Vamos a Cuba

Remember the book controversy over "Vamos a Cuba"? A year ago Judge Gold ruled that the School Board violated the First Amendment in banning the book. The Eleventh Circuit heard argument. From the AP:

In the hearing on Wednesday, Senior Circuit Judge Donald Walter, outlining a hypothetical situation, asked ACLU attorney JoNel Newman whether it would be acceptable to remove a book about Adolph Hitler that failed to mention the Holocaust.
"The political reality in Cuba is not what the book is about," Newman said, arguing the book about Cuba focused on daily life on the island, not Castro. "The school board can't remove it because it wishes to inject a political message into it."
Overruling the decision of two academic advisory committees and the county school superintendent, board members voted last year to remove the book after a parent who spent time as political prisoner in Cuba complained. Critics of the book say it does not mention Cuba's alleged lack of civil liberties, the political indoctrination of public school children, food rationing and forced child labor.
"These books are rife with factual omissions, misrepresentations and inaccuracies," said Richard Ovelmen, the school board's attorney.
The move was contested in federal court, with the judge ruling last summer that the board's opposition was political, and the issue would best be addressed by expanding the collection instead of removing books espousing views with which the board did not agree.
Circuit Judge Ed Carnes noted that "there's a difference in enormity" between the Holocaust and actions by Castro's government, but that Walter's hypothetical addressed the "omission of facts."
The 2001 book by Alta Schreier contains images of smiling children wearing uniforms of Cuba's communist youth group and celebrating the country's 1959 revolution. In discussing the daily life of Cuban children, the book says they work, study and play the same way children in other countries do.
Walter and Carnes both took issue with that premise.
"That's simply not true," Carnes said.
Carnes also presented his own hypothetical, asking Newman if a book about North Korea could be pulled from shelves because it failed to mention problems in that communist government.
Newman said such political discussions should not be required for books for elementary students.
The court did not indicate when it would rule.

"The value of freedom is found not only in the larger issues of life but also in the fanciful and strange."

So said Judge Middlebrooks about a naked protester in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

The case involved what it means to be the prevailing party in a civil rights case. Here's David Savage, from the LA Times on the case:

The Supreme Court's first ruling on an Iraq war protest is not likely to be remembered as a landmark in the law. In a 9-0 ruling, the justices rejected a claim for legal fees filed on behalf of a Florida nudist who wanted to form a peace symbol out of naked bodies on a state beach.Toni Anne Wyner's planned demonstration ran afoul of the state's Bathing Suit Rule, which, as its name suggests, requires beachgoers to cover up. In February 2003, she went to court to challenge this rule as a violation of her 1st Amendment right to free expression. In the past, the Supreme Court has said that nudity and nude dancing can be a form of expressive conduct, though it can be regulated. At first, a judge saw merit to her complaint and allowed the nude protest to take place — but behind a screen, to shield other beach patrons at John D. MacArthur Beach State Park in Palm Beach County. "The value of freedom is found not only in the larger issues of life but also in the fanciful and strange," said U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks. He continued: "Protesting a potential war through naked protest seems a bit quixotic, but it is also part of the freedom that both those supporting the war and those who oppose it seek to protect."After forming their peace symbol behind the screen, the nudists went into the water naked. When Wyner went back to court seeking a permanent order allowing such protests, the judge refused and ruled for the state. However, he said that the civil liberties lawyers who represented Wyner were entitled to be paid because they had won at least one round of the litigation. The Supreme Court reversed that decision Monday in Sole vs. Wyner. Federal law entitles the "prevailing party" in a civil rights or civil liberties case to obtain legal fees from the government. "Wyner is not a prevailing party, we conclude, for her initial victory was ephemeral," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court. A plaintiff who wins a preliminary injunction, then loses on the merits, wins a battle but loses a war, Ginsburg wrote.

Case changes focus

Prosecutors have changed the focus of the trial from Jose Padilla to Kifah Wael Jayyousi. Here's the AP report on how it started:

A Muslim convert testified Tuesday that he grew suspicious and distanced himself from the leader of an Islamic charity after an associate returned from war-torn Chechnya with part of a leg missing from a land mine explosion.
Jeremy Collins, 33, said he worked at American Worldwide Relief that was headed by Kifah Wael Jayyousi, who is on trial along with alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla and an another man on charges of contributing to Muslim extremist causes worldwide. All three face life in prison if convicted.
“It was just chaos. There was no relief work,” Collins said he learned from his associate. “There seemed to be more fighting than relief work.”

Collins’ testimony focuses on Jayyousi’s years in San Diego, well before Padilla, a U.S. citizen held for 3½ years as an enemy combatant, came on the scene.
Questions about the organization also were raised when the group’s $20,000 satellite telephone was shut down in early 1996 at the request of the Russian government, said Collins, who was the organization’s then-vice president.

Wilk guilty

blogging from the road....

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Wilk guilty of 7 counts in murder of BSO deputy, wounding of another
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By Paula McMahon
Sun-Sentinel.com

June 5 2007, 4:40 PM EDT

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Jurors in a federal death penalty case convicted Kenneth Wilk on Tuesday of three capital counts in the murder of a Broward Sheriff's Office deputy and the wounding of another deputy almost three years ago.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-65wilk,0,3625341.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

Judge Altonaga is busy...

In addition to the 400 plaintiffs to be tried 5 at a time, Judge Altonaga also has the "child camel jockey" case, which was profiled this weekend in the NY Times:

The plaintiffs are thousands of boys from South Asia and Africa who say they were abducted, enslaved and forced to ride racing camels to entertain the rich in the Middle East. The defendants live in the United Arab Emirates.
But the case is pending in Miami, and the jockeys are represented not by human rights groups but by Motley Rice, a leading contingency-fee class-action firm based in South Carolina known for its work in tobacco, asbestos and other domestic injury cases.
The class-action bar is going global. Until recently, international human rights cases in American courts were brought mainly by public interest lawyers more interested in calling attention to abuses and in establishing universal legal standards than in a potential payday.
The prominent plaintiffs’ firms, their critics say, are in it for the money. And the fact that they have started to embrace international human rights law may be a reflection of the relatively limited opportunities left in domestic class-action suits after legislative and judicial efforts to cut them back.