Ungrateful bastard.  I felt kinda bad for the comments I made yesterday about how Cuyahoga County has raised the assigned counsel fees back to what they were in 1978.  After all, at least for the low-level felonies, it works out to a 25% raise from what they were after they got cut back in 2002.  A 25% raise is nothing to sneeze at.

On the other hand, I dug up on online inflation calculator and punched in some numbers.  If the fees had kept up with the rate of inflation since they were instituted back when Jimmy Carter was discussing nuclear proliferation with his then-11-year-old daughter, the minimum would now be $1,674.00.  And from the other perspective, $500 back then is worth a little under $150 now.

To be sure, this puts my retirement plan on firmer footing, but that’s not saying a  whole lot, considering that my retirement plan heretofore consisted of deciding whether I preferred to spend my twilight years muttering the phrase “Welcome to Walmart” or “Would you like to Supersize that?”

Smiling Bob ain’t smiling no more.  Speaking of supersizing, SL&P points us to this story about Steven Warshak, the founder of Berkely Premium Nutraceuticals, whose major product was a “male enhancement” pill called Enzyte.  Turns out that the company was rife with fraud, and it looks like Warshak will be doing hard time.  Tough to believe that this wasn’t on the up-and-up.

(Your double entendre here—>____________________)

Milestones.  Monday’s will be the 600th post I’ve made on this blog.  By the time I get back from vacation — more on that in a minute — I’ll have been doing this for two and a half years.  It takes a fair amount of time, probably about ten hours a week, but I enjoy doing it.  Yesterday I ran into four different lawyers who mentioned that they read the blog, and I know several judges who do, too, and that’s a nice little ego trip.  At a relatively precocious age, I came to the realization that if you speak and write well, people will think you are much more intelligent than you actually are.  This blog has put the exclamation point on my life-long attempt to prove that theory.

I’m going to making some changes here in a couple of months, some cosmetic, some functional.  I’d like this to be a little more user-friendly as far as a resource goes, so that you can more easily access the posts on a particular topic, like stop-and-frisk or speedy trial.  The blogroll needs a major reworking.  There are more Ohio blawgs out there than when I started, and some of them are pretty good.  And if any of you have any ideas as to what you’d like to see more of — or less of — hit the Contact button above and send me an email.  No, “more pictures of nekkid women” is not an option.

Next’s week’s a short week:  I’m taking off for Labor Day, too.  The Case Update will be on Tuesday, and then I think I’m going to do a couple of posts on the exclusionary rule.  I’ll be on vacation the week after that, and when I return on the 15th the Ohio Supreme Court will be back in session, and I’ll have some posts about some major decisions on tap in the US Supreme Court this term, too.

See you on Tuesday, and have an enjoyable holiday weekend.