Jake Laperruque 10. The Child Count Competition. Rick Santorum opened this contest at the start of the debate by mentioning he had 7 children. Michelle Bachmann bested him by announcing she had 5 children, plus 23 foster children. Newt Gingrich forgot about his children, and just said that we need to end the “Obama depression.” Mitt Romney announced he had 5 sons, 5 daughters-in-law, and 16 grandkids. Ron Paul declared that he’d delivered 4,000 babies. Tim Pawlenty said “I’m the father of …
The Filibuster Returns
Yevgeny Shrago Both parties saw the other side of the double-edged filibuster earlier this week. Democrats, lead by Dick Durbin, prevented an attempt to delay implementation of a cap on debit-card interchange fees that passedlast year as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform. Despite 54 votes for the highly contentious measure, the amendment failed; its bipartisan supporters were unable to reach the magic cloture threshold of 60. Regardless of the merits of this provision, which essentially …
Crowdscouring a Beer Company Buyout
Anthony Kammer I came across an interesting post in the Blog of the Legal Times yesterday about two advertising executives who attempted to raise $300 million from online investorks in order to purchase Pabst Blue Ribbon. Rather than approaching large investors, they came up with a rather brilliant method for crowdsourcing the buyout. The two men, Michael Migliozzi II and Brian William Flatow, actually managed to raise $200 million before the SEC stepped in to block the purchase. Since late …
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Human Trafficking Sanctions Ineffective
Marshall Thompson The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) is the main U.S. law to combat slave labor and sex slavery. While most of its provisions appear to be having some positive effects on human trafficking worldwide, a key aspect of it has become little more than a sad joke. To motivate international cooperation, the law requires the State Department to rank nations based on their anti-trafficking laws. Tier 3 countries, which have taken no actions to stop human trafficking, open …
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Head in the iClouds
Jake Laperruque Yesterday, Steve Jobs wowed the tech world with exciting announcement of Apple’s newest product, iCloud. iCloud is Apple’s long awaited cloud computing tool. It enables users to sync iPhones (and XL sized iPhones ) with Mac computers, and instantly access files and exchange them between devices, using the Internet. Cloud computing is an excellent way to make life for those with multiple devices (increasingly becoming the norm) easier and more convenient. Given Apple’s focus …
Tenn. Smacks Down Local Anti-discrimination Laws
Marshall Thompson Last week Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee signed a new state law that prohibits local governments from passing their own anti-discrimination laws. The bill comes in response to a Nashville ordinance prohibiting housing and employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. According to Businessweek Haslam said, “We’re not in favor of discrimination in any form at all. We just think that businesses should get to decide for themselves what they have in …
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