Nebraska senior Federal Judge Richard Kopf, whose excellent blog Hercules and the Umpire I've written about a few times here and here, has decided to pack up his keyboard and quit blogging. I'm really sorry to see him go. His blog was immensely readable, sometimes serious, sometimes humorous. He has not been pressured to give up the blog, he's doing it voluntarily.

I'm sure many blogs would be willing to host him if he felt like writing a post or two, TalkLeft among them. I wouldn't care that he's not a "leftist," as he says.

Judge Kopf isn't taking the blog down, he's just not writing any more. If you haven't read him yet, go over and take a look. I think the judiciary would be much more transparent if more judges blogged. We, the public, tend to think of federal judges as being isolated in their ivory towers. It's nice to see a few that show their personality off the bench, and provide us with valuable legal insights while doing so.

An editorial in the New York Times requests clemency for NSA surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden.

In retrospect, Mr. Snowden was clearly justified in believing that the only way to blow the whistle on this kind of intelligence-gathering was to expose it to the public and let the resulting furor do the work his superiors would not.

...When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government.

The editorial concludes with:

...President Obama should tell his aides to begin finding a way to end Mr. Snowden’s vilification and give him an incentive to return home.

Busy work day. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Great news for Sergio Garcia, an undocumented resident who went to law school in the U.S. and wants to be a lawyer. A California court has ruled he can be admitted to the bar as an attorney.

“We conclude that the fact that an undocumented immigrant’s presence in this country violates federal statutes is not itself a sufficient or persuasive basis for denying undocumented immigrants, as a class, admission to the State Bar,” the chief justice wrote.

Garcia waited four years for the ruling. More on his case, and that of Jose Godinez-Samperio at the ABA Journal here.

Colorado made history yesterday, becoming the first government to allow marijuana to be purchased by adults for recreational use.

From Denver to Telluride, the lines were long. Here's a look at the day in photos.

The stores are projected to generate a lot of income, as well as jobs.

Colorado projects $578.1 million a year in combined wholesale and retail marijuana sales to yield $67 million in tax revenue, according to the Legislative Council of the Colorado General Assembly.

I'll be keeping track of emerging marijuana legal and policy issues, both federal and state, at a new blog on marijuana laws I launched yesterday. Take a look. (It also looks good on mobile devices.)

Happy New Year's Eve everyone.

7 hours to go and it's legal to buy pot in Colorado.

Here's NORML Colorado's new webpage -- and a list of "Doobie DOs" (and Don'ts.)

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Good news in Florida today. A federal judge in Orlando has ruled Florids's law requiring welfare recipients to be tested for drugs is unconstitutional.

“The court finds there is no set of circumstances under which the warrantless, suspicionless drug testing at issue in this case could be constitutionally applied,” she wrote. The ruling made permanent an earlier, temporary ban by the judge.

U.S. District Judge John Koeltl has granted a motion from the Government to release attorney Lynne Stewart from prison. Months ago, Judge Koetl said he could not act unless the Government, as opposed to Stewart, made the request. This morning, the Government made the request and this afternoon, Judge Koetl granted it.

“The defendant’s terminal medical condition and very limited life expectancy constitute extraordinary and compelling reasons that warrant the requested reduction” in her prison sentence, Koeltl’s order said.

Stewart has been imprisoned since 2009 as a result of her conviction for assisting her jailed client, Omar Abdel-Rahman, communicate with his followers. Some more history on her need for early release is here.

She's been suffering from cancer since 2006.

Stewart's conviction stretched the definition of material support to a terrorist organization to new limits. While nothing can return the past four years to her, at least she will spend her final days with her family. Our best wishes go out to Lynne.

Der Spiegel has several feature articles this week on the NSA's backdoor program TAO, which stands for "Tailored Access Operations."

This is the NSA's top operative unit -- something like a squad of plumbers that can be called in when normal access to a target is blocked.

According to internal NSA documents viewed by SPIEGEL, these on-call digital plumbers are involved in many sensitive operations conducted by American intelligence agencies. TAO's area of operations ranges from counterterrorism to cyber attacks to traditional espionage.

[More...]

In the last two days, there have been two terror attacks in Volograd, Russia, one at a train station and one on a trolley, raising concern for safety at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi. At least 27 people have been killed, and at least 45 were maimed or wounded.

The suicide bomber at the train station has been identified by the Siberia Times as a 26 year old female named Oksana Aslanova. She is known as a "black widow," having been married to two deceased Islamic terror leaders in North Caucasus. Both her husbands were killed by Russian forces, and she was on a watch list. [More...]

Time to recount the year's top crime stories: In no particular order, here's my list:

1. Colorado and legal recreational marijuana
2. Edward Snowden and NSA Phone Records
3. Guantanamo Hunger Strikes
4. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and the Boston Marathon Bombing
5. The George Zimmerman trial
6. DOJ and Kim Dotcom
7. DOJ and Aaron Swartz
8. Mexico's Release of Rafael Caro-Quintero
9. Adam Lanza (and efforts to enact new gun control laws)
10. Oscar Pistorius

Feel free to add your own own, but please keep them related to crime and civil liberties.

What's on your mind? Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.