KOIN online has this story today (10/16/07), “Kicker Tax Refund ‘Phishing’ Scam.”
“If you get a phone call or e-mail asking for your bank account number so that your kicker refund can be electronically deposited in your account, don’t believe it.
The Oregon Department of Revenue said that a handful of taxpayers have reported getting official-sounding phone calls and e-mails offering to deposit their kicker refund.
It’s not you. The Oregon Constitution is truly the proverbial Dog’s Breakfast (aka dog’s dinner, i.e. a mess and a muddle (edible but maybe not so eatable)). Everyone has known this for a long time and the Oregonian also Says It’s So in its October 11th, 2007, article by Janie Harr, “Tinkering with the constitution an Oregon tradition.”
Given how long the Oregon Constitution has been a dog’s breakfast, should that fact alone determine which way you vote (and there are always other facts to consider)? Or, maybe, we need a committee, commission, task force, whatever, to clean it up. And then again, maybe not. Our Constitution won’t fit into a nice neat pocket version (like this one), but that’s ok – maybe. You have to admit, pocket-size ones entice you to read them, but one the size of a small phone book, not so much.
When was the last time you read the Oregon Constitution?
If you were ever in doubt that the great mind behind beSpacific had a sense of humor (and you shouldn’t have been – librarians gotta laugh), here’s a link to an October 16, 2007, beSpacific post, “New Website Simplifies Your Access to Your FBI Files.” This will lead you to Get Grandpa’s FBI File and Get My FBI File.
(Maybe I need to follow these leads, hmmmm: Read, The Law Librarian and the FBI, Part One to Part Six.)
The Sentencing Law and Policy blog, posts this: “Oregon Supreme Court applies Apprendi to consecutive sentences”. Read the Comments too.
Excerpt from the blog post:
“Providing a great reminder that there are still many unsettled Blakely issues, the Oregon Supreme Court today in State v. Ice, No. S52248 (Ore. Oct. 11, 2007) (available here), holds that the “federal constitution requires that a jury, rather than a judge, find the facts that Oregon law requires be present before a judge can impose consecutive sentences.” All Blakely fans should make the time to check out Ice….”
As if it’s not tough enough enforcing money judgments stateside, you may also have to think about enforcing them north of the border. The October 2007 Oregon State Bar (OSB) Bulletin has an article by Michael Bertoldi (contact information in the article), “Show Me the (Canadian) Money” that tells you how.
From Inter Alia in the past few weeks, links to some interesting new blawgs, including:
Counterfeit Blog
Online Liability Blog
RICO Law Blog
Law of the Game Blog
Would a records check on you erroneously show a criminal conviction? If it did, what steps would you take to clear your record?
For example, what would you do if in the course of applying for a mortgage or a job or looking for an apartment, the bank, employer or apartment manager told you, “forget about it” because a background or credit check came up with a criminal conviction on your record. So you didn’t know you even had a “record” did you? Well think again. This type of identity theft (or besmirching) is happening, again and again.
Trying to fix this type of criminal record error makes clearing your financial record after a financial identity theft look like a walk in the park (ok, a really big park, with a lot of really steep hills). This is partly because the reason for the error can be located anywhere from the criminal impersonator (if there is one) to errors by a law enforcement agency, by the database vendor, or by whomever is contracting for the information. (There are probably others in this chain.)
Over the years I’ve heard from more than a few lawyers who have had rental car or other travel “legal adventures” while out of the country. (Law librarians learn an awful lot from the trouble other people get into.) Here’s a new one for you, linked to from an Oct 8th Ernie the Attorney post, “International law of golf car rental.” It’s funny, but not so much either.
The Oregon State Bar (OSB) has published their 2008 Law Library Values grid.
No, you can’t always believe what you read (you didn’t know this already?), but this is not cause for despair. While print authors remain forever frustrated when they notice errors after publication, especially those who know they aren’t likely to be corrected in future printings, online authors, and especially journalists, have an easy if imperfect fix. Jonathan Franzen of Corrections fame, has nothing on newspaper Corrections. There is even a “corrections” blog, Regret the Error, which on top of being very funny, has links to the corrections pages of many major newspapers.
Our Oregonian doesn’t have a link at Regret the Error, but it does have a Corrections section on its web page (and in the print edition).
Bloggers have the best “correction” options of all. We can edit, include the correction in a Comment, or the mother-of-all-corrections – we can delete (though imperfectly). This, as you can imagine, is why law librarians want the laws printed on paper. Shenanigan-free (mostly).
Oregon Legal Research Blog