The opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, has prosecutors and judges shaking their heads in disgust and defense lawyers nodding with satisfaction at the notion that the Constitution's Sixth Amendment guarantee that defendants "shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him" is not satisfied by a sheet of paper.
Attorney Terry Chapko reports a $105 million award to 120,000 former and current baristas in a class action tip-sharing lawsuit against Starbucks. The suit was initiated in October 2004 by Jou Chau, a former barista in La Jolla, CA, who alleged Starbucks supervisors were illegally forcing baristas to share tips with them since October 2000. Yesterday, Judge Patricia Y. Cowett of California Superior Court in San Diego ruled that Starbucks must provide restitution, with interest, of over $100 million. Thats almost $1,000 per barista! She also enjoined Starbucks from sharing any more tips with supervisors.
For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses. The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench. In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.
As the police attacks on protesters in Minnesota continue -- see this video of the police swarming a bus transporting members of Earth Justice, seizing the bus and leaving the group members stranded on the side of the highway -- it appears increasingly clear that it is the Federal Government that is directing this intimidation campaign. Minnesota Public Radio reported yesterday that "the searches were led by the Ramsey County Sheriff's office. Deputies coordinated searches with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
Union bosses in this region of rural Mississippi have long grumbled that the largest factories here hire illegal immigrants, and that the immigrants were starting to get more overtime and supervisory positions.
Friction between the union and immigrant workers, along with a tipoff at an electrical manufacturing plant, boiled over this week into the biggest workplace immigration raid in the nation's history.
Then he snapped the photo. Deputy McCloud - who has been on the force only 18 months - told him that photographing him was illegal.
“I asked, ‘what planet are you from?’,” Conover said.
The company, Mack Associates Inc., knew the employees were illegal immigrants and had offered them names and social security numbers belonging to other people, the US Justice Department said.
Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users' privacy, the judge's ruling described that argument as "speculative" and ordered Google to turn over the logs on a set of four tera-byte hard drives.
The extent to which American exceptionalism is embedded in the national psyche is awesome to behold.
While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on the planet, Americans still react with surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible for something as heinous as a war crime.
The criminals in the federal government are now trying to legalize the seizure of computers and other property under the guise of strengthening intellectual property laws. HR 4279 or the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 which was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, will give the government draconian powers to do just this.
A man alleges that police entered his home illegally and ripped a catheter from his body during a child pornography investigation that led to the arrest of two neighbors.
Andrew Glover, 60, of New Britain filed a notice with the city Thursday that he intends to pursue a federal civil rights lawsuit. He accused the officers of inflicting severe injuries as he was recovering from intestinal surgery in February.
The Internet Archive, a project to create a digital library of the web for posterity, successfully fought a secret government Patriot Act order for records about one of its patrons and won the right to make the order public, civil liberties groups announced Wednesday morning.
On November 26, 2007, the FBI served a controversial National Security Letter (.pdf) on the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle, asking for records about one of the library's registered users, asking for the user's name, address and activity on the site.
...
Though FBI guidelines on using NSLs warned of overusing them, two Congressionally ordered audits revealed that the FBI had issued hundreds of illegal requests for student health records, telephone records and credit reports. The reports also found that the FBI had issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs since 2001, but failed to track their use. In a letter to Congress last week, the FBI admitted it can only estimate how many NSLs it has issued.
An Oklahoma court released a 34 year old man who was caught kneeling behind a 16 year old girl at a store in Tulsa, taking an "upskirt" picture of her, ruling upskirt photography in public places a legal practice.
The state of Minnesota has illegally collected and claims ownership to the DNA of 780,000 children and has provided the DNA of over 42,000 children to genetic researchers without parental consent.
For anti-piracy company, Logistep, life is becoming more and more difficult by the day. They have been deemed to be operating illegally in Italy and have been slammed over privacy issues in the home country, Switzerland.
Today Clinton neglected to vote on the FISA bill and she lost my vote. She offers a Comprehensive Government Reform page on her web site, but won't stand up NOW against vast, illegal spying in our out of control surveillance society.
