Now this I did not see coming. As a born and bred Midwesterner, I would have guessed that a study of which state swears the most would have led to the usual suspects: New York or New Jersey. Well, according to a study of more than 600,000 phone calls from the last year, the state with the highest use of profanity is . . . Ohio.
Continue reading “Looking For Profanity? Try The %&$#?@ Buckeyes!”
Category: Society
There is a troubling conviction in Alexandria, Virginia where Chad Dixon has been sentenced to eight months in jail for training people how to pass top-secret security polygraphs. The Administration prosecuted Dixon, a former Little League coach, obstruction and wire fraud for teaching between 70 and 100 people how to get past lie detector tests. He was paid $1000 a day and the Justice Department labelled him a “master of deceit.” However, if other people are actually giving false information or gaming the system, the question is whether this should be treated as a protected form of speech. It raises many of the same issues as the prosecution of people who encourage or advice others on how to commit suicide. [The picture is a file image of a test and not associated with Dixon or these underlying charges]
There is a controversy in Iowa where the state has started a program to issue permits to carry guns in public to people who are legally blind. This includes people who are completely blind. Disability advocates insist that any denial of a permit for a gun to a blind person would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
With the continuing stories of contaminated or mislabeled food coming from China, many people have actively sought to avoid Chinese products. The United States Department of Agriculture (long the enemy of the consumer and friend of agribusiness) has come up with a solution: Chinese chicken imports will be sold without telling people that they are from China. In an apparent effort to bring our standards to Chinese levels, the Administration is also planning to hand over key inspection posts to industry.
It is the profound disgust that I must report the results of the 2013 annual Torts v. Contracts Paintball competition. Contracts prevailed this year 2-1-1. The annual competition is the outcome of an auction to support our public interest law program at George Washington University. These contests have raised thousands of dollars of indigent clients and public interest work.
Continue reading “Contracts Beats Torts In 2013 Paintball Competition”
Submitted by Charlton Stanley, Guest Blogger
Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways…Chardonnay in one hand…chocolate in the other…body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, screaming “WOO HOO, What a Ride!”
– author unknown, but often attributed to Hunter S. Thompson
Photo by Jim Foreman
Used with permission
Lately the news seems to be nothing but a non-stop stream of woe, outrage, tragedy and lawlessness. Instead of focusing on the latest outrage of the day, I decided to do a series of stories about people who inspire. This is the first installment of a series of stories about people who inspired me (and many others) in one way or another. I hope the reader will find them fascinating and inspiring as well. Not necessarily stories about celebrities, although some may be familiar names, but real people who led extraordinary lives.
Women do not get the recognition they deserve, and to compete in a male dominated world, have to be twice as good at everything. Barbara Jordan once said, “Life is too large to hang out a sign: For Men Only.” I am an admirer of women who are smart, strong, competent and accomplished. I was married to a woman like that for 55 years, but lost her two years ago.
This story is about one of those women. Sabrina “Sib” Jackintell died last year at the age of 71, just two weeks before her 72nd birthday.
Continue reading “Remarkable People: Sabrina Jackintell, a Woman for all Seasons”
Submitted by Darren Smith, Guest Blogger
In another shining example of “The White Elephant in the room might go away” the City Council of Seattle approved, in an 11 minute consultation, to proceed with acting to implement a large surveillance system on Seattle waterways before a five million dollar Homeland Security grant would be forfeited due to a “use it or lose it” clause. And so far, nobody has decided how to use it.
The system originated from the city seeking and being approved for a five million dollar federal grant to purportedly prevent terrorist acts on the popular waterfront areas of Puget Sound. The system operated 28 cameras connected by a wireless network. It seems the hunger for free money was to be quickly satisfied before any sort of plan or discussion as to the privacy or constitutional implications was considered. The council none-the-less snapped at the money unanimously but now is in disarray as to what to do with this new system.
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
This is an update to a story originally posted here by Charlton Stanley, “Polygraphers trigger fear response in Federal prosecutors.”
Chad Dixon, a 34 year old Marion, Indiana little league coach who ran the “PolygraphExpert.net” website teaching people how to defeat polygraph tests, was sentenced to eight months in jail for threatening national security by teaching government job applicants how to beat lie-detector tests. Teaching such techniques and discussing them is not per se illegal. It is an admitted gray area in 1st Amendment jurisprudence. However, U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady found the evidence compelling enough that Dixon had crossed the line when he advised some clients, including two undercover officers, to conceal what he taught them while undergoing government polygraphs. This is in addition to the charges of obstruction and wire fraud Dixon plead guilty to last year.
Nina Ginsberg, Dixon’s attorney, accused prosecutors of trying to turn her client into a “poster child for its newly undertaken campaign” to stop people from using the polygraph disruption techniques. the prosecution had sought a two year sentence, but Judge O’Grady thought that eight months was sufficient. O’Grady said, “There’s nothing unlawful about maybe 95 percent of the business he conducted,” although he added that “a sentence of incarceration is absolutely necessary to deter others.”
As Charlton Stanley’s original column indicated, lie detectors are anything but a lie detector. “[L]ie detector technology has no known statistical properties with regard to detecting deception of any kind. It has not been accepted as science in the scientific community. The only thing scientists seem to agree on is most of these machines measure stress reactions in humans, and to that extent, they can measure stress in people who feel stress—that’s it.”
Deterrent based on legitimate concerns or chilling of free speech in the name of protecting a test of dubious value?
What do you think?
Source: Seattle Times
~submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (aka Otteray Scribe) Guest Blogger
First there was WikiLeaks, then there was Edward Snowden. The drip, drip, drip of information about secretive spy agencies continues. There have been bombshell revelations about the extent to which government agencies like the FBI, CIA, NSA and others are invading our most private communications. Of course, spies do what spies do, and that is to spy on whoever or whatever they can get away with. Few people understood the implications of PRISM when news of the program was leaked. Additionally, I suspect that despite revelations of its existence, the full extent of its capability and reach will never be known by the public.
The NSA reportedly paid tech companies millions of dollars to cover the cost of compliance with their “requests” for back-door access to the software package.
Another program to keep in mind is the FBI Stingray operation that sucks up wireless telephone communications. Last May, in the first litigation where the government admitted having Stingray, Arizona Federal District Judge David Campbell dismissed a motion to suppress. Judge Campbell is a George W. Bush appointee. PDF of his ruling is here. Last July, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in the Northern District of California, in an effort to learn more about Stingray, and if it is scooping up domestic phone calls.
Continue reading “Encryption and the Spymasters: Is Privacy Dead?”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In a recent New York Times article titled At Charter Schools, Short Careers by Choice, Mitoko Rich wrote of how charter schools seem to be developing something of a “youth cult” in their teaching ranks. She reported that in the charter network “teaching for two to five years is seen as acceptable and, at times, even desirable.”
Teachers in the thirteen YES Prep Schools, which are located throughout Greater Houston, have a reported average of two and a half years of experience. The teachers who work for Achievement First—which has 25 schools in Connecticut, Brooklyn, and Providence, R.I.— “spend an average of 2.3 years in the classroom.” And the individuals who teach in the KIPP schools and the Success Academy Charter Schools stay in the classroom for an average of four years. This youth culture—or culture in which most classroom practitioners have little teaching experience— differs from that of our country’s traditional public schools where teachers average nearly fourteen years of experience…and where public school leaders have made it “a priority to reduce teacher turnover.”
In the NYT article, Jennifer Hines, senior vice president of people and programs at YES Prep, was quoted as saying, “We have this highly motivated, highly driven work force who are now wondering, ‘O.K., I’ve got this, what’s the next thing?’ There is a certain comfort level that we have with people who are perhaps going to come into YES Prep and not stay forever.” (Note: New teachers at the YES Prep schools receive just two and a half weeks of training over the summer before arriving in the classroom.)
Continue reading “Should the High Teacher Turnover Rate in Charter Schools Be a Cause for Concern?”
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
Presumed cooked.
There is an old adage, “What’s good for the goose is [not] sauce for the gander” or as phrased today “What’s good for the goose is [not] good for the gander”. The implication being that what is good for one is good for all or not good for all if stated in the negated form. A case out of Florida provides a perfect example to give this adage a workout.
The goose is former President George W. Bush.
The member of the gander in this case is William T. Woodward of Titusville, Florida. Woodward is charged with shooting three of his neighbors, two of them fatally, over the 2012 Labor Day weekend.
His defense? The sauce.
Woodward’s attorneys are asserting Florida’s “Stand Your Ground’ law and the Bush Doctrine.
Let’s examine this case in the light of the history and consequences of “Stand Your Ground”, the Bush Doctrine and how an equally controversial foreign policy stance might impact a domestic criminal proceeding.
Continue reading “Good for Goose and Gander? Or Just Foul Play? – The Bush Doctrine Redux”
In Ohio, Athens County Municipal Judge William A. Grim has been reversed in his denial of the right to appointed counsel to a young man accused of interfering with police. While Kelly Kasler, 22, is an adult and her parents declined to pay for a lawyer, Grim refused counsel to her because she was being supported in college by her parents. It was a clearly wrong decision and the concerns over Grim’s judgment were magnified in a case where a citizen is accused of interfering with police.
There is a tragic case out of New York City this week that could be the basis for a product liability action. Roman Pirozek Jr., 19, virtually decapitated himself with his own remote-controlled Trex 700 helicopter when it cut off a piece of his skull and slashed his throat.
Continue reading “New York Man Killed By His Own Remote Controlled Helicopter”
The video below of Michigan State University Professor William Penn on the first day of his creative writing class has triggered an investigation by the university into a diatribe against Republicans. A student filmed the comments (and it was released by a conservative group) where Penn is heard attacking Republicans for “raping” America and refusing to pay taxes. The case will pit values of academic freedom against the need for an open and welcoming environment for students at universities.
Techdirt found an interesting example of how easy it is to censor videos on YouTube. After this faux ad appeared to criticize the control of cable companies, someone filed a defamation complaint and, as shown below, the video was removed. That’s right a faux ad criticizing unnamed cable companies was the basis for a defamation complaint according to the site.
Continue reading “Faux YouTube Ad Draws Real Defamation Complaint”