Below The Beltway

It looks like Elliot Spitzer won’t be going to jail:
NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors announced Thursday that they won’t bring criminal charges against Eliot Spitzer for his role in a prostitution scandal, removing a huge legal cloud that has surrounded the former governor since his epic downfall eight months ago.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said [...]

A Federal Judge in Pennsylvania has, not surprisingly, dismissed a lawsuit attempting to remove Barack Obama from the ballot on the ground that he is not a natural born citizen:
A federal judge in Philadelphia last night threw out a complaint by a Montgomery County lawyer who claimed that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was not [...]

Roy Pearson tries to revive the frivolous lawsuit that refused to die:
Roy L. Pearson Jr. was back in court today, trying to revive his highly publicized $54 million lawsuit against a neighborhood dry cleaners over a pair of lost pants.
Pearson, a former District administrative law judge, recycled some of the same legal arguments that were [...]

Fifteen year old girl takes naked picutre of herself, sends it to a few friends, gets charged with distributing child pornography:
NEWARK — A 15-year-old girl is accused of distributing nude photos of herself to other minors, and one state legislator is questioning whether she should be labeled a sex offender.
The Licking Valley High School student [...]

Anyone who knows anything about the law wouldn’t be the least be surprised by this:
A federal judge in Honolulu has dismissed a lawsuit trying to stop the running of a giant particle accelerator outside Geneva, dodging the issue of whether it could actually cause the end of the world.
The judge, Helen Gillmor, said in her [...]

Roy Pearson’s infamous $ 54 million pants will have their day in court yet again:
A customer’s $54 million lawsuit against a D.C. dry cleaner over a missing pair of pants will be argued again in court next month.
The D.C. Court of Appeals has agreed to hear the case first brought against Custom Cleaners more than [...]

Today, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that a Louisiana law allowing the death penalty for rape of a child even when it doesn’t result in death is unconstitutional:
A divided Supreme Court ruled today that it is unconstitutional to execute someone who rapes a child but does not kill the victim.
In a 5 [...]

Markos Moulistas links to and reproduces an Associated Press story about the gay marriages in California, and then has this to say:
The dinosaurs at the AP think they know what the “spirit of the internet” is, and they claim it has nothing to do with copying pieces of information from other sources for purposes of [...]

Not surprisingly, there’s been a lot of discussion among bloggers about moves by the Associated Press to define what constitutes “fair use” of it’s articles by bloggers:
The Associated Press, one of the nation’s largest news organizations, said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its [...]

Senator Diane Feinstein has introduce a private relief bill to prevent the deportation of a high school valedictorian whose came to the United States with his parents when he was three years old:
FRESNO, California (CNN) — Plans to deport an Armenian high school valedictorian in Fresno, California, were put on hold Tuesday after Sen. Dianne [...]