Junk the LSAT? Making the Case for a Better Test
Should the LSAT be scrapped for something better, more predictive of success as a lawyer? Two California academics think so. Former Berkeley law professor Marjorie Shultz and Berkeley psychology professor Sheldon Zedeck have created a test that they feel could be administered to law school applicants to measure their nascent lawyerly abilities. Click here for the story, from Wednesday's NYT.
As the Economy Falls, Age-Discrimination Claims Go Up
Laid-off workers over 40, it turns out, aren't just sitting back, accepting their laid-off fates and waiting for those Social Security checks to come in. They're increasingly taking matters into their own hands . . . and suing, claiming age-discrimination. Click here for the WSJ story. According to the story, figures scheduled for release later this week by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission show that age-discrimination allegations by employees are at a record high, jumping 29% to 24,600 filed in the year ended Sept. 30, up from 19,103 in 2007. WSJ Law Blog March 11, 2009

Folks in Chicagoland were greeted in their morning Tribunes with a riveting story about a strange alleged operation going on in Tenaha, Tex., a “dusty fleck of a town” near the Texas-Louisiana border. According to the story, police officers in Tenaha have made a practice of stripping motorists, many of whom are African-American and just passing through, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Court records report it happened to more than 140 people between June 2006 and June 2008. Among them were a black woman from Akron, Ohio, who surrendered $4,000 in cash after Tenaha police pulled her over, and an interracial couple from Houston, who gave up more than $6,000 after police threatened to seize their children and put them into foster care. Neither the woman nor the couple were charged with any crime. Officials in Tenaha call the search-and-seizure practice a legitimate use of the state's asset-forfeiture law, a law which permits local police agencies to keep drug money and other property used in the commission of a crime and add the proceeds to their budgets.
Are the protections of 'Gideon v. Wainwright'--the 1963 Supreme Court case which guarantees lawyers to everyone charged with a crime--at risk? Former Veep Walter Mondale thinks so. Writing in Tuesday's Washington Post, Mondale writes that “states across the country routinely fail to appoint counsel to people who are genuinely unable to afford representation on their own.” WSJ Law Blog March 10, 2009

Bank of America Corp. now ranks as the largest U.S. bank ranked by assets, according to a study by SNL Financial. Charlotte, N.C.-based BofA had total assets of almost $2.5 trillion as of Dec. 31.
http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2009/03/09/daily39.html

Around the world, bats pollinate or disburse the seeds of more than 300 important species, including wild bananas, wild avocados and durian, a fruit coveted in Southeast Asia. In Mexico bats pollinate saguaro cactus and agave plants, from which tequila is distilled. Bats are an important pollinator of agave and have helped make commercial tequila production possible (although the agave seedlings used for tequila production are increasingly being grown in labs). No bats, no tequila. And no tequila, no margaritas. http://www.nature.org/magazine/spring2009/features/art27403.html

At the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., Bonnie the orangutan has been amazing researchers with her special talent: Bonnie knows how to whistle.
Those notes are a symphony to the ears of primate researchers who believe her musical abilities could lead to a greater understanding of how human speech evolved. "I think what makes it significant is that you can train apes to whistle, but no one trained her to do it. She decided to do it on her own," says Erin Stromberg, who works in the National Zoo's Great Ape house and helps care for the orangutans. Stromberg helped publish a recent paper on Bonnie's talents. Researchers believe Bonnie was trying to imitate the sounds of zookeepers who whistle while they work.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100875176

pied-a-terre (pee-ay-duh-TARE)
plural pieds-a-terre (pee-ay-duh-TARE)
noun: A place of lodging for temporary or secondary use
from French pied-à-terre (foot on the ground)
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On March 12, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his first "fireside chat," an evening radio speech addressing the nation. He talked about the bank crisis.
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