"Its a law that costs lives every single day." - Jeff Rowes, Senior Attorney for the Institute for Justice.

On October 28th, the Institute for Justice joined cancer patients around the country and others to put an end to the chronic shortage of bone marrow donors. Right now, over 1,000 Americans die each year because they cannot find a bone marrow transplant.  That why today’s lawsuit, against the attorney general of the United States, is so important.

As always, their legal services will be provided pro bono.

Here is a very powerful three-minute video describing the lawsuit, followed by today’s press conference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOO2kQZbqB0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT2pmjS5Xpc

When less than 30% of patients who need a bone marrow transplant are able to get one from within their family, and the chances of finding an outside match can be one in millions, the commonsense approach would be to incentivize donations. However, when Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA) of 1984, it became a crime for any person to "knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation if the transfer affects interstate commerce." At the time, it reflected a rising concern about the birth of an organ black market and the potential issues that would arise if destitute donors were coerced into selling their organs.

The problem is, the law capriciously treats bone marrow like a non-renewable solid organ instead of like other renewable cells, such as plasma and sperm, for which compensation is legal. It does not take into account that bone marrow donation requires less than 5% of marrow cells, which grow back within weeks, and that over 35,000 people have donated to a stranger without a single donor death. It also doesnt consider the fact that 70% of donations are done through a non-surgical process known as a simple peripheral blood stem cell draw which is comparable to a blood transfusion.

Saving lives starts with finding compatible donors. Without them, the only outcome for those in need is a slow and painful death. In this aspect, NOTA has done nothing but cause unnecessary deaths by irrationally banning the promotion of a safe, accepted, lifesaving, and otherwise legal medical treatment. The bone marrow clause in NOTA alone is responsible for the death of three Americans every single day.

Currently, compensating someone for a bone marrow transplant could land everyone - the doctor, nurses, donors, and patients - in federal prison for up to five years and fine them each an amount of no more than $50,000. This is yet another landmark precedent that the Institute of Justice is pursuing and will be the first time the NOTA will be the subject of a constitutional challenge.

If you want to learn more about the case (Flynn v. Holder), or donate to help set new precedents in major quality-of-life issues afflicting our society, visit the Institute for Justice website.

                    Fantasy football has much of the male population hooked starting today! Three out of every twenty men play some sort of fantasy game and one out of every twenty women does so as well. Somebody came up with the idea with of purchasing insurance for fantasy team players. This blossomed into a marketing adventure where fantasy football players now have the ability to be insured. If the fantasy football player on your team gets injured early on; you have the option of being reimbursed for that football player’s entry fee if he misses over a certain number of games.

                  This cold blooded killer has been on the loose for the past twenty one years. He was finally charged guilty due to a DNA match to six of the nine people he has killed with the new DNA swab test. All of these bodies were found no further away from each other than six blocks. Sadly, these cases probably most likely turned cold because the women he killed were mostly prostitutes or involved with drugs. Nobody would have been really looking for these poor women even if they had been missing for a while. He has been charged with two murders so far and has many more to come.

                 Hundreds of thousands of people are grieving the passing of Ted Kennedy. He has passed away on August 25^th, 2009. He passed away due to brain cancer at the age of seventy seven. It is especially difficult for the Kennedy family at this moment in time. Grieving in the public eye is such a difficult thing when going through such a sensitive aspect in life. Of course the family has always kept graceful composure as always in honor of Ted Kennedy.

                The White House has issued a stimulus plan that is supposed to bring about another three and a half million new jobs. In the state of New York alone there is to be an estimated two hundred and fifteen thousand jobs available to the people. The amount of money going into this stimulus is seven hundred and eighty seven billion dollars. California is probably the state with the highest job projection with the number of three hundred and ninety six thousand jobs. Hopefully President Obama will continue to move this country forward in the right direction!

These political considerations, delays, and implausible justifications for decision-making are not the only evidence of a lack of good faith and reasoned decision-making, Korman said. ?Indeed, the record is clear that the FDAs course of conduct regarding Plan B departed in significant ways from the agencys normal procedures regarding similar applications to switch a drug product from prescription to non-prescription use.?

The drug is marketed by Montvale, N.J.-based Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc. as Plan B. Korman ordered the FDA to permit Barr Pharmaceuticals to make Plan B available to 17-year-olds without a prescription under the same conditions as Plan B is now available to women over the age of 18. He said his order must be complied with within 30 days. The FDA said it is reviewing the judges decision. Womens groups said its unlikely that the Obama administration would appeal. Social conservatives decried the ruling.

The Food and Drug Administration let politics obscure its judgment when it denied teenage girls over-the-counter access to the Plan B morning-after pill, a federal judge said Monday as he ordered the FDA to let 17-year-olds obtain the medication.

In a thorough admonition of the Bush administration, U.S. District Judge Edward Korman blasted the FDA?s handling of the issue, saying it had ?repeatedly and unreasonably? delayed issuing a decision on the medication. The morning-after pill is a source of tension for social conservatives who held great sway in the Bush administration and who believe the pill is tantamount to abortion.

The ruling said the FDA in several instances had delayed issuing a ruling for suspect reasons and on two occasions only took action to facilitate the confirmation of acting FDA commissioners whose confirmations had been held up by the repeated delays.

According to Law.com, Wednesday, May 13th, computer microchip company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) brought about a suit which fined Intel $1.45 billion. The European Commission found that Intel violated European antitrust laws that would also have been unlawful in the United States.

The Federal Trade Commission is also investigating Intel for giving discounts to manufacturer buyers in exchange for them not purchasing AMD products. While this is not a new issue, these new developments may make the playing ground more level. 

Intel currently sells 80 percent of the microchips on the market. This billion dollar fine could knock them down to a more equal ground to their competitors. However, Intel intends to appeal the case and stand behind its marketing practices. There has been no harm to consumers through this issue. 

In other countries, Intel has been fined for similar actions that were found to be against local economical practice laws. Other companies practice marketing techniques like these, but only the ones from the biggest companies come under examination like this.  This case is encouraging Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney, Justice Department antitrust chief, that anti-monopoly guidelines should be enforced more often. More dominant corporations will be sought out and examined in a similar way.

According to Findlaw.com, memos have been found from the Bush administration which try to legitimize abusive interrogation approaches.  A first hearing is set for today, Wednesday, May 13th. It is called "What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration." 

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi issued a news release recently that stated again that she had been, in 2002, briefed on only new interrogation methods that were planned for future use and approved. However, last week CIA records were released that stated that Pelosi knew in September of 2002 that harsh interrogation techniques were being used at that time.

 Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island also attended the secret meetings that allowed them to know about the abusive interrogation. He stated that probably two of the attorneys will face professional sanctions but none of them would have legal consequences such as jail.

A witness today is scheduled to testify. His name is Philip Zelikow and he was one of the State Departments top officials who originally opposed the fierce interrogation techniques. There are 4 other witnesses scheduled to testify as well.

Two lawyers at US Securities and Exchange Commission are on suspicion of insider trading. The FBI is investigating the situation. The lawyers were from the division of enforcement and the chief counsels office. They were not named, but one, a female, had been working for the SEC for 28 years and the other, male they are investigating, is the lawyer from the chief counsels office. 

There is no system in place to make sure that employees of the SEC are not engaging in insider trading. In order to be illegal, they would have had to use nonpublic information. They have not been proven to have used either public or nonpublic information.

However, CBS news reports that these lawyers spent much of their workdays emailing family members and recommending which stocks to purchase.

The IG is recommending that the SEC have a single office to keep track of the trading going on within the company, and steps to follow and determine whether employees are engaging in insider trading.

Karl Rove arrived at the Washington office of his lawyer, Robert Luskin, Friday to have a meeting with special prosecutor Nora Dannehy regarding whether Bush administration officials were within the law when they fired 9 U.S. attorneys serving the president.

The Bush administration let these 9 attorneys go in 2006. The former White House aid said he would work with the prosecutor during the investigation. 

The Justice Department had previously concluded that the firings of at least four attorneys were for political reasons. The Justice Department intended to conduct a criminal inquiry. During his presidency, Bush tried to stop people that were pressuring Karl Rove and another to testify about this case. 
 
This past July, Bush tried to assert that these White House advisers were not subject to the questioning. U.S. District Judge John Bates disagreed with Bush on this issue. These advisers are subject to questioning just as anyone else would and are subject to the rules of the law.

A federal grand jury has charged the former chairman and chief executive of KB Home with multiple counts of fraud and other crimes related to a stock option backdating scheme that authorities say bilked the homebuilders shareholders out of millions of dollars. The 20-count indictment returned Thursday charges Bruce E. Karatz with 15 counts of mail, wire and securities fraud, four counts of making false statements in reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and one count of lying to the companys accountants, according to the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.

Karatz, 63, faces up to 415 years in prison if convicted on all charges. "Mr. Karatz allegedly broke the rules, and then lied about it, to line his pockets and then to conceal his windfall from his company and the trading public," said United States Attorney Thomas P. OBrien. Karatz, who lives in the Bel Air Estates neighborhood of Los Angeles, agreed in September to pay $7.2 million to settle civil charges of backdating stock options. Under terms of the settlement, the executive didnt admit or deny the allegations brought by the SEC, which claimed he profited by more than $6 million from exercising many of his stock options.

According to the indictment, for seven years, Karatz altered the grant date on his options to one on which KB Home shares traded more cheaply, but didnt report it in public filings. That hid the actual value of stock-based compensation that KB was awarding him and other executives, prosecutors said. This enabled Karatz to reap millions of dollars when he exercised his options, while making it appear the gains were the result of the normal appreciation of the market value of KBs stock, prosecutors said.

Among more than 1,100 pages of documents released Thursday in the Caylee Anthony case were images from her mothers computer ? including pictures of skulls and a drawing of two skeletons locked in an embrace.  Also among the images: a photo of little Caylee with a heart-shaped sticker similar to the one later found with the slain toddlers body.

The defense for Caylees mother, Casey, had asked a judge to prevent the photos from being publicly released, but the motion was denied last week. At the hearing, Anthonys attorney, Jose Baez, said that releasing the photographs would be "embarrassing" to the Anthony family.

The documents also contain a transcript of an interview with Anthonys former boyfriend. According to Anthony Lazarro, he awoke in the middle of the night to find Casey Anthony sitting on the bed, watching videos of Caylee and silently crying. He claims this happened just days after the 2-year-old Florida toddler was last seen alive.

The defense downplayed the release of the latest documents. In a statement, Baez said, "We are going to reserve comment on discovery releases until those times when the discovery is of some importance to the real evidence in this case."  Casey Anthony, 22, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, and has pleaded not guilty. She is being held without bond at the Orange County Jail in Orlando, awaiting a trial expected to begin in October.

A former Bush White House aide was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison on Wednesday for stealing nearly $600,000 from a government-funded program that promotes democracy in Cuba. Felipe Sixto apologized for stealing from the Center for a Free Cuba, telling U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton that in addition to his own greed and selfishness, he "wanted to provide a lifestyle for my family I could not afford."

That argument from Sixto did not sway Walton, who compared him to Bernie Madoff, who has pleaded guilty to ripping off thousands of investors of billions of dollars. While the situations are different, Walton said Sixto, like Madoff, wanted a lifestyle "far above" what he deserved. "The mentality that brings you before this court is the same," Walton said.

Walton sentenced him to 30 months in prison, three years supervised release and fined him $10,000. Sixto had asked for home confinement or probation. Sixto pleaded guilty Dec. 19 to theft. He acknowledged overcharging the organization more than $579,000 when purchasing radios and flashlights with federal funds. His lawyer said 90 percent of the money had been paid back to the center, with some of it coming from a mortgage that Sixtos parents took out on their house.

James M. Mason knew his wife since she was born a boy. The janitor and former military man was a boarder in the childs home and was treated like family. Many were surprised when he married Chris nearly three years ago, not just because he knew she underwent sex-change surgery three years before, temporarily calling herself Christine Newton-John after the pop singer with the same last name. He was in his 70s, she in her 30s. He was mild-mannered; she had a domineering personality.

Then, last summer, there was another surprise: Chris Mason was accused of exercising her frail husband to death so she could inherit his retirement benefits, in an attack caught on surveillance video. Police say she forced James Mason, who had heart disease, to do stressful activity in an indoor pool for more than two hours. He collapsed and died the next day after Chris Mason authorized his removal from life support.

She is to be sentenced Friday and could get up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to reckless homicide. "Its just been a total nightmare," said Maryanne Vallandingham, Chris Masons mother, who is ill with emphysema and distraught over her daughters fate and the death of a close son-in-law.

Although the tale of James and Chris Mason didnt begin as a nightmare, the relationship always was considered unusual. The marriage seemed not much more than a living arrangement, said Chris Masons sister, Cathy Vondrasek, who learned of it only after the two were wed. "I never knew of them to be romantic," she said. "Jim was always like an uncle to us."

Lam Luong was convicted Thursday of murdering four small children he threw from an 80-foothigh bridge on Alabamas Gulf coast, a crime prosecutors described as a horrific "death ride" for youngsters who thought they were in caring hands. Lam Luong, 38, who emigrated from Vietnam at 14, presented no defense witnesses at his trial this week in Mobile, AL.

A jury needed just 40 minutes to convict him of five counts of capital murder, one for each child and one extra because the case involves multiple victims. Capital murder is Alabamas only charge that carries a potential death sentence. Jurors are scheduled to return Friday to recommend either death or life without parole, though the judge is not required to abide by their recommendation.

Prosecutors told jurors Luong committed an ?unimaginable crime" by casting the four children, ages 4 months to 3 years, from the highest point of the Dauphin Island Bridge on Jan. 7, 2008, after an argument with his common-law wife, Kieu Phan. Three of the children were his with Phan, 23, and the fourth was his wifes with another man.

Prosecution witnesses said they spotted Luong and the children in a van parked on the bridge that crosses the Mississippi Sound. One testified that he thought Luong was just tossing a bundle of garbage over the railing only to learn later that bundle was the first child dropped into the water.

Stacey Barker reported her 18-month-old daughter missing now says the child died accidentally and that she dumped the body near a freeway, authorities said Friday. Barker told detectives that when her daughter Emma Leigh died, she panicked and believed she would be blamed, Los Angeles County sheriffs Sgt. Diane Hecht said.

A body found Thursday in Sylmar, a few blocks from Interstate 5, was identified by coroners officials as Emma. The cause of death was not immediately determined. Barker initially told investigators that she was knocked unconscious by someone while putting Emma into her car in Lancaster on Wednesday. She said Emma was gone when she awoke partially clad hours later in another city.

Sheriffs Lt. Pat Nelson said Barker was suffering from a head injury when she first spoke to investigators. The details or cause of her injury were not immediately known. Hecht said Barker told investigators where she dumped Emmas body. Officials said the mother was not being detained, but the case would be presented to the district attorneys office. Nelson said Barker was not a suspect, but added: "That may change as circumstances develop."

A Baltimore drug dealer accused of orchestrating the death of a witness from behind bars hid another contraband phone in his maximum-security prison cell and called another witness in the days leading up to his trial, prosecutors said Monday. Patrick A. Byers Jr. could face the death penalty if convicted in federal court of ordering the 2007 shooting death of Carl S. Lackl Jr., who was set to testify against Byers in another slaying.

Byers, 23, is accused of arranging Lackls death from the city jail, using a contraband cell phone. Since being charged federally, Byers has been detained at a maximum-security prison known as Supermax. Last week, a search of Byers cell revealed a new cell phone hidden under his mattress, Assistant U.S. Attorney John F. Purcell Jr. said.

Cell phone records showed that Byers made several calls to Joseph Parham starting last month, prosecutors said. Like Lackl, Parham had identified Byers as the gunman in a March 2006 slaying. Last week, Parham recanted his statement. U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett said he found it "amazing" that an inmate could sneak a cell phone into the maximum-security prison.

"I dont quite understand how an individual at Supermax has access to a cell phone," Bennett said. "This is a very serious matter." The judge allowed the cell phone to be introduced as evidence, denying a defense request for a hearing on the issue. "Were not pleased with the situation," said William B. Purpura Jr., Byers attorney.? You shouldnt be," Bennett said.

In his opening statement, Purcell said Parham "flipped" after speaking to Byers, and that jurors would have to reconcile Parhams contradictory statements. Lackl, a 38-year-old single father, was gunned down in July 2007 in a drive-by shooting outside his home in suburban Rosedale. It happened a week before Byers was set to be tried for murder, with Lackl as the star witness. Lackl was lured outside with phone calls about a car he was trying to sell.