This week, there has been considerable discussion of a series of pictures released by the office of Representative Bob Brady that shows him pouring water in the mouths of family members and staff from the glass used by Pope Francis after speaking in Congress. Yesterday, Brady admitted to taking the glass and sharing the water (while insisting on holding the glass himself) but proffered that he asked permission to take the glass. He also confirmed that he did the same with a glass used by President Obama. What is really astonishing is that Brady not only took these pictures but instructed his staff to release them on social media.
I have long been a critic of the use of shock belts, particularly in courtrooms. Those concerns were magnified this week when Judge Jack Skeen or his deputies shocked criminal defendant James Calvert for failing to stand while addressing the court. Calvert had a long history of disrupting the court proceeding.
Continue reading “Texas Prisoner Reportedly Shocked For Failing To Stand While Addressing Court”
Most of our parents told us about not bragging but John Mogan, 28, and Ashely Duboe, 24, appear to have missed that (in addition to a notable large number of other lessons in their lives). Mogan, a parolee, had allegedly just robbed the Savings Bank in Ashville, just outside of Columbus. He and Duboe celebrated by posting pictures with the cash.
Jonathan Harrington, 21, thought he had a great joke when he heard that the University regularly inspected dorm rooms for drugs. Harrington took powdered sugar in lines to look like cocaine on his desk with a rolled up dollar bill and seven aspiring pills. The university police proceeded to do a field test and declared it to be real cocaine — leading to Harrington being charged with felony drug possession.
Stephanie Marie Moore, 20, is the latest person who had been felled by a self-inflicted social media wound. Moore’s Snapchat picture riding sea turtles went viral and led to her arrest for animal cruelty this weekend in Melbourne, Florida.
Russian Ambassador Sergey Andreev has caused an outcry in Poland after stating that Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 was an act of self-defense prompted by the failure of the Poles to join a coalition against Hitler. It was a bizarre claim was not only politically disastrous but historically moronic. The Russians have often omitted from their accounts of the heroic Russian war with Germany that they were first and foremost an ally of Hitler and sought to carve up Europe with him. it was only when Hitler betrayed Stalin that the Russians fought against Germany in its invasion.
Continue reading “Russian Ambassador: Poland Responsible For German-Russian Invasion in 1939”
Last week, Qatar’s Sheik Khalid bin Hamad Al-Thani first took a dangerous high-speed race through the streets of Beverly Hills and then allegedly told a reporter that he could kill him given his diplomatic immunity (which he didn’t have) . . . . and then fled the country in contempt of U.S. laws. Now, a Saudi prince has been arrested at a hillside compound near Beverly Hills after allegedly trying to force a worker to perform a sex act on him. Saudi prince Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud was arrested on suspicion of forced oral copulation of an adult. The arrest followed the reported sighting of a woman covered in blood trying to escape the compound by climbing an eight-foot wall. He is now accused of sexually abusing and beating at least three women during a three-day party in his $37 million Beverly Hills home.
Continue reading “Another Arab Prince Faces Criminal Charges In Beverly Hills”
Just last June, we passed the 26,000,000 mark and today we hit 27,000,000 views. We used these milestones as a time to reflect and give thanks to our many regular readers around the world and give you an idea of the current profile of readers on the blog. This remains a unique place for many of us to gather and exchange ideas and values. I feel enormously privileged to host this site and to have such wonderful weekend contributors and regulars. As our site motto states, “the thing speaks for itself” and that is certainly true of our success. The success of this site is due to this entire virtual community at RIL. We continue to rank in the top legal blogs in the world and we are continuing to see a growing international readership. Indeed, we are currently competing for the top legal blog in a global competition and have moved up to third place despite starting much later to call for votes. If you haven’t voted, it only takes a couple of seconds and you can vote with a single click right HERE.
By Cara L. Gallagher, weekend contributor
*Warning! This post has the potential for spoilers.
Show David Simon a hero and he’ll write you a biopic tragedy full of injustices, passive-aggressive slights, and indifference. He’ll also create original characters, like Tommy Carcetti, Bubbles, and McNulty, who will test the needle of your moral compass on an episodic basis. You’ll want try to find the good one, the one who consistently plays it above board, the incorruptible. You’ll find yourself at bars and cocktail parties when the inevitable discovery that all parties present have binged The Wire debating who the least bad character is. But none such character exists in nearly any of his HBO series. I say nearly because I can’t speak for Treme. Like the rest of us, I never made it through the entire series. My hunch is he’s not in New Orleans either.
The latest Simon series, Show Me A Hero, a short six-episode HBO series about housing, race, and politics set in mid-1980’s Yonkers, New York is one of his more hopeful tributes to social justice, but no less delivers on the tragedy. Continue reading “The heroes, tragedies, and hope of segregated housing”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Yazidi Rights Groups, Non-Governmental Organizations, and the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq Petitioned the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute ISIS for crimes against humanity and genocide for the terrorist organizations atrocities committed against citizens in Iraq and Syria.
Ekurd Daily reported how the new effort to bring legal accountability to actors in the war torn region.
Members of Yazda International and Free Yazidi Foundation, backed by the Kurdish Regional Government of Iraq (KRG), met with ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda today to present their new report outlining how [ISIS] fighters have slaughtered, enslaved, and raped thousands of Yazidis since it invaded their communities in the Nineveh province in northern Iraq last August. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls remain captive as sex slaves among IS militants.
These acts of violence committed by [ISIS] fighters against the Yazidis and other non-Muslim minorities in the region have been documented before. But Murad Ismael, co-founder of Yazda, told VICE News his group’s report provides further evidence of abuses against Yazidis at the hands of foreign fighters. According to the report, there’s an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 people from Australia, Jordan, Europe, and beyond fighting for [ISIS].
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
In a truly illuminating display of foolishness, a patron at a Michigan gas station set a pump on fire when he attempted to remove a spider from his gas tank. His fear of spiders and what he probably believed to be a clear, and present danger to his person, used a lighter to kill the menace.
The predictable result, a fireball engulfed his car and the gas pump.
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Though as further evidence ISIS is establishing a form of structuralized government, ISIS claims it will undermine Western currency markets with its minted bullion coins. It is using such to establish internal payments and as a hard currency to fund its black marketeering in illegal trade items. Since ISIS lacks a recognized currency, gold provides an intrinsic value in trade in foreign commerce.
However its reliance on bullion coinage can also make it vulnerable to economic countermeasures.
Continue reading “ISIS Minting Coins, Claiming They Will Undermine The Economies Of Enemies”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
We have followed the plight of several reporters for the news medium Al Jazeera who were imprisoned and subjected to various appeals on behalf of the prosecution to ensure their place amongst the incarcerated, accused under dubious evidence of involvement with terrorist organizations and the crime of reporting of false information. The courts even went so far as to accuse them of doing the work of the devil. (HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE)
For over a year there has been much outcry in the world media and the public about the abuses against free speech, journalists, and citizens; especially focused it was on these reporters. Now, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi grants a pardon to these Al Jazeera reporters.
Continue reading “Egypt President Pardons Imprisoned Al Jazeera Reporters”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Lewiston Maine Mayor Robert Macdonald advocated enacting a state law that would require welfare recipients’ “names, addresses, length of time on assistance and the benefits being collected” be enumerated on a state website that is made accessible to the general public. Mayor Macdonald claims that because recipients of public pensions, they are government employees, that if this information is public record then the people have a right to know where the money is being spent on welfare recipients.
It is rather difficult in reading the mayor’s letter to the editor of the Twin City Times to accept his notion that his actions are in the public’s interest to see where tax dollars are paid, when he simultaneously makes many references disparaging recipients and those who advocate their plight. Yet, he claims to support privacy rights in other respects.
There is a first amendment controversy that has erupted at Wesleyan University over a column written by Bryan Stascavage, a 30-year-old student who served two tours in Iraq, penned an op-ed in the school newspaper that criticized the Black Lives Matter movement. Stascavage is a sophomore majoring in philosophy and political science at Wesleyan and staff writer for the Argus. He wrote a piece criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement — a position shared by many who view some in the movement as espousing anti-police sentiments and, as discussed on this blog, often denouncing people for declaring that “all lives matter” as racists. However, Stascavage and the editors of the college newspaper were met by a torrent of criticism and calls for funding for the newspaper to be withdrawn. To its credit, the University stood strongly with free speech. However, the editors then issued an abject apology that clearly portrayed the decision to publish Stascavage’s column as a mistake.