On Wednesday, U.S District Court Judge Virginia Phillips issued a permanent injunction against enforcement of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) law. The injunction was issued pursuant to a claim brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, an LGBT Republican organization.
The Court’s Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law (per FRCP 52) explained the decision to grant the injunction.
Hi Friends,
As most of us know, Nolo.com is the best Website for consumer and small business USA legal information. Nolo’s lawyers-writers-editors are the best. Nolo.com covers everything from starting a business, employment, real estate, intellectual property, immigration, family law, tax, estate planning, bankruptcy, credit law and foreclosures.
Well… as our country slowly quickly moves into economic tough times, I thought I would blog on a new book, The Foreclosure Survival Guide written by my friend Steve Elias.
Steve Elias has been writing about legal and consumer financial issues for Nolo.com for nearly thirty years. He has been covering the recent legal and ecomomic changes that folks face, including credit, bankruptcy and foreclosure issues. Steve is currently blogging (with Albin Renauer – Go Blue!) on Nolo’s Bankruptcy & Foreclosure Blog, covering the latest issues, as well as legislation on bankruptcy and foreclosure. He also blogs on The Law Reform Soapbox.
Nolo.com also has put together the Property & Money Resource Center with loads of legal and consumer content from Steve and the other Nolo editors. This resource center includes specific sections with articles & FAQs on Foreclosure, Credit Repair & Debt, Bankruptcy and Social Security & Retirement. The Property & Money Resource Center is constantly being updated with the latest information.
Steve has written a new book on foreclosures, appropriately called the The Foreclosure Survival Guide (on Nolo.com the book costs $14.99, and the immediately downloadable ebook pdf costs $12.99, you can also get the book on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com). The Foreclosure Survival Guide has information on mortgages, including adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs), short sales, deeds in lieu of foreclosure, judicial and non-judicial foreclosure, credit counseling, liens, and using bankruptcy to deal with foreclosure.
Steve goes into much more detail in his book, but here is some information from his book about nonprofit counselors that may be able to help:
Nonprofit Housing Counselors (from Chapter 10 – Resources Beyond the Book)
I strongly suggest that you find a nonprofit housing counseling agency. The counselors there can help you assess your mortgage situation and, if possible, negotiate a solution with your lender that will keep you in your house. Lenders–which suffer economically from foreclosures and benefit if something can be worked out–are the main source of funds for these agencies. (see Ch. 4 [of The Foreclosure Survival Guide] for an in-depth discussion of finding and working with a nonprofit housing counselor.)
- The Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has a list of approved counselors. You can find a hud-approved agency at www.hud.gov/foreclosure/index.cfm or by calling 800-569-4287.
- The Homeownership Preservation Foundation website, www.995hope.org, offers free online counseling, among other things. or you can call 888-995-HOPE and talk with someone.
- The Homeownership Crisis Resource Center, www.housinghelpnow.org, will link you up with a local nonprofit foreclosure prevention specialist who may or may not be hud approved.
- The National Foundation for Credit Counseling will get you to a nonprofit counselor (typically HUD approved) through its toll-free hotline, 866-557-2227.
The foreclosure problems have been going on for a while and could get much worse if something is not done by the lenders and government (who will soon own large stakes in the lenders). As it is in the best interest of the lenders and the neighborhoods to try to keep people in their homes to reduce the number of foreclosures and vacant units, there needs to be something done to revalue some of these loans. We will see what Congress, President Bush and then President ??? do. And then there is the US and world economy as a whole… we will see.
For those facing credit issues, foreclosure or possible bankruptcy, check out Nolo’s Property & Money Resource Center for very helpful consumer information. For those facing foreclosure, falling behind on their payments, or just need help with paying their mortgages, check out The Foreclosure Survival Guide. The table of contents of The Foreclosure Survival Guide is in the extended entry of this post.
Peace,
Tim
Hi Friends,
Last week, the State of Oregon Legislative Counsel Committee sent Justia a notice of copyright infringement and demand to cease and desist. In its letter, Dexter Johnson, the Legislative Counsel, asked us to remove a copy of the Oregon Revised Statutes stored on our servers (or pay a licensing fee) by April 30, 2008. The letter claimed copyright on many parts of the Oregon Revised Statutes:
[T]he Committee … claim[s] a copyright in the arrangement and subject-matter compilation of Oregon statutory law, the prefatory and explanatory notes, the leadlines and numbering for each statutory section, the tables the index and annotations and such other incidents as are work product of the Committee in the compilation and publication of Oregon law.
Hi Friends,
As public domain information hero Carl Malamud is working on getting case law online and into the public domain (we have helped a bit :). Carl, donors, and the Public.Resource.org team have done a lot and… more to come…
But in addition to case law, Carl has also been working to get other public legal documents online and into the public domain. These documents include the legislative histories of the laws. So this was interesting… it looks like Thomson-West has signed an exclusive agreement with the GAO to have these legislative histories on WestLaw.
Hi Friends,
Here is a great new free case law project that came out (or at least I was made aware of 🙂 a few weeks ago. AltLaw.
Right now AltLaw is focused on getting up the Federal appellate opinions online (US Supreme Court and Federal Circuit Courts). They have aggregated opinions for the last 15 years or so (depending on the court), and have done good job presenting the cases in formated text, in addition to providing the original pdf and in a text only format. It looks like these are the slip opinions, but they can be later fixed up to match the text of the official published opinions.
Hi Friends,
As part of our Bellingham recruitment trip we went to Linuxfest Northwest… to find Bellingham linux people and perl/python programmers.
Me with The Bird.
What do you think of when someone mentions the USA PATRIOT Act? Fahrenheit 9/11? Long lines at the airport? Domestic spying by the NSA? Well, I have a new item to add to that list. As the winter cold season takes its toll, honest citizens trying to buy some nasal decongestant will discover that Sudafed® has been replaced by Sudafake—courtesy of the USA PATRIOT Act.
I found the original Sudafed at a local Walgreens. Had to take a product card to the pharmacist behind the counter and exchange it for the actual contraband. Oh, and they asked for my driver’s license. I could see all my personal information being zapped into some database for the government to data mine. Thanks! And, if I somehow end up on the No-Fly List…
Walgreens doesn’t offer all cold products in their original formulation. For example, Robitussin only comes with Phenylephrine HCI and not Pseudoepedrine HCl (the active ingredient in the original Sudafed). So, buy accordingly. Personally, I think Sudafake is really a placebo pill, because it had no effect. Hence, my search for the tried and true.
Hi Friends,
I just got a new MacBook Pro. It is faster than my previous PowerBook, and the screen is much much nicer.
Hi Friends,
Cyber Librarian Gary Price of the ResourceShelf, and the editor of Search Engine Watch Blog is going to Ask Jeeves as the Director of Online Information Resources. Gary will be giving up the editorship of the Search Engine Watch blog (with Barry Schwartz taking over) but will continue on with ResourceShelf. You can read more on the ResourceShelf site post. From the Ask Jeeves press release:
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