The Obama Administration has filed its expected Motion to Dismiss in the challenge by the United States House of Representatives v. Burwell. As many of you know, I am lead counsel in the action. We posted our complaint earlier and I have posted the motion of the Administration below.
Continue reading “Obama Administration Files Motion To Dismiss House Challenge”
If the Seattle Seahawks are known for their aggressive offensive line, their players are nothing when compared to the aggression of their lawyers. Outdoing even the brutish NFL lawyers who claim copyright to terms like “Super Bowl,” the team has filed two dozen trademark applications in a little over a year to claim ownership to such terms as “boom” and “Go Hawks.” The team is also claiming ownership to the number 12 in a font like the one used by the team. It had to settle a prior lawsuit over its use of “The 12th Man” phrase (referring to the fans) — a phrase claimed by Texas A & M where it was forced to pay a licensing fee for the limited use of this common term. Now it is trying to the do the same in claiming parts of the English language as owned by the team (I am waiting for the Patriots to trademark “Deflate-gate”). It is all perfectly bizarre but Congress has done little to stop the frenzy to claim common terms and phrases. Too bad there is not anyone willing to throw a flag for encroachment to protect citizens.
Continue reading “Offensive Holding: Seahawks Move To Trademark The Word “Boom” and the Number 12″
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Weekend Contributor
It is unfortunately not surprising that anything that the CIA does should be considered suspect. When the CIA recently came under fire for allegedly spying on Senate computers, no one, except the Senators who were spied on were surprised. Now that Director John Brennan has completed his internal “investigation” into the matter, the truth has come out. John Brennan says he and the CIA did nothing wrong! Continue reading “The CIA’s Whitewash Investigation of Itself”
We previously discussed the gross negligence exhibited in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) rollout and how there appeared little accountability for such failures even when they cost hundreds of millions.(For a column, click here). Now it turns out that, after costing the country a fortune due to this shoddy work, the IRS has reportedly awarded the company yet another contract to do work on . . . you guessed it, Obamacare.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty, (rafflaw) Weekend Contributor
In our sometimes upside down world, it can seem that the lives and secrets of our intelligence service employees and their agencies are worth more than the lives and physical and mental well-being of the countless prisoners who were tortured by the CIA . That is the same torture that was authorized and approved at the highest levels of our government.
Let’s also not forget the many instances of allegedly criminal activity by large banks and their employees that resulted in civil fines or no action at all, notwithstanding the lives that were shattered in the meantime.
Recently it was disclosed that the Department of Justice and the FBI have recommended that Gen. David Petraeus be criminally prosecuted for allegedly passing his classified CIA email account and exposing state secrets to the biographer/author he was having an affair with. This is the very same Department of Justice, along with the Obama Administration that claims it did not have enough evidence to file charges against admitted torturers and those that authorized the torture and destruction of evidence. Continue reading “An Upside Down World of Justice”
The ABA Journal has posted a podcast that I did with former New York Times journalist Linda Greenhouse on the Supreme Court. Greenhouse is currently the Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law and Knight Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence at Yale Law School.
Continue reading “Turley and Greenhouse Discuss Supreme Court”
We have long discussed the shameful treatment of passengers by the airlines, which continue to gouge consumers while reducing seat space and even the most basic accommodations. The complaints against the airlines have increased recently due to the airlines refusing to pass along record low fuels prices to consumers in maintaining high-cost tickets. Now, United Airlines has sued a 22-year-old blogger, Aktarer Zaman, for showing passengers how to find cheap flights on his website Skiplagged.com. Orbitz has joined in the ignoble effort.
Continue reading “Blogger Reveals Trick To Getting Cheaper Fares So United And Orbitz Sue Him”
The National Fraternal Order of Police has launched a campaign to change federal law to add attacks on police as a hate crime. In a letter to President Barack Obama and Congress, the powerful union cites the murders of two New York City police officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. The demand would treat an attack based on status as the same as an attack based on race. Given the Administration’s expedited investigations of civil rights violations involving deaths caused by police officers in Missouri and New York, the change would create an interesting situation where both future suspects and officers would be arguably protections under federal hate crime laws.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw) Weekend Contributor
The instances of reported abuse of our country’s laws by our Intelligence services seems never-ending. The National Security Agency, or NSA is at the top of the list when it comes to violations of our laws and even its own rules and procedures that are allegedly designed to protect our privacy.
Pursuant to a court order in a case brought by the ACLU, the NSA is required to provide a list of its abuses on a quarterly basis. Of course, the NSA redacts most of what it puts in its own disclosures. Continue reading “NSA Abuses Never End”
MIT professor Jonathan Gruber has produced a firestorm of controversy over remarks made in various settings about the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) and how drafters like himself relied on the “stupidity” of voters in passing the legislation. It appears that the Gruber hits keep coming, even as he prepares for another round of questioning in Congress. The latest comments from 2009 reveal Gruber saying that Obamacare would not produce affordable health care for many citizens since its focus is coverage not costs. This statement made five months before the passage of the Act from a key architect is in stark contrast to President Obama’s repeated assertions that premiums would go down dramatically. The latest statement will fuel questioning before Congress on whether the White House knew that premiums were unlikely to do down and that people would not be able to keep their current policies as promised by President Obama in selling the program.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)- Weekend Contributor
It should not surprise any of the regular visitors to this blog that I have written many articles detailing the abuses of many of the Big Banks and the resulting fines that they have paid on multiple occasions. When a taxpayer reads about Billion dollar settlements being paid by Banks and financial companies as a result of a Justice Department investigation, they probably assume that the entire amount of the fine is being paid.
Those very same taxpayers may be surprised to learn that in many cases, the Banks are able to deduct from their taxes up to 75% of the fines and settlements made with the Justice Department. Continue reading “Just How Much of Big Bank Fines Are Actually Paid and Who Profits?”
I have long argued in my column as well as numerous blog postings that our country is legally bound to prosecute people responsible for ordering torture during the Bush Administration. There is no question that water boarding is torture as recognized by President Obama, Attorney General Holder, the United Nations and virtually every expert in this field. However, while you may want to try to rewrite legal precedent (as did John Yoo and Jay Bybee in their infamous Torture Memos), you should not try to rewrite history. That is what former Vice President Dick Cheney appears to be doing this month. He told Chuck Todd on Sunday that we never prosecuted anyone for water boarding — an assertion that I and others have repeatedly raised over the years. The statement is simply false and adds historical revisionism to legal revisionism in our sordid foray into torture.
Continue reading “Cheney Offers Tortured View of History In Defending Waterboarding”
The families of nine of the 26 people killed two years ago at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut have filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer, distributor and seller of the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle used in the shooting. The lawsuit names Bushmaster, Camfour, a firearm distributor, and Riverview Gun Sales, the East Windsor store where Adam Lanza’s mother purchased the Bushmaster rifle in 2010. The plaintiffs include Sherlach and the families of Vicki Soto, Dylan Hockley, Noah Pozner, Lauren Rousseau, Benjamin Wheeler, Jesse Lewis, Daniel Barden, Rachel D’Avino and teacher Natalie Hammond (who was injured in the shooting). Despite great sympathy for these families and this teacher, the lawsuit has little merit in my view in seeking liability against the sale of a lawful weapon.
Despite the public pledge of President Obama to pull out of Afghanistan, we continue to spend huge amounts of money in the war and the Obama Administration has fought to keep U.S. troops in the country. Now an estimate from the Financial Times and independent researchers put the cost of the war at roughly $1 trillion with a commitment of hundreds of billions more in the coming years. There continues to be no serious debate over our ongoing losses both in personnel and money in this war.
The last ten years have been a windfall for insurance companies: first with the post-9-11 legislation and then Obamacare. Now however, lobbyists are threatening to cancel the Super Bowl unless Congress renews the TRIA—the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act to cover insurers so that they will not have to actually pay out for any costs associated with terrorism. There may be good reasons for the bill coverage but there are also some unanswered questions. Do not expect too many answers however.