The Palestinian Authority embraced a curious hero this week among those released as part of an agreement with Israel. Issa Abed Rabbo was the longest serving prisoner of the 104 released this week. Rabbo, 49, was heralded as a hero and given a pension and a large sum of money by the PA. However, Rabbo was convicted of taking two young hikers, binding them, putting bags over their heads, and then shooting them to death in 1984. That is not the makings of any freedom fighter that I know of.
Month: November 2013
Republican Florida Rep. Trey Radel has been charged with misdemeanor cocaine possession in Washington, D.C. A newly elected Tea Party Republican, Radel issued a contrite statement that he has struggled with alcohol and that his alcoholism led to “an extremely irresponsible choice.” UPDATE: Radel has pleaded guilty and received a one year probation sentence.
Continue reading “Tea Party Republican Arrested For Cocaine Possession (Updated)”
There are “three time losers” in some recidivist cases and then there is Shermain Miles. For Miles, the magic number is 396. That’s right, she has racked up roughly 400 arrests since 1978 but insists that 396 is the magic number and that she is now considering a change in her lifestyle.
We have often discussed the worsening environment at football games for people who want to just watch the game with family and friends. American football is going the way of soccer with drunk and obnoxious fans ruining the games with continual profanity, fighting, and taunting. Rob Hopkins, a Buffalo Bills fan, is the poster boy for this trend. Hopkins decided to slide down the upper deck railing without any thought of the people below him. He fell from the upper deck on to a fan seated in the section below during the game against the New York Jets. The shoulder injury from the 30 foot fall is now the least of his problems. He has been banned from the stadium, fired from his job, and could be looking at a criminal charge. All for being a certifiable idiot.
Of course, tensions are high with the bear exhibit.
Not that long ago, police departments joined together to call upon the United States Supreme Court (with the support of the Obama Administration) to allow citizens to be tracked with GPS devices placed on their vehicles without a warrant or probable cause. The litigants argued that this was a minor intrusion into the rights of citizens and that there was no expectation of privacy in such movements. The Court wisely rejected the arguments in United States v. Jones. Now police in Boston are objecting to a plan to place such devices on their patrol cars as an unwarranted intrusion.
Continue reading “Boston Police Object To Plan To Equip Cruisers With GPS Devices”
I have had numerous readers and reporters send me links on the scandal that has taken hold of Case Western Reserve University in the last few weeks. Dean Lawrence (Larry) Mitchell has taken a leave of absence after a lawsuit accusing him of a pattern of sexual harassment and other abuses. Frankly, I have not posted anything on the story because Mitchell is a former colleague of mine at George Washington University and allegations from his time as a law professor at GWU have been raised as part of the lawsuit. I have no personal or direct knowledge of the GWU allegations of relations with students but I wanted to see if the matter was quickly resolved. It was not and appears, if anything, to be getting worse. Given the inquiries from readers, I felt that I would give an accounting of the current status of the controversy and the legal issues raised in the lawsuit. Given my position at GWU, I do not feel that it is appropriate to discuss those allegations.
We previously discussed the fraud prosecutions of fortune tellers in the United States as well as crackdowns in other countries. We discussed the uncertain line drawn in such cases between such soothsaying and magical services and the practices of protected religious organizations. A recent story raise precisely this question out of Clearwater, Florida where the Church of Scientology has opened a $145 million, 377,000-square-foot complex that features a new “superpower program” for followers who wish to attain god-like abilities.
I previously wrote a column about how government officials waste billions or plow whole programs in the ground without nary a reprimand. If that column bothered you, you might want to sit down. A new report has detailed how the military has cooked the books to hide trillions, that’s right trillions, in missing money and equipment. The military calls them “plugs,” a curious term for fraud. These are knowingly fake figures used to hide the fact that there is no accurate record of the money. In one finding, a single office in Columbus, Ohio, made at least $1.59 trillion in errors with $538 billion in plugs. The study reveals that government accounting records are fraudulent but that congressional oversight has been equally illusory.
Choose between hygiene and the heebie jeebies.
There is a disturbing case out of New Mexico where police fired into a van full of children after the mother tried to drive away from officers. As shown on the video below, an officer stopped Oriana Ferrell on a routine traffic stop only to see her drive away. What followed was a chase, smashing windows of the van, and the shocking decision of an officer to fire into a vehicle with kids in the backseat.
Continue reading “New Mexico Police Fire Into Minivan Filled With Children”
There is a highly troubling case involving Jeremy Hammond,27, who was sentenced to 10 years for the December 2011 hacking of Strategic Forecasting. It was the maximum possible sentence that Chief US District Court Judge Loretta Preska could give him. The case involves a recurring controversy over the government’s effort to punish hackers and whistleblowers revealing a massive surveillance state and attacks on privacy in the United States. However, this case has the added disturbing element of an allegation of a conflict of interest by Preska who refused to recuse herself from the case despite the fact that her husband was an alleged victim of the hacking.
Continue reading “Jeremy Hammond Given Maximum Sentence In Hacking Case”
We have previously discussed actual evil twin defenses in past cases (here and here and here and here). However, a case out of Colorado Springs now has a detailed opinion specifically allowing the use of the defense in a major case. District Judge David Shakes ruled Friday that an Army artillery officer, 1st Lt. Aaron Lucas, could argue that his twin brother may be responsible for a series of sexual assaults.
Time to wake up bloggers! There are a host injustices to discuss.
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
A recent report published by the Center for Media and Democracy has alleged that there is a network of think tanks across this country that has been “quietly pushing the agenda of right-wing groups with funding from Koch brothers-affiliated organizations.” The umbrella organization that these sixty-four think tanks are collaborating with is called the State Policy Network (SPN)—“a nonprofit that nurtures conservative think tanks in all fifty states.”
From SPN’s website:
Founded in 1992 by Tom Roe at the urging of Ronald Reagan, State Policy Network is the only group in the country dedicated solely to improving the practical effectiveness of independent, non-profit, market-oriented, state-focused think tanks. SPN’s programs enable these organizations to better educate local citizens, policy makers and opinion leaders about market-oriented alternatives to state and local policy challenges.
According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s report, SPN and its “member think tanks” promote an “extreme right-wing agenda” that is much the same as that of “David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, Charles Koch’s Cato Institute, and Koch’s Citizens for a Sound Economy spin-off FreedomWorks–all of which happen to be associate members of ALEC.”
Continue reading “State Policy Network—The “PR Firm” for ALEC and a Right-Wing Agenda”