so there

Divaliscious!!!!!!

Can we also comment on how ridiculous she looks in that picture? What outrageous coiffage.

has there been nothing on her history with tom goldstein? he was an intern of hers years ago.

Ahhhh - legal gossip again. Goes down like a mint julep on a hot summer's day.

Who assigns seats to the press corps? Is there any way of checking Totenberg's story? At least one reporter hadn't heard it before. The picture is funny. Where's Annie Leibowitz when we really need her?

Does anybody else think that maybe Nina got confused by people referring to her as the "dean" and thought it was a real title? It isn't really her fault if nobody else will let her know it's not an actual position. Maybe somebody should let her know that those aren't real degrees. Not me.

To all the commenters who have asked "who cares?" on every Nina Totenberg post:

Evidently, the Washington Post.

So stop yer complaining, just 'cause you're too ignorant to know who Nina Totenberg is.

12:56 - Good point. Maybe Lat can investigate further?

Are these official assignments, e.g., by Kathy Arberg or Pam Talkin?

Or is it just an informal understanding about where people regularly sit -- like on a school bus?

Why on earth is there a "dean of the Supreme Court press corps?"

I can't imagine what purpose it could have, other than allowing Dean Totenberg an excuse to administer corporal punishments to young reporters who violate court decorum (by doing things such as sitting in her precious seat or forgetting her Starbucks).

i like cheese

Laurie Lin is better than Lat. Less Federalist Society hidden agenda, for one.

There arent really assigned seats, are there?

Slow news day at the Post, it seems.

First, motherfuckers!

3:54 - I think Laurie's great too. But WTF does this post have to do with the Federalist Society?

I wish she would have commented on her GULC graduation speech in the WaPo article. Something to the effect of:

"I admit it - I panicked. It was 10am on graduation day and I had no speech prepared, so I found a random word generator online and had it spit out about 1,000 words. Then I matched up the rhyming ones as best I could during the invocation. Finally, I read the thing, but I thought it was too short so I repeated it and changed the nouns' gender in the second iteration. There, I said it."

Who uses "a Starbucks" to mean coffee? Geez.

6:57 -

It's "acute" erogenous zones.

i like cheese

I recall an article about Goldstein from a year or so ago. If I remember correctly, it mentioned his internship with Totenberg and that Totenberg "got him" (or words to that effect) his clerkship. Not to be too "tierist," but I'd bet Goldstein is one of very, very few American Univ. grads to clerk on the D.C. Cir. Stands to reason that Totenberg was instrumental in getting him in the door.

For what it’s worth, I also know a fairly recent Totenberg intern who has nothing but praise for her.

White Girls With Asian Guys!

"Not to be too "tierist," but I'd bet Goldstein is one of very, very few American Univ. grads to clerk on the D.C. Cir. Stands to reason that Totenberg was instrumental in getting him in the door."

Goldstein was first in his class, and D.C. law school faculty members usually know other people in D.C. I doubt he needed much help.

Prob is, Tom Goldstein looks nothing like Anne Hathaway. Hence, the metaphor falls apart. Meryl could totally play Nina though. I give you that.

Also: I would love to hear Alan Simpson (former Sen. from Wyoming) anecdotes about Nina, if anyone's got em. There was that whole Clarence Thomas thing with Alan and Nina.

"But WTF does this post have to do with the Federalist Society?"

This is Lat's blog and he can do what he wants with it, but Lat tends to write posts that are far more sympathetic to conservative figures and that lambast liberal figures.

Look what he writes about Jan Crawford Greenberg (ABC's conservative Supreme Court correspondent) in this post: "This scrumptious SCOTUS scoop was delivered courtesy of Jan Crawford Greenburg, one of our favorite Supreme Court correspondents. And our affection for her has only grown after we attended an event with her last week, at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) in Washington."

This is a description of Ms. Greenberg from Lat: "We admired her summery ensemble: a pantsuit in dark brown, as opposed to the more formal skirt suit she wore to her Georgetown talk, paired with a cream-colored blouse and expertly accessorized with a coral necklace. Her reddish-brown hair also looked lighter than in the past."

Contrast this to how he describes Nina Totenberg (who is known to be as liberal as Greenberg is conservative): "We love the snarky grandiosity of Ms. Nina's response, which only reinforces her reputation as alpha female of the SCOTUS press gaggle."

I think that it's clear that Lat loves to mock liberal public figures while sympathetically covering conservative figures. He's like the Fox News of the blogosphere. Again, it's his blog so he's free to be as biased as he wants.

So 12:12, you think American sends its top grad to the DC Cir (or 2d/9th Cir, for that matter) every year?

I'm not taking anything away from Goldstein. If it's tough to make your name as a top-SCOTUS litigator from Hah-vahd or Yale, it's nearly impossible to do it from American (can you name another?). Even a guy as sharp as Goldstein would need some help.

Anyway, here it is:

"Totenberg helped him get a clerkship with D.C. Circuit Appeals Court judge Patricia Wald...."

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.mauro.html

Ummm....if Tom Goldstein is so great and had such a "powerful" clerkship, then why does he sit at home writing a blog in his undies? Sounds a little loserish to me.

oops. nevermind.

(love, loyale 2L?)

8:00/8:02 - Yeah, "oops" is right. TCG is a partner at Akin Gump and a top Supreme Court advocate, as well as one of those so-called "loserish" blogger-types (that you waste your time reading, making you an even bigger loser).

10:28:

lol....and who are you? the defender of socially retarded blogger shut-ins everywhere? get a life, and keep your acerbic comebacks to yourself, unless your name is dave lat.

Hey Lat --

What's your take on Lindsay Lohan's friend suing Perez Hilton for libel?
http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2007/07/15/2007-07-15_lohan_buddy_sues_2_blogs_claiming_libel-1.html

Wow. That was um, mature. This page looks more and moe like autoadmit daily. Your job sucks, Lat. Go back to biglaw.

Wow, that's awful. Someone needs to delete those posts and ban than IP address.

2:57, there is no "irony."

There is a difference between (1) Lat doing a send-up of Asian jokes and stereotypes, in a post about censorship in China, and (2) your endless repetition of the "n" word (for no apparent purpose other than to hurt and offend other readers).

If you want to write the "n" word again and again on the internet, start your own blog. It's free. You can make every post nothing but the "n" word. Have fun.

But don't deface somebody else's website. Your posts are the equivalent of graffiti or spam. It is proper to delete them.

(Lat, please block this person's new IP address.)

Lat: If the "n-word" poster is actually at GULC, you can report him or her to the university authorities.

Find out the commenter's IP address, then file an abuse report by email:

abuse at georgetown dot edu

Lat, thanks for erasing that offensive post. Weird/irrelevant posts are one thing, but that one went way overboard.

I forgot - the NAACP buried the N-word last week, so officially it doesn't exist anymore. That means we can use it as much as we want now, amirite?

Lat -- please don't let this place turn into autoadmit. thanks for your attention.

3:28 a.m.: I laughed out loud reading your comment. You really do have a completely distorted view of where everyone stands on the political spectrum.

Isn't it metonymy rather than synecdoche? Starbucks isn't a part of coffee; it's a type. Wow, I should just study for the bar and not be such a nerd.

As someone who covers SCOTUS frequently, but is not a member of the SCOTUS press corps, I can tell you that usually non-SCOTUS press corps types are not permitted to sit in the "assigned" seats near the bench. That is where the usuals--the AP, Totenberg, Greenhouse, Biscupic, etc.--sit and others are allowed there only if the regulars aren't in attendance. Everyone else sits on folding chairs in back of the cushioned seats.

Usually, the SCOTUS guards monitor fairly closely where you sit, so I am surprised the Starbucks fetcher actually ended up in Nina's seat.

As high school as it sounds, remember that the White House press corps has similar seating rules.

Alas, Nina was insufficiently over the top and thus left herself open to attack. Next time she should say "bring me a Starbucks and a bagel...[pause for laughter]....you see, I am portraying a diva insofar as I snapped at this person to bring me a coffee and insofar as I referred to the coffee as a 'Starbucks'.....[pause for laughter]....you see, divas think that everyone is there to serve them and so it is natural for a diva to snap orders to anyone within earshot on the assumption that the person wouldn't be there except to do her bidding...[pause for laughter]....you see, Starbucks is a fairly expensive type of chain coffee that divas drink...."