Category Archives: legal news

legal news, national news, State news

Transgender issue taking strange turn

Transgender-Bathroom-600x321

I am trying to understand this issue, but it’s escaping me … so far.

The Obama administration is going to send out a “directive” to public school systems throughout the country advising them against discriminating against “transgender” students.

It won’t have the “force of law,” according to federal officials. It will warn districts that they face being denied federal funds if they fail to comply with the directive.

Check this out:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/obama-administration-to-issue-decree-on-transgender-access-to-school-restrooms/ar-BBsZoch?li=BBnb7Kz

What is giving me so much grief?

It’s the “transgender” issue all by itself.

People who identify  with the opposite sex should be granted access to facilities set aside for the opposite sex, say proponents of transgender rights.

So, if I hear them correctly, a man with all the requisite male body parts can use a woman’s public restroom. Same for a woman who wants to use the men’s restroom.

Simply identifying with the other gender doesn’t require them to dress appropriately, as I understand it. Am I wrong about that?

How do we know who’s truly transgender, therefore, and who, um, isn’t?

Here in Texas, the lieutenant governor weighed in on this matter by ordering the Fort Worth Independent School District superintendent, Kent Scribner, to resign because of guidelines he wrote governing the issue — in that school district.

I’ve stated already that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick overstepped his bounds by meddling in a local issue. Scribner’s employment status should be determined exclusively by the school board that appointed him.

The federal “directive” seems to line up the same way. Have the federal courts ruled on the constitutionality of this matter? If so, then it got past me.

I’m trying to understand which rights are involved here, particularly as it pertains to individuals who haven’t yet been surgically altered to comply with their stated gender identity.

I have no issue, moreover, with those who’ve had the “gender reassignment” surgery and have been re-created into the appropriate gender. The medical procedure, by my way of thinking, removes the transgender confusion.

I’ve stated many times over many years that I don’t understand a lot of things.

This, most assuredly, is one of them.

My head hurts.

legal news, national news

Decency is alive and well after all

zimmerman

I am happy to report that decency lives.

It’s alive and well. It exists in many quarters and in many human beings. The particular example of decency worth citing here exists in an auction house that was set to put a firearm on the block for the highest bidder.

Then it took the firearm off the auction market.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36281438?ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook

It belongs to a fellow named George Zimmerman. You remember this guy, right? He shot a 17-year-old boy to death in February 2012. Trayvon Martin died from a gunshot fired by Zimmerman as the boy was walking through a Florida neighborhood.

Zimmerman claimed he acted in self-defense. A trial jury agreed with him, acquitting him of murder charges.

The case, though, became the source of international outrage.

Zimmerman has continued to find himself in the news. He got into some kind of beef with a girlfriend; it involved assault and, yes, a gun was involved in the altercation.

He’s acted like a dirt bag since being acquitted.

Now he wants to sell the gun, presuming — I reckon — that he’ll get big bucks for the notorious pistol.

It was a disgusting notion that he’d put the gun on the auction block.

It was equally gratifying to hear that the auction house decided to pull the gun down, take it off the market and presumably give it back to Zimmerman.

Zimmerman told a Florida radio station, “I’m a free American, and I can do what I’d like with my possessions.” Sure you are, George. You also are a public figure and your every move is now subject to public scrutiny.

That’s the price one pays in a free society for one’s actions, for better or worse.

Other “free Americans” are able to decide whether they support those actions. An auction house has chosen to do the right thing.

 

legal news, media news, political news, State news

Texas AG slams door on transparency

paxton

Ken Paxton’s tenure as Texas attorney general has gotten off to a rocky start.

First, a Collin County grand jury indicted the Republican politician on charges of securities fraud, accusing him of failing to report income he derived from giving investment advice to a friend. The Securities and Exchange Commission followed suit with a complaint of its own.

Bad start, man.

Then the attorney general accepts the resignations of two top aides and agrees to keep paying them. What’s worse in this case, according to the Dallas Morning News, is that the AG isn’t explaining why he’s continuing to pay the ex-staffers.

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20160509-editorial-ken-paxton-should-answer-our-reporters-questions.ece

The Morning News accuses Paxton of bullying the newspaper’s reporters who keep asking questions about the payments. He’s not willing to explain why he’s using these particular public funds in this manner.

The newspaper has blistered Paxton in an editorial. It demands, correctly in my view, that he hold his office — and himself — accountable for the actions he has taken regarding the resignations of these individuals.

The Morning News asks a pertinent question, noting that state law allows public agencies to grant paid leave when it finds “good cause” to do so. Paxton decided to categorize their departure as paid leave, thus justifying the continued payments to folks who no longer work for the state. The paper asks: What’s the good cause? The attorney general isn’t saying.

The paper offers this bit of advice to the public as it ponders the AG’s behavior: “Voters should take note.”

 

legal news, local news

College needs to own its policies

springcampus_5

Some issues just aren’t adding up regarding the matter of Amarillo College’s hiring policies, which now have become the subject of community discussion.

Who’s in charge of administering and enforcing those policies? Aren’t there some others at AC who should be held accountable for this embarrassing development?

Ellen Robertson Green quit her job as AC vice president for marketing and communication after it was revealed that she allegedly violated AC nepotism rules by hiring her daughter to work as a content producer for Panhandle PBS, the college’s public TV station.

Green supervised Panhandle PBS. Her daughter, thus, reported directly to her mother.

That violated the school’s rules against nepotism.

I’ve already declared my own stake in this matter, given that until recently I worked as a freelance blogger for Panhandle PBS and that I consider Green to be a friend.

I now am an outsider looking at this situation from some distance.

However, I do know that everyone works for someone else.

Green didn’t operate in a hermetically sealed environment at AC. I’m going to take a bit of a leap here and presume that the college has qualified and competent legal counsel advising senior administrators of matters that might cause problems.

Thus, I am unclear as to why Green is taking the fall by herself by resigning her post at AC, particularly after the college terminated her daughter’s employment when reports of this policy violation became known.

The way I see it, if the school fired her daughter, that ends the nepotism problem right off the top.

Green was one of several VPs at the school who report directly to AC President Russell Lowery-Hart. Was the president unaware of the hire? Did he let it go? If he was unaware, why was he kept in the dark?

I fear the questions will linger for a time longer and cast a growing shadow over a public institution that — until just recently — had enjoyed a stellar reputation throughout the community it serves.

It’s time to clear the air.

Fully.

 

legal news, State news

How are they going to find that kind of dough?

920x920

Stories like this pique my interest partly because I once was part of this community, and also because I wonder about the nature of the judgment handed down by the court.

Here’s the summary: A Jefferson County, Texas, judge has ordered two former Beaumont Independent School District administrators to pay the district $4 million apiece in funds they admitted to embezzling.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/Ex-Beaumont-ISD-officials-ordered-to-pay-back-4-7397631.php

Devin McCraney once served as BISD’s chief financial officer and Sharrika Allison was the district’s comptroller. I don’t know either of them, as they came on board long after my wife and I left Beaumont in January 1995.

District Judge Milton Shuffield ordered the two of them to pay $4 million each, plus another $93,000 in interest.

Here’s what makes me scratch my head.

I worked for nearly 37 years in daily journalism. I made a decent salary during a good bit of my working life. My combined salary over the course of my entire career never even came close to a fraction of the amount of money assessed by the judge in this embezzlement case.

How does the judge expect these individuals to pay back the money?

Did they pocket the money somewhere in a secret place? Will they be able to just hand it over once they uncover it?

I guess I should note that both of them received prison sentences, which took them out of the work force for several years.

I don’t know what these individuals earned while working for BISD, which has fallen on extremely hard times in recent years. The state education agency swooped in and took over day-to-day management of the district. Its former superintendent, Carroll Thomas, “retired” after helping steer the district into the tumult that resulted in the state takeover.

Now a district judge has ordered these two former administrators to repay the district millions of dollars.

I’m a layman watching this story from afar. How does that work?

 

legal news, national news, political news

How does Hastert earn this kind of ‘support’?

ct-former-u.s.-house-speaker-dennis-hastert-photos-20150528

Something must have gotten past me.

A judge received more than 60 letters of support for a former U.S. speaker of the House of Representatives just before sentencing him to 15 months in federal prison.

It’s not the banking fraud that has everyone’s attention. It’s the reason for the charges to which former Speaker Dennis Hastert has pleaded guilty.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-dennis-hastert-letters-met-20160422-story.html

The letters reportedly were written mostly before the allegations of sexual abuse had been made public. They spoke to Hastert’s supposedly stellar character and devotion to his family.

Fine.

But what about the charges that he hid hush money he was paying to boys he purportedly abused sexually while he was a high school wrestling coach?

The terms of Hastert’s guilty plea apparently limits his sentence to no longer than six months in jail.

Speaker Hastert allegedly led a hideous double life. He was a respected coach and equipment manager at the Yorkville, Ill., high school. Meanwhile, he allegedly lured at least four boys into compromising situations while traveling with them.

It’s almost too disgusting to ponder that a man who once was second in line to the presidency of the United States likely had did terrible things to young boys at an earlier time in his life.

I get that Hastert is in failing health. I feel terrible about the toll this case has taken on his family. However, the responsibility for that toll falls squarely on the former speaker.

Did he deserve any sympathy from the judge?

Maybe just a little.

Maybe.

The judge, though, didn’t see it that way when he sent a “serial child molester” to the slammer.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dennis-hastert-former-us-house-speaker-sentenced-to-15-months-in-prison/ar-BBsiQsJ?ocid=ansmsnnews11

entertainment news, legal news, national news, Sports news

O.J. returns — sort of — to the spotlight

OJ

Orenthal James Simpson might be getting out of prison soon.

The Nevada parole board has granted Simpson parole for some of the crimes for which he was sentenced to prison five years ago. He’s going to remain behind bars, though, until he becomes eligible to be paroled for the rest of the crimes.

So, what will he do once he walks out of the slammer?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/31/oj-simpson-parole/2603497/

Here’s a thought: He ought to seek to repay the African-American community that cheered his acquittal in 1995 for the double murder of his former wife and her friend.

Simpson went to prison on charges stemming from an altercation he had in Nevada over some sports memorabilia. I don’t begrudge his becoming eligible for release on those charges.

It’s the double murder and his acquittal of those charges that continue to eat at many millions of Americans.

The jury’s finding of “not guilty” was the result of brilliant defense work by Simpson’s legal team led by the late Johnnie Cochran. That the former football star walked on those charges infuriated most Americans … but cheered a significant minority of Americans, namely, African-Americans who were glad to see Simpson remain free.

More than 20 years later, it remains a fair question to ask: Why cheer this man’s acquittal only on the basis that he, too, is black?

For his entire adult life, there can be no finding of evidence that O.J. Simpson gave back to the community from which he emerged to attain athletic stardom and, to a lesser degree, a level of celebrity as a film actor.

Indeed, I saw something just this weekend about Simpson wanting — get ready for this one — to date Kris Jenner, the former wife of the late Robert Kardashian, another member of Simpson’s superstar legal team.

Eventually, Simpson will walk out of prison. He’ll be free to do whatever he wants — as long as he doesn’t violate the terms of his parole.

He ought to start his road back by giving something to the community that cheered him when — in my view — a jury let him get away with murder.

Then again, he did once vow to look for “the real killers” of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Is that pledge still on the table?

 

legal news, political news, State news

Texas AG getting ahead of himself

paxton

Ken Paxton plans to run for re-election in 2018 for a second term as Texas attorney general.

Big deal? Sure it is. The Republican officeholder is facing criminal charges on a couple of fronts, which suggests to me that he’s getting way ahead of himself.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/04/21/despite-indictments-ken-paxton-plans-run-again/

I get what he’s saying. He’s proclaiming his innocence of charges of securities fraud brought by a Collin County grand jury. What’s more, the Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a complaint against Paxton alleging the same thing.

The man could go to jail if he’s convicted.

What’s getting too little attention here is the context of the indictment that brought the charges against the attorney general.

The panel indicted Paxton for failing to report properly the compensation he received for providing investment advice for friends.

As for the context, let’s remember a couple of critical points. Paxton represented Collin County in the Texas Legislature before running for AG in 2014. The grand jury quite likely included individuals who voted for Paxton when he ran for statewide office. Collin County is a reliably Republican area just north of Dallas. It’s no bastion of liberals out to “get” GOP politicians.

Thus, it’s quite possible that the prosecutors who brought the complaint to the grand jury had the goods on Paxton and the grand jury agreed.

Now, though, the attorney general’s flack has announced he plans to declare officially his intention to seek re-election.

The man’s got some work to do before he even thinks about his political future.

legal news, political news, State news

Texas voters need to share in Paxton saga

AP_16102639500954-729x450

Erica Greider, writing a blog for Texas Monthly, takes note of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s growing legal problems.

He shouldn’t stand alone in the alleged culpability, she writes.

Part of the responsibility — perhaps most of it — belongs to the Texans who elected him in 2014 as the state’s top law enforcement officer.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/indictments-texass-attorney-general/

A Collin County grand jury indicted Paxton this past year on several counts of securities fraud. Now, though, the Securities and Exchange Commission — the federal agency that oversees investment transactions — has leveled complaints against the attorney general.

Greider notes correctly that Paxton deserves the presumption of innocence, but she adds: “Even so, for an attorney general to rack up so many indictments with such ease and rapidity is in poor taste and raises troubling questions about his efficacy as manager.”

But none of this was a surprise sprung on Texans after he took office. It had been reported well before the November 2014 election that Paxton was in trouble for allegedly receiving income for investment advice he was giving to friends without reporting it properly to state election officials.

With that, Texans knew they were possibly electing a top legal eagle who himself might be facing some serious legal difficulty.

They elected him. He took office and then — wouldn’t you know it? — the grand jury indicted him and then the SEC weighed in with complaints of its own.

It just seems — to me, at least — that voters ought to be a good bit more discerning when selecting people to high public office.

It’s especially true — again, in my view only — that such discernment ought to be tuned even more finely when those selections involve people we entrust to enforce the state’s laws.

We can do a whole letter better than electing folks who are lugging around this kind of baggage.

 

legal news, national news, political news

GOP erects fortress of obstruction

garland

Merrick Garland should be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to take a seat on the Supreme Court.

Why? He’s qualified in the extreme. He is a model of judicial restraint. Garland is held in high regard by his peers and even by politicians of both parties.

So, what’s the trouble?

He happens to have been nominated by a Democratic president in his final full year in office. Senate Republicans, the folks in charge of the body who must confirm these nominees, say that Barack Obama doesn’t deserve to name the next justice.

And why is that? Well, it’s because the next nominee is going to succeed a conservative judicial titan on the court. Antonin Scalia went hunting in West Texas and then died suddenly earlier this year.

The Supreme Court’s balance has been narrowly conservative. Scalia’s death occurring during the presidency of a progressive politician means that the politician — Barack Obama — should get to select the next person to serve on the nation’s highest court.

But, no-o-o-o-o, say Republicans. He can’t do that.

The nomination must wait for the election to occur and for the next president to take office, say Republicans. Their hope, as if it’s not clear, is that one of the Republicans running for the White House will win the election.

Garland has launched what some are calling a “charm offensive” against some targeted Republican senators.

It hasn’t worked. The GOP lawmakers thought to be vulnerable to Garland’s judicial brilliance aren’t budging. They’re standing by their own man, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has said — laughingly, in my view — that “the people deserve to have a voice” in choosing the next Supreme Court justice.

It’s a crock of horse manure. The people’s voice was heard in November 2012 when voters re-elected Barack Obama as president.

Oh, but wait! Didn’t the people speak in 2014 when they voted to hand control of the Senate over to the GOP? Sure they did.

However, as one who believes in presidential prerogative, I also am of a mind to place greater value on the votes collected by the one individual who is elected head of government and head of state than on the votes earned collectively by the legislative branch of government.

Garland’s charm offensive likely won’t — by itself — change enough minds to earn him a confirmation hearing before Barack Obama leaves office.

However, it very well could awaken the people once again this election, who in turn might seek to have their “voices heard” when they toss aside the Senate Republican majority while electing a Democrat to assume the presidency.

Obstruction can be difficult to disguise.