Law

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered Creation Ministries International and Answers in Genesis to settle their dispute with private arbitration, the outcome sought by Answers in Genesis and affirming the trial court’s ruling. CMI had hoped to force the U.S. dispute into the Australian courts, where a second lawsuit is ongoing and has its next hearing in April. This decision opens a route for AiG to stop the Australian proceedings in favor of the private arbitration that has been ordered in the United States. The court’s decision is here (PDF). It appears to me that CMI is going to be held to the agreements that its previous board of directors signed, however foolish, irresponsible, or unethical it was of them to do so. As those previous board members resigned in return for indemnification, it doesn’t appear to me that CMI is likely to obtain any remedy for the wrongs it alleges have occurred. It looks like AiG operated within the bounds of the law in its actions. ...

So much for change. ABC News: The Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. The case involves five men who claim to have been victims of extraordinary rendition — including current Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, another plaintiff in jail in Egypt, one in jail in Morocco, and two now free. They sued a San Jose Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan, accusing the flight-planning company of aiding the CIA in flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured. ...

At The Agitator blog, Radley Balko writes what Michael Phelps should have said when a photograph of him taking a bong hit was published in a tabloid: Dear America, I take it back. I don’t apologize. Because you know what? It’s none of your goddamned business. I work my ass off 10 months per year. It’s that hard work that gave you all those gooey feelings of patriotism last summer. If during my brief window of down time I want to relax, enjoy myself, and partake of a substance that’s a hell of a lot less bad for me than alcohol, tobacco, or, frankly, most of the prescription drugs most of you are taking, well, you can spare me the lecture. ...

Obama’s inauguration speech was censored in China. They didn’t like these two sentences: “Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.” The words “and communism” were removed from the Chinese translation by the state-run Xinhua news agency. “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history.” That whole sentence was removed from the Chinese translation. Rick Warren’s invocation speech was the low point in the career of a U.S. Army officer who gave in to pressure to conform when his commanding officer expected everyone to applaud, saying “God Bless him for having the courage to pray for all of the lost souls in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ!" On Obama’s first day in office, he issued executive orders to suspend military commissions for 120 days, close Guantanamo Bay in the next year, require all government agency interrogations to comply with the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation, freeze salaries for the 100 top executive branch officials, reverse George W. Bush’s executive order allowing former presidents and their relatives to keep presidential materials out of the National Archives beyond the 12-year statutory limit, close all CIA secret prisons, and call for a review of all U.S. government detention procedures. The Obameter is tracking Obama’s campaign promises. So far he’s kept five, compromised on one, stalled on one, taken no action on 488, and broken none. He will need to delay, if not break, some of his spending promises… UPDATE (February 17, 2009): So far, it appears that Obama has no intention of keeping his promise to post all bills to the web for five days of public comment prior to signing them. He’s broken that promise repeatedly already.

Radley Balko, guest-blogging at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, describes three police officers, asking whether each has engaged in egregious enough conduct to be fired: One, Shoving a 71-year-old Walmart greeter to the ground and, when another customer came to assist, shoving that customer through a glass door?Two, How about three DWI incidents within a one-year span, including one in which the officer ran a roadblock, then had to be tasered, pepper-sprayed, and wrestled to the ground; another in which he hit another car, then left the scene of the accident; and another in which he fell asleep in his cruiser in front of a school, while in drive, with his foot resting on the brake?Three, How about an officer with an otherwise stellar record, who has a reputation in the department for honesty, but who became an outspoken critic of the war on drugs, and on one occasion declined to arrest a man after finding a single marijuana plant growing outside the man’s home?Can you guess which of these officers lost their jobs for the described conduct? Read Balko’s post to find out. ...

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great (not to imply that the United States is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee. ...

The City of Phoenix’s $97.4 million sales tax subsidy to the CityNorth retail center project in north Phoenix has been declared unconstitutional, a violation of the Arizona Constitution’s gift clause. All three members of the appeals court agreed, writing in their opinion that “We think these payments are exactly what the Gift Clause was intended to prohibit." The city’s subsidy would have granted $97.4 million in sales tax revenues (or less, not to exceed 50% of the sales taxes collected by CityNorth businesses) over 11 years to the project developer, the Klutznick Company, in return for 3,180 parking spaces, including 200 parking lot spaces set aside for public use for “park and ride,” for the next 45 years. The ruling found that the only public benefit for which the city could legitimately be paying were the 200 “park and ride” spaces, and that the city may still pay market rate for those 200 spaces (probably about $6 million over 45 years), but not for the other 3,180 spaces. The appeals court’s ruling may be found here (PDF). Congratulations to Goldwater litigation director Clint Bolick and the owners of the six small businesses that were plaintiffs in the case: Meyer Turken of Turken Industrial Properties, Ken Cheuvront of Cheuvront Wine and Cheese Cafe and Cheuvront Construction (and Democratic State Senator), Zul Gilliani who owns an ice cream shop at Paradise Valley Mall, James Iannuzo of Sign-a-Rama, Kathy Rowe of Music Together, and Justin Shafer of Hava Java. The Goldwater Institute team initially lost the case, Turken v. Gordon, at the trial court level in Maricopa County Superior Court. The City of Phoenix tried unsuccessfully to get an award of $600,000 in attorney’s fees from the Goldwater Institute in an attempt to chill future public interest lawsuits; now they’ll no doubt appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court. (Previously.)

The cases continue to mount–when police officers come to search property and they are confronted by dogs, they often shoot and kill them, even if they are puppies. A Milwaukee resident whose Labrador-Springer Spaniel mix was killed by police in 2004 has filed a lawsuit against the city, and she requested a list of every dog killed by city policy for the last nine years. There were 434–a dead dog every seven and a half days, and that’s just one city. In Oklahoma, a police officer pulled into a driveway to ask a woman for directions, and when the woman’s Wheaton Terrier came bounding toward him, he shot and killed it. The police refused to do anything about the woman’s complaint, and tried to pay her off to shut her up when she let them know that her security cameras had captured the incident. She also sued. Radley Balko at The Agitator has been doing a great job of collecting and reporting on cases of unwarranted police killings of dogs. His latest summary of cases, from which the above two cases were taken, is his 16th “puppycide” blog post.

In Montgomery County, Maryland, teens have found a new use for speed cameras–getting revenge on people they don’t like or who have wronged them. Since the tickets from photo radar cameras are issued to the owners of the cars whose license plates are captured, they print out fake license plates on glossy photo paper, stick them over their own license plates, and then go out speeding. This shows yet another flaw in the photo radar ticket process. I’ve speculated that registering your cars in the name of an LLC or trust is probably sufficient to make it difficult to assign individual responsibility to a speeding incident. UPDATE (December 23, 2008): In Australia, an even more creative revenge against a mobile speed camera–have it issue tickets to itself! They could have just noted the plate number and followed the example of the Maryland teens, rather than stealing the actual plate… (Thanks, Adam, for the link.) ...

Two ex-employees of Diskeeper Corporation have filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court after being fired, charging that the company makes Scientology training a mandatory condition of employment. Diskeeper founder and CEO Craig Jensen is a high-level Scientologist (OT VIII) and member of the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE), which means that he follows Hubbard “management technology” in how he runs his businesses and donates a portion of revenues to the Church of Scientology. UPDATE (December 25, 2008): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more. ...