CMLawLibraryBlog

First of all, in getting ready for fall, there are RTA schedule changes effective Aug. 24^th.

Second, it's not a surprise that RTA is experiencing fuel cost increases, and is projecting less revenue than needed. See the RTA 2009 Tax Budget with projected scenarios. (The Euclid Corridor Project is from different funds and is projected to be more cost efficient operationally when completed this fall.) Ridership is growing, however RTA has indicated that fares only cover about 20% of the cost of service. For costs not exceed its revenue, a legal requirement, RTA is looking at imposing a fuel surcharge (increasing the fares), and making service reductions. The Community Circulators, a service improvement on which many in our community depend, may all have to be cut, along with cuts on numerous other routes. See the list.

RTA is holding public hearings to gather testimony concerning impact of specific cuts. There was a very upset, overflow crowd at the downtown Cleveland Public Library Auditorium on Tuesday, Aug. 5^th , with many speaking after the PowerPoint presentation. RTA reserved the Auditorium at CPL for Wed. Aug. 5^th at 12 noon for additional testimony. If a cut will impact you but you cannot attend a hearing, submit your comments to RTA by Aug. 18^th.

RTA is created under the authority of Ohio Revised Code Chapter 306. For more information on documents establishing the parameters for the governance of RTA, as well as the powers, responsibilities and duties of RTA see RTA's website.

H.R. 3221 Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, signed Wed., July 30^th, Public Law 110-289, is now available - as Enrolled or Typeset

See NeighborWorks’ Summary of the new legislation and link to Senate Statement and summary .

From the President ‘s page: signing information “The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which authorizes the Department of the Treasury to purchase obligations of housing Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs); reforms the regulatory supervision of the housing GSEs; provides reform of the Federal Housing Administration; provides homeownership assistance and reforms to mitigate recent increases in foreclosures; and contains housing-related tax incentives and other tax provisions.”

Feeling frustrated and helpless with our Government’s inability to solve the issues you see as top priorities? Take control in the only way you can: play a game. American Public Media’s Budget Hero let’s you make the decisions on how our tax dollars should be used. Indulge yourself.

Thanks to the Law Librarian blog for the tip.

At 9:30 a.m. at CSU’s Cole Center, 3100 Chester Ave., the U.S. House Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity of the House Committee on Financial Services, holds a hearing “Foreclosure Problems and Solutions: Federal, State, and Local Efforts to Address the Foreclosure Crisis in Ohio.” Here is information including the list of panelists.

Want to send your vote directly to your Senator or Congressperson? Govit allows you to vote on pending legislation important to you and to send your vote to your representative in Congress. You can also track voting on a bill by other Govit users and your Representative. Additional information about the bill includes the sponsor and co-sponsors, their voting behavior and contributors to their campaigns.

Other sites that track bills thomas.gov.bill summary, GPO Access-Legislative or review our Legislative History Research Guide. These three links can provide access to legislative history documents, such as Committee Reports and the Congressional Record.

When nonprofits are filling out their Form 990's for 2008 using the new Final Form 990 and Schedules (announced Dec.20, 2007 – Release IR-2007-204) they will also have new Instructions!

The IRS has Announced that the Draft of the Instructions is open for comment, and that “Included…are special highlights indicating certain items … on which the IRS would especially like to receive public comments.” Anyone may comment, but must do so by June 1^st.

Legistorm is a non-partisan site that tracks how members of Congress are spending public money. Their databases include information on Congressional salaries, travel, financials and information on the latest happenings on the House and Senate floors and committees. For additional information on who is donating to legislators, correlated to their votes, take a look at our previous post..Show 'Em The Money.

What is my Congressman or Senator up to and who is buying his vote? Or, less cynically, is there a way to investigate whether my representative is responding to the support of his constituents? Either way, a new site enables you to track the money given to federal or state legislators within days of their votes on a bill. See this example from Maplight.org: for results from the tab “$ near votes”. Select another tab, Congresspedia, for background information on the legislator from the wiki project of Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Media and Democracy.

No, the IRS is not only interested in dollar amounts. As noted in the March 11, 2008 U.S. Law Week (vol. 76, no. 34, p. 2539 (available to CSU users remotely with a Scholar PIN) the IRS has recently issued Governance and Related Topics – 501(c)(3) Organizations.

Given the IRS’s belief that “a well-governed charity is more likely to obey the tax laws, safeguard charitable assets, and serve charitable interests than one with poor or lax governance,” this document includes sections related to Mission, Organizational Documents, Governing Body, Governance and Management Policies, Financial Statements and Form 990 Reporting, and Transparency and Accountability. It replaces the Feb. 2007 Discussion Draft, and includes references to the new 2008 Form 990.

For a “Summary of Redesigned Form 990” including the various schedules, see Bruce R. Hopkins’ Nonprofit Counsel (Vol. 25, No. 3, p.3, March 2008 - available via OhioLINK’s Electronic Journal Center 2003-present.)

Additional information resources for nonprofits are listed in the Law Library’s Nonprofit Law Resource Guide.

This post is courtesy of Schuyler Cook:

From the Astronomical Applications Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory webpage:

Daylight Time: "Starting in 2007, daylight time begins in the United States on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. On the second Sunday in March, clocks are set ahead one hour at 2:00 a.m. local standard time, which becomes 3:00 a.m. local daylight time. On the first Sunday in November, clocks are set back one hour at 2:00 a.m. local daylight time, which becomes 1:00 a.m. local standard time. These dates were established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Pub. L. no. 109-58, 119 Stat 594 (2005). Not all places in the U.S. observe daylight time. In particular, Hawaii and most of Arizona do not use it. Indiana adopted its use beginning in 2006."

There are several new resources related to this critical issue area that you may find useful:

SUBPRIME-FILING. Use this to retrieve selected trial court filings from both federal and state courts.

Earlier this month the Ohio Supreme Court announced that it has made available to Ohio courts a Foreclosure Mediation Program.

To gain a better perspective on impact related to Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, the CWRU Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development has issued Foreclosure and Beyond - A Report on Ownership and Housing Values Following Sheriff’s Sales, Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, 2000-2007 by Claudia Coulton, Kristen Mikelbank & Michael Schramm.

see U.S. General Accountability Office Report - GAO-08-78R (October 16, 2007,) Information on Recent Default and Foreclosure Trends for Home Mortgages and Associated Economic and Market Developments

<While this issue area was not his main focus, you may also want to listen to remarks by the U.S. Secretary of HUD, Alphonso Jackson, Feb. 22 at the City Club of Cleveland. A podcast of his remarks is available for listening or downloading. (Aside - you can check the list of available podcasts of City Club speakers at Podcasts. Need more info about City Club podcasts? Click here )

The Webby Awards is like the Oscars for the Web. Since its infancy in 1997, the categories for Webby Awards have expanded a lot, but law, government and politics have been on the Webby radar for some time.

Check out these past winners. They continue to represent excellent information sources on the Web.

2007 - LawHelp.org (law category)
2006 - Justice Learning (law category)
2005 - FindLaw (law category)
2004 - HealthOntario (government & law category)
2003 - NASA (government & law category)
2002 - Library of Congress (government & law category)
2001 - Nolo Self Help Center (government & law category)
2000 - Politics.com (politics category - nonactive link on Webby)
1999 - California Voter Foundation (politics & law category)
1998 - CNN Politics (politics & law category)
1997 - The Netizen (politics & law category - nonactive link on Webby)

“Politics and Justice – Politics at Justice?,” an issue of concern across the political spectrum, is being discussed at the Tuesday, Oct. 23rd Cleveland-Marshall Criminal Justice Forum, 4:30 – 6:30 p.m. For some background information,

• New York Times Topic Links: United States Attorneys
• Jurist Posts
• Attorney General – Statutory Authority
• U.S. Attorneys Mission Statement
• The first of the series of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings entitled Preserving Prosecutorial Independence: Is the Department of Justice Politicizing the Hiring and Firing of U.S. Attorneys? Senate Hearing 110-161 Feb. 6, 2007, is now available.
• See LexisNexis for summaries or transcripts of the other related hearings. (password required)
• The Joint Statement of the Former United States Attorneys Before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, March 6, 2007
• U.S. Attorneys Who Have Served Less than Full Four-year Terms, 1981-2006. CRS Report for Congress, Feb. 22, 2007.

For additional information on Forum Speakers:
 (More)

Those curious about how the U.S. Supreme Court decides which cases to hear may want to access Justice Harry Blackmun's pool memos in the Blackmun Archive Browser. A pool memo is written by a Supreme Court law clerk, who summarizes the facts and issues in a case, and recommends whether or not the court should grant certiorari. The pool memorandums are confidential Supreme Court documents. Justice Blackmun's papers became available five years after his death, and the pool memorandums written by his clerks were part of those papers.

The pool memorandums provide insight into whether the "cert pool" process is working. The "cert pool" process has been criticized because it presumably places too much power in the law clerk who wrote the pool memo, who is typically a recent law school graduate. The process is thought to have a built-in bias for denying certiorari. See Demystifying the U.S. Supreme Court's Cert Granting Process , Howard J. Bashman, Law.com, Oct. 15, 2007.

For an article on the release of Justice Blackmun's papers in 2004, see Blackmun Contributions to History: Papers and Oral History, Richard G. Kopf, The Historical Society of the United States Courts in the Eighth Circuit Newsletter, Vol. 10, 2005. Cleveland Marshall College of Law Professor Dena Davis examined Justice Blackmun's sermons, also released in his personal papers, to provide insight into his theory of Constitutional interpretation. See "Moral Ambition: The Sermons of Harry A. Blackmun", Dena S. Davis, LexisNexis® 72 Brooklyn L.Rev 211. This article points out that Blackmun's Constitutional interpretation and Biblical interpretation are both based upon compassion and protecting outsiders and the marginalized.

Some 15 years after filing a Freedom of Information Act action, the CIA released the report requested by George Washington University's National Security Archive. Today's post contains a link to the entire 27 MB, 702 page item as well as links to NSA's split of the report into five parts.

Since Tuesday, April 17, 2007 looms for procrastinators as this year's version of tax day, the following web site should cause us all to pause.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress, viewing the 1862 Federal Income Tax Return (complete with instructions) might make us long for its use as a model for tax reform.

When was the last time you thought about Government Documents? Probably the last time you read a newspaper article or heard an NPR report or watched a PBS news show whose story began with words such as, "according to a government study released today..." Shame on the media (particularly the print folks) who could provide us all some portion of a citation to allow us easier access to the source to which they refer.

Suffer the fear and loathing of Government Documents no more. To help get you to those sources and so much more, please utilize the following tutorial by Charles E. Malone, the Government Information Librarian at Western Illinois University "Agency Approach to Finding Government Information."

Mr. Malone has completed his first update since 1999 and it is absolutely worth your time.

In case you missed it, an editorial in today's New York Times informs and/or reminds us that October of 2006 brought us change from the self described conservative Congress and Administration. The voluminous Fall enactment, Public Law 109-364 (TEXT PDF) aka "To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2007 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes." in fact contains some new definition for when the President can use the U.S. military for domestic police activites. (More)

• Main
• Archives
• Folders
• Dashboard
• Links

«	August 2008					»
Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Search This Blog:

• RSS 2.0

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

• Ohio Bill Would Help Decorated Veterans Earn Degree
• Open Access Doesn't Mean More Citations
• RTA - Schedule Changes, Public Hearings, Involvement in the Public Sector
• On the Foreclosure Front - H.R. 3221 Signed
• C-M Law Library Blog Widget
• Ohio Employer's Law Blog
• Facebook Friends with HeinOnline
• Telltale Smell Upheld as Justification for Warrantless Search
• Saving Money on Law School Textbooks
• Visual Ways to Brief Cases

• Career Information [27]
• Community Events [15]
• Faculty Teaching and Scholarship [43]
• From The Director [3]
• Government Information and News [18]
• International [29]
• Law Library News and Events [50]
• Law Student News [20]
• Law-Zarro [18]
• Legal Research & Writing [98]
• Library Resources and Databases [54]
• National [74]
• Ohio and Local [61]
• Speakers and Visiting Scholars [11]
• Study and Exam Tips [16]

• Blog Directories
  • Law Professor Blogs
  • Law X.0: A Taxonomy of Legal Blogs
  • Justia Blog Search
  • Blawg Republic
• Blogs by C-M Professors
  • Comparative Racism and the Law - Canada/U.S.
  • Before the Law
• Blogs for Law Faculty
  • Legal Scholarship Blog
• Blogs for Law Students
  • The Frugal Law Student
  • JD2B
  • WishIWouldHaveKnown
• Blogs of General Legal Interest
  • SCOTUS Blog
  • Ohio Supreme Court Opinion Summaries
  • Ohio State Supreme Court News
  • Wall Street Journal.com Law Blog
  • Above the Law
  • Law School Innovation
  • Supreme Dicta
  • The Volokh Conspiracy