WHY IS WALMART GOING TO THE SUPREME COURT?!?!

Why in the world is Walmart going to the Supreme Court?  I mean the highest court in the entire United States of America!  They must have done something really bad...in fact they really did.  Walmart is being accused of allowing sex discrimination to occur in their nationwide stores.  

Walmart went to the Supreme Court March 29, 2011 to ask the Supreme Court could they throw the case.  Now, why would they go to the Supreme Court, well because when they went to the lower courts they all threw the case out, but that wasn't good enough for the women of their companies who are suing them, even though they won at the district and appellate court levels.  So they took matters a step higher.



But what some owners can't seem to understand is why are the women so unhappy when over 70 % of their employees are women and 1/3 of their mangers are women.  But Walmart shouldn't feel alone because many big companies are supporting them because they think this court case will be very costly to them and they can't seem to understand why they couldn't just settle this between them. 



How This Relates To Class:
This story relates to class because just a couple of weeks ago we learned about the different steps it takes for a case to be heard by the highest court.   And one of the steps was it had to go through a small court and enough judges had to vote yes for that particle case to be heard by the Supreme Court.  And that is exactly what this Walmart vs. Women Employees case had to do.

Helping Japan: There Are Some Dangers to Doing This

                             

I'm pretty sure we would all want to help Japan after that devastating earthquake and tsunami.  But there are some cautions we Americans need to take when giving money to these organizations that say they are collecting money to give to Japan to help them rebuild their country. 

Of course we want to help them, we want to give them money, food and water, and clothes.  And there are some good funding programs that are helping people in Japan.  Like the American Red Cross Foundation, Globalgiving, Save the Children, the Salvation Army, and Americares.  They are all legit organizations that people can go to give back to Japan.  And Google, which is a nationwide Internet search engine, is also helping people in Japan.

And just like there are some great organizations that really do help people there some organizations that are scammers and people need to watch out for. 

But there are some things that people can do to protect themselves.  People can ask for the charity for identification and papers.  They can ask for a license or certification.  People can also google the charity's name.



How This Relates To Class:
This story relates to class earlier we learned about the different Departments of the Government and one of those departments was the Department of Homeland Security.  In the news lately, members of Homeland Security have been on the look out for any scammers who are claiming they need money so they can help Japan, but what they really are doing is pocketing the money for themselves.  and when they are caught they may be charged by the Supreme Court instead of the lower state courts because this is a high federal crime, which is why the highest court would need to solve it.