Cultivated Compendium

The Lawrence Journal-World reports: "One group that won't be required to have health insurance when the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate goes into effect next year is American Indians, of which Douglas County has a larger-than-average population. The health reform law often known as Obamacare mandates that Americans carry some type of health insurance in 2014 or be fined. The 2010 law does, however, exempt certain people from that requirement: members of religious groups opposed to insurance, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, Americans who either don't make enough money to file taxes or would have to spend more than 8 percent of their income on premiums, and American Indians eligible for care through the Indian Health Service."

Two of the causes closest to my heart-- disaster relief and people with disabilities--intersect in this piece on how the early dissemination of information is crucial to improve disaster relief for people with disabilities.

Two recent losses by litigation-funding outfits led to this interesting report from the Wall Street Journal. One tidbit: "Litigation finance is a growing field that now includes a number of specialty firms that maintain multimillion-dollar portfolios devoted to legal investments. Hedge funds and individual investors also occasionally purchase stakes in litigation as part of a broader investment strategy. There at least five litigation-finance firms in the U.S., U.K. and Australia that have $100 million or more under management. With litigation finance, funders advance money to help people and companies pay for lawsuits they would otherwise be unable to pursue. Critics are concerned that the practice could give outside investors undue influence over legal decisions and allow frivolous lawsuits to go forward, driving up the overall cost of litigation."

GigaOM's Mathew Ingram argues that the federal shield law for journalists pending in the U.S. Senate is a bad idea because it would "allow the government to define who gets to be a journalist and who doesn’t." Ingram further argues, even though senators tried to draw a line between freelance journalists and Wikileaks, the leaker web organization "is clearly a media entity — a key part of what Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler has called the 'networked fourth estate.'"

Five Philadelphia judges have had their financial records subpoenaed by federal prosecutors, including in connection to a convicted felon who was an active Democratic Party fundraiser and who won a lawsuit, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Sources told the Inqy they were unsure of the focus of the investigation beyond interest in cases being possibly fixed. Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery also is the subject to a federal probe, The Legal Intelligencer reported a few weeks ago: http://m.americanlawyer.com/module/alm/app/tal.do#!/article/1106224228

The Washington Post's Robert Barnes reports on the latest legal disputes in the custody dispute over Baby Veronica between her adoptive white parents and her biological American Indian father: "Since a deeply divided Supreme Court ruled in Veronica’s case in June, here’s who else has had a say: two South Carolina courts, three Oklahoma courts, the Supreme Court of the Cherokee Nation, a battalion of lawyers, two governors and someone from the United Nations." One of the legal issues is South Carolina's call to extradite the biological father to face contempt charges for not following court orders in favor of the adoptive parents.

Buried in this story on a meeting of American Indian tribes and federal prosecutors is a statistic showing that federal prosecutions of crimes on reservations increased 54% from 2009 to 2012. The lack of resources to pursue law-breaking on tribal reservations, particularly sexual violence against American Indian women, has been a huge issue in recent years. As novelist Louise Erdrich said in an interview about her most recent novel in which a mother's rape by a white man is unprosecutable, "The statistics are one in three native women are raped, about 67 percent of those rapes fall under federal jurisdiction and are not prosecuted.  Something like 88 percent are believed to be committed by non-natives, and the tribes have no jurisdiction over non-natives." The increase in federal prosecutors' caseloads might be showing the tide is turning on this issue.

For the full interview with Erdrich, see: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2012/10/conversation-louise-erdrich...

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said that it would be toxic for a Republican presidential candidate to support same-sex marriage during the primary season, but that the nominee would likely come out in favor of same-sex unions after securing the nomination.

The ACLU has raised concerns that the Alaskan Health Information Exchange for sharing electronic health records is not secure against hackers and governemental intrusion by the NSA. For example, the ACLU opined: "Let’s be clear: electronic medical records can be a good thing. They can improve our health and make it easier for doctors to care for us. But a medical exchange that isn’t secure against spies and hackers is bad for Alaskans." The full OP/ED can be read here: http://m.newsminer.com/opinion/community_perspectives/risky-electronic-h...

But healthcare providers hit back, arguing the exchange is secure and that penalties for not ensuring patient privacy are high.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional for juvenile offenders. Now the Alabama Supreme Court has set out a 14-factor test that judges can use to decide if juveniles convicted of murder can be sentenced to life with or without the possiblity of parole. The Sentencing Law and Policy Blog noted that the Alabama Supreme Court found an opinon from the Pennsylvania Superior Court, Commonwealth v. Knox, helpful in setting out the 14 factors, which include the juvenile's mental-health hisotry, the juvenile's emotional maturity and development and "any other relevant factor related to the juvenile's youth."