House Republicans have quietly raised the value of a contract with a private law firm that is handling the chamber’s Supreme Court defense of a 1996 federal law that defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman.
House Administration Chairman Dan Lungren, R-Calif., signed off in September on a $500,000 increase in the maximum value of the contract with the firm, Washington-based Bancroft. Republicans have raised the cap of the contract twice: first on Sept. 29, 2011, from its original maximum of $500,000 to $1.5 million, and again on Sept. 28 to its new maximum of $2 million.
Not content to push through an anti-union “right-to-work” law, new restrictive abortion policies, and an anti-Sharia law, Michigan Republicans are now pursuing a revamp of a law voters rejected at the polls barely more than a month ago.
Michigan’s House Republicans today passed a new version of the “emergency manager” law that voters repealed via ballot referendum in November. The initial version gave broader powers to state-appointed emergency managers who oversee townships that are struggling financially.
Among those powers was the ability to void union contracts and labor agreements. The new version, introduced by state Rep. Al Pscholka ®, makes small changes but still includes the provision granting the manager authority over labor contracts, as the Detroit Free Press reports:
Expect some serious discipline at Harvard University’s newest club — the first bondage and sado-masochism hotspot to win official campus approval.
Harvard College Munch, as the group is named, promises to give the student body a chance to beat misconceptions about S&M by providing “accurate understandings of alternative sexualities and kink.”
If you've ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you've ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or "drug paraphernalia" in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me.
Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who's ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a "record" financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank.
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