Submitted by Elaine Magliaro
I’ll be enjoying Mother’s Day with my ninety-six-year-old mother, daughter, granddaughter, husband, and son-in-law. I’m making lobster rolls–which my mother loves. I am so fortunate that she is still with us.
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
These Scottish Terrier puppies bring up a timeless scientific question . . .
By Charlton (Chuck) Stanley, Weekend Contributor
The sad case of Cook County (Illinois) Judge Cynthia Brim has been discussed on this blog previously here and here. To sum up, she had a mental breakdown while holding traffic court on March 8, 2012.
She went on a paranoid rant, accusing police of targeting minorities for traffic tickets. For the next 45 minutes, she rambled on about her childhood as well as describing at least five prior hospitalizations for mental illness. During her rambling outburst, she told her audience she was once removed from the courtroom by paramedics after a previous breakdown.
Witnesses reported she said, “Not only men have balls, but women can have balls too. You just have to grow them.”
Continue reading “Mentally Ill Judge Cynthia Brim Removed From the Bench”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor
Doesn’t it seem “patently” absurd that Amazon would be granted a patent for the process of taking a photo against a white background? Earlier this week, Udi Tirosh broke that news at DIY Photography. Tirosh said that he really wasn’t sure how he could tag the story any way “other than a big #fail for the USPTO, or a huge Kudos for Amazon’s IP attorneys.” He added that in a patent titled “Studio Arrangement,” Amazon took IP ownership on what photographers “call shooting against a seamless white backdrop.”
Tirosh wrote that Amazon’s patent “describes the arrangement of elements in the studio to make a product shot—and “even details the F-stop, ISO value and focal length you need to use”:
a background comprising a white cyclorama; a front light source positioned in a longitudinal axis intersecting the background, the longitudinal axis further being substantially perpendicular to a surface of the white cyclorama; an image capture position located between the background and the front light source in the longitudinal axis, the image capture position comprising at least one image capture device equipped with an eighty-five millimeter lens, the at least one image capture device further configured with an ISO setting of about three hundred twenty and an f-stop value of about 5.6; …
I am delighted to post the great news that Michael Sam, who came out earlier this year, is now the NFL’s first openly gay player. Sam is now a Ram.
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
The government of Mexico demobilized a vigilante group fighting the drug cartel Knights Templar in the State of Michoacan. The group, consisting of manly ranchers and farmers, was successful in largely expelling the cartel while the government was not able.
At a ceremony in the city of Tepalcatepec, where the group began in February of 2013, uniformed members of the now official Self-Defense Council of Michoacan (CAM) were assigned arms and uniforms. 120 officers were sworn in as a rural police force.
The group’s spokesman, Estanislao Beltran proclaimed. “Now we are part of the government. Now we can defend ourselves with weapons in a legal way.”
There are hopes in the government the creation of this new police force will end the lawlessness in the state and the vigilantism of the civilian population. The federal commissioner for Michoacan, Alfredo Castillo said that action would be taken now against “false self-defense groups” but said of the CAM “[You] will have the responsibility of defending your neighbors from delinquency and organized crime.”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
In an interview with the BBC, Lawyer Samiullah Afridi said his defense of Dr. Shakil Afridi Would end due to continual death threats against him over the last two years. Samiulla, who is not related to his client, had at one point left the country out of fear for his safety.
We previously discussed the worsening situation for lawyers in Pakistan defending those accused of infamous crimes and civil rights issues in the Murder of Attorney Rashid Rehman.
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Absolute monarch Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei announced in January a harsh form of sharia law will be enacted. Effective in three phases beginning now and spanning two years, the edict eventually allows for the stoning to death of homosexuals, adulterers, and apostates; for amputation of limbs for those convicted of theft; and flogging for abortions and the consumption of alcohol. The capital offense provisions of the law reportedly apply only to Muslims.
Sultan Bolkiah claims this is a step in solidifying a long cultural tradition in the sultanate which was established in the fourteenth century. Increasingly conservative Muslim politicians and officials in Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia are beginning to move from sharia being limited to family matters to now criminal law and capital offenses. Acheh in Indonesia is included especially. While Brunei enjoys one of the highest per capital income in the world, has many social benefits such as effectively free health care and education, its population of over 416,000 individuals now is seeing human rights restricted in a trend that is generating international condemnation in the West. Al-Jazeera reported that many members of the Muslim ethnic Malay majority have voiced cautious support for the changes. However, non-Muslim citizens, who are fifteen percent of the population, led a rare burst of criticism on social media earlier this year, but largely went silent after the sultan called for a halt.
“Theory states that God’s law is harsh and unfair, but God himself has said that his law is indeed fair,” the sultan said.
But will Western governments be willing to isolate countries engaging in abuses of individuals and oppression of the human rights of populations or is trade and money going to become the focus and inconveniences such as abuse continue to be ignored?
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
June 30th, 2014 will mark a significant change in nomenclature and status for same sex couples who had previously registered their domestic partnership starting in 2012. After this date, these couples’ status will change automatically to “married.” This presents an opportunity to become married without the administrative overhead of now filing for a marriage license. Couples after June 30th who enter into a union will be considered married.
The legal profession this week lost one of our best and bravest. Pretending to be potential clients in a matrimonial case, two people entered the law firm of Rashid Rehman Khan and shot him to death. Rashid Rehman, a coordinator for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), had faced death threats for years after he courageously represented a university professor accused of blasphemy. Unable to kill the accused, Islamic extremists appear to have now killed the lawyer. Rehman never flinched in his commitment to the rule of law and to this country.
There is an interesting ruling out of Arizona where an appellate court has overturned a Scottsdale municipal ordinance barring people from being intoxicated in public. The ordinance was found to be in conflict with a 1972 state law that prohibits municipalities from criminalizing “being a common drunkard or being found in an intoxicated condition.” The intent behind the law was to recognize alcoholism as a disease as opposed to a crime. The case is Arizona v. Coles, 2014 Ariz. App. LEXIS 78 (May 6, 2014).
Continue reading “Arizona Appellate Court Strikes Down Scottsdale Public Intoxication Ordinance”
New details have emerged in the shooting last December of two men in Miami Dade County. Police were looking for Adrian Montesano, 27, who had shot a police officer after robbing a Walgreens at gunpoint. They spotted him in a car with another man and gave chase. The Blue Volvo crashed and was wedged between a light pole and a tree. Police surrounded the vehicle and then opened fire — hitting the car with some 50 bullets. There was then another period of quiet and the men were told to surrender. Some witnesses say that the wounded men were raising their hands. Police say that they saw movement and unleashed a barrage of bullets. In all, some 377 rounds were fired — hitting other cars, businesses, and a home with children inside. Some are calling this a case of a police “frenzy” where the officers lost control in two rounds of massive shooting.
You may recall that we discussed the disturbing case involving the shooting of Andrew Lee Scott, 26, an entirely innocent man who was killed by Florida police after they went to the wrong home to arrest an attempted murder suspect, did not announce they were officers, pounded on a door at 1:30 am and then shot and killed Scott when he pointed a gun at the strangers at his door. They were looking for Jonathan Brown who is suspected of attempted murder and insisted that they had little choice in the shooting. Now, to compound the tragedy, it turns out that Brown was also completely innocent. Brown was exonerated after being charged with attempted murder when witnesses established that there was no crime to begin with. In fact, the witnesses suggested that Brown was something of a hero. The family is now in court and, while the charges were dropped some time ago, I wanted to run an update on the case.
This week, I had the honor to speaking at the dinner of the Atlanta IP Inn of Court. I was particularly fortunate to spend time with Michael Bishop (shown here in the blue shirt and beard), one of George Washington Law School’s graduates and the incoming president of the Inn. In the course of our conversations, Michael told me about a lawsuit where he is actually a party as opposed to counsel. He and his partner, Shane, are suing for the basic right to marry — a right that is not only forbidden in Georgia but the state constitution goes further to ban the recognition of marriages from other states. The lawsuit is enormously important and well pleaded, as the complaint below attests. It could prove to be an excellent vehicle to again seek Supreme Court review, though that will take a while since it was just filed.
Continue reading “GW Grad Challenges Georgia’s Ban On Same-Sex Marriage”
It is either take him out for a drag or let him get back to watching the cat.
Continue reading “How A Corgi Tells You That He Doesn’t Want To Go On A Walk”