We have been following the defamation lawsuit filed by Thomas M. Cooley Law School against the Kurzon law firm, a New York plaintiffs law firm. Now, Partner Jeff Kurzon has filed a counter lawsuit against Cooley in New York. Kurzon is pursuing a class-action against the Michigan law school for allegedly fudging employment and student loan statistics.
Continue reading “Law Firm Sues Thomas M. Cooley For Defamation”
Saudi Arabia is moving to expand its already draconian laws concerning blasphemy. The new regulations by the ultra-conservative Shura council following the arrest of Saudi blogger and columnist Hamza Kashgari, 23, was arrested for tweeting comments deemed as insulting the Prophet Mohammad.
There are news reports that Anthony Weiner has contacted former staffers to ask them to come back to work for him as he prepares to run again for office, including a possible run for mayor of New York or public advocate. Weiner left office after repeatedly lying to his constituents, colleagues, and the media about sending nude pictures of himself to women and accusing people of hacking into this phone. Women stated that they felt harassed by the photos that were sent without their solicitation or consent.
Continue reading “Report: Weiner Preparing For Another Political Campaign”
The Chicago Sun Time is reporting a fascinating case involving a police cadet who collapsed from heat stroke after just 10 days in the police academy when asked to run three miles. Donald E. Barnes Jr. never finished the “slow jogging exercise” or the academy but was put on medical disability . . . . 15 years ago. Barnes has collected $500,000 over the last 15 years but has never returned to the academy to complete training, let alone work as an officer.
Witnesses in Houston are contradicting police accounts of the fatal shooting of Rufino Lara. Officer J. McGowan arrived at the scene after reportedly being called by friends of Lara who said that he was being chased by men with a knife (he does not speak English). The friends of Lara insist that when McGowen arrived she told Lara to put his hand in the air and then shot the unarmed man. A friend started to film the scene as McGown allegedly ripped open his shirt in search of a weapon until McGown seized the camera and said that she is not allowed to film police officers.
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
It’s hard to strike the right balance between respect and mirth in writing this story, but I will try. Faithful in West New York, New Jersey, have commenced pilgrimages to a tree at the intersection of 60th Street and Bergenline Avenue. The skinny tree stands in front of a music store. On it, they say, is a revelation showing an image of the Virgin Mary resembling the famous sighting at Guadalupe.
Candles, flowers, cards, and towns folk have gathered around the opening in the bark where the purported miracle is said to be. Catholic diocesan spokesman and aptly named, James Goodness, is not convinced of divine intervention saying the image is likely “just some discoloration” that resembles St. Mary. However, the churchman is not one to disabuse the faithful of their faith. “But if it helps people to be stronger in their faith, then it is a good thing,” Goodness said.
Or is it?
Source: NJ.com
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
The Vatican went to court to obtain a temporary injunction against the German satirical magazine Titanic in regards to its July cover, shown at left. The translation is: “Hallelujah in the Vatican: The leak has been found!” The cover refers to the Vatileaks scandal.
The Vatican claims that the covers are illegal and “harm the holy father’s legal rights.” That must refer to the right not to be offended.
Continue reading “Vatican Sues Over Satirical Magazine Cover”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Amber Estes (left) has submitted an article to The University of Georgia student newspaper entitled “How to find that perfect husband in college.” Estes writes that the four years of college are “four years to find a husband” and provides six easy to follow steps.
Step 2: Spend your free time casually moseying around the law school.
Step 4: On your first date, STAY CLASSY. A man won’t get down on one knee for a woman who is overly willing to get down on both of hers.
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
This probably only works for joeys.
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Elizabeth Warren, a lawyer who is an expert in bankruptcy law and the woman responsible for the creation for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Massachusetts. She is running against incumbent Scott Brown, aka Senator McDreamy. Brown, a Republican, won Ted Kennedy’s senate seat in a special election in 2010. He was helped in his bid to win the election by the Tea Party, lots of campaign contributions from big banks, and Martha Coakley—his Democratic opponent who proved to be a truly inept political campaigner.
We have had a number of discussions on the Turley Blawg about Brown’s opponent Elizabeth Warren this year (here, here, here, and here). I thought it time to shed some light on Scott Brown who has focused much of his campaign talk calling into question Elizabeth Warren’s credibility because of her claim that she has Native American ancestry.
Brown has been criticized by Warren—as well as by other democrats, Massachusetts residents, and members of the news media—because he has spent so little time discussing substantive issues that are of true import to his constituents and to this country.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
For many years in the late 60’s and through the 70’s a group of twenty five friends and co-workers would camp for a weekend on an island in the middle of Long Lake, in the Adirondack mountains. At the time these were the people who were closest to me, even more so than my family. The island we camped on in the middle of this magnificent lake was as beautiful and tranquil as you might imagine it to be. You could only reach it by boat and the isolation added to the feeling of peace that settled over us when we were there. An old mansion had once stood on a rise looking out at the Lake. All that remained of it was a huge fireplace and chimney. We would cook large dinners as twilight descended. As we ate our meals more wood was piled on the cooking fire until it was a large blazing bonfire and we would get high, talk, gaze into the fire’s ever changing shapes and play/sing music as night descended, sharing the communion and the warmth of our interrelationship.
As I recall those long weekends four decades past, I recognize that we were taking part in a ritual as old as the beginnings of human society. The sharing of a communal meal, the comfort of close companionship, primitive music and a roaring fire keeping away the terrors of the night. These earliest of human rituals developed the beginnings of that which we call society. Ritual as I define it is a combination of repetitive actions, rites and procedures performed by two or more individuals that provides comforting feeling and a sense of shared togetherness. The behaviors tap into the most universal of human archetypes and thus are easily recognized as reassuring by participants and by groups. I’m using my own definition here because if you Google “ritual defined” you will get a multiplicity of definitions, all with some precision, that in the end make the explanation of ritual more complex than it should be, hence my own hubris in creating my own definition.
As millennia passed the communal campfire developed into a complex mixture of ritual that bonded people together and like the earliest ones provide the comfort of safety in a fear ridden world. My generation of hipsters abjured the rituals we inherited, even as we created rituals of our own. It is a fact of humanity’s existence within society’s that communal rituals are needed to bond us together and that the breakdown of some of the binding rituals of American society, have separated us and have made our lives more chaotic and less personally meaningful. Let me explain what I perceive. Continue reading “A Meditation on Ritual”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
United States District Judge for the Western District of Louisiana, Dee Dodson Drell, has upheld the district court finding that an Alexandria, Louisiana, ordinance banning fortune-tellers is unconstitutional. Drell said that banning fortune-telling is a violation of the First Amendment’s right to free speech.
The city of Alexandria argued the business of fortune-telling is a fraud and inherently deceptive.
Continue reading “Fortune-Telling Is Constitutionally Protected Speech”
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Around the mid 19th Century, Southern separatists coined a name for the commodity that guaranteed their region’s prosperity and defiantly signaled their immunity from the control of the despised central government controlled by Northern industrialists – “King Cotton.” “King Cotton” became a reason and a battle cry, emboldening the separatists to strike out at Fort Sumter against perceived injustices. The slogan served as a wedge between two regions whose cooperation just two generations earlier had forged a new nation. King Cotton was deposed at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865 and the country was spared his influence for the time being.
A new king arose on those same Southern cotton fields, now perfectly re-invented as measured, marked, and manicured line-bound rectangles with iron posts commemorating each end. King Cotton was replaced in the Southern psyche with a sport borrowed from the ivy-covered walls of the Northeast colleges. In places like Tuscaloosa and Baton Rouge and Knoxville and Athens, a new king was born, and his open-air castles holding 75,000+ subjects spread through the “fly-over states,” into towns with funny names, and even to the tiny central Pennsylvania town of State College. King Football reigns supreme in the minds of many today — it’s the nation’s most popular and lucrative sport, if combined with the professional ranks, or merely in second place if you’re talking about the game played on the campuses.
During the recent coverage on the health care decision, I had repeated occasion to disagree with co-commentators who heralded the Roberts decision as a triumph for the Court in regaining credibility and getting beyond ideological divisions. That seems curious to me since the vote was still 5-4 and was fractured into multiple opinions. The Roberts opinion in my view was also fundamentally in conflict with itself and re-wrote the federal law in a new image. It appears that the opinion did not alter the opinion of the public, either. If anything the public’s view of the Court has worsened after the decision.
Continue reading “Poll: Supreme Court’s Standing Falls Further After Health Care Decision”
There is an absolutely fascinating contempt finding in Florida where Millionaire Dan Rotta, 65, has been sent to jail for 180 days for criminal contempt in a divorce case — for allowing his 16 year old son to get married in Las Vegas. The court had ordered that the boy be sent to a special school in Utah — at the request of his mother Rene Rotta — in light of his problems with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. However, by marrying with the consent of one parent in Vegas, the boy is now legally treated as an adult and is no longer under the jurisdiction of the court as a child in the divorce case.