Quoteworthy

New York Times' Linda Greenhouse, commenting on the U.S. Supreme Court's "exaltation of corporate speech" in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission:

...the Roberts court has lost its virginity.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Karlheinz Schreiber Trial Begins

CBC reports that the trial of former Brian Mulroney associate, Karlheinz Schreiber, has commenced in Germany.

The trial has begun in Germany for Karlheinz Schreiber, a German-Canadian businessman accused of tax evasion for his role in a 1990s political financing scandal.

More on the history of Mr. Schreiber and his dealings with the former Prime Minister here.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Harper's Judicial Tides

Lawyers Weekly makes an interesting observation - One third of federal judges now appointed by Harper government:

The Conservatives will have appointed one-third of the country’s federal judges by the time they celebrate their fourth anniversary in office this month.

...Prime Minister Stephen Harper has already had a major impact on the judiciary’s top echelons, despite leading a minority government. He has appointed two Supreme Court of Canada judges, as well as at least eight provincial chief, or associate chief, justices.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Learning the "Power of the Internet" (the Hard Way III)

Another hapless Tweetor learns an important life lesson:

Some things, you just don't say online:

When heavy snowfall threatened to scupper Paul Chambers's travel plans, he decided to vent his frustrations on Twitter by tapping out a comment to amuse his friends. "Robin Hood airport is closed," he wrote. "You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

Unfortunately for Mr Chambers, the police didn't see the funny side. A week after posting the message on the social networking site, he was arrested under the Terrorism Act and questioned for almost seven hours by detectives who interpreted his post as a security threat. After he was released on bail, he was suspended from work pending an internal investigation, and has, he says, been banned from the Doncaster airport for life. "I would never have thought, in a thousand years, that any of this would have happened because of a Twitter post," said Mr Chambers, 26. "I'm the most mild-mannered guy you could imagine."

More Learning the Power of the Internet (The Hard Way): Part I and Part 2.

And a similar, but perhaps more sinister, episode on Facebook leads to charges in Malaysia.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Law Firm E-Security Concerns To Heat Up After Trojan Email Attack?

Legal professionals who utilize Web 2.0 and the Cloud have long been wary of the general perils of inadequate online security.

This Law.com report of a targeted trojan email attack on a Los Angeles law firm, however, obviously ups the ante and raises genuine concern about the safety of confidential client date housed by law firms in the face of sophisticated attempts to breach security walls:

A Los Angeles law firm that recently filed a $2.2 billion copyright infringement suit against the People's Republic of China said that it has become the target of cyberattacks originating in China. The e-mails sent to Gipson Hoffman & Pancione came the same week that Google declared that it would stop complying with Chinese censorship requirements for the Internet following reports that several of its computer systems had drawn cyberattacks believed to originate in China.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Best Law Firm TV Ad Ever

Via Overlawyered

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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U.S. Supreme Court Extends Camera Ban at California Gay Marriage Trial

In a 5-4 ruling today, the U.S. Supreme Court has indefinitely extended the ban on videotaping the ongoing Proposition 8, same-sex marriage trial in California.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Frum's Torture Apologetics

David Frum on John Yoo's recent appearance with Jon Stewart:

Yoo had come to the interview to elucidate a couple of simple points. The question he had been asked by the security arm of government was not, “How can we torture?” but “What can we do that isn’t torture?” Yoo is a lawyer, not an expert in interrogation. He did not recommend techniques. He tried to do something that the U.S. government had not done before: define the legal limit of the permissible.

Maybe that job should never have been assigned. Possibly Yoo’s answer was wrong. (Knowing John, he’d be more than usually open to that second possibility – few people in high government office can ever have had less ego than John Yoo.) But that’s the ground on which he has to be engaged, not in the angels-and-demons style of much of the media coverage … a style that has the incidental effect of recategorizing some of the most brutal enemies the United States has ever faced as pitiful victims.

Just a lawyer doing doing his job, of course - defining waterboarding as "the permissible." As if this were a novel question, never before considered.

For what it's worth, I'm hard-pressed to recall a single instance of anyone - liberal, conservative, blue, green or pink - who has ever, in any "style," categorized Osama bin Laden as a "victim."

See Mr. Frum's article, The Real John Yoo. More on John Yoo's legal "opinions" here.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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US Supreme Court Blocks You Tube Airing of Gay Marriage Trial

Trial begins today in the constitutional challenge to Califormia's ban on same-sex mariage.

The U.S. Supreme Court has today issued a temporary order staying a federal judge's ruling last week that permitted videotape of the hearings to be uploaded and broadcast via You Tube.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Twice the Punishment

WSJ Law Blog wonders aloud:

How would the law punish Siamese twins if one of the twins committed murder without the other being involved?

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Rick Mercer on the Harper Prorogue and Afghanistan

Rick Mercer:

It is ironic that while our parliament has been suspended we are a nation at war. On New Year's Eve we greeted the news that five Canadians were killed in a single day with sadness but not surprise. We are at war because ostensibly we are helping bring democracy to Afghanistan. How the mission is progressing is open for debate but this much is certain – at present there is a parliament in Afghanistan that it is very much open for business. Canada has no such institution.

In Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's government faces fierce opposition at every turn; many of his cabinet choices have been rejected in a secret ballot by the more than 200 parliamentarians that sit in the legislature. Simply closing parliament down and operating without their consent is not an option for Hamid Karzai; to do so would be blatantly undemocratic or at the very least downright Canadian...

(via Alison at Golloping Beaver)

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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France to Outlaw "Psychological" Domestic Violence?

Is this Daily Mail story for real?

Married couples in France could end up with criminal records for insulting each other during arguments. Under a new law, France is to become the first country in the world to ban ' psychological violence' within marriage. The law would apply to cohabiting couples and to both men and women.

It would cover men who shout at their wives and women who hurl abuse at their husbands - although it was not clear last night if nagging would be viewed as breaking the law.

The law is expected to cover every kind of insult including repeated rude remarks about a partner's appearance, false allegations of infidelity and threats of physical violence.

One commenter at the article offers this personal insight:

Once a month my wife screams and yells for no good reason... would her natural cycle be used as a temporary insanity defense? The last thing I want to have to do is call on the police to help me with her moods but the law is the law I guess and maybe she does belong in jail.

Bizarre. More on the proposed psychological violence law is here from BBC.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

National Post's Barbara Kay opines that the proposed law is bound to be enforced against men only:

I pity the poor men of France if this bill passes. As it is, women for any number of reasons - custody battles, revenge for perceived or real insults, or just because it's an easy end to a difficult moment - falsely allege physical violence, which the police and courts routinely indulge without proof. Conversely physical violence against men for which there is proof is routinely ignored. If this bill passes, French women will have licence to assault men psychologically - "you're no man, you let your boss walk all over you;" "you call that lovemaking?" - with impunity, not that any real man, ironically enough, would dream of complaining to the police about such insults, however diminishing and painful they were. But women will hold the power to invoke the state's enormous punitive powers when they feel slighted. Or even when they don't, but have an axe to grind.

This is a Pandora's Box France will be very sorry she opened.

Her views are genenerally solid, but it appears that in her tangential commentary on the applicability of this law to emotional cruelty by parents, she has not fully considered the already sharp teeth of Canada's existing child welfare laws, which address emotional abuse of children.

- GJW

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Fox News or the 700 Club?

You be the judge:

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Canada's Top 100 CEO's Are Doing Just Fine

Canadian Press reports that Canada's top 100 CEO's didn't have such a bad year in 2008:

Canada's 100 highest paid CEOs pocketed an of average $7.3 million in 2008, the same year Canadians were hard hit by the emergence of the worldwide recession, according to a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives...

1. Thomas Glocer, Thomson Reuters Corp. $36.6 million.
2. -Ted Rogers, Rogers Communications Inc. $21.5 million.
3. -J. M. Lipton, Nova Chemicals Corp. $19.8 million.
4. -George Cope, BCE Inc. $19.6 million.
5. -Robert Brown, CAE Inc.$17.3 million.
6. -William Doyle, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan $17 million.
7. -Hunter Harrison, Canadian National Railway Co. $13.4 million.
8. -Dominic D'Alessandro, Manulife Financial Corp. $13.3 million.
9. -Stephen Wetmore, Bell Aliant Regional Com. Income Fund $11.6 million.
10. -Serafino Iacono (co-chairman), Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp. $11.3 million.
11. -Miguel de la Campa (co-chairman), Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp. $11.3 million.
12. -Jeffrey Orr, Power Financial Corp. $11.3 million.
13. -Jean Claude Gandur, Addax Petroleum Corp. $11.2 million.
14. -Edmund Clark, Toronto-Dominion Bank $11.1 million.
15. -Tye Burt, Kinross Gold Corp. $11.1 million.
16. -Frank Stronach (Chairman), Magna International Inc. $10.8 million.
17. -Louis Vachon, National Bank of Canada $10.5 million.
18. -Randall Eresman, EnCana Corp. $10.3 million.
19. -Gordon Nixon, Royal Bank of Canada $9.6 million.
20. -Ron Brenneman, Petro-Canada $9.2 million
21. -Richard Waugh, Bank of Nova Scotia $9.2 million.
22. -Michael Wilson, Agrium Inc. $9.2 million.
23. -Gregory Wilkins, Barrick Gold Corp. $8.9 million.
24. -John A Manzoni, Talisman Energy Inc. $8.8 million.
25. -Allan Leighton, Loblaw Cos. Ltd./Weston $8.8 million.
26. -Kevin McArthur, Goldcorp Inc. $8.7 million.
27. -Craig H. Muhlhauser, Celestica Inc $8.7 million.
28. -Harold Kvisle, TransCanada Corp. $8.6 million.
29. -Eugene C. McBurney, (Chairman) GMP Corp. $8.3 million.
30. -Jim Shaw, Shaw Communications Inc. $8.2 million.
31. -Richard George, Suncor Energy Inc. $8 million.
32. -Pierre Beaudoin, Bombardier Inc.$7.8 million.
33. -Richard J. Harrington, Thomson Reuters Corp. $7.8 million.
34. -D.A. Loney, Great-West Lifeco Inc. $7.3 million.
35. -Pierre Peladeau, Quebecor Inc. $7 million.
36. -James Kinnear, Pengrowth Energy Trust $6.9 million.
37. -Darren Entwistle, TELUS Corp. $6.9 million.
38. -Stephen Snyder, TransAlta Corp. $6.9 million.
39. -Donald Stewart, Sun Life Financial Inc. $6.6 million.
40. -Robert A. Milton, ACE Aviation Holdings Inc. $6.6 million.
41. -Donald Lindsay, Teck Cominco Ltd. $6.5 million.
42. -Peter Munk, Barrick Gold Corp. $6.5 million.
43. -Patrick Daniel, Enbridge Inc. $6.5 million.
44. -William Downe, Bank of Montreal $6.4 million.
45. -Nancy Southern, Atco Ltd./Canadian Utilities Ltd. $6.3 million.
46. -Gerry McCaughey, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce $6.3 million.
47. -Jacques Lamarre, SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. $6.3 million.
48. -Charles Fischer, Nexen Inc. $6.2 million.
49. -Bruce Aitken, Methanex Corp. $5.9 million.
50. -Donald Walker, Magna International Inc.$5.9 million.
51. -Jurgen Schreiber, Shoppers Drug Mart Corp. $5.9 million.
52. -Edward M. Siegel Jr., Russel Metals Inc. $5.8 million.
53. -Siegfried Wolf, Magna International Inc. $5.7 million.
54. -David Goodman, Dundee Wealth $5.6 million.
55. -Mario Longhi, Gerdau Ameristeel Corp. $5.6 million.
56. -Ronald Pantin, Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp. $5.5 million.
57. -Allen Chan, Sino-Forest Corp. $5.3 million.
58. -Geoffrey T. Martin, CCL Industries $5.3 million.
59. -Sean Boyd, Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd. $5.3 million.
60. -Scott Saxberg, Crescent Point Energy Trust $5.3 million.
61. -Ian Greenberg, Astral Media Inc. $5.3 million.
62. -Paul Desmarais Jr., Power Corp. of Canada $5.2 million.
63. -James Balsillie, Research in Motion Ltd. $5.2 million.
64. -Michael Lazaridis, Research in Motion Ltd. $5.2 million.
65. -Andre Desmarais, Power Corp. of Canada $5 million.
66. -Francois Coutu, Jean Coutu Group $4.9 million.
67. -Jay Hennick, FirstService Corp. $4.8 million.
68. -John Lau, Husky Energy Inc. $4.8 million.
69. -Frederic Green, Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. $4.7 million.
70. -John Macken, Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. $4.7 million.
71. -Steve Laut, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. $4.6 million.
72. -Peter R. Jones, HudBay Minerals Inc. $4.6 million.
73. -Gerald Grandey, Cameco Corp. $4.6 million.
74. - Marc Tellier, Yellow Pages Income Fund $4.6 million.
75. -Mayo M. Schmidt, Viterra Inc. $4.5 million.
76. -Marvin F. Romanow, Nexen Inc. $4.5 million.
77. -M.H. McCain, Maple Leaf Foods Inc. $4.4 million.
78. -Keith A. Carrigan, BFI Canada Ltd. $4.4 million.
79. -Alain Bedard, TransForce Inc. $4.3 million.
80. -Wm. Wells, Biovail Corp. $4.3 million.
81. -Gerald Schwartz, Onex Corp. $4.3 million.
82. -Raymond McFeetors, Great-West Lifeco Inc. $4.2 million.
83. -Ellis Jacob, Cineplex Galaxy Income Fund $4.1 million.
84. -Robert S Pritchard, Torstar Corp. $4.1 million.
85. -Michael Waites, Finning International Inc. $4.1 million.
86. -Stephen H. Sorenson, Uex Corp $4 million.
87. -B.H. March, Imperial Oil Ltd. $4 million.
88. -Charles Jeannes, Goldcorp Inc. $4 million.
89. -Luc Desjardins, Transcontinental Inc. $4 million.
90. -Stanley Marshall, Fortis Inc. $3.9 million.
91. -Peter Marrone, Yamana Gold Inc. $3.9 million.
92. -Marcel Coutu, Canadian Oil Sands Trust $3.7 million.
93. -Kevin Loughrey, Thompson Creek Metals Co. Inc.$ 3.7 million.
94. -Thomas Gauld, Canadian Tire Corp. $3.6 million.
95. -Brett Herman, TriStar Oil & Gas Ltd. $3.6 million.
96. -S. Defalco, MDS Inc. $3.5 million.
97. -W.P. Buckley, ShawCor Ltd. $3.5 million.
98. -D.L. Rogers, Sears Canada Inc. $3.5 million.
99. -Edward Sonshine, RioCan REIT $3.4 million.
100. -Rupert Duchesne, Groupe Aeroplan Inc. $3.2 million.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Video: If Only Life Was Really Like This...

All you need is love...

May we earthlings inch just a little bit closer in 2010.

What a fantastic job done by the people who mixed this video.

(ht: KJR)

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Our Most Tweeted Posts for 2009

Via Topsy:

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- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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