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Michael Jackson accidentally killed himself while trying to become sick enough to cancel upcoming concerts, a prominent author claims. Author Gerald Posner, who also writes for The Daily Beast, claims that a top member of the pop singer’s entourage told him that Jackson wanted to cancel several shows without having to pay out his touring company.

Of all the misguided schemes put forth lately to save newspapers (micropayments! blame Google!), the one put forth by Judge Richard Posner has to be the most jaw-dropping. He suggests that linking to copyrighted material should be outlawed. No, Posner does not work for the Associated Press (which also has some strange ideas on linking). He is (normally) considered to be one of the great legal minds of our time. Posner is a United States Court of Appeals judge in Chicago and legal scholar who was once considered a potential Supreme Court nominee. He is someone who should know better....

I sense intellectual deterioration of the once-vital conservative movement in the United States. As I shall explain, this may be a testament to its success. Until the late 1960s (when I was in my late twenties), I was barely conscious of the existence of a conservative movement. It was obscure and marginal, symbolized by figures like Barry Goldwater (slaughtered by Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election), Ayn Rand, Russell Kirk, and William Buckley--figures who had no appeal for me. More powerful conservative thinkers, such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, and other distinguished conservative economists, such as George Stigler,...

If U.S. Attorney Pat Fitzgerald was still thinking about appealing the light sentence given Fast Eddie Vrdolyak, a ruling in an unrelated appellate case last week might have changed his mind. Fitzgerald had appealed a lenient sentence in a case of consumer fraud, with the result that Judge Richard Posner actually ordered the defendant acquitted, adding a rebuke to prosecutors that was, even for Posner, sharply worded. Fitzgerald’s spokesman told me that the Vrdolyak matter is “still under review” and he had no comment on Posner’s ruling. Vrdolyak, after pleading guilty in a $1.5 million financial fraud, was sentenced last...

BUT WILL THEY RESPECT HIM IN THE MORNING?July 23, 2008 Back before the Republican Party was saddled with John McCain as its nominee, The New York Times called him "the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe." The paper praised him for "working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation" and predicted that he would appeal to "a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field." At the same time, the Times denounced "the real" Rudy Giuliani as "a narrow, obsessively secretive,...

Prostitution Raid links Communist Tax Lawyer, leftist voter project, and 9/11 Truther Movement You just can't make this stuff up. Louis Posner, a National Lawyers Guild affiliated Tax Attorney, is arrested for running a Strip Club, which was a front for prostitution. What makes this case unique is that the funds were laundered through Voter March, a leftist election reform organization. ABOUT VOTER MARCHBackground: Voter March began on November 14, 2000, as four founding members organizing people who wanted to express their opposition to the irregularities and egregious conduct of Election 2000 and the direction in which an illegitimate administration...

(Porn star Alexia Moore performs on stage ... ... and hurries out of court Friday night.) (Louis Posner) Teams of vice cops swooped down and busted a posh midtown strip club that catered to stockbrokers and bankers - and featured porn stars who charged $5,000 for private trysts. Prominent tax lawyer Louis Posner; his wife, Betty; and 19 others were arrested on a variety of prostitution and money-laundering charges at The Hot Lap Dance Club, which the couple ran out of a velvet-heavy loft, police said. Cops said Posner raked in $1 million over the last 10 months from the...

CHICAGO - A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected most claims by slave descendants that they deserve reparations from some of the nation's biggest insurers, banks and transportation companies. The three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that slave descendants have no standing to sue for reparations based on injustices suffered by ancestors and that the statute of limitations ran out more than a century ago. The opinion, written by Judge Richard A. Posner, said that "statutes of limitations would be toothless" if descendants could collect damages for wrongs against their ancestors....

JEDDAH, 3 September 2003 — Saudi Ambassador to London Prince Turki Al-Faisal, accused in a new book “Why America Slept” of establishing relations with Osama Bin Laden, strongly rejected the allegation last night, and US officials also dismissed the book’s claims. “This information is totally false and groundless,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News. “I have had no contacts with Bin Laden since 1990, and have never had contacts with Al-Qaeda, which is a satanic terrorist organization,” he added. Prince Turki said he had spent years trying to bring Bin Laden to justice. “Saudi Arabia revoked...

WHAT IF WIRETAPPING WORKS? Wire Trap by Richard A. Posner Post date: 01.26.06 Issue date: 02.06.06 he revelation by The New York Times that the National Security Agency (NSA) is conducting a secret program of electronic surveillance outside the framework of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (fisa) has sparked a hot debate in the press and in the blogosphere. But there is something odd about the debate: It is aridly legal. Civil libertarians contend that the program is illegal, even unconstitutional; some want President Bush impeached for breaking the law. The administration and its defenders have responded that the program...

"...Judges are not wallflowers, but Posner’s pugnacity and impatience, his willingness to confront bureaucracy with practicality, and his tendency to catch people off-guard are attributes for which he has become known. "...There are others: Posner is the most prolific federal judge in American history. In addition to more than 2,200 published opinions, he’s written thirty-eight books on a dizzying array of topics, from Monicagate to aging to intelligence reform, and more than 300 articles, op-ed pieces, reviews, and essays — including a recent blockbuster about the press. Along with Gary Becker, a Nobel economist in the monetarist Milton Friedman mold,...

Judge Richard Posner was in town for a public appearance the other night, and as he is a leading candidate for the title World's Foremost Authority, I thought I would stop by the famous old Willard Hotel to see what he had to say about the 9/11 Commission Report and its legislative by-product, the Intelligence Report Act. Supposedly the legislation improves the capacity of our intelligence community in this time of terror attacks worldwide. Judge Posner, a federal judge and lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, writes on a broad range of public matters. He writes beautifully on...

The Kelo Case, Public Use, and Eminent Domain--Posner Comment The Fifth Amendment permits the use of eminent domain, in which government takes private property without negotiation but must pay the owner the market value of the property, only if the taking is for a "public use." (The Fifth Amendment is applicable only to action by the federal government, but the Fourteenth Amendment, which applies to state and local government action, has been interpreted to incorporate the "public use" limitation on eminent domain.) In Kelo v. City of New London, which the Supreme Court decided on June 23, the city took...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Judge Richard A. Posner was in town for a public appearance the other night, and as he is a leading candidate for the title World's Foremost Authority, I thought I would stop by the famous old Willard Hotel to see what he had to say about the 9/11 Commission Report and its legislative by-product, the Intelligence Report Act. Supposedly the legislation improves the capacity of our intelligence community in this time of terror attacks worldwide. Posner, a federal judge and lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, writes on a broad range of public matters. He...

Summary: Democracy doesn't need Deliberation Day. If spending a day talking about the issues were a worthwhile activity, you wouldn't have to pay voters to do it. The proposal by Professors Ackerman and Fishkin for a Deliberation Day, on which citizens lured by federal financial incentives would engage in collective deliberation over issues and candidates in the forthcoming national election, seems to me to misunderstand what modern political democracy is and should be. The remote inspiration for Deliberation Day is Athenian democracy, in which the citizenry as a whole was both the legislature and the principal court, and the appointment...

How to become CIA director Posted: September 9, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com For years I've been wondering how someone as sensible as James Woolsey ever became Bill Clinton's CIA director. A new book, getting much acclaim on other points, "Why America Slept," by Gerald Posner, finally answers the question. Indeed, from Posner's account, it seems like it was a mistake. The story is fascinating for what it says about the Clinton administration's priorities and policies. Woolsey was a conservative Democrat, former Rhodes scholar and attorney who served as undersecretary of the Navy in the Carter administration. He...

Lib Author Regrets Voting (TWICE!) for clinton "Sickened" by clinton's Failure to Protect America from Terrorism by Mia T. 9.4.03 EW YORK, Sept.4- Gerald Posner revealed yesterday on "The O'Reilly Factor," (FoxNews), that he voted for clinton TWICE but would not have done so, knowing what he knows today. He said that when he was researching his new book, he was nauseated -- literally -- by clinton's utter failure to protect America from the growing global threat of terrorism. Posner added that he was further sickened by the attempt of the clintons and their minions to rewrite the clinton legacy...

C-Span Booknotes interview with Judge Richard Posner on his latest book "Public Intellectuals: A Study in Decline" is scheduled to be repeated at 11:30 PMEDT. Posner describes himself as a being originally a liberal who changed to more conservative views especially after seeing some of the disruptions of the '60's. He describes public intellectuals as those who attempt to apply the world of ideas to the concerns of the general public. He mentions John Stuart Mill as perhaps his favorite of the best known intellectuals because of his advocavy for limited government involvement in peoples' lives. Some time is spent...