Robert Ambrogi’s column in the Oregon State Bar (OSB) Bulletin (click on the OSB Bulletin drop down menu for the table of contents) has a great list of lawyer-created wikis that demonstrate the range of talents these little critters have (the wikis and the wiki-makers).
His own excellent blog is here.
How much and for what services should the state pay private investigators in capital cases?
The May 10th Willamette Week has a very interesting story about how the state is or is not paying for adequate legal defense services in capital cases, specifically in this case with defendant Ricardo Serrano. The WW blog posting’s comments have additional information.
May 11th postscript: If the information I received today is correct, the decision was made in this particular case to pay the private investigator standard rate.
The current issue of the Oregon Law Review, vol. 85, 2007, has an article (Comment) by Sarah Burgundy on Measure 37, “Charming the Eight-Hundred-Pound Gorilla: How Reconsideration of Home Rule in Oregon Can Help Metro Tame Measure 37.”
And, oh joyful day, the Oregon Law Review makes their articles available online to the public. This article is here.
Did you know you could find out online how much Powell’s might give you for your used books? You will need an ISBN, but most (though not all) books have one. Here’s the link. It’s less dangerous to do this online than going to one of their stores where it is almost impossible to walk out without buying something, though I remember doing that once – well, maybe almost did that once.
Did you know you have to renew your “membership” on the Do Not Call List every 5 years? Well, now you do. Here’s how.
A new Bedsworth to amuse and signal the beginning of a brief blog-hiatus for me. It’s time to enjoy Spring’s and Portland’s sights and sounds, and get some work done too.
It occurred to me recently that I don’t like the word victim and don’t want ever to be called one, unless I’m not around to argue the point, in which case you can call me whatever you want. I hear and read so many stories about incredible people who I would prefer to call survivors or maybe alpha victims, though that’s not quite right either. You know the ones I mean, the ones who fight back, who stand up, who won’t let the bxxxxxxs get them down, etc. The bicyclist who stages a sting to get his stolen bicycle back, the rape survivor who braves a trial, a daughter who tracks down the man who shot her father, parents, family members and friends of survivors who figure out how to make the world a better place after the loss or injury of someone beloved, and so many other role models. We’re not to know what we’ll do on the other side of tragedy, but I’d like to think, if I had a choice (and not all tragedies give us one), I’d be one of those incredible survivors, rather than a victim, put upon, defeated, traumatized, passive. We need a better word.
Two very different books come to mind when I think about this, in addition to the stories I hear and read in the news. One is “Revenge,” by Laura Blumenfeld, an incredible story (I first heard Blumenfeld on Studio 360). The other, oddly enough, is “About Alice,” by Calvin Trillin. Among the other well-known joys of reading Trillin and his ever present, delightful puzzlement over the ways of the world, is his telling of some new Alice stories. The most extraordinary is the one he tells of a letter Alice wrote to a friend’s daughter who was raped. Trillin writes about Alice and her letter to their friend’s daughter (and please forgive me if I suffered confusion over quotation marks).
“This was a dozen years after Alice had been operated on for lung cancer, and among the things that she wrote to our friend’s daughter was that having lung cancer and being raped were comparable only in that both were what she called ‘realizations of our worst nightmares.’ She said that there was some relief at surviving what you might have thought was not survivable. ‘No one would ever choose to have cancer or to be raped,’ she wrote. ‘But you don’t get to choose, and it is possible at least to understand what Ernest Becker meant when he said something like “To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything,” or to begin to understand the line in “King Lear” – “Ripeness is all.” You might have chosen to become ripe less dramatically or dangerously, but you can still savor ripeness.’” (Trillin, “About Alice,” 2006, pp. 8-9)
The Street Roots issue (April 13th) that is on the street now, and that will be available on the Street Roots homepage soon, has two articles on the Portland Charter Review measures, one by Joanne Zuhl, Street Roots staff writer, and the other by Don MacGillivray, who was a member of the Mayor’s Charter Review Commission.
More information on the Charter Review Commission and the reform measures can be found at the Citizens to Reform City Hall web page, the Portland’s Future Charter web page, and in just about every Portland metro area newspaper, happily too numerous to mention in the brief time I have this morning for blorking.
The Street Roots issue (April 13th) that is on the street now, and will be available on the Street Roots homepage very soon, has an article by Andrea Meyer, Legislative Director for the ACLU of Oregon, explaining why they oppose the proposed Portland sit-lie ordinance. Today’s Oregonian, May 1st, has an editorial by Israel Bayer, Director of Street Roots, on the same ordinance.
If you think you live in a city that’s not watching legal developments around the country on ordinances like this one, you’re not paying attention.
Monday’s (4/30/07) Oregonian story by Michelle Roberts and Bryan Denson, “Wayne’s worlds blur boundaries of law, sanity,” was interesting from more than one perspective. Toward the end of the story, we read:
“Shortly after Skeen’s release, he called The Oregonian and said he wanted to continue championing the causes of psychiatric patients. He asked the reporter to give him a list of the names of state hospital workers. She refused.
A few days later, on July 19, 2004, James Sellers, a public information officer for the Oregon Department of Human Services called the reporter. Sellers asked whether she had received the employee list that her assistant, “Mike Allen,” had requested for her. The reporter told Sellers she had no assistant. Sellers said he had sent the information to an e-mail account that wasn’t a working e-mail address for the newspaper. After that conversation, the reporter phoned Skeen, saying she suspected he had pretended to be her assistant to obtain information.”
What I want to know is why is a PIO or any other government employee sending lists of employee information to anyone without FIRST checking on the where that information is going? The alleged Oregonian “assistant” had a non-employer email address. Yes, I know there are lots of reasons for that, but you’re sending personal information for heaven’s sake. How hard is it to call the reporter and verify that s/he is the person who will get the information? Enough personal information security lapses occur without anyone being able to stop them; couldn’t we at least minimize the ones that occur due to negligence, incompetence, and stupidity? On the Internet no one knows you’re Wayne.
Oregon Legal Research Blog