THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II: Thanks to the Supreme Court, Washington, D.C. resident Dick Heller, the lead plaintiff in of D.C. v. Heller, now has a gun permit. But his lawyers don't have their fees from the District of Columbia, reports Legal Times. Attorney Alan Gura, who headed Heller's legal team, asked for $3.6 million in attorney fees and costs for the six years he spent on the case. The sum includes a fee enhancement, based on the exceptional nature of the case - “one of the most profound and important victories available under our system of justice” – that doubles each lawyer's hours, meaning Gura's estimated 1,661 hours, at a rate of $557 per hour would come to roughly $1.85 million. The District filed an opposition brief, complaining that the fee request was “highly unreasonable” and made a counteroffer of $798,232 in fees and $9,480 in litigation costs. Gura defends the request by noting that the D.C. government mounted a defense that would have cost “millions” if handled by a private firm, adding that the Heller team “should not be paid for winning, only a very small fraction of what the other side spent or would have spent losing.” The right to bear arms is priceless, and Gura deserves the fee he is requesting.
† What It's Like To Be Sheriff Joe: Back in April, when Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's deputies swept the town of Guadalupe, AZ, looking for illegal aliens, Mayor Rebecca Jimenez told him to get lost – with TV cameras rolling. And so he did. Arpaio canceled his contract to patrol the one-square-mile town of 5,500, reports the Los Angeles Times, and now the city’s new mayor, Frankie Montiel, is scrambling to find another agency to help fight gangbangers and other criminals:
Arpaio sent Jimenez a letter notifying her that he would cancel the contract because it now appeared that Guadalupe, which had been patrolled by the department for 20 years, would not let him enforce all state laws.
The county supervisors approved the cancellation late last month, giving Guadalupe six months to find another agency.
The town soon discovered that finding a replacement was not so easy. Other cities said their police budgets were too strapped to step in. …
To buy more time, the town has sued Arpaio and the supervisors to keep the contract in place.
For his part, Arpaio insists that even when the town is patrolled by another agency his deputies can continue to enforce the law by rooting out illegals.
† Can The Nutrition Police Lay Off Coffee, Already?: A study of 38,432 American women that began in 1992 published in the Archives of Internal Medicine has found “no overall association between caffeine consumption and breast cancer risk,” reports Reuters. However, women with benign breast disease - nonmalignant lumps or tumors – who drank four or more cups of coffee daily were at significantly increased risk of breast cancer – but benign breast disease in and of itself is a risk for breast cancer, and even these women did not develop breast cancer if their coffee consumption was limited to just a couple of cups a day. In any case, the researchers admit that the findings for benign breast disease are “borderline” and could just be a fluke.
† The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (last item): Having cut a plea deal with prosecutors last month, Stephanie Wilson of Utica, NY, will serve up to three years in prison on a charge of attempted third-degree criminal possession of a weapon for stashing an arsenal in her baby’s stroller that included a sawed-off shotgun, knives and a box cutter to have at hand for a confrontation with another woman over money, reports The Associated Press. At the sentencing hearing, Oneida County Judge Michael Dwyer advised the 29-year-old to seek mental health counseling.
† Not For All The Money In The World: Remember some 18 months ago when Arianna Huffington was looking for an executive assistant and The Stiletto swore she would never work for her, health benefits notwithstanding? Gawker explains why:
To hear present and former Huffington Post employees tell it, the liberal website owes its ridiculously high turnover mainly to founder Arianna Huffington's tendency to use staffers to perform menial personal chores, to an internal culture of nasty screaming and name-calling and to a generally chaotic management structure, such as it is, subservient to Arianna's rapidly-changing whims.
† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Another Cockamamie Lib Idea Fails The Real World Test): After Terri Martin abandoned her 13-year-old adopted son at Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, NE, under the state's flawed “safe haven” law, Oakland County (MI) Juvenile Court Referee Karla Mallett barred her and her husband, Terrance Martin, from further contact with their other children - two boys, ages 10 and 5, and a 3-year-old girl – and placed them under temporary state custody, reports The Associated Press. Prosecutors allege the children had been abused and neglected. The children are now being cared for by a 19-year-old cousin.
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