Assistant Summit County prosecutor Kassim Ahmed has resigned after a truly bizarre controversy over what appears a slight bump in the hallway that led Ahmed to file an assault charge against court employee Holly Trivett. The videotape below does not support the claim and Ahmed complained that he has “taken unfair criticism as a result of these negative articles.”
Continue reading “Prosecutor Resigns After Filing Assault Charge Over Hallway Bump”
A speech by Anthony Scaramucci at his alma mater, Tufts University, has been delayed after the former Trump White House spokesman threatened the student newspaper with a defamation lawsuit. I previously wrote a column on Scaramucci and his controversial outbursts. This threat against the students at Tufts is legally meritless and undermines whatever credibility Scaramucci retained following his disastrously sort stint at the White House.
Continue reading “Anthony Scaramucci Threatens Tufts With Defamation Lawsuit”
Indiana University Health employee Taiyesha Baker is reportedly out of a job after a tweet from an account named “Night Nurse” was traced to her. In the tweet, Baker reportedly called for white male children to “be sacrificed to the wolves.” We have previously discussed the issue of when it is appropriate to punishment people for conduct outside of the work place. We have followed cases where people have been fired after boorish or insulting conduct once their names and employers are made known. (here and here and here and here). I often come down on the side of free speech, but some cases directly impact the employer and the underlying business or services. This may be one such case, but it, again, raises the question of what political and social views are protected for employees to express in social media or on their personal time.
Continue reading “Indiana University Reportedly Removes Nurse After Disturbing Tweet”
I am not sure what is more surprising. First, Julie Gagne, 47, was charged with destroying her own Infiniti SUV. Then, it was revealed that she allegedly did the act with a flamethrower. Finally, and this is probably the most surprising, flamethrowers are legal in Illinois.
Continue reading “Illinois Woman Charged With Destroying Her Own Car With A Flamethrower”
We previously discussed the violation of federal rules by White House counselor Kellyanne Conway in the endorsement of a commercial product. Now an even more serious allegation has been raised in a complaint filed by Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics. Shaub charges that Conway violated the ban on federal employees using their positions for political purposes and the allegation is not without merit. Conway has possible defenses but the statements on Fox against the election of Alabama Democratic Senate candidate Dough Jones used poor judgment. When reviewed in the context of past cases, the complaint raises credible claims. For full disclosure, Conway is one of my former students at George Washington University Law School (she graduated in 1995).
Continue reading “Kellyanne Conway Hit With Hatch Act Complaint Over Moore Comments”
We just discussed the tragedy in New York where a man hunting deer after sunset with a high-powered handgun shot and killed a woman walking her dogs. If you wonder how a hunter could fire at a woman walking her dogs, you might want to consider the arrest of Marvin C. Miller, 26. The Ohio hunter is charged with bagging a brown pick up truck that he mistook for a deer. Just for a point of reference, these are representations of the two different targets for any future hunters.
Continue reading “Ohio Hunter Mistakes Brown Pickup For Deer and Disables Vehicle”
Teen Vogue columnist Emily Lindin is under fire this week after writing how she is “not at all concerned about innocent men losing their jobs” over false allegations of sexual assault or harassment. Lindin dismissed the dangers of false claims as low in joining other feminist writers in arguing that women must be believed in such cases. Indeed, Lindin wrote that even raising false claims could be a sign of hostility to women. I wrote recently how this standard was not used during the Clinton presidency where leading feminists not only supported Bill Clinton but continue to flock to events featuring the alleged sexual harasser and assaulter.
London detectives are searching for a man who placed a small camera in a toilet at Starbucks in Vauxhall. They have one big advantage: the first picture taken by the creep was of himself installing the camera.
David Williams, 56, finally resolved who will not be invited to Thanksgiving. He is clearly off the list. The Queens man became angry about who would be invited, specifically whether his girlfriend would be included. When his sister Dianna Gadson, 66, objected, he grabbed a knife. The rest is Norman Rockwell meets Jerry Springer.
University of California -Riverside student Edith Macias achieved a degree of fame (or infamy) when she was involved in an ugly incident in September with a fellow student wearing a Make America Great Again hat. Macias ripped the hat off the head of student Matthew Vitale and then spouted profanities in a college office. Now Macias is looking at a charge of misdemeanor grand theft with the possibility of jail time.
Yesterday, the Hill posted my column on the hypocritical responses by both Democrats and Republicans to sexual harassment and assault allegations against figures ranging from Harvey Weinstein to Al Franken to Roy Moore. In the last 24 hours, CBS anchor Charlie Rose and Rep. John Conyers have been added to the list. However, the most glaring disconnect in the response to such allegations remains Bill Clinton, who was just accused of additional incidents of sexual harassment and assault after his presidency. Putting aside the veracity of such new claims (which remain based on anonymous sources), Clinton has a long and well-documented history of affairs and allegations ranging from sexual harassment to rape. However, Democrats gathered in Little Rock, Arkansas to hold an adoring tribute to Clinton on the 25th anniversary of his election as president. The event, headed by James Carville, failed to mention a single allegation of his assaulting women even as Democratic politicians and commentators have begun to acknowledge that these women should have been believed and Clinton held more accountable. Indeed, opening the Clinton fest with Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” was rather ominous given the allegations of ongoing misconduct.
Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, is the latest focal point for the growing free speech crisis on college campuses. University student Lindsay Shepherd, 22, teaches tutorials on language use for first year communications students in a class called “Canadian Communication in Context”. She showed brief clip featuring psychology professor Jordan Peterson who is against forced use of genderless and “made-up” pronouns. Shepherd said that the clip spurred a lively and beneficial discussion in the class. However, one student filed a compliant and now Shepherd is facing an investigation for creating a “toxic environment” for showing the clip without publicly denouncing the views expressed in the clip. It appears that the school’s motto, Veritas Omnia Vincit (“Truth Conquers All”), applies only to university sanctioned truth.
We have hit another milestone today with over 33,000,000 views. We are also expected to reach 35,000 followers on Twitter. That hardly makes us competition for the largest sites but it is still an impressive collection of people seeking a place for civil but passionate discourse on legal and policy issues of our time (and perhaps a few wacky stories). We often use these milestones to look at the current profile of the blog and its supporters around the world.
As always, I want to offer special thanks for our weekend contributors: Mike Appleton, Larry Rafferty, Darren Smith, Kimberly Dienes, and Cara Gallagher (particularly Darren who continues help up with periodic technical problems etc).
I particularly want to thank our regular commentators and readers. We try to keep this blog as an open forum with as little interference or monitoring of the comments as possible. Given our free speech orientation, we try not to delete comments and, for that reason, we are deeply appreciative of how most people avoid personal or offensive comments in debating these issues. We have had to delete a handful of comments with personal attacks or profanity but the number remains quite low for a blog of this size. The success of this blog is due to the fact that we offer something more than the all-too-common troll-driven, angry, and insulting commentary of the Internet. Thank you for voluntarily assuming restraint over the tenor and content of your comments. Continue reading “RES IPSA HITS 33,000,000”
Wes Goodman is the Republican state legislator for Ohio who ran on a religious right agenda of opposing LGBT rights and same sex marriage. His career ended last week after the discovery of Goodman having sex with a man in his office. Things that makes this legislator less of a good man is not his apparent homosexuality but his dishonesty and hypocrisy. He is not only married to a woman but has been a leading voice against homosexuals.
Jim Bakker was last seen by most people after his sex scandal and then sentencing for fraud. Now he is back and he will totting pancake mix. Bakker is shilling for people to call a 1-888 phone number to give him $60 (plus shipping) for a bucket of pancake mix. The alternative appears to be starving your children and handing them over to the Biblical Beast.
Continue reading “Rev. Jim Bakker: Buy My Pancake Mix Or Make Flapjacks In Hell?”