Archive for November, 2005
Wednesday, November 30th, 2005
The Harvard Crimson thinks Ben Affleck would make a great opponent for Senator George Allen in next year's election, even though he would lose, and he'd make a lousy Senator anyway:
Affleck simply does not have the stature, political experience, or ability to compromise that is required of a United States Senator. Affleck’s ardent campaigning for [...]
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Wednesday, November 30th, 2005
Sam: What'll you have, Norm?
Norm: Well I'm in a gambling mood, Sammy. I'll have a glass of whatever comes out of that tap.
Sam: Oh, Looks like beer, Norm.
Norm: Call me Mister Lucky.
Sam: What do you say, Norm?
Norm: Any cheap, tawdry thing that'll get me a beer.
Sam: Whatcha up to, Norm?
Norm: My ideal weight if [...]
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Wednesday, November 30th, 2005
Here's the perspective of an Orthodox rabbi on the Christmas Tree/Holiday Tree controversy.
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Wednesday, November 30th, 2005
I said here that it was a good move on Warner's part to grant clemency for Robin Lovitt. I do not think it will hurt him politically. Myself, I think Lovitt is guilty. I believe in the death penalty, but I also believe in the law. Evidence was destroyed and that made the DNA testing impossible. Rules were broken by the state denying Lovitt his proper appeal rights. I feel Warner did the right
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
Well its definite. According to the
Roanoke Times the "Study of tiny air bubbles in the ice confirm that current levels of CO2 are higher than anything experienced at least in the last 650,000 years." And "There can be no serious, reasonable doubt that this unprecedented increase is due to industrial activity that dumps billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year."
But not all scientist agree.
Look here at a report released by the National Center for Policy Analysis. This reports concludes "The Earth currently is experiencing a warming trend, but there is scientific evidence that human activities have little to do with it. Instead, the warming seems to be part of a 1,500-year cycle (plus or minus 500 years) of moderate temperature swings."
The authors did not look at a single item, instead "Evidence of the global nature of the 1,500-year climate cycles includes very long-term proxies for temperature change — ice cores, seabed and lake sediments, and fossils of pollen grains and tiny sea creatures. There are also shorter-term proxies — cave stalagmites, tree rings from trees both living and buried,
boreholes and a wide variety of other temperature proxies."
"Is the Earth currently experiencing a warming trend? Yes. Are human activities, including the burning of fossil fuel and forest conversion, the primary — or even significant — drivers of this current temperature trend? The scientifically appropriate answer — cautious and conforming
to the known facts — is: probably not."
Why? Because "During the past 20 years, scientists have been accumulating
strong physical evidence that the Earth consistently goes through a climate cycle marked by alternating warmer and cooler periods over 1,500 years (plus or minus 500 years)."
The earth goes through cycles. Not everyone agrees with the Roanoke Times about global warming. By the way, this report "The Physical Evidence of Earth’s Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle" was released in September 2005.
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
Governor Warner has granted Robin Lovitt clemency.
Gov. Mark Warner has spared the life of a convicted killer whose claim of innocence was jeopardized by a court official’s accidental destruction of DNA evidence.
Warner granted the clemency request of Robin Lovitt this evening, one day before Lovitt was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center. Lovitt would have become the 1,000th prisoner executed in the United States since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.
. . .
The lawyers asked Warner to commute Lovitt’s sentence to life in prison, which is just what Warner did.
This is going to be interesting for several reasons. Mostly, though, because of Warner’s 2008 plans.
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
WordPress continues to out do itself. This new blogger-like service (WordPress.com) is amazing. Why would anyone prefer Blogger over Wordpress?
I suppose the only people that will stay with Blogger now are those that have built up a lot of links to their .blogspot.com URLs or are traditionalists. The only thing they really had going for them was the price.
After a few months of using Blogger, I jumped on the WordPress train as fast as I could. Now one can have WordPress for free.
The WordPress.com admin interface is really close to the normal WordPress and only missing a few features.
This will probably be the end of Blogger as we know it.
(Link via Kilo)
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
You people who are enthralled with the hybrid class of automobiles out there are not going to want to read this. According to a newly released study, the Ford Escape and Toyota Prius, arguably the most attractive and popular of all the electric/gasoline powered vehicles, will cost you - over a five-year stretch - more than you'll save. Lots more.
A hybrid shortcircuit
Gasoline-electric hybrid cars get the fuel economy buzz, but they still don't pay for themselves at the pump. Edmunds.com found that the Ford Escape hybrid would break even over five years with its gasoline counterpart only if gas cost $5.60 a gallon. For a Toyota Prius, the tipping point is $10.10 (compared with a Corolla). That's hardly electrifying. (
link
)
Back to the drawing board ...
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
Va. Gov. Grants Clemency for Condemned Man
By KRISTEN GELINEAU
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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Virginia's governor on Tuesday spared the life of a convicted killer who would have been the 1,000th person executed in the United States since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976.
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Robin Lovitt's death sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole a little more than 24 hours before he was to be executed by injection Wednesday night for stabbing a man to death with a pair of scissors during a 1998 pool-hall robbery.
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In granting clemency, Gov. Mark R. Warner noted that evidence from the trial had been improperly destroyed, depriving the defense of the opportunity to subject the material to the latest in DNA testing.
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"The commonwealth must ensure that every time this ultimate sanction is carried out, it is done fairly," Warner said in a statement.
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Warner, a Democrat, had never before granted clemency to a death row inmate during his four years in office. During that time, 11 men have been executed. Virginia is one of the most active death-penalty states, having executed 94 people since 1976.
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The 1,000th execution is now scheduled for Friday in North Carolina, where Kenneth Lee Boyd is slated to die for killing his estranged wife and her father.
This was a smart move by Warner.
Brian Patton has this.
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
The Detroit News has had enough of Michigan native Michael Moore. Finally.
Daily Beef: Moore or less on GM
Filmmaker Michael Moore weighed in on the GM plant closings by saying "General Motors continues its destruction of cities like Flint and the American middle class," according to USA Today. As though GM doesn't want to sell cars, make money and strengthen communities. But if Moore thinks he can do a better job, he could hire the laid-off workers and build cars. (
link
)
Moore, who made a few hundred million from his slanderous hit-piece, "Fahrenheit 9/11," could afford to help every one of the 30,000 soon-to-be laid-off GM workers. Let's see if those tears of his are genuine.
Write 'em a check, Mikey.
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
The
AP is reporting that earlier this afternoon, Governor Warner granted clemency in the case of Robin Lovitt, who was scheduled to be executed this week for a murder committed in 1998.
This is the case where the court clerk is accused of throwing out part of the evidence which could have exonerated the defendant (or not) if it was available for modern DNA testing today.
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
Here's Garren Shipley's article about the pending recount in the Attorney General's race, including these specifics:
Virginia law, unlike Florida’s now infamous recount statutes, doesn’t allow for a “hand recount.†Instead, a “recount court†made up of the chief judge of the Richmond Circuit Court and two other judges to be appointed by the state’s chief [...]
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
Associated Press:
Virginia's governor on Tuesday spared the life of a convicted killer who would have been the 1,000th person executed in the United States since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976.
Robin Lovitt's death sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole a little more than 24 hours before he was [...]
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
In
Chapman v. Rahall, Judge Conrad of the W.D. Va. ruled that the United States was the sole proper defendant for the claims against West Virginia Congressman Nick Rahall for stuff he said on TV about the plaintiff, under the Federal Tort Claims Act as amended by the Westfall Act.
This outcome likely does in the plaintiff, either because of failure to exhaust administrative remedies for an FTCA claim or because of the intentional act exclusions to the liability of the United States under the FTCA.
Interesting that there was no discussion of the constitutional immunity of congressman under the U.S. Constitution's speech and debate clause. Years ago, the Supreme Court held in Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 U.S. 111 (1979), that the immunity under the Speech and Debate clause did not extend to statements made by Senator Proxmire in his press releases and newsletters.
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
In
Southprint, Inc. v. H3, Inc., Magistrate Judge Urbanski of the W.D. Va. denied the winner's request for attorneys' fees in a Lanham Act case and also denied about half of the plaintiff's claim for court costs under Rule 54.
In particular, the expedited process server fee was denied, and costs were allowed only for those depositions that "were submitted and necessary in rendering a decision on the motion for summary judgment." Judge Urbanski also booted the claims for court reporter extras like condensed transcripts, transcripts on disc, and postage or shipping costs. Also, the judge booted the claim for a transcript of the court hearing on the motion for summary judgment. The court also allowed a fraction of the plaintiff's copying costs, which was a new one on me. Copy costs? Anyhow, the judge is right on all counts, so far as I know.
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
Here is an Amazon list mostly of books I've read or written about on this blog, about Virginia trials or cases or lawyers. I'm sure that there are a few more such books out there, send me a line if I've missed some of the more obvious titles.
Also, check out
Chad's post re: readings on Virginia politics.
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
According to
this Bacon's post, the Chamber of Commerce says that Virginia has the No. 4 best legal system in the country, trailing only those jurisprudential Edens situated in Delaware, Nebraska, and North Dakota.
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
In the Roche v. Lincoln Property case, the plaintiffs brought their products liability case in state court in Virginia, the defendants removed the case to the E.D. Va., the trial court judge slammed the plaintiffs' case by booting their expert testimony under Daubert and granting summary judgment on the merits for lack of evidence, the plaintiffs appealed to the Fourth Circuit on issues related to the removal, the Fourth Circuit reversed the judgment for the defendant on jurisdictional grounds, and finally, in
today's unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court reversed the decision by the Fourth Circuit, concluding that the propriety of removal was to be determined based on the actual, rather than the potential, defendants to the state court case.
One interesting footnote from the case says: "The Roches state that they preferred to litigate in state court for two principal reasons: Virginia does not permit summary judgment based on affidavits or deposition testimony, and Virginia has not adopted the rule of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), to assess expert evidence." Hey, no kidding, since they were subsequently zapped in federal court by Daubert and summary judgment practice.
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
I had
a post
about Robin Lovitt and Mark Warner before the holiday. It addressed the so called dilemma facing Warner on the fate of Robin Lovitt. It is not a dilemma, but I will leave that alone for now. Todays
RTD
has this article about Robin Lovitt victims mother and her wishes. It also touches on planned protests if the execution is carried out tomorrow.
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From the RTD
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But Mary Dicks, an 84-year-old Washington resident, thinks the execution should be carried out.
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Lovitt was sentenced to die for stabbing Clayton Dicks to death during a robbery at an Arlington County pool hall in 1998. A clemency petition asking that Lovitt's life be spared is before Gov. Mark R. Warner.
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"I don't want to see [anybody] getting killed," Mary Dicks said. But, she added, the death penalty is appropriate for Lovitt. "That's what Clayton got, didn't he? He was at his job and he got executed."
I agree with the victims mother and my heart is breaking for her. But there are many problems with the case as all the evidence was destroyed.
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Kenneth W. Starr, one of Lovitt's lawyers, and Mark L. Earley, a former Republican Virginia attorney general, oppose Lovitt's execution because the evidence destruction eliminated any chance Lovitt had to cast doubt on his guilt with new DNA testing.
What will Warner do? The pressure is on and time is running out. Warner mouthpiece Kevin Hall said
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"the governor's office has received roughly 1,500 calls, letters and e-mails, mostly from out of state and almost all urging clemency."
Warners call on this case could follow him for years. I still see it as a win-win for Warner if handled correctly. With the destruction of evidence he has an out to appeal to the pro death penalty side. If he lets the execution take place will he loose some anti death penalty support? As I said in the post last week, it will be very interesting to see how he handles this. Waner is also gaining a little praise from some conservatives with his recent remarks on the war in Iraq. Chad has
the info here
.
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