Free Republic

MYFOXNY.COM - Sophomore Jackie Genovese, 16, of New Jersey, had the perfect prom dress and date. But tragedy struck last week when her boyfriend of two years was killed in a car accident. Jackie's boyfriend, James, died on the way home from a baseball team dinner. He was a popular Jackson High School senior only weeks from graduation. She bought her $1,200 dress at Freehold's Diane and Co., also known for their popular Oxygen show "Dress Coutoure." She wanted a refund for her dress so she could help pay for her boyfriend's funeral. Jackie's mom asked the owners of the...

Yesterday, Michael Dreeben, the attorney representing the U.S. government, tried to defend the controversial “honest services” statute from a constitutional challenge in front of the Supreme Court. When Dreeben informed the Court that the feds have essentially criminalized any ethical lapse in the workplace, Justice Breyer exclaimed, [T]here are 150 million workers in the United States. I think possibly 140 [million] of them flunk your test. There it is. Some of us have been trying to draw more attention to the dangerous trend of overcriminalization. Judge Alex Kozinski co-authored an article in my book entitled “You’re (Probably) a Federal Criminal.”...

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. plans to close most operations Friday and said nearly 7,000 employees will lose their jobs as the lender becomes one of the biggest casualties of the U.S. housing downturn. Experts said it is likely the Melville, New York-based company will have to seek bankruptcy protection, and no later than Monday. In a statement, American Home (Charts) on Thursday night confirmed earlier reports that it was ceasing most operations. The company said its employee base will be reduced to about 750 workers, down from the 7,409 it reported at the end of...

<p>Conflicts of interest are the bane of the news business. Last year, CNBC was accused of one. It has now taken steps to prevent such a thing from happening again. As a result, no one can accuse the network of being soft on ethics. But is it now being too hard?</p>

<p>We teach a course on White Collar Crime at Stanford. Planning our exam questions just after the recent corporate scandals became dominant news, we thought up an angle on a case just beginning to make headlines. In the hypothetical question, the CEO of a big company is charged with a crime related to her trading in the stock of another, wholly unrelated company, and she publicly declares her innocence of that crime. We asked whether the government could make this person's protestation of innocence itself a federal securities fraud crime in connection with the stock of the company in which she is a CEO.</p>

United Nations human rights guidelines for businesses should be ready for publication by next summer, according to the November issue of Ethical Performance. EP says work on drafting the guidelines has been making 'significant progress', and that the five-strong UN Commission on Human Rights working group responsible for drawing them up is confident the final document will be ready by August 2003.The latest draft of the guidelines, Responsibilities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights, includes a new section suggesting that companies should pay 'reparations' to anyone 'adversely affected' by their failure to comply with...

Make Pinocchio CEOs Pay By ROGER LOWENSTEIN This was a tough week for corporate CEOs. They had to swear under oath that the numbers they are reporting to investors are actually true. I suppose you could call it putting your mouth where other people's money is. This provision of the newly enacted corporate reform law has gotten loads of ink, as well it should. CEOs could be criminally liable for bearing false witness. We can only hope that the requirement to truth-tell does not represent a trend, else so many other institutions, such as politics and matrimony not to mention...

Is anyone aware of a stockholders association whose purpose is to serve as a watch dog over activities of public corporations.

I know a distinguished social pathologist who is wondering, at this juncture, whether there is a new component in the economic picture in America. Something is certainly new, given the near-daily advent of a fresh company detected in evasion and worse. The free-market models give us: entrepreneurs; stockholders; accountants; federal watchdogs; bankruptcies; — and jails. The mix of those elements is supposed to encourage thrift; investment; merchandising; and profits — to the stockholders and to the buying public.What appears to the inquirer as unique in today's situation is a body of actors who disengage from the accepted disciplines and...