Every year, millions of Americans fill out their tax forms. One of the options is to make a dollar campaign contribution. Where does that dollar go? Bumper stickers or flyers? Buttons? Pizza parties for campaign volunteers? How about snappy little skirts from Neiman Marcus?

Yes, that’s right. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint against Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and the 2008 republican candidate for vice president, for misusing campaign contributions. Palin racked up large bills at high-end retail outlets, snatching up thousands of dollars worth of clothing and clothing accessories for herself and her children. After everything was said and done, Ms. Pailn managed to squint out of a $150,000 shopping bill.

So some lesser-known government watchdog commission caught the snafu and made her replenish the funds and fraud charges are pending and and… No. The lesser-known government watchdog commission in question, the Federal Election Commission threw out the complaint on the grounds of… they can throw it out?

Congress formed the FEC in 1975 by passing the Federal Elections Campaign Act. Its purpose is to enforce the limitations and prohibitions on the use of campaign funds by enforcing federal campaign finance laws. Their self-described duties are to “disclose campaign finance information, to enforce the provisions of the law such as the limits and prohibitions on contributions, and to oversee the public funding of Presidential elections.” To help ensure fairness, no more than three of the six member committee can be of one political party. Currently there are three democrats and three republicans on the committee.

So shouldn’t clothing fall under some limitation of what can be purchased with campaign funds? Yes and no. The FEC in all their wisdom ruled that the ban against using campaign funds for personal expenses doesn’t apply to party money. This after the Republican National Committee told the FEC that they paid for her clothes, not donors. Now that’s compassionate conservatism.

The mainstream selling point of why this case is important is “well she said she’s a soccer mom but soccer moms don’t spend $75,000 at Neiman Marcus” when really it should be “How can tax payer dollars go to feed a watchdog that doesn’t watch?” The FEC is taxpayer funded. They have been around for thirty plus years and to date it’s difficult to justify why they exist at all. If something like the Palin controversy doesn’t rub their noses wrong enough to do something, then what will?

For information on canadian lawyer, toronto lawyer, vancouver lawyer and lawyers in your local areas, visit www.lawyerahead.ca for the most comprehensive information on a Canadian Lawyer.

Most Viewed Canadian Lawyers for the Week of June 01, 2009

1.  Lorne Fine, Toronto Lawyer, Toronto Family Lawyer

2.  Anna Perry, Vancouver Lawyer, Vancouver Family Lawyer, Vancouver Real Estate Lawyer

3.  Norman F. Williams, Hamilton Lawyer, Hamilton Criminal Lawyer

4.  Graydon Sheppard, Hamilton Lawyer, Hamilton Personal Injury Lawyer

5.  Paul Pellman, Toronto Lawyer, Toronto Family Lawyer

Stay tuned for the next week’s most viewed lawyer edition!

Most Viewed Lawyers for the week ending March 27, 2009

1. David J. Rotfleish, Toronto Business Lawyer, Toronto Tax Lawyer
2. Christopher Hicks, Toronto Criminal Lawyer, exclusively Criminal
3. J. Gardner Hodder, Toronto Business Lawyer, Toronto Civil Litigation Lawyer
4. Irving A. Solnik, Toronto Family Lawyer, Toronto Civil Litigation Lawyer, Toronto Lawyers
5. Daniel Brown, Toronto Criminal Lawyer

We will update this Lawyer List again next Monday on our “Most Viewed Lawyers in Canada”

Should Simon Rosenfeld, a toronto lawyer, who was convicted of money laundering 4 years ago, face higher sentencing because he was a lawyer?

Simon Rosenfeld was charged with 2 counts of money laundering in 2005 and is serving a 3 year sentence in prison.  The decision was made in 2005 after the jury found him guilty in a 3 week trail period.  However, the Prosecution Service of Canada is seeking to increase that sentence to now 5 years.  They say that lawyers that violate the criminal code should be punished harsher than the next citizen facing the same charges.

Their argument goes as follows.  Lawyers unlike other citizens of this country are given special privileges by the Law as lawyers are entitled to special client-attorney relationship that come with practicing law as a profession.  Therefore those that violate these priveleges to commit crimes should face tougher sentencing compared to the next guy facing the same charges and the same circumstances.

This argument became especially of interests in the Rosenfeld case as he was caught on tape saying that it was 20 times more safer for a lawyer to launder money in Canada.  When the undercover RMCP officer, who posed as an associate of a Columbian Drug Cartel, further pressed Rosenfeld whether after giving him a 1 dollar USD bill that the client-attorney priveleges are now in place and now they can do ‘business’, Mr. Rosenfeld was observed saying ‘Yes’.

Paul Staniszewski, a retired judge is at issue with his alma mater and another university over prerequisites for receiving the Honourable Paul I.B. and Mrs. Tevis Staniszewski Award. Apparently, the universities thought it okay to hand them out to Muslims to Judge Staniszewski’s dismay.

“I’m reacting to what’s going on to people who aren’t even soldiers, who are having their heads beheaded and this stuff is shown on the TVs and everything else,” Staniszewski said in an interview. Continuing with, “I am doing the same thing these people are doing, except I’m not cutting off heads, I’m cutting off applications for help in their studies.”

An Osgoode Hall Law School alumnus, Staniszewski practiced law in Toronto as a Toronto Lawyer for 13 years before becoming a federal judge in 1967.

Both universities have refused Mr. Staniszewski’s request going as far as to say the request was illegal.

The former judge is the author of Memoirs of a Judge, a 200-page autobiography featuring chapters such as “A Young Japanese Judge Visits” and “My 58^th Birthday”.

Many parents believed that mercury-laced vaccines caused their child’s autism, but a special U.S. court ruled otherwise. The court found that there was no direct link between receiving the vaccination and autism.

With copious amounts of scientific research done on the subject, the court had a lot to go on. Inevitably, the court concluded that, “It was abundantly clear that petitioners’ theories of causation were speculative and unpersuasive.” Adding that, “the weight of scientific research and authority” was “simply more persuasive on nearly every point in contention.” And the evidence “is weak, contradictory and unpersuasive,” and “sadly, the petitioners in this litigation have been the victims of bad science conducted to support litigation rather than to advance medical and scientific understanding” of autism.

This ruling brings grim tidings to more than 5,500 families who have filed personal injury claims through the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The attorneys for the families must show that thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative found in vaccines, more than likely caused their child to become autistic.

The controversy over vaccines has a lot of celebrity proponents. Jenny McCarthy, a television star and Playboy playmate, is one of them. McCarthy’s son is afflicted with autism and, in an attempt to spread awareness; she has done many interviews, most recently with CNN, regarding the connection between vaccines and autism.

Where it gets bothersome is with organizations like Kids Need Options With Vaccines (KNOW). They have a page on their website listing three ‘myths’ about vaccinations including “Vaccines are effective” as one of the myths. According to them, there is no proof vaccines help lower disease rates and that the only true way to do this is through improved hygiene and diet.

In Quebec City, a 15-year-old contracted meningitis in part because he refused the meningitis vaccine. Under Quebec law, people 14 and old have the right to refuse a vaccine without parental consent.

The decision by the court is refreshing. It is nice to know science can still triumph and mob rule is not always status quo. Autism is a challenging disease and it is almost a shame the parents were wrong in the sense that knowing the cause would allow us to change the way we inoculate our young and curtail autism. Nevertheless, they were wrong and the court’s decision puts aside claims by lawyers and their clients that may have hindered finding the true cause of autism and ending it.

Four people were injured in a shooting incident yesterday in Toronto, as they were standing outside of one of the victims’ building, having a conversation. Rachid Adam and his friends were hanging out talking, when two gunmen fired eight shots at the young men. The youths attempted to dodge the bullets and ran inside the building, and police found them there later, in various states of injury.

The attack was apparently random and unprovoked, and it seems the young men will all survive, though who the shooters were and whether or not they will be caught is as of yet unclear.

In related news, the shooter from the Edmonton Night Club shooting was convicted, for the incident that occured in 2006. Apparently the incident begun when some woman spilled a drink on someone else, and some sort of dispute over this begun. Somehow, at some point, a gun was pulled, and three men were shot and killed.

Thomas Orak, Jacey Pinnock, and Dave Persaud were all killed in the shooting, and several others were injured by stray bullets. The gunman, who has not been named, has been convicted of second-degree murder, and will be sentenced at a hearing later this month. Another man, Dwayne Nelson, was convicted on related assault charges.

While these two incidents are unrelated, it does beg the question of why guns are so readily available, and what we can do to prevent violent crime. Prosecution of crimes and harsh sentences only go so far, discovering the root causes of violence usually takes longer, more solid exploration and the type of time and resources your humble blogger obviously must lack. But what the government can do, besides prosecuting these cases (when they’re already so overloaded they can barely handle the bail hearings in many districts).

Lawyerahead.ca allows consumers to find a Toronto lawyer, Ottawa Lawyer or any other lawyer in Canada quickly and easily. Learn more at lawyerahead.ca