It is my honor to introduce the newest member of our blogging community: Wayne Joseph Owens. Wayne is the son of Claire Duggan and Dewayne Owens. Claire is not only a regular on our blog but the moving force behind our annual Three Little Pigs Murder Trial for elementary school children (Claire not only organizes the event but actually has played various roles at the trial). Wayne entered the world at 4:32 am on 2/2/14 (nice numerology). He weighed in at 6 lbs. 1oz.
Year: 2014
This strikes me as a serious offender doing time on just biscuits and water.
Northern Virginia is reeling from the murder of a beloved music teacher, Ruthanne Lodato, 59, in her Alexandria home. I have a connection to the victim. We lived in Alexandria before moving to McLean and Ruthanne led the music class for three of my four children. It was a wonderful music class called Music Together Alexandria at the Del Ray United Methodist Church for toddlers. While I only knew her through the class years when my children were toddlers, Ruthanne was a wonderfully warm and giving person. We are all devastated by the news and the community has rallied around the effort to find the man shown in police sketches.
Continue reading “Beloved Music Teacher Murdered In Alexandria As Police Search For Killer”
There is an interesting torts case out of Pennsylvania where Donald H. Adams III has won a $5 million settlement in a products liability against Poly-San, a portable toilet manufacturer and installer. Adams was left a quadriplegic after two of his relatives decided to play a prank on him by rocking the port-a-potty with him inside only to watch it tip over. The case in the Sullivan County Court of Common Pleas, Adams v. Poly-San, raised interesting elements of superseding forces and negligence. Notably, the case also included his relatives as defendants with the company as well as the toilet installer, Lewis Crawford. (Portable toilets shown are not involved with the company or case)
Gloria Eun Hye Lee is facing the type of charge that you do not want to put in front of any jury. The Las Vegas a pet shop owner is accused of torching her own store. The problem is that she allegedly decided to leave 27 puppies inside in the arson attempt.
President Obama has continued the practice of selling ambassadorship off to wealthy friends and donors — a practice that many used to denounce during Republican administration but has been dismissed with a shrug in this Administration. I have long been critical of the practice which places a president’s and a party’s interest ahead of that of the nation. I was at a dinner party a few years ago where an Obama donor spoke openly how the White House gave him an ambassadorship and he decided to just give it to his wife who he said is delighted that she is now called “ambassador” wherever she goes. As discussed this weekend, donor Noah Bryson Mamet has been nominated for ambassador to Argentia but has never even visited the country. This follows an embarrassing hearing with Obama bundler George Tsunis, who was nominated for ambassador to Norway. Tsunis showed as striking lack of knowledge of that country.
In 2012, we discussed the embarrassingly transparent decision of the Democratic Party leadership to simply ignore the vote of the 22,000 delegates to refuse controversial changes to refer to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and add a reference to God. The move was viewed as necessary to secure Jewish votes and appeal to religious voters. The delegates however opposed on repeated voice votes — well short of the needed to two-thirds of the delegates. As shown in the video, in calling for a voice vote, the leadership was shocked and called for a new vote that came out the same way. The leadership just declared the vote as having passed by two-thirds acclamation. It was an embarrassing but telling moment for those who view the two parties as controlled by a small elite group of self-serving power brokers. Now, researchers at the University of Iowa in Iowa City have concluded that voice votes may not only politically but practically useless despite Robert’s Rules of Order.
Continue reading “Ayes and Nayes [and Neverminds]: Iowa Study Questions Value Of Voice Votes”
We posted pictures last night of homecoming welcomes from dogs. This recent shot of a soldier retiring from Afghanistan would have been perfect to include, though I deserves its own place of honor.
By Mike Appleton, Weekend Contributor
“In this case, a young woman in a crisis situation was put at risk because religious directives were allowed to interfere with her medical care. Patients should not be forced to suffer because of a hospital’s religious affiliation.”
-Kary Moss, executive director, ACLU of Michigan (quoted in the Detroit Free Press, December 2, 2013)
“The Church holds that all human life, both before and after birth, has inherent dignity, and that health care providers have the corresponding duty to respect the dignity of all their patients. This lawsuit argues that it is legally ‘negligent’ for the Catholic bishops to proclaim this core teaching of our faith. Thus, the suit urges the government to punish that proclamation with civil liability, a clear violation of the First Amendment.”
–Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, president, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (quoted in the National Catholic Register, December 7, 2013)
Tamesha Means was only 18 weeks pregnant when her water broke. A friend rushed her to the emergency room at Mercy Health Partners in Muskegon, Michigan. She was examined and sent home with instructions to follow up with her regular doctor at her next scheduled appointment. The following morning she returned to the hospital, bleeding and having painful contractions. She was given pain medication and again sent home. That very night she returned for the third time, in great pain and with an elevated temperature, suggestive of an infection. As the hospital was preparing paperwork to send her home yet again, Ms. Means went into labor and delivered a baby who survived fewer than three hours. She was then informed that she would need to make funeral arrangements.
Those are a few of the allegations contained in a new lawsuit that has outraged conservatives and the Catholic hierarchy by advancing traditional negligence principles as a basis for imposing liability against a surprising group of defendants. Continue reading “The Means Case: Medical Ethics and the USCCB”
Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Recent nominations highlight the continuing spoils system of politicians returning favors for fundraising. A few appointments highlight this practice has not ended. Appointing the unqualified to the diplomatic service on the mere reward for political fundraising raises the question of importance our government places on foreign policy between the United States and other Nations. Some recent appointments highlight the fact that diplomatic credentials are not necessarily the most important criterion. Continue reading “Soap Opera Diplomacy: The U.S. Government Continues To Field Unqualified Ambassadors Who Were Once Large Election Fundraisers”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor
Here is one ad that never aired during this year’s Super Bowl:
The Proud to Be video was made by Change the Mascot, a national campaign that was launched by the Oneida Nation. The video was released by the National Congress of American Indians a couple of days before this year’s Super Bowl. Change the Mascot’s aim is to end the use of the term “redskins” as the mascot for Washington, D. C.’s NFL team. The campaign “calls upon the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell to do the right thing and bring an end the use of the racial epithet.”
Continue reading “Proud to Be: A Native American Ad That Wasn’t Aired During the 2014 Super Bowl”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Weekend Contributor
On February 7th, 2014, the sad reports were compiled from the deadly day before. On Thursday, February 6th, at least 24 people were shot and 14 of them were killed. Two of the dead were small children. The shootings and killings were from cities and towns all across the country. A 17 month old girl was accidentally shot by her 3 year old brother in North Carolina.
A 13-year-old was accidentally shot and killed while playing with a shotgun in the state of Washington. In Seattle, Washington, a man was shot and killed by a fellow tenant. A man in his 30’s was shot several times and critically wounded in Owasso, Oklahoma. A 18 year man was shot and killed at his uncle’s home in South Carolina. These and others were all wounded or killed by gunfire on February 6th, 2014. Just one sad day out of many. Continue reading “All In a Day’s Work”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor
The following video was made by Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Mark Fiore:
By Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor
A 2009 report by the National Research Council (NRC) passed quietly into the night (except in legal and forensic circles) while barely garnering more than a ripple in the public’s psyche. It should have been a tidal wave given news last December that a 48-year-old New Jersey man, Gerard Henderson, who spent 19 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, was done in by faulty crime lab work. Henderson was convicted largely on “bite mark” evidence. Bite mark evidence is a process used to exam indentations and anomalies on a victim’s body and ostensibly made by human teeth which are then matched to a defendant’s dentures in an effort to prove that he/she was the perpetrator of the crime. Convicted in 1995, Henderson proved that state testing of the bite marks on the back of 19-year-old victim, Monica Reyes, was deeply flawed and conducted without sufficient safeguards to insure its reliability.
Independent forensic scientists working for Project Innocence could not reproduce findings by the state crime lab which is the gold standard for scientific verifiability. Henderson became one of the more than two dozen people wrongfully convicted of rape or murder since 2000 as a direct result of flawed bite mark evidence analysis all duly attested to as accurate by the local crime lab.
Continue reading “Think You Can Rely On Your Local Crime Lab For The Unvarnished Truth? Think Again”
by Charlton “Chuck” Stanley, Weekend Contributor
Last week, I reported on the deliberate misfiling, destruction, and throwing away files at the Records Center in St. Louis. Although an audit showed several employees were outside normal limits for error rates, only two were serious enough to warrant charges.
As I described in the earlier story last week, one of the men, 28-year-old Lonnie Halkmon, entered a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of destruction of government records. Halkmon was sentenced to forty hours of community service and two years probation. He could have gotten up to six months in jail on that charge.
Engram was responsible for the destruction of more than a thousand records. He destroyed some of them, threw 241 away in the woods near the Center, and took others home with him where he tossed them in the trash.
Continue reading “Second Worker at the Military Records Center in St. Louis Sentenced”