Avoid Getting Nailed
Posted by: Linda Chalat
April 22, 2008

The air-powered nail gun has become a mainstay at construction sites across the nation. As the tool's popularity surged during the building boom of the 2000s, nail gun injuries also took off despite decades of warnings from researchers and doctors that the guns are dangerous, especially those equipped with a mechanism that allowed automatic firing, in "contact trip" mode.

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Justice for Sale
Posted by: Linda Chalat
April 14, 2008

For 40 years, no incumbent Wisconsin Supreme Court justice ever lost an election - not, that is, until this month, when a business-backed circuit judge narrowly defeated the first African-American to serve on the state's highest court.

But the victory of Michael Gableman over Louis Butler was stands out because the race came with such cost, partisanship, and confrontation-hardball trends that are expected to appear in judicial races nationwide. At an estimated $5 million, the cost of the Wisconsin race set records, and its campaign ads-largely sponsored by outside groups-were so negative and in some cases so misleading that they were criticized by a state watchdog group. One of Gableman's ads falsely implied that Butler had gotten out of jail a convicted rapist who then committed a second sexual assault. (In fact, the second assault occurred after the man served his full sentence.) Another ad by the pro-Butler teachers union accused Gableman of sentencing child sex offenders far below the maximum, but it used the example of an offender who received a higher sentence than the one the prosecutor recommended.

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Wheels of Justice Move Very Slowly
Posted by: Linda Chalat
April 04, 2008

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. will pay $20 million to settle the last in a series of lawsuits that claimed it was responsible for poisoning water in the Mojave Desert town of Hinkley, as depicted in the movie "Erin Brockovich."

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