FTC Testifies on Efforts to Protect Consumers in Subprime Mortgage Market
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce, Trade, and Tourism [Improving Consumer Protections in Subprime Lending], about the Commission’s continuing efforts to protect subprime mortgage borrowers. The testimony described the agency’s priorities, including deceptive mortgage advertising, deceptive or unfair servicing practices, discrimination in lending, and foreclosure rescue scams..."

Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner have published Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, which hit stores April 28. The writing could apply to anyone engaged in the art of persuasion. For starters is the authors’ advice to acknowledge weakness in arguments right up front.
WSJ Law Blog April 29, 2008

Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann is considering a new e-mail policy after thousands of e-mails released in a sexual harassment investigation led critics to label his office “Dannimal House.” Spokesman Jim Gravelle says top officials in Dann's office are discussing changes that would cover e-mail exchanges and establish guidelines for general office decorum, the Tribune Chronicle reports. The changes won’t be made until completion of an investigation into sexual harassment charges against Anthony Gutierrez, general service director.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/ohio_ag_marc_dann_considers_policies_to_address_dannimal_house_image/

A huge fight has erupted in the U.S. Congress over whether drug makers and other companies should be allowed to keep patents they obtained by misrepresentation or cheating.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/29/business/patent.php

A lawyer who ordered opposing counsel to "sit quietly in the corner" and "be like a potted plant" has been ordered to write an article on civility for that remark and other cutting comments.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/lawyer_who_made_snarky_comments_ordered_to_write_civility_article/

When should American litigators care about a judgment of the French Cour de Cassation (Supreme Court) requiring a French lawyer to pay a 10,000 euro fine? When that decision may shake up the conventional wisdom about what discovery may be obtained from French (and perhaps other foreign) parties and nonparties.
http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1209459934853

Larry McMurtry will receive the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award on April 30 because he is a “bibliophile par excellence.” That’s how City Librarian Fontayne Holmes describes the novelist, essayist and screenwriter. “He really is such a book person in every single meaning of the word, as a bookstore owner, as a book collector, as a writer and as an incredible reader of literature,” she said.
McMurtry, who has published 41 books, is known for depicting an un-idealized vision of the Old West and his native Texas. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, which became a television mini-series starring Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones and Danny Glover in 1989.

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Quote: Learning liberates.