Law School. DOJ Realizes That Comcast & Time Warner Are Trying To Prop Up Cable By Holding Back Hulu & Netflix. Massachusetts Teen Aaron Deveau Found Guilty in Landmark Texting While Driving Case. Aaron Deveau, 18, was the first driver to be charged and convicted of motor vehicle homicide by texting under Massachusetts law. Prosecutors said Deveau, who pleaded not guilty, was texting on Feb. 20, 2011, when his vehicle swerved across the center line of a Haverhill street and crashed head on into Donald Bowley's truck, killing the 55-year-old father of three.
"My brother received such severe head trauma that ... there was no hope for him," the victim's sister Donna Burleigh testified in Haverhill District Court. Deveau was charged with motor vehicle homicide and negligent operation of a motor vehicle, using a mobile phone while operating a motor vehicle, reading or sending an electronic message, a marked lanes violation, and two counts of negligent operation and injury from mobile phone use. Deveau's lawyer argued that there was no evidence the crash caused Bowley's death.
But prosecutors argued that Deveau was not paying attention when the vehicles collided. The case for telling everyone what you make. Terri Kelly loved everything about her job as a sales representative at the pharmaceutical company Novartis, except for one thing: She knew she was getting paid less than a man with exactly the same position and achievements. At one point, she and this man, hired around the same time, were ranked, respectively, fifth and fourth among the best-performing sales reps in the nation. But over the course of nine years, he was earning as much as $12,000 more a year than she was – cumulatively, $65,000 more. Two things made Kelly unusual: She’s married to that better-paid sales rep and had been since before they worked for Novartis. Novartis, Kelly told Salon, had a policy on the books preventing employees from discussing their wages.
According to a survey by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 19 percent of employees’ workplaces formally prohibit discussing wages and salaries, and another 31 percent said it’s discouraged. That can change during the legal process.
The Media’s Shameful, Inexcusable Distortion Of The Supreme Court’s Citizens United Decision. One of the beauties of the transfer of power from major media operations to individuals, bloggers and tweeters is that they — we — can all serve as a sort of fact-checking peanut gallery. So it’s hard to imagine that, in this day and age, the mainstream media could repeatedly misstate the holding of one of the most significant Supreme Court decisions without being roundly excoriated.
Not a matter of opinion or a partisan viewpoint, but, simply parroting a mistake or lie about the holding in that crucial ruling. I have followed the Court’s Citizens United decision particularly closely because my dad, Floyd Abrams, was one of the lawyers who argued it (for free, incidentally) in the Supreme Court, on behalf of Senator Mitch McConnell. Let me say at the outset that I don’t entirely agree with the position my dad took in the case.
There are two media myths and inventions that are most commonly cited. Wrong. Wrong again. The Washington Post has done no better. The Court Case That Almost Made It Illegal to Tape TV Shows - Alexis Madrigal - Technology. The progress of a technology that's sufficiently old often seems inevitable. Take the VCR. It seems like a foregone conclusion that people would be able to use them for playing *and* recording. Yet, people here in the United States almost created a reality in which recording from our televisions was not legal. In fact, the Supreme Court's decision to allow home recording in the landmark 1984 case, Universal Studios vs. The case, as it was, revolved around whether recording a television program with a Betamax was a "fair use" under copyright law. Here's what the law, in this case, the Copyright Act of 1976, says about fair use: The fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
This was a radical proposition. Supreme Court justice: broadcast TV on "borrowed time," so why worry about indecency? The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today for FCC vs Fox Television Stations. The case pits the television networks against the Federal Communications Commission, the latter fighting for its right to regulate "fleeting" expletives and brief nude scenes on over-the-air TV. Cher and Nicole Richie star in the nearly eight year old legal drama, as do several actors from an episode of NYPD Blue. One comment during questioning by Justice Samuel Alito caught our eye. It was directed at Carter Phillips, an attorney for Fox who wants the FCC's stricter indecency rules struck down. "Well, broadcast TV is living on borrowed time," Alito declared. "It is not going to be long before it goes the way of vinyl records and 8 track tapes. " "I hope that—I'm sure my client is not thrilled to have you say that," Phillips responded.
"Well, I'm sure your clients will continue to make billions of dollars on their programs which are transmitted by cable and by satellite and by Internet," Alito persisted. The U.S. Constitution: A Less Common Model - Graphic. ACLU sues to force release of drone attack records. “The government’s self-serving attitude toward transparency and disclosure is unacceptable,” the ACLU said in a statement. “Officials cannot be allowed to release bits of information about the targeted killing program when they think it will bolster their position, but refuse even to confirm [its] existence” when asked for information “in the service of real transparency and accountability.” In addition to statements by Obama and Panetta, the lawsuit notes that “media reports about the targeted killing program routinely quote anonymous government officials describing details of the program.” The case comes as the administration has been engaged in an internal debate over whether to be more forthcoming about the drone program, and a range of lawmakers and international legal bodies have asked for more information and oversight.
The administration has argued in previous legal cases that national security prohibits the discussion of the covert program. NDAA FAQ: A Guide for the Perplexed. The volume of sheer, unadulterated nonsense zipping around the internet about the NDAA boggles the mind. There was a time–only a few months ago–when the NDAA detention provisions were the obscure province of a small group of national security law nerds. Now, however, this bill has rocketed to international notoriety. The added attention to it is a good thing. It’s an important subject and warrants genuine debate and discussion.
The trouble is that much of the discussion is the intellectual equivalent of the “death panel” objections to the health care bill. While certain journalists have done a good job covering the controversy, it’s much easier to get bad information than good. The reader who wants answers to simple questions faces a confusing array of conflicting information. Here then, as a public service, is an NDAA FAQ–a simple attempt to lay out the key questions people are asking about the NDAA and answer them as simply and neutrally as we can. Nope. Who is covered? Yes. Stephen Voss Responds to Our FAQ.
Worth Repeating: The NDAA’s “Mandatory Detention” Provision Doesn’t Actually Bar Civilian Prosecutions.