'Global warming is baloney' signs put the heat on Burger King
A row between the fast food giant Burger King and one of its major franchise owners has erupted over roadside signs proclaiming "global warming is baloney".
The franchisee, a Memphis-based company called the Mirabile Investment Corporation (MIC) that owns more than 40 Burger Kings across Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, has described Burger King as acting "kinda like cockroaches" over the controversy. MIC says it does not believe Burger King has the authority to make it take the signs down.
The dispute began to sizzle last week, when a local newspaper reporter in Memphis, Tennessee, noticed the signs outside two restaurants in the city and contacted the corporation to establish if the message represented its official viewpoint. Burger King's headquarters in Miami said it did not, adding that it had ordered MIC to take the signs down.
But a few days later readers of the Memphis paper said they had seen about a dozen Burger King restaurants across the state displaying the signs and that some had yet to be taken down. Media attempts to contact MIC to establish why it was taking an apparently defiant stance were rebuffed, but the Guardian managed to grill MIC's marketing president, John McNelis.
"I would think [Burger King] would run from any form of controversy kinda like cockroaches when the lights get turned on," said Mr McNelis. "I'm not aware of any direction that they gave the franchisee and I don't think they have the authority to do it."
McNelis added: "The [restaurant] management team can put the message up there if they want to. It is private property and here in the US we do have some rights. Notwithstanding a franchise agreement, I could load a Brinks vehicle with [rights] I've got so many of them. By the time the Burger King lawyers work out how to make that stick we'd be in the year 2020."
He continued: "Burger King can bluster all they want about what they can tell the franchisee to do, but we have free-speech rights in this country so I don't think there's any concerns."
The Guardian sent a transcript of the interview to Susan Robison, Burger King's vice-president of corporate communications.
She responded: "The statement that was posted on several restaurants' reader boards in the Memphis area, and the view expressed by the franchisee on this issue does not reflect Burger King Corp's opinion … BKC has guidelines for signage used by franchisees [which] were not followed. We have asked the franchisee to remove the signage and have been told that the franchisee will comply."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/05/burger-king-global-warming-us
NRA gun case appeal heads to high court
WASHINGTON — One year after the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep handguns, the justices have before them a new test of that right.
The National Rifle Association has appealed a ruling from a U.S. appeals court in Chicago that said the right to bear arms cannot be invoked by gun owners challenging state and local firearm regulations. It said the high court's groundbreaking decision last term in a case from Washington, D.C., allows the Second Amendment to cover only regulations by the federal government — at least until the high court weighs in again.
If the justices decide to take up the appeal, it would probably be heard next fall by a bench that could include Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who is now on a federal appeals court in New York. She was part of a court panel in January that similarly held that the 2008 gun decision did not apply to state regulations.
A U.S. appeals court in San Francisco, however, ruled this year that the Second Amendment indeed covers state gun restrictions.
"Because of the split in opinions (on the breadth of the 2008 ruling), it seems likely that the court would take it," says Daniel Vice, a lawyer with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. He says a ruling could affect gun laws nationwide.
The June 2008 decision, decided by a 5-4 vote, said for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep handguns at home for self-protection. A 1939 high court decision had led lower courts and many legal analysts to believe the Second Amendment covered firearm rights only for state militias such as National Guard units.
The new decision in National Rifle Association v. Chicago by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago, written by conservative Ronald Reagan appointee Frank Easterbrook, echoes the closely scrutinized decision from a three-judge panel of the U.S. appeals court for the 2nd Circuit that included Sotomayor.
She joined an opinion that rejected a challenge to a New York ban on certain weapons used in martial arts and emphasized that the high court has never specifically ruled that the Second Amendment can be applied to state regulations. That 2nd Circuit decision, Maloney v. Cuomo, provoked some gun rights groups to protest Sotomayor's nomination. The Virginia-based Gun Owners of America called her "an anti-gun radical."
Last Tuesday's decision by the 7th Circuit undercuts criticism that the Sotomayor panel decision was extreme. As Easterbrook wrote, specifically agreeing with the 2nd Circuit, the Supreme Court said in the 2008 case involving a District of Columbia handgun ban that it was not deciding whether the Second Amendment covered state or local regulations.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who authored the high court decision, noted that the case arose from the federal enclave of Washington, D.C., and that past cases said the Second Amendment covers only the federal government. With a new case from a state or municipality, the court could extend the reach of the Second Amendment.
Until then, Easterbrook wrote in the case involving handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park, an appeals court may not "strike off on its own." He said that would undermine the uniformity of the nation's laws.
The NRA's Stephen Halbrook, representing Chicago and Oak Park residents who want to keep handguns at home, urged the justices to take up the 7th Circuit case to resolve the reach of last term's ruling.
Halbrook said the right to guns "allows one to protect life itself."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2009-06-07-court-guns_N.htm
The World is seems is interested in "privacy issues and civil liberties"
Swedish Pirate Party enters EU parliament: partial results
A Swedish party that wants to legalise Internet filesharing and beef up web privacy scored a big victory Sunday by winning a European parliament seat, results showed.
The Pirate Party won 7.1 percent of votes, taking one of Sweden's 18 seats in the European parliament, with ballots in 5,659 constituencies out of 5,664 counted.
"Privacy issues and civil liberties are important to people and they demonstrated that clearly when they voted today," one of the party's candidates, Anna Troberg, told Swedish television on Sunday.
The party was founded in January 2006 and quickly attracted members angered by controversial laws adopted in Sweden that criminalised filesharing and authorised monitoring of emails.
Its membership shot up after a Stockholm court on April 17 sentenced four Swedes to a year in jail for running one of the world's biggest filesharing sites, The Pirate Bay.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt's conservative Moderates won 18.8 percent of votes and four seats, close to its score in the European election in 2004 but down sharply from the 26.1 percent it won in Sweden's 2006 general election.
Coming little more than a year ahead of Sweden's next general election in September 2010, political analyst Mats Knutson called the result a "formidable cold shower" for Reinfeldt, speaking on public television SVT.
The opposition Social Democrats, traditionally Sweden's biggest party, won 24.6 percent, also close to their result in 2004 and maintaining their five seats in the EU parliament.
The Greens scored a strong rise in support, and were credited with 10.8 percent of votes compared to 6.0 percent in 2004 and doubled their seats to two.
The formerly communist Left party saw its support drop from 12.8 percent in 2004 to 5.6 percent and one seat, a drop of one.
The far-right Sweden Democrats, which are not represented in Sweden's parliament, meanwhile tripled their score but not enough to win a seat in parliament.
Their support rose from 1.1 percent in 2004 -- and 2.9 percent in the 2006 general election -- to 3.3 percent.
Voter turnout in Sweden was 43.7 percent, higher than the 37.1 percent in the 2004 election, election officials said.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.243153c6a091a3b942a75077729e8c92.941&show_article=1
It were just about safety the police would have no problem with it, but the cameras are money makers and they need money now because they can not or will not make cuts in their budgets.
Software warns of speed camera locations
June 8, 2009 - 5:45am
WASHINGTON - Rather than obey the speed limit, some drivers are installing software that warns them to slow down when they are near a speed camera.
One software company that is cashing in on the trend to add more speed cameras across the nation is PhantomAlert.
PhantomAlert uses cars' Global Positioning System devices to track the location of speed and red light cameras. For a monthly, yearly or "lifetime" fee, subscribers get unlimited access to the service, including updates as more cameras are added.
Maurice Nelson, who directs Montgomery County's camera-enforcement program, says the service raises awareness of speed cameras. But Nelson tells The Washington Post that he hopes PhantomAlert doesn't send the message that drivers can speed until they are alerted.
Because compliance with the speed laws is the rationale for placing cameras in the first place, reaction from law enforcement is mixed. One thing Nelson objects to is an option that tells drivers the locations of sobriety checkpoints.
PhantomAlert is owned by Joseph Scott, whose previous projects include PhotoBlocker, a reflective spray-on substance intended to foil speed cameras, and PhotoShield, a clear license plate cover with the same purpose.
http://wtop.com/?nid=30&sid=1691544
Here is a great reason for Captiol Punishment
West Bank teen arrested in rape and murder of 8-month-old
A 17-year-old Terrytown man was arrested on charges of aggravated rape and first-degree murder of an 8-month-old child Saturday afternoon, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office said.
Arnold T. Ross, of 136 Friedrichs Road in Terrytown, was booked into the Jefferson Parish Correctional Facility. No bond is available on the first-degree murder charge.
Ross was arrested after officers responded to a call of an unresponsive infant at 1656 Gary Court, Apt. B, near Gretna.
The infant, Da-Von Lonzo, was taken to Ochsner Westbank where he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival, according to a release issued by Col. John Fortunato, a spokesman for the sheriff's office.
The death was initially unclassified, but the Jefferson Parish coroner's office later reported it as a homicide after an autopsy of the child's body revealed multiple fractures consistent with a beating and tears in the anus.
Ross, who said he was the boyfriend of the infant's mother, initially told detectives that the baby fell down the stairs while he was babysitting, Fortunato said. But a neighbor reported hearing loud noises coming from the apartment, and investigators noted inconsistencies in Ross's account.
Ross later admitted that he beat the infant repeatedly when he would not stop crying, Fortunato said. When the child began to defecate on himself, Ross said he tried to clean it up, causing the tears, according to the release.
Ross has a record of previous arrests for possession of crack cocaine and marijuana, obscenity, battery on a correctional officer, three counts of battery on a teacher, three counts of theft, illegal carrying of a weapon and assault.
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/gretna_man_arrested_in_rape_an.html
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