Elliott J. Schuchardt is an American civil liberties attorney. Schuchardt is best known for filing a lawsuit against the federal government, which contends that the United States is unlawfully collecting and searching the national e-mail database; that lawsuit is pending in the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. In 2015, Schuchardt filed and argued the case that obtained the injunction that prevented Sweet Briar College, located in Amherst, from closing its doors after more than a century. On June 5, 2013, former government contractor, Edward Snowden, publicly alleged that the United States government was storing and unlawfully searching e-mail of United States citizens. Snowden claimed that the government's actions were a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from conducting a search of a person's private papers without first obtaining a warrant from a magistrate. Snowden fled to Russia to avoid prosecution for disclosing this information.

A year on June 2, 2014, attorney Elliott Schuchardt filed suit against President Barack Obama and several senior government officials contending that the federal government was improperly collecting and "data-mining" the national e-mail database. The case is pending in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, under docket number 2:14-cv-00705-CB; the lawsuit was dismissed by the District Court on the ground that Schuchardt did not have standing to pursue the case. On October 5, 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed, finding that Schuchardt had stated a prima facie case, did have at least facial standing to continue with the lawsuit; the Third Circuit remanded the case to the District Court to consider the factual basis for Schuchardt's allegations more closely. While the case was pending, Schuchardt received the assistance of William Binney, a former technical director at the National Security Agency. While at the NSA, Binney was responsible for handling all technical issues relating to the acquisition and distribution of "signals intelligence" for the agency's 6,000 analysts.

These analysts were responsible for reporting for the entire world. During 2000-01, Binney's team developed the program that first enabled the National Security Agency to datamine e-mail, his story is documented in A Good American. On July 5, 2017, Schuchardt filed with the District Court an affidavit prepared by William Binney. In the affidavit, Binney alleges that the United States government is both collecting and unlawfully searching the national e-mail database; the District Court has not yet ruled on the government's renewed motion to dismiss. On May 23, 2017, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit relied upon the Third Circuit's opinion in Schuchardt v. Obama, to reinstate the complaint in a similar lawsuit filed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Sweet Briar College is a women's liberal arts college located in Virginia. On March 3, 2015, the President of the college, James F. Jones, announced that Sweet Briar would close after more than a century. In the announcement, Jones cited declining enrollment and an endowment insufficient to cover large-scale changes needed to boost enrollment.

On March 30, 2015, Schuchardt filed a lawsuit against Sweet Briar College on behalf of Jessica Campbell, an alumnae of the college. The lawsuit alleged that Sweet Briar's decision to close had damaged the value of Campbell's university degree. Schuchardt subsequently filed an amended complaint on behalf of a number of current and former students of the college. On April 29, 2015, Schuchardt obtained an injunction on behalf of the student / alumnae group, which prevented Sweet Briar College's board from taking any further action to close the school. Schuchardt's group participated in negotiations involving the board of directors of Sweet Briar College, the Virginia Attorney General's Office, the County Attorney for Amherst County, an alumnae group called "Saving Sweet Briar. On June 20, 2015, the Virginia Attorney General's office announced a mediated agreement to keep Sweet Briar College open for the 2015–16 academic year; the agreement called for Sweet Briar College president James Jones to resign.

Sweet Briar College remains open today

The Pentamerone is a seventeenth-century fairy tale collection by Italian poet and courtier Giambattista Basile. The stories in the Pentamerone were collected by Basile and published posthumously in two volumes by his sister Adriana in Naples, Italy, in 1634 and 1636 under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbatutis; these stories were adapted by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, the latter making extensive, acknowledged use of Basile's collection. Examples of this are versions of Cinderella, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel. While other collections of stories have included stories that would be termed fairy tales, his work is the first collection in which all the stories fit in that single category, he did not transcribe them from the oral tradition as a modern collector would, instead writing them in Neapolitan, in many respects was the first writer to preserve oral intonations. The style of the stories is Baroque, with many metaphorical usages; this has been interpreted as a satire on Baroque style, but as Basile praised the style, used it in his other works, it appears to have no ironic intention.

Although the work fell into obscurity, the Brothers Grimm, in their third edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales, praised it as the first national collection of fairy tales, fitting their romantic nationalist views on fairy tales, as capturing the Neapolitan voice. This drew a great deal of attention to the work; this collection was for a long time the best and richest, found by any nation. Not only were the traditions at that time more complete in themselves, but the author had a special talent for collecting them, besides that an intimate knowledge of the dialect; the stories are told with hardly any break, the tone, at least in the Neapolitan tales, is caught.... We may therefore look on this collection of fifty tales as the basis of many others. Two-thirds of them are, so far as their principal incidents are concerned, to be found in Germany, are current there at this day. Basile has not allowed himself to make any alteration, scarcely any addition of importance, that gives his work a special value – Wilhelm Grimm Basile's writing inspired Matteo Garrone's 2015 film, The Tale of Tales.

The tales of Giambattista Basile are set in Basilicata and Campania, where he spent most of his life at the local nobles. Among the places related to the stories we find the city of Acerenza and the Castle of Lagopesole, the latter connected to the fairy tale Rapunzel; the name of the Pentamerone comes from Greek πέντε, ‘five’, ἡμέρα, ‘day’. It is structured around a fantastic frame story, in which fifty stories are related over the course of five days, in analogy with the ten-day structure of the much earlier Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio; the frame story is that of a melancholy princess named Zoza. She cannot laugh, no matter what her father does to amuse her, so he sets up a fountain of oil by the door, thinking people slipping in the oil would make her laugh. An old woman tried to gather oil, a page boy broke her jug, the old woman grew so angry that she danced about, Zoza laughed at her; the old woman cursed her to marry only the prince of Round-Field, whom she could only wake by filling a pitcher with tears in three days.

With some aid from fairies, who give her gifts, Zoza found the prince and the pitcher, nearly filled the pitcher when she fell asleep. A Moorish slave steals it, finishes filling it, claims the prince; this frame story in itself is a fairy tale, combining motifs that will appear in other stories: the princess who cannot laugh in The Magic Swan, Golden Goose, The Princess Who Never Smiled. The now-pregnant slave-queen demands that her husband tell her stories, or else she would crush the unborn child; the husband hires ten female storytellers to keep her amused. Each tells five stories, most of which are more suitable to courtly, rather than juvenile, audiences; the Moorish woman's treachery is revealed in the final story, she is buried, pregnant, up to her neck in the ground and left to die. Zoza and the Prince live ever after. Many of these fairy tales are the oldest known variants in existence; the fairy tales are: The First Day "The Tale of the Ogre" "The Myrtle" "Peruonto" "Vardiello" "The Flea" "Cenerentola" – translated into English as Cinderella "The Merchant" "Goat-Face" "The Enchanted Doe" "The Flayed Old Lady"The Second Day "Parsley" – a variant of Rapunzel "Green Meadow" "Violet" "Pippo" – a variant of Puss In Boots "The Snake" "The She-Bear" – a variant of Allerleirauh "The Dove" – a variant of The Master Maid "The Young Slave" – a variant of Snow White "The Padlock" "The Buddy"The Third Day "Cannetella" "Penta of the Chopped-off Hands" – a variant of The Girl Without Hands "Face" "Sapia Liccarda" "The Cockroach, the Mouse, the Cricket" "The Garlic Patch" "Corvetto" "The Booby" "Rosella" "The Three Fairies" – a variant of Frau HolleThe Fourth Day "The Stone in the Cock's Head" "The Two Brothers" "The Three Enchanted Princes" "The Seven Little Pork Rinds" – a v