As the Court considers the future of affirmative action in higher education, the Florida State Board of Education is moving to create different grading in schools on the elementary and secondary levels in terms of the levels of proficiency expected for students based on their race.
Continue reading “Florida Adopts Different Standards For Students Based On Race”
A new study is out that refutes the suggestion of some opponents to the “right to die” that legal suicides results in an increase in suicides. The theory is that, if people are given the lawful opportunity to commit suicide, more will do so under the same theory as finding a parking space in Manhattan (you should park even if you do not need one or your meeting is across town because when will you ever see an open space again in your lifetime?). The new study from Switzerland found no such correlation in terms of increasing the desire to commit suicide.
Continue reading “Study: Availability of Legal Suicide Does Not Increase The Desire For Suicide”
This is not a case that you want to take before a jury. Ronald Eugene Robinson, 35, in Jacksonville, Florida is accused of using enemas and then returning the “pre-packaged CVS Pharmacy Ready-to-Use enemas” to the shelves of a CVS pharmacy. What is most interesting about this case (ok one of the most interesting things) is that this is a federal case since the incident is being treated as product tampering.
Continue reading “Florida Man Arrested For Returning Used Enemas For Refunds”
Springfield attorney Claude M. Kicklighter may not be a pit bull of a lawyer but his client certainly is. Kicklighter’s new client is Kno, a pit bull facing euthanasia after attacking a five year old boy. Judge William E. Woodrum Jr. has enlisted Kicklighter pro bono to represent the dog. In layman’s term, that means it will be all bark and no bones for Kicklighter.
Continue reading “A Pit Bull’s Pit Bull: Court Appoints Attorney To Represent Dog On Death Row”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
It has been estimated that approximately 50 million Americans watched the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney that took place on October 3rd. Many viewers of the debate are diehard fans of Sesame Street. They were taken aback when Romney brought up the name of one of this country’s most well-loved TV avian characters that evening. It’s a good thing that John James Audubon wasn’t alive to hear the words that emitted from Mitt’s mouth in responding to Jim Lehrer about cuts that he’d make in federal spending if he is elected President:
“I’m sorry, Jim. I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you too. But I’m not going to — I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.”
The following day, PBS issued a statement expressing disappointment that it had become a target in the political discussion the previous evening. Big Bird himself issued no statement on his own behalf. Since the debate, however, he has appeared on television entertainment and news shows and in a number of Youtube videos. It has been reported that our fine feathered friend was truly disheartened when he learned of Romney’s plan to eliminate funding for PBS programs like Sesame Street, the show that brought him fame and helped to make “Big Bird” a household name.
Continue reading “Fowl Play?: Big Bird Enters the 2012 Presidential Debate”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
In a case that didn’t receive too much publicity, the federal district court in Idaho recently struck a blow against the FBI’s misuse of the material witness statute which is designed to allow for the government to arrest and detain witnesses who will be used to testify in court cases against third parties. The case in question involved a United States citizen who converted to the Muslim faith during college and was arrested, detained and abused in jail in 2003. The man in question was born in Kansas and was a college football star and his name is Abdullah al-Kidd. Continue reading “Abdullah al-Kidd and the FBI”
Below is my column today in the Washington Post on the decline of free speech in Western countries. Speech is being balkanized into prohibited and permitted areas by redefining speech in terms of its social impact. Increasingly, it seems that the West is re-discovering the tranquility that comes with forced silence. What is fascinating is that this trend is based on principles of tolerance and pluralism — once viewed as the values underlying free speech.
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Submitted by: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
The two major themes that run through most of my guest blogs here are the idea that we are being manipulated by a Corporate Oligarchy, whose aim is to re-establish Feudalism in an American format. The second theme is my belief that their method of control is perpetrating this revision of America through manipulation of the National myths to which we have all been exposed. They have worked hard and somewhat successfully to take the myths and turn them into memes. One myth that I’ve recently written about is the “American Dream” that all of us have an equal chance of fulfilling all our aspirations based on our innate abilities and hard work alone. One meme that has been developed from this is that our Elite 1% are entrepreneurial heroes, who are the only “job creators” worth mentioning. The truth is that most of the 1% inherited their wealth, like the Koch Brothers or Donald Trump, while many others were born in privileged settings and rose in the world through their contacts with others from the same background.
Gene Howington, a friend and another guest blogger, has approached the same territory with his four part series of discussions of propaganda methodology. Gene and I are running on parallel tracks getting at the same thing and interestingly both of us set out on our parallel paths independent of discussion with the other. Gene and I have both touched on the mechanisms that are being used and in Gene’s case eve the science of the manipulation, but I think both of us have missed the specific science that has been adopted by corporations and used to perform this attempt to control. Today I came across an article at Alternet.org http://www.alternet.org/ that flashed the proverbial light bulb in my brain. When I read it my thought was, of course……. .Why haven’t I as someone trained in mental health seen this connection before? I will present extensive quotes from the article and then link it. I think it is important enough that everyone who visits here should read this article through.
“The corporatization of society requires a population that accepts control by authorities, and so when psychologists and psychiatrists began providing techniques that could control people, the corporatocracy embraced mental health professionals. In psychologist B.F. Skinner’s best-selling book Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), he argued that freedom and dignity are illusions that hinder the science of behavior modification, which he claimed could create a better-organized and happier society.”
Continue reading “Manipulated America: One Theory of How They Control US”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
One of the main problems with any legal principle is that we humans are so complex in our interactions that even the most hallowed of legal principles are bound to run into conflict with a real life situation that turns it on its end and leaves even the most principled among us at a loss. This is why the timeless practice of training lawyers to be able to argue both sides of a case arose. Even those who are most respectful of our legal system and our Constitution, recognize that with the variety of human situations, sometimes the legal process leads to results that are far short of the mark of what a person might consider to be justice. Recently, while watching a TV real life murder show called “Unusual Suspects” I came across a case, whose resolution, left me confused as to whether the result was correct in a Constitutional sense. The first ten amendments to our Constitution that are known as “The Bill of Rights” are legal principles that I hold sacrosanct. Historically, the founders put them in place to safeguard the people from the tyrannies that often flowed from autocratic systems of government. These were principle that history and experience had taught them were necessary to protect and preserve the freedom of citizens.
The Fifth Amendment became famous in the 40’s and 50’s when it was invoked at congressional hearings striving to root out “communists”. People in the glaring spotlight of Congressional Hearings, sworn under oath, would be forced to invoke the Fifth Amendment to assert their right not to incriminate themselves. What was unfortunate about these “witch-hunts” was that according to legal procedure, if the person under oath answered any kind of question it was deemed that their Fifth Amendment Rights had been forfeited, since any answer, no matter how innocuous could be considered to have opened up a line of questioning. Thus if one was asked to discuss where they worked they would have to invoke the “Fifth”, or otherwise be opened to questions on who they worked with. The result of this was that by exercising their Constitutional Rights, these witnesses were made to seem guilty of hiding something, merely by asserting their right to remain silent. People’s careers were destroyed having been guilty of nothing more than associating with people who believed in a different economic system, that wasn’t inherently illegal. As the title indicates I’m writing about another aspect of the Fifth Amendment and the result of a particular murder case that left me intellectually and emotionally conflicted. Continue reading “Double Jeopardy”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
In the case of Fourtin v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court of Connecticut overturned the conviction of Richard Fourtin. Fourtin was convicted of sexually assailing a twenty-five year old woman with significant mental and physical handicaps including cerebral palsy, mental retardation and hydrocephalus. The Court, in affirming the Appellate Court’s judgement, found that the woman could have used “gestures, biting, kicking and screaming” to indicate “her lack of consent to sexual intercourse at the time of the alleged sexual assault.”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Click to enlarge.
Solution below the fold.
Good luck.
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Here’s a novel lawsuit. Lansdale, Pennsylvania’s Patrick Gallagher was enjoying a prenuptial night out with his buddies at a gentleman’s club. As part of the “Bachelor’s Package,” the husband-to-be was invited to lie prostrate on stage while an unnamed exotic dancer shimmied up the dance pole above him. Then, according to his lawyer, Neil T. Murray, Esq., the limber young lass “from a great height … launched herself down onto his abdomen.” The blow was so severe that it ruptured Gallagher’s bladder and caused back and hip injuries. Gallagher is suing the establishment, the aptly named Penthouse Club,for $50,000.00 for medical costs, pain, and humiliation. Big emphasis on the latter, I suspect.
Continue reading “Professional Negligence? Club Sued For Negligent Lap Dance”
This video of Chris Matthews confronting a woman calling President Obama a “communist” pretty much sums up how our political discourse in this country is now devoid of any intellectual content. The woman repeatedly tells Matthews to “study it out” but then seems incapable of explaining what a communist actually is.
In my torts class, we often discussed the factual and proximate causation issues concerning the failure to diagnose illness like types of cancer before they metastasize. Those causation questions are a bit more severe in the case of Jeannine Harvey, a mother of four who died after doctors missed her advanced cervical cancer 30 times according to her family.
We previously discussed the lawsuit by 3M Co. against Covington & Burling over its alleged conflict of interest and violation of its duty to 3M in representing the state against 3M in an environmental case. In a major conflicts decision (and a major embarrassment for Covington), a court has found that the firm betrayed its former client and “exhibited a conscious disregard for its duties of confidentiality, candor, full disclosure, and loyalty to 3M by failing to raise its conflicts arising from the fact that it previously advised and represented 3M.”