On shows like The Daily Show, people have chuckled that former Senator Rick Santorum’s name is synonymous with a graphic sexual act. Gay columnist Dan Savage launched a campaign for people to link the name to the act on Google. This prompted Santorum to contact Google and complain that the company is “spreading filth.”
Retired international law professor Detlev Vagts, 82, has pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide in the death of Marcia Kearney in Newton, Massachusetts. In light of his plea and presumably his age, Vagts was spared prison time in favor of three years probation and six months of house arrest. He has been ordered not to drive for the rest of his life.
Continue reading “Former Harvard Law Professor Pleads Guilty to Vehicular Homicide”
If brevity is the soul of wit, Walter Maksym may be the most witless lawyer in practice. That may soon change if the Seventh Circuit has its way. The court slammed Maksym recently for writing a brief full of gibberish, including a 345-word sentence. The court has ordered Maksym to show cause why he should not be disbarred.
Continue reading “Seventh Circuit Slams Attorney For 345-Word Sentence and “Gibberish” — Demands Show Cause On Possible Disbarment”
The use of informers by police have always been criticized, particularly jail house snitches who will implicate anyone for a better deal. Scotland Yard has used 158 “supergrasses” used since 2006, including Gary Eaton, 51, who is now the center of a scandal over such procured testimony. Called a “pathological liar” by two courts, the Metropolitan Police still used Eaton to the trial of various people of murder. While records show the police were aware of his prior record, pathological lying, and mental instability, Scotland Yard has announced that no officers or prosecutors will be punished for his use as the star witness in two murder trials.
There may be need for an intervention in Congress after Rep. John Fleming, a Louisiana Republican, admitted to what appears an eating disorder. Fleming went on television to denounce Obama’s plans to tax the wealthy and explained how he really does not have a lot of income left over from earning $6.3 million a year from his string of Subway and UPS businesses. He insists that after paying taxes, salaries, and support for his businesses, he only takes home $600,000 — of which $200,000 goes to food for his family. Fleming is the father of four adult children and lives alone with his wife.
Continue reading “Eating Out of House and Home: Republican Opposes New Taxes By Noting That He Needs $200,000 a Year for Food”
For years, we have discussed the abusive litigation by the Recording Industry Association of America in seeking obscene damages against people for downloading songs. Congress, again, caved to demands by lobbyists to allow for such lawsuits. The result has been thuggish lawsuits where industry lawyers threaten not only citizens with ruin but, in the case of the Copyright Group, those who try to help them. Now, one of the most obscene verdicts against Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum has been reinstated by the First Circuit — $675,000 for downloading and sharing 30 songs. The court, however, takes the rare step of suggesting that Congress may want to look again at the law. The problem is that these citizens do not have well-paid lobbyists and massive campaign funds to motivate many members to act. The Obama Administration joined the industry in defending the law and the original fines as not unconstitutional.
Judge Richard A. Posner is a legal icon who has had more impact on the development of the law. As the father of the Law and Economics movement, Posner’s writings are featured heavily in my classes as well as other classes around the country. While I disagree with him, I have tremendous respect for his scholarship and jurisprudence. However, a recent oral argument revealed a less flattering side of the former University of Chicago professor. Faced with an attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union in a case involving the right of citizens to film police in public, Posner cut him off after 14 words and spoke derisively of the right of citizens and groups to engage in such protected conduct.
Continue reading “Posner Ridicules Right of Citizens To Film Police in Seventh Circuit Oral Argument”
Councilman Lewis Fidler (D-Brooklyn) is calling for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to pull down ads critical of funding for Israel. Fidler is demanding that MTA President Thomas Prendergast put an end to billboards calling for an end to funding for Israel as “a highly political campaign with a controversial underlying anti-Israel message.” Apparently, amid all of the graffiti and ads and pamphlets in the MTA there is no room for messages critical of Israel. Fidler wrote I would urge you to disallow and/or remove these advertisements.”
Continue reading “Fidler in the Subway: New York Council Member Calls For Censorship of Pro-Palestinian Ads in Subway”
Stealing kid’s lunch money has long been a scourge in schools, but usually the thieves come from the ranks of adolescent bullies. Prosecutors allege that Joanna Fan and her husband, Ziming Shen, never got out of the habit and stole at least $2.5 million in federal funds meant for nutritious meals for preschoolers.
Continue reading “Stealing Kid’s Lunch Money: New York Couple Charged With Theft From School Programs — And Then Go Bonkers Outside Court”
The New York Times is reporting that the U.S. has fallen to 25th in a global ranking of Internet speeds. Feel not for the future, however, we are still one spot ahead of Romania. Take that Bucharest cyber cafes!
Continue reading “U.S. Now 25th In The World in Internet Speed — Just Ahead of Romania”
Submitted by Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
The decennial exercise in legislative self-dealing known as redistricting has been frequently assailed as corrupt. Efforts to eliminate the incentive to treat redistricting as an incumbency protection racket by placing term limits on House and Senate members have run afoul of the Constitution. But Floridians may have found a partial solution. As Republicans were strengthening their super-majority status in the state legislature this past November, eagerly anticipating the opportunity to redistrict the remaining Democrats to somewhere in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, voters were simultaneously adopting by substantial margins two amendments to the Florida constitution intended to eliminate gerrymandering. And a federal judge has now thrown out the Florida legislature’s constitutional challenge to one of those amendments.
Continue reading “Redistricting and the Citizen Legislator”
There is an interesting censorship allegation this week after Alec Baldwin walked out on the Emmy telecast in response to the decision by News Corp to cut a joke about CEO Rupert Murdoch and the expanding phone-hacking scandal. Comedians have always been a central part of political speech in the United States as have cartoonists and others who use art or prose to address matters of public interest. The alleged censorship of the material by Fox or News Corp shows, at very best, a lack of judgment by company officials and attorneys.
Continue reading “Baldwin Accuses News Corp of Censoring Joke on Murdoch”
Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
Webster’s defines compassion as:
compassion \kəm-ˈpa-shən\, n.,
: sympathetic of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it
In yet another instance of corporate callousness, Claudia Rendon, a 41-year old mother from Philadelphia, was fired from her job at Aviation Institute of Maintenance after taking leave to donate a kidney to her son, Alex. Kidney transplant surgery normally takes six to eight weeks recovery time. Rendon had discussed taking unpaid leave from July 19 to undergo the kidney transplant surgery on July 21 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and to return to her job on September 1. She told ABC News that on her last day of work, her manager presented her with a letter to sign acknowledging that her job was not secure one hour after telling her that she would have her job upon her return. On August 24, Rendon informed Aviation Institute of Maintenance that she might not be able to return to work September 1 due to severe lower back pain; a common complication of such surgery. Aviation Institute of Maintenance said they wanted a letter from the doctor. The University of Pennsylvania hospital and her short-term disability provider each wrote letters to Rendon’s employer stating she would return to work Sept. 12. Upon making a social visit to Aviation Institute of Maintenance on September 8, she found out her position had been filled by someone else on September 6. Alex, who was a student at AIM, has also suffered repercussions of undergoing this lifesaving transplant. The school is trying to collect $2,000 related to time he took off in addition to trying to charge him $150 to re-enroll. Did Aviation Institute of Maintenance break the law? Or are they just another example of a callous employer lacking in compassion?
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Banned Books Weeks 2011 will be observed September 24-October 1.
Jonah Goldberg claims that Banned Books Week (BBW) is nothing but hype. In a column he penned for USA Today in early September, Goldberg wrote that BBW “is an exercise in propaganda.” He continued, “For starters, as a legal matter no book in America is banned, period, full stop (not counting, I suppose, some hard-core illegal child porn or some such out there). Any citizen can go to a bookstore or Amazon.com and buy any book legally in print — or out of print for that matter.”
Continue reading “Banned Books Week: Just a Lot of Propaganda Says Jonah Goldberg”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty(Rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
I admit that I get a headache when I read any news about former Bush administration officials, but it seems that former Vice President Dick Cheney is in the news again and I am left scrambling for my migraine medicine. He has written a book detailing all the wonderful things he accomplished as Vice President under George W. Bush. Unfortunately for Mr. Cheney, in his efforts to explain his work as Vice President under George W. Bush, he may have provided an admission of some of the alleged lies that critics claim were being spread by Cheney and the Bush administration in the lead up to war in Iraq. Continue reading “Recent American History According to Cheney”