Former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick appeared alongside federal lawmakers on Tuesday to push for a stricter animal fighting law.

Vick, who pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2007, served more than a year in prison for fighting dogs at his Virginia home.

Cameras swarmed Vick as he walked into the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Channel 2’s Scott MacFarlane reported. Vick is being recruited by animal rights groups who are hoping to use the quarterback to lobby for tougher laws.

Vick and some congressional leaders announced their support of a new federal law that would make it illegal to attend an animal fight. Staging a fight is already a federal felony, but now the target is the spectators who bankroll the fights by gambling on animals.

“It took me going through what I went through to understand the magnitude of the entire situation. I’ve learned so much,” Vick said in the hearing.

In Georgia, it’s only a misdemeanor crime to attend an animal fight, a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine. The new federal law would stiffen penalties and help local police.

“Many of these animal fighting rings happen in rural counties with very small sheriff’s departments that are understaffed and underfunded. By having a federal statute these communities will get the support they need,” John Goodwin with the Humane Society of the U.S. said.

Vick watched a video of children attending a cockfighting ring in Alabama during the news conference. The new proposed law would also make it a felony to bring a child to an animal fight, something that Vick saw before his arrest.

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Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and attorneys general from 20 other states on Monday filed an amicus brief challenging the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s federal health care law.

The states’ brief in Kinder v. Geithner, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, argues that the law’s individual mandate — which requires all Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty — violates the Constitution.

“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is an extraordinary law that rests on unprecedented assertions of federal authority, pushing even the most expansive conception of the federal government’s constitutional powers past the breaking point. The Act imposes a direct mandate upon individuals to obtain health insurance, marking by all accounts the first time in our Nation’s history that Congress has required individuals to enter into commerce as a condition of living in the United States,” the brief said.

“The federal government identifies no limiting principle that would prevent Congress from employing that same power to force individuals to engage in any manner of commerce so that the federal government may better regulate it.

“Instead, the federal government embraces a sweeping view of the Commerce Clause — broad enough to reach any subject and encompassing enough to include the power to compel — that would imperil individual liberty, render Congress’s other enumerated powers superfluous, and allow Congress to usurp the general police power reserved to the States.” Read the rest of this entry »

House Republicans on Tuesday failed to advance a measure that would repeal regulations that increase efficiency standards for light bulbs, rules that they have assailed as an example of government overreach.

“The 2010 elections demonstrated that Americans are fed up with government intrusion,” Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who proposed the repeal, said in a debate on Monday. “The federal government has crept so deep into our lives that federal agencies now determine what kind of light bulbs the American people are allowed to purchase.”

But Democrats, despite being in the minority in the House, were able to defeat the repeal on a vote of 233 to 193 because the measure was brought up under rules that require a two-thirds majority for passage.

The Democratic whip, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said Republicans were wrong to propose the repeal at a time when Congress should be focusing on creating jobs and on the debt-limit negotiations. “By bringing misguided bills like this one to the floor instead of a comprehensive jobs plan, it is clear that House Republicans are still in the dark,” Mr. Hoyer said in a statement titled “Not the Brightest Idea.”

The first stage of the standards, which will be phased in from Jan. 1 through 2014, requires bulbs to be 25 to 30 percent more efficient. The second stage could require bulbs to be 60 percent more efficient by 2020. The law includes exceptions for specialty lights, like candelabra lamps, three-way bulbs and black lights.

The restrictions could eliminate the familiar incandescent bulbs, which have used essentially the same technology since Thomas Alva Edison invented them.

Republicans have also said the new types of bulbs are too expensive. Prices range from about $1.50 for a halogen incandescent to $20 for light-emitting diode, or LED, bulbs, which are supposed to last 10 years. Regular bulbs today cost about 35 cents. Read the rest of this entry »

THE United States violated international law by executing a Mexican national who was denied his consular rights, UN human rights chief Navi Pillay says.

Texas carried out the controversial execution of Leal Garcia yesterday, despite calls for reprieve from both the White House and Mexican government.

“The execution of Mr Leal Garcia places the US in breach of international law. What the State of Texas has done in this case is imputable in law to the US and engages the United States’ international responsibility,” she said today.

At least 51 Mexicans on death row in the US, including Garcia, were not informed after their arrests that they could get legal help from the Mexican consulate, a violation of the Vienna Convention.

“The lack of consular assistance raises concerns about whether or not his right to a fair trial, guaranteed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and binding on the United States, was fully upheld,” a statement from Ms Pillay’s office said.

Garcia, 38, was executed at 6.21pm local time Thursday in a Huntsville, Texas prison for the 1994 rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl, state officials said.

The International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 the United States had to review the cases of the 51 Mexican nationals on death row because none had received consular services.

This review never took place, the UN statement said.

The execution, “will undermine the role of the International Court of Justice, and its ramifications are likely to spread far beyond Texas”, Ms Pillay said.

“The federal Congress must also assume its responsibilities and act to remedy the gap in US law that this case has again sadly revealed in order to prevent its recurrence in the future,” Ms Pillay said.

After all, she noted, it is “the responsibility of all federal countries to ensure that all individual states respect the international obligations assumed by the country as a whole”.

In a rare intervention, the US government’s top lawyer had urged the Supreme Court to spare Garcia’s life, saying his execution would cause “irreparable harm” to US interests.

But the Supreme Court denied the request for a stay of execution in a 5-4 decision just over an hour before Leal was set to be put to death.

US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was “disappointed” that Texas went ahead with the execution.

“US compliance with Vienna convention terms is absolutely critical to ensuring our own consular access and our own ability to protect Americans detained abroad,” she said.

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It began three years ago with a mystery that turned into an unthinkable crime. A community outraged, a family torn apart, and a nation’s attention focused on one woman. After 91 witnesses and 30 days of testimony – stunning revelations, a family accused, disturbing evidence and even more disturbing behavior – finally a shocking verdict. “48 Hours” takes you inside one of the most dramatic murder trials in recent memory.

Today’s verdict was not what most of the impassioned observers outside the Orlando courthouse were expecting.

“We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.”

On July 5, 2011, Casey Anthony was acquitted of murder, acquitted of manslaughter and acquitted of child abuse.

She was convicted only of four misdemeanors: All of them about lying to investigators.

Minutes after Casey’s fate was read aloud, Jose Baez, the man in charge of her case and who sat beside her for the past six weeks – spoke out: “Casey did not murder Caylee. Our system of justice has not dishonored her memory by a false conviction.”

It’s been three long years since Baez began fighting an uphill battle to save his most notorious client.

“I admire her greatly,” he told “48 Hours.” I think she has courage… strength, intelligence…”

The Orlando, Fla., woman first became a national obsession in July 2008, when she claimed that her 2 ½-year-old daughter, Caylee, had been kidnapped a month earlier – but she didn’t report it. While her daughter was supposedly missing, Casey partied – and told her family and friends that Caylee was with a nanny. That October, Casey was charged with murder. Two months later, Caylee’s skeletal remains were found not far from the family home.

Photos: The search for Caylee

After years of damaging pre-trial publicity, Baez was practically the only person left defending her.

“You can only use flattering terms to describe the true Casey Anthony,” he said.

The drama moved to the courtroom in May 2011, when the demure-looking 25-year-old defendant finally faced a jury.

“This isn’t just a case about Casey Marie Anthony, it’s a story about Caylee Anthony as well,” Prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick said in her opening statements.

The prosecutor argued that Casey killed 2 1/2-year-old Caylee and then concocted elaborate lies to conceal it.

“No one else lied to their friends, to their family, to investigators, no one else benefited from the death of Caylee Marie Anthony,” Burdick told the court.

The stakes were high: If convicted, Casey Anthony possibly faced the death penalty – a harsh reality that undoubtedly weighed heavily on her parents, George and Cindy Anthony, as they listened to the prosecutor’s opening statement:

“Casey Anthony appeared … to be what her parents thought she was – a loving mother working hard to support her daughter…” Burdick continued.

George and Cindy were key to this highly circumstantial case. Casey was 19 and still living with them when Caylee was born. Casey and her child never moved out.

“I saw her with Caylee every day,” Cindy Anthony told “48 Hours” in a 2009 interview. “And I saw the type of mother she is. And she’s just like me … And I could never harm a hair on any of my children’s head.”

In that interview, the Anthonys told “48 Hours” that Casey left the house with Caylee in June 2008 and, unexpectedly, did not come back home.

“I think it was a couple weeks into it when I started really pushing to talk to Caylee. Because, you know, I really missed her,” Cindy said in the interview.

In his opening argument, attorney Baez said Casey had a reason to lie about Caylee’s whereabouts. And for the first time in public, he revealed it.

“She never was missing. Caylee Anthony died on June 16, 2008, when she drowned in her family’s swimming pool,” Baez told the court in his opening statements.

That awful event, Baez said, overwhelmed this deeply disturbed young mother – a woman who had learned to keep secrets because she had been sexually abused by her own father from an early age.

“It all began when Casey was 8 years old and her father came into her room and began to touch her inappropriately. And it escalated. And it escalated,” Baez continued.

“Jose Baez’s opening statement – it was stunning,” “48 Hours” correspondent Troy Roberts remarked to Linda Kenney Baden, a HLN contributor, who was once a member of Casey’s defense team.

“Wow, wow, wow,” Kenney Baden replied.

“It turned the case on its head?” Roberts asked.

“It turned the case upside down,” Kenney Baden said. “As to what the reason was as to why somebody would not report her beautiful daughter missing.”

Baez accused George Anthony of being the real villain in this case – a brutal man who intimidated his daughter for years. Baez told jurors that George found Caylee in the pool that day and then Casey found him holding the body of her lifeless child.

“She immediately grabbed Caylee and began to cry. And cry. And cry,” Baez continued. “And shortly thereafter, George began to yell at her, ‘Look what you’ve done! Your mother will never forgive you and you will go to jail for child neglect for the rest of your frickin life.’”

Baez contended that Caylee’s accidental death became one more ugly family secret… a secret just like George’s alleged sexual abuse.

“Casey was raised to lie. …she could be 13 years old, have her father’s penis in her mouth, and then go to school and play with the other kids as if nothing ever happened,” Baez told the court.

Throughout Baez’ accusations, George Anthony remained stoic. Later, on the witness stand, he would unequivocally deny the allegations against him.

“Certainly the opening statement put pressure on the defense to prove the allegations made against George,” Roberts said to Kenney Baden.

“Yeah, but the defense doesn’t have to prove those allegations,” she explained. “They have to give a hint to the allegations.”

“This is not a murder case. This is not a manslaughter case. This is a sad, tragic accident,” Baez told jurors.

The state insisted this was no accident – and the physical evidence proves it. But Baez promised he would discredit the state’s forensic experts, police investigators, and even Roy Kronk, the man who found Caylee’s remains.

“What did Kronk do with her? Why did he place her there that way? And can you trust anything this man has to say? And I would tell you you can’t,” Baez continued.

After nearly three years of relentless publicity – damaging evidence and scandalous photos – the defense was now on a mission to show that Casey Anthony wasn’t the person everyone thought she was after all.

“I think the public still hates Casey Anthony,” Kenney Baden told Roberts. “But I think the public also knows that they haven’t been given the whole truth.”

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Wyoming is preparing for about 120 new state laws to take effect this week.

July 1 marks the start date for many of the bills the Legislature passed during this year’s session. The new rules and procedures will affect law enforcement, transportation and other parts of state government.

One of the most heavily debated bills was the elimination of the implied consent law for suspected drunken drivers.

Starting Friday, motorists will lose the right to refuse chemical tests when they are suspected of driving under the influence.

The bill also creates a “remotely communicated search warrant.” That means a judicial official does not need to be physically present to approve the warrant to force the test.

Rep. Keith Gingery, R-Jackson, who sponsored that bill, said it could have one of the largest effects of all legislation passed this year. He added that judges and prosecutors have worked for the past few months to arrange the logistics of the new law.

“Potentially, it will have a dramatic impact on the reduction of deaths on our roads,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »

The debate over the effects of the federal health care law on employer-provided insurance has been intensifying in recent weeks, with controversial polls and consultants contradicting one another about whether employees will benefit or lose coverage by 2014.

After nearly two weeks of widespread queries and criticisms, McKinsey & Company, the management consulting firm, posted on Monday the questionnaire and methodology of an online survey it had released that was denounced by the White House and others for contending that nearly a third of employers would definitely or probably drop coverage for employees when provisions of the health care law took effect in 2014.

The White House responded on Monday night. “As we learn more, it’s become clear that this one flawed study from McKinsey is truly an outlier,” Nancy-Ann DeParle, an assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff, said in a blog post.

The White House initially pointed to forecasts by the Congressional Budget Office and other experts whose estimates were much smaller in terms of whether employees would lose some or all coverage. For example, an Urban Institute study to be released on Tuesday suggests that employees in small businesses may receive more coverage, not less.

McKinsey also came under fire for not providing access to the survey’s authors, and for not publishing the questions, the types of employers taking part or the survey methodology.

In posting “details regarding the survey” on its Web site Monday, McKinsey acknowledged that its survey was “not comparable” to the studies by the budget office, Urban Institute or others using economic modeling.

Rather, it surveyed business owners using an online panel that was apparently self-selected. McKinsey said it paid for the survey by Ipsos, a French marketing firm, “to capture the attitudes of employers,” large and small.

In addition, McKinsey seemed to be trying to address the criticisms by the White House and others, asserting that its report was not intended to be predictive.

McKinsey’s explanations did not satisfy Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and several from the House who have inquired.

“This report is filled with cherry-picked facts and slanted questions,” he said in a statement. “It did not provide employers with enough information for them to make honest choices and fair evaluations. Rather than correct the major deficiencies in their report, McKinsey has chosen to again stand by their faulty analysis and misguided conclusions.”

Several other reports have focused on small businesses, the group having the hardest time dealing with rising medical costs.

The latest, issued on Tuesday, is by the Urban Institute, a Washington research center. Its study, based on analysis of Census Bureau and Department of Health and Human Services surveys, estimates that employer coverage will increase modestly for workers and their dependents in firms with 50 or fewer employees.

By contrast, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was an economic and health policy adviser to Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign, predicts that more than 35 million people will lose employer insurance. “We figured they would all end up in the exchanges,” the state-sponsored insurance agencies to be set up under the new law, he said in a telephone interview.

Over all, including all employers, analyses by a number of widely cited researchers predicted little or no change in employer-sponsored insurance in 2014. They include the Congressional Budget Office, RAND, Lewin Associates and Mercer.

John Arensmeyer, a small business advocate who supports the law, the Affordable Care Act, calls it “a big step in the right direction.” But he said a poll by his group, Small Business Majority, found that more than half of respondents did not know what was in the law.

“Once they learn about tax credits and the exchanges option, they are more inclined to participate,” Mr. Arensmeyer said.

Linda J. Blumberg, an Urban Institute researcher, said, “Contrary to a lot of statements that have been made in the press and elsewhere, the impact of the law on small employers is going to be positive in great degree.”

Mr. Holtz-Eakin headed a group of 105 economists who filed a brief supporting the lawsuit by Republican officials from 26 states seeking to have the Affordable Care Act overturned.

But Dr. Blumberg said Virginia and other states with Republican governors were working to set up the exchanges. Republicans prefer state exchanges to the probability of a federal version if they do not act.

Four states, West Virginia, Maryland, California and Colorado, recently passed laws to establish exchanges, and similar bills have been adopted by one house in a number of other states, she said. “There is a division between what the attorneys general are doing and what governors’ offices are doing,” she said.

Gerry Harkins, who owns a small construction company in Atlanta and is a spokesman for the National Federation of Independent Business, said he would try to “figure out a way to game the system.”

“This whole plan is really slanted toward large employers,” he said. Firms with 10 and fewer workers also should benefit. “The burden falls in the middle.” His company, Southern Pan Services, had 1,200 employees before the economic crisis. It now has “under 100,” he said.

He is considering splitting his company into two units to get under 50 employees each and reduce the $3,000 penalty, for each worker, he will face for his current health plan, which is entirely paid for by employees. Joseph R. Antos, a health policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, criticizes the health law. He says it has “too much central direction and not enough appreciation for our fiscal situation.”

But Mr. Antos said large employers, who cover the majority of American workers, would probably wait several years after 2014 to see how the new system worked before deciding what to do. Those with union contracts will take much longer, he said.

He said the many variables in the law made predictions difficult. “Whatever you assume, is what you get out of it,” he said.

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An American law student has been detained by Egyptian authorities on charges he is a “highly trained” spy working for Israel, Egyptian media reported today.

The U.S. State Department confirmed Sunday’s arrest of 27-year-old dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Ilan Chaim Grapel in a statement, but declined to comment concerning allegations voiced in Egyptian state media that he was working for the Israeli intelligence force, Mossad, “with the aim of harming [Egypt's] economic and political interests.”

Grapel’s mother, Irene Grapel, told ABC News the charges against him were “complete fabrications.”

“I was dumbfounded,” said Irene Grapel of when she learned her son had been detained. “I don’t know where to put the next step.”

Irene Grapel said her son had traveled to Egypt to work with a non-profit organization that helped other African refugees in Egypt. “He volunteered his time to go there,” she said.

Both Irene Grapel and the State Department said Ilan Grapel had been visited by U.S. officials and appeared to be in good health in captivity. Irene Grapel said that speaking with her son today was “just great.”

“My imagination was running wild last night, thinking of what they could be doing to him,” she said. Before the popular revolt against former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, those detained by Egyptian police were sometimes subjected to harsh interrogation and torture. Read the rest of this entry »

In perhaps the weightiest of the dozens of challenges to the Obama health care law, a panel of appellate judges grappled Wednesday with the essential quandary of the case: if the federal government can require Americans to buy medical insurance, what constitutional limit would prevent it from mandating all manner of purchases and activities?

The three judges, selected at random from among 10 members of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, sprayed lawyers Gatling-gun style with questions about where a limiting principle might be drawn, as it must if the sweeping law is to pass judicial review. After a nearly three-hour hearing, Chief Judge Joel F. Dubina called the litigation “a very difficult case,” but provided no clues as to when or how the court might rule.

In the past five weeks, the health care litigation has taken on the feel of a traveling road show in wingtips, with similar hearings in appellate courts in Cincinnati, Richmond, Va., and now Atlanta. At each stop, the august courtrooms have been populated with many of the same lawyers and observers, and the same advocacy groups and commentators have held dueling news conferences outside each courthouse.

Lawyers involved in the cases have trouble forecasting which might ultimately be accepted for review by the Supreme Court. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you been sharing your Netflix password with your friends?

How about Rhapsody or Hulu Plus?

If you get caught sharing your online subscription accounts, you could be slapped with a fine and even imprisoned.

The bill was recently passed in Tennessee, making it illegal to share your password for online “entertainment subscription services” on or after July 1.

Pushed by recording industry officials, the bill was signed by Gov. Bill Haslam and ostensibly designed to stop hackers from stealing and selling passwords in bulk. But it could also target individuals who share their password with family and friends.

Tennessee is the first state to address Internet delivery entertainment in its legislation. It expands the current theft-of-cable laws with Senate Bill 1659 and its subsequent amendment, which states that stealing $500 or less of entertainment is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a fine of $2,500.

Sure, laws like this should be in place for thieves, but it’s a hefty penalty for sharing your passwords with family. Maybe someday the other 49 states will enact this kind of law, but until then, stay away from the “Volunteer State.”

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