In April, we wrote about a man at a Yankee game last year who was ejected from the (old) stadium for trying to move around during the playing of “God Bless America” during the 7th-inning stretch. The man, annoyed at his ejection, took the matter to the courts. Along with a little help from the New York Civil Liberties Union, he sued the Yankees, two cops, and Ray Kelly, the NYPD's commissioner. (Click here for the lawsuit.) Well--and God Bless Compromise--the suit has been settled. Click here for the AP story. The city did not admit liability in the settlement, but it will pay the Queens resident $10,001 and will pay $12,000 in legal fees to the New York Civil Liberties Union. For its part, the Yankees will pay nothing but said in settlement papers that fans at the team's new stadium are allowed to move freely during the song and there are no plans to change that. “Policy remains as it always has been: Fans are free to move about during the playing of 'God Bless America,'” said Alice McGillion, spokeswoman for the Yankees. WSJ Law Blog July 8, 2009
Back in 2007, the Bureau of Prisons directed its chaplains to purge the prisons of all religious texts. That policy shift, which stemmed from a governmental fear that prisoners might read religious texts and become Islamic extremists after 9/11, sparked huge response. Many thought the move was unconstitutional, and a pair of inmates, citing the First Amendment's guarantee of the right to free religion, sued over the matter.
The latest prison veto, though, may even go a bit further. According to a story, prison officials told an inmate he couldn't read a pair of books authored by President Barack Obama, saying they were “potentially detrimental to national security.” Click here to read The Associated Press story on the incident. WSJ Law Blog July 10, 2009

Featured architect: Renzo Piano (born 14 September, 1937) is a world renowned Italian architect and recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize. See picture of his Nemo Science Centre in Amsterdam at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renzo_Piano

New words added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary include some words and expressions that have been around for years or even decades but have gained wider currency because of the Internet. They include "sock puppet," coined as early as 1959, and "flash mob," which can be traced to 1987. There is also the usual new crop of words, this time including entries like "vlog," a blog containing video. Other new additions include staycation, locavore (a person who eats locally grown foods) and frenemy (somebody who acts like a friend but is actually an enemy). The last word was used by British-American writer Jessica Mitford in a 1970s essay, in which she said it had been coined by one of her sisters decades earlier.
http://www.timesoftheinternet.com/90814.html

On July 11, 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird was published. It was written by Nelle Harper Lee, (books by this author) who dropped the "Nelle" because she didn't want anyone calling her "Nellie." She grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, which was the model for her fictional town of Maycomb. When she was a kindergartner, she made friends with her next-door-neighbor, a boy of the same age named Truman Capote. The character of Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird was based on him.
July 11 is the birthday of Thomas Bowdler, (books by this author) born in Ashley, Somerset, England (1754). He wrote a censored version of Shakespeare's plays, called The Family Shakespeare (1807), because he thought that the Bard's sexual humor was inappropriate for women and children. He said that he "endeavored to remove every thing that could give just offence to the religious and virtuous mind." And we remember him today in the verb bowdlerize, which was named for him. The Writer’s Almanac

On July 13, 1787, the Continental Congress, operating under the Articles of Confederation, passed the Northwest Ordinance. Considered to be the most important piece of legislation passed under the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance created and organized the Northwest Territory, which would become that states of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and part of Minnesota. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/2009/07/continetal-congress-passes-northwest.php