Two Los Angeles County teenagers are suing Facebook, claiming the social network effectively sold their names and images to advertisers without parental permission.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles challenges a Facebook feature that allows members to note that they like an advertised service or product. Facebook broadcasts those endorsements to the user's friends.

The lawsuit also claims minors unwittingly endorse Facebook when people typing their names in a search engine are steered to a Facebook sign-up page.

The plaintiffs say Palo Alto-based Facebook is violating a California law that requires parental consent for children to make commercial endorsements. The teens seek unspecified damages.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes says the lawsuit is meritless. He notes Facebook doesn't allow users under 18 to let their profiles appear on public search engines.

Richard F. Miller is an acclaimed author and historian, who has served four stints as an embedded journalist: aboard the USS Kitty Hawk (2003); with the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment in Fallujah, Iraq (2005); with the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division near Baqubah, Iraq (2006), and most recently, with the 101st Airborne at various posts in eastern Afghanistan (2008). In this exciting interview, he discusses his latest book: Fighting Words: Persuasive Strategies for War and Politics.

In Fighting Words, Richard looks to some of history's most successful battle speechmakers to answer the age-old question of how. How did Pope Urban II's speech convince tens of thousands of Europeans to wage the First Crusade, a dangerous, and for many, a one-way journey to Jerusalem? How did George Patton's speech transform the green kids of the Third Army into the terror of the Third Reich? How did the words of General David Petraeus resurrect a losing effort in Iraq and in the process, retrain his soldiers for a new kind of war?

Richard doesn't speculate about "what works" on the public podium. Rather, he analyzes real historical examples and extracts their lessons-from Alexander the Great to General David H. Petraeus and President Obama. As Richard aptly demonstrates, persuasive strategies based on love, hate, duty, patriotism, comradeship, fear, and shame are as widely used today as they were in antiquity.

Bradley M. Gottfried is a celebrated author, who also holds a Ph.D. in Zoology from Miami University. He has worked in higher education for more than three decades as a faculty member and administrator. He is currently President of the College of Southern Maryland. His latest book, The Maps of Gettysburg, is an informative and innovative guide to one of the Civil War's greatest battlefields.

The Maps of Gettysburg offers thirty-one "action-sections" comprising the entire campaign. These include the march to and from the battlefield and virtually every significant event in between. Brad's original maps enrich each map section. Keyed to each piece of cartography is detailed text about the units, personnel, movements, and combat (including quotes from eyewitnesses) that make the Gettysburg story come alive. This presentation allows readers to easily and quickly find a map and text on virtually any portion of the campaign, from opening movements of the armies in early June to the last Confederate withdrawal of troops across the Potomac River on July 13, 1863.

Roger Clark is the founding member and managing partner of Clark, Goldberg & Madruga www.clarkgoldberg.com. In his more than 25 years practicing law, Roger has earned a national reputation as a successful trial attorney representing insurers, cable television providers, and small and large businesses in a broad range of business litigation matters. "My philosophy has always been that the attorneys in this law firm must be prepared not just to 'litigate' a case, but to try it before a judge or jury, while at the same time keeping the client's goals and objectives squarely within our sights." Roger is rated "AV" by Martindale-Hubbell, which is the highest rating that can be bestowed upon an attorney.

David Boies challenged America’s lawyers to “bring the rule of law to its full fruition here in this country … to fulfill the goals and lofty rhetoric of our founding fathers,” as the keynote speaker at the Opening Assembly of the 2010 ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

The rule of law was the assembly theme, as ABA members gathered in the Herbst Theater of the War Memorial Veterans Building, site of the signing of the charter of the United Nations in 1945.  

President Carolyn B. Lamm pointed to ABA efforts from activities of the Section of International Law to such projects as the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative, the Rule of Law Initiative and the World Justice Project as advancing United Nations goals to spread democracy based on law around the world.

Boies, co-counsel with Ted Olson in winning a federal district court ruling Wednesday that overturned California’s Proposition 8, cited “numerous challenges to the rule of law in our own country,” in applying that theme at home.

When our nation was born, it consisted of “wes” and “theys,” Boies said, with the “wes” being white male property owners and the “theys” comprising everyone else.  As the national history unfolded, the circle of “wes” expanded to encompass more and more segments of society.  

“We have an opportunity to expand the circle of ‘wes’ until there are no more ‘theys,’” said Boies, urging lawyers to work toward ensuring that “liberty and equality and protection of individual rights is something that every citizen equally enjoys.”