WASHINGTON–John G. Roberts, President George W. Bush’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, has a history with credit unions: He argued the AT&T Family FCU case before the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6, 1997.
At the time, Roberts was a 42-year-old partner in the law firm of Hogan & Hartson. He argued the case for the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) and the National Association of Federal Credit Unions, which intervened on behalf of the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).
The Supreme Court eventually ruled against credit unions in the case, based on a suit brought by bankers in 1990 against NCUA over the field-of-membership expansion the agency granted AT&T Family FCU, Winston-Salem, N.C. The events culminated into the push for the Credit Union Membership Access Act (H.R. 1151), which President Clinton signed into law in August of 1998.
In 1997, after arguing the case, Roberts told CUNA News Now, “It’s always a mistake to try to predict the outcome of a case from the justices’ questions.”
He explained that there was nothing credit unions and members could do to influence the court’s decision. “The court isn’t like Congress and third parties we’ve lobbied. The court is looking at the law,” said Roberts.
CUNA General Counsel Eric Richard worked with Roberts during the AT&T case. He said the nominee is “enormously talented with an exceedingly bright legal mind.”
“CUNA and the credit union movement were privileged to have been represented by him,” said Richard. “We wish Judge Roberts all the best.”
Daily Archives: July 21, 2005
Media Changes SF Chronicle Cutting Jobs
“We understand that they’re losing money,” he said. “We were trying to be good Samaritans, and we got stabbed in the back.”
The paper is in a strong position to seek union concessions because it opened its financial records to a union auditor, who confirmed that the Chronicle lost more than $62 million last year. Ms. Hoyt said that in the last two months the paper has been losing money at a faster rate — about two million dollars a week* — though the loss was less earlier this year.
Because Hearst is a privately held company, it is under no obligation to explain its finances to the public. While the union has confirmed the multimillion-dollar losses, it doesn’t know all the details, such as the salary and benefits of the publisher. The union said the paper is being mismanaged and has too many managers per employee.
Via Dan Gillmor (I agree that it’s hard to believe the Chronicle is losing $1m per week).
Fingernails Store Personal Information
Secure optical data storage could soon literally be at your fingertips thanks to work being carried out in Japan. Yoshio Hayasaki and his colleagues have discovered that data can be written into a human fingernail by irradiating it with femtosecond laser pulses. Capacities are said to be up to 5 mega bits and the stored data lasts for 6 months – the length of time it takes a fingernail to be completely replaced.
Via Macintouch