THE LEGAL INTELLIGENCER: The state Attorney General’s Office has decided not to ask the Supreme Court to reinstate several dismissed charges against three former Penn State officials awaiting trial for allegedly covering up sex abuse by serial child molester Jerry Sandusky. In January, the Superior Court quashed charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy […]
Pennsylvania’s sleazy primary elections
The big losers in last Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary: the voters of Pennsylvania As long as our political system is awash in unaccountable money and untruthful negative ads; so long as our votes don’t count; and so long as our elected representatives don’t even have to tell us whom or what they support, nothing else in […]
Canada Will Move to Legalize Marijuana Next Year
by Phil Smith This article was produced in collaboration with AlterNet and first appeared here. DRUG WAR CHRONICLE: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, elected last fall, campaigned on a promise that his Liberal government would legalize marijuana. Now, we’re getting an idea of just when that is going to happen. Speaking at the UN General Assembly Special Session […]
LETTER: Arriving in Erbil and Wondering: What Lies Ahead
by Cathy Breen April 24, 2015 Erbil, Kurdistan–Wherever I look, tall, unfinished concrete buildings, accompanied by construction cranes, loom over the city. It is somewhat eerie because I see no movement inside or around any of the buildings, none whatsoever. I arrived in Erbil five days ago. Since then, meetings, family visits, efforts to relearn […]
Russia’s Richest Woman
By Slava Tsukerman Two publications appeared last week in Russian media about Yelena Baturina, Russia’s richest woman and wife of former Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. According to one of the publications Moscow authorities made a decision to withdraw from a company affiliated with the structures of Yelena Baturina, about 7.4 hectares (18 acres) of land […]
Emily’s List’s sleazy attack ad in the Pennsylvania Senate race
WASHINGTON POST: …In this case, Women Vote, an arm of Emily’s List, a Political Action Committee that seeks to elect pro-choice Democratic women, is using words “true” and “truth” and even cites a fact checking organization to advance a deeply misleading claim. The group got away with it because television stations in Pennsylvania kept running […]
Kane: Criminal Charges Result of Retaliation
LEGAL INTELLIGENCER: Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane has argued that the criminal charges against her should be quashed because criminal prosecutions for grand jury leaks are rare, and only occurred in her case because of two former state prosecutors’ efforts to retaliate against her. Defense attorneys for Kane filed a motion Wednesday alleging that Kane […]
How the Other Fifth Lives
NEW YORK TIMES: For years now, people have been talking about the insulated world of the top 1 percent of Americans, but the top 20 percent of the income distribution is also steadily separating itself — by geography and by education as well as by income. This self-segregation of a privileged fifth of the population […]
LETTER An Australian physician’s call for opiate and alcohol maintenance in medical and pharmacy practice
EDITOR: The following is from a prominent Australian physician who has devoted decades of his career to treating opiate and alcohol addicts in a run down area of Sidney and reporting on his findings. “One might think that after 50 years of opiate research in America that there would be some voice calling for normalization of […]
McGinty tops Sestak for Senate nomination
PHILLY.COM: Katie McGinty won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, beating Joe Sestak with a late surge fueled by millions of dollars and high-profile party support from Washington… For Sestak, a retired admiral and former congressman from Delaware County, the night seemed to bring an unorthodox political career to a halt, dashing the […]
Can a Black or Latino feel confident of a fair trial by a Lancaster County jury?
We were called for three days of jury duty but were dismissed shorty after noon of the first day for want of need. However, looking over the hundred plus people who showed up caused us to reflect on how we would feel if we were an African American or a Latino on trial. Supposedly the […]
Voters may count in 2016
By Dick Miller WE.CONNECT.DOTS: What a time for Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders to be running for President. Both propose to deliver us from evil of the one-percenters, albeit by contrasting approaches. If either or both open the door, do we have the will to battle for what belongs to us? A summer of […]
LETTER: “LNP remains a lily-white ‘newspaper’…”
Re: LNP takes cheap shot at Hillary Clinton by publishing Lewistown Sentinel bogus editorial NEWSLANC’S editor responded to a comment: “EDITOR: We believe there has ben a significant improvement at LNP over the past year or two While we find fault with them from time to time, we also have reason to be displeased at times […]
Ethics Rules for Pot Practice Less Hazy
LEGAL INTELLIGENCER: …[According to the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania:] “It is apparent that once a jurisdiction makes the policy decision to authorize some form of marijuana-related activity, those who choose to engage in such activity are better served if the legal profession is able to advise clients engaged in such activities […]