I have previously discussed how I continue to be mystified by how international soccer is managed as with the long resistance to using basic technology to confirm goals. The recent controversy out of Brazil however leaves me stunned by how these rules often ignore the obvious. In this case, the team’s masseur with Aparecidence snuck on to the field and saved a certain score in a semi-final play-off — resulting in Aparacidence winning the game and moving on toward the finals.
A new puppy owner swore on Reddit that he had recently punished his new puppy and then woke to find this. An accident or a warning?
We previously discussed the curious step of President Obama seeking approval for a new war while insisting that he does not need such authorization to attack Syria. Now, Secretary of State John Kerry has referred to a one week period for Syria to comply with U.S. demands or presumably face an attack. It so happens that the Senate is set to vote this week, but opposition in this country is extremely high to yet another military intervention by the Administration. Moreover, unsuccessful in his earlier pitch for a free war, Kerry is now trying to sell the world on an “unbelievably small” military campaign. The U.S. seems to be saying that President Obama just needs the world to let him attack briefly to show that he cannot be dismissed or mocked in his earlier red line announcement. However, Kerry suggested a new red line in turning over control of the weapons and Russia has now announced that it will ask Syria to put chemical weapons under international control. That would undermine further the U.S. rationale for war if Russia says that it is moving to comply with Kerry’s demand. However, State Department handlers are trying to again walk back from the Secretary’s public statements.
We previously discussed the shocking sentence handed down by Montana Judge G. Todd Baugh to a teacher who raped a 14-year-old student. Stacey Rambold, 54, (left) was given just 30 days in jail after Baugh found that the victim was “older than her chronological age.” It produced an outcry on this blog and other sites. Baugh then magnified the concerns over his judicial judgment by responding to the outcry by trying to re-sentence Rambold. It left the impression of a judge seeking a longer sentence in direct response to public pressure. The Montana Supreme Court stepped in to order Baugh to cancel the resentencing hearing.
The Ninth Circuit ruled last week that La Carl Mertez Dow deserves a new trial in reversing a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton (left) in Oakland, California that it was harmless for a prosecutor to give false information to a jury that Dow was trying to hide a scar in a lineup. The fact that this case had to go to the federal court of appeals to be overturned is a chilling reminder of how our criminal justice system has been warped by the harmless error standard. Courts routinely find constitutional violations in federal cases only to dismiss them as harmless by saying that the defendant would likely have been convicted anyway. The case is Dow v. Virga, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 18468.
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.
A reader on Reddit captured this image of a motorcycle cop not only texting while driving but texting with both hands. It is not clear whether he is reporting himself to his colleagues for ticketing.
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”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
The Show Me state, has been making news lately. Unfortunately, the news it has been making has nothing to do with the St. Louis Arch or the baseball Cardinals, but its legislature’s penchant for attempting to nullify Federal laws that it does not agree with. The State of Missouri is working hard to nullify Federal gun laws and Obamacare.
“If you ever wondered what a 21st century nullification crisis would look like, look no further than Missouri. One hundred and forty eight years after the end of the Civil War, the New York Times reports, “the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature is expected to enact a statute next month nullifying all federal gun laws in the state and making it a crime for federal agents to enforce them.” Meanwhile, the Show Me State is doing everything it can to effectively block implementation of the Affordable Care Act.” Daily Kos
I guess Missouri wants to Show the rest of the nation that the Constitution and its Supremacy Clause is not worth the parchment it is written on. In case you are not sure what is meant when a State tries to nullify a Federal law, here is a little primer on the subject. Continue reading “Nullification-Missouri Style”
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.