Some credentials for the lawyer-bloggers who are prosecuting Dan Rather in the blogosphere

Maybe it's our own fault because so many of us use nicknames.  But some of us pajama-wearing bloggers are getting a bit miffed at being dis'd by CBS News and others in the mainstream media.  Some of us are getting a bit testy about it, in a mostly good-humored way.  (My own most recent post about lawyer-bloggers was tongue-in-cheek; I'm perfectly aware that sometimes I'm "full of it," and try not to let my ego float me away for too very long at a time.)

Hugh Hewitt, for example, posted today about an article in today's Los Angeles Times article today in which Jeffrey Seglin, a professor at Emerson College in Boston, is quoted as saying,

"The fear I have is: How do you know who's doing the Web logs?

"And what happens when this stuff gets into the mainstream, and it eventually turns out that the '60 Minutes' documents were perfectly legitimate, but because there's been so much reporting about what's being reported, it has already taken on a life of its own?"

Hugh suggests that Prof. Seglin, who has good credentials of his own, might bother clicking on some blogger links to answer that question.  Hugh lists several high-quality and influential nonlawyer bloggers whose identities and credentials are easy to find, but being a lawyer-blogger myself who's been down on CBS News' case for the past few days, I thought I'd "expose" the credentials of a few other lawyer-bloggers (sometimes a/k/a "blawgers") who are baying along with me as part of the pack.

Let's start with Hugh, then.  Hugh Hewitt's understated bio on his blog reveals that he is "the host of a nationally syndicated radio show heard in more than 60 cities nationwide, and a Professor of Law at Chapman University Law School, where he teaches Constitutional Law," and that he "is a weekly columnist for The Daily Standard, the online edition of The Weekly Standard, and a weekly columnist for WorldNetDaily.com."  In addition to summarizing his various books, Hugh's somewhat more detailed bio on the website of the Chapman University School of Law confirms that he's a three-time Emmy Award winner (1995, 1997, and 1998) as "co-host of the week-night television news and public affairs show Life & Times on PBS Los Angeles affiliate KCET-TV," and that he

served for nearly six years in the Reagan Administration in a [variety of] posts including Assistant Counsel in the White House and Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States. He was Governor Wilson's appointee to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and is presently a member of the California Arts Council. Professor Hewitt appears frequently as a political and social commentator on shows including Nightline, The Today Show and Larry King Live. Professor Hewitt is an honors graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School.

Pre-White House, Hugh also had an extremely unusual but wonderful clerkship on the prestigious United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (the appellate level metaphorically just below, and literally just around the corner from, the U.S. Supreme Court), but he's too modest to have listed the details in any of his online CVs.  (If you were to imagine a combination of Scalia, Bork, Ginsberg, and J. Skelly Wright, you'd still not quite get the full flavor of his clerkship year.)

When he's not in his pajamas, John H. Hinderaker, "Hindrocket" of Power Line, is affiliated with the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Policy and is a partner in the Minneapolis law firm Faegre & Benson.  His practice history includes "twenty-six years [in] a broad-based and varied commercial litigation practice. A veteran of more than 80 jury trials, he has appeared in courts in fifteen states."  J.D. cum laude from Harvard; A.B. magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth — yeah, I think I've heard of those schools.  Scott Johnson, Power Line's "Big Trunk," is also affiliated with Claremont, and probably doesn't wear pajamas to his day job as "an attorney and senior vice president of TCF National Bank in Minneapolis."  Power Line's "Deacon" is Paul E. Mirengoff, a partner in the Washington office of mega-firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld (where his partners include uber-Dems Bob Strauss and Vernon Jordan).  In addition to government service in the Office of the General Counsel of the EEOC, his credential include an undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, in 1971 from Dartmouth College, and a J.D. in 1974 from Stanford Law School, where he served on the Stanford Law Review.

The Godfather of law bloggers, of course, is the InstaPundit himself, Glenn Reynolds.  Again, his blog bio is pretty modest, but if you dig a bit deeper, you'll find that Glenn Harlan Reynolds is the Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law.   (Endowed professorships are a very big deal, even for a full professor at any law school.)  His legal and popular-press publications list is a mile long — the top-tier law reviews in which he's published scholarly articles include Columbia, Virginia, Penn, and Wisconsin — and he has a BA from Tennessee in 1982 and a JD from Yale Law School in 1985.

As for the crusty old trial lawyer who writes this blog, the About Beldar link in the upper right corner of my sidebar will take you to a short bio that includes my name and bar card number, as well as a link that goes to my full bio on the website of the law firm where I'm currently "of counsel" as the (literal) office graybeard.  I've never pretended to false modesty about my credentials and experience, and in fact have ended up referencing them repeatedly in explaining my context for commenting on various legal matters.  I won't run through them in full here — that's what hyperlinks are for, Prof. Seglin.  But let's just say that CBS News seemed fairly well satisfied with my credentials, ability, and performance when I won a Fifth Circuit appeal of a defamation case as their lawyer in 1983.  (Note:  Neither I nor my current firm represents CBS at present, nor have I personally since 1983; and somehow I doubt that I'm likely to anytime soon.)

And there are many, many lawyer bloggers writing about this scandal that I could mention — including at least one other alumnus of my alma mater (Texas Law School), Los Angeles County prosecutor and media watchdog Patrick Frey of Patterico's Pontifications (whose online bio doesn't nearly do justice to his law school credentials, by the way).  [Update: (Just added a less oblique identification of and links to my friend Patterico.)  Also, in my original post, I left out left out the Bruin Brigade — the superbly credentialed and experienced Profs. Stephen Bainbridge and Eugene Volokh from UCLA, for instance!  Accord, Ann Althouse, the Robert W. & Irma M. Arthur-Bascom Professor of Law at Wisconsin Law School.  See also former Southern District of New York federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy of NRO's The Corner, who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others and has taught as an adjunct professor at NYU and Fordham.  Plus a deity!  And if he wasn't so busy with the SwiftVets, we could maybe get former Supreme Court law clerk and number-one-in-his-class Texas Law School graduate John O'Neill on board as well.  Wow, talk about your string cites!  This one would make any law review editor quiver!] 

I wouldn't mind matching up the academic and legal practice credentials of any of these lawyer-bloggers against — oh, just hypothetically, a certain lawyer who's running for President at the moment.  Yale is a great undergrad institution, of course, and Boston College is a fine law school.  (I emphatically disagree with the snarky folks who've made fun of him for not going to Harvard Law, having turned down Stanford and Columbia, both higher-regarded law schools, for Texas Law School myself because of financial and geographic considerations that I've never regretted.)  But if you start looking for the magna cums and summa cums, or the law review memberships and judicial clerkships, or the law review publications or major firm partnership-type credentials — well, let's just say that said lawyer's extended credentials as a practicing or academic lawyer thin out pretty quickly in comparison.  (His law license is officially dormant, as a matter of fact.)

I'll finish with this remark:  I'm highly confident that if we assembled together in a courtroom, the lawyer-bloggers currently "prosecuting" Dan Rather in the blogosphere could, collectively, match up just fine against any legal team CBS News chose to hire from any firm or firms anywhere in the country.  And Dan — without being too self-righteous about it — we're kickin' your butt in the blogosphere, buddy.  You guys can't even field a decent team in this arena.