The Post-4th Link Roundup: Law, Health, and Muppets

The first comes from a new source for this blog, the New Jersey Law Journal, courtesy of my friend Devin Cohen.

YOUR BILL OF RIGHTS, ON FILM
If you like to take your legal
education with a bucket of popcorn, star power and crackling dialogue
by the likes of David Mamet, then the people at Rotten Tomatoes have
created the list for you. In honor of Independence Day (the holiday –
not the movie), the film-review website chose an exemplary movie to
illustrate each of the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Several of the amendments were easy calls – 12 Angry Men stands for the
Sixth, and the Charles Bronson vigilante movie Death Wish for the
Second. A few require both creativity and some wiggle room over what
qualifies as an exemplary movie, for instance, the beer-running road
movie Smokey and the Bandit to illustrate the states’ rights legal
quandaries raised by the Tenth. But who knew there even was a movie
that dealt with the no-quartering-of-soldiers Third Amendment? To learn
what it is, check out the whole list and accompanying commentary.

Next, we’ll go to another unusual source for this blog: the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (full disclosure: a family member works there). They just launched a MySpace page to help teens with mental health issues. It’s a compelling page, and it’ll be interesting to see what kind of marketing push the city puts behind it. It’s not one of those things that kids may generally friend (though geeks like me who served in high school clubs like Peer Advisors or whatever it was may want to promote it), but it could be something that some kids will take a look at. Also, among the page’s top friends are links to other teen help profiles on MySpace, so it’s great to see a community uniting to help the broader audience there.Read the press release here. An excerpt:

The Health Department today announced a new
online campaign to engage teenagers grappling with depression, drugs,
and violence, and to encourage them to seek help. NYC Teen Mindspace,
posted on MySpace, is the agency’s first effort to promote health
through Web-based social networking – a medium with great potential
because of its popularity with young people. To see the campaign, visit http://www.myspace.com/nycteen_mindspace .

Lastly, since I found out yesterday my nephew missed this Muppets Fourth of July tribute, I figured maybe a few other people out there haven’t seen this either. Enjoy.