Deadliest Catch + wealthy mystery woman + maritime tragedy + a very wide variety of lawyers and laws = interesting read.

That equation worked for me. If you like any of those things, you may enjoy this article.

Quoted: A shipwreck, a mysterious owner and a 158-year-old maritime law. There are a thousand ways to die on the Bering Sea, and it seemed like all 1,000 hurtled toward the Alaska Ranger at 2 a.m. that Easter morning. Massive waves—skyscraper-size and Bible black—smashed the Ranger. Snow squalls blasted the deck. A storm gripped the 203-foot mackerel boat 120 miles off the Alaskan coast. Waves flooded the rudder room, rushing past watertight compartment doors. “Catastrophic hull failure!” an officer shouted. The electricity cut off. Suddenly, the engine locked into reverse. As the crew scrambled into neoprene survival suits, they peered into the wheelhouse where Capt. Peter Jacobsen called maydays into the radio. The fishmaster­—a mysterious officer from Japan who directed them toward fertile fishing grounds—sat in the wheelhouse smoking a cigarette, staring straight ahead. His survival suit hung unzipped off his shoulders.…

Yikes.

Quoted: "Well, he ran away, and the swamp got him," was one story Kiser said school administrators told him. "The gators got him. Water moccasins got him" were others.

Oh dear. I still love it there.

Quoted: Chuck E. Cheese's bills itself as a place "where a kid can be a kid." But to law-enforcement officials across the country, it has a more particular distinction: the scene of a surprising amount of disorderly conduct and battery among grown-ups.

Interesting.

Quoted: A judge in Travis County has ordered a woman to stop having children as a condition of her probation in her case of injury to a child by omission, an extraordinary measure that legal experts say could be unconstitutional.

Sounds like it went well.

Quoted: "I initially signed it because he was not my first choice. If I could I would withdraw my signature today. I'm happy he came," she said.

A neatly distilled analysis. Not sure it gives proper context, but it is informative.

Quoted: A lot of blame has sloshed around for the sub-prime meltdown, from greedy borrowers to greedy mortgage brokers to Alan Greenspan, but if you want the real culprit, it was the repeal of the Glass-Stegall Act.

Gotta love the crabby old Dutchmen at the Consumerist.

Go get 'em.

Quoted: The Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are looking at whether officials at Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, misrepresented its financial condition and the soundness of its loans in security filings, the officials said.

A sad and interesting case. The judge in the case denied NBC's initial motion to dismiss. I remember reading about this when it happened - apparently a lot of law enforcement personnel involved with the show have had problems with the way things are handled.

Quoted: The Conradt family’s lawyer, Bruce Baron, of Baron Associates in Brooklyn, said the decision “sends a strong message to law enforcement throughout this country: Never subcontract your uniform, badge and the oath you take.”