Most of you will rememeber Cyrus Sanai as the guy who told the world about the collection of off-color material on the website/server of federal appellate judge Alex Kozinski — a story we covered here in depth on this blog when it broke. Some of you have since gotten to know Cyrus better as the guy who drops into the comments to lecture us all on his particular views regarding DNA statistics and the like. Now you can know him as the guy who was declared a vexatious litigant by the Los Angeles courts! (In essence, this means that, in the future, he has to ask for court permission before filing a lawsuit.)

The order is here. In it, the court finds that Sanai has engaged in “frivolous and improper” litigation tactics, including “attempt[ing] to acquire a fraudulent abstract of judgment” — tactics which, the court concludes, “speak to an improper motive to grind down the other side and to keep them from being able to move forward in the litigation.” Perhaps some of the most interesting parts of the order are the quotes from Judge Terry Green, one of several judges that Sanai has challenged. Here is a representative quote from Judge Green during one of the hearings on Sanai’s misconduct:

There is more like that.

Sanai, of course, challenged the judge who issued this order, and in fact all judges in Los Angeles County. So there are your grounds for appeal — which means there will be yet another entertaining order (from the appellate courts) in the coming months and years.

It’s an endless saga. Which is kind of the court’s point.

And refers the matter to the State Bar:

The Ninth Circuit Judicial Council yesterday sanctioned Beverly Hills attorney Cyrus Sanai, saying he had filed frivolous complaints against 19 federal judges.

The court ordered that any further misconduct complaints filed by Sanai, best known as the lawyer whose discovery of sexually explicit material on Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski’s personal website led to the judge being admonished, be submitted to the court for review prior to being filed.

Only after “a determination is made as to whether it merits further review” will the filing of a complaint by Sanai be permitted, the order provides. The council also publicly reprimanded Sanai and ordered that a copy of its order be served on the State Bar of California for consideration of further discipline.

. . . .

“An attorney filing a frivolous misconduct complaint diminishes the effectiveness of our system of justice, and also may have an adverse effect on the random assignment of judges who may feel compelled to recuse even in light of unfounded allegations,” the council wrote. “We conclude that both a public reprimand and a pre-filing order are appropriate sanctions for this abuse of the misconduct complaint procedure.”

Here is the opinion.

Just before Thanksgiving, I reported that Judge Stephen Reinhardt had issued an order regarding Cyrus Sanai’s complaints against Alex Kozinski. That order concluded:

Although I do not believe it would be appropriate for me, in my present role, to initiate sanction proceedings against complainant, see Judicial Conduct Rule 10(a), complainant’s conduct warrants referral to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Council for whatever action in this regard, including referral to the state bar, it may deem appropriate. See: In re Complaint of Judicial Misconduct, 550 F.3d 769 (9th Cir. Jud. Council 2008).

Four days ago, the Judicial Council ordered Sanai to show cause why he should not be sanctioned:

Complainant is ordered to show cause why he should not be sanctioned by an order requiring him to obtain leave before filing any further misconduct complaints, or by issuance of a public reprimand, and/or by referral to the California State Bar Association. See Judicial-Conduct Rule 10(a); In re Complaint of Judicial Misconduct, 552 F.3d 1146, 1148 (9th Cir. Jud. Council 2009). Complainant shall address also whether he violated 28 U.S.C. § 360 by publicly commenting on misconduct proceedings as listed in the sealed attachment to this order. Complainant has twenty-eight days from the filing of this order to file a response that shall not exceed 4,000 words in length . . . .

The Judicial Council explains:

Complainant filed three misconduct complaints naming nineteen federal judges, raising many frivolous claims. Complainant reiterated allegations previously dismissed, without providing new supporting evidence, and admitted using the misconduct process to further his litigation strategy, a clearly improper purpose. In publicly discussing the pending misconduct proceedings, complainant may have violated 28 U.S.C. § 360.

The admission referred to by the Court was made on this blog, in this post, in which Sanai told me that the investigation of Kozinski was “part of a litigation strategy.”

I’ll keep you informed as this progresses.

Oh, while we’re on the topic . . .

Back in December, the Washington Supreme Court issued an opinion reversing a hearing officer’s order disbarring Fredric Sanai, Cyrus’s brother. A couple of people told me about it, but I was busy and didn’t have time to post about it in a timely fashion. No time like the present.

The 5-4 opinion is here. The dissent is here, and has some choice things to say about Cyrus Sanai:

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A reader passes along an article from the Daily Journal, which reports on the Ninth Circuit’s dismissal of certain ethics complaints by Cyrus Sanai against numerous judges, including Alex Kozinski. (Attentive readers will note that I first reported on this before Thanksgiving. Patterico: beating the Daily Journal by almost a week!)

The reader notes that, for all the articles that the L.A. Times has done about Kozinski, it has run absolutely zilch on this order. Indeed, a search of their archives reveals that the last mention of Kozinski was on November 14, on an unrelated matter. (Patterico: reporting the news that the L.A. Times refuses to run!)

The Daily Journal article begins:

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed a lengthy misconduct complaint against Chief Judge Alex Kozinski and numerous other jurists filed by Cyrus M. Sanai, a Beverly Hills attorney.

The article notes the investigation launched over the sexually explicit material on Judge Kozinski’s web site, and continues:

While that investigation was under way, Sanai filed a complaint against Kozinski and a dozen other circuit judges and six district judges alleging assorted acts of misconduct related to their handling of Sanai’s own civil cases, appeals and earlier misconduct matters.

That complaint was the subject of a Nov. 25 order by Circuit Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt, in which he found Sanai’s claims “frivolous,” “not supported by any evidence” or properly dismissed by earlier orders.

In sum, Reinhardt concluded, Sanai filed baseless allegations “and appears to have described his conduct as part of a litigation strategy.” Reinhardt cited that phrase in a 2008 posting by Sanai on a legal affairs blog called Patterico’s Pontifications, run by a deputy district attorney in Long Beach, John Patrick Frey.

Frey also quoted from a Sanai comment to another blog: “Once Kozinski inserted himself into my litigation inappropriately [by writing the op-ed column], it’s my duty and right to undo the negative consequences and turn the situation to my litigation advantage.”

Frey declined to comment on the matter Monday except to note it is unusual for his blog to be mentioned in an official circuit order.

Kozinski, through his attorney, declined to comment.

(Just so it’s clear, I didn’t so much “note” that it was unusual as “agree with the reporter” that it was unusual. He brought it up.)

I spoke to the reporter, John Roemer, just before lunch yesterday (nice guy) and indeed declined to comment on Cyrus Sanai’s argument that the Ninth Circuit had no business meddling in this set of complaints. The reader can make his own judgment.

Well, I guess this answers the question of who that mystery “complainant” was in Reinhardt’s order.

I had a feeling it was Cyrus Sanai! Don’t ask me how I knew . . . it just felt right.

Cyrus Sanai’s litigation strategy continues apace. He has written yet another article for a media outlet (this time the L.A. Weekly) that touts his litigation claims without disclosing his ongoing litigation.

As regular readers will recall, Sanai is embarked upon a grand legal strategy to reverse rulings in his parents’ divorce in Washington state. He has proclaimed that his litigation strategy includes seeking discipline for Alex Kozinski. On this site and others, Sanai said that revealing the contents of Judge Kozinski’s website/server was merely one element in a three-step litigation strategy related to his parents’ divorce.

One wonders if we’re now seeing Step Two.

It appears that part of Sanai’s strategy includes writing articles that advance pet arguments identical to those being made in his litigation:

• Sanai claims that there is corruption in Western state courts (including, not coincidentally, the court that decided his parents’ divorce);

• Sanai says that the Ninth Circuit has the power to issue injunctions to put a stop to that corruption (and, not coincidentally, he has asked for the federal courts to issue just such an injunction); and

• Sanai says that the Ninth Circuit has failed to issue such injunctions because of a disturbing pattern of deciding cases by unpublished disposition (which, not coincidentally, happened when he requested such an injunction).

Sanai’s dispute with Judge Kozinski began when Sanai wrote a newspaper article advancing these positions, without disclosing that the subject of his article related to Sanai’s ongoing litigation. Judge Kozinski wrote an article noting Sanai’s lack of disclosure. Kozinski also argued that Sanai had misstated the holdings of several court decisions.

Now, Sanai has written an article for the L.A. Weekly that advances these same positions. Sanai was purportedly assigned by the Weekly to cover the Ninth Circuit’s Judicial Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. But as the article goes on, Sanai’s coverage of the conference becomes little more than window dressing for his discussion of his legal arguments — arguments which are not disclosed as central to Sanai’s litigation (which is not even mentioned).

What relevance do these arguments have to the conference? Why, Sanai says, the relevance is that they weren’t even discussed!

Nevada’s “pay for play” judiciary was well documented in the Los Angeles Times’ “Juice for Justice” series two years ago. In Arizona, the state’s own watchdog has documented instances in which elected judges use their judicial powers to favor friends or settle scores. In Washington state, the courts have been accused of appointing the employees of private litigants as special masters or judicial referees to decide cases involving those very litigants.

This is precisely what Sanai claims happened in his parents’ divorce case — which took place, not coincidentally, in Washington state.

Federal courts have the power to enjoin or enter declaratory judgments against such lower-court misbehavior. But the 9th Circuit typically disposes of these cases through unpublished decisions with no oral argument — another example of its isolation and lack of engagement. Yet this potentially hot topic somehow failed to come up in Sun Valley last week.

The topic is “hot” primarily to Sanai. With unerring precision, these two paragraphs track the legal argument Sanai has been trying to advance in court for the last several years.

And, like before, he has failed to disclose that fact.

I generally like the L.A. Weekly, but the paper got played here. This article is an advertisement for Sanai’s legal claims, and the fact that he was pursuing those claims should have been disclosed.

If Judge Kozinski weren’t effectively muzzled by the ongoing investigation, he might have pointed this out — likely in a far more entertaining and readable fashion than I have done here.

P.S. Any comments that could even arguably be read as a threat to anyone — whether professional, physical, or otherwise — will be cheerfully deleted. Offenders may be banned.

Law.com reports that Judge Alex Kozinski is taking a low profile at a judicial conference which will be covered by, among others . . . Cyrus Sanai:

Adding to the prickly situation, Beverly Hills attorney Cyrus Sanai, a Kozinski critic and the one who accessed and leaked the Kozinski Web site, obtained press credentials from the LA Weekly to cover the event.

The circuit agreed to allow Sanai to attend as a reporter, for the LA Weekly, part of an alternative newspaper chain. The circuit gave him press credentials but kept a close watch on him during Monday’s opening session.

Lawyers may attend only by invitation of the circuit but it is open to media coverage. The conference traditionally does not hold press briefings and the only opportunity to ask questions would be in the routine, public question and answer sessions at the end of each panel presentation.

Sanai said, “I’m on my best behavior. They made it clear that if I interrupt or try to ask questions I can be bodily removed.” There are plenty of U.S. Marshals, who act as security for all circuit conferences, to make good on the promise.

Sanai said the LA Weekly is not interested in a story about him, so he'll be focusing on other aspects of the conference, which concludes Thursday.

Interesting.

P.S. I have gotten tired of the threatening nature of comments surrounding this topic, so any comment that sounds like a threat — to sue someone, to investigate someone, to go after someone’s bar card, or anything else along those lines — will be summarily deleted.

UPDATE: Kozinski reportedly canceled a scheduled Q&A session. Also, according to the linked story, Kozinski ordered Sanai ejected from a welcome reception, which reporters had been told in advance they could not attend.

Cyrus Sanai, who tipped news organizations to controversial files on Judge Alex Kozinski’s “alex.kozinski.com,” has sent me the following statement. He was the subject of charges by Alex Kozinski’s wife, and while it’s clear to me that he is an extremely unpopular figure on the Internet, I think it’s fair that he be given a chance to respond and set out his views. I have some comments and links following the statement, including one that indicates that Sanai’s complaints against Judge Kozinski constitute part of a “litigation strategy” with respect to a Washington divorce case.

Click on “more” to read the statement.

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Following up on my previous post about the dispute between attorney Cyrus Sanai and Judge Alex Kozinski:

Sanai told me that he filed a complaint alleging misconduct by Kozinski for commenting on a pending case — Sanai’s petition for rehearing en banc of a legal issue related to his parents’ divorce. Sanai also complained that Kozinski had put materials related to the case on Kozinski’s web site. This, Kozinski clearly did. Howard Bashman has preserved Kozinski’s piece about Sanai. It purports to link a .pdf critical of Sanai. You can see the link by right-clicking the hyperlink in Kozinski’s piece that says “(read the PDF)” and checking “properties.” It goes to this link: http://alex.kozinski.com/judge.thibodeau.pdf.

When the Ninth Circuit’s Judicial Council finally ruled on Sanai’s complaint, it was in this order. It found no misconduct on the unnamed judge’s part, but noted that the judge had nevertheless apologized for any appearance of impropriety.

Sanai says he was surprised to see this language in the order:

A limited inquiry was conducted pursuant to 28 U.S.C. section 352(a), but found no posting of complainant’s case-related information on any website maintained by the judge.

Sanai researched the issue online. He claims that his research, using the Wayback Machine and search engine caches, revealed that the web site had been taken down months earlier. Weeks after the Judicial Council’s order was issued, Sanai says, the site came back up.

Sanai concluded that Kozinski had been trying to hide something from the Judicial Council by taking down the site, and decided he wanted to find out what that was. When Sanai ran a Google search plugging the name of Kozinski’s site into the search engine, hits came back to .mp3 sharing sites, saying that songs like Monty Python’s “Lumberjack” song could be downloaded at URLs located in a subdirectory of Kozinski’s site: http://alex.kozinski.com/stuff. This is the subdirectory that had the porn.

Sanai believes that Kozinski was actively sharing these files. As I wrote in my post from earlier this morning:

Judge Kozinski’s site had many .mp3 music files. If you do a Google search for http://alex.kozinski.com, page 2 of the results gives you this page. It includes a link to a site that shares .mp3 files, and which refers to the alex.kozinski.com/stuff subdirectory for a download of a Monty Python song. Mr. Sanai maintains that this, together with other evidence, is an indication that Judge Kozinski was sharing .mp3 files.

Sanai believes that Kozinski’s sharing of files indicates hypocrisy on Kozinski’s part, because of the position he took in the dissent in this case (starting at page 7864), arguing that credit card companies should be liable for copyright infringement if they facilitate the infringement.

This, as I have previously suggested, is where Kozinski may end up being vulnerable. The porn, titillating as it is, is really a secondary issue. If he was file-sharing .mp3s, after having taken a hardline position against infringers in judicial opinions, it could expose him to charges of hypocrisy.

[UPDATE: A commenter purporting to be Cyrus Sanai has left a comment to this post, with several other allegations against Judge Kozinski.]

[UPDATE: The commenter is indeed Sanai. He sent me images that he copied from Kozinski’s site. I have reproduced them here.]

It has been revealed who tipped the L.A. Times about the porn on Alex Kozinski’s web site: Cyrus Sanai.

[Roger Jon] Diamond [defense attorney for obscenity defendant Ira Issacs] volunteered to the court that a Beverly Hills attorney, Cyrus Sanai, had recently called him and indicated he had a dispute with the 9th Circuit and knew about the material on the judge’s Web site.

“He called me to get my view and I said, ‘It’s not right, don’t do it,'” Diamond said without elaborating on what that attorney planned to do.

Sanai said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that he informed the newspaper about the pornographic images on the judge’s Web site.

Sanai said he discovered the graphic material in December on Kozinski’s Web site, which he was monitoring as part of a long-running dispute he has with the 9th Circuit tied to his parents’ divorce case. After downloading the files, Sanai said he began contacting reporters at various publications in January in an effort to publicly expose them.

Sanai said he hoped disclosure of the material in the media would bring attention to what he called widespread ethical problems on the 9th Circuit.

The court “refuses to acknowledge the existence of judicial ethics,” Sanai said. “I expected people to be shocked and revolted.”

If that name sounds familiar, it should. Sanai is a lawyer who had a public dispute with Kozinski in which Kozinski ripped Sanai a new one. I posted about this in September 2005, in a post titled Ouch! in which I said:

Don’t cross Alex Kozinski.

. . . .

If lawyer Cyrus Sanai had much of a professional reputation before (which I doubt), it’s gone now.

I guess this is Sanai’s way of saying to Kozinski: don’t cross Cyrus Sanai.

Details in the extended entry.

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This blog began ten years ago today, on February 17, 2003, with this rather uninspiring post:

WELCOME MESSAGE: Welcome to Patterico’s Pontifications. This is destined to be the hottest blog since that one put out by that guy. You know who I mean.

Since then, I have had a run of luck beyond my wildest dreams. This blog has broken national stories, which have been cited in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, among other Big Media rags. Stories published here have been featured on national TV news networks and discussed by late-night comedians. I have published op-eds in the Los Angeles Times. The blog has broken a story that contributed to the downfall of a Congressman, published another national story that got a Big Media journalist reassigned, defended a federal judge against misleading accusations, and appeared on radio programs all across the country.

Most of these stories, I hasten to add, were based on tips from readers. Meaning it wasn’t really me who was responsible. It was you guys.

I’ve gotten to meet wonderful people through the blog — including guest bloggers, readers and commenters, other bloggers, and writers and other personalities I never thought I would be lucky enough to meet. Thanks to the blog, I met and became acquainted with Andrew Breitbart and many of his friends. I have gotten to hang out with people who have written or starred in some of my favorite movies; learned the identity of (and hung out with) talented undercover cop writers; met fearless journalists and talented novelists; and just had a fabulous time.

Over the years, I have amassed 723,852 comments, made on 16,566 posts, and 33,267,955 page views.

I’ve also experienced harassment of my wife and children; publication of my home address and pictures of my home; threats of violence and death; State Bar complaints; Google bombing of my name and job title coupled with scurrilous accusations; numerous lawsuit threats; one lawsuit filing, numerous workplace complaints . . . and I have been SWATted — all for expressing my views.

Hey, nobody said life was all peaches and cream. (Which is fine, because I don’t particularly care for peaches and cream.)

But on this 10th anniversary of the blog, I wanted to highlight some favorite posts of mine from the last ten years. I’m hoping that many of these posts are going to be new to recent readers. My favorite posts tend to give the reader something unique, whether it’s original journalism breaking national stories, exposing of tendentious media bias, or just some personal observations about my family and life in general.

This post can’t possibly be comprehensive, or it would be too long. This is just a collection of a few of my favorite posts from the last ten years.

I hope you enjoy them.

THE DOG TRAINER YEAR IN REVIEW

I probably became best known for my scathing year-end reviews of the Los Angeles Times, which I used to call the “Los Angeles Dog Trainer” — a term stolen from Harry Shearer. I stopped doing this review after 2009, in part because the paper seemed less relevant, and in part because in 2009 I was transferred to a new and very demanding unit in my office, and I soon found that I could no longer muster the time and energy to do a Year in Review.

Nevertheless, I have toyed with the idea of doing a 2010-2013 roundup, and possibly a round-up of the top stories from ten years of L.A. Times bashing.

Here are the links to past Years in Review:

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004 Part Two

2004 Part One

2003

(By the way, if you have trouble getting links in older posts to work, go here for tips on how to deal with that problem.)

THE GINSBURG CONTROVERSY (MARCH 2004)

I believe the first national story I broke on this blog was about Justice Ginsburg giving a speech to the National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, days after ruling on a case in which that organization had filed an amicus brief. Justice Scalia had come under fire for supposedly speaking to a group that had a case pending before the Supreme Court, and I believed that the news media should give equal time to a liberal Justice doing the same thing.

I broke the story in this March 7, 2004 post, telling readers that I had informed the L.A. Times about it. They ran this front-page story on March 11, 2004. I registered my shock in this post. The episode ended up being discussed in a book by Dan Gillmor,

MICHAEL HILTZIK SOCK PUPPETRY (APRIL 2006)

In 2006 I learned that an L.A. Times business columnist was sock puppeting on my blog and on his blog at the L.A. Times. I revealed the evidence in a post titled Three in One: Michael Hiltzik, Mikekoshi, and Nofanofcablecos. Hiltzik confessed, his blog was suspended — and the story went national.

GLENN GREENWALD’S SOCK PUPPETRY (JULY 2006)

In some ways arguably the most epic post I have ever written, my post exposing Glenn Greenwald’s sock puppetry relied heavily on the Wuzzadem sock puppets to carry the narrative. It is still cited constantly and I’m often told it is among my readers’ favorite posts.

MY INTERVIEW WITH STASHIU (OCTOBER 2006)

One of my favorite sets of blog posts was an interview I did with Stashiu, a Gitmo psych nurse who regularly spoke with some of the worst terrorists in the world. Stashiu talked to me for hours about Guantanamo, and the piece has held up over the years — and Stashiu has been a reliable friend of the blog ever since. My interview with Stashiu was published in five parts:

Part One: Introduction. Stashiu tells us about a terrorist who threatened to a) have Zarqawi (who was then still alive) cut off the heads of Stashiu’s family while he watched — and then b) cut off Stashiu’s head.

Part Two: Stashiu arrives at GTMO, and tells us what the terrorists are like.

Part Three: Hunger strikes, suicides and suicide attempts, and mental illness. Stashiu opines that the suicides were a political act.

Part Four: Treatment of the detainees, and the detainees’ treatment of guards. Also, desecration of the Koran — but by whom?

Part Five: Stashiu reacts to Big Media pieces about GTMO.

THE KOZINSKI MATERIALS (JUNE 2008)

In June 2008 the L.A. Times revealed that Judge Alex Kozinski had placed bawdy material on a web server accessible by the public. I obtained the material and published it in multiple posts. I revealed that it was generally humorous material, and that one of the most inflammatory accusations, that he had a video of “bestiality,” was nothing of the sort. I also published a letter from his wife which was cited in the Associated Press and other publications, and was widely credited for helping reverse the tide of opinion against him.

An admission that Cyrus Sanai made to me that his complaint against Kozinski was part of a “litigation strategy” was cited by the Ninth Circuit — with a citation to the URL of my post and everything! (Incidentally, that decision represented the second time that this blog affected the contents of a Ninth Circuit opinion. The first occurred in May 2004, and was described here.)

FAKE DOCTOR ROXANA MAYER (AUGUST 2009)

Thanks to a tip from a reader, this blog uncovered evidence that there was a phony pro-Obama operative at a 2009 town hall meeting on health care reform. A “Dr. Roxana Mayer” in a white physician’s coat claimed to be a pediatrician, and spoke up in favor of health care reform — but this blog revealed evidence that she was a fake. I wrote her and confronted her with the evidence and she admitted it.

As a result of this story, which received over 100,000 page views in a single day, this blog was mentioned on Hannity. Unfortunately, the clip appears to be lost to posterity.

SOCK PUPPET ELLIE LIGHT (JANUARY 2010)

In 2010, a campaign of blatant Astroturfing appeared in publications around the country, with the same pro-Obama letters appearing in countless publications under different names. I added to the evidence here, here, here, and here.

Michelle Malkin, one of my favorite people in the world whom I have never met, mentioned this blog on Hannity (fast forward to 4:25):

WEINERGATE (JUNE 2011)

I blogged quite a bit on Weinergate, but the posts of mine that advanced the ball the most were posts about his communications with a real-life underage girl, here, here, and here. I later learned that these posts played a key role in his decision to resign.

SWATTING AND BRETT KIMBERLIN CONTROVERSY (MAY 2012)

One of the oddest things that has happened to me is undergoing a pattern of harassment from a set of crazed trolls surrounding Brett Kimberlin. As I was experiencing this harassment, I was SWATted — something I can’t prove is connected, but which seemed to be. Enjoy the short version of the story — and then bookmark the long version, which is very dense and truly repays repeated readings.

MISCELLANEOUS POSTS

I am proud of work I did on the Roman Polanski extradition, the U.S. Attorney firings, exposing government overreaching in the prosecution of James O’Keefe, my posts on Chuck Philips (especially the ones dealing with Anita Busch), my Deport the Criminals First series, the SWIFT terrorist financing program, and my campaign against Proposition 66, the initiative to weaken the Three Strikes law.

BIG MEDIA CITATIONS AND APPEARANCES

In February 2005, less than two years after I started the blog, I published an op-ed in the L.A. Times that savaged the L.A. Times for the way they bury corrections of significant errors. The piece was called The Correct Way to Fix Mistakes. I wrote another op-ed in August 2005, about the way the paper had lionized Cindy Sheehan while papering over her omissions, contradictions, and disturbing radicalism.

In 2007 I was invited to participate in an online debate with liberal Marc Cooper about the future of the paper, at the L.A. Times web site. The feature was called a “Dust-Up” and the five entries are collected here.

This blog has been cited in the pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other outlets. (I don’t think it has been read by Russ Feingold on the floor of the Senate, so sock-puppetin’ Glenn Greenwald still has that on me. Good day, sir!)

I have been on the radio more than I deserve.

My radio appearances started with Clint Taylor, who was doing a show at a student-run station out of Stanford.

Once, in February 2008, my father-in-law was driving to work in Kentucky, and was taken aback to hear me on NPR, talking about how I was likely to vote for John McCain even though I thought he was a horrible candidate. (When you listen to that clip and hear that I was pulling for Romney, please remember that he was running against McCain, whom I have always, always hated.)

I talked SWATting on local station KABC with my pal John Phillips in November 2012. I was on KFI during drive time in June 2006, talking about the SWIFT terror financing program, on a day when Michelle Malkin filled in for John and Ken.

I appeared on the local public radio show “Which Way, L.A.?” with Warren Olney twice. The second time was in July 2008, to discuss my L.A. Times “Dust-Ups” with Marc Cooper. The first was in June 2008, when Eugene Volokh and I tore L.A. Times reporter Scott Glover to shreds for his misleading coverage of the contents of Judge Alex Kozinski’s web server.

I had the honor of appearing on the Stage Right Show with Larry O’Connor, including this March 2010 show where I mocked Brett Kimberlin’s business partner Brad Friedman, and got to talk to my commenter and pal daleyrocks. Larry O’Connor pretended to be Friedman on that show, which was a riot. I was on the Stage Right Show a month earlier, in February 2010, also on the same show as Friedman. That one was great because Andrew Breitbart called in to help me yell at Brad.

I have made several appearances on Pundit Review Radio, which was broadcast on WRKO in Boston. In a July 2006 appearance I discussed the SWIFT program targeting terrorist financing. In a November 2006 appearance I discussed a story where I proved that the L.A. Times had misreported details about an alleged airstrike in Ramadi. And in an October 2005 appearance I discussed my opposition to the Harriet Miers nomination, in which I played a fairly active role.

I appeared on CQ Radio with Captain Ed Morrissey on several occasions, including a March 2007 appearance discussing the U.S. Attorney firings, an April 2007 appearance discussing Alberto Gonzales, a November 2007 appearance discussing election politics and Tim Rutten, and a December 2007 appearance discussing my year-end review of the L.A. Times.

In March 2009 I was on the Northern Alliance Radio Network with Captain Ed and Mitch Berg.

I even went on a show called “Hoist the Black Flag” with Ace and Jeff Goldstein — in April 2006 and July 2006, to discuss the Hiltzik story.

I have also had radio personalities read my stuff on the air. Before he got into an insane feud with me for calling him out on some misstatements he had made, Mark Levin read my stuff. Rush Limbaugh read from my Cindy Sheehan L.A. Times op-ed in October 2005, and from a DRJ post on Obama’s tax plan in October 2008.

ENDORSEMENTS

I have some favorite quotes about me from people over the years, but the one I will never forget is from Tony Snow, who once commented:

Thanks for the wonderful write-up. It’s always fun visiting the belly of the beast. Meanwhile, keep up the great work. Love the blog.

“Love the blog.” Tony Snow said he loved the blog! Awesome. Of course, the post about his appearance on Bill Maher is probably the only entry he ever read, but still. Pretty cool. (He actually left a second comment about an hour later, responding to a Bill Maher sock puppet. But the Tony Snow comments were for real.)

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

My dad died in 2005. He used to read my blog every day. I remembered him here. After he left, I dreamed about him, and this post about one particularly vivid dream remains one of my favorites. I have wished him a happy birthday every March 17 since the blog started. It’s hard to imagine that he was reading the blog for fewer than three of the last ten years.

But possibly my favorite post from this blog is one about not taking things for granted. It’s a post I wrote as the one-year anniversary of my dad’s death was coming up, and I guess it made me reflect. Anyway, that post is the only one I’ll quote at length here.

In the post, I talked about a night that we took our infant daughter to an acoustic concert, hoping she would sleep through it. If she cried, the plan was for me to take her to the car, where I would watch her for half the concert, and then call my wife out to sit for the second half. I never called her, but spent the whole concert in the car watching my daughter sleep. I wrote:

The night it happened, I didn’t mind being in the car with my daughter. But if I could go back now, there’s no question that I would want to be there.

Not only would I stay in the car with her — I would make the most of the experience, realizing that I had a precious chance to see her at that age again. I would try to commit every moment to memory.

And then I realized: some day, years in the future, I might be asking the same question about my life today — this very minute. If you could have this moment back to live over again, what would you do?

The rest of that evening, I pictured myself as having been sent into my body from the future, to relive the moments I was experiencing. And I saw everything differently. I sat on the couch and watched television with my arm around my wife — all the while imagining myself as an old man, transported back in time to relive that moment. And all of a sudden, what otherwise might have seemed like a mundane moment seemed like a privilege. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world, just sitting there with my wife.

I’ve tried the trick all weekend, and it really changes your outlook. Just sitting around with a sleepy child in your arms is great any way you look at it. But if you picture yourself as someone whose child has grown up — if you imagine yourself as an older man, who would give the world to be back in that chair with that child in his arms — it makes you realize how important the moment is. And you appreciate it more.

Even when times are tough — or seem tough — keeping this perspective in mind can help change the way you look at your life.

Thanks for spending part of the last ten years with me. I hope you keep reading.

UPDATE: A special thanks to all the guest bloggers who have helped me during the years, including DRJ, Karl, Jack Dunphy, JD, Aaron Walker, Morgen Richmond, WLS, Justin Levine, Dafydd ab Hugh, See Dubya, The Angry Clam, Xrlq, Teflon Don, Charlie (Colorado), and several others. You kept things going when I couldn’t, and contributed many worthwhile posts.