"The 2009-2010 edition of the United States Government Manual is now available on GPO Access. As the official handbook of the Federal Government, the United States Government Manual provides comprehensive information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. It also includes information on quasi-official agencies; international organizations in which the United States participates; and boards, commissions, and committees. The Manual begins with reprints of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The Manual is published as a special edition of the Federal Register (see 1 CFR 9.1)."

Almost every Brooklynite you talk to has a fairly strong opinion about the Atlantic Yards project. Many shudder to think about the traffic and congestion that might beset downtown Brooklyn after the mammoth project that includes an arena is up and running—and the Nets are over there, possibly losing games by the dozens (not to mention the displacement of many local residents). Others like the thought of the borough reclaiming its place as major-league in its own right, separate and apart from its flashier brother just to the west. In any event, the New York state Court of Appeals handed down its long-awaited ruling on the project November 24, holding it lawful for a state economic development agency to seize private land to build an arena. The 6-1 ruling by the New York State Court of Appeals allows the contentious $4.9 billion, 22-acre Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn to proceed. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the NYT story; here for the 60-page opinion.
The court's decision echoes the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 Kelo decision, when the court found it was constitutional for a New London, Conn., economic-development corporation to seize private homes and businesses to build a research campus for Pfizer Inc. That decision, Kelo vs. New London, Conn., set off a firestorm of protest, prompting state lawmakers to amend laws to prevent local governments in those states from seizing private land in some cases. The New York judges, writing in Daniel Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corp., ruled that it was lawful under the state's constitution for the state entity to seize the downtown Brooklyn land to improve blighted conditions.
The case Stop the Beach Renourishment Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection is slated for oral argument next Wednesday, involves not only a fascinating and provocative set of facts, but a little-cited legal theory that the petitioners are asking the justices to embrace. The facts, with a little help from this Washington Post story, go like this: In order to combat erosion on beaches along Florida's beaches, the state for years has been pumping in wide strips of sand. Some homeowners challenged the program because it comes with a catch: The new strips of beach belong to the public, not the property owners. The homeowners feared their unmolested waterfront views might, as a result, start to include include throngs of strangers toting umbrellas and coolers . So they sued. In September of last year, the Florida Supreme Court ruled for the state and against the homeowners, ruling that that the homeowners' property rights had not been infringed upon just because their waterfront property lines, in many cases, do not actually touch the water. In other words, no property at all had actually been taken by the state. The ruling was largely based on so-called Florida common law. The homeowners didn't petition for cert on the theory that the program constituted a legislative taking, but that the Florida Supreme Court's ruling ditched 100 years of common law to endorse the popular beach renourishment program, and therefore constituted a judicial taking.
It's this issue that will the high court will take up next week: whether a decision by the judicial branch, rather than the executive or legislative, can create the kind of taking of private property forbidden by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Click here for the homeowners' brief; here for the state's brief. Meanwhile, state and local officials in Florida argue that what happened in Destin was not a taking at all. “The state has not invaded or carved off a single inch of their land,” the city said in its brief. State law prevents any structure being built on the beach in front of their property, or interfering with their access to the water. WSJ Law Blog November 24, 2009
The issue, to be argued before the court December 2, began in 2003 when Stop the Beach Renourishment Inc., a group of five beachfront homeowners in Destin in the Panhandle, protested what a replenishment project was doing to their property lines.
The problem is particularly acute in Florida, which has 825 miles of beaches along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and is a regular target for hurricanes. The state legislature has declared that "beach erosion is a serious menace to the economy and general welfare of the people of this state and has advanced to emergency proportions."
And Florida's Supreme Court ruled in 1909 that waterfront property "may not be taken without just compensation and due process of law." It reaffirmed the position at least six times. In its 2008 ruling in the case from Destin, Florida's Supreme Court found that beach replenishment projects actually protect waterfront property by preserving homeowners' view and access to the water. It found that under Florida law, "there is no independent right of contact with the water." In a stinging dissent, Justice R. Fred Lewis wrote that the decision "butchered Florida law" in depriving waterfront property owners of their connection to the sea. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision by late June. http://www.freep.com/article/20091130/NEWS15/911300315/1001/NEWS/High-court-to-decide-if-property-lines-should-change-with-the-tide

Fun puns from a reader
• A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired.
• A will is a dead giveaway.
• A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.
• The dead batteries were given out free of charge.
• He broke into song because he couldn't find the key.

Uranus was the first planet discovered that was not known in ancient times, though it had actually been seen many times before but ignored as simply another star (the earliest recorded sighting was in 1690 when John Flamsteed cataloged it as 34 Tauri). Sir William Herschel discovered the planet in 1781, and originally called it Georgium Sidus (George's Star) in honour of King George III of England. French astronomers began calling it Herschel before German Johann Bode proposed the name Uranus, after the Greek god. The name didn't come into common usage until around 1850. Uranus has about twenty moons. The first two were discovered by William Herschel in 1787, and named, by his son, after characters from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream, as Titania and Oberon. Two more moons discovered by William Lassell in 1851 were named Ariel and Umbriel; Gerard Kuiper discovered the moon Miranda in 1948. All moons of Uranus are named after characters from Shakespeare or Alexander Pope. http://www.redorbit.com/education/reference_library/solar_system/uranus/116/index.html

Hidden namesakes
John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich was saved from oblivion by the way he liked to snack—with a slab of salt beef stuffed between two pieces of toast. Samuel Augustus Maverick was a Yale grad¬uate, lawyer, Mexican War veteran, and San Antonio mayor who owned so much Texas real estate they named a county after him. In the wee morning hours of Nov. 5, 1605. Guy Fawkes was arrested in a rented storeroom under the House of Lords that was suspiciously packed with 36 barrels of gunpowder. John Duns Scotus was a Scottish theologian and one of the most influential thinkers of the Middle Ages. For his delicately shaded approach to this and similar difficult issues, he earned the nickname Dr. Subtilis, and his theories held sway from his 1308 death through the end of the Middle Ages. Duns Scotus’ followers, the Scotists, dominated theology until another gang of scholars, the Thomists (after Thomas Aquinas), encroached on their turf. These new philosophers ridiculed the hairsplitting sophistry of Dr. Subtilis and his Dunsmen (pronounced DUNCE-men), who were impervious to learning anything new or different. Once upon a time, (the middle of the seventh century), there was a young English princess names Æthelthryth, or, as the Normans would later call her, Audrey, later St. Audrey, then came to be pronounced tawdry. Pantaleon was an unmarried physician and citizen of the pagan Roman empire who could, perform miraculous acts. The emperor condemned Pantaleon to death for practicing black magic. When the Black Death swept through Europe, St. Pantaleon’s stock went up dramatically in places like hard-hit Venice, where a spectacular church was dedicated to him. “San Pantalone” became so identified with Venice that his name was borrowed by the commedia dell’arte for the character of the prototypically greedy Venetian merchant. The commedia dell’arte had story lines harking back to Roman times, but was played out as improvisational farce. The costume signature of Pantalone was a pair of red leggings that reached the feet, a distinctively Venetian manner of cladding the legs that audiences outside the region found remarkable. Over the years and in various languages, the character’s name was borrowed to describe varying fashions of long trousers and related garments. By the mid-1800s, the Anglicized name Pantaloon had comfortably been shortened to “pants.” See the rest of these stories and background for words such as janitor, wimp, frisbee and cardigan. http://www.theweek.com/article/index/103500/The_last_word_Hidden_namesakes

On November 30, 1900 Oscar Wilde (books by this author) died at age 46, after declaring his famous last words: "Either that wallpaper goes, or I do."
November 30 is the birthday of Canadian children's writer L.M. Montgomery, (books by this author) born Lucy Maud Montgomery in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, in 1874. Her mother died when she was a toddler, and her father sent her to live with her mother's parents. There were no other children around, just Lucy and her grandparents, and she spent a lot of time reading and writing poems. She left home for a few years to teach, but when her grandfather died, she came home to live with her grandmother, and she stayed with her for the next 13 years. And during that time, she wrote her first novel, about an orphan girl with bright red hair who gets sent to live with a couple from Prince Edward Island who were hoping for a boy instead. It got rejected over and over, so she put the manuscript away in a hatbox and turned to other things. But eventually, she got it back out, read it, decided it wasn't that bad after all, and sent it out again. This time it got accepted, and in 1908, Anne of Green Gables was published and became a classic children's book.
November 30 is the birthday of a writer who described life in the Mississippi River valley, whose most famous fiction and nonfiction is set along the river, and who got his pen name from being a riverboat captain, even though he spent most of his adult life traveling or living on the East Coast. That's Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, (books by this author) born in Florida, Missouri (1835).
The Writer’s Almanac