House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is trying to fend off criticism over her knowledge of the Bush Administration’s plan to torture detainees. Pelosi has adopted a highly lawyered exclamation that she was briefed on the plan but never told that they were implementing the plan. It is a distinction lost on civil libertarians. She was still briefed on a war crime and did not act to stop it.
Continue reading “It Depends What “Know” Means: Pelosi Admits That She Was Briefed on Torture But Claims Ignorance on its Actual Use”
Month: April 2009
U.S. News and World Report has released its 2010 law school rankings after they were first leaked by an industrious blog. There appears to be a change in methodology that affected the ranking in the top 25 (George Washington took a big hit in overall ranking while coming in second for its part-time program).
Continue reading “New Law School Rankings”
There is an interesting account out of Waco, Texas where Bill Nye “The Science Guy” was booed for saying that the Moon does not generate it own light — in contradiction to the Bible. This will likely end any dream of Nye to open a new Bill Nye “The Religion Guy” line of products. The speech reportedly occurred in 2006 but the controversy was rekindled after critics cried foul at the removal of the story from the local newspaper’s online archive.
Derick A. Culberson, 22, is accused to moving beyond the normal roses and dinners to win back a girlfriend. Culberson has been charged with making a false police report that he was robbed at gunpoint in order to get his girlfriend feel guilty for leaving him
Continue reading “Broken Heart, Empty Head: Florida Man Admits to Staging Robbery to Woe Ex-Girlfriend”
Madonna Constantine, the former professor of the Teachers College of Columbia University who reported a noose found on her door, has filed a lawsuit against Columbia for $200 million after she was fired for plagiarism.
Continue reading “Former Columbia Professor Sues University for $200 Million”
Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that he will “follow the law” in deciding whether to pursue criminal charges against Bush officials for the torture program. While first reported as a major advance, the statement conspicuously does not mention the appointment of a special prosecutor, an essential component to any investigation since the Justice Department featured heavily in these allegations.
Continue reading “Holder Promises to Follow the Law on Any Torture Investigation But Fails to Mention Special Prosecutor”
This may make for a better movie than a torts case, but Sandrina Purdum, 31, alleges that Jennifer Angevine ruined her wedding in Queens, New York, by telling guests that she had been sleeping with her new husband, Harold Purdum, 31. She is alleging slander, infliction of emotion distress, and battery.
Continue reading “The Wedding Plaintiff: New York Woman Sues Guest Over Wedding Outburst”
Madlyn Primoff, 45, a partner at Kaye Scholer specializing in international financial matters spent the night in jail and is facing criminal charges after she allegedly throw her two daughters, 10 and 12, out of her car on the side of the road. One daughter succeeded in catching up with the car and jumping back in while the ten-year-old was found by another adult. Primoff reported the second daughter missing and was arrested when she went to the police station. She was carried with a misdemeanor count of endangering child welfare.
Continue reading “New York Lawyer Arrested For Throwing Kids Out of Car”
At a time when the Harman scandal is focusing attention on the power of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Congress, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is quoted in his very first interview on foreign policy as saying “Believe me, America accepts all our decisions.”
Continue reading “Israeli Foreign Minister: The United States Does What Israel Decides Should Be Done”
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has called for Judge Jay Bybee to resign in light of his central role in the torture program and memos. Leahy declared that “[t]he fact is, the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee did not tell the truth. If the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee had told the truth, he never would have been confirmed.”
Continue reading “Leahy Calls for Judge Bybee’s Resignations and Others Call for Impeachment”
Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, has called the alleged interception of her calls with a suspected spy “an abuse of power” and has called for the transcripts of the call to be given to her. As suggested in an earlier blog, she has promised to make the transcript public if given to her. However, she would not confirm the conversation while denying any quid pro quo arrangement to help accused American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyists — Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman — in exchange for AIPAC’s help in securing the House Intelligence Committee Chairmanship. While Harman is reported as ending the call with the statement that “This conversation doesn’t exist,” she now denies that the conversation existed as reported in the media.
Notably, the same week that this conversation was revealed, the Administration is reportedly considering dropping charges against the AIPAC lobbyists — precisely what the AIPAC contact reported demanded from Harman in her help to reduce or dismiss charges.
Now this is a sentence that most of my clients would relish. Pittsburgh contractor William G. Tomko Jr. was convicted of using his $5 million mansion as part of a tax evasion scheme where he avoided $228,000 in taxes by having work on the mansion disguised as payments for work done at five area schools. U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster sentenced Tomko to have to live in the mansion as his punishment under a sentence of three years’ probation with one year to be spent on house arrest. Tomko’s cell will be a 8,000-square-foot mansion on eight acres and with $1.8 million in furnishings and $81,000 in fine art. I hope that he can hold up under the pressure of living in this particular cellblock. A divided court of appeals panel has upheld the sentence.
President Obama reversed earlier statements statements made as late as this weekend from Raum Emmanuel and others that he did not want anyone — low level or high level officials — prosecuted for torture. In a clear break from his past statements, Obama insisted that the matter had to be left to Attorney General Eric Holder. We discussed this latest development on this segment of MSNBC Countdown. In the meantime, the Administration leaked a memo from Intelligence Director Dennis Blair that said that the torture program yielded new information — part of a new emerging argument that torture works that was also recently advanced by former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Below is today’s column from the Los Angeles Times on the demand of the family of Martin Luther King that the King Center be paid roughly $800,000 for the right to use his image and words in the planned memorial to the late civil rights leaders on the Washington Mall.
Continue reading “Monumental Shakedown: Cashing in on Martin Luther King, Jr.”
The lawsuit against KBR by the families of civilian drivers killed in an ambush in Iraq in 2004 have been strengthened by internal memos showing that KBR officials knew of the insurgent activity and high level of danger before sending them into harm’s way.