Cultivated Compendium is my personal website with the occasional link to my reporting and to important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news.
Welcome
News and Reporting
December 3rd, 2014
The Federal Aviation Administration has said no to a petition from the Electronic Privacy Information Center to conduct rulemaking about the privacy and civil liberties concerns raised by drones, Gizmodo's Adam Clark Estes writes. The FAA, which has to prioritize making rules when immediate safety or security concerns are at stake, said privacy is not an immediate safety concern, but "conveniently, the agency didn't comment... Continue Reading
December 2nd, 2014
U.S. Senators Michael Bennett and Orrin Hatch are circulating a draft bill to exempt some electronic health records, including medical charts and health histories, from the FDA's oversight, Reuters' Christina Farr reported last week. Medical technology that is classified as posing a low risk to patient safety would be exempt from FDA regulation. Bradley Merrill Thompson, an FDA-specialist with the Washington D.C.-based... Continue Reading
December 2nd, 2014
The Washington Post's Sari Horwitz continues that newspaper's fantastic coverage of issues in Indian Country. This latest installment looks at how American Indian youth sent into the juvenile justice system are just locked away most of the time. There is no schooling, counseling or vocational opportunity at the juvenile facilities like the one on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota (which has been known to be... Continue Reading
December 2nd, 2014
According to a report in Reuters, several leaders of major American corporations are threatening to start siding with the foes of healthcare reform if President Barack Obama's administration does not stop challenging some workplace wellness programs: "The programs aim to control healthcare costs by reducing smoking, obesity, hypertension and other risk factors that can lead to expensive illnesses. A bipartisan provision in the 2010... Continue Reading
December 1st, 2014
Ohio is preparing to join the ranks of several other states that have enacted provisions to keep secret their execution procedures, The Marshall Project's Maurice Chammah reports. The American Board of Anesthesiology has warned that it might revoke the certificate of any anesthesiologist who participates in an execution. A proposed Ohio law would protect doctors' licenses if they participate in executions. The law also would... Continue Reading
December 1st, 2014
SCOTUSBlog's Amy Howe reports that, after oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court today, there is no clear path for victory for Anthony Elonis or the federal government in a case testing the First Amendment boundaries of "true threats." At issue is whether Elonis' criminal liability for his violent, rap-like Facebook posts should be judged by whether he intended to place his ex-wife, an FBI agent and others in fear... Continue Reading
December 1st, 2014
There have been a flood of misdemeanor cases in American courts because of tough-on-crime legislation and tough policing, The Wall Street Journal's John R. Emshwiller and Gary Fields report. The result has been assembly lines in court. Just minutes are spent adjudicating the cases and defendants, who have a constitutional right to legal counsel, often are not provided lawyers. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that... Continue Reading
December 1st, 2014
The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin and Jerry Markon report that the reason parents of "dreamer" children, who had been brought into the country illegally and had been granted temporary relief under the president’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, weren't included in President Obama's executive action protecting many immigrants from deportation is because " ... Continue Reading
December 1st, 2014
The Los Angeles Times' David G. Savage reports that President Obama's use of executive action to shield immigrants from deportation won't just raise the ire of Congressional Republicans: "By claiming the power to forge ahead based on his executive authority, the president may well lose the one conservative he still really needs: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr." Savage wonders if Obama's immigration action could... Continue Reading
November 30th, 2014
FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said today on CNN that his agency is planning the integration of drones into American airspace in stages, "starting with lower-risk uses and then moving on to other applications," Politico's Jennifer Shutt reports. Continue Reading
November 30th, 2014
Journalism professor Will Nevin writes about the U.S. Supreme Court case, United States v. Elonis, that'll be heard in oral argument this week. At issue is whether a conviction for making "true threats" on-line requires that the speaker subjectively intended the threat or if a reasonable person would objectively view their speech as a threat. Anthony Elonis says he was writing rap songs and satire instead of wanting to make... Continue Reading
November 26th, 2014
Two bans on same-sex marriage were struck down yesterday in Mississippi and Arkansas. According to the Associated Press' Emily Wagster Pettus, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves granted a preliminary injunction against Mississippi's statutory and constitutional bans on same-sex marriage. According to SCOTUSBlog's Lyle Denniston, U.S. District Judge Kristine G. Baker struck down Arkansas' ban even though the state officials said... Continue Reading
November 26th, 2014
A sharply divided New York Court of Appeals ruled that a golf course owned by the Seneca Indian Nation doesn't have sovereign immunity shielding it from lawsuits, according to an AP report. The builder of the golf course, which is close to Niagara Falls, has sued over money it says it is owed on the course's construction contract. The majority held that the corporate entity, a wholly owned subsidiary that owns the golf course, is not... Continue Reading
November 25th, 2014
The Wall Street Journal's Jack Nicas and Andy Pasztor report that the Federal Aviation Administration is contemplating regulations for commercial drones that industry folks say will "essentially prohibit" industrial applications in pipeline inspections and crop monitoring. While the FAA has not released the proposed federal rules for integrating drones into American airspace, WSJ reports the rules "are expected to require... Continue Reading
November 25th, 2014
A New York judge has ruled that the confession of the defendant in the Etan Patz case is admissible, ProPublica's Naveena Sadasivam reports. The defendant's lawyers argued that his confession to the murder of a little boy whose face was famously plastered on milk cartons is false. New York Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley ruled that "Hernandez did have the mental capacity to waive his rights to have an attorney present and... Continue Reading
Pages
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
