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VOL. 79 PART 1 JANUARY 2021
Vancouver, Merritt, Williams Lake and Prince George. They are sentencing
courts that provide an Indigenous perspective, based on a holistic and
restorative approach to sentencing Indigenous persons who acknowledge
responsibility for criminal offences. It involves local Indigenous elders and
knowledge keepers who provide advice on a healing plan for an offender.
The healing plan may be incorporated as part of a fit sentence for the
Indigenous person who has pled guilty.
A U.S. businessman who donated $2.5 million to a pro-Trump “election
ethics” group is suing “True the Vote” for the return of his money after the
organization dropped its legal actions in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania
and Wisconsin and discontinued its “Validate the Vote 2020” campaign.
“True the Vote” had promised to “investigate, litigate and expose suspected
illegal balloting and fraud in the 2020 general election”. At the time of writing,
the Trump team has lost 46 legal claims relating to the election and has
failed to advance any evidence of fraud in court.
Phoenix Law is a Belfast law firm that provides “formidable legal advice to
clients in the UK and Ireland and a voice for the underdog in litigation
against state bodies, institutions, insurance companies or multinational
organisations”. Phoenix Law is also a Calgary immigration law firm.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported in 2016 on the quest of
“Northern Territory lawyer-turned ornithologist Bob Gosford” to “find definitive
proof on the theory Australian desert birds of prey intentionally spread
fire to smoke out their unsuspecting targets”.
In the waning days of the 45th presidency, and perhaps as a sign of a rise
in integrity, there have been a surfeit of principled resignations recently.
Among them, Richard Pilger, director of the elections crimes branch in the
Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Justice Department, resigned after his
boss, Attorney General William Barr, issued directions to federal prosecutors
to examine allegations of voting irregularities before states moved to
certify the 2020 election results. John Choi, a D.A. in Ramsey County, Minnesota,
resigned from President Trump’s law enforcement commission
after figuring out that the intention of the commission was to provide “cover
for a predetermined agenda that ignores the lessons of the past, furthering
failed tough-on-crime policies that led to our current mass incarceration crisis
and fueling divisions between our communities and our police officers”.
William Burck, retained by the poisonous Steve Bannon to defend him on
fraud charges, got off the record after his client made public and inflamma-