Month: February 2014

An anti-drug pencil with a hidden message:

No, that isn’t a Photoshop. Pencils like those really were
manufactured back
in 1998. Apparently, no one involved in making and distributing
the product picked up on the problem until a fourth grader pointed
it out. “We’re actually a little embarrassed that we didn’t notice
that sooner,” a spokesperson at the Bureau for At-Risk Youth said
at the time.

Now these
jokers have revived the design and are selling pencils
bearing the slogan again, this time with more self-awareness. It
comes in a pack of five, so if you want to mount four of them on
the wall in the above arangement you can still have one left over
to write with.

[Via Boing
Boing.] 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that a federal law which
“forbids the bringing of large securities class actions based upon
violations of state law” does not preclude the bringing of state
class action suits against associates of billionaire financier
Allen Stanford, who is currently serving a 110-year federal prison
sentence for securities fraud.

At issue in Chadbourne & Parke LLP v. Troice is
whether the the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of
1998, which says plaintiffs may not bring a class action suit
“based upon the statutory or common law of any State” when those
plaintiffs allege “a misrepresentation or omission of a material
fact in connection with the purchase or sale of a covered
security,” precludes the state class actions filed in response to
what has been described as Standford’s securities fraud “Ponzi
scheme.”

Writing for a 7-2 majority, Justice Stephen Breyer ruled today
that federal law does not bar the state suits from proceeding. “The
basic consequence of our holding,” Breyer wrote, “is that, without
limiting the Federal Government’s prosecution power in any
significant way, it will permit victims of this (and similar)
frauds to recover damages under state law.”

Writing in dissent, Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by Justice
Samuel Alito, charged the majority with weakening federal
protections for future investors victimized by securities fraud.
“Today’s decision, to a serious degree, narrows essential
protection for our national securities markets, protection vital
for their strength and integrity,” Kennedy wrote. “The result will
be a lessened confidence in the market, a force for instability
that should otherwise be countered by the proper interpretation of
federal securities laws and regulations.”

At a glance, today’s majority features an usual ideological
line-up, with conservatives such as Justice Clarence Thomas joining
the decision of liberal Justice Stephen Breyer. But in fact Thomas
has a well-established record of siding with the Court’s liberal
bloc in what might be termed “regulatory federalism” cases. In
2009, for instance, Thomas sided with Justice John Paul Stevens’
6-3 ruling in Wyeth
v. Levine, which held that federal law did not preclude a
state lawsuit filed against a pharmaceutical company. Two years
later, in Williamson
v. Mazda Motor of America, Inc., Thomas filed a
concurrence explaining why the federal Motor Vehicle Safety Act
should not trump a more restrictive California seat belt
regulation. His vote in that case prompted one liberal legal
advocate to describe
Thomas as a “surprising ally for progressives.”

Today’s ruling in Chadbourne & Parke LLP v. Troice
is available here.

Writing today for a unanimous Supreme Court, Chief Justice John
Roberts affirmed the power of a military base commander to oversee
what goes on in a government-designated “protest area.”

The case of United States v. Apel arose from a March
2003 incident when an anti-war protester named John Dennis Apel was
arrested and convicted for trespassing and vandalism at
California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base. After several more such
incidents, Apel was banned from setting foot on Vandenberg property
for a period of three years, a restriction that included banning
him from a designated protest zone. Apel refused to comply with
that order, however, and was subsequently removed from the protest
area.

According to Apel, because the protest area is located on a
parcel of land adjacent to a public highway that traverses base
property, the protest area itself is not under the “exclusive right
of possession” of the U.S. government. Apel further argued that the
protest area lies “outside the entrance” to Vandenberg, and should
therefore not count as military property since “no military
operations are performed” on it.

The Supreme Court unanimously rejected those arguments. “We
decline Apel’s invitation to require civilian judges to examine U.
S. military sites around the world, parcel by parcel, to determine
which have roads, which have fences, and which have a sufficiently
important, persistent military purpose,” declared Chief Justice
John Roberts. “The use-it-or-lose-it rule that Apel proposes would
frustrate the administration of military facilities and raise
difficult questions for judges, who are not expert in military
operations.”

Notably, today’s ruling did not address the separate question of
whether Apel’s removal from the protest area violated his rights
under the First Amendment. That issue will be the subject of
further proceedings by the lower courts. Two members of the Supreme
Court, however, did signal their sympathy for Apel on this point.
Writing in concurrence, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, observed, “When the Government permits the
public onto part of its property, in either a traditional or
designated public forum, its ‘ability to permissibly restrict
expressive conduct is very limited.’” As for Apel, Ginsburg’s
concurence added, “it is questionable whether Apel’s ouster from
the protest area can withstand constitutional review.”

The opinion in United States v. Apel is available
here.

“It is much easier to apologize
than it is to get permission,” the popular saying goes. One school
in Texas has taught a student a different lesson: better to keep
quiet and hope no one notices than to apologize for a mistake. What
happened,
via WLS:

Christi Seale says her 17-year-old son Chaz
accidentally confused a beer can for a soda can and packed it in
his lunch.

“He was in a hurry, running late. We were talking about school and
he put it all together and took off for school,” she said.

When he realized his mistake at school, Chaz gave the unopened beer
to his teacher. But that teacher then reported it to the principal
at Livingston High School, who suspended the boy for three days and
then sent him to an alternative school for two months.

Chaz said, “I gave it to the teacher thinking I wouldn’t get in
trouble, and I got in trouble.”

That kind of tone deaf, zero tolerance informed move isn’t going
to discourage students from underage drinking, it’s going to
discourage them from alerting school officials to inadvertent
infractions of school policy.

Meanwhile, a student in Tennessee learned never to consent to a
search, even when you don’t think you have anything to hide.

Via News Channel 5:

On Thursday, Duren-Sanner, a senior at Northeast High
School drove his father’s car to school. During a random
lockdown, his car was chosen to be searched.

Duren-Sanner gave permission because he said he had nothing to
hide.

His father is a commercial fisherman on the West Coast and had
apparently left a fishing knife in the car. Duren-Sanner’s father
said it might have been wedged between one of the seats.

Duren-Sanner said he told school officials and the Sheriff’s
department the car was his father’s and he didn’t know the knife
was in it.

“He’s like ‘it doesn’t matter it was in your possession anyway,'”
Duren-Sanner said.

School officials suspended him for 10 days, the maximum allowed
under school policy, and then he was reprimanded to attend 90 days
at an alternative school.

He’s probably learned his lesson, not about the dangers of
fishing knives, but about the dangers of consenting to a search.
The beer can and the fishing knife cost the two students a combined
13 days of suspension and five months at “alternative” schools.
Administrators at both schools insist procedures were followed, and
what are they getting paid the big bucks for if not to defer to the
rule book and deny access to their schools to students who’ve
inadvertently run afoul of those rules, even when they haven’t hurt
anyone. Whether they like it or not, they’ve taught the students,
and any classmates paying attention, a valuable lesson on authority
and how stupid and dangerous it can be.