News of note from a grand Booker discussion

I had a grand opportunity on Tuesday to speak to the Sixth Circuit Judicial Conference as part of a panel discussing federal sentencing after Booker.  Because of the grand location for the event, I could not resist analogizing Booker to the time travel movie Somewhere in Time, but I think you really had to be there for the analogy to work.

Besides my hackneyed movie reference, the panel included, inter alia, interesting reports from US Sentencing Commission Chair Ricardo Hinojosa and DOJ's ex-officio USSC member Deborah Rhodes.  Judge Hinojosa whet my ever-ravenous appetite for post-Booker data by indicating that a new data run, now including over 20,000 post-Booker sentencings, should be released by the USSC within the next few weeks.  And Assistant AG Rhodes slightly eased my anxiety over AG Gonzales' recent speech urging a Booker fix (basics here, commentary here and here and here) by indicating that the speech was just advocating consideration of so-called "topless guidelines" and was not meant as an endorsement of any specific pending legislative proposal (lots of background here).