McDonald’s recently pulled out of the Crimea after the takeover of the Ukrainian peninsula by Vladimir Putin. While Putin’s authoritarian move did not appear to appeal to McDonald’s, it is only fitting that Burger King would be attracted to the imperial tendencies of Putin. The chain has announced that it will fill the void and expand into the Crimea.
Continue reading ““Have It Your Way”: Where Putin Invades, Burger King Will Follow”
There was an extraordinary moment on a Swedish flight this week taking off from Frösön airport in northern Sweden. The government was deporting Ghader Ghalamere back to his native Iran. A man on the flight stood up to tell the passengers about the deportation and told them not to fasten their seat belts to stop the flight. The passengers did precisely that and the flight could not take off in an extraordinary act of peaceful protest.
A new report concludes that Los Angeles police officers have widely tampered with voice recording equipment to block monitoring of their actions on duty. Officers have been tearing off the antennas of their cruisers to prevent transmitting signals. Yet, there is not a single reported case of a single officer been disciplined, let alone fired. Indeed, none will be investigated.
This week, U.S. Rep. Vance McAllister was faced with the scandalous release of a security video to his kissing his married aide, Melissa Anne Hixon Peacock, at his office in Louisiana. That would normally be the stuff of scandal, but it is even worse when you are married and ran as a religious conservative. McAllister went public with an apology to everyone (except personally to Peacock’s husband who is now divorcing his wife). He asked forgiveness but is now demanding an investigation to potentially jail whoever revealed his conduct: a curious path for a self-proclaimed redemptive sinner.
We have another example of the power of the Internet in fighting crime. After Ahryun Moon, 29, had her laptop stolen in Joy’s Place, a San Francisco coffee shop, the security video was placed on YouTube. Sure enough, someone spotted the women in the video still wearing the same distinct outfit. She is Pawl Raynal, 32, and fittingly enough was arrested in another Bay Area coffee shop.
Continue reading “Viral Video Results In Arrest Of Laptop Thief In San Francisco”
Sen. Elbert Guillory (R., Opelousas) appears to like poultry pugilism. Chicken boxing, that is. Guillory left a number of his colleagues scratching their heads when he raised the distinction between cockfighting and “chicken boxing,” the latter involving chickens wearing little gloves as opposed to razors to fight.
Continue reading “Chicken Boxing? Louisiana State Senator Wants Poultry Pugilists Protected”
Feeling unappreciated at work? Think what it is like for the guy who was given this locker.
Charlotte School of Law professor Brian Clarke has written a series of articles that I hope all of my students and colleagues and blog mates will consider reading (here and here and here). Professor Clarke has written about his own struggle with depression and supplied statistics on the high number of students and lawyers who grapple with this illness. He is the latest in the line of attorneys to come out to discuss depression and has made a particularly insightful and personal case for those who are struggling with the condition. (I am emailing the links to Professor Clarke’s writings to all of my students this term)
In New Jersey, Glen Meadow Middle School has added its own bizarre entry in the ever-lengthening list of zero tolerance insanity. According to Ethan Chaplin, he was suspended for twirling a pencil in math class. He says that a student (who had been allegedly bullying him) yelled to the teacher that “He’s making gun motions, send him to juvie.” The school responded by suspending Chaplin and the Vernon Schools Superintendent Charles Maranzano insists that it is the only appropriate response because he must investigate any time that a student claims to be uncomfortable or threatened by another student.
The politics over illegal immigration has radically changed as both parties see the issue as key to attracting the hispanic vote in the next election. A measure of that change was evident on Sunday when Former Florida governor Jeb Bush said Sunday that many who illegally come to the United States do so out of an “act of love” for their families while Democrats are pushing to stopping deportations all together.
There is an interesting story about this month that shows the success of the Church of Scientology in pursuing its signature litigation abuse by hitting critics with lawsuits and injunction motions. One of the chief targets of Scientology lawyers has been “Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard,” a British book that has been hounded by the Church in an alleged attempt to keep it out of the United States. If that was the motivation, it worked for 27 years. However, that book has now been published in print this month in the United States and joins “Going Clear” by Lawrence Wright as a “new” account of the life and controversies surrounding Hubbard’s life and creation of his own religion.
Continue reading “Scientology Book Published In United States After 27 Years”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw) Weekend Contributor
I guess you don’t have to be from Chicago or Illinois to know who Rahm Emanuel is. The current Mayor of the City of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel is the former chief of staff to President Obama and a former Congressman. He is also a former investment banker. It has been alleged that this former investment banker has been crying poor since he entered office and proposing that city workers must pay more into their pension funds and get less pay and benefits.
“If you’ve read the financial news out of Chicago the last few weeks, you’ve probably heard that the city faces a major pension shortfall, supposedly because police officers, firefighters, teachers and other public workers are selfishly bleeding the city dry.
You’ve also probably heard that the only way investment banker-turned-mayor Rahm Emanuel can deal with the seemingly dire situation is to slash his public workers’ retirement benefits and to jack up property taxes on those who aren’t politically connected enough to have secured themselves special exemptions.” Pandodaily Continue reading “Mr. Mayor, Show Us the Money!”
There is an interesting story below on the nationwide trend of Native American tribes to exclude potentially thousands from membership on the basis of their not being “Indian enough.” Critics charge that the move comes as casino profits have increased and tribes are seeking to increase per capita payouts by reducing their membership rolls. Tribes insist that they are simply trying to police their ranks and reinforce their tribal identities. This has left it as a fight over whether the rejections are driven by casinos or culture.
We have been following stories of how European courts have been hammering Internet companies in stripping posters of anonymity and limiting speech (here and here). Now, Google has been hit again with a major fine of $1.4 million for failing to have cars that are readily identifiable in its Street View program in Italy. Italians complained that they were not given sufficient notice to get out of the way to avoid being filmed.
Continue reading “Google Hit With $1.4 Million Fine For Not Having Easily Recognizable Cars”
As many on this blog know, I have long been a supporter of same-sex marriage and gay rights. However, I have qualms about a story this morning that Mozilla Chief Executive Brendan Eich has been forced to step down after a campaign by an online dating service. The campaign revealed that Eich had made a donated $1,000 in 2008 in support of California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state before it was struck down in the federal courts. The controversy raises again the tension between free speech and corporate identity.