October 31, 2008
NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Levi & Korsinsky ("L&K") is investigating breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of state law by the board of directors of Epicor Software Corporation ("Epicor" or the "Company") (Nasdaq:EPIC) arising out of their failure to properly consider and their rejection of an offer from Elliott Associates LP ("Elliott Associates") to purchase the Company for $9.50 per share. The Epicor board breached their fiduciary duties because the offer provides shareholders with a 39% premium to the closing price of Epicor shares on the day prior to Elliott Associates' tender offer and because the Epicor board has taken steps to block any unsolicited takeovers, including the offer from Elliott Associates.
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The prospect of a Barack Obama presidency seems to be driving the conservative legal establishment around the bend.???Nothing less than the very idea of liberty and the rule of law are at stake in this election,??? Northwestern University law professor and Federalist Society co-founder Steven Calabresi wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week.The constitutional horrors of an Obama presidency, Calabresi said, could include ???a federal constitutional right to welfare; a federal constitutional mandate of affirmative action wherever there are racial disparities, without regard to proof of discriminatory intent; a right for government-financed abortions through the third trimester of pregnancy; the abolition of capital punishment and the mass freeing of criminal defendants…???Writing in National Review Online, Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center was equally alarmist. ???Simply put, the survival of the historic American experiment in representative government will be in serious jeopardy if Barack Obama is our next president,??? he warned.Wow, and I thought he was just a socialist.The role of the courts and the impact of the next president is one of the most under-covered stories of the campaign. But it???s easy to exaggerate the impact of the next president, even if you aren???t imagining the ghost of Earl Warren lurking under your bed. As Terry Eastland, who has managed not to succumb to the fevered worries of his fellow conservatives, noted recently in the Weekly Standard, a Democratic president would probably simply be doing ???maintenance work??? on the Supreme Court, at least in his first term, replacing one liberal justice with another. ???Obama couldn’t create a liberal majority unless at least one conservative, or man-in-the-middle [Anthony M.] Kennedy, were to step down, and that looks doubtful, at least in the next four years.???At the same time, I think Eastland understates the effect of a John McCain presidency when he says that, given a Democratic-controlled Senate, ???actually replacing liberals with conservatives would be far more easily said than done.??? A robust Democratic majority would curtail a President McCain, but that does not mean that McCain appointees would be the same as those of President Obama. A McCain appointee to replace, say, Justice John Paul Stevens, 88, would almost certainly shift the court to the right.So how much do conservatives have to worry about the court in an Obama presidency?Certainly, many liberal legal activists believe that President Bill Clinton squandered his chance to reshape the federal courts and would press Obama to be more ideological. Obama chose not to join the Gang of 14 a few years ago to forestall Senate filibusters. He voted against both of President Bush???s nominees, John Roberts and Samuel Alito –although The Post reported that he had to be talked out of voting for Roberts.Exhibit A in the conservative indictment of Obama is his statement to Planned Parenthood in July 2007 that ???we need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”This stance, Calabresi said, is tantamount to requiring ???the appointment of judges committed in advance to violating??? the oath they take to dispense justice impartially. But as University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse, no wild-eyed liberal, pointed out, Obama ???is not saying that judges should distort the meaning of law so that people they empathize with can win cases. He’s saying judges need to understand the realities of the world, most significantly, what life is like for people.???Exhibit B is a 2001 radio interview in which Obama made the entirely unremarkable observation that the Warren Court “never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.” This is supposed to be evidence of Obama???s secret radicalism. ???Is his provision of a ‘tax cut’ to millions of Americans who currently pay no taxes,??? Calabresi asked, ???merely a foreshadowing of constitutional rights to welfare, health care, Social Security, vacation time and the redistribution of wealth????What???s so wonderful about this attack is how delicately Obama???s critics choose to pick the cherries. Obama said he agreed, as the Supreme Court ruled this year, that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. He disagreed with its ruling invalidating the death penalty for child rape.Obama???s discussion of the constitution in his book ???The Audacity of Hope??? is distinctly nuanced, expressing qualms about liberal overemphasis on courts. ???I wondered if, in our reliance on the courts to vindicate not only our rights but also our values, progressives had lost too much faith in democracy,??? he wrote.In an interview with the Detroit Free Press this month, Obama described the court as an ???institutionally conservative??? organization reluctant to get out ahead of public opinion. The Warren Court did, appropriately so, Obama said, ???because the political process didn???t give an avenue for minorities and African Americans to exercise their political power to solve their problems. So the court had to step in and break that logjam.??? However, he said, ???I would be troubled if you had that same kind of activism in circumstances today.???I don???t doubt that Obama judicial nominees would not be to conservatives??? liking. Fair enough. I haven???t liked President Bush???s, and I doubt I???d like President McCain???s any better. That???s what elections are about, and it???s why I wish there had been more campaign discussion about the role of the court.But the suggestion that electing Obama threatens the rule of law, representative democracy and liberty itself is so unhinged it is hard to take seriously, except as a measure of how worried some people are about their party losing its grip on power.
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October 30, 2008
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court has rejected patenting a way to smooth energy costs in a closely watched decision that could narrow the scope of “business method” patents.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court has rejected patenting a way to smooth energy costs in a closely watched decision that could narrow the scope of “business method” patents.
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HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Proclaiming his innocence, an unemployed trucker was executed Thursday for the fatal stabbing and robbery of a woman he said had given him food, clothing and money after she spotted him on a street corner holding a cardboard sign offering to work for food.
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NEW YORK, Oct. 30, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Levi & Korsinsky ("L&K") is investigating breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of state law by the board of directors of Genelabs Technologies Inc. ("Genelabs" or the "Company") (Nasdaq:GNLB) arising out of their attempt to sell the Company to GlaxoSmithKline for $1.30 per share for a total sale price of approximately $57 million. The price is unfair given that the Company has $28.76 million in cash and, as of December 31, 2007, a net operating loss for federal income tax purposes of approximately $186 million.
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WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled against a man trying to patent a business idea, a decision with far-ranging implications for the financial services and high-tech industries, which have major players on both sides of the issue.
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Tipper and Al Gore at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway, in Dec. 2007. (Sandy Young) By Peter Slevin SARASOTA, Fla. — Al Gore, who lost his 2000 race for the White House when he fell 537 votes short in Florida, will headline a pair of rallies for Barack Obama on Friday in the land of the butterfly ballot and the hanging chad. Gore will campaign in vote-rich Broward and Palm Beach counties, the site of some of the most extraordinary scenes of the post-election battle for Florida and the presidency — a battle ended by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision with 1.6 million votes never recounted. “Nobody knows better that every single vote counties — especially in Florida — than Vice President Al Gore,” Obama state director Steve Schale said in a written statement. Gore will be urging people to vote early “so no
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MARSHFIELD, Vt. — When Diana Levine turned 63 recently, her daughter made her a birthday card, drawing on Greek mythology with an illustration of Diana the Huntress, her bow string drawn taut, an arrow ready to fly.
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NEW ORLEANS - The United States does not have immunity from negligence claims lodged against it for failing to respond to concerns raised by a putative class alleging formaldehyde exposure in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Administration, but purchasing the offending trailers was a protected policy action under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), Judge Kurt D. Englehardt said Oct. 3 (In re: FEMA Trailer Formaldehyde Products Liability Litigation, No. 07-1873, E.D. La.; See 8/19/08, Page 17).
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Filed by admin at October 30th, 2008 under News
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