This charming couple is Barbara Lee, 45, and Marco Ibanez, 19. They are accused of killing Alfred Stewart, 31, (shown below) and attacking his friends after Lee mistook their sign language for gang signs. Stewart and his friends are deaf and now he is dead.
Continue reading “Sign of Our Times: Deaf Man Stabbed After Alleged Gang Members Mistake Sign Language For Gang Signs”
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has severed his office’s relationship with King & Spalding after the firm abandoned its representation of the House of Representatives in the challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In my view, Cuccinelli is right to do so. While I have long been critic of DOMA, I have been highly critical of the firm’s handling of the case and dumping a client under pressure. Paul Clement has now left the firm and will represent the House of Representatives as part of Bancroft PLLC.
Continue reading “Virginia Severs Ties With King & Spalding”
Various news organizations are reporting that Osama Bin Laden is dead. President Obama is expected to announce the news. Bin Laden was reportedly killed in Pakistan by an operation involving Navy Seals but the story is still unfolding. YahooReports indicate that he was shot in the head after he and his bodyboards resisted an attack by the elite unit.
Continue reading “BIN LADEN DEAD”
Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty, (rafflaw), Guest Blogger
We often read and hear about the Tea Party and its members being in favor of protecting the Constitution, lowering taxes, protecting state’s rights, reducing the size of government, and going back to the ideals of our Founding Fathers. You can imagine my surprise when I recently read that freshman Texas Congressman, Blake Farenthold, a member of the Tea Party Caucus, at a recent meeting with constituents, claimed that unemployment compensation does not give enough incentive for people to get a job! Continue reading “Tea Party Congressman Thinks the Unemployed are Lazy”
Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Grigory (“Grisha”)Perelman is an unusual man — in very many respects. Living in near poverty with his mother in St. Petersburg, the forty-three year old Russian mathematician had a strange interest in an arcane problem known as the Poincare’ Conjecture. Proposed in 1904 by French mathematician, Henri Poincare’, the theorem contends that three-spheres are the only possible bounded three-dimensional spaces to contain no holes.
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Da Vinci “originalists”, a term coined by Garrett Epps, look for hidden meanings in the Constitution, much like Robert Langdon found the “hidden” symbols in Leonardo’s Last Supper. Where the text is clear, the Da Vinci “originalists” find secret meanings. Such is the case with the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty, (rafflaw), Guest Blogger
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama announced that he was considering an Executive Order that would mandate that all contractors who receive Federal money must disclose their political contributions. Since I am not a big fan of Executive Orders and since President Obama was not a big fan of Executive Orders when he was a candidate, I was not especially enthralled about the possibility of another Executive Order. However, once I read what the proposed Executive Order was going to do, I have to admit that I embraced it with open arms. Continue reading “John Yoo Calls the Kettle Black”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Last Wednesday, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the case of AT & T Mobility v. Concepcion. The justices split along ideological lines
once again. The 5 to 4 decision came down on the side of corporations—and most likely eliminated the right of citizens to band together to bring class action lawsuits against large corporations.
The Concepcion case involved cellphones and a common type of contract that requires customers to press their claims through arbitration instead of through lawsuits. As reported by Robert Barnes in The Washington Post, these types of contracts “which mandate individual rather than group claims, are becoming standard for companies offering loans, cable service, credit cards and even employment.”
Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Well, the Alabama Senate finally got around to it. A vote Wednesday eliminated Jim Crow laws and other segregationist measures in the State’s 340,000 word constitution that was adopted in 1901. The struck language eliminates requirements for separation of the races in educational institutions and the infamous polls taxes. The vote was 22-9 with all Republican senators voting in favor of the legislation.
Some Democratic legislators opposed the bill as too little, too late. Sen. Linda Coleman, D-Birmingham, said there were still racist problems in Alabama’s constitution, including schools that she said are not equitably funded. “This bill to me is a farce. It’s a smokescreen,” Coleman said. ” Jim Crow is still here…. We know there are disparities,” she added. Continue reading “‘Bama Finally Bids Jim Crow Adieu”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
In the 1969 case Chimel v. California, the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, held that an “arresting officer may search the arrestee’s person to discover and remove weapons and to seize evidence to prevent its concealment or destruction.” The search also included “the area “within the immediate control” of the person arrested, meaning the area from which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” This case created the Chimel rule allowing warrantless searches incident to a lawful arrest.
Continue reading “Can Smartphones Be Searched Incident to Arrest?”
After arresting hundreds of Christians for attempting to worship in unapproved services, the Chinese have turned to Buddhists for a crackdown that has reportedly taken the lives of two Tibetans. Chinese forces raided the Kirti Monastery (shown left) after accusing monks of disrupting social order and . . . wait for it . . . defaming their religion. That’s right, the government that occupied Tibet, killed Tibetan monks, sent the Dalai Lama in hiding, and destroyed countless temples has accused these monks of defaming their own religion.
Continue reading “China: Who Will Rid Us of These Meddlesome Monks?”
The Arizona Court of Appeals heard an interesting argument this week that is newsworthy for two reasons. First, there is a legal dispute over whether spa can use live fish to nibble dead skin off the feet of customers. Second, a spa wants to use live fish to nibble dead skin off the feet of customers. The state insists that there is no way to sterilize the Garra Rufa fish, a tiny carp.
Continue reading “Carping Over Cosmetology: Spa Fights For Right To Use Flesh-Nibbling Fish in Arizona”
Tanya McDowell is a homeless mother who is criminally charged for the crime of lying about her address to get her son into a suburban kindergarten in Connecticut. She is now charged with felony larceny and conspiracy after Housing Authority lawyer, Donna Lattarulo, reported McDowell to the police after suspecting that she was using her babysitter’s address to get her son into the kindergarten.
Continue reading “Homeless Mom Charged With Felonies After Lying About Her Address To Get Her Son In Suburban Kindergarten”
Not that we need signs of our economic crisis, but Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke made a chilling observation this week at an event talking about the company’s operations. Duke said his customers are simply “running out of money.”
Continue reading “Wal-Mart CEO: People Are “Running Out Of Money””
This morning I kissed by co-human carer and fed my companion animal before sitting down to blog on the recent publication by the Revd Professor Andrew Linzey, a theologian and director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. Linzey has denounced the use of the word “pet” and “owner” as derogatory. Don’t even get him started on references to animals as “beasts” or “critters.”
Continue reading “Pet Companion Animal Peeve: Professor Calls For the Elimination of Such “Derogatory” Terms As “Pet,” “Beast,” “Owner,” and “Wildlife””