Nota Bene

The Sacramento Bee reports:

A federal judge denied motions to dismiss charges against a New York-based law firm, one of its partners and two others accused of keeping a pool of people at the ready to take part in class-action lawsuits and paying them millions of dollars in kickbacks.

U.S. District Judge John F. Walter rejected the defendants’ arguments Monday that the fraud and conspiracy charges should be dropped because the payments made to some plaintiffs weren’t illegal.

The law firm, now known as Milberg Weiss, was indicted in May 2006 by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles.

The Washington Post reports:

A federal judge ruled on Monday a California law to label violent video games and bar their sale to minors was unconstitutional, prompting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to say he would appeal the ruling.

California passed a law in 2005 regulating video games with strong support from Schwarzenegger, the former star of many violent action films. Legislators argued violent video games could bring psychological harm and spark aggressive behavior in minors.

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Judge Ronald Whyte, who had previously granted a preliminary injunction against the law, issued a permanent order that also cited conclusions from judges facing similar laws in other states.

The Washington Post reports:

The Justice Department trampled on congressional independence when raiding U.S. Rep. William Jefferson’s office last year, a federal appeals court ruled Friday, siding with Congress in a constitutional showdown.

In a rare textbook case involving all three branches of government, the court held that investigators violated the Constitution by reviewing legislative documents as part of a corruption investigation.

The court ordered the Justice Department to return any legislative documents it seized from the Louisiana Democrat’s office on Capitol Hill. Still undecided is whether prosecutors can use other records it confiscated as part of their bribery case against Jefferson.

You can read the full opinion here. A snippet from the opinion is below: (more…)

The New York Times reports:

In a surprise to parent groups and their lawyers, a judge issued a statewide restraining order Friday prohibiting a self-described pedophile from coming closer than 10 yards to any minor in California.

One constitutional lawyer said the order, by Judge Melvin D. Sandvig of State Superior Court, amounted to either house arrest or expulsion from the state.

A separate provision also bars the man, Jack McClellan, from posting on the Internet any photos of minors without parental permission, including the type of nonpornographic photos that he has posted in the past. These postings, with directions to events that minors were expected to attend, have enraged parents and children’s advocates.

Judge Sandvig issued the order at the request of two lawyers, Richard Patterson and Anthony D. Zinnanti. Mr. Zinnanti brought the action on behalf of his daughter after Mr. McClellan was seen in the Zinnantis’ hometown, Santa Clarita.

The S.F. Chronicle reports:

In a strong statement of bipartisan support for press freedom, the House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to advance legislation that would give journalists a qualified right to protect confidential sources.

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Rep. Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who co-sponsored HR2102 with Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., called the vote “an important first step toward repairing a tear in the First Amendment.” Pence describes himself as an advocate of limited government who believes the “only check on government power in real time” is a free and independent press.

Pence has been concerned by the federal government’s increasingly aggressive attempts to coerce journalists to reveal their sources through threats of fines or jail time. He often cites the case of Chronicle staff writers Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, who faced the prospect of imprisonment when they refused to divulge how they obtained grand-jury testimony in the BALCO steroids investigation.

His proposed “shield” is not absolute. Reporters still could be forced by the courts to reveal sources in cases involving threats to national security, disclosures of trade secrets or personal financial or health information, or a threat of death or significant physical harm.