Booker news and notes

A few Booker items have caught my eye at the end of a relatively quiet day for Booker in the courthouse:

• This fascinating article from the Texas Lawyer provides a Lone Star view of the Booker with an emphasis on legal uncertainties and the workload for the Fifth Circuit.  I touched on workload issues in a recent post on Booker burdens, and I was intrigued by this quote from the Fifth Circuit’s Chief Judge Carolyn Dineen King:

“We’re going to have a meeting of all of the judges in about a week and try to get a coordinated approach to it all,” King says of Booker appeals. “It is a monumental task.”

• As detailed here and here, the Sixth Circuit would have benefitted from a coordinated approach to plain error, and Peter Henning of the White Collar Crime Prof Blog notes here that some of the disparate inter-circuit approaches to plain error have been in white-collar cases.

• With House and Sentencing Commission hearings on the way, groups and commentators are sharing advice concerning legislative reactions to Booker.  This AP article reports on the ABA’s “go slow” resolution (previously discussed here), and this newspaper commentary provides an insightful set of recommendations in urging Congress to pass “bipartisan legislation to make our federal justice system fairer, cheaper and more effective at reducing crime.”