I have written often about the wonderful Oregon Legislative Liaisons, but sadly they are no more.
Instead, you need to visit the Legislature’s Support and Contact Information website, where you will find lots of contact information.
You can also email Legislative Help, or call 1-800-332-2313 and leave a message.
The OSB Or Con Law section’s Spring 2010 newsletter is an eye-popping 73 pages – that’s not a newsletter, that’s a book!
If you want to immerse yourself in some heavy, but interesting reading, here’s a link to the newsletter’s PDF. (I can’t promise that the link won’t change, so remember the link to the OSB Constitutional Law Section website.)
There is a lot of information in this issue:
Craig Colby v. Karen Gunson, State Medical Examiner (SC S057691) (August 26, 2010)
Excerpt (from August 26, 2010, OJD Media Release):
“On review from the Court of Appeals in an appeal from the Marion County Circuit Court, Albin W. Norblad, Judge. 229 Or App 167, 210 P3d 917 (2009).
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Jury Instructions Committee has completed an extensive revision of the Ninth Circuit Manual of Model Criminal Jury Instructions. The 2010 edition of the Manual contains a number of new instructions. It is updated with cases and statutes through July 2010.
The 2010 edition includes renumbered instructions from the 2003 edition; a conversion table is posted online and provides equivalent jury instruction numbers in the 2003 edition.
There are excellent consumer law websites all over the web, but sometimes you just need the local touch and a local story. This is because a lot of consumer law is local, that is, you need to know state and local law, practice, and procedure in order to determine your rights.
I love this story – and it is so familiar to a public law librarian: many, many people come into the law library to ask, “Where and How Do I Appeal?”
Complete answers to questions people ask are often as elusive as it almost was here for Laura Gunderson – and kudos to her for persistent research, which is often exactly what one has to do – persist, persist, persist. But you can see why legal solutions so often elude those without the aptitute, resources, and time to pursue fairness, if not justice.
Steve Duin’s column in today’s Oregonian (8/24/10) points us to an interesting report on the Oregon business climate:
Taxes feel different here, Monday, August 23, 2010, Steve Duin, The Oregonian
Excerpt: “Politicians, economist Joe Cortright says, tend to view recessions as Greek tragedies: “If something bad is happening in the Oregon economy, it’s because the gods are punishing us for our sins.”
“A 52-year-old Aloha man was arrested Friday night for firing a gun at his own wall after his neighbors complained about him doing loud bird impersonations.”
You can’t make this stuff up! This is why you should always have friends in code enforcement, emergency rooms, and law enforcement. They have the most amazing stories and make even the crankiest amongst us feel downright normal:
A recent story reported on at OregonLive, from the Hillsboro Argus:
People who work in the legal community don’t generally ask us this question, but ordinary mortals do. I am an ordinary mortal too, mostly, so the question seemed well worth a blog post on the subject:
Before trying to track down that transcriptionist, aka transcriber, or even doing it yourself:
1) First, make sure you know what is on the CD and how it was recorded. For example, Oregon Courts use FTR (“For The Record”) to record trials. Is that what is on your CD?
This story from the Law Librarian Blog caught my eye, “Short Takes on the News”:
Excerpt: “…If someone lives in Philadelphia and blogs, and collects even a tiny amount of income from that activity, then that person could expect a tax bill from the city for $300. It represents the cost of a business privilege license. Apparently any activity that generates even a tiny amount of money is subject to the license fee. The Philadelphia City Paper tells the story or Marilyn Bess, who operates a low traffic blog that generates about $50 in ad revenue. She received one of the bills, which was not a mistake after she investigated it. It’s sad that even in rough economic times that a city such as Philadelphia would stoop to these tactics. I wonder how Ben Franklin would respond? Hat Tip to Andrew Sullivan’s blog for the tip….” (Link to full blog post.)
(Read about Benjamin Franklin.)
The website, I Write Like, is wonderful, funny, and inventive (and I’m not inquiring into their algorithms, etc. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow, even if they all lead to Corey Doctorow). Give it a spin.
For many of my sample paragraphs I feed to it, I’m also told (as a couple of the 3 Geeks folks were) that “I write like” Cory Doctorow (including this blog post!) with a few paragraphs coming up “like” David Foster Wallace. If that’s not worth a laugh (and a pang for DFW), I’m not sure what is, but if you have to choose your writer-company, it certainly pleases me muchly – such august company – even if it’s all a fantasy.
Thank you (I think) to 3 Geeks and a Law, August 23, 2010, for their hot tip blog post: I Write Like Jonathan Swift – Who Do You Write Like??
Oregon Legal Research Blog