The murder of John Colman is not exactly a cold case, it is positively glacial. New York detectives have taken up the case 400 years after the English seaman was found murdered and buried in a shallow grave. No weapon, no motive. The culprit, however, is believed to be out of the New York jurisdiction and even Interpol.
Category: Academia
School officials in at Atlantic High School (“Home of the Trojans & Trojanns“) in Des Moines, Iowa are facing questions of why five teenage girls were forced to take off their clothing for a search after a classmate reported $100 missing from her purse. No money was found. The Supreme Court just ruled in June 2009 that strip searches were unconstitutional in Safford Unified School District v. Redding. As in the Iowa search for money, no drugs were found in the Arizona middle school search.
Continue reading “Iowa School Accused of Strip Searching Teenage Girls in Search of Stolen Money”
OK this is getting bizarre. This mother breaks into tears when she thinks of the President of the United States speaking to her children in school. We are less than two days away from Obama’s brain-washing, soul-crushing, communist-loving subliminal-laced speech to our children. By Wednesday, our schools will be little more than communes with kids calling for redistribution of wealth and reeducation of parents.
Continue reading “Parents Unite Against Obama’s “Brainwashing” Speech to Students”
We have been following the trend among Western countries in rolling back on free speech with different forms of blasphemy laws, here. Much of this attack on free speech began after the controversy over the publication of cartoons depicting Muhammad. Now, Dutch prosecutors are charging an Arab group for publishing cartoons questioning the Holocaust.
Continue reading “Dutch Prosecutors Charge Arab Group With Hate Speech Over Cartoon”
The University of Illinois College of Law has already had a bad year with allegations of less qualified students being given entrance into the school as favors for politicians. Now, Dean Ming Liu Bengtsson, 38, the assistant business dean at the law school has been arrested for allegedly stealing $20,000 at her previous job working for Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs. She recently resigned her position.
Continue reading “Former Business Dean at Illinois College of Law Charged With Theft and Forgery”
It turns out that your “personal space” is all in your head. There is a fascinating story in the current issue of Nature involving the ability of human to sense and maintain proper “personal space.” Researchers at Caltech found a woman who had extensive damage to her amygdala, the part of the brain known to help process strong negative emotions. They discovered that she not only had difficult in recognizing fear in the faces of others but had no less of a sense of “personal space.”
Well, there are mandatory parenting and driving schools. Now, there are “John schools” for men caught soliciting prostitutes. Cities are turning to John schools to curb prostitution. They might have to teach some old dogs new tricks. This week, an octogenarian was arrested in a sting targeting johns outside of Washington.
Continue reading “Men Lining Up for Admission into John School”
Who says no one will read your college or university thesis? Robert F. McDonnell, Republican candidate for Governor in Virginia, is now wishing that he had chosen a simple paper on the life and times of Thomas Jefferson. Instead, as a masters student at Regents University, he wrote a thesis against government policies favoring “cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.” He also denounced as “illogical” a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.
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Last night I discussed the growing speculation that Justice John Paul Stevens, an icon of the Court with over three decades of service, may be preparing to retire (here). On both a personal and jurisprudential level, Stevens remains one of my favorite judicial figures. He is a man who had a transformative impact on his country. His place in history will likely be discussed for years to come. With this news and the justices returning to the city for the new term, this story may be of interest. Below is my cover article in the American History Magazine on my choices for the top nine justices — as well as my list of the Supreme failures on the Court.
Continue reading “The Supremes: Picking the Top Nine Justices of All Time”
Public schools are cutting back deeply during this economic downturn but you would not know it from reading the credit card bill for Brian Keith Johnson, the Montgomery College president. Johnson appears to have personally taken on the cause of stimulating the economy with his state-funded spending. Unfortunately, he has a global reach, including a $4,051 hotel bill in Delhi. To make matters worse, last year an Arizona court issued a warrant for Johnson for failure to pay $12,000 in unpaid child support.
Continue reading “Maryland College President Under Fire For Lavish Spending”
When Dick the Butcher declared in Shakespeare’s Henry VI “The first thing we do let’s kill all the lawyers,” he may have been prophetic. Jones Day partner Mark Herrmann has written on his blog that his unscientific survey shows that legal blogs tend to have a lifespan of less than a year.
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Evolution in Sedalia, Missouri appears to be moving in reverse. The band leaders of the Smith-Cotton High School Tiger Pride Marching Band thought that they had a cute idea in showing the images of monkeys evolving into band members under the words “Brass Evolutions 2009.” Parents and teachers objected that evolution (a scientific theory) was advancing a “religious” viewpoint. Amazingly, the school agreed and ordered the t-shirts turned in by the students.
Lincoln, Nebraska (The Weekly Vice) – Gregory Tyrrell, 45, is a registered sex offender who allegedly came up with what he thought was a brilliantly simple idea. He covered himself with towels from head to toe and repeatedly went into the women’s locker room in a Lincoln, Nebraska health club. The problem was the hairy legs, which women had a hard time missing.
Continue reading “The Trouble With Hairy: Nebraska Man Arrested For Entering Ladies Room at Health Club Covered in Towels”
While other school officials are struggling against the scourges of drugs and violence, officials at the Richmond Community Schools in Indiana have started a campaign against the ravages of stripes and plaids. Officials have prohibited clothing other than solid colors and have parents seeing solid red.
Continue reading “Good Citizens Don’t Wear Plaid: Richmond Schools Ban Stripes and Plaids as Key to Success”
Former University of Louisville Adjunct Law Professor Thomas H. Irwin, 56, was arrested this week after bringing two handguns and 53 rounds of ammunition into the campus law library. Irwin had been declared a “persona non grata” in December 2008 for alleged harassment of another employee at the school.