Welcome back to the roundup. Ease into the week with some of the latest law links:

• This should be obvious, but one local lawyer says when when handling a social media crisis, don’t act like Anthony Weiner.
• An American lawyer and a professor celebrated the first public lesbian wedding in Nepal.
• What’s the best way to cross-examine defense medical experts? Why, use their own ethics code against them, of course.
• Isolating race bias in the workplace is difficult.
• Mirriam Seddiq rants on the latest inaction on immigration reform and the FBI’s new guidelines.
• NFL’s Mr. Irrelevant wins a $5.4 million default judgement.
• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (above) is drawing more attention to himself with what the New York Times calls an “ethically sensitive” friendship with a Dallas real estate magnate.

With all of the Osama bin Laden news last night and today, you might want (need?) a little break. Check out the law links below for a breather.

• Could the Fourth Circuit be turning the tide on discrimination cases?
• How is that performance-based compensation system working for ya?
• Free Boozy!!!!
• AG Gansler has reached an agreement with a Florida company pretending to be based in Maryland.
• Malnourished horses seized from Maryland farm.
• I couldn’t resist just one more bin Laden link — what does it all mean for our civil liberties?
• But what about the clients?

Good morning. Here’s all the legal Web news that’s fit to re-post:

• Judge M. Blane Michael, of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, has died.
• An opinion from Maryland’s top court last week ruling that signatures on petitions need not be legible, could trigger a spate of new ballot initiatives come 2012.
• A gender identity bill has advanced in the House.
• 7th Circuit serves up every lawyer’s worst nightmare.
• Warning: beware of flawed statistics.
• In a Harry Potter-esque twist, one of the judge’s portraits in a Baltimore County court is haunted. No sign of a Nearly-Headless Nick sighting, though.
• Rocker Bret Michaels is suing CBS and organizers of the Tony Awards, claiming that a set piece that hit his head during the awards show in 2009 caused his brain hemorrhage.

I’ve never been to Raleigh-Durham International Airport, but it’s near Duke, so naturally I must root against it under any circumstances. (Go Terps!)

I was doubly delighted, then, upon learning that the airport had conceded defeat in a six-year battle with a local newspaper, The News & Observer, over a ban on vending boxes at the airport. The airport, known as RDU, had argued the news racks “would undermine airport security and aesthetics, impede passenger flow through the terminals, and reduce airport income.”

The case went up and down the federal court system until Thursday, when the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied RDU’s request for a rehearing en banc. The airport says it will place news racks at baggage claim and ticket areas of terminals, although The News & Observer and other papers want them in the terminals’ concourses.

That dispute is for another day; what I want to highlight is the “withering rebuke” of RDU written by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III. Wilkinson, a former newspaper editorial page editor, who attacked RDU’s arguments and offered a spirited defense of the First Amendment. You can read the entire concurring opinion here.

His underlying point is “it is blackletter law that free speech is not to be wholly subordinated to administrative convenience.” And he concludes with the following gem:

“An informed citizenry is at the heart of this democracy, and narrowing the arteries of information in the manner sought by the Authority will only serve to impair our country’s coronary health.”

Welcome back from the long weekend! Just four days to go until the next one! Until then, here are some law links:

• John Bratt calls the 4th Circuit’s decision in the Sparrows Point LNG case a win for Baltimore County.
• There aren’t a huge number of lawyers in the General Assembly.
• “The criminal justice system wasn’t a good system with a few cracks,” Page Croyder writes. “It’s been a giant mud hole in which the wheels of justice spin without going anywhere.”
• Facebook is not actually encouraging people to cheat on their husbands and wives, but it is making it easier for them to be caught at it. Via Maryland Divorce Legal Crier.
• This is kind of a weird lede on this ABA Journal story about wrongful convictions, implying that the guy did something wrong: “Barney Brown should have listened to his mother that fateful day in 1970 when she told him to stay home while she was at work.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously approved the nomination of Virginia Supreme Court Justice Barbara Keenan for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Keenan must still be approved by the full Senate — just like U.S. District Judge Andre M. Davis, who was approved by the committee for a 4th Circuit seat back on June 4.

Sen. Ben Cardin’s frustration over the delay in getting a vote on Davis surfaced on Tuesday, when the Senate approved West Virginia’s Irene C. Berger as a federal judge in that state.

According to the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette, Cardin complained that some Republican senators had placed anonymous holds on nominees.

“This is a deliberate effort to try to slow the pace,” he said. “I really think this is wrong, and people should know about this.”

The ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., denied that Senate Republicans were “slow walking” Obama’s nominees.

“I’m not going to remain silent while the record is distorted,” Sessions said.

On the Cover:  Welcome to the first Monday in October! This morning marks the Supreme Court debut of Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and Assistant Public Defender Celia Anderson Davis, who will argue over a Hagerstown man’s child sex abuse conviction. The question is whether a request for counsel, years earlier, should have stopped police from questioning the suspect without a lawyer after they obtained additional information. Read the main story, some advice from Gansler’s predecessor, and a preview of the new term.

In the News: The Court of Appeals heard argument in a legal malpractice case that challenges the “case within a case” methodology … the ban on self-represented lawyers claiming attorneys’ fees applies even to bad faith or frivolous actions, the Court of Special Appeals holds … Maryland Legal Services Corp. renews its quest for a higher filing-fee surcharge … Sen. Ben Cardin finds a civil audience for his health-care talk at UB Law… and a former CBS Early Show personality appeals a ruling that knocked out his medical malpractice claim.

Also:

• Paul Tiburzi remembers the time he argued against the D.C. lawyer who went on to become Chief Justice of the United States;
• An Owings Mills man got a $588,000 verdict in his lawsuit against a home-improvement contracting firm, but will also seek to hold the contractor individually liable;
• Read the Week in Review and our Law Digest, this week with cases from the Court of Appeals, the 4th Circuit and the U.S. District Court for Maryland.

As if Caryn Tamber’s article weren’t compelling enough, our sister paper in Richmond points out another reason to study Gomis v. Holder.

“If the 4th Circuit’s current configuration leaves it in equipoise and publishing even fewer opinions than usual, it is at least going on the record with some of its disputes,” Deborah Elkins writes on the Virginia Lawyers Weekly blog: 

In recent days, the court has published two orders in cases in which it has denied rehearing en banc, with judges at each end of the spectrum publishing concurrences and dissents from those denials.

True, the judges don’t always fall into predictable patterns.  But their airing of views on classic issues such as the degree of deference to agency decisions and the “sanctity of the home” may be a preview of coming attractions, after some of the court’s five vacant slots are filled.

The agency-deference case Elkins refers to is Gomis, in which the court voted 5-5 not to rehear an asylum case. July’s panel decision deferred, 2-1, to the BIA’s finding that an adult woman’s father was unlikely to make good on his vow to have her circumcised because, among other things, the practice was outlawed in Senegal in 1999 and the State Department reports it is on the wane there. 

The “sanctity of the home” case is Hunsberger v. Wood, decided Sept. 14 by a 5-4 vote with one abstention. The decision let stand a finding of qualified immunity for a police officer who made a warrantless entry to a home at night, accompanied by a civilian who was looking for his missing stepdaughter.

A vote on U.S. District Judge Andre M. Davis’ nomination to the 4th Circuit could be scheduled as soon as next week, according to The Baltimore Sun’s Maryland Politics blog.

Since taking office, President Obama has made 17 Article III appointments to the federal judiciary. So far the full Senate has approved just one: Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who heard her first case on Wednesday.

Sorry, still no word on when DLLR Secretary Tom Perez might be able to follow his staff to the Justice Department.

They didn’t set out to hang out their shingles — at least, not yet — but the economy made it the most attractive option for these new solo practitioners. Read The Accidental Solo, this related story on setting up shop, and these tips on running your own practice.

The University of Maryland law school’s Appellate and Post-Conviction Advocacy Clinic highlights its summer wins and is taking a setback in stride, as one of its recent clients got arrested on a charge similar to the one the clinic helped get expunged.

Topping the news are stories about the firing of Public Defender Nancy Forster and a citation against a Charles County judge for letting the air out of a court worker’s tire. In Legal Briefs, Chief Judge Bell sends another letter – this time, seeking Social Security numbers for the Client Protection Fund.

In Verdicts & Settlements, a Baltimore jury awards more than $1 million to the children of a young woman who died after surgery to resolve her blood clots. And, in Unbillable Hours, meet a Montgomery County lawyer who coaches high school football players in more ways than one.

PLUS: On the Move; columns by Legal Aid’s Joe Surkiewicz and Dolan Media’s Justin Rebello; and our weekly Law Digest, featuring eight opinions by the 4th Circuit.