Mirich, BAIS's top producer in Nevada and consistently top ten nationwide, was inexplicitly terminated by BAIS in September 2004 after building his book of business to over $300 million. His assistant Brent Cowin, also a stellar BAIS employee, was also shown the door for no cause.

Senior partner Kevin Mirch commented on the award:

"A man's reputation is everything. It is time for the big corporations to be held accountable for maligning top employees and publishing false information throughout the industry."

Terri Patraw was one of only 4 head coaches in the department to receive overall personnel evaluations of "commendable" for all three evaluation periods during her tenure. 

It was admitted by the defense that Commendable was the highest overall rating generally awarded to coaches.

I just read that one of the UNR Defense attorneys was in a serious motorcycle accident.  It says he has several broken bones throughout his upper body.

All I can say is Karma.  When one lies over and over to destroy other people's lives and careers he is bound to eventually sit down to the banquet of consequences. 

I do not believe I have read one brief from this man that did not contain lies about me. 

I do not believe I have sat through one hearing with this man that was not filled with lies from his mouth about me.

Karma is affiliated with the law of return: the idea that the beneficial or harmful effects one has on the world will return to oneself.  Colloquially this may be summed up as "what goes around comes around."

        "It takes a lot of mental energy for these people to continue to lie."

Weldon told The Hill that he believes the DIA, a unit of the Pentagon, is carrying out a smear campaign against an officer who spoke the truth.

“I do not want to serve in a Congress if that is what it comes to,” he said. “We talk the good talk. … We talk about how much we support the troops. Here is the time to test: If you support the troops, you will not allow a bureaucracy to ruin someone who has done nothing wrong but tell the truth.”

“If there are people in this administration...who do not want this story to be told, and obviously there are, then that’s all the more reason...to demand that the truth has to come out,” he said.

________________________________________________________________________________________

FDA Collaboration in Vioxx Smear Campaign Investigated

The recent discovery of handwritten notes by Dr. Ned Braunstein rejuvenated Congress’s investigation into possible collaboration between the FDA and Merck in a smear campaign against whistle-blower Dr. David Graham. 

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, called for renewed investigation based on the notes documenting an October 13, 2004 conversation between Braunstein from Merck and Brian Harvey of the FDA. Braunstein noted Harvey’s call for “an official rebuttal on Graham.” Both the FDA and Merck publicly spoke out against Graham noting differences between his research and their own respective studies.

Dr. Graham was “quite shocked” and felt that it demonstrated “how widespread the organized campaign to discredit and smear” him was.

Holder told assistant U.S. attorneys for the District of Columbia that they must respond to negative perceptions of federal prosecutors by doing "the right thing."

"Your job as assistant U.S. attorneys is not to convict people," Holder said. "Your job is not to win cases. Your job is to do justice.

Your job is in every case, every decision that you make, to do the right thing.

Anybody who asks you to do something other than that is to be ignored."

Holder spoke in the same courthouse where Stevens was freed from criminal charges a day earlier. A jury had convicted the Republican who had served 40 years in the Senate of corruption charges last fall, but Holder decided the case should be dropped because federal prosecutors withheld key evidence from Stevens' defense team.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan threw out the conviction Tuesday and took the extraordinary step of ordering an investigation into whether prosecutors violated the law. Sullivan said he had never seen such misconduct and mishandling of a case during 25 years of the bench.

Holder: "You are expected to do nothing more than the right thing. Anything other than that is unacceptable."

     "There is nothing like a little witness tampering to put the icing on the cake." 


                                            -Nancy Grace - CNN

The benefit of the doubt had already been stretched thin and taut by the time Roland Burris offered his third version of the events leading to his appointment to the U.S. Senate. It finally snapped like a rubber band, popping him on that long Pinocchio nose of his, when he came out with version four.

Let’s see if we have it right: Burris had zero contact with any of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s cronies about his interest in the Senate seat being vacated by President Barack Obama— unless you count that conversation with former chief of staff Lon Monk, and, on further reflection, the ones with insiders John Harris, Doug Scofield and John Wyma and, oh yeah, the governor’s brother and fund-raising chief, Robert Blagojevich. But Burris didn’t raise a single dollar for the now ex-governor as a result of those contacts because that could be construed as a quid pro quo and besides, everyone he asked refused to donate.

The story gets worse with every telling.

Enough. Roland Burris must resign.

His protests that he had nothing to hide just don’t square with his obvious attempts to hide something, as evidenced by the evolving truths in three sworn statements to the House impeachment panel.

His Jan. 8 testimony before that panel contradicted the affidavit he’d filed three days earlier. On Feb. 5 he submitted a “clarification” detailing the contacts he’d failed to mention on the stand.

The hole just gets deeper and deeper, and Burris keeps digging.  He has no credibility.

They told Burris to go to the impeachment committee and testify fully and truthfully. And he did not.

Disgraceful. Disgraceful all around.

There’s only one honorable action for Burris: resign.

It's the second time Burris has changed his story. In an unsolicited affidavit to the impeachment committee on Jan. 6, Burris said he had only one limited conversation with the governor before accepting the Senate appointment. 

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Just as Illinois was moving past the agony and embarrassment of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's ousting, the fellow Democrat whom Blagojevich appointed to the U.S. Senate was hearing calls for his own resignation Sunday amid allegations he lied to legislators.

Freshman Sen. Roland Burris released an affidavit on Saturday that contradicts his statements last month to a House committee investigating Blagojevich's impeachment.

"I can't believe anything that comes out of Mr. Burris at this point," Rep. Jim Durkin, the impeachment committee's ranking Republican, said at a news conference Sunday. "I think it would be in the best interest of the state if he resigned because I don't think the state can stand this anymore."

Gov. Pat Quinn, who advanced to the governor's mansion after Blagojevich was ousted over corruption allegations last month, also called on Burris to explain the contradiction.

In an unprecedented legal settlement, a former Arizona State University student who was raped in her dorm room in 2004 by one of the school's football players will collect $850,000, and the Arizona university system will establish a women's safety czar for all three major campuses -- ASU, the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University.

The settlement ends a civil lawsuit filed in 2006 by the former student, identified as "J.K." in court records, against Arizona State, the Arizona Board of Regents, then-head football coach Dirk Koetter and Darnel Henderson, the player who allegedly raped her. The suit claimed the university had placed her in a dangerous position, which led to the rape.

Although other rape victims have pursued lawsuits against universities and their athletes, the ASU settlement is unique in three ways: (1) the appointment of a highly placed safety officer who will review and reform policies for reporting and investigating incidents of sexual harassment and assault; (2) the extraordinarily high sum of university money paid to the victim; and (3) the public disclosure of the terms of the settlement.

After Henderson was finally expelled from ASU, Koetter tried to help him obtain a scholarship at Arkansas-Pine Bluff and other programs, according to a later university investigation.

"This is a new day," said Joanne Belknap, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado and an expert on women's violence issues. "Universities always protect the male athlete. It has happened forever. But this settlement will make things significantly better."

"This will level the playing field for women on campus," Redmond said. "The football coach will no longer be allowed to trump university policy. Arizona is establishing a fortress of prevention that will be a model for all colleges and universities."

Thought to ponder...

Let's say that an attorney(s) representing a defendant submitted evidence to the Court as follows:

The attorney(s) presented that a particular book is the defendant's guide.  When in reality it is not.  The defendant's attorney(s) removed the copyright page when it produced pages from the book as an exhibit to the Court.  You see the copyright page would prove the falsification of evidence as it would show who the actual author is.  Knowing this, the attorney(s) would certainly have to remove this true evidence in his/her effort to obstruct justice.

Wouldn't this conduct constitute plagiarism by the attorney(s) and defendant?

Plagiarism is the use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work.

Within academia, plagiarism by students, professors, or researchers is considered academic dishonesty or academic fraud.

It would seem to me that such falsification of evidence, perjury, and obstruction of justice could lead to disbarment by said attorney(s) who engaged in such (mis)conduct.

Disbarment is a revocation of a lawyer's ability to practice law or argue cases.

Generally disbarment is imposed as a sanction for conduct indicating that an attorney is not fit to practice law, willfully disregarding the interests of a client, or engaging in fraud which impedes the administration of justice.

In addition, any lawyer who is convicted of a felony is automatically disbarred in most jurisdictions.

See my posts below titled "Perjury, Felony, Imprisonment" and "A Lesson On Lawsuits" for details on the crimes of perjury and subornation of perjury.   They are category D felonies resulting in imprisonment for a minimum term of not less than 1 year and a maximum term of not more than 4 years.

Congress asked the Justice Department to look into whether the seven-time Cy Young Award winner lied last February, when he testified under oath at a deposition and a public House hearing that he never took illegal performance enhancers.

That contradicted the sworn testimony of his former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, who said under oath that he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone. Clemens last played in the major leagues in 2007, with the New York Yankees.

The Justice Department brought the case to a grand jury -- which is based in Washington -- after an 11-month FBI inquiry. A grand jury allows prosecutors to get sworn testimony from witnesses and collect documents.

Barry Bonds, baseball's career home run leader, is scheduled for a March trial on charges he lied to a federal grand jury in 2003 when he denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs. That is part of a separate investigation in California that also ensnared star Olympic sprinter Marion Jones, who was sentenced to six months in prison for lying about her steroid use.

Just three weeks ago, a committee of business leaders and members of Rutgers’s governing board issued a report faulting the university’s president, Richard L. McCormick, and its Board of Governors for inadequate supervision of the athletics department. And over the summer, The Star-Ledger published a series of articles exposing deals, contracts, and other spending practices the department carried out with limited input from top university officials.

The Truckee Carson Irrigation District and four of its Fallon employees were indicted Wednesday on 10 charges of conspiring to defraud the federal government, making false claims and falsifying records in a scam to secure Sierra water and gain credits from the federal government.

David Overvold, 58, project manager for the irrigation district based in Fallon; Lyman McConnell, 64, the district’s lawyer; Shelby Cecil, 65; and John Baker, 63, manipulated or disabled water meters, changed numbers on water-use reports and submitted inflated figures from 2000 to 2005 in order to secure additional water credits from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the indictment said.

The four men and the district are scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Reno. If convicted, they could face up to 20 years in prison for each of the three falsification of records counts and five years for the conspiracy to defraud and each of the three false claims and false statement counts.

They also face a possible $250,000 fine for each of 10 counts.

Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki will not appear before the grand jury, which is expected to hear the Attorney General's case against him today.  His lawyer Kent Robison said they made the decision not to appear because they don't know what specific charges are being sought.

Robison said if Krolicki is indicted the Attorney General's Office has agreed to issue a summons for him to appear in court to face the charges rather than arresting him and booking him in jail.

"We're of the ham sandwich mentality here," Robison said, meaning they fully expect an indictment.

Krolicki said state prosecutors are trying to indict him on charges of violating laws governing the handling of public money during his management of the state’s college savings plan while he was state treasurer.

I have referred to the NCAA's Notice of Allegations in several of my blogs.  I thought it might interest some to see what this document is.  The Notice of Allegations is a detailed document listing the names and NCAA rule violations of employees at a specific institution.  The Notice is sent to the University President by the NCAA Enforcement Staff upon completion of its' investigation.

Indiana University received its' Notice of Allegations from the NCAA this past February.  Upon immediate receipt of this document and the accompanying NCAA letter, Indiana released it to the media.  They also posted the entire letter and the Notice of Allegations on their own athletic department website. 

See the PDF links at the bottom of this page for a review of these documents. 

Public entities are required by law to operate with transparency to hold public officials accountable and to fight public corruption. 

Nevada law requires the University of Nevada, Reno to release the NCAA Notice of Allegations to the public.  It is the same practice followed by Universities all over the country. 

The University of Nevada continues to be under investigation by the NCAA.

“All of our research has shown that these Title IX cases, especially retaliation cases, the verdicts are much, much higher...,” Behar said.

This is taken from an Reno Gazette Journal article a few months back:

Attorney Jeff Dickerson said all the cases he files have merit because it would be folly to spend time and money on a frivolous suit.  He said one civil rights lawsuit against UNR is too many.

He rejects about 85 percent of prospective UNR plaintiffs who ask him to sue the university on their behalf.

"On the average, 10 to 20 people from UNR a month call for my services, ranging from administrators to full professors to janitors," Dickerson said.

The NCAA's notice of allegations also accuses athletic director Brian Teter of not reporting to the NCAA his knowledge of two ineligible players and later submitting a false self-report regarding one of those players. Teter failed to conduct himself in accordance with the association's "high standards of honesty and sportsmanship," the notice said.

The NCAA charged the athletic department with a lack of institutional control, saying the school failed to monitor the eligibility of student-athletes, properly train staff in NCAA rules, police itself for rules violations and accurately report any violations.

ESPN Article

Caller Times


The Athletic Director was fired 5 days later for his role in covering up NCAA violations.

Athletic Director Out