Philip Rosmarin

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

It’s really a sign of your tremendous success in the criminal law, when an apparel company sends you its Judicial Robe Catalog.

I was so honored recently when the Thomas company (Clarence, is that you?), out of classy hometown New London, Ohio, sent me its fine brochure.

Perhaps believing my elevation to the bench a sure thing, they sent it to the attention of my bailiff. As a child I had an imaginary friend; now I’ve got an imaginary bailiff.

I like that they’re located at One Harmony Place. Courtrooms should be places of harmony. Between prosecutor and defense attorney should lie perfect concord: oh, yes, counselor, my client is guilty, but can we just dispense with these archaic ideas about punishment?

The Thomas website is chockablock with items suitable for my impending judicial responsibilities. But who knew there were so many different judicial robes? I can buy a no-nonsense Plain Jim model for just a couple hundred bucks, or double that and show those lickspittle lawyers just who’s in charge of this courtroom.

I always thought the judge’s robe was just a robe, but there are many choices to be made.

Regular yoke, or deep V yoke? I’m a regular guy — I always used to get a regular man’s haircut until my daughter complained. But the deep V yoke: it’s really nice, let’s you expose more of your tie. I’m pretty sure there’s even a Presidential model that plunges way, way down there for the guy who aspires to be a so-called judge.

Zipper closure, or button? Zippers are the most popular, because once you’re behind the bench you can secretly unzip the thing and no one will ever know when you’re mansplaining the law to them. For some reason, a button closure for a man is an extra fifteen bucks, but for women it’s gratis. What are we doing to those buttons?

Single bell sleeve or double bell sleeve? Ding-dong I’m goin’ for the double. Knit cuff or choir cuff? My wife says I’m always preaching to the choir, and I’m not sure I’d ever trust a judge in a knit cuff.

Six different fabrics, including Peachskin/Angelic if you’re ready to go full RBG, and Wondercrepe, which’ll make even the meekest judge feel like a goddamn superhero.

You can even get yours embroidered, with up to four words or initials. Because it’s lettered discreetly in the lining, you can Make America Great Again and only your dry cleaner will ever know.

Luckily, only two colors: it’s gonna be black, or it’s gonna be navy. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a judge in a navy robe, except maybe in the Navy.

I may never be tapped to put them on; I may never figure out which side is front, which back.

I’ve ordered a dozen, just in case.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

People send me things.

I don’t look at them as carefully as I maybe should. So when a local lawyer sent me some information about another local lawyer, I didn’t look at it as carefully as I should.

It described a person named Lee Isaacs as “one of Boulder’s top criminal defense attorneys,” and that description brought me up short. I’m one of Boulder’s criminal defense attorneys, though I call myself a criminal defense lawyer because attorneys have bigger heads than lawyers do.

I never heard of her, or maybe him, and I know, or know of, most of Boulder’s criminal defense lawyers, and accidentally most of its criminal defense attorneys.

The information said he, or maybe she, had been here for decades. Decades. How’d I miss her? How’d I miss him?

As I said, I sometimes don’t look at the things people send me as carefully as I should. Turns out Lee Isaacs actually isn’t any kind of a lawyer, or even an attorney.

She’s (and I know now she’s a she, because I’ve finally looked carefully) a fictional character. I’m a lot less jealous of lawyers who are better than me when the lawyers are fictional characters. I’m sure, if I tried really hard, I could come up with a fictional character who’s an even better lawyer than the one real lawyer Jeanne Winer came up with.

Maybe I wouldn’t even have to try very hard. I’d just have to write, “Ross Martin (a thinly disguised me) was the greatest criminal defense lawyer, and maybe even criminal defense attorney, in the history of Boulder, Colorado — certainly the greatest in the history of the world, and just possibly in the history of both the known and unknown universes.”

Fairly simple.

Lee Isaacs (the fictional lawyer) is the kind of lawyer who likes to position herself as being a little long in the tooth (though her teeth are actually pretty short), so as to emphasize her vast experience and instill confidence in her clients.

So she kvetches about the new pain in her neck when she tilts her head sideways. (I don’t think I’ve ever deliberately tilted my head sideways; that’s just looking for trouble.) Goes on and on about the new ache and how it’s here to stay. Time, she contradicts the Stones, is definitely not on my side.

Then you learn she’s eight months shy of sixty.

She’s just a kid!

It’s enough to make a (just barely) older lawyer a little grouchy.

I have to be careful here, though, because the real lawyer and real writer Jeanne Winer, according to my lesser lawyer friend, knows Tae Kwon Do, and I know I bruise easily.

So to avoid casting any shade on my peaches-and-cream complexion, I’m going to tell you that the lawyer who sent me the information about the book says it’s realistic, funny, intelligent, and interesting.

It’s called “Her Kind of Case,” and you can find out more about it here.

Gonna read it myself. You can learn from these kids.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Winston Churchill once asked a woman if she would sleep with him for five million pounds. She was intrigued and said she supposed she would, if the terms of the transaction were further explained.

He countered his own offer: how about, he said, for five pounds. The lady was aghast. Just what kind of woman do you think I am, she said. Oh, Churchill replied, we’ve pretty much established that; we’re just haggling over price.

Donald Trump is like that. For the right price, he condones murder.

To be sure, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman isn’t your everyday murderer. Like all the best murderers, he’s got a cute nickname. His is “MbS”; Donald’s, according to a lady who claims to know him in the best possible Biblical sense, is “Tiny”.

More than nicknames, though, the prince and the president are tied at the loins by the dollars that get the commander-in-chief’s salivary glands cranking overtime (that’s the only overtime he puts in). Some things are just more important to him than human life, and there are billions of those things hanging off the Saudi trees, ripe for the picking.

When asked, Donald Trump says, “Maybe he did, or maybe he didn’t.” For him, that’s the equivalent of reasonable doubt.

His intelligence agencies don’t express that same doubt.

The CIA concluded with “high confidence” that MbS ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. CIA confidence doesn’t get any higher than that, unless they’re asked who the worst president is in the history of the Republic.

So for billions of dollars, Donald Trump has haggled a pretty good price on a coverup to a murder.

Thing is, our beloved President would have settled for much less.

Khashoggi was a journalist. Enemy of the people.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

The armed forces of the United States are commanded by a coward.

He is no ordinary coward. In his own mind, if he accepted the fact he is a coward, he would have to be the greatest coward of all time.

He’s been one for more than fifty years. He pretended to a physical defect, supported by a doctor he paid to lie for him, to avoid the risk other men and women of his generation shouldered instead during the Vietnam War.

He boasts that he would rush a gunman unarmed yet is so afraid a little rain might expose his balding head that he dishonors American war dead at home and abroad by hiding high and dry indoors.

And yesterday he presided over the tear-gassing of women, and of children in diapers. Had they picked up a stone he had already expressed a cheery confidence that he would have the right to shoot them.

Legally interesting, is the fact that United States forces didn’t use tear gas on U.S. soil, but fired it across the border into Mexican territory. Mexico’s foreign ministry demanded an investigation.

The American president said it was just too bad children were gassed, and suggested people who were not their real parents held the babies and children in front of them as human shields, his only evidence of that, of course, being it was the kind of thing he would do.

He called the folks seeking asylum “stone cold criminals” and vowed he would keep them out by any means, even if he had to shut down the U.S. government to build a big beautiful wall.

That’s a close-up of three of the stone cold criminals he gassed, at the top of this piece.