One of the craziest ideas we have in this country is that inmates serving long sentences, even inmates on death row, should be allowed to marry.

What do we know -from hard experience, goes on with these marriages? The first thing is that the women who "fall lin love" with inmates have serious mental problems. The next thing we know is that inmates tend to be manipulative with plenty of time on their hands.

And what is in this for society as a whole? Births where the father has no possibility of providing support? How about new wives shooting it out with police in a jailbreak? That is exactly what happened in the Hyatt case last year when an inmate convinced a foolish woman to marry him and then used her to help him escape from prison.

When are we going to get wise in this country that things are hard enough without allowing inmates to marry. Even Ted Bundy married shortly before his execution. And the point of allowing that was...? Maybe allowing him to pass on his twisted genetic code?

Here's a timely tip from our friends at Naked Ownership, a Louisiana law headlines site:    

Under the Rule 2-12.7, Uniform Rules of Louisiana Courts of Appeal, an appellant's reply brief is due 10 days after the appellee files its brief. Note carefully: that's not 10 days after the appellee's due date, but 10 days after the appellee actually files. For example, let's say you represent the appellant, and the appellee's brief is due on June 1. If the appellee actually files on June 1, your reply brief is due on June 11. But if the appellee files a day early, on May 31, your reply brief is due on June 10, not June 11.

And remember that in the Louisiana courts of appeal, you can file by mail, and the date of the postmark is deemed the date of filing. So in the above example, if the appellee mailed the brief on May 31 and it arrived at the clerk's office on June 1, it will be deemed filed on May 31.

Louisiana no longer has an inheritance tax. It does, however, still have a gift tax.

Now, the purpose of gift taxes traditionally is to prevent people from circumventing inheritances taxes by giving away their money prior to death. So, what point is there for holding on to a gift tax?

Senator Dardenne, who seems to be one of the few in the Louisiana Legislature with any common sense, introduced a bill to phase out the gift tax.

"We penalize Louisianians for giving through their lifetime that which is not going to be taxed upon their death," said Dardenne, R-Baton Rouge. "This is a tax totally inconsistent with reason."

The bill died in committee. Here is a comment from Blanco chief of staff Andy Kopplin :

"Are we going to give it to those folks with an average income of $850,000?"

I don't know where he gets that absurd figure (out of the air, I suspect) but the tax does not tax the rich -it taxes the average person who wants to pass on certain assets to their children now rather than through probate later. Yet another regressive Louisiana, business as usual, flim-flam.

The racist New Orleans administration of mayor “Chocolate City” Ray Nagin is at it again. This time Nagin decreed by executive order that any businesses that want to take advantage of post-Katrina tax incentives will have to hire at least 35% minority-controlled businesses.

The co-chairwoman of Nagin’s 100-day commission stated “We are not asking, We are requiring.” ¹

New Orleans is already widely known as corrupt and mis-managed. You would think that rebuilding New Orleans would be the one and only priority with the mayor. But it isn’t. The number one priority seems to be continually stirring up racial issues. Just for once, the folks running New Orleans need to look at their city the way the rest of the world does. So, a large contracting firm from, say, Memphis is considering locating in New Orleans and building offices. New Orleans has a reputation for inefficient city government, but the temptation of tax credits is close to outweighing the reservations the company has. The CEO of this business stops to consider the reservations:

Among the reservations are: 1) no work force; 2) no public education; 3) local government that is unable to cope at any level, yet is re-elected; 4) AND, now another layer of bureaucracy interposed between the business and being able to do business. This new layer will demand accountings to prove that at least 35% of business done is with minority owned local business. You need concrete for that new building but the best bid is from a Mississippi non-minority company? Too bad, you will have to use the local minority business at whatever price they want to charge.

Realistically, what chance is there that our mythical Memphis CEO is going to need more than ten seconds to decide to pass on New Orleans? This nonsense may fly with Nagin’s constituants, many of whom voted absentee even though they will never be returning to New Orleans. But it will not fly with anyone else -especially not with the only sector that has even a ghost of a chance of getting New Orleans back on track: the American business community. One more nail in the coffin.

Thanks to Obligatory Anecdote for the picture.  

Should a sperm donor be required to pay child support? Imagine a few situations before you make up your mind.

Suppose that you donated to a sperm bank with the understanding that all donors would be kept confidential and that the mothers have contractually agreed that all they want is the sperm and that they will never seek support. Suppose further that the mother dies in a car crash and the children are now wards of the state. The state has subpoened the records of the sperm bank and want support from the donor. What should happen? Does the welfare of the children outweigh any other consideration? What if your donation was used 500 times because your donor profile was attractive to the mothers? Should you pay support to 500 children?

A court in Pennsylvania has ruled that an agreement between the mother and donor was unenforceable because of "legal, equitable and moral principles." The same result would undoubtedly be reached in Louisiana in this same fact situation.

McKiernan (the donor), who has paid up to $1,520 a month in support since losing the case at trial, said he was not pleased with the ruling.

This is no surprise, given the level of incompetence that seems to follow this guy around. First he is charged with killing JonBenet, which smelled from day one. Then he is shipped back to California to face child porn charges –but the evidence had been lost. Knowing it was lost, the D.A. offered Karr a deal to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence equal to time already served. He would have walked, but with a child porn conviction on his record.

Although Karr seems to walk around in a daze all the time, and seems to like to confess to crimes he wishes he committed, he wasn’t stupid enough to take the D.A.’s desperate offer. It was desperate because the D.A. and law enforcement would have been somewhat off the hook if they could have gotten something against Karr. Anyway, it is all legal history now.

The sheriff’s office did come up with a mirror image of what was supposed to have been on the lost computer, but guess what? The computer was last used 2 years before Karr even lived in California.

As CNN reported: “If they can show that computer wasn’t even accessed after 1998 and the last time it was accessed he was in another state, as well, then there’s some serious problems.”

Well, Karr’s strange, 2 month romp through the U.S. courts is over for now. I have the strange feeling this was his intended outcome from the beginning: to show the shortcomings from top to bottom in our criminal justice system.

Actually, this headline is from 1938. Isn’t it interesting to see how much things have changed? It wasn’t that long ago that sex outside of marriage was a crime in most of the United States.

Frank Sinatra was charged with having an affair with a married woman. The charge was later changed to adultery but eventually the charges were dropped entirely. Smile Frank.

So, you might ask, how is this timely in today’s world? Because Turkey is contemplating going back to the good old days by changing the penal code to make adultery a criminal offense.

“Hundreds of women from different parts of Turkey marched from Ankara’s central square to Parliament recently, waving banners that read ‘Keep your hands off my body’ and ‘No to the male-dominated penal code.’ Following loud protests from womens groups and other liberals in society, the government has shelved its plans to pass the legislation. But its critics are wary. “This is just the lull before the storm. We don’t really know which way the government will decide about adultery in future,” says Zelal Ayman, 33, of the Women’s Solidarity Foundation.” 

Fact situation: Man gets divorced from wife of 17 years and is ordered to pay $1,200 per month alimony. Wife subsequently gets a sex change operation and becomes a man. Former wife, current man, receiving alimony even petitions the court for a change of name and alleges in the petition that he is a man.

Question: Should a man be forced to continue paying alimony to a man?

One answer is that alimony is based on marital status while married and whatever happens after the marriage is irrelevant.

In Louisiana, however, alimony (spousal support) can be considered “rehabilitative” to allow the former spouse to get back on his or her feet while trying to become employable. Since you also have to look at how much in need the former spouse is, you have to wonder about alimony that was apparently put towards the cost of the sex-change procedure –which is not an incidental expense.

All in all, Lawrence Roach is not happy with the situation: "This is just not right," Roach said. "It's humiliating to me, degrading and really, you know, I'm a man and I don't want to be paying alimony to a man." ^cbs

One of the reasons some people oppose fences along the border is that fences usually prove to be a waste of money. Resourceful people who want to get in to the U.S. are not going to be deterred. Personally, I feel that if it even slows them up it is worthwhile.

Speaking of resourceful, this man was caught trying to cross the border disguised as a car seat. This points out that someone can always get in if they try often enough and there are no consequences once they do get in.

Here’s one for the legal community: if a woman carried her daughter’s egg to full term and birth, is that child a grandchild or a child of the mother?

A woman in Japan was a surrogate mother for her daughter, who could not conceive.

“Yahiro Netsu, the head of a maternity clinic in the central prefecture of Nagano, told a news conference that the woman gave birth in the first half of 2005 using an egg from her daughter and sperm from the daughter’s husband, both in their 30s. Kyodo news agency said it was the first time in Japan that a woman has acted as a surrogate mother for the child of her daughter — effectively delivering her grandchild.” -CNN

Since there was no law or precedent for how to handle the situation, the mother/grandmother listed herself as mother on the birth certificate and then gave the baby up for adoption to her daughter.