NYT: Mystery of Gossipy Blog on the Judiciary Is Solved (and blog dies)

Mystery of Gossipy Blog on the Judiciary Is Solved
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: November 16, 2005

Alex Kozinski, a federal appeals court judge in California, was a little miffed last year when a blog called Underneath Their Robes, a dishy hybrid of People magazine and The Harvard Law Review, failed to list him as a candidate for "male superhottie of the federal judiciary."

So he nominated himself ("discerning females and gay men find graying, pudgy middle-aged men with an accent close to Gov. Schwarzenegger's almost totally irresistible"), and he won.

Yesterday, Judge Kozinski was mourning what was apparently the death of the blog. Soon after The New Yorker magazine disclosed on Monday that its author was not, as the blog claimed, a female lawyer at a big firm with a taste for gossip and luxury goods, but rather a male federal prosecutor in Newark, the site disappeared behind a password-protected virtual wall.

Judges and their law clerks made up much of the site's readership, and several said yesterday that they had found its mixture of judicial celebrity sightings and over-the-top commentary irresistible....

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The blog's author was until recently known only as Article III Groupie, after the part of the Constitution concerning the judiciary....The judge was right. Article III Groupie turns out to be a 30-year-old prosecutor, David B. Lat. That was news to his employer, the Justice Department....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/16/national/16blog.html?hp&ex=1132203600&en=9cefdd2e53057922&ei=5094&partner=homepage