It appears that not all apples are alike when it comes to food stamps. Tracy Browning, 38, of Louisville has been arrested for trying to buy several iPads with food stamps. After she was turned away by the Apple store and fled, she then tried to make the same purchase at a second Apple store.
Category: Criminal law
John Cusack and I had a dialogue last year about civil liberties and other issues. John has now run a second interview (actually half of a second interview) on Huffington Post. This interview focuses on the case of Julian Assange.
Continue reading “What Is An Assange? My Interview With John Cusack”
We have often discussed the continuing crackdown on student free speech in high schools. The latest such case involves Courtni Webb, a seventeen-year-old student at California’s Life Learning Academy who was suspended for writing in a poem in a personal notebook that she “understand[s] the killings in Connecticut.”
People are hoping to see less of Robert Moore, 48, but a court released the defendant who was arrested in Plymouth after “spraying urine to and fro into the flower beds while making noises like an elephant.” Despite his lawyer admitting that Moore has a “raging alcohol problem” and exposing himself of children, he was released and given another chance to tackle his drinking.
I suppose the good news for the Church of Scientology is that Belgium is no longer calling it a cult. The bad news is that it has moved on to calling is a criminal organization in a comprehensive set of charges ranging from extortion to fraud to privacy breaches to the illegal practice of medicine. The charges follow years of investigation into labor contracts that led to raids on Church properties in 2008. In 2009, Scientology was convicted of fraud in Paris and fined almost $1 million.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
If you are like me, you remember the violent response by the FBI, DHS and local police forces to the many “Occupy” movement protests last Fall. In those protests, the police used incredible force and firepower to break up peaceful protests and make a mockery of the First Amendment. The police responses always seemed to be coordinated from city to city and there were allegations that the FBI and other governmental agencies were aiding the local authorities in stamping down the First Amendment rights of the Occupy protestors. Now, a treasure trove of documents was released pursuant to a Freedom of Information request by a group called The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. Those documents expose a level of governmental intrusion into the privacy of protestors and governmental and private bank partnerships designed to crack down on legal protestors. Continue reading “Who Occupied the Occupy Movement?”
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Duke neuroscientist, Michael Platt, has an intriguing theory. What if altruism isn’t just learned at your mother’s knee but is really a result of evolved brain chemistry? In a study he co-authored and published in the journal, Nature Neuroscience, Platt wondered why certain primates act unselfishly. Animal behaviorists have long known that monkeys will go without food rather than see a member of their species shocked, and mice will starve to avoid hurting other mice. Major news stories around the world  have told the tales of animals risking their own safety to protect humans and other animals. In one recent episode,  Binti Jua, a female gorilla saved a three-year-old boy from other gorillas when he fell into the gorilla enclosure at the Brookline Zoo.  In another, a dog in Chile dodged traffic on a busy freeway to drag his canine companion to safety after it  had been struck and rendered unconscious.
Voters in Idaho just got over the scandal involving Larry Craig and a certain airport bathroom. Now, U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) has been arrested for DUI in Alexandria, Virginia. A DUI would appear to be less of a political threat than an alleged attempt at a homosexual bathroom tryst. However, Crapo is a Mormon and told police that he had three shots of vodka that night. In a state with the second highest Mormon population in the United States, such an admission is not going to be well received. It may be that the image of being a “Jack Mormon” could be a lasting problem for Crapo.
We have been following the growing protests over rapes in India this month. This includes a brutal gang rape on a city bus and an alleged rape of a victim by police officers. Now, a 17-year-old Indian girl who was gang-raped has committed suicide after she claimed that police pressured her to drop the case and marry one of her attackers.
I have previously written about the criminalization of America as politicians turn every objectionable act into a crime. I have criticized this trend in columns (here and here) and numerous blogs on the criminalization of using artificial turf to growing vegetable gardens to eating french fries in the subway. Now owners of an old-fashioned soda shop in St. Paul, Minn. were threatened with fines and a misdemeanor citation unless they stopped selling novelty candy cigarettes. Lynden’s Soda Fountain was unaware that it was committing a crime by selling the long-common items.
Continue reading “Old Fashioned Soda Shop Threatened With Misdemeanor Over Sale Of Candy Cigarettes”
We have yet another case of a police shooting of a family dog. This case involved a particularly tragic
occurrence on Christmas Day. Kobi, a 70-pound Rhodesian Ridgeback mix was shot dead by a Chicago police officer. Chicago has previously appeared on these pages for dog shootings. The family says that the police opened the gate to the backyard where Kobi was being kept and then shot him when he came out. They were looking for a suspect. The police department insists that the officers acted appropriately.
As the government deals with ongoing scandal and protests over the gang rape of a student in New Delhi, another woman has come forward with an equally horrific account: she was allegedly raped by the police inspector after she went to report a rape. Maan Singh, a senior sub inspector (SSI) posted at Akbarpur police station in Ambedkar Nagar has now been arrested.
NBC is dealing with an unexpected legal problem after a segment by David Gregory, who displayed what he said was a high-capacity ammunition clip on “Meet the Press.” D.C. law prohibits the possession of high-capacity ammunition clips. This may have been a case where a picture — or consultation with counsel — might have been in order. There is no exception for the media in such possession cases.
The police in Toms River have an intriguing crime on their hands involving a mysterious woman, a chicken, and a diamond ring. A married man met a woman at a bar and took her home where he offered her some chicken and gave her $20. She gave him a piece of paper with her telephone number on it. However, after the man fell asleep, he woke to find the paper gone along with $55, his necklace, and his wife’s diamond ring.
Best wishes to everyone celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah. Continue reading “Merry Christmas!!!”