Legal and Legislative News

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Merck: More Agony from Its Painkiller

Business Week

by Amy Barrett

August 22, 2005

The costly Vioxx verdict makes its plan to take on each claim individually more difficult. But a big settlement is no easy cure, either

Unfortunately for Merck, the Aug. 19 decision by a Texas jury raises big questions about how the company can fend off the mountain of Vioxx suits it faces. It has two possible routes: Strike a big settlement to resolve most of these cases, or take on each case individually. But both approaches are fraught with risk for the drugmaker.

Once Woeful, Alabama Is Model in Child Welfare

The New York Times

by Erik Eckholm

August 20, 2005

As a mother, Stephanie Harris seemed hopeless. She was 29 and a determined crack addict back in 1993, when she was sent to prison for neglecting her six children, including infant twins.

The authorities had little choice, she now agrees, but to give custody of her children to relatives. If history were the guide, in Alabama or perhaps any other state, Ms. Harris might never have regained her children, child welfare officials here say. More likely, the children would have been shuffled among relatives and foster homes.

Study Ranks America's Most Liberal and Conservative Cities

americancityandcounty.com

August 16, 2005

A new nationwide study released by the nonpartisan Bay Area Center for Voting Research (BACVR) ranks the political leanings of every American city and finds that Detroit, Michigan is the most liberal and Provo, Utah the most conservative.

In all, the BACVR researchers examined voting patterns of 237 American cities with populations of over 100,000 and ranked them each on liberal and conservative scales. The list of Americas most liberal cities is dominated by cities with large African American populations that are concentrated in the Northeast, Midwest and California. Conversely, the study found that the staunchest conservative cities are clustered in the South and interior West and have extremely low numbers of African American residents.

Lynn presentation leaks onto Net

TechWorld

by Kieren McCarthy

July 29, 2005

The controversial presentation by researcher Michael Lynn regarding exploitation of known holes in Cisco's router software has leaked onto the Internet.

This week, Cisco first pressured Lynn's former company Internet Security Systems (ISS) into removing the presentation from the line-up at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. Then, when Lynn resigned from ISS in protest and threatened to go ahead with the presentation, Cisco took out an injunction against him. Lynn nevertheless did the presentation stating that he "had to do what was right for the country and the national infrastructure". Cisco, ISS, Black Hat and Lynn have since signed a legal agreement in which Black Hat and Lynn promised not to make the material available to anyone else. Lynn was also put under a series of controls including "unlawfully disassembling or reverse engineering Cisco code in the future ... [and] using Cisco decompiled code currently in his possession or control for any purpose."

Bush Wants Land Transferred to City

The Washington Post (DC)

by Spencer S. Hsu and Dana Hedgpeth

July 16, 2005

D.C. Control of Mostly Waterfront Property Could Increase Tax Revenue by Millions.

President Bush proposed yesterday to give the District government control over roughly 200 acres of federal land in the city, most of it waterfront property where redevelopment could increase D.C. tax revenue by tens of millions of dollars a year. The 15 acres of National Park Service land northwest of RFK would be turned over to the city on the condition that some of it be provided to a D.C. public charter boarding school, such as one run by the nonprofit SEED Foundation, city officials said.

Court affirms partial-birth ban unconstitutional

World Net Daily

July 8, 2005

Critics say judges 'fail to understand the barbarity of the procedure'

A federal appeals court today upheld a district court decision striking down the federal law banning partial-birth abortion. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in St. Louis agreed with a federal district court judge in Nebraska that the ban, passed by Congress in 2003, is unconstitutional because it does not contain an exception for the health of the mother.

Florida Prosecutors Receive Limbaugh's Medical Records

The New York Times (FL)

July 7, 2005

A Florida judge released some medical records of the conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh to prosecutors on Wednesday, allowing them to move forward in a long-stalled investigation into whether Mr. Limbaugh illegally bought painkillers.

The medical records have remained sealed since investigators seized them because Mr. Limbaugh appealed, arguing that the seizure violated his privacy rights. He lost at the circuit and appellate court levels, and the Florida Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Colorado Homeschoolers Fear New State Database Threatens Freedom

School Reform News (CO)

by Ben DeGrow

July 5, 2005

Homeschool activists in Colorado knew they had reason to be wary of the new majority in the state legislature, but they also were disappointed by one of their allies when Gov. Bill Owens (R) signed a bill changing the state's immunization tracking system.

"There is no way to guarantee the privacy issue. There is an agenda out there, and it's to do away with our freedom of choice." Treon Goossen Concerned Parents of Colorado Homeschool. In the 2004 elections, several state lawmakers who had demonstrated support for the homeschool agenda were replaced by less-supportive officials. Familiar legislation that had been opposed--and previously defeated--by the homeschool community progressed this year through the House and Senate.

Smoking Gun Evidence: Juvenile and Family Court Decisions are driven by the Goal of Maximizing Child Protection System Federal Fund Revenue

The Sociology Center

by James Roger Brown

July 3, 2005

Parents nationwide have complained for decades that their families were destroyed and children seized by corrupt child protection agencies for no other reason than to obtain federal funds for State governments.

They have been telling the truth all along. Clear evidence has been discovered documenting how organized crime methods and procedures are integrated into juvenile and family courts. This documentation has been assembled through the combined efforts of independent researchers in California, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, researchers for the American Family Rights Association, and document research conducted by The Sociology Center.

Justices Rule Police Do Not Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect Someone

nytimes.com

by Linda Greenhouse

June 28, 2005

The ruling applies even for a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband making an arrest mandatory for a violation.

The decision, with an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and dissents from Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Colorado. The appeals court had permitted a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman's pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.

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