Welcome to HackLawyer.net

You couldn’t help but notice that our local rag endorsed John McCain for president.  That places the Amarillo Globe in such good company.  McCain may want to crow about this plug but he got another one from overseas that he defintely does not want to talk about.  A commentary on a password-protected Islamic Web site which disseminates propoganda for Al Qaeda states the following: “Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election.”  This is no joke.

The endorsement left the McCain camp speechless.  It was quick to point out that Hamas endorsed Obama but so what?  Let the McCain campaign explain this one.  One such alibi is that McCain’s tough policies of keeping troops “indefinitely” in Iraq, his focus on Islamic terrorism and his insistence on military options tend to ratchet up Al Qaeda recruitment.  That’s what some terrorism experts have come up with.  I’d like to hear from the candidate himself.

As if the avalanche of data out there about the dangers of cigarette smoking isn’t enough to convince you that smoking is tantamount to suicide, here’s one more nail.  A new study has concluded that people who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis may see an improvement in their condition if they quit smoking. 

The study, described as preliminary, offers evidence that giving up the habit may help arthritis patients in general.  The results were presented at a recent conference of the American College of Rheumatology.  The study looked at more than 14,000 people with rheumatoid arthritis and divided them into three groups - nonsmokers, smokers and former smokers.  When the study was initiated, just under 2,000 patients were active smokers but a fifth of that group managed to quit smoking.  Those who did saw a “significant” improvement in their symptoms.  You decide.

Since I am talking of gambles that didn’t pay off, let me talk a bit about a few that did.  I haven’t really discussed this here, but ever since the running of the Belmont Stakes and having witnessed Big Brown’s dreadful performance, I took an extended sabbatical from the races.  That’s right, not a single bet on the ponies for four months.  I needed the time from the races.  It was my plan to lay off until the Breeders Cup, scheduled for Santa Anita this past Friday and Saturday.  And it was a move that paid off. (more…)

Inventive use of Rule 202.1 Texas Rules of Civil Procedure

Ted Roberts, a lawyer out of San Antonio, had a pretty good thing going, or at least, he thought he did.  He and his wife, Mary, were working a variation of the old badger game.  Roberts’ scheme involved shaking down the unfortunate victims by making them believe they were the subject of a Rule 202 proceeding (Motion To Perpetuate Testimony) which would expose them, their position with their respective company or their wives to embarassing disclosures.  This was then followed up with a request that the mark “contribute” to Roberts’ favorite “charity” or reimburse him for the expenses involved in the “investigation” incurred in discovering his wife’s infidelities. 

Incredibly, Roberts pulled off four such shake-downs.  Each of them involved men who were well-heeled.  One was a lawyer, one a CPA and the other two were corporate financial officers.  All these unfortunate men met Mary, the wayward wife, at hotels in the Austin area.  And the “affairs” were well documented with lurid e-mails sent by Mary to each.  Roberts crafted his scheme to include unwitting private investigators and forensic computer analysts who were retained to “tail” the cheating wife or subject the wife’s computer to a full-blown forensic examination in quest of incriminating evidence.  Of course the investigator came up with juicy evidence as did the forensic computer analyst.  It was all designed to do just that as Roberts and his conspiring wife planned.  But, like most crimes, this went one went awry too.  Eventually, authorities were contacted and the paper trail led directly to Roberts and his multiple bank accounts, overflowing with the loot extorted from the marks.

Roberts was eventually taken to trial in Bexar County and found guilty on multiple counts of theft by coercion and deception.  He was sentenced to five years TDC.  I guess they rejected his plea for probation.  Hack cannot report on what was done with his wife or whether she turned State’s witness or whatever.  But you can read all the facts here.  Suffice it to say that Roberts put a lot of time into carrying out this series of scams.  It makes you wonder if he put in a corresponding amount of effort toward representing his clients.  (more…)

Back on September 8, I put up a short post about a top 25 movie list about Los Angeles that was originally published in The Los Angeles Times.  I boiled down that list to six movies. (see L.A. Movies, posted under Items of Interest)  I promised more so here goes with a baker’s dozen.

1.  Double Indemnity (1944) with Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson; directed by Billy Wilder - murder under a microscope.

2.  The Big Sleep (1946) with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall; directed by Howard Hawks - a movie whose script (written by none other than William Faulkner) was so convoluted that the director called the book’s author, Raymond Chandler, for assistance in figuring it out.  Chandler was of no help.

3.  He Walked By Night (1948) with Richard Basehart and Scott Brady, directed by Alfred Werker.  Tense, low budget thriller about a cold-blooded killer stalking the streets of L.A. with a bang-up conclusion taking place in the underground aqueduct.

4.  Sunset Boulevard (1950) with William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olsen and Jack Webb; directed by Billy Wilder.  Brilliant L.A. film about a fading silent film star (Swanson) plotting her “return” (nee comeback), aided by a cad gigilo and part-time script writer (Holden) and attended to by her former husband-director and now-valet ”Max” (Stroheim).  But art was indeed imitating life because in reality, like the movie, Swanson really was trying to comeback after many years in exile from the silents and Stroheim really was once a great director who was reduced to taking bit parts in also-ran productions.  It is a film with more great lines than space permits but here’s one: Norma Desmond (Swanson) asks Joe Gillis (Holden) if one of his scripts had ever been produced into a movie.  Gillis replies: “Yeah, but you’d never know it.  I once wrote a script about some Oakies out of the Dustbowl but by the time it made it onto the screen, it was all played out on the deck of a PT boat.” (more…)

Now here’s something I really wasn’t aware of but it looks like for some of my younger bloggers and computer-savvy enthusiasts, drinking and firing off rash e-mails is a bit of a problem.  And in recognition of this binge of late-night drunken e-mailing, Google has come up with its own version of the vehicle interlock device: it’s called Mail Goggles and is intended to help stamp out this scourge. 

Here’s how it works: it requires any user who enables his or her Gmail program to perform five simple math problems in 60 seconds before sending e-mails between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m.  It is the first sobriety checkpoint ever put up on the information superhighway and most likely, it’s a portent of things to come.  You may think this is all pretty silly but consider a couple of anecdotes here and then make up your mind. (more…)

Lefty Rosenthal, colorful gambler, handicapper and Las Vegas legend, died last Monday, October 13 in Miami Beach.  Cause of death is still unknown.  His life was the centerpiece to Martin Scorsese’s film “Casino,” although the character in the movie went by the name Ace Rothstein.  Rosenthal’s rise (and violent fall) in Las Vegas was originally chronicled in Nicholas Pileggi’s book by the same name that came out in 1995.  And it turns out that most of what you saw in the film was faithful to real-life events. 

Take, for example, the opening sequence in the film when Rothstein, played by Robert DeNiro, gets into his Cadillac and turns on the ignition, only to have it go up in flames and then, within second, blow up.  That really happened.  On the evening of October 4, 1982, Rosenthal had just walked out of Tony Roma’s on East Sahara Avenue with an order of takeout ribs and when he started the car, it blew up.  He, like the DeNiro character, survived the explosion but it marked the end of his era, a very short 14 years, in Las Vegas.  No one was ever prosecuted for the attempt on his life, he doesn’t even remember putting the key in the ignition and he quickly repaired to Miami Beach where he stayed until his last breath this past Monday.

Frank Rosenthal started out in Chicago where he studiously worked at his craft - handicapping the horses and learning how to set an odds line while watching baseball at old Comisky Park - and later fell into favor with local gangsters because he made them so much money.  Although he was never really considered a “made guy” (his Jewish heritage took care of that), he was protected by the Mafia.  He later was installed at the old Stardust Hotel and Casino at a minor position when he was informed, out of the blue, that he would be in control of the entire operation and three other hotels owned by a company called Argent Corporation.  In reality, Argent was a front for the mafiosi who controlled the gargantuan pension fund of the Teamsters union which had fiannced the Argent acquistion of the hotels and casinos.  It was the perfect set up for the mob to wash its illegal monies as well as skim into the casinos’ gambling take. 

At the time, Allen Glick, owner of Argent, was surprised to learn that he would be taking orders from one of his employees.  This is how he recounted that fateful day with Lefty Rosenthal when he learned who was really calling the shots, as told to Pileggi:

“He [Rosenthal] said, ‘It is about time you become informed of what is going on here and where I am coming from and where you should be.  I was placed in this position not for your benefit, but for the benefit of others, and I have been instructed not to tolerate any nonsense from you, nor do I have to listen to what you have to say, because you are not my boss.  When I say you don’t have a choice, I am just not talking of an administrative basis, but I am talking about one involving health.  If you interfere with any of the casino operations or try to undermine anything I want to do here, I represent to you that you will never leave this corporation alive.’ “

Other details of the movie seem to have been grounded in reality.  (more…)

This past Sunday at Louisiana Downs in Bossier City, the track kicked off the card with a $5,000 maiden claiming race.  This is a bottom-of-the-barrel race; the $5,000 tag is about as low as you can go, even at LA Downs.  Anyway, it was a full field of twelve horses and four went off at triple-digit odds.  Mr. Bradley went off at 123-1, Kristens Rebel at 125-1, Titan by Day at 156-1 and finally Cato at 182-1.  And the winner?  Cato with a payoff of $367.20 for every two dollars bet on the nose to win.  It is reported to be the highest mutuel payoff there at the Bossier City track ever and for my money, I can’t remember reading or hearing about a bigger one.  And the other three?  They finished, respectively, ninth, eleventh and dead last.  Well, someone had to have had money on the colt but who?  Cato had come into Sunday’s race off five consecutive double-digit defeats by lengths and his top Beyer Speed Figure was 20.  To give you some context, typical cheap, claiming grinders chalk up Beyers of 55 to 65.  Stakes horses regularly record Beyers in excess of 100.  Do I smell a betting coup?

James Pennebaker is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas with a pet obsession which he has now fashioned into a whole new discipline.  His interest is in counting one’s words, literally counting the numer of words spoken or written by a subject in order to derive meaning, state of mind and motivation from the word content.  More than 20 years ago, he did studies with victims of traumatic experiences and found that those who talked about their ordeals tended to be physically healthier than those who kept the memories tamped down.  At the time, he wondered how much he could learn by looking at the sheer number of words spoken by the test subject, right down to the number of articles and pronouns.

This pursuit has led him to a study of Beatles’ lyrics to a full-blown analysis of Al Qaeda communcations.  As far as the latter is concerned, Dr. Pennebaker was asked by the FBI to examine Osama bin Laden’s use of first-person pronouns (I, me, mine, my) in his statements and interviews available through videotapes, letters and the Internet.  He found that bin Laden’s use of first-person has remained fairly consistent over the years whereas his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, has been using such pronouns much more frequently as of late.  Dr. Pennebaker wrote in his report to the agency that he believes the increase suggests greater insecurity, feelings of threat or perhaps marks a dramatic shift in his relationship with bin Laden.  He went on to theorize that this shift could be a way of his reasserting his own independence from bin Laden and establishing himself as a future alternative leader in the movement.

Pennebaker uses a software program which he helped devise to analyze, break down and compare all the “I’s,” “the’s” and “a’s” which comprise so much of our everyday speech which we really aren’t aware of.  He has broken down word content into such categories as social words (talk, they, we), biological words (cheeks, hands, head, heart, spit), “insight” words (think, believe, feel, consider, suppose) and dozens of other categories.  The software then compares each word to its own unique dictionary and then provides a readout of how many words appear according to each category. Pennebaker believes that this study of “junk words” - you know, those words that we use as ”crutch” words to shift emphasis or move on to another subject (articles, pronouns, etc.) - can prove crucial to understanding the mental processes of people.  (more…)

I suppose many folks my age (56) have a story to tell about screwing up the courage to go their father or mother and do something very, very painful - take the car keys away from the elderly parent.  I can understand why this is something so ferociously resisted by the aging parent.  It’s really the last tangible thing they have through which they can assert some degree of independence.  In a world that demands and rewards only youth, which discounts experience derived from advancing years and where the elderly parent begins that slow, eventual descent toward death - punctuated with pain and disease - the car stands as that last bastion of the life they once grasped with vigor.  I don’t blame them for fighting to keep the car but the statistics are daunting.  And make no mistake.  A graph showing traffic fatalities among the various age groups looks like a big U, with the greatest number of fatalities starting with the 16-18 age group, dipping down through middle years and peaking once again with those 80 and over.  But some communities are trying to grapple with the unpleasant experience of taking the keys away.

One such community has started a “Car Fit” program where law enforcement and mechanics will donate their time to inspect a senior’s car to make sure it’s roadworthy.  White Plains, New York has started an “Older Driver” network which sets up drivers to make sure seniors get to the store or make important medical appointments rather than forcing the individual to make the trek on their own.  What all of this is designed to prevent is summed up in a harrowing anecdote provided by a N.Y. county official by the name of Andrew Spano.  He was contacted by his elderly father who asked Spano if he could utilize his political connections at the Department of Motor Vehicles and get those people to cut him some slack on the eye examination.  When the dutiful son asked his father how he was getting around if he couldn’t see, his father told him “Your mother tells me what the signs say.”  Spano immediately drove to his father’s house and took the keys.  His father didn’t speak to him for two months.

It must be a very difficult thing to do.  How do you go about telling some man who risked his life for his country, garnered a Purple Heart (or two) and helped to build a family and life that he can’t drive anymore and that what little freedom he enjoys nowadays is gone?  I don’t know but these fledging programs are worth looking into and look to me to be as valuable and needed as the very popular “Meals on Wheels” that is touted around here.