Mayor Seeks To Tweak Gun Ordinance In Wake Of Court Ruling

Posted on June 26, 2012 8:00 pm by zandocomm

Mayor Seeks To Tweak Gun Ordinance In Wake Of Court Ruling

Rahm Emanuel 4

Rahm Emanuel 4 (Photo credit: afagen)

CHICAGO (CBS) – Mayor Rahm Emanuel will seek to revise the city’s gun control ordinance, after a federal judge ruled part of the 2010 law is unconstitutional.

The mayor said he will introduce a revision to the gun ordinance at this week’s City Council meeting, permanently banning anyone with a violent felony conviction from getting a city gun permit. Anyone with a violent misdemeanor conviction would face a five-year ban.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan struck down a portion of the Chicago Firearm Ordinance that barred anyone convicted of “unlawful use of a weapon” from obtaining a city gun permit. He ruled that section was too vague and unfairly barred people with non-violent gun convictions from ever again owning a firearm in Chicago.

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R. Allen Stanford gets 110 years for role in $7B swindle

Posted on June 15, 2012 2:00 am by zandocomm

R. Allen Stanford gets 110 years for role in $7B swindle

English: Mug shot of Allen Stanford.

HOUSTON – Former jet-setting Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford, whose financial empire once spanned the Americas, was sentenced Thursday to 110 years in prison for bilking investors out of more than $7 billion over 20 years in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.

U.S. District Judge David Hittner handed down the sentence during a court hearing in which two people spoke on behalf of Stanford’s investors about how his fraud had affected their lives.

Prosecutors had asked that Stanford be sentenced to 230 years in prison, the maximum sentence possible after a jury convicted the one-time billionaire in March on 13 of 14 fraud-related counts. Stanford’s convictions on conspiracy, wire and mail fraud charges followed a seven-week trial.

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No Bail For Ohio Bridge Bomb Suspects: Judge

Posted on June 13, 2012 6:00 am by zandocomm

No Bail For Ohio Bridge Bomb Suspects: Judge

 

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND | Tue Jun 12, 2012 3:52pm EDT

(Reuters) – Five men accused of plotting to blow up a highway bridge south of Cleveland are a danger to the community and could try to flee so they will be held without bail pending their trial, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

Self-described anarchists Brandon Baxter, Anthony Hayne, Joshua Stafford, Connor Stevens and Douglas Wright were charged in April with one count each of conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. They have pleaded not guilty, but did not testify at a bond hearing in late May.

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Unpaid Bloggers’ Lawsuit Versus Huffington Post Tossed

Posted on April 5, 2012 7:56 pm by zandocomm

Image representing AOL as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

Unpaid Bloggers‘ Lawsuit Versus Huffington Post Tossed

(Reuters) – AOL Inc on Friday won the dismissal of a lawsuit by unpaid bloggers who complained they were deprived of their fair share of the roughly $315 million that the company paid last March to buy The Huffington Post website.

U.S. District Judge John Koeltl rejected claims by social activist and commentator Jonathan Tasini and an estimated 9,000 other bloggers that they deserved $105 million, or about one-third, of the purchase price.

The lawsuit contended that the work of unpaid content providers like bloggers gave The Huffington Post much of its value, and that the website’s sale allowed co-founder Arianna Huffington to profit at their expense. Tasini said he alone had made 216 submissions to the website over more than five years.

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5 Ex-Cops Sentenced In Katrina Killings Case

Posted on April 5, 2012 4:38 pm by zandocomm

filedesc CBP Supports Relief Effort photo by G...

5 Ex-Cops Sentenced In Katrina Killings Case

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge sentenced five former police officers to years in prison for the deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge in the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina but not before lashing out at prosecutors for allowing others involved to serve lighter penalties for their crimes. The case that wrapped up Wednesday was the centerpiece of a Justice Department push to clean up New Orleans’ police department that has long been tainted with corruption.

U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt expressed frustration that he was bound by mandatory minimum sentencing laws to imprison former Sgts. Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius and former officers Anthony Villavaso and Robert Faulcon for decades when other officers who engaged in similar conduct on the Danziger Bridge — but cut deals with prosecutors — are serving no more than eight years behind bars.

“These through-the-looking-glass plea deals that tied the hands of this court … are an affront to the court and a disservice to the community,” he said.

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NY Judge Rejects $285M SEC-Citigroup Agreement

Posted on November 28, 2011 10:10 pm by zandocomm

NY Judge Rejects $285M SEC-Citigroup Agreement

 

By LARRY NEUMEISTER

Logo of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Category...

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Associated Press

NEW YORK —

A judge on Monday used unusually harsh language to strike down a $285 million settlement between Citigroup and the Securities and Exchange Commission over toxic mortgage securities, saying he couldn’t tell whether the deal was fair and criticizing regulators for shielding the public from details of the firm’s wrongdoing.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff said the public has a right to know what happens in cases that touch on “the transparency of financial markets whose gyrations have so depressed our economy and debilitated our lives.” In such cases, the SEC has a responsibility to ensure that the truth emerges, he wrote.

Rakoff said he had spent hours trying to assess the settlement but concluded that he had not been given “any proven or admitted facts upon which to exercise even a modest degree of independent judgment.”

He called the settlement “neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest.”

The SEC shot back in a statement issued by Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami, saying the deal was all four of those things and “reasonably reflects the scope of relief that would be obtained after a successful trial.”

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