
Posting to the blog will stop for Christmas break. I will resume posting on or around January 5th.
Remarks and observations concerning American law and cultural studies as it relates to courses taken by students in the University of Osnabrück's and University of Münster's foreign law programs.
What began as a lowbrow parody of a high school principal goes before a federal appeals court this week.Seems hard to believe that schools could possibly punish students for speech they engage in outside of school, but the Internet has truly changed the nature of speech. The Philadelphia Enquirer has more.
The case of Justin Layshock, who lanced his principal with an unflattering Internet "profile" created on a home computer, has become a battleground pitting Pennsylvania school administrators against groups that defend free-speech rights.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia will hear arguments from each side Wednesday.
Mr. Layshock used his grandmother's computer in December 2005 to create a fictitious profile of Hickory High School Principal Eric Trosch. Mr. Layshock, then a high school senior, made fun of the principal's bulk and implied that he smoked marijuana. Mr. Layshock posted the profile on the Internet social site Myspace.com.
Angered, Mr. Trosch and administrators of the Hermitage School District in Mercer County suspended Mr. Layshock from school for 10 days. After that, they placed him in an "alternative" education program that Mr. Layshock considered inferior.
A small-town Massachusetts police chief who authorities say promoted, organized and profited from a firearms exposition where children were encouraged to shoot machine guns and where an 8-year-old killed himself with a Micro Uzi was charged Thursday with involuntary manslaughter.The elements of involuntary manslaughter under Massachusetts law are:Although the event was promoted as an opportunity for children to fire machine guns under the supervision of certified instructors, 8-year-old Christopher Bizilj had been supervised by a 15-year-old boy who was "knowledgeable about guns" but not certified as a firearms instructor, Hampden County District Attorney William M. Bennett said in outlining charges against Pelham Police Chief Edward B. Fleury and two others.
The law that organized the Homeland Security office first lists Homeland Security's duty to recognize that government itself can't secure the state without God, even before mentioning other duties, which include distributing millions of dollars in federal grants and analyzing possible threats.This seems to raise the same question that I ask myself every time I see an athlete praise God after a sporting event. If both teams ask for God's help with winning, do members of the losing team blame God for the loss? In the instance above, if God gets credit for securing the State of Kentucky, might he be blamed should something terrible happen there? Probably not. Instead the blame will be placed at the feet of "abortionists" gays and the ACLU. (follow the link and see quote number one if you are unsure what this means).