There is a truly bizarre story this week involving a former Indiana University law professor who resigned from West Point Military Academy’s law department as a disturbing article was published where he denounces other scholars who exhibit “pernicious pacifism” as aiding and abetting terrorists. The case raises free speech and academic freedom issues in handling controversial writings of academics. However, it also raises the poor standards for selecting faculty at West Point, a concern that I have had in the past with regard to its legal studies as well as those at other military educational programs. Not only does Bradford have extremist and disturbing views but he has been previously accused of exaggerating his credentials.
Category: Bizarre
There is a bizarre case out of Arizona where lawyer Dennis Wilenchik has been given a formal sanction of admonishment from the bar after he sent profanity laced emails to a client who he accused of failing to pay his bills. The emails also included a reference to the movie Deliverance and its notorious rape scene. After accepting the discipline, Wilenchick now is seeking to set aside the discipline in light of new evidence. The discipline included a one-year probation period during which Wilenchick would have to continue with anger management treatment.
Continue reading “Arizona Lawyer Seeks To Vacate Bar Sanction After Profanity Laden Email”
A Virginia teen may have just become a lock for this year’s Darwin award after he was arrested for alleging pretending to be a police officer. He reportedly picked the wrong car . . . with an actual police officer inside.
It is common to get advice like “never look a polar bear in the eye.” The same appears to be true with Dayton police officers. Driver John Felton has posted a video of a pull over by a police officer who told him that he was pulled over because he “made direct eye contact” with him while driving by.
The Chinese regime followed its recent market meltdown in true Maoist fashion this week. It dragged out a journalist, Wang Xiaolu, to confess that he helped start the crash. It cannot be the centrally planned, artificially dumped up system itself. No, it was a journalist.
Jordan Toner, 29, allegedly not only engaged in reckless drive-in in front of witnesses, but may have created the world’s worst record of the it with a selfie while driving . . . just before he hit a tree in Maine.
President Robert Mugabe, 91, has long been one of the world’s most heartless and merciless dictators, but he seems also on a quest to show that he is also the most clueless. This week Mugabe expressed utter surprise that his people were starving as he and his notorious and corrupt family live like emperors. He assured that there is “no suffering” in Zimbabwe.
Continue reading “Mugabe Insists “No Suffering” in Zimbabwe”
There is an interesting controversy brewing over the continued removal of water by Nestle from California’s water supply during the record drought in that state. Nestle continued to remove millions of gallons of water from the San Bernardino National Forest to sell as part of its Arrowhead bottled water brand. While the rest of the state is facing stringent water reductions, Nestles has been criticized for removing 27 million gallons of water from 12 springs in Strawberry Canyon under a permit that expired in 1988. The expired permit’s fee for the water, according to critics? $524.
According to various media reports and Amnesty International, an all-male village council in India sentenced two sisters, including a 15 year old girl, to be raped as punishment for their brother running away with a married woman from a higher caste. The accounts state that Meenakshi Kumari, who is 23, and her younger sister, will then be paraded naked with their faces blackened through the streets as part of this disgraceful, primitive sentence.
There is a terrible death in San Francisco that reads like a perverse torts exam question on factual and legal causation. Barber Luis Gomez, it can be argued, was almost killed by permissive public urination in the city (an issue that we recently discussed with regard to the effort to decriminalize public urination in New York). Gomez, 40, was killed during his commute from a suburb into the city. Because the BART was done, he drove his 1994 Honda Civic into the city. He was then crushed by a falling light pole that officials blamed on human and animal urine corroding its base.
Continue reading “Lamp Post Crushes Car In San Francisco In Bizarre Consequence of Public Urination”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and Councilmen Johnny Khamis and Raul Peralez proposed installing license plate readers on garbage trucks. If there is one thing apparently that is important to the collection of your trash and rubbish it is reading every license plate in the neighborhood it seems. The city officials believe it will make a strong dent in the number of stolen and wanted vehicles left out in the street around garbage day.
The proposal involves installation of the readers and feeding the license data to the central computer system that serves the police department’s LPRs installed on patrol cars. It promises to be a monumentally cost inefficient system despite what city officials might claim. The civil liberties implications notwithstanding.
Psst, car thieves of California: be sure to take in your stolen car when you take out the trash.
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
A sign of the current education situation in Washington State took a turn for the obvious when, showing a fundamental lack of knowledge of basic civics, a coalition of Washington State Senators declared an order of the State Supreme Court to be Unconstitutional. That’s right, the several senators seem to have missed a key portion of their junior-high education relating to which branch of government has the ultimate say in constitutional matters and perhaps the workings of our tripartite government.
The claim of unconstitutionality stems from an open letter penned by several state senators describing the “constitutional crisis” caused by a rogue state supreme court. Previously the court held the state in contempt for failing to provide for the constitutionally mandated primary duty of funding basic education. It ultimately prescribed a penalty of $100,000.00 for each day the legislature failed to furnish the court with a suitable plan to address shortcomings enumerated in McCleary v. State.
Continue reading “WA State Senators Declare Supreme Court Order “Unconstitutional””
New York has a rather bizarre case this week where Jordan Zeidman, 20, sued his own mother, Shirley Zeidman, 54, to recover $5,000 that his grandmother gave him as a bar mitzvah gift. Shirley Zeidman has now been found liable for conversion and unjust enrichment. It might not have been a bona fide but it was a baba fide transaction according to the court. The case is Zeidman v. Zeidman, CV-011924-14.
Former TV judge Joe Brown, 66, has surrendered to Tennessee deputies to begin serving a five-day jail term for contempt of court. Brown was held in contempt by Magistrate Judge Harold Horne for an outburst in Juvenile Court in March 2014. He took the issue all the way up to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which denied Brown’s application to appeal a Court of Appeals upholding the ruling. Brown called the court a “circus” and a “sorry operation.” Of course real judges do not have producers and set designers. When Horne told him to stop, Brown did not. He gave him a day in jail but Brown continued until he had five days in jail.
Continue reading ““Judge” Brown Goes To Jail Over Contemptuous Encounter With Real Judge”
One of the most interesting aspects of the case against Jared Fogle, Subway pitchman, for pornography was the use of a dog named Bear. While incorrectly called a “porn sniffing bloodhound,” Bear is actually one of five dogs trained to find hidden electronic data devices. Bear found the thumbdrive used to incriminate Fogle.
Continue reading “Meet Bear, The Dog That Helped Nail Jared of Subway”