The Ninth Circuit has handed down an interesting ruling that reaffirms that sexual contact requires consent. What is different is that the case deals with prison sex. Former Idaho prison guard Sandra de Marti is accused of sexual harassment in groping inmate Conway Wood. The case is Wood v. Beauclair, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 18575 (9th Cir.).
Category: Society
After facing press accounts depicting its product as “pink slime,” Beef Products Inc. has brought a defamation action in South Dakota against ABC News Inc.and ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer for damages from the coverage. Notably, the lawsuit also includes Gerald Zirnstein, a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist, as a defendant. It was Zirnstein who reportedly coined the catchy phrase “pink slime” for the beef product. The company is seeking $400 million in claimed actual and consequential damages, treble damages, punitive damages and attorney’s fees and costs.
Continue reading “Coming To A Court Near You: The Revenge of the Pink Slime”
“Girls Gone Wild” founder Joe Francis, 39, has long shown remarkably bad judgment on legal matters, including his tax evasion conviction and charges of contempt. He can now add a $20 million damage award that he will have to pay casino mogul Steve Wynn — not counting possible punitive damages. The latest court loss for Francis was over an unpaid gambling bill and led to slander by Francis. He will now pay at least 10 times the amount of his gambling losses to Wynn, 70, and that is not counting a $7.5-million defamation judgment awarded by a Nevada judge this year. That is almost $30 million and counting.
Mark Christopher James Craddock, 75, will not be practicing medical any more in Australia after he prescribed chemical castration for an eighteen-year-old patient as a cure for his homosexual inclinations. Both Craddock and the teen were members of the Exclusive Brethren Christian sect.
Justin Hallman, 16, wanted to show how the United States is turning into a police state. He succeeded all too well in not only receiving an A+ in his American Government class but also allegedly a visit from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) confirming the very premise of his film posted on YouTube (below).
For years I have tried to raise international awareness of the menace of Surströmming, fermented herring. Now, Swedish police has faced the reality of Surströmming terror. The police closed off a whole street after hearing reports of a gas leak only to find a stash of fermented herring.
Continue reading “Swedish Police Shutdown Downtown Area Only To Uncover Scourge of Surströmming”
French tourist Nathalie Rollandin may have the ultimate video from San Francisco. While filming the sunset on the Golden Gate Bridge, a seagull snatched the camera out of her hands and recorded a bird’s eye view of the water and sunset.
Our erstwhile ally in Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is responding to the brutal murder of U.S. ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three other embassy staff in Benghazi on Wednesday. Stevens was reportedly suffocated to death by the attacking mob which attacked the consulate because of a small film shown in the United States that was deemed as insulting to the Muhammad. Karzai then offered his own take on the murders by denouncing the “inhuman and abusive act” of the . . . filmmakers.
Continue reading “Karzai Denounces Filmmakers for the Murder of Americans in Libya”
The Washington Post has reported on a controversy at American University involving Professor Adrienne Pine who drew complaints from her students in her class “Sex, Gender & Culture” after she breastfed her baby in class. The university has criticized Pine but the controversy has produced a national debate on the propriety of a professor bringing a baby to class and breastfeeding in front of students as she lectures.
Principal Verenice Gutierrez in Portland, Oregon is the center of a controversy over her efforts to deal with racism and cultural intolerance. There is certainly plenty of such examples in most states, but Gutierrez is being criticized for finding such prejudice in the peanut butter. The principal at Harvey Scott elementary school cited peanut butter sandwiches as an example of how innocently insensitive we can be our prejudices since we do not think “Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches.” Frankly, I am pretty sure that Somali kids will knew what to do with a P & J without crawling in to a fetal position of fear over the latent racism contained in the lunchtime baggy. In defense of Gutierrez, she was trying to suggest an effort to reach out to learn different cultural preferences: “Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.” While I question the choice of the example, the point is to get teachers to think of the cultural realities and experiences of their students. However, in my view, other aspects of the training sessions are more problematic.
Continue reading “Oregon Principal Under Fire For Efforts Against “White Privilege””
It may be the ultimate dream come true for Republicans: the Democratic National Convention saluting the brave comrades of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. That appears to have occurred according to Navy experts who have identified the images of ships used at the convention as our Russian brothers and sisters in arms. When retired Adm. John Nathman, a former commander of Fleet Forces Command, took the podium to honor America’s veterans, it appears that someone did not bother to check the identity of the warships used as the backdrop. [Update: the DNC has now apologized for the oversight]
We have discussed the plan of the new French government to impose a 75% tax on the top earners in the country, a move that in my view is better politics than economics. Now there is an alleged tort to go with the politics (Thank God). France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault, announced that he was seeking Belgian nationality. The response from the leftist Liberation newspaper was a giant headline superimposed over Arnault’s face reading “Get lost, rich jerk”. Now Arnault is suing for for “public insult” – over the offending headline’s “vulgarity and brutality.”
Othello once begged that he be thought of “one that lov’d not wisely but too well.” Democratic candidate Wendy Rosen could claim the same defense regarding voting. She voted not wisely but too well by voting in both Maryland and Florida in 2006 and 2008. She has now withdrawn as the challenger to Republican Rep. Andy Harris in the 1st Congressional District in Maryland – though it is not clear if her name can now be removed from the ballot. She waited until after the August 28th deadline for ballot changes in announcing her withdrawal.
New declassified intelligence files show that the United States government lied about its knowledge of the Katyn massacre of Polish officers and intellectuals by Russia. The new evidence includes the disclosure that the Roosevelt Administration received highly credible coded messages from U.S. officers who were American POWs during the war but suppressed the information to preserve relations with Stalin. Our government has long been accused of denying such knowledge of the war crime committed by our then ally despite an investigation by Congress in the 1950s establishing that it was the Russians not the Germans who killed the Poles.
Continue reading “Report: U.S. Buried Knowledge of Katyn Massacre During World War II”
With teachers striking in Chicago, the news is not good over all for parents and students in my home town after the Department of Education released data showing an incredible Seventy-nine percent of the 8th graders in the Chicago Public Schools are not grade-level proficient in reading. In addition, 80 percent are not grade-level proficient in math.
Continue reading “Report: Seventy-Nine Percent of Eighth Graders In Chicago Public Schools Are Below Proficient In Reading”