On Wednesday August 4, 2020 Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco struck down California’s ban on same sex marriage in a 136 page opinioon, ruling that voter approved Proposition 8 violates the constitutional right of equal protection. Proposition 8 defines marriage as a union between a man…
Articles Posted in David Badertscher
The War Logs: Deciding What to Publish – And What Not to Publish
According to the New York Times, the articles published on July 25 are based on thousands of United States military incident and intelligence reports – records of engagements, mishaps, intelligence on enemy activity and other events from the war in Afghanistan – that were made public on Sunday on the…
Gloria Dinerman
Like others who have expressed their condolances, I felt both saddness and a sense of loss upon hearing that Gloria Dinerman, a prominent Information Sepecialist and business person, had passed away in New Providence, NJ on Sunday July 17, 2010. As mentioned in the obituary below, Gloria will be remembered…
The U.S. Intelligence Community and Top Secret America
More than a dozen Washington Post journalists spent two years developing Top Secret America, a multimedia presentation put together by compiling hundreds of thousands of public records of government organizations and private sector companies. From these records, the Washington Post identified a web of these organizations, both government and private,…
Chambers of the Sea: Who Needs Law Libraries? It’s All Free on the Internet
Many thanks to Jonathan Stock, recently retired as Supervising Law Librarian at the Connecticut Judicial Branch Law Library at Stamford, for writing this fine, thought provoking article. It has been published in the July 2010 issue of AALL Spectrum and we have linked to the Spectrum article with Jonathan’s permission.…
New York County District Attorney: New Policy Regarding Prosecution of Business Entities and Organizations
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., has announced the District Attorney’s Office’s (DANY) new policy on the prosecution of businesses and organizations. Below are links to the DANY Press Release announcing the new policy and the May 27, 2010 DANY memorandum which contains the actual policy http://www.manhattanda.org/whatsnew/press/2010-06-01d.shtml Press Release…
Can Some Forms of Grand Larceny Be Viewed as Hate Crimes?
Apparently prosecutors in Queens County New York think so. This month Queens prosecutors have charged two women with stealing more than $30,000 from three elderly men they had befriended separately. The women were charged with grand larceny as a hate crime. This strategy of treating some hate crimes as larcenous…
U.S.A v. Justin K. Dorvee: Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Decision
On October 1, 2009 I posted an appalant brief for U.S.A v. Justin K. Dorvee on this blog. The Brief was prepared by Paul F. Angioletti, attorney for the defendant-appellant. Mr. Angioletti has now informed me that the Court of Appeals Second Circuit issued an opinion on the Dorvee appeal…
Resources for Librarians Participating Online: Videos, Tip Sheets, Guidelines, Articles, and More
Jaclyn McKewan, Virtual Services and Training Librarian at the Western New York Library Resources Council in Buffalo writes:”People not picking up instant messages is continuing to be a problem, so I created a 7-minute Camtasia video that shows people what to do when they get that message on the screen…
The Third Way: A Narrowly Tailored Broadband Framework
David Badertscher This posting is essentially a followup of two of our earlier postings on this topic which you can find here and here. It begins with two statements released by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on May 6, 2010 in partial response to the recent decision in the…