Criminal gangs are nothing new to prisons. However the recent breakout at a Frankfurt zoo left people scratching their heads. The kangaroo at Hochwildschutzpark Hunsrück west of Frankfurt escaped with the help of a fox and a boar.
Continue reading “The Great Escape: Kangaroo Kingpin Escapes With Help Of a Fox and Boar”
My son Ben’s latest animal video. Truly astonishing and seems to show a level of intelligence that I was not aware of in walruses.
I generally thought the NBC coverage of the Olympics was pretty good and I like Bob Costas as the central host — even though many objected to the delay in showing events to maximize NBC’s audience during the games. However, the goodwill almost evaporated in watching the coverage of the closing ceremonies. As I tweeted last night, I found it really irritating to have to listen to Seacrest and others talk over the music to add predictable and sometimes vapid comments. It appears I was not alone with critics piling on NBC on social media sites.
Continue reading “Weak Finish: NBC Under Fire For Closing Ceremony Coverage”
Civil libertarians have been concerned for years with the move toward greater use of the military in domestic operations by both President George W. Bush and now by President Barack Obama. The military continues to shift resources for prepare for large-scale domestic operations. Most recently, the Marines moved to create a battalion to allow the military to “be capable of helping control civil disturbances, handling detainees, carrying out forensic work, and using biometrics to identify suspects.” Now the Small Wars Journal, a respected publication closely followed in the U.S. military, has published an article entitled “Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A ‘Vision’ of the Future” by retired Army Col. Kevin Benson of the Army’s University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and Jennifer Weber, a Civil War expert at the University of Kansas. It lays out not just the military but the legal basis for military operations to crush domestic insurrections in the United States.
Chef Jason Febres at the Taste & See restaurant in Wichita seems confused by all of the commotion over his menu. Febres triggered an international outcry with his announcement that he would be serving up Lion for a special on the menu with kangaroo, alpaca, crocodile and water buffalo. After the restaurant was deluged with objections from animal rights activists, environmentalists, and human beings, Febres withdrew the item saying “We did took a second look … and realized that yes, it can be a little shocking and disturbing for some people.”
Continue reading “Wichita Restaurant Under Fire For Lion Dish On Menu”
For years, we have had a spirited debate over whether civil libertarians could vote for Barack Obama after his expanding of Bush anti-privacy measures, “hit list” policy, refusal to prosecute officials for torture, and other actions. For those who now oppose Obama, there is now a theme song to express their angst and anger. Even for those who still support Obama, you have to admit it is pretty funny.
Continue reading “Parody Video “The Obama That I Used To Know” Goes Viral”
It was a grizzly scene along the banks of the Susquehanna River as witnesses, police, and the coroner stared at the corpse floating in the water. After taping off the crime scene and with the coroner on hand, the police were entering the water to retrieve the corpse when it sat up. Lycoming County Coroner Charles E. Kiessling Jr. no doubt spoke for many in saying “Let me tell you, it was quite a shock for us.”
Here is my column today in USA Today calling on the Olympic committee to consider an overhaul of Olympic rules to update procedures and remove archaic and discriminatory rules. While some may treat this as a call for a new Olympic legal team, it is merely an effort to get the Olympic to guarantee greater fairness with a systemic review of the rules for various sports. What bothers me is to see avoidable mistakes treated like just part of the games, even though they do great injustice to athletes who sacrificed so much to get to these cameras.
By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
In 1984 Leonard and Harriet Nobelman purchased a condominium with the assistance of an adjustable rate mortgage loan from American Savings Bank. Six years later, the Nobelmans encountered financial difficulties and filed Chapter 13 proceedings in bankruptcy court. At the time of their filing, their mortgage balance, including accrued interest and late fees, was $71,335.00 and the fair market value of their home was only $23,500.00. Accordingly, the Nobelmans proposed a reorganization plan which treated the difference between the mortgage balance and the fair market value, a total of $47,835.00, as unsecured debt.
Under bankruptcy law, the reclassification of indebtedness exceeding the value of the collateral from secured to unsecured status is known as a “cramdown.” This is a commonly used device that effectively “strips” the lien of a security interest down to the collateral’s value. It enables a debtor to retain property while insuring that the secured creditor will recover at least as much as it would realize from a foreclosure sale of the property.
The problem is that as a practical matter, unsecured creditors, whether in reorganization or straight liquidating bankruptcies, seldom receive any of the amounts owed to them. So American Savings Bank, staring at the potential loss of more than half of the mortgage principal, filed an objection to the Nobelmans’ plan. The ensuing litigation odyssey required three years and produced a Supreme Court decision that has particular significance in the current housing crisis.
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro Guest Blogger
In May, David Sirota penned an article for Salon titled Selling out Public Schools. In it, he said that Mitt Romney, President Obama, and both of our major political parties were “assaulting public education.”
Sirota wrote:
On the Republican side, the Washington Post reports Mitt Romney just unveiled “a pro-choice, pro-voucher, pro-states-rights education program that seems certain to hasten the privatization of the public education system” completely. On the other side, Wall Street titans in the Democratic Party with zero experience in education policy are marshaling tens of millions of dollars to do much of what Romney aims to do as president – and they often have a willing partner in President Barack “Race to the Top” Obama and various Democratic governors.
Funded by corporate interests who naturally despise organized labor, both sides have demonized teachers’ unions as the primary problem in education — somehow ignoring the fact that most of the best-performing public school systems in America and in the rest of the world are, in fact, unionized. (Are we never supposed to ask how, if unions are the primary problem, so many unionized schools in America and abroad do so well?) Not surprisingly, these politicians and activists insist they are driven solely by their regard for the nation’s children — and they expect us to ignore the massive amount of money their benefactors (and even the activists personally) stand to make by transforming public education into yet another private profit center. Worse, they ask us also to forget that in the last few years of aggressive “reform” (read: evisceration) of public education, the education gap has actually gotten far worse, with the most highly touted policies put in place now turning the schoolhouse into yet another catalyst of crushing inequality.
Continue reading “Stateside Louisiana: School Vouchers and the Privatization of Public Education”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
If you ever wondered why the Justice Department is investigating the office of Maricopa, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, this latest story may be all you need to read. Recently, the Maricopa Sheriff’s office arrested and detained Briseira Torres and alleged that she was an illegal alien. Why is this one arrest such an important story? The short answer is that Sheriff Joe’s office and possibly the Prosecuting attorney ignored the most credible exculpatory evidence that was already in their possession. Briseira’s long form Birth Certificate, attested to by the State of Arizona as accurate, was left out of the record provided to the Grand Jury! Continue reading “Sheriff Joe’s Office Lies Again”
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Health regulations have hamstrung an 80-year-old tradition at New York’s Algonquin Hotel. Once known as the home of the Algonquin Round Table that brought together famous journalists, playwrights, and sports writers, the hundred year old Midtown landmark was also noted for its free roaming cats. For over eighty years, Algonquin guests were treated to a lobby cat usually bearing the name Matilda. Alas, NY City Health Department regulations have doomed the hoary tradition. A spokesperson for the Department tells us that, “According to the New York City Health Code, live animals are not allowed in food service establishments (except for edible fish, shellfish, or crustacean) unless a patron needs a service dog.”
Continue reading “Algonquin Hotel’s Matilda Tethered By Bureaucracy”
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Travelers at Angel Fire Resort in New Mexico might need some unusual gear when visiting. I’d suggest a field guide and maybe some bear repellant. Around midnight Monday, a curious black bear visited the resort and snooped around the hallways, popped into a conference room, and casually left through the main lobby. Guess he didn’t like the room. Here’s the video:
Submitted by: Michael Spindell, guest blogger
“For when the One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
He writes – not that you won or lost –
But how you played the Game.”
by Grantland Rice
How many of us grew up with the paraphrase of these words ringing in our ears as we participated in all of the competitions that humans partake in. These sentiments represented the epitome of humans engaging in fair contests, the object of which was defining dominance in a particular field and/or activity. We were all supposed to be “fair”, “play by the rules”, honor our opponents and most of all treat them with respect. Much of this was first defined in Western Culture by the Code of Chivalry which not only defined how men hacked each other to death on the battlefield, but also how they were to treat the “fairer” (weaker) sex. As the merchant class rose and nobility declined, Chivalry was subsumed in Western Culture by the notion of “fair play”. That all of these concepts have been but hypocritical touchstones meant to add the veneer of human nobility, to human competition, is rarely admitted by those who promote competition for financial and/or political gain.
Thoughts of this came to me as I watched the Olympics this year, listening to the portentous palaver of the announcers, discussing the contests and the purported values behind them. Yes I felt tears of patriotic pride as Gabby Douglas won the gymnastics Gold Medal, but I also saw the pain on the face of Viktoria Komova, who “only” won the Silver Medal. Implicit was that the Russian gymnast had failed in her quest and that she would forever be marked by this failure. This is the hypocritical dichotomy that is pursued in all avenues of competitive human endeavor when reported upon by the media.
Humanity reached the top of the “food chain” by defeating the competition over eons of strife with other fierce predators. While there are still valid arguments on each side of the question as to how human society developed, whether in a spirit of cooperation, or as a rigid imposition of the will of the “leader”, we cannot question that we attained our status because of our predatory talents. Once the “order” of society was imposed humanity began to learn to sublimate battles to the death for proof of supremacy, into “contests” of talent. We learned to sort out our “hierarchy” through these contests and indeed they have developed into a wide range of competitions that most of us use to determine our places in the world. This is not a controversial idea, but even so I would like to take a step back from it and look at the obvious background of human competition that is missed as we “crown” our champions and pity those who could not measure up. The Olympic Movement is a very problematic one. I could go into its mixed history of bigotry, commercialism, deception and tragedy, but that is perhaps for another time. Continue reading “How You Play the Game”
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
“There’s a party in my mind…And it never stops
There’s a party up there all the time…They’ll party till they drop
Other people can go home…Other people they can split
I’ll be here all the time…I can never quit.”
– “Memories Can’t Wait” by Talking Heads, written by David Byrne and Jerry Harrison
As previously discussed here at Res Ispa Loquitur, some fashion choices can be downright criminal. This time our contestant on Felony Runaway Fashions is Chad William Forber, 41, from Blue Grass, Illinois. Like our previous encounter with those who have a daring fashion sense, there is no probative legal analysis of this case and no pressing civil rights issue. Just good clean fun(ny facts). Also some not so funny (alleged) drug use. This time our designer’s drug of choice was methamphetamines. There is nothing funny about meth. Nothing at all.