THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† You Can’t Hide Your Prying Eyes: Former UCLA Medical Center administrative specialist Lawanda Jackson, 49, has been indicted on charges of illegally obtaining individually identifiable health information for commercial advantage. “According to the federal indictment, Jackson received $4,600 from the yet unknown media outlet, in exchange for the celebrities' private medical data,” reports online newspaper eFluxMedia. When interviewed by the Los Angeles Times a couple of weeks ago about allegations that she had snooped into the medical records of CA First Lady Maria Shriver, actress Farrah Fawcett and others, Jackson had denied selling the information. If convicted, Jackson could get as much as 10 years in jail.
† The Other Shoe Drops (“She Stared Down An Armed Terrorist To Save Her Unborn Baby’s Life,” fifth item): According to testimony by his mother and brother, Naveed Haq, on trial for the 2006 shootings at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, had “mental problems.” The Seattle Times reports that Hasan Haq testified that his brother hated being Pakistani and Muslim (“He said Islam does not have very good leadership and he would go on about how they were backward.”), that he once tried to force him to eat a pizza topped with pork sausage, and that he ate in front of the family while they were fasting during Ramadan. His mother, Nahida Haq, told the jury that in the weeks leading up to the shootings, her son didn't shave or change his clothes (“He paced the house incessantly, his eyes bulging.”), but under cross-examination by prosecutors she admitted that he had showered and shaved the day before the shootings (as did the September 11 hijackers, BTW). Though police and witnesses testified that Haq “made anti-Semitic statements before and during the slayings,” when his mother took the stand she claimed never to have heard racist or anti-Semitic statements pass his lips.
† What Al Gore Hath Wrought (second item): In the eight years since a presidential election got hung up on “hanging chads,” FL passed a “no match, no vote” law (voters are turned away at the polls if Social Security or driver’s license numbers don’t jibe with state databases); imposed anti-fraud requirements on voter registration groups, along with stiff fines for violators; and prohibited voters from amending registration forms in the final month before an election. While these provisions - meant to standardize voter registration and minimize fraud - have withstood legal challenges thus far, “[s]ome critics predict that tens of thousands of potential voters will be kept off the rolls - many of them poor, black or Hispanic, reports The New York Times. The paper adds that “independent elections experts” claim “it is now harder to vote [in FL] than in nearly every other state in the nation.”
† The Other Shoe Drops (“The Sum For The Parts,” second item): A class action suit representing hundreds of people who claim that the corpses of their loved ones were dismembered and sold by a body-parts trafficking ring has been filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common pleas against Michael Mastromarino, Christopher Aldorasi, Lee Cruceta, Kevin Vickers, Gerald Garzone, his brother Louis Garzone and James McCafferty, reports Reuters. According to the grand jury indictment, the seven men “harvest[ed] bones, skin and tendons in unsanitary conditions, and [sold] them to hospitals with the risk that they could infect patients who received them,” and “allegedly made $3.8 million from sale of body parts obtained in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey between February 2004 and September 2005.” They are scheduled to go on trial in criminal court September 2nd.
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