The new phone books — I mean guidelines — are here!

You have to be a fan of the Steve Martin classic “The Jerk” to fully appreciate the reference to one of my favorite movie quotes/sequences in the title of this post. However, you probably only need to have passing familiarity with the girth of the federal sentencing guidelines to understand a phone book analogy.

In any event, jokes aside, November 1, 2004 is the day the latest, greatest version of Federal Sentencing Guidelines Manual and Appendices become effective. Hot off the virtual presses, you can access various forms of the 2004 Federal Sentencing Guidelines Manual here. In addition, you can read all 154 pages of the “Reader-friendly” version of the 2004 Guideline Amendments here. I heartily encourage readers to use the comments to highlight any of the dozen 2004 amendments they believe are particularly important or noteworthy.

Of course, with the Booker and Fanfan iceberg approaching quickly, these pre-Blakely amendments may be just a slight rearranging of the deck chairs on the guidelines Titanic. But they still merit attention, if only out of respect for all the work that the US Sentencing Commission obviously put into these amendments.