As some of you know, I love Canada and particularly Quebec. However, for all of their wonderful food and culture, Quebec inherited the quixotic and often comical cause of protecting French against common expressions from their counterparts in Europe. Now, the language police, Quebec’s office of French language, or OQLF, has cited a restaurant for having too many non-French terms on its menu. The problem is that it is an Italian restaurant and the names of the dishes are Italian.
Mutawa units, Saudi Arabia’s religious police, have been busy this month arresting Christians who practice their faith in the Kingdom. While Saudi Arabia has led the fight to create an international blasphemy crime and objected to every minor slight to Islam, it is one of the most repressive and intolerant regimes for religious freedom in the world. It will not allow the building of a single church in the Kingdom and now is cracking down on those who pray to a Christian God. The latest arrests occurred among foreign workers at a private residence in Dammam.
Continue reading “Dammam If You Do, Dammam If You Don’t: Saudi Arabia Cracks Down On Christians Praying In Private House”
This is Penny Winters, a 63-year-old worker who has been criminally charged with stealing from Walmart. The object of her felonious fancy? A bag of Oreos. That’s right, she was caught by Walmart security on camera eating some cookies and then fired and arrested.
Continue reading “Walmart Worker Fired and Then Charged Criminally For Eating Oreos”
Five Connecticut towns will pay $3.5 million in a bizarre raid by heavily armed SWAT team members after a report of drugs in the house of a Norwalk man. The team hit the home with flash grenades while snipers and officers surrounded the property. The owner, Ronald Terebesi, was dragged from the home and another man, Gonzalo Guizan (right), shot and killed. Neither was armed and a small amount of recreational drugs were found. The towns however still fought the case for years until a court issued a key ruling against them. They still deny any negligence or fault and proceeded to give the officer leading the raid an award for his role in the disastrous raid. (Swat members shown here were not involved in this raid)
This morning, our blog passed our 15,000,000 viewers. Since just a few weeks ago that we passed the 14,000,000 mark, it is obvious that the blog continues to grow at an impressive rate. We continue to rank in the top ten most viewed legal blogs in the world and I would like to think that our civility policy adds to the appeal of the blog for new viewers.
A report from Nigeria alleges that a million dollars of a poverty fund was used to pay for an appearance of Beyoncé in Bayelsa. While it is not clear if she also chose to lip sync that performance, she was paid, with Jay Z, to appear in 2006 allegedly with money dedicated to help 47% of Bayelsans who live in abject poverty.
Continue reading “Report: Poverty Fund Used To Pay For Beyoncé Performance In Nigeria”
There is an interesting torts case brewing in Los Angeles where guests at the Cecil Hotel drank and bathed from a rooftop water tank that appears to have had a decomposing body in it for two weeks. The body of Elisa Lam was found after a worker investigated the cause for low water pressure at the hotel.
While some teenage boys might nominate her as “mother of the year,” Judy H. Viger, 33, has been arrested on five counts of endangering the welfare of a child after she allegedly hired strippers to perform at her 16-year-old son’s birthday party.
Continue reading “New York Mom Arrested For Hiring Strippers For Son’s 16th Birthday Party”
A high-ranking EPA official, Region 8 Administrator James Martin, will resign after weeks of scrutiny over allegations that he used a personal email account to conduct “official business.” Martin was accused of using his private me.com account to confirm a meeting with the general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund. That would not appear a catastrophic event, but what truly interests me is the Senator who has been leading the charge: Louisiana Senator David Vitter. It was Vitter who used his official cellphone to arrange liaisons with prostitutes from the Senate floor. He first attacked reporters and witnesses as liars before reluctantly admitting the truth and claiming to have been forgiven for his sins. He then demanded to use campaign funds to pay for his legal fees. He was not only not charged but reelected to the Senate.
Continue reading “Vitter’s Victory: EPA Official Resigns During Investigation Over E-Mails”
Florida trooper Detrick McClellan (left) was on-duty when he sped at more than 100 mph without emergency lights down a county road and slammed into a Mitsubishi Galant driven by Michelle Campbell, 51. Campbell died in the crash and her granddaughter, 12, flew through the windshield. Her adult niece was also injured. McClellan was found at fault and given three traffic citations even though he said he was responding to a call about someone throwing rocks off an overpass. He was facing citations for careless driving, speeding, and failure to use his emergency lights. Yet, when McClellan came up for his hearing, the ticketing officer was no where to be found and the judge therefore dismissed the case. A video shows officers and McClellan laughing after the dismissal.
A tragic and bizarre accident occurred last Saturday at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland, Oregon. Ireland Lane, 11, ran from her room in flames and investigators believe that static electricity may have ignited flammable hand sanitizer on the cancer survivor.
Missouri Rep. Mike Leara has a curious concept of democracy, let alone free speech. Leara has proposed a law that would make it a crime for any of his colleagues to introduce gun control legislation.
We previously discussed the legal issues raised by ChristianMingle promising the faithful to help find “God’s Choice” for them. It seems unlikely that Sean Patrick Banks, 37, was God’s Choice for an ideal Christian date. He is now accused of raping women that he met through ChristianMingle.com across the country.
Professor Emlyn Hughesof Columbia University found a solution to the common complaint of students surfing the Internet and text messaging through class. In his lecture on quantum mechanics, Hughes stripped to his underwear as images of 9/11 and the Holocaust were shown to the class. Two people dressed as ninjas blindfolded stuffed animals while Hughes laid in a fetal position on the floor. One then impaled a stuffed animal with a sword.
Continue reading “Columbia Professor Strips In Bizarre Lecture On Quantum Mechanics”
How standards have changed. First there was Mao’s famous Yangtze River swim where he set a world record by swimming 15 km in 65 min. Now a wealthy Chinese businessman is offering 200,000 yuan [HK$246,000] to get a Chinese official to simply swim for 20 minutes in a river without success. It is not the result of diminishing physical stamina (or propaganda) in China as much as the river in question. Jin Zengmin, chief executive of a Hangzhou eyeglasses retailer, wants Ruian’s environmental protection bureau chief, Bao Zhenmin, to swim in the river in the small-town Ruian, which is virtually solid garbage. He could literally do a crawl on the surface. Not the Australian crawl, mind you, but the Chinese crawl on a surface of refuse.