100 Milestone Documents from National Archives and Records Administration- "The following is a list of 100 milestone documents, compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration, and drawn primarily from its nationwide holdings. The documents chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965."
"The list begins with the Lee Resolution of June 7, 1776, a simple document resolving that the United Colonies “are, and of right, ought to be free and independent states...” and ends with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a statute that helped fulfill the promise of freedom inherent in the first documents on the list. The remaining milestone documents are among the thousands of public laws, Supreme Court decisions, inaugural speeches, treaties, constitutional amendments, and other documents that have influenced the course of U.S. history. They have helped shape the national character, and they reflect our diversity, our unity, and our commitment as a nation to continue our work toward forming “a more perfect union.”

Words of wit from the Brits
Gobsmacked is a fairly recent British slang term: the first recorded use is only in the eighties, though verbal use must surely go back further. The usual form is gobsmacked, though gobstruck is also found. It’s a combination of gob, mouth, and smacked. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-gob1.htm
Chinwag informal conversation http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/chinwag
Dogsbody someone who is forced to do all the jobs that no one else wants to do http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/dogsbody

Visit http://www.arttatumfoundation.com/ and see eight pianos at Follow the Piano on Flickr, Renee painting a piano on October 13, 2009 at Elephant Paints Piano at Toledo Zoo, and more pianos at bottom of page including one painted by the Walleye hockey team. More information here:
Pianos—not the fancy, grand variety, but pianos that were meant to be played a lot—are donated to an arts organization, placed in a public place to be painted, and then left there for anyone from the most accomplished musician to a curious child to come along and play. The Art Tatum Jazz Heritage Foundation created the Pianos for Art project this year to honor its namesake's 100th birthday and claim a little artistic synergy similar to the It's Reigning Frogs public art campaign in 2001 that featured giant, brightly
painted frogs around Toledo.
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091115/ART10/911159983

The 2009 Guidelines Manual (effective November 1, 2009) is available in HTML and Adobe .PDF formats (large file and broken into chapters), which can be viewed, downloaded or printed via the website."
Related postings on sentencing guidelines

Google Scholar Now Includes Free Case Law Database
Use Google Scholar Advanced Scholar Search to find articles, subject specific articles and patents, legal opinions and journals [Search all legal opinions and journals; Search only US federal court opinions; Search only court opinions from individual states].
Via Justia: use Google Scholar to access: 1 US 1 (pre 1776 :), 1 F 2d 1 (1924+), F Supp cases, US State Cases 1950+
Via Justia: Google Scholar also gives alternatives versions of cases http://is.gd/4WOZw including Cornell's LII, Justia, Public.Resource.org

Pew Analysis Shows More Than 60 Percent of Export-Import Bank Loan Guarantees Benefited Single Company
News release: "The Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im)—the official government agency subsidizing U.S. exports of goods and services—provided nearly two-thirds of its long-term loan guarantees over the last two years to a single corporate entity, according to analysis released [11/09/09] by Pew’s Subsidyscope project. In FY2007 and FY2008 combined, Ex-Im issued $15.3 billion in long-term loan guarantees. Of that total, almost $10 billion, or an average of 65 percent, went toward the purchase of commercial aircraft made by the Boeing Company, the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft combined."

Ranking law schools and law firms.
A universe that used to contain one member, it seems—U.S. News & World Report—has suddenly gotten a lot more crowded. Princeton Review now ranks the law schools. The American Lawyer, with its annual A-List ranking, provides a ranking of sorts for law firms. Vault uses prestige as the measuring stick for law firms; Chicago Law prof Brian Leiter provides his own law-school rankings, here. The list, particularly in regard to law schools, goes on and on. Well, let us add one more name to the parade. Law & Politics, the publisher of Super Lawyers and the magazines Minnesota Law & Politics and Washington Law & Politics, unveils its first ever ranking of U.S. law schools, based on one criteria only: how many Super Lawyers each produces. Roughly 5 percent of the lawyers in each state are selected to Super Lawyers lists each year. Click here for how those are chosen.
The top 25 go like this: 1) Harvard; 2) Michigan; 3) Texas; 4) UVA; 5) Georgetown; 6) NYU; 7) Columbia; 8) Florida; 9) Berkeley; 10) Yale; 11) Hastings; 12) GW; 13) BU; 14) UCLA; 15) Penn; 16) Chicago; 17) BC; 18) Northwestern; 19) Stanford; 20) University of Miami; 21) Vanderbilt; 22) SMU; 23) Duke; 24) Minnesota; 25) Wisconsin. Click over to Super Lawyers for the full rankings. We didn't get to peek behind the curtain on the numbers that comprise the rankings, but we can tell you this: that 2,354 Super Lawyers in 2009 were Harvard (#1) graduates, while 492 were Wisconsin (#25 graduates). We're not experts in statistics, rankings or methodologies. Nor do we really have a well-defined opinion on what makes a law-school “good.” But one glaring issue jumped out at us upon hearing of the Super Lawyers ranking: it doesn't take into consideration class size. We know, for instance, that classes at Yale and Stanford are much smaller than classes at Harvard, Georgetown and Michigan, and it's been that way a while. So there are simply more Harvard Law grads in the world than Yale grads—and a ranking that doesn't take this into consideration is, in our opinion, an imperfect one. WSJ Law Blog November 17, 2009

On November 18, 1903, Panama and the United States signed a treaty on the proposed Panama Canal. Read the full text of the Convention for the Construction of a Ship Canal. Visit the website of the Panama Canal Authority.
On November 18, 1976, the largely-appointed Parliament of Spain voted to transition to elective democracy. The vote came almost a year after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, who had governed the nation since 1936. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
November 18 is the birthday of novelist and poet Margaret Atwood, born in Ottawa, Ontario (1939). Her father was an entomologist who spent every year from spring to fall studying insects at a forestry research station in northern Quebec. Atwood said, "At the age of six months, I was carried into the woods in a packsack, and this landscape became my hometown. She had no access to television or movies, and few children to play with. So she spent her time exploring the woods and reading. Atwood's first novel, The Edible Woman, came out in 1969. It's about a woman who finds that she can no longer eat after her boyfriend proposes marriage. Atwood is best known for her novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985), about an imaginary America where religious fanatics have taken over the government. The book became an international best-seller. Her most recent novel is The Year of the Flood (2009), which came out this fall. The Writer’s Almanac

Quote The cardinal doctrine of a fanatic's creed is that his enemies are the enemies of God. Andrew Dickson White, diplomat, historian, and educator (1832-1918)