JONATHAN TURLEY

An engineer from Ukraine put on an amazing display this year. This allows our readers to prepare for next year with some ideas to put your neighbors to shame.
Continue reading ‘And You Thought Your Holiday Lighting Was Impressive . . .’

Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger

During the miserable trench warfare of WWI, a night of humanity offered some hope of peace. Arthur Conan Doyle called it  “one human episode amid all the atrocities.”  If Christmas means anything, it surely means this:

Christmas Day, 1914

My dear sister Janet,

It is 2:00 in the morning and most of our men are asleep in their dugouts—yet I could not sleep myself before writing to you of the wonderful events of Christmas Eve. In truth, what happened seems almost like a fairy tale, and if I hadn’t been through it myself, I would scarce believe it. Just imagine: While you and the family sang carols before the fire there in London, I did the same with enemy soldiers here on the battlefields of France!

Continue reading ‘A Christmas Truce’

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

Here’s an acrostic poem that I wrote a few years ago. If you read down the left side of the poem, it spells out the word “wreath.”

Wrapped around itself,

Red-ribboned

Evergreen, fragrant of winter forests,

Adorned with berries, baubles, bells of gold,

Tacked to the front door…

Home for the holidays.

Happy Holidays to all!!!

I have previously written and blogged on the criminalization of the American society. Now a study in the journal Pediatrics this week finds that, by age 23, almost a third of Americans have been arrested for a crime.
Continue reading ‘The Penal State: New Study Shows One-Third of Americans Have Been Arrested For A Crime By Age 23′

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

Nomi Prins, a former investment banker who once worked for Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns, recently appeared on Democracy Now! Amy Goodman questioned Prins about the collapse of MF Global and John Corzine’s testimony before Congress.

Corzine has claimed that he never directed anyone at MF Global to misuse investors’ funds.  A witness named Terry Duffy, however, has testified that “Corzine was aware of loans that may have used customer money.” Duffy is chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

In her interview with Amy Goodman, Prins spoke about a clip of Corzine’s testimony that she and Goodman watched: “We’re listening to someone try and dodge his way out of responsibility and accountability, which is very much what all of the CEOs on Wall Street have done through the subprime crisis and through past crises.” Prins added, “And for him to sit there in front of Congress and talk about ‘not intending’ and ‘I didn’t know’ and ‘I didn’t instruct’ and ‘I didn’t misuse’ and all these sort of legal maneuvers around this issue really is deplorable.”

Continue reading ‘Business As Usual: What the Collapse of MF Global Reveals about Financial Reform in the USA’

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

In the aftermath of the financial crisis back in 2008, a number of conservative commentators—including Mike Huckabee and Neil Cavuto—blamed minorities and low income people for the subprime mortgage mess. According to some of these conservatives, the responsibility for the mortgage mess lay at the feet of the Community Reinvestment Act and the poor/minorities among us who took out subprime mortgages. There didn’t seem to be any mention of banks and their predatory lending practices being at fault in any way.

Well, James Theckson, a former banker who was a regional vice president for Chase Home Finance in southern Florida, claims that banks are mostly culpable for the subprime mortgage fiasco. He told Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times that his team wrote $2 billion in mortgages in 2007—and that some of them were “no documentation” mortgages. Theckson said, “On the application, you don’t put down a job; you don’t show income; you don’t show assets. But you still got a nod.” He continued, “If you had some old bag lady walking down the street and she had a decent credit score, she got a loan.”

Continue reading ‘A Sordid Tale of Discriminatory Lending Practices and “Ghetto Loans”’