Free-speech law is nearing the century mark with a golden age of robust rulings under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., one that compares with an earlier golden age under the Warren court in the 1960s. The Roberts court has protected the free speech rights of corporations, protesters at soldiers’ funerals, filmmakers depicting animal cruelty,…
Guilty as charged!
That’s the ultimate news Illinois voters and news media need to take away from the big federal corruption trial in Chicago this summer.
No, not the fact that former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was found guilty. That wasn’t news, really. Anyone who followed the interminable trial and re-trial, and who listened to the FBI wiretaps of Blago attempting to auction off the “F—ing golden” U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama, knew he was going down.
The conviction of former Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich on 17 federal criminal counts on Monday is not surprising in light of the high percentage of convictions that federal prosecutors win in retrials of white-collar crimes after they have a chance to streamline complicated cases to appeal to juries.
A jury found Blagojevich guilty of 17 counts of wire fraud, attempted extortion, bribery, extortion conspiracy and bribery conspiracy. He was acquitted on one bribery charge, and the jury deadlocked on two counts of attempted extortion.
Venturing into a new frontier of First Amendment law, the Supreme Court gave constitutional protection to those seeking to use the vast stores of data and information collected by modern information technology. The court ruled 6-3 that Vermont could not stop pharmaceutical companies from obtaining data on doctors’ prescription-writing practices – data the companies used…
From hot lead to computers; from a p.m. newspaper to an a.m.; from Pulitzer ownership to Lee Enterprises, four veterans who have written and edited for a total of 135 years, recently walked out of the Post-Dispatch for the last time. It was a big loss of talent, experience and institutional memory. They are: Phil…