The New York Times reports on the case of a British Travel Agent living in Spain, who had his domain names seized by his US domain registrar at the request of the Treasury Department.
They felt that he, “helped Americans evade restrictions on travel to Cuba”, so they seized the sites, including one about Earnest Hemingway, and two in Italian and French.
A whois shows that the Pirate Bay uses Key-Systems GmbH?
Perhaps they are in a country of laws, and not men.
The people just won one, where the Federal District Court just struck down Bayer’s patent on Yasmin, a contraceptive.
The patent, which expires in 2020, is on a formula for the compound drospirenone in which the particle size was reduced so it could be absorbed by the body more quickly before it is exposed to stomach acid. U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan agreed with Barr that the decision to reduce the particle size would have been obvious to any researcher.
Hell, it’s obvious to any cook too.
Why else would they sell powdered sugar. Smaller particles dissolve more quickly.
The Federal Court of Appeals reinstates the ruling on Navy sonar tests.
I might take a bullet for him.
This time, the object of my affection talks about John McCain’s integrety, and says, “He doesn’t seem to have any.”
He was talking about John McCain’s willful violation of campaign finance laws, and his embrace of bigot John Hagee.
Word up. Keep fighting the good fight.
Thank the “self regulating” Bush administration for the fact that banks are refusing or unable to present a comprehensive schedule of fees at their office, as is required by law.
I’m not kidding. The GAO was investigating allegations of Civil Rights allegations, and their general council expelled them from the premises, and instructed Ag Dept. employees not to talk with them.
This is simply a mind %^$* beyond belief.
Well, after white house staff admitted using RNC emails to avoid the record keeping laws, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requested backups of the emails.
Henry Waxman, the committee chairman, has now revealed that the GOP has told Congress to go pound sand, saying that they, “has no intention of trying to restore the missing White House e-mails.”
These folks are absolutely lawless.
Rep. Markey has consistently been at the forefront of such things, and how he has proposed the Wireless Consumer Protection and Community Broadband Empowerment Act, which calls for the following:
Seems like a good bill to me.
Well, this shold be very interesting.
My guess is that Andrew Cuomo is going to be much more aggressive than the FCC.
He’s following Spitzer’s lead, and the consumer protection laws in NY are more aggressive than the FCC’s power at this time.
I guess that they got a bit upset about Microsoft ignoring their directive to open up their APIs.
Microflaccid is lucky that I’m not on the board. I’d strip copyright protections from all but the most recent versions of their software for this sort of crap.
Imaging what would happen if Office 2003 and Windows XP were available legally for free in Urop.
Well, it looks like the FDIC is gearing up for bank failures.
It’s looking to bring back some retirees from its receivership division, and it’s looking for bids from private companies to handle mortgages, commercial loans, and student loans for the failed banks.
They are estimating 100 bank failures over the next 12-24 months, but I think that they are behind the curve.
H/t to Calculated Risk.
The Republican’ts are threatening a filibuster, and Bush and His Evil Minions™ are threatening a filibuster, but the Senate bankruptcy reform bill is a decent piece of legislation.
Basically, it gives bankruptcy courts the right to modify the terms of a loan on a primary residence, much in the same way that they can for rental properties and vacation homes.
It should keep people in their homes, it will allow things like outrageous fees and deceptive loans to be modified, and it places the burden to a large degree on the purveyors of the toxic mortgages.
Needless to say, the mortgage industry hates it.
Too true. Too Funny.
it looks like they got a firestorm of criticism, so they have reversed their earlier decision to close the economic stats site.
Michael Isikoff has the goods: McCain’s claims of never talking to anyone from Paxson Communications is false:
A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.
On Wednesday night the Times published a story suggesting that McCain might have done legislative favors for the clients of the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, who worked for the firm of Alcalde & Fay. One example it cited were two letters McCain wrote in late 1999 demanding that the Federal Communications Commission act on a long-stalled bid by one of Iseman’s clients, Florida-based Paxson Communications, to purchase a Pittsburgh television station.
Just hours after the Times’s story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response……
But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. “I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue,” McCain said in the Sept. 25, 2002, deposition obtained by NEWSWEEK. “He wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business. I believe that Mr. Paxson had a legitimate complaint.”
…
McCain’s subsequent letters to the FCC—coming around the same time that Paxson’s firm was flying the senator to campaign events aboard its corporate jet and contributing $20,000 to his campaign—first surfaced as an issue during his unsuccessful 2000 presidential bid. William Kennard, the FCC chair at the time, described the sharply worded letters from McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, as “highly unusual.”
So, what we have here at best is what he did with Charles Keating, and now he is lying about it.
You have more details on his ties to lobbyists and wealthy pay-to-play campaign contributors here and here.
The Washington Post notes that McCain’s paid campaign staff is full of lobbyists, which kind of means that when AP Reporter Glen Johnson heckled Mitt Romney about not having lobbyist on staff, he was being unfair and unprofessional.
Following the House growing some balls and not caving on telco immunity, the Congress is trying to redraft the bill to get something passed, but the Republicans are refusing to even show up to the meetings on this.
It’s a big whiny baby tantrum.
If I own a rental property, or a vacation home, and I declare chapter 11 bankruptcy, the courts can modify the terms, though not the principal, or the loan, but for my primary home, they cannot.
It does not make sense to me either, so I support the bills Emergency Home Ownership and Mortgage Equity Protection Act of 2007 and the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, which allow courts to modify mortgage terms in bankruptcy.
They don’t go far enough, they only apply to the more exotic mortgages, and they should apply to all, particularly in terms of prepayment penalties and other fees.
The mortgage industry says it’s bad for consumers, because it will drive up interest rates.
The truth is that it makes the more exotic mortgages less attractive, but the old style fixed rate mortgages should be about the same.
Even if it did bump up rates, average mortgages payments would still stay the same, because people do not buy homes on price, but on monthly payments, and prices would adjust.
That’s what happens when one makes such a highly leveraged purchase.
Good article in The Atlantic about this.
Basically, it makes no difference in home ownership, it just raises the prices of houses.
It was a unanimous decision.
The facts of the case are that James LaRue lost $150K after his 401(k) managers ignored his orders to move his holdings to a different account. The lower courts said that only the plan had standing, but SCOTUS said that the participants do to.
Frankly, I’m surprised. I would have figured that one of the court Neanderthals would have taken the side of the incompetent money managers.
Well, it appears that Germany is going after a bunch of tax cheats based on a DVD acquired from a paid informant for $6 million, and the leaders of Lichtenstein are upset.
I have no sympathy. Money laundering has been the Lichtenstinian economy for decades, and it’s time that they started unraveling this mess.