Legal Research Blog

WARNING: This product contains lead, a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Wash your hands after handling.
I spotted the above warning when shopping around for Christmas trees. Of all items that should be lead-free, I would imagine that Christmas trees should appear at [...]

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MSN Games: Photosensitive Seizure Warning. A very small percentage of people may experience a seizure when exposed to certain visual images, including flashing lights or patterns that may appear in video games. Even people who have no history of seizures or epilepsy may have an undiagnosed condition that can cause these “photosensitive epileptic seizures” while [...]

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Last weekend, I had spotted Donald Kerr’s comments about reinterpreting privacy to mean that the government should have access to our private communications and financial information provided proper safeguards are in place. Who trusts the government to erect proper safeguards? Today, PC World reported that a former FBI and CIA employee had plead [...]

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Was the Fourth Amendment recently repealed? I may have missed it but the Associated Press reports that Donald Kerr recently testified that the time has come for us to adjust our definition of privacy. That’s a one-liner that should scare most Americans, especially when you consider he is the deputy director [...]

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Today, the U.S. Courts announced free public access to federal court records (via PACER). I headed straight to the press release to soak in all the details as I imagined accessing all the wonderful legal briefs hidden behind PACER’s pay wall.
However, before you head to the PACER website, you should know that free access [...]

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When I read accounts describing waterboarding as being a simulated drowning, I thought they strapped the detainee to a board and actually dunked him into a water tank. I was mistaken. As it turns out, waterboarding is a much simpler procedure.

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SFGate.com: Lawmakers Blast Yahoo Executives for Helping China Jail Dissident. While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, said at the end of the three-hour hearing.
According to Wikipedia, “[m]embers of so-called Pygmy groups often consider the term derogatory, instead preferring to be called [...]

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BusinessWeek: Jerry Yang on the Hot Seat. On Nov. 6, Yahoo! CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang answered to Congress for his company’s role in landing Tao behind bars. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs called on Yang on Nov. 6 to explain what reasons the Chinese government gave when it requested information from Tao’s Yahoo [...]

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Senator Patrick Leahy stated that he will not be supporting the nomination of Michael Mukasey for Attorney General over the waterboarding issue. While Mr. Mukasey has indicated that our current laws prohibit waterboarding, he declined to conclude that waterboarding constituted torture. The problem in this case resides with the question and not with [...]

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Los Angeles Times: Democrats Calculate Risk on Tax Hikes. More than two decades after presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale called for tax increases — and lost the White House in a landslide — the Democratic Party is on the verge of a major political gamble: Some of its leading members are proposing an array of [...]

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