Harry Truman never completed law school but he did attend for two years. He lived a few miles from Kansas City, which recently became renown in the history of lawyers and lawyer jokes. It all began on April 14th when legal secretary Monica Hastings opened her boss’s office and was…
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kim Richards was arrested in California in the Beverly Hills Hotel and charged with trespassing, public intoxication and resisting an officer and battery on an officer. Early morning Thursday, April 16, 2015 Kim Richards was arrested on the grounds of the Beverly Hills Hotel.…
April 6, 2015 marks the closing arguments in the Boston Bomber case being played out in Federal court in Boston. The Federal criminal trial of Mr. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the sole survivor of the pair that is accused of planning, preparing and detonating an anti-personnel destructive device at the finish line…
Today in Alaska, an amendment permitting recreational marijuana use goes into effect. In November, 2014, the citizens of Alaska in a statewide vote to amend the Alaska constitution voted 53% for and 47% against this amendment. The vote, a majority, prevailed and the new amendment became fundamental law for Alaska.…
The Obama administration has announced that it is expanding the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications efforts to “countermessage” terrorists groups. Propaganda has a long history of use as a governmental tool to enlist public support and oppose groups that disagree with State policies. The Obama administration has not put forward…
This past Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in an 8-1 decision, that now it’s possible for a police officer to stop your car based on a mistaken understanding of the law without violating the Fourth Amendment. Now watered down by Heien v. North Carolina, the Fourth Amendment to the…
Rarely imposed since the 1940’s, quarantines are both: 1) Creatures of law, subject to constitutional muster and 2) Public health policy; based on the best current state of medical science: its understanding of the process by which infection works in its biological host, and the methods of transmission of communicable…
On Friday November 7, 2014, the United States Supreme Court announced that it would “consider” a new major legal challenge to the Affordable Health Care Act. This happened three days after voters in the United States voted in the “mid-term” election on November 4, 2014. Mid-Term because it is in…
Two governors, Governor Christie in New Jersey and Governor Cuomo in New York, both announced quarantine rules and were undercut by President Obama. The legal issue is whether a president can overrule a state governor on an issue such as quarantine. Ebola, the viral infection that has killed 4,941 people…
Congressional Republicans have been vocal in demanding the United States impose travel bans from African nations where Ebola infection rates are high. Travel bans have a long history of being of dubious value, and a look at travel bans imposed on HIV victims is informative. The United States government has…