The lesson of this story is simple: if you are a criminal defense attorney counseling your client to lie on the stand, don’t say it in an e-mail.

In a DUI case, legal eagle Scott Pratt wrote his client to say,

they won’t have anyone there to testify how much you had to drink. You won’t be charged with perjury. I’ve never seen them charge anyone with perjury, and everybody lies in criminal cases, including the cops. If you want to tell the truth, then we’ll just plead guilty and you can get your jail time over with.

The judge in the case is “thinking about prohibiting Pratt from practicing in his courtroom.” Really! If I were the judge, I’d be mulling that issue over for all of about two seconds.

Thanks to Eugene Volokh for the pointer.

L.A. Times funnyman Roy Rivenburg has this piece on some great holiday gifts for the politically-minded folk in your family or inner circle of friends. If my Dad were still around, I’d get him the Donald Rumsfeld doll.

Howard Bashman is trying to supplant my role as the blogosphere’s premier L.A. Times fact-checker — and is doing a pretty good job of it, too. Howard rips apart an L.A. Times op-ed that will run tomorrow. According to Howard:

In the second to last paragraph of the op-ed, Professor [Marci A. ] Hamilton writes: “If one were looking for a predominant influence on the Supreme Court, it would seem to be Harvard Law School, not Catholicism. In addition to those listed above, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer attended Harvard Law, which means that if Alito is confirmed, the school will have seven graduates on the high court.” Unfortunately, the statement that “if Alito is confirmed, [Harvard Law School] will have seven graduates on the high court” is wrong in at least three different ways.

Go to Howard’s post to see what those are. It’s nicely done, with hyperlinks that prove his various assertions.

I’ll pass this along to the Times‘s Readers’ Representative, who has a whale of a correction to issue.

Sometimes I like to tell my kids to do something that I know they’re already going to do anyway. Like, if they’re in a bad mood, I’ll say: “Make a grumpy face!” They will because they’re already grumpy. Then I’ll tell them “Good job!” for having followed my directions. (In fact, I think I have an example of that here.)

I appear to have done something similar with the Wizbang “Best Law Blog” contest. I told you not to vote for me, and apparently (for the most part), you didn’t.

Good job!

Anyway, thanks to anyone who voted for me regardless of my entreaties.

P.S. Does anybody understand how some relatively poorly trafficked blog called “Law Dork” managed to get a thousand more votes than the Volokh Conspiracy??

P.P.S. I have added the word “relatively” to the previous sentence, in response to the Law Dork’s comment. Adding the word helps clarify what I meant. My intent was not to insult the Dork; the readership of my blog is “poorly trafficked” compared to Volokh, Althouse, or How Appealing. I just didn’t understand how he got so many votes given his relatively lower numbers.

Apparently, according to the Dork, the answer is that his blog was made a cause célèbre by some other blog called “Jesus’ General.” I never heard of the other blog either, but that doesn’t mean anything.

Anyway, congratulations to the Law Dork, and apologies for any offense my “poorly trafficked” comment caused.

You know that Paypal button at the bottom of the right margin? The one nobody ever, ever uses?

Well, turns out someone did. But I went and associated my Paypal account with an e-mail account I almost never check. The guy sent me $50 — that’s fifty U.S. dollars! — on November 5, and I just found out about it today. The payment was sent back for non-receipt almost two weeks ago.

I am a bonehead.

It’s okay. The guy’s a Marine who fought in Vietnam. I know that from the comment he left on the site. He deserves the money far more than I do.

Doesn’t make me any less of an idiot, though.

P.S. I’m going to be checking that account regularly now. So if you all have just been waiting to Paypal me money, but you were waiting for me to say it’s okay — well, it’s okay!

P.P.S. Note that I said the Marine “deserves” the money more than I do — not that he needs it more than I do. It never even occurred to me that anyone might take my comment as saying that former Marines are destitute, but commenter Rod Stanton seems to think it could be read that way. So let me make it clear: that is not what I meant to say — at all.

I think Tom Cruise is a great actor, but in real life, he is a loony-tunes. Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

L. Ron Hubbard, by contrast, was a genius: the P.T. Barnum of modern times. Nevertheless, I reject his teachings in favor of the ministry of Elron McKenzie.

Who among you is involved with a media organization and would like to give Patterico a media credential? It could be for a radio station, an alternative newspaper, a high school newsletter . . . I don’t care. I just want to be able to call someone and say: “I’m working on behalf of [your organization here].” But I don’t want to, you know, go to journalism school and be a real journalist, and all that jazz. I just want the credential.

I have a specific reason for making this request. If it works, you’ll know.

No, I’m not trying to avoid FEC regulations. To hell with those people. It’s a secret why I want to do this, for now. But if you have a media credential to offer, and you want to know why, e-mail me at patterico AT patterico DOT com and we’ll discuss it.

UPDATE: Kevin Roderick says:

Patterico is seeking a media “credential” (whatever that is) for some secret purpose.

It’s funny he should put it that way. I wrote somebody about this on Saturday and said almost exactly the same thing: “Does [your organization] have any way of obtaining or distributing media credentials? (Whatever those are.)”

The closest I can figure, as I say in the post, is that I want to be able to call people and legitimately say that I’m representing a particular media organization. Whether I would need some medal pinned on my chest, of the kind that might be handed out by the Wizard of Oz, I have no idea . . . being rather unsophistimicated in such matters. Roderick continues:

Let’s assume it will involve a conservative lesson about journalists or the media.

Well, that’s not a bad guess, since it’s a request for a media credential, and I’m a conservative. It’s a bit snarky, but it’s not a bad guess. But there’s much more to it than just that.

There’s something missing from around the necks of the five Important World Leaders pictured below. Can you guess what it is?

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