You NEED to listen to this video.  This is one woman’s account of refusing to go through the ultra-intrusive body scanners; instead, she sought a less intrusive search and was handcuffed to a chair and subjected to embarrassment, ridicule, emotional distress, and physical molestation.

I thought this was America — where privacy is valued and respected.  These new body scanners have been proven to do little to deter terrorists acts.  Instead, these devices, purchased at tax payer expense, subject innocent Americans to electronic strip searches, stripping away our dignity and privacy “for the greater good.”  Acts like these destroy the very thing they are supposed to protect; our rights and freedoms as individuals.

I refuse to use one these disgusting machines and if anyone attempts to pull on me what they pulled on this woman, I promise I will take it out of someone’s hide.

I’m sure the answer may be easier or harder for many of us to answer, depending on dramatic events in our life.  Take the wife who lost a husband on 9-11.  I’m sure she’d instantly say “I’d like to return to the evening of September 10th.”  For me, while I have lost loved ones, I wouldn’t enjoy or wish returning to the days before their death.  Instead, I’d like to return to something epic; something that would shake the very foundation of my faith and belief in life.

I’m going to cheat and say I’d like to return to two moments in history: 1) the crucifixion and the days before and after it; and 2) Roswell New Mexico during the supposed alien craft crash.

Why these two events?  Well, I’m a devout Christian (though many wouldn’t know it) and I’d like to know whether what I believe in is real or fiction.  Knowing one way or another would either intensify my faith, or convert me into a Jew!

As for Roswell, if an alien craft really did crash, it would prove once and for all that we are not alone in the universe.  Could you imagine the reality?

How about you?  What moment would you return to?

For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut. . . .

So even if your blog collects a handful of hits a day, as long as there’s the potential for it to be lucrative — and, as Mandale points out, most hosting sites set aside space for bloggers to sell advertising — the city thinks you should cut it a check. According to Andrea Mannino of the Philadelphia Department of Revenue, in fact, simply choosing the option to make money from ads — regardless of how much or little money is actually generated — qualifies a blog as a business. The same rules apply to freelance writers. As former City Paper news editor Doron Taussig once lamented [Slant, "Taxed Out," April 28, 2005], the city considers freelancers — which both Bess and Barry are, in addition to their blog work — “businesses,” and requires them to pay for a license and pay taxes on their profits, on top of their state and federal taxes.

If I lived in Philadelphia right now, they’d try to force me to pay $300 a year to exercise my free speech rights on the internet.  What city will try this next?  I wouldn’t be surprised if it is San Francisco.

I don’t earn a dime on this website, and yet these idiotic bureaucrats  want to penalize my hard work by demanding a yearly handout.  What right do they have to decide that I should give them $300, or whatever sum of money they arbitrarily decide is appropriate?  What have they done to entitle themselves to such funds?  Not a damn thing.

But that’s the point.  If you’re a government entity, you can pull new policies right out of your rear and suddenly they’re legit.  If I demanded $300 from my neighbor and took it, I’d be arrested for theft.  But if a city does it, well that’s just a part of respecting the public order.

I wonder, at what point did America – from the federal government all the way down to its municipalities, decide that the people work for the government; not that the government works for the people?  It’s ass backwards.  Millions of hardworking Americans are pinching their wallets and instead of tax breaks and other policies to alleviate their already stressed coffers, the government is imposing new taxes, new penalties, and new “creative” ways to suck us dry.

Disgusting.  These people running Philly are so out of touch they must be living on Mars.  And what’s sad, they wont be the only ones that think this is a good idea . . . .

. . . Kelley Drye partner Talat Ansari told the newspaper his firm sends some legal matters to India, although it is only basic work. An example: The firm hires lawyers in India to review e-mails to find relevant documents for discovery. “We have comparatively very competent lawyers who speak English there and have gone through rigorous law school training,” he said. And the rates are cheaper, although that could change in the future.

Finish reading it here.

Check out the photos here

It looks like businesses finally got tired of the unreasonable fees imposed by the legal community.  Now, they’re going out of the country to receive basic legal services for a fraction of the cost.  I understand why legal services shouldn’t necessarily come cheap: you’re paying for the expertise.  Plus, many lawyers have student loans to pay in addition to overhead, benefits, et cetera.  But $400 an hour?  A bit much.

India’s legal outsourcing industry has grown in recent years from an experimental endeavor to a small but mainstream part of the global business of law. Cash-conscious Wall Street banks, mining giants, insurance firms and industrial conglomerates are hiring lawyers in India for document review, due diligence, contract management and more. . . .

Employees at legal outsourcing companies in India are not allowed by Indian law to give legal advice to clients in the West, no matter their qualifications. Instead, legal outsourcing companies perform a lot of the functions that a junior lawyer might do in a American law firm.

Continue reading…

Check out the article here.

A survey of 114 law firms chronicles the tough job market for summer associates, finding a 44 percent drop in the number hired this year.

Continue reading this article

I woke up this morning exhausted, and I was still having difficulty breathing.  I tried to do some morning errands but the lips were going purple so my wife decided it was about time to hit up a local clinic.  We’re in between insurance at the moment so we had to pay out of pocket.

Long story short, I got the treatment I needed but walked around all day with what felt like a hangover.  If I’m going to get a hangover, can’t I at least have the fun that precedes a hangover?  Apparently not.

I couldn’t get much in the way of work done today, with the breathing problems and hangover and all.  So I finally decided to accept defeat and took the day off.  I really did not want to but I didn’t have much of a choice.

On a side note, one consequence of attending law school and racking up a ton of debt is that no one will extend credit to you.  For example, a few months back my wife and I sought a $3,000 car loan to cover the remaining cost of our car.  We didn’t need the loan, but a cushion for our savings account would have been nice.  We were denied even though both of us were working.  They told us our debt to income was too high.

Then, today, I sought a line of credit for a new laptop .  Same result.  I’ll write a more detailed post on this problem later but it’s very, very frustrating.  We pay our credit cards on time every month, never leaving a balance.  We pay our insurance and rent and loans on time every month.  And yet, we can’t seem to get a loan or a line of credit from anyone, without a 28% interest tag attached.  It’s criminal.