Free Republic

I started thinking about this glut of lawyers at the top of the federal government and realized that the next four years is going to be even worse that I originally thought. President - lawyer Vice President - lawyer First Lady - lawyer Sec State - lawyer Attorney General - lawyer (of course) Sec Interior - lawyer Agriculture - lawyer Homeland Security - lawyer Trade Representative - lawyer Senate Majority Leader - lawyer Plus the other ~ 60 lawyers in the senate and the ~ 130 lawyers in the House. And then there are all the lawyers that are on...

The dispatches arrived in a bunch and pointed too much to the same conclusion to be coincidence. The conclusion: We're doomed. And it's not al-Qaida doing us in. We're doing it to ourselves. In what is surely the tip of the social iceberg, a New England grade school has joined schools across the country in prohibiting the kids from playing tag at recess. Touch football is also banned. The schools are growingly - and legitimately - fearful of lawsuits over playground accidents by litigious parents. Seesaws and jungle gyms have long since disappeared from playgrounds. But there is probably more...

NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 4: A city consumer court has asked a leading beverage company to pay Rs 5,000 as compensation to a buyer who found a dead fly in a whisky bottle of the company. "The very sight of a dead fly in such drink causes trauma to a consumer particularly when he detects the foreign object after consuming some quantity of the drink," observed the Delhi State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission headed by President Justice J D Kapoor and Member Ruminita Mittal. Justice Kapoor rejected the contention of the company, Shaw Wallace distilleries, that there was no proof to...

JAG, we are told, mistakenly thought the open-tip round was the same as hollow-point ammunition, which is banned. The original open-tip was known as Sierra MatchKing and broke all records for accuracy in the past 30 years. The difference between the open-tip and the hollow point is that the open tip is a design feature that improves accuracy while the hollow point is designed for increasing damage when it hits a target. About 10 days ago, the Army JAG in Iraq ordered all snipers to stop using the open-tip 175-grain M118LR bullet, claiming, falsely, it was prohibited. Instead of the...

LOS ANGELES - O.J. Simpson on Friday questioned the system that allowed both him and actor Robert Blake to be found liable for murder after being acquitted in criminal court, calling it "double jeopardy." "I still don't get how anyone can be found not guilty of a murder and then be found responsible for it in any way shape or form," Simpson said in a phone interview from his Florida home. "... If you're found not guilty, how can you be found responsible? I'd love to hear how that's not double jeopardy." Simpson said he had no opinion about Blake's...

WASHINGTON - The House on Thursday passed a bill that would take away lawyers' licenses if they repeatedly file frivolous lawsuits, the latest in a Republican drive to crack down on what they consider costly abuses of the legal system. Supporters of the bill, which passed 228-184, said lawsuits deemed baseless by a judge for flimsy facts or faulty interpretations of the law are a waste of court time and often a bonanza for lawyers — rather than a chance to recoup legitimate damages for clients. In a statement, the White House called the bill "a step in the right...

You can count on your constitutional due process rights if you are a thief, a rapist, or a murderer. But if you're accused of committing a crime against the environment, you may as well tear up the Constitution and bury it in a landfill—or better yet, send it for recycling. That, at least, is the message of the legal tactics that the government has employed in its two-decade-long crusade against John Rapanos, a Michigan developer. Rapanos' crime? He shifted sand from one part of his property to another without a wetland permit, a felony under the Clean Water Act. Rapanos'...

There are few people more loathsome in this world than child molesters. Society spends billions every year investigating, apprehending, prosecuting, incarcerating and treating people who sexually exploit children. But in California, pedophiles are a protected class who in the realm of housing enjoy all the special anti-discrimination rights and privileges granted to minorities, the handicapped, homosexuals and others. In a column she wrote for The Wall Street Journal, Catherine Seipp of the Independent Women's Forum said California's version of Megan's Law includes a provision that prohibits landlords from using the state Megan's Law database to weed out undesirable tenants, potential...

I've been hanging around playgrounds. No, not like that -- there's no need to call the police, or keep your children locked indoors. Maybe what I should say is we've been hanging around playgrounds. You see, I have my own little girl, so my presence among the slides and swings is perfectly legitimate. Like any dad, I'm a slave to my wee one's thrill-seeking demands. I push, slide and climb, both to make her happy, and to ensure she's safe. I've found myself wedged inside playground tubes too tiny to comfortably fit a dachshund, and I've smacked my head on...

NOW --- LET'S TALK A BIT ABOUT GUN CONTROL I mentioned this above .. but let's bring it up again. Gun control. For decades the left has been eager to disarm the American people. Democrats and liberals have been dedicated to the idea that only government should have guns, that the people should totally and completely put their right of self defense to government. How would you like to have been one of the people in New Orleans who sat out the storm in their house, only to now find to now find predatory looters trying to come through the...

<p>"She looked beautiful," attorney George Felos said, emerging from a visit to her room. He claimed that Terri was "resting comfortably."</p> <p>"In all the years I've seen Mrs. Schiavo, I have never seen such a look of peace and beauty upon her," he insisted. Felos's comments were sharply at odds with accounts from her family and their lawyers, who say her eyes are sunken, her skin is flaking and that she's bleeding from the eyes and mouth.</p>

Unlike the FAKE cases that have been highly circulated online for the last several years (see http://www.StellaAwards.com/bogus.html for details), the following cases have been researched from public sources and are confirmed TRUE by the ONLY legitimate source for the Stella Awards: www.StellaAwards.com . To confirm this copy is legitimate, see http://www.StellaAwards.com/2004.html You may forward this issue, so long as you send it in its entirety. MEDIA OUTLETS: See http://www.thisistrue.com/2004.html *BEFORE* running the awards! (That page will have any updates and corrections, too.) -v- #6: The Tribune Co. of Chicago, Ill. The newspaper chain owns several newspapers, as well as the...