Year: 2008
Trimming the Elements to Make the Law a Lie
Iowa Champion Charles Kenville posts a complaint about the unfairness of drug threshold levels in Iowa: Because the threshold level for a mandatory 25 year prison sentence on methamphetamine charges is so low (five grams), prosecutors have unconscionable power over a defendant’s fate during plea bargaining… The injustice with the low threshold is that the… Read more
A Hard Drive Across the Border
New York Criminal Defense Lawyer Scott Greenfield has some comments about a disturbing Fourth Amendment ruling. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects everyone in the United States from unreasonable searches. And I’m pretty sure that the U.S. government can’t conduct arbitrary searches of U.S. citizens outside the country either. But when we cross the border,… Read more
What Competition In Aviation Means To Us
Kip is making fun of an op-ed by Robert Crandall in the New York Times, and rightly so. Consider the first paragraphs of Crandall’s missive: Thirty years ago this fall, Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Since then, America’s airline system has greatly deteriorated. I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. Another… Read more
Network Admin Kitteh
This is my cat, Buffy. Click through to vote for her. Read more
Earthquake!
We had a 5.4 magnitude earthquake in Illinois this morning. It hit around 4:36, so I was asleep and missed the whole thing. Bummer. Quakes are really rare in these parts and it would have been fun. 5.4 isn’t much of a quake, but it’s huge for Illinois. It also attracts a lot of attention because… Read more