To many people's regret, Lars Thorwald recently announced his TTFN. I always counted on Lars' lawyerly knowledge and analysis to illuminate aspects of political and legal goings on that as a layperson, I just wouldn't know about.
In the comments to Lars' diary, aravir had an absolutely brilliant idea:
Lars, if you read this, I have a better idea (174+ / 0-)
....find a "community" within DK that tickles your own fancy. For me, that's Wednesday's "What are you reading?" community. Get involved.
Better yet, be part of the solution. We have BlackKos, and GLBT and Friends at Daily Kos. How about LawKos? A weekly community effort fronted by and rotated among progressive legal Kossacks, which highlights important history and news regarding the law. I'm guessing a summer battle over Steven's replacement would be a great place to start and build community support for such an effort.
...I will look forward to your return.
by aravir on Mon Apr 12, 2010 at 10:05:21 AM CDT
As a result of this idea, on Thursday, I posted the first of an information gathering series of diaries called LawKos. I wanted to get input, information, volunteers, etc. I shamelessly pimped the diary in comments in a BWD roundup, and in a pootie diary (we all know those get a lot of traffic), and I have to say, that the input was extremely positive. At least 85% of people responding to the question of whether a diary series called LawKos would be a good idea responded that it is either a good or excellent idea. Any politician would die for those poll numbers, and so I think we can reasonably surmise that LawKos is an idea whose time has come.
So, I wanted to put another diary up (and will likely do a repost of this one tomorrow), to bring this idea to the attention of the weekend readers, and gather further input.
I've started a LawKos account, so that, by the time we get an 'editorial board' put together, we will be able to start posting diaries.
Since posting the idea on Thursday, I've gotten several volunteers via comments, and emails who are willing to write for the series. To those I haven't yet responded to, I'll be doing that just a bit after posting this diary. I would solicit more volunteers, as there are certainly enough areas of law to write about, and many overlap/intersect with politics. I hope to have LawKos become at least a weekly series, and preferably, twice weekly. If you're not a lawyer, but know someone who might be interested in participating, please let him/her know. And just to be clear, I'm not excluding law students, I think they certainly have something to add to the 'conversation.'
I'm not an attorney, but I'm willing to do whatever the editorial board needs me to do on an ongoing basis. (My email is in my profile, for anyone who's interested in being part of the LawKos writing/editorial pool.)
UPDATE 1
An email has just been sent to legal Kossacks who had previously indicated their interest in contributing. I don't have email contacts for the following people, so please send me a mail, so I have a way to contact you:
Burrow Owl
Sally Cat
NoVa Boy
If you indicate in this diary that you're interested in contributing, but don't have an email address on your KOS profile, please send me an email letting me know of your interest. Mine's in my profile.
So, here's another extremely scientific poll.