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while I agree that if you send me widgets you should get paid, I have never in my life heard of the purchaser getting to ding the store for extra costs if they had to go elsewhere. I find it very interesting. Can you point me to cases?

Sure... The relevant law, since we're talking about purchase of goods, is UCC article 2-712, which has been adopted by every state:

2-712. "Cover"; Buyer's Procurement of Substitute Goods.
(1) After a breach within the preceding section the buyer may "cover" by making in good faith and without unreasonable delay any reasonable purchase of or contract to purchase goods in substitution for those due from the seller.
(2) The buyer may recover from the seller as damages the difference between the cost of cover and the contract price together with any incidental or consequential damages as hereinafter defined (Section 2-715), but less expenses saved in consequence of the seller's breach.
(3) Failure of the buyerto effect cover within this section does not bar him from any other remedy.

So, as I said, if the original price was $10/widget and I have to go elsewhere and pay someone $15/widget, you would owe me the difference ($5/widget), plus any other incidental or consequential damages (my attorney's fees, court costs, etc.). But it may be reduced by expenses I saved - for example, if the third party charges more per widget, but has free shipping, while you would've charged me $25, then that comes off the top.

Basically, the point of the remedy is to put me in the situation I would have been in, had you not breached - I get my widgets, I'm out only $10/widget, and you're responsible for getting me to that point.

The classic case for this is Laredo Hides v. H&H Meat.

There actually is a precedent allowing American citizens to sue other countries that support terrorism under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, but I assume the court decided Ethiopia's hacking was not an act of terrorism.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Flatow v. Iran case details: http://www.leagle.com/decision...

I only point this out because the degree of legislation or judicial interpretation might be much less than people assume.

If anyone is interested in the Flatow v. Iran case and it's aftermath NPR's Planet Money did a great podcast on it: http://www.npr.org/2017/01/12/... (I swear it's not left or right leaning story)

Well facts is facts and that is all a jury is supposed to decide—I didn't mean to imply that a juror who didn't care about prostitution would vote Not Guilty because of it. But jurors are regular people and there is a sliding scale when it comes to the evidence required for things they care about and things they don't. There is actually less documentary evidence in the Lauria case than I would have thought, supporting your skepticism—but the case is 50 years old.... Results may vary in Texas. http://www.leagle.com/decision...

Well, no.
Ever seen a Sidewinder boat?
Ever seen the exact same boat, made from a mold made from a Sidewinder but sold by Glastron?
Sidewinder sued and it turned out that judges can make decisions that follow their own reasoning rather than follow a series of decisions that we mere mortals can follow.
http://www.leagle.com/decision....
Maybe DC Comics and the movie studio are more 'influential' with a judge than some small time car customizer much like Sidewinder vs Glastron?

In the Target case, the court certified the plaintiff as a class that could initiate a class action suit on the basis that they may have been being discriminated against in the "enjoyment of goods, services, facilities, or privileges". An out-of-court settlement was reached between Target and the plaintiff, so the matter was never settled in court.

The problem? The court handling the Target case is in the 9th Circuit Court's jurisdiction, and the 9th Circuit Court had already established a precedent over this exact same topic way back in 2000 (if that case looks familiar, it's because it's the same precedent they're citing in the current case). If you look in section II.B, what you'll see is that the 9th asserts the whole "enjoyment" thing only pertains to places of "public accommodation", and that if you understand "public accommodation" in the context in which it was used, it's abundantly clear that Congress was specifically talking about physical locations (it really is pretty clear...even without being a lawyer, the language is easy to understand). Congress even gave examples, like zoos, restaurants, auditoriums, and laundromats. Notably missing: mail order catalogs, infomercials, or any number of other ways that people might have procured goods and services (that text was written in 1990, so it's understandable that the Internet wouldn't have been mentioned).

Which is to say, the lower court decided that instead of following precedent, they'd ignore it and interpret the ADA text in a way that was both contrary to how the relatively plain and easy to understand language was written by Congress and was also contrary to how the higher court they are under had said it should be interpreted. The judge in the Target case even made comments indicating their interest in seeing the plaintiff's success in the case help extend the law into areas where it hadn't reached before (i.e. places where it wasn't supposed to reach to begin with, a fact which the judge was ignoring). Moreover, had that case been allowed to progress, it would have established a wide-reaching precedent that could have been used to impose ADA restrictions on practically anything and everything, even when it would make no sense to do so.

All of which is to say, whatever precedent might have been set by that court would have been wiped out by the 9th's earlier decision that was completely contrary to theirs. Had Target not settled, I'd wager that they'd have easily won in appeals, since the next court up is the 9th, and they appear to have a better memory for precedent than the lower court does.

Disclaimer: IANAL

HOAs are just an affront to your personal liberties and a money pit. Their enforced conformity preserves nothing and gives you nothing (except some light fascism).

Ditto for cities.

Middle and lower income households absorb the greatest percentage of social programs, so why shouldn't they be the ones that contribute the most to them?

That's like asking prisoners to pay for their imprisonment. Remember, the purpose of the zoning code is to keep the poor and minorities out of middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods, and that in turn restricts economic mobility, keeping the poor dependent on social programs for their livelihood. For example, the market would build more affordable housing if it weren't prevented from building it.

(Side note: this is similar to the way motorists support separated bicycling infrastructure, in order to get bicyclists out of their way. And then they complain that bicyclists aren't paying their fair share for those separated facilities.)

So I think the people who actually want those social programs (the wealthy) that keep the poor poor should be the ones to pay for them.

It is why Cities have always struggled. To many people to close to each other. The wealthy always purchase enough space to make themselves comfortable. However the poor can not and once you get so many people pressed together they fight.

I think the fighting is because downtown areas heavily subsidize the suburbs (source 1, source 2, source 3, source 4) and so the inner city poor are getting fed up because their money is leaving their neighborhoods and is spent on subsidizing the middle and upper class lifestyles. And because the middle class prevents economic mobility by keeping the poor out of middle class neighborhoods.

Many cities have erected barriers to affordable housing under the guise of maintaining property values. So when young families cannot afford to live in established neighborhoods, that's by design.

Schools in (some) downtowns are bad because the poor and minorities are zoned out of the suburbs through zoning laws that raise the cost of suburban housing. Besides raising the cost of housing, laws such as minimum parking requirements and prohibitions against accessory dwelling units reduce property rights and restrict economic mobility, all in the name of keeping the riffraff (i.e. the poor and minorities) out.

Another factor that makes schools in poor areas perform poorly is the fact that often freeways are funded in part by regressive sales taxes such as Measure R in Los Angeles rather than 100% by user fees alone. Therefore, freeways tend to move wealth from the poor to the rich, further restricting economic mobility and trapping people into a cycle of poverty.

So the suburbs seem like a nice place to raise a family, but only because the cost is greater than what those who live there pay.

It was MiniScribe, from the court documents:

In mid-December 1987, Miniscribe's management, with Wiles' approval and Schleibaum's assistance, engaged in an extensive cover-up which included recording the shipment of bricks as in-transit inventory. To implement the plan, Miniscribe employees first rented an empty warehouse in Boulder, Colorado, and procured ten, forty-eight foot exclusive-use trailers. They then purchased 26,000 bricks from the Colorado Brick Company.

On Saturday, December 18, 1987, Schleibaum, Taranta, Huff, Lorea and others gathered at the warehouse. Wiles did not attend. From early morning to late afternoon, those present loaded the bricks onto pallets, shrink wrapped the pallets, and boxed them. The weight of each brick pallet approximated the weight of a pallet of disk drives. The brick pallets then were loaded onto the trailers and taken to a farm in Larimer County, Colorado.

Miniscribe's books, however, showed the bricks as in-transit inventory worth approximately $4,000,000. Employees at two of Miniscribe's buyers, CompuAdd and CalAbco, had agreed to refuse fictitious inventory shipments from Miniscribe totalling $4,000,000. Miniscribe then reversed the purported sales and added the fictitious inventory shipments into the company's inventory records.

Zoning laws are also fascism (or more accurately dirigism, which is closely associated with fascism) which we've tolerated for decades, despite their history of oppressing the poor and minorities.

In Washington State, there are no "Safety check points" or "DUI Check Points", or these crazy "Survery" check points. For case law, reference Seattle v. Mesiani; 1988.

It's been very clearly understood that under our state constitution that these types of things are a violation of the 4th Amendment. You can't just stop everyone and then look for probable cause. You have to have it prior to stopping an individual.

While I agree that a crackdown on DUI (and now in Washington Marijuana is legal too) is good for the public, it can not come as an expense to your rights. As a society, we need to look back at why the constitution was written and what happened before, and in other societies after that.

Do you think that King would want his speech (of historical importance) locked up behind copyright?

King sued for copyright infringement of the speech in 1963. That's what got the whole copyright ball rolling.

So yeah, this is exactly what he wanted.

So because a wikipedia article doesn't cover it, it must not be true?

Here's US v. Nicholas in which (under oath) he admits to drug use. So there's part of it verified. Find the divorce case which was they fought to keep sealed (but the L.A. times fought for) and I'm sure you'll find information about his infidelity with prostitutes. With some quick googling I was only able to find his attempts to keep it sealed.

Did Vanity Fair possibly exaggerate or sensationalize? Sure, but nothing in there is all that unbelievable. I've seen rich people with a lot less money (only 400-500K/year) do things along those lines. If they had that money it would be the same story. Only thing is they aren't in the tech business.. they are in an inherently shadier business..

To preempt the citation-craving masses:
Encyclopedia
News
Ruling

By "carefully toeing the line" I presume you mean "not actually violating the restraining order"?

Looks to me like the guy just found new ways to harass her in the legal sense that didn't violate existing restraining orders. So the Ex took out a new restraining order that covered the new form of harassment.

The man should be punished for harassing his ex-girlfriend. Depriving him of his First Amendment rights, however, should not be part of that punishment.

Why not? The whole point of a restraining order is to prohibit harassing behavior without tossing the culprit in jail. I think it more noteworthy that the judge made the restraining order for 50 years. From googling around, I gather such orders generally aren't longer than a year before they're reviewed. In that light, this one seems unusually onerous.

More googling indicates the ruling was appealed and mostly upheld though the length of the restraining order was cut from 51 years to 50 years, which is apparently the legal maximum for a restraining order in Minnesota. They seemed to think the terms of the original restraining order were otherwise legal and constitutional.

Yup. The guy who filed the suit is Kevin Cammarata of Los Angeles, California. I couldn't see whether he owns any sites (to avoid), though... a quick Google search only turned up various articles about this lawsuit.

From the case details

Plaintiff Kevin Cammarata alleges that he is the former owner of several subscription-based adult entertainment websites who, "under pressure from and as a result of the unlawful practices of the [d]efendants . . . sold his business at an unfavorable price."

So, possibly he doesn't own any sites anymore...

Better yet, he's going to have to pay for all parties' attorney fees, AND costs on appeal.

(By the way: here's the actual opinion.)

What makes you claim the original statement was false? The court made no such determination, and the veracity of the statement was never argued. "After the defendants failed to respond, the district court entered a default judgment.."

Had the editors chosen the story I submitted, a link to the legal opinion was included. However, as they chose the first story submitted, the following link will have to do:

Legal opinion.

It was decided years ago that the phone numbers you dial are not "private" once you've dial them. This is essentially an application of the same concept, where you tell a 3rd party (the ISP or phone company) a "secret" (an SMTP message or phone number) and they blab it to someone else (since I guess they don't care about their own privacy).

From http://www.leagle.com/unsecure/page.htm?shortname=infco20100311081:

In order for Fourth Amendment protections to apply, the person invoking the protection must have an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the place searched or item seized. Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 88, 119 S. Ct. 469, 473 (1998); Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S. Ct. 507 (1967). The Supreme Court "consistently has held that a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties." Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743-44, 99 S. Ct. 2577, 2582 (1979). "[T]he Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed." United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 443, 96 S. Ct. 1619, 1624 (1976).

More specifically, a person does not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the numerical information he conveys to a telephone company in the ordinary course of business. Smith, 442 U.S. at 743-44, 99 S. Ct. 2582 ("[E]ven if petitioner did harbor some subjective expectation that the phone numbers he dialed would remain private, this expectation is not one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable") (quotation marks omitted); accord United States v. Thompson, 936 F.2d 1249, 1250 (11th Cir. 1991) ("The Supreme Court has held that the installation of a pen register does not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution and does not warrant invocation of the exclusionary rule."). ...

A person also loses a reasonable expectation of privacy in emails, at least after the email is sent to and received by a third party....

The case can be read at:
http://www.leagle.com/unsecure/page.htm?shortname=infco20100311081

Here's a brief summary

1. A guy sent some faxes to a hospital criticizing their management and mocking them.
2. The prosecutors and police were friends of the hospital management and they investigated this as a "favor"...
3. they secured three successive indictments against the guy, all of which included felony assault against a man he never met
4. each time the indictments were dismissed by a higher court
5. but they arrested and held him anyway
6. so he sued for violation of his 4th because they got his phone records and emails without a warrant and for malicious prosecution
7. The 11th circuit dismissed ALL the malicious prosecution claims, granted the police and prosecution total immunity, and ruled that the plaintiff's rights weren't violated when his emails were turned over, because they had already been "delivered" to his ISP.

There are a lot more things wrong with this decision than just the 4th amendment violations.

IANAL but, wow! I had no idea how bad this could be! The story from the judgment is that some guy sent faxes to a hospital complaining and mocking the management. As a favor, some local prosecutors investigated and set up false prosecution INCLUDING FALSE TESTIMONY to a grand jury. They subpoenaed everything including emails and phone calls.

The long and the short of it is that, because they are prosecutors, they are given absolute immunity from prosecution for their grand jury testimony, even if it is knowingly false! They are given immunity from the conspiracy to provide false testimony, since the only evidence of false testimony would be the grand jury testimony itself, which is protected!

The 4th amendment issues seem also weird to me. They say that you cannot expect a phone number to be private, since by dialing it you have given the number to the phone company, which is a third party. Really?! What is the point of a phone number, what value does it have, except with regard to the third party, in this case the phone company? I can't shout someones phone number in the street expecting that they will respond, and in any case, that also makes it public and not protected by the 4th. Again, IANAL but under what conditions would an email ever be considered private? What about letters and packages that aren't sent through the postal system? Are they private? I just don't understand this.

Again, I have no perspective and experience for this, but as a layperson, I really hope that other courts find this reasoning flawed. It seem very much so just by common sense to me, though I understand common sense doesn't necessarily mean anything here.