The U.S. of A, the greatest country on earth, has legally executed 27 people this year, and more than 1,300 since we resurrected the death penalty back in 1976. Mr. Presidential Candidates, what will YOUR administration do to ensure that the USA is not eclipsed by nations like Iraq and Gambia, who are trying to Even Greater Than Us, in a "killing their own citizens" sense?
One of the many distinguishing features of freedom-loving den of Reaganites California is that the voters, in their infinite wisdom, chose long ago to cap property taxes by law—one of those special kinds of laws that very specifically helps people who are already wealthy. Congratulations, wise self-disinterested voters of California! The rich are very happy that law exists right about now.
The blinks of a 35-year-old man, paralyzed and dying from a gunshot wound, may help convict his killer.
Since the recession and the cruel pulling-out of the rug from under the notional feet of thousands of fresh-faced law school graduates who'd imagined office-bound lives of leisure in their futures, it's become quite clear to everyone that law school is for suckers. Nobody knows this better than people who run law schools. So what to do? Put themselves out of a job? Haha! No, but seriously, they can offer you a great deal on law school right now.
Warren Hill (pictured) was convicted of a 1985 murder, and was sentenced to death after being convicted of beating a fellow inmate to death in 1990. He is scheduled to be executed by the state of Georgia tomorrow evening. Warren Hill's IQ is 70. He has been found by a court to be mentally retarded. Georgia plans to kill him anyhow.
As the entire legal profession has crumbled into little more than a white collar version of janitorial services, times have gotten tough—not just for recent law school grads, but for everyone unfortunate enough to work at a law firm. Naturally, the days of luxurious, opulent law firm offices are over. Uh... in favor of something better!
Caleb Mason, an associate professor of law at Southwestern University, has done us all a service by producing, in a paper for the Saint Louis University Law Journal, the most thorough legal reading of Jay-Z's "99 Problems" yet. The upshot? Jay-Z mostly gets it right, except for one glaring omission. Some highlights:
The top story out of the recently concluded Supreme Court term was, of course, the healthcare decision. But a close second was the astonishing fact that Associate Justice Antonin Scalia is a conservative. And an asshole! So what?
In the United States of America, we do not have debtors' prison. Right? Oh, so wrong. The financial and legal penalties for being poor in America are only getting worse.
If you read "the business section" or invest in a "portfolio" or are a member of or have ever gotten into an argument with a member of "the Republican Party," you're probably familiar with the argument that corporations have a moral and legal duty to act solely to grow their value for their own shareholders. If you are not a corporation's shareholder, in other words, it has no duty to do shit for you. Now, this idea is being challenged. BUT: should it be?
One of the most blatant injustices in our nation's drug laws (which are themselves an injustice) has always been the disparity in sentencing between those who were caught selling crack and those who were caught selling powder cocaine. Crack sentences have always been much, much harsher. (Racism, by scaremongering "tough on crime" politicians? Yes, it's racism by scaremongering "tough on crime" politicians.) A 2010 law finally brought crack sentences down to earth, very relatively speaking. And now: a bit of good news, for crack stragglers.
Today was Big Decision Day at the Supreme Court, and though we'll have to wait until next week for the long-awaited healthcare decision, the justices threw us a bone by finding the Federal Communications Commission's indecency standards unconstitutionally vague [pdf]. Get ready for some hardcore broadcast teevee fuckin'!
Last week, we brought you a letter from Ohio Death Row inmate Abdul Awkal. He was scheduled to die earlier this month for the 1992 murders of his wife and brother-in-law. That execution date was postponed two weeks in order to mentally evaluate Awkal. Today, a judge ruled that he is not mentally competent to be executed.
Last year, a Target store in Valley Stream, New York was the site of an long campaign by the UFCW to unionize the store's workers. Target has no unionized stores, and remains staunchly anti-union. The union lost the vote at Valley Stream, but last month a judge ordered a new election due to company misconduct. Let's take a look at just how brazen Target's anti-union culture of fear really is.
It is fortunate that the legal profession is renowned for its graceful sense of humor about its own problems, because the "new generation" of lawyers will consist only of one cute dog, because everyone else knows that going to law school would be the worst possible decision that a young adult can make except for eating that third slice of Pizza Hut's new Cheesy Bites™ pizza simulacrum. Let's check in on the depressing mire of gloom that is the legal profession and its educational antecedents, shall we?
We must admit that we will never ever tire of directing your attention to the accumulation of evidence that "law school" is, by and large, a massive fraud perpetrated upon society's most overacquisitive young driftabouts, and one whose effect is to turn out a massive class of highly indebted functionaries whose skill set is not only undeveloped to the point of worthlessness, but that, when developed, is, for the most part, detrimental to the function of justice. The fact that law school's popularity is crumbling away as the magnitude of the systemic scam becomes ever more apparent can only be taken as a redeeming ray of hope for the future of our nation's collective critical thinking skills.
Yesterday, a Nassau County Supreme Court judge ruled that the Nassau County Police Department had improperly withheld records about its relationship with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, and agreed to release them at 10:30 this morning. About 45 minutes before the documents were due to become available, Nassau County attorneys appealed the decision and obtained a stay of the order.
