The Supreme Court ruled that unless murder is involved, kids can not be sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole. The idea is not to make it possible for all offenders to get out of prison, but to give young offenders a chance down the road to show that they have changed through their time in jail and can now be a functioning member of society. In short it means to acknowledge that a person can change between the time when they are a child and the time they are an adult. However, the reason they came to this conclusion was not so much for that reason, but because the young man who came to them had been disproportionate to his crimes.

It was predicable in a number of ways. Iranian President Ahmadinejad gave a speech on Nuclear Weapons at the UN on Monday, that was by all standards fairly predictable. No one had been looking forward to hearing what the Iranian President had to say on the topic and for good reason, he had no plans on addressing his own country’s problems with nuclear weapons, but rather had a lot to say about everyone else. If nothing else this is a good lesson in deportment. No one really hears what you have to say if you always say the same thing, and no one wants to hear what you have to say if you are only going to condemn others.

Once in a while there is a great article, and for every person that article will be different. For some this is going to be one of them, and for others you will want to just set it aside and pretend you never saw it. Don’t just read the content though. If you don’t like Obama at least listen to the message. While it ends on a note of uncertainty, who can be certain with the political climate surrounding the Middle East. The point of the article though is that whether you agree with the plans or now, reaching this point in Obama’s health care plan shows that maybe, just maybe he does know what he’s doing and can follow and shape the long game. That is what it took to get him here. If you do like Obama, this is one more thing that gives you hope for his ability to handle the Middle East.

In the middle of the 1970′s the United States Securities and Exchange Commission was conducting more than four hundred investigations on alleged cases of bribery concerning American corporations.  These payments totaled more than three hundred million dollars in all.  Payments made by the companies to foreign politicians, political parties, and government officials.  One of the most notorious and widely recognized cases during this time was the Lockheed scandals of bribery.  They were charged with paying official members of foreign countries to get their contracts.

It was during this time that the United States Congress conceived of the FCPA, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Act specifically targets those who are committing the criminal act of bribery.  They were intent on ensuring the confidence of the public, in the integrity and the morality of the American businesses and corporations.  The US President who signed the Act into law was Jimmy Carter.  He did so on the 19th of December, 1977.  The FCPA was then amended eleven years later when in 1998, the International Anti-Bribery Act was created.  This amendment was conceived as a means to implement and supplement the conventions surround the anti-bribery laws set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Any citizen and/or corporation of the United States will be held accountable in a court of law in the event that they are found to be making payments in order to establish or continue practicing business.   Anyone holding government positions, such as doctors working in a government managed or owned facility, is considered a foreign official.  One who owns a bank is considered a minister of finance, and too would fall into the category of foreign official.  Any international organizations, such as the Red Cross or the United Nations, will too be held to the rules, regulations and laws decreed in the tenants of the FCPA.  Ending bribery, ends one very detrimental form of corruption, and the officers of the FCPA set out to do just that.