We have long discussed the plight of young girls in Muslim nations who have been handed over as child brides in arranged marriages. Wasila Umaru, 14, however, decided not to go quietly into a marriage with a 35-year-old man. She made a meal for the groom and three friends and poisoned them all to death.
Category: Criminal law
There was an extraordinary moment on a Swedish flight this week taking off from Frösön airport in northern Sweden. The government was deporting Ghader Ghalamere back to his native Iran. A man on the flight stood up to tell the passengers about the deportation and told them not to fasten their seat belts to stop the flight. The passengers did precisely that and the flight could not take off in an extraordinary act of peaceful protest.
A new report concludes that Los Angeles police officers have widely tampered with voice recording equipment to block monitoring of their actions on duty. Officers have been tearing off the antennas of their cruisers to prevent transmitting signals. Yet, there is not a single reported case of a single officer been disciplined, let alone fired. Indeed, none will be investigated.
This week, U.S. Rep. Vance McAllister was faced with the scandalous release of a security video to his kissing his married aide, Melissa Anne Hixon Peacock, at his office in Louisiana. That would normally be the stuff of scandal, but it is even worse when you are married and ran as a religious conservative. McAllister went public with an apology to everyone (except personally to Peacock’s husband who is now divorcing his wife). He asked forgiveness but is now demanding an investigation to potentially jail whoever revealed his conduct: a curious path for a self-proclaimed redemptive sinner.
We have another example of the power of the Internet in fighting crime. After Ahryun Moon, 29, had her laptop stolen in Joy’s Place, a San Francisco coffee shop, the security video was placed on YouTube. Sure enough, someone spotted the women in the video still wearing the same distinct outfit. She is Pawl Raynal, 32, and fittingly enough was arrested in another Bay Area coffee shop.
Continue reading “Viral Video Results In Arrest Of Laptop Thief In San Francisco”
Sen. Elbert Guillory (R., Opelousas) appears to like poultry pugilism. Chicken boxing, that is. Guillory left a number of his colleagues scratching their heads when he raised the distinction between cockfighting and “chicken boxing,” the latter involving chickens wearing little gloves as opposed to razors to fight.
Continue reading “Chicken Boxing? Louisiana State Senator Wants Poultry Pugilists Protected”
There is a disturbing case out of Northern Virginia where Braulio Castillo, the CEO of a computer company, is accused of beating his wife and then hanging her from the ceiling to make it look like a suicide. Castillo has been under investigation by Congress over $500 million in contracts secured through a special service-disabled veteran status law.
There is a truly horrific case out of Minnesota after David J. Gherity, 60, was arrested for setting his girlfriend on fire in his condominium. What struck me as odd was that he was not charged with attempted murder as opposed to assault in the attack. However, Gheirty’s lawyer says that there is a videotape of Gherity at work at the time of the crime that will vindicate his client.
Continue reading “Minnesota Lawyer Arrested In Burning Of Girlfriend”
Former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden has long been the face and voice of the growing security state within the United States. While many of his representations have been challenged, he continues (like Dick Cheney) to create his own reality to justify powers viewed as authoritarian and unlawful. Now, with the approaching release of a comprehensive report on the torture program, Hayden is out in the press denying the findings of the report that torture did not result in any meaningful new intelligence and that the CIA tortured people who were already cooperating with conventional (and legal) interrogations. Hayden took to the airways to champion torture by attacking the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D, Cal.) and said that she was just being “emotional” and should not be involved in such a serious debate.
Continue reading “Hayden: Feinstein Too “Emotional” To Discuss The Torture Program”
The politics over illegal immigration has radically changed as both parties see the issue as key to attracting the hispanic vote in the next election. A measure of that change was evident on Sunday when Former Florida governor Jeb Bush said Sunday that many who illegally come to the United States do so out of an “act of love” for their families while Democrats are pushing to stopping deportations all together.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw) Weekend Contributor
I guess you don’t have to be from Chicago or Illinois to know who Rahm Emanuel is. The current Mayor of the City of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel is the former chief of staff to President Obama and a former Congressman. He is also a former investment banker. It has been alleged that this former investment banker has been crying poor since he entered office and proposing that city workers must pay more into their pension funds and get less pay and benefits.
“If you’ve read the financial news out of Chicago the last few weeks, you’ve probably heard that the city faces a major pension shortfall, supposedly because police officers, firefighters, teachers and other public workers are selfishly bleeding the city dry.
You’ve also probably heard that the only way investment banker-turned-mayor Rahm Emanuel can deal with the seemingly dire situation is to slash his public workers’ retirement benefits and to jack up property taxes on those who aren’t politically connected enough to have secured themselves special exemptions.” Pandodaily Continue reading “Mr. Mayor, Show Us the Money!”
I must be missing something. English prosecutors are heralding the sentencing of Mohammed Khalid Jamil as a “landmark case” in their campaign against computer fraud. Jamil ran an international conspiracy to defraud people of millions in a Microsoft scam. However, he received just a four-month sentence and that sentence was promptly suspended. As for the fine, he was told to pay £5,665. How exactly is that a landmark?
If the police are correct, Colin Chisholm III, 62, and Andrea Chisholm, 54, just may be the most outrageous welfare frauds in history. The Chisholms lived on a $1.2 million yacht when they were not in one of their expensive homes. However, they still collected more than $160,000 in state welfare benefits. They each face one count of welfare fraud. They also portrayed themselves as Lord Colin A.J. & Lady Chisholm of Struy.
Continue reading ““Lord and Lady Chisholm” Arrested For Welfare Fraud In Florida”
Angela Timmons, 54, an employee at Virginia College in South Carolina, appears to have carried out an April Fools’ Day prank that few in her family will soon forget. Timmons, 54, send an email to her daughter that there was a gunman on the loose at the school and the daughter called police — triggering a massive response. It was a stupid prank. However, the range of charges against Timmons is a bit disconcerting.
Continue reading “Fool Me Once . . . : April Fool’s Day Prank Of Daughter Leads To Mother’s Arrest”
The Albuquerque police have long been criticized for a high rate of shootings and the increasing militarization of their operations. This month, many have joined in that criticism after the release of a videotape of police shooting a homeless camper, James Boyd, in the foothills outside of the city.