If brevity is the soul of wit, Walter Maksym may be the most witless lawyer in practice. That may soon change if the Seventh Circuit has its way. The court slammed Maksym recently for writing a brief full of gibberish, including a 345-word sentence. The court has ordered Maksym to show cause why he should not be disbarred.
Continue reading “Seventh Circuit Slams Attorney For 345-Word Sentence and “Gibberish” — Demands Show Cause On Possible Disbarment”
Category: Politics
There may be need for an intervention in Congress after Rep. John Fleming, a Louisiana Republican, admitted to what appears an eating disorder. Fleming went on television to denounce Obama’s plans to tax the wealthy and explained how he really does not have a lot of income left over from earning $6.3 million a year from his string of Subway and UPS businesses. He insists that after paying taxes, salaries, and support for his businesses, he only takes home $600,000 — of which $200,000 goes to food for his family. Fleming is the father of four adult children and lives alone with his wife.
Continue reading “Eating Out of House and Home: Republican Opposes New Taxes By Noting That He Needs $200,000 a Year for Food”
For years, we have discussed the abusive litigation by the Recording Industry Association of America in seeking obscene damages against people for downloading songs. Congress, again, caved to demands by lobbyists to allow for such lawsuits. The result has been thuggish lawsuits where industry lawyers threaten not only citizens with ruin but, in the case of the Copyright Group, those who try to help them. Now, one of the most obscene verdicts against Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum has been reinstated by the First Circuit — $675,000 for downloading and sharing 30 songs. The court, however, takes the rare step of suggesting that Congress may want to look again at the law. The problem is that these citizens do not have well-paid lobbyists and massive campaign funds to motivate many members to act. The Obama Administration joined the industry in defending the law and the original fines as not unconstitutional.
Councilman Lewis Fidler (D-Brooklyn) is calling for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to pull down ads critical of funding for Israel. Fidler is demanding that MTA President Thomas Prendergast put an end to billboards calling for an end to funding for Israel as “a highly political campaign with a controversial underlying anti-Israel message.” Apparently, amid all of the graffiti and ads and pamphlets in the MTA there is no room for messages critical of Israel. Fidler wrote I would urge you to disallow and/or remove these advertisements.”
Continue reading “Fidler in the Subway: New York Council Member Calls For Censorship of Pro-Palestinian Ads in Subway”
The New York Times is reporting that the U.S. has fallen to 25th in a global ranking of Internet speeds. Feel not for the future, however, we are still one spot ahead of Romania. Take that Bucharest cyber cafes!
Continue reading “U.S. Now 25th In The World in Internet Speed — Just Ahead of Romania”
Submitted by Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
The decennial exercise in legislative self-dealing known as redistricting has been frequently assailed as corrupt. Efforts to eliminate the incentive to treat redistricting as an incumbency protection racket by placing term limits on House and Senate members have run afoul of the Constitution. But Floridians may have found a partial solution. As Republicans were strengthening their super-majority status in the state legislature this past November, eagerly anticipating the opportunity to redistrict the remaining Democrats to somewhere in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, voters were simultaneously adopting by substantial margins two amendments to the Florida constitution intended to eliminate gerrymandering. And a federal judge has now thrown out the Florida legislature’s constitutional challenge to one of those amendments.
Continue reading “Redistricting and the Citizen Legislator”
There is an interesting censorship allegation this week after Alec Baldwin walked out on the Emmy telecast in response to the decision by News Corp to cut a joke about CEO Rupert Murdoch and the expanding phone-hacking scandal. Comedians have always been a central part of political speech in the United States as have cartoonists and others who use art or prose to address matters of public interest. The alleged censorship of the material by Fox or News Corp shows, at very best, a lack of judgment by company officials and attorneys.
Continue reading “Baldwin Accuses News Corp of Censoring Joke on Murdoch”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty(Rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
I admit that I get a headache when I read any news about former Bush administration officials, but it seems that former Vice President Dick Cheney is in the news again and I am left scrambling for my migraine medicine. He has written a book detailing all the wonderful things he accomplished as Vice President under George W. Bush. Unfortunately for Mr. Cheney, in his efforts to explain his work as Vice President under George W. Bush, he may have provided an admission of some of the alleged lies that critics claim were being spread by Cheney and the Bush administration in the lead up to war in Iraq. Continue reading “Recent American History According to Cheney”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, gave a speech at Harvard Law School entitled “Strengthening our Security by Adhering to our Values and Laws.” According to Marty Lederman, “it is the most comprehensive single statement of the Obama Administration’s policies and practices with respect to al Qaeda and other terrorist threats.”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Most people who regularly visit this blog know that I am Jewish. While I am not what one would call a pious Jew, being a Deist in outlook, I have always been very proud of my ethnicity and of the religion, which plays a central part in it. From their infancy, my children were immersed in Judaism both through education and by our family regularly taking part in Jewish Rituals, including regular Synagogue attendance. Where I part personally from normative Judaism is that I view the Torah, The Five Books of Moses, as primarily allegory with some real history thrown in. To me it is a work of some wise and some not so wise men, not the writings of God. I believe and have seen demonstrated in many families though, that the Torah and its 613 Commandments can serve as blueprint for living a fulfilling life.
The issue becomes complicated when it comes to my feelings about Israel. To me the existence ofI srael is a necessity for Jews to have a future in this world and if it comes to it, a final haven to make our last stand. I am an American first, so I would not willingly emigrate away from the country of my birth, unless those who hate Jews come to power. Contrary to the opinion of many, Jews are far from being a homogeneous ethnicity/religion. One cannot for instance refer to being an Orthodox Jew with any precision of description since that movement is in itself splintered on many details of interpretation. This is true of the other main branches of Judaism: Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionism. Perhaps it is because there is no central Jewish religious authority speaking for all Jews, as much as organizations like ADL, AIPAC, et. al. would claim to, that the range of Jewish opinion is so wide on so many subjects.
This brings me to an article I read at the PublicEye.org titled: “The New Christian Zionism and the Jews”. Its’ thesis is that many Jewish supporters of Israel and the current Israeli government have allied themselves with Christian Fundamentalists whose “love” for Israel and Jews come from the wish to fulfill the prophecies of The Book of Revelations, where in fact Jews not willing to accept Jesus, will die in a horrid holocaust. This trend has been one disturbing me for a long time. I have watched Jews and Israeli’s embrace Fundamentalist Christian support, in what to me is a shortsighted and irrational policy. This could be justified by saying that a country takes its allies where one can get them. Sometimes what seems an example of realpolitik is merely an instance of dangerously narrow opportunism, as I will elaborate. Continue reading “The Christian Zionist Movement and Jewish Confusion”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Debbie Schlussel says she can’t be sure, but it seems that Michelle turns to Barack and says “All of this for a damn flag.” This happened during the flag folding ceremony at the 9/11 memorial. Here’s the video:
Well some expert lip readers have put Schlussel to shame:
“It’s amazing how they fold that flag.”
H/T: LGF.
For about a week, I have been hesitant to post on the Solyndra scandal. There seemed to be a bit of too much of a pile on due to this being a green tech company. However, it is now serious and new evidence suggests that the White House was not just cavalier with such stimulus funds but willfully blind that this company (run by a major Democratic donor who visited the White House repeatedly before the public support by the President) was likely to fail. At best it was a remarkably moronic move by the President and his staff.
Continue reading “White House Warned in 2009 That Solyndra Was Poor Investment”
There is a disturbing story out this week that four-star Air Force Gen. William Shelton testified under oath that the White House tried to pressure him into changing his testimony on a new wireless project in a way that would benefit a large Democratic donor. There is also an allegation that someone in the Administration leaked the intended testimony to the company.
Continue reading “General Accuses White House of Pressuring Him To Change Testimony To Favor Company Run By Democratic Donor”
A new report on the quality of police in England found that some officers are “barely literate because entry standards are so low.” The author suggests that these standards were lowered to allow for greater numbers of minority officers. However, now the lack of literacy is delaying proceedings and causing problems for judges and lawyers alike.
Continue reading “Report: English Police Officers “Barely Literate” Due To Lowering Entry Standards”
In a victory for transgender citizens, the Australian government has decided that passports will now have three rather than two options for designating gender: male, female, and indeterminate. The latter will be designated with an “X”.
Continue reading “Australia Creates Third Gender Option For Citizens on Passports”