A friend recently related a tale about a client who wanted to know whether his belief, that "our judges are more crooked than a corkscrew", was true. Since she knew about how judges are selected in Iowa, she was able to explain it to him and he learned that his initial belief was way off.
In Iowa, we select judges through a merit selection system, not by elections running thousands and millions of dollars in advertising. The specifics of the process are on the website of the Iowa Supreme Court. In brief, each judicial district has a judicial nominating commission [there is one for state-wide judges too] and laypeople serve on each. If a vacancy opens up, applications are made and the Commission reviews them, selects a group that is sent to the Governor to choose from. Once selected and sworn in as a judge, the judge is subject to a retention vote in general elections.
The Court's website also has a detailed description of how judicial independence and accountability is maintained.
The upshot is that in my 30-plus years of practice, I haven't experienced or heard of venality such as one sees in tv, movies or from other states. Not having expensive elections is no doubt a good part of it, not to mention common Iowa values.
The EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] has published Guidelines to assist agencies in hiring and promoting disabled employees. Obviously, these Guidelines can be helpful as well to other employers, public and private.
The Senate on 9/11 passed the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments of 2008 and after the House goes along [it is expected to] and the President signs it, it'll become law. The law was created to reject the various holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court [and lower courts] which eviscerated the meaning and usefulness of the ADA. The sponsor of the Senate bill was Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. More details regarding the legislation are found here.
I received a phone call early this morning with an inquiry from one of my credit card companies about whether I had made a purchase yesterday at a certain location. Not only did I not recall making that purchase, much less at that location, I couldn't have made the purchase since it was for something related to a Dell computer and anyone who knows me knows I only use Mac computers. I called the fraud division of the credit card company and confirmed this was a stolen number [I actually had the card in my possession] and the purchases were not mine. We closed the account, but now I am curious about how someone used my credit card number to purchase items without having the actual card [thus missing the 3 digit verification number on the opposite side]. I hope they catch the thief.
Have credentials for the Obama speech Thursday night and will take photos and 'blog' about it at my separate personal blog, Serendipity.
I am a proud graduate of Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. For years it has had a "Mindset" list which is a list of findings about the newest entering class:
This month, almost 2 million first-year students will head off to college campuses around the country. Most of them will be about 18 years old, born in 1990 when headlines sounded oddly familiar to those of today: Rising fuel costs were causing airlines to cut staff and flight schedules; Big Three car companies were facing declining sales and profits; and a president named Bush was increasing the number of troops in the Middle East in the hopes of securing peace. However, the mindset of this new generation of college students is quite different from that of the faculty about to prepare them to become the leaders of tomorrow.
You can go back to 2002 if you want to check earlier years.
I am doing some research into online sites that will act as storage for whatever you want, such as images, documents etc. Each has different features but I did find some helpful information in two articles, one on ExtremeTech and a chart on Top Ten Reviews. There are no doubt more and ones with other features, but this is a start if you're curious.
I found an excellent article on how to maximize your Spotlight searches in Leopard at UsingMac
and should be interesting, particularly because I worked for the Democratic Party [Convention] at its 1968 Convention in Chicago. Should be a fascinating contrast. Quite exciting. Denver lodging is full up or else extremely expensive.