Anyone else receive a "Breaking News Alert" call from 866-252-6256 predicting Democratic landslides in a bunch of key states? It looks like this number has been used by a call-bank for awhile but I haven't seen any reports as to who owns it and calls go straight to a voice mail which very carefully avoids giving any identifying information.
@Johan: When I hear "dress code", I think "McDonald's" - and it's jarringly incompatible with a professional job: someone is supposed to be capable of performing independent, skilled work and yet they can't be trusted to dress themselves?
It makes a lot more sense if you consider a dress codes as a conformity exercise - and in that context it's unsurprising that the Sun had a particularly strict one: it fits perfectly with their hidebound conservatism.
Bush wins easily because he's launched far and away the most direct attack on the actual concept of the United States with his arguments about executive power - from major issues like oversight and torture to minor things. We've had corrupt and incompetent presidents in the past but I can't think of a precedent for anyone directly asserting that the other two branches had no authority over him or that constitutional rights were only advisory.
According to VA Watchdog it's an urban legend
Does anyone have a more authoritative source for this? While it'd certainly be in character I get itchy any time I read something like this without any quotes, bill/policy numbers, etc.
One thing which gets lost among the "evil big company" chatter is that the people most at risk are small-to-medium businesses - they don't have a large legal department to discourage suing, the cost is more likely to be a significant chunk of their revenue and the case probably won't get attention from anyone else. Big businesses certainly do enjoy advantages under the system but they're also likely to get class-action cases simply because they have more customers to take abuse.
We used to see this with the patent sharks: they'd buy some incredibly bad patent which they claimed covered all web pages or online shopping (actual examples) and would then look for companies like our clients who tended to be profitable bricks-and-mortar companies whose web operations weren't important enough to justify the expense of a court case. Collecting $5-50,000 from a bunch of little guys was much easier than suing someone like Amazon.com who could really afford to fight back.
There are two changes I'd make to the legal system: the first would simply be ensuring that punitive damages went to a third-party. In addition to reducing the "jackpot" prospect it makes more sense from a social perspective to have the money fund whoever is actually dealing with the mess (e.g. the public health services or environmental cleanup groups who are probably dealing with all of the people who didn't sue).
The other would involving improving the professional misconduct system to make sure there was a serious risk of disbarment for lawyers who bring blatantly abusive cases, which are not always strawmen.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 6 |
| 2007 | 1 |
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