Results tagged “districtcourt”

From U.S. District Court Judge Amy St. Eve's recent ruling in the Rezko case....

Now that the Michigan primary is safely behind us, all eyes are focused on Nevada and South Carolina. For Democrats, who need at least 2,025 delegates to win the presidential nomination, Nevada's caucuses this Saturday offer 33 delegates. Not only is the nation looking at the Silver State, where early voting is a new experience for a mix of Latino, rural and urban voters, but so are the federal courts. Hillary Clinton has been polling well there, but Barack Obama has been endorsed by the state's largest union, the Culinary Workers. This endorsement is significant not only because it is the largest union in the state, but also because the state's Democratic party has opted to hold nine "at-large" caucuses, open to anyone within 2.5 miles of the Las Vegas strip, where the bulk of CWU members work. Intended to make voting easier for shift-workers in Nevada's casino industry, the move prompted a lawsuit by the Nevada Teachers Union. The lawsuit claimed that those voting in at-large precincts being held on the Strip would have too much weight compared with those voting at their polling places, infringes on the right to equal protection guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, and violate state statute in the way they were drawn.

Police brutality and a lack of transparency go together like...well, not PB&J (a happy combo). Let's say hangovers and dry heaves. The abjuration of responsibility and accountability goes like this: The list of Chicago police officers who have the most excessive-force complaints is secret. The City wants it to stay that way. US District Court Judge Joan Lefkow ordered that the records be unsealed and made available to the public. The City's appealing that order,...

The Chicago International Film Festival is one of the highlights of the Chicago movie calendar. Every October for the past several years, we've purchased a festival pass and taken a gamble; in addition to catching films every year that we've already heard about, we always force ourselves to see at least a few films we know nothing about. In the past that's meant such pleasant surprises as Syndromes and a Century and 10th District Court....

Seriously. Look it up. What Rosie Costello did to her kids falls under the first definition. She asked them to fake mental retardation (now having the preferred term developmentally disabled — DD for short) so that she could collect Social Security benefits on their behalf. Wow. She coached her kids starting with her daughter at age 4, and later taught her son. He pretended to be mentally retarded into his mid-20s, "picking at his face, slouching and appearing uncommunicative in meetings with Social Security officials."

By now there's no doubt you've heard of Elvira Arellano, even if the name doesn't sound immediately familiar. She's the illegal Mexican immigrant that's been holed up in Adalberto United Methodist Church on the West Side since mid-August. So far she's been deported once in 1997 and arrested once in 2002; now she's hiding in sanctuary with her naturalized 7-year-old son, Saul.

Today marks the halfway point of the Chicago International Film Festival. So now’s as good a time as any to catch up with what’s playing in the next week and how you can catch all the films you want to see. If you haven’t seen anything yet, consider this your wake-up call. First, start with the official site. Under Films and Events, you can search for films by category, date or even country. As you’re...

(Thanks, Sam!)

A lot of people like to bash the Sun-Times. It's the poorer little sister of the two big city papers, and it seems that the stewardship of former owner David Black and Hollinger International didn't help very much. A report filed yesterday with U.S. District Court and authored by former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Richard Breeden accuses Black and his associates of "self-righteous and aggressive looting" of the Sun Times and its other holdings.

It didn't happen in Chicago, but we're betting that our audience, heavy with 18-24 year olds, is keen to know that file sharing got a big leg up yesterday when the Ninth Federal Appeals Court in San Francisco ruled that peer-to-peer file sharing services like Morpheus and Grokster are legal.

Update on the Chip War: Lay’s is so busted! A federal judge has ordered Frito-Lay to remove its controversial billboard immediately. It appears that Frito-Lay’s alleged Chicago taste tests actually occurred at malls in Joliet, Niles and Elgin. While Frito-Lay maintains that those involved in the taste-test were Chicago residents, the documentation that could prove their assertion is in a New York office recently damaged in a fire. Uh, likely story, Frito-Lay. We’re on to you.