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Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart

Barack Obama's Law Personality:Harvard Law Review's first black president plans a life of public service. His multicultural background gives him unique perspective. By Tammerlin Drummond Times Staff Writer **SNIP** "One of the luxuries of going to Harvard Law School is it means you can take risks in your life," Obama said recently. "You can try to do things to improve society and still land on your feet. That's what a Harvard education should buy-enough confidence and security to pursue your dreams and give something back." **SNIP** The son of a Kenyan economist and an American anthropologist, Obama is a tall...

Imagine if you had to get permission before you linked to the Web site of companies, people or organizations. If “permission-based” linking was a requirement - blogging and much other Internet activity as we know it (even mainstream media news sites) would cease to exist. Well, if the lawsuit of one major law firm against an Internet news publication succeeds, that “permission-based” linking may become the law…and effectively kill the Internet.

Good News on the Law: Don’t get cheated by your lawyer!Date 09/02/08 | Topic: Life Today By Stephen Bloom, Esq.Good News Daily Too many Christian clients are getting cheated by their lawyers. And it’s not because lawyers are dishonest or taking unfair advantage. No, it’s not even something lawyers are doing intentionally. And, surprisingly, many of the cheated clients don’t even realize they are victims. But they are. Allow me to explain. Suppose you’re a Christian believer facing a common legal situation. You aren’t sure what to do, so you make an appointment to see a lawyer. You present the facts...

Catholic physicians and other doctors in California who oppose mercy killing would be forced to provide terminally ill patients with information on morally questionable “end-of-life care options” under a bill now pending in the state legislature. The bill, AB 2747, is a repeatedly amended and watered down version of an original euthanasia measure sponsored by Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka. Berg’s original bill, termed a “stealth assisted-suicide bill” by opponents, would have allowed doctors to administer “palliative sedation” to deliberately induce a coma, and to starve patients to death under a provision called “voluntary stopping of eating and drinking.” Also excised...

Not very long ago, in a land not at all far away, there was a little company called Blueport. It held the copyright on a piece of software that the US Air Force liked using for logistics. Blueport protected its software with a time bomb—a bit of code that made the software self-destruct when the license expired. That date was approaching, and Blueport wanted to negotiate a new license with the USAF—and you know, get paid. Instead, it got a bit of the ol’ shock and awe. The Air Force not only didn’t pay up, it paid big contractor SAIC...

You can expect hardball in a presidential campaign, especially one in a country as divided as ours seems to be. But the kind of hardballs being pitched is an indication of the people and policies that an incoming administration will be employing. That is why it’s particularly troubling that the Obama campaign has filed a criminal complaint against the people behind an ad being run that links Obama to avowed terrorist William Ayers. Per Ben Smith's Blog at Politico: It's worth noting that this isn't the first time Bauer has called for criminal investigations and prosecutions into the donors to...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 25, 2008 – Because they are military veterans and have a unique understanding of the sacrifices servicemembers make, some of the top leaders of the law firm Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge and Rice have created a military-friendly work environment that supports not only veterans, but also employees who serve in the National Guard or Reserve. The law firm has many policies and programs in place to support its employees who serve part-time in the military, and for its efforts in this area, it is receiving the 2008 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award. Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge and...

Governments tend toward tyranny. Governments are comprised of selfish humans with personal desires for money, job security, and increased authority over fellow citizens. A citizen working for a government has opportunities to rule over and oppress fellow citizens, they would never have outside their government position. Therefore, government becomes a magnet for selfish power-seeking individuals. By their sheer size and superior firepower, governments tend to overrun and ignore personal rights. The machine capriciously devours it's victims. The Declaration of Independence declares that governments exist to protect the rights of citizens. The Constitution for the United States of America further states...

Editor’s Note: Stephen Bloom is a Christian attorney with more than 20 years experience in private practice. He is a frequent media guest, speaker, and writer on Christianity and the law, a Lecturer in Management and Business at Messiah College, and a Consultant to the United Methodist Stewardship Foundation of Central Pennsylvania. He is a legal columnist for Good News Daily, former host of the "Practical Counsel - Christian Perspective" radio program, and founder of the Estate Planning Council of Cumberland County. Bloom has been actively involved in the leadership of numerous community and ministry organizations, including his church, where...

INVITATION BIBLICAL LAW CENTER NATIONAL SEMINAR “THE LORD, THE LAW & THE LIBERTY” Faith Baptist Church, Paris, Texas – August 25 and 26, 2008 The 24th Annual Unregistered Baptist Fellowship National Meeting will be held in Indianapolis, Indiana, October 13-15, 2008. Click Here for more details Dr. Dixon releases new book, The Trail of Blood Revisited: Christ's True Church, Its Past, Present and Future. Order today! Now in an updated 4th Printing! 170 pages, suggested donation $8 for single copies; $7 each for 2 copies; $6 each for 3 or more copies; $4 each for 60 copies (case lot). Includes...

The Democrats have begun beating the drums for Nuremberg style trials for members of the Bush administration. Accusing them of war crimes, the Left is anxious to see Bush, Cheney, Yoo, Rove and other members of the administration in the dock. We don’t know if execution is their objective, but you can be sure that it isn’t exoneration. A poster MarkField at the Volokh Conspiracy has suggested a way of pulling this off: As one who strongly favors prosecution, I think your sense of the public reaction is very likely correct. For that reason, I think it's important to begin...

There is a little Fascist in all of us; the desire to smash our enemies, to humiliate them and to make them crawl before they … go. It’s the farthest we get from the Sermon on the Mount and a reason to remind ourselves how far we are from grace. George Will, perhaps inspired by Barack Obama’s comment that “America ..ah.. .is .. is … no longer what it could be … what it once was. I don’t want that future for my children.” Reminds us what America once was. On the night of Aug. 13, Mabel Hallam, a pretty...

This is how pogroms begin. This is how revolutions are conducted. This is how Fascists and Communists operate. How do you start a hate movement? It’s easy and a poster called MarkField at the Volokh Conspiracy Summarizes it in a few words. You gin up a trial: …begin slowly with the least sympathetic defendants and develop the evidence in some detail. As public disgust builds, so will the desire to see punishment inflicted. It’s not a new strategy. Unsavory characters throughout human history have used this strategy. The French Revolution was a useful example as was the trial following the...

The six-year running battle over the admissions policy of a highly regarded private school in Hawaii — the Kamehameha Schools — is back in the courts, with one side specifically aiming for an ultimate test in the Supreme Court. An earlier case, testing whether an 1866 civil rights law still bars the use of race in private school admissions, reached the Court last year, but was settled before the Justices took final action on it. A new lawsuit, raising the same challenge, was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Hawaii — with the same name (Doe v. Kamemameha Schools),...

By Stephen Bloom Esq. Good News Daily As Americans, we deeply cherish our constitutional right to free speech. And as caring members of our communities, we deeply cherish the safety of our children. But what happens when those two values conflict? What do we do when the exercise of free speech threatens our kids? More specifically, should we allow images of underage victims of pornographic exploitation to be freely exchanged by adult Internet users? If we take counsel on this issue from the blunt biblical words of Jesus, who warned “If any of you put a stumbling block before any...

The state of Texas urged the Supreme Court on Monday to allow it to go ahead on Tuesday with the execution of Mexican national Jose Ernesto Medellin, arguing that he has several times received all of the review of his case that American or international law requires. But, the state added, if there are other foreign nationals in Texas who have not had the same review of their treaty-based claims, the state will join in to make sure that it happens. Medellin’s lawyers have asked Justice Antonin Scalia, as Circuit Justice for the area that includes Texas, to postpone his...

CAMP VICTORY — Coalition forces once named the predominantly Sunni area in central Iraq, consisting of the cities of Yusuifiyah, Mahmudiyah, Iskandariyah and Latifiyah, the “Triangle of Death.” The troop surge initiated in 2007 neutralized much of the area enabling Iraqi Security Forces to take a leading role in the securing the region. An uprising there in March raised concerns and directed attention to the Iraqi Security Forces operating in that area; Coalition forces feared the ISF would struggle to maintain rule of law in the communities. “We got word that special group members were going to be coming down...

The young law professor stood apart in too many ways to count. At a school where economic analysis was all the rage, he taught rights, race and gender. Other faculty members dreamed of tenured positions; he turned them down. While most colleagues published by the pound, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship. At a formal institution, Barack Obama was a loose presence, joking with students about their romantic prospects, using first names, referring to case law one moment and “The Godfather” the next. He was also an enigmatic one, often leaving fellow faculty members guessing about his...

The Los Angeles Police Department says one of its officers was shot and wounded by Long Beach police.

Where were the career people on whom we count to keep the department honest? The latest report concludes that the two most senior people responsible for protecting immigration judges from political influence had "sufficient evidence . . . to have realized that political or ideological affiliations played a role" and that they should have spoken up to others who could do something. The same criticism was leveled at those who ran the office overseeing the honors program and lateral hiring. Where were they? It is disappointing that they failed to act forcefully to protect the department they served. Attorney General...

The Believer's Guide to Legal Issues is favorably reviewed in the August, 2008, issue of Pulpit Helps Magazine. "The author gives practical advice on a number of issues," notes reviewer Glen H. Jones, writing in the Pastors' Library literary section. "[Author Stephen Bloom's] legal calling is geared toward Christians who must often face conflicts between the law and their Christian profession," he continues. Jones rates the book "highly recommended" for all readers. Pulpit Helps has provided help and resources for pastors and Bible teachers for 30 years.

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- One year ago this week, Barack Obama promised activists with the nation's largest abortion business that the first thing he would do as president is overturn every pro-life law in all 50 states. He said his first action would be signing the mislabeled Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). The measure, if it becomes law, would codify Roe v. Wade by making the infamous Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited abortions the law of the land. But it would go further and overturn hundreds of state laws that have put limits on abortion like parental involvement, partial-birth abortion...

The FDA continues its habit of making mountains out of mole hills. The discovery of a single jalapeño with Salmonella Saintpaul at the warehouse of a tiny distributor named Agricola Zaragoza on the McAllen Produce Terminal Market simply doesn’t mean very much. ...Once again, needlessly and with reckless disregard for the rights of innocent people, the FDA has destroyed an industry. ...Dr. Acheson thinks that it is within his authority to destroy the fortunes of innocents. ...Repeating the words “public health” as a mantra, though, does not make it true. The bottom line is that the risk for healthy people...

In the end, this new copyright law is going to suffer the same fate that many other well intentioned laws have suffered in China; most people will probably never even hear about it. I was just in an Internet cafe yesterday. To my right someone was giggling as they watched Meet the Fockers and to my left someone else was spellbound by an old episode of Prison Break. What did I think? I guess I was happy that they could find some enjoyment in the midst of the harsh reality that probably confronts them every day in this developing country.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (Legal Newsline)-A Missouri candidate for the state Legislature says he has returned a $300 contribution from fellow Democrat state Sen. Chris Koster, who's running for attorney general. Dr. Vernon (Doc) Harlan of St. Louis is running for the 71st District state House seat in the Aug. 5 primary. Harlan said he returned the contributions amid recent revelations that Koster's campaign may have "been connected to laundering of political funds."

What is the ages old misconstruction of Shakespeare? "First kill all the lawyers." Well, one might excuse bloggers if they might wish to add the officers of the courts to that death sentence, at least if the experience of the bloggers at New York's "Room 8" blog are concerned. For Ben Smith and his fellow "Room 8" bloggers, the world got a bit topsy-turvey not long ago when he was served with a grand jury subpoena by state prosecutors demanding that the identities of anonymous posters on his website be revealed. Worse, the court wouldn't inform Mr. Smith exactly why...

Drivers who cause fatal accidents while on mobile phones face up to 14 years in jail Last updated at 11:09am on 15.07.08   Getting tough: The new sentencing rules target mobile phone use by drivers. Posed by model. Motorists who cause fatal accidents while texting or talking on mobiles could face up to 14 years in prison from today. Drivers involved in death crashes after drinking or taking drugs face similar penalties, as will those who were driving at greatly excessive speed over long distances. Under new sentencing guidelines sent to the courts today which come into immediate effect, there...

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The Townswomen's Guild are meeting to debate a radical reform in the law on prostitution. Their template? The Swedish model. (edit) The debate comes as the Government here is drawing up proposals for law reform that could de-criminalise prostitutes who would, instead, be offered help to get out of the vice trade or given anti-social behaviour orders, in favour of a crackdown on men who trawl for sex.The approach, championed by women ministers such as Harriet Harman, has met with fierce resistance from the Home Office. While Diane Abbot has tabled an Early Day Motion, to date it has...

Greetings Veterans and lawyers on FR, I received the following email yesterday."is it illegal to misrepresent yourself as a soldier? In any venue. I know of someone who is telling people that she is a four year veteran of the iraq war. she is only twenty..so im sure that she is full of crap...I have family in the armed forces and would like to know becuase it is a great insult to those of us who actually have family and freinds risking thier lives for our country" -Sxxxxxxxxx Gxxxxxx" (name redacted by me) I went to thomas.gov looking through the...

Washington is poised to make driving while talking on hand-held cell phones illegal. New Jersey has already been down this road. The cell-phone ban for Washington will start Tuesday and will be similar to a New Jersey law that went into effect in 2003. Washington's law makes it a secondary offense. That means police must find a driver committing another violation such as speeding before stopping drivers for holding a cell phone up to their ear. New Jersey's law also began as a secondary offense. State officials there found the law toothless and difficult to enforce, said William Cicchetti,...

The nation's largest immigration law firm is under federal scrutiny over whether it helped major U.S. corporations disqualify American job applicants and give thousands of high-paying positions to immigrants. The unprecedented Labor Department inquiry centers on Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy -- a New York firm at the forefront of a political effort to ease hiring of skilled foreign workers. The Labor Department is auditing all pending applications for legal immigrant workers the firm has filed on behalf of its corporate clients. Fragomen's prestigious client roster includes General Electric Co., IBM Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp. and Bank...

The couple's quarrels reached a crisis in 1994, when the wife pried open a bedroom door with a kitchen knife, slashed the sheets and lunged with the blade toward her husband . . . The marriage did not improve. In the 2003 affidavit, the husband testified he was afraid of his wife and had only stayed in the relationship “for the sake of the kids,” their two teenage sons. . . . But about 4:45 a.m. Monday, police said, Glen Denson ambushed his wife, Sharon Denson, at the North Side home of her boyfriend, shot them both and set them...

RALEIGH - To defend itself against a lawsuit by the widows of three American soldiers who died on one of its planes in Afghanistan, a sister company of the private military firm Blackwater has asked a federal court to decide the case using the Islamic law known as Shari’a. The lawsuit “is governed by the law of Afghanistan,” Presidential Airways argued in a Florida federal court. “Afghan law is largely religion-based and evidences a strong concern for ensuring moral responsibility, and deterring violations of obligations within its borders.” If the judge agrees, it would essentially end the lawsuit over a...

In reading the majority opinion I am struck by the utter waste that is involved here... all those years... studying how adherence to legal precedent is the bedrock of the rule of law, when it turns out, all they really needed was a Pew poll, a subscription to the New York Times, and the latest edition of “How to Make War for Dummies.” It is truly stunning that this court has seen fit to arrogate unto itself a role in the most important issue facing any country, self-defense, in a case in which Congress has in fact repeatedly acted. This...

A federal appeals court on Friday invalidated campaign finance rules that give wealthy donors broad latitude in underwriting expensive political ads. Limits on coordinated campaign spending apply too narrowly to time frames just before elections and should be expanded, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in the decision. Judge David Tatel said in the ruling that interest groups often engage in early advertising, in some cases more than a year before an election. The restrictions the Federal Election Commission imposed apply only to spending within 90 days of a congressional election and 120 days...

IN THE AMERICAN hierarchy of relationships, friendship often seems distinctly second-class. We obsess about the "work-family balance," but the leisurely conversation with an old friend is a quick casualty when it conflicts with either one. Just in the last generation, the number of real confidants we have outside the family has dropped substantially, according to one 2006 study. more stories like thisNow, a number of scholars are seeking to shore up friendship in a surprising way: by granting it legal recognition. Some of the rights and privileges restricted to family, they argue, should be given to friends. These could be...

" A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article's tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States did not say every day without fear of legal reprisal. Things are different here. The magazine is on trial. ... Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech. "It is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken," Jeremy Waldron, a legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books...

This is one of the most frightening things I've learned in a long time. Over in the US, a bill has passed the House of Representatives and is heading to Congress – with a huge amount of support. The PRO-IP bill, H.R.4279, significantly increases the state's power to detect and prosecute IP infringement, carrying with it a whole host of new law enforcement positions and capabilities. It establishes an IP Czar, someone with the job of overseeing zealous action on behalf of copyright and trademark owners, and includes such powers as the ability to seize equipment if it contains just...

The Senate is debating a cap-and-trade proposal, and although it's unlikely to pass, it will return because all the major presidential candidates support the concept. Cap and trade extends the long government tradition of proclaiming lofty goals that are impossible to achieve. We've had "wars" against poverty, cancer and drugs; but poverty, cancer and drugs remain. President Bush called his landmark education law No Child Left Behind rather than the more plausible Few Children Left Behind. Carbon-based fuels (oil, coal, natural gas) provide about 85 percent of U.S. energy needs and generate most greenhouse gases. So, the simplest way to...

Earlier this week, we spoke to Senator James Inhofe from the Senate floor, where he led the opposition in debate on the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill. He seemed confident that the bill would not pass in the Senate, and told us that the overwhelming vote to open debate had nothing to do with support for the bill, but the opportunity to argue against massive regulation of energy production in the US. Inhofe apparently had it more right than he knew, as it appears that the debate will end much more quickly than anyone guessed — and that the bill is dead...

Two recent events should give for-profit companies new reasons to re-evaluate the ways in which they use open source software as well as the extent to which they use it. These events are: (1) the release of a new version of the widely used license that covers such software, i.e., the General Public License version 3, and (2) a round of lawsuits filed by the Software Freedom Law Center against for-profit companies using the software for commercial gain. Four companies to date, the largest of which is Verizon Communications Inc., have been sued for violation of the GPL. Although the...

I often find myself wondering how seemingly normal people ever wind up being criminal defense attorneys. When even Harvard law professor and one-time member of O.J. Simpson’s so-called dream team Alan Dershowitz claims that over 90% of all criminal defendants are guilty, why would any sane person want to devote his life to trying to spring hundreds, maybe even thousands, of felons?

The Midwest Book Review has just published the following review of The Believer's Guide to Legal Issues in its June 2008 Reviewer's Bookwatch! Stephen Bloom provides astute counsel to Christian families in "The Believer's Guide to Legal Issues." I found myself quickly engrossed in Stephen's practical counsel, examples, illustrations, and his solid stand on Biblical principles when facing legal issues so prevalent in society today.The chapters are made up of several parts. Each chapter begins with two fictional vignettes reflecting life lessons and more life lessons, Biblical insights, concluding with practical counsel. Individual sections complement each other and integrate Biblical...

Growing global demand and a weak dollar have given us $4-a-gallon gasoline. The way to lower prices would seem obvious: pump more oil domestically and strengthen the dollar. That's too obvious for Congress, apparently, which instead wants to solve the problem through litigation: The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices,

Other gun bloggers (War on Guns and Snowflakes in Hell, to name a couple), have covered the outrageous (and criminal) police harassment of open carry activists in Dickson City, PA. The police thuggery eventually led to the arrest of a man who had broken no laws, and the confiscation of his entirely legal firearm. As I said, this has already been well covered. The reason I am writing about it today is to respond to this editorial piece, "Big difference in right v. smart." Police detained one of the armed diners and temporarily confiscated his weapon when he declined to...

BELLEVUE, Wash., May 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Chicago Alderman Richard Mell ought to be prosecuted like any other negligent gun owner for failing to re-register his firearms under an ordinance he helped pass, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today. "I don't care if anti-gun Mayor Richard Daley supports giving Mell a break, and it doesn't matter that Mell is the father-in-law of Gov. Rod Blagojevich," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. "For years, the draconian ordinance supported by Mell and enforced by Daley has terrorized Chicago gun owners. It's time for Mell to face his...

Stefan Ferrari got his required vaccines before he was 18 months old. At the time, his parents said, he was a healthy, verbal boy. But after his last round of booster shots, Stefan stopped speaking and, now 10 years old, he has not spoken since. Stefan's parents, Marcelo and Carolyn Ferrari of Atlanta, filed suit, alleging the vaccines caused neurological damage to their young son. On Tuesday, the family's lawyer asked the Georgia Supreme Court to let the case against two vaccine manufacturers, Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline, go forward. Lawyer Lanny Bridgers told the court it was bad timing when Stefan...

By a vote of 4-3, the California Supreme Court struck down a state ban on same-sex marriage – changing the definition of marriage by judicial fiat. The decision is a disappointing one and represents another example of an activist judiciary that overreached by taking this issue out of the hands of the state legislature where it belongs. The California high court failed to uphold what the state legislature and an overwhelming majority of California voters clearly understand – that the institution of marriage is limited to one man and one woman.