-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Skylar Capo, an 11-year-old aspiring veterinarian in Fredericksburg Virginia, rescued a baby woodpecker from the jaws of the family cat in her Dad’s backyard. Her mother, Alison Capo, agreed to take the baby woodpecker home to make sure it was safe and uninjured. On the way home, they stopped by Lowe’s and took the caged bird inside to keep it out of the heat of their car.
Continue reading “Girl Saves Baby Woodpecker – Mom Gets Fined $535”
Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty-Guest Blogger
Since we have been all so absorbed by the ongoing political saga involving the imaginary debt ceiling crisis, I thought it would be therapeutic to discuss something totally unrelated to that nonsense. As you will recall, the CIA destroyed hundreds of hours of video tape documentation of the infamous CIA Torture Program during the last Administration. Continue reading “The CIA Destroyed Evidence..So Why Shouldn’t They Be Held in Contempt?”
Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Given the temptations to imbibe in New Orleans and the benefits of a father-son weekend, Billy Joe Madden of Mississippi probably thought he was doing the right thing taking his son along to serve as designated driver. Still, something looked odd to Louisiana Troopers as they saw the Hattiesburg resident passed out in the passenger seat of his pickup truck as it tooled erratically along Interstate 12 while he son “manned” the wheel and as his unsuspecting daughter slept in the back seat. Seems our responsible drinker and father of two felt it quite proper to let his eight-year old son drive the pickup to Dallas –as in Texas –even as his 4 year-old daughter slept. Troopers were not so sanguine and booked Billy Joe (you just can’t make this up) on two counts of child desertion, parent allowing a minor to drive, open container and two counts of no child restraint and no seatbelt. Both of Madden’s children were turned over to child welfare authorities and were awaiting the arrival of a family member who could take custody of them, police said. Billy Joe remains in jail in lieu of his $1,400.00 bond. Who’d bail him out for this anyway?
Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Bonneau is a quiet little town in the “Low Country” of South Carolina. Boasting plenty of southern charm, it covers about 2.9 square miles and sports 354 residents. Not much going on except good red beans and rice and some pleasantly hot summer boat rides on Lake Moultrie. Pretty Mayberry-esque except it’s also the epicenter for a debate on South Carolina’s obscenity laws which prohibit motorists from displaying bumper stickers, decals, or devices depicting “sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body in an offensive way as determined by contemporary community standards.”
Continue reading “South Carolina To Try Citizen For Nutsy Display”
Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
While everyone was distracted with the hullabaloo surround the artificial “debt ceiling crisis”, Congress did manage to get some work done. Unfortunately that work was in furtherance of eroding your right to privacy. Thursday, July 28, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee submitted a bill (H.R. 1981) under the politically motivated and misleading name Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, which was quietly lobbied for by conservative Republicans and the Department of Justice, voted in committee to advance regulations requiring Internet service providers to retain your account information. This information preserved would include not just your IP address, but customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers and bank account numbers as well. The Judiciary Committee approved this bill in a 19-0 vote, rejecting a last minute amendment that would have required the retention of IP addresses only by 7-16.
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
A Durham, North Carolina, man has been charged with killing a 4-year-old boy and a 28-year-old woman. Peter Lucas Moses, 27, and six others face murder charges in the deaths of Jadon Higganbothan, 4, and Antoinetta Yvonne McKoy, 28.
Continue reading “Man Kills 4-Year-Old Boy He Thought Was Gay”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Perhaps the real original sin of humanity is the concept of sin itself. There is of course evil in the world and there is good. To me there is little equivocation about some evils and I am hardly a moral relativist. Although these terms become subjective when viewed from the perspective of an individual, there is a wide general acceptance among diverse cultures as to general definitions. We consider murder in all cultures evil, as is robbery, assault, rape, and a host of familiar others. For at least five thousand years, cultures established legal systems to deal with bad behavior and with those systems came the need for punishment. The history of punishment has always been rather draconian and bloody throughout history. While today punishment is perhaps more humane in many places, it still caries with it significant cruelty in its application throughout humanity.
“A woman and her three children had just gotten off the bus at a stop across from their apartment building (in Marietta, Georgia) in October 2010 when her 4-year-old son, A.J., broke away from her and ran into the street. A car struck the boy, causing fatal injuries. Nelson (the woman) and one of her two daughters also suffered minor injuries. Nelson was charged with three misdemeanors: second-degree vehicular homicide, failing to cross at a cross walk and reckless conduct, according to court records. A jury convicted her this month. Although prosecutors did not recommend jail time, each count carried a potential sentence of one year in jail”. What is behind this prosecution? Who among us who has raised young children wouldn’t be chilled with the vision of this happening to them? Why do we see such prosecutorial zeal in our society to find someone to punish when accidents occur? Continue reading “The Eternal Cluelessness of the Avenging Mind”
Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
If you’ve never heard of King Lincoln v. Blackwell, don’t be too surprised. Project Censored calls the outsourcing of the 2004 Presidential elections in Ohio “one of the most censored stories in the world.” Originally filed on August 31, 2006 in Ohio, King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell is an ongoing civil case to decide if the the Ohio Secretary of State at the time, Kenneth Blackwell, violated the Civil Rights Act (42 USC §§ 1983 and 1984) and the 1st, 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution by conspiring to “deprive and continue to deprive Ohioans of their right to vote and have, in fact, deprived and continue to deprive Ohioans of their right to vote by, in a selective and discriminatory manner, unfairly allocate election resources (such as voting machines), institute a system of provisional ballots, purge voter registrations, and broke the bi-partisan chain of custody ballots”. The vote at the heart of the issue is the 2004 Presidential election where, in defiance of exit poll data, there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush.
New filings include a revealing deposition of the late Michael Connell. Connell died shortly after giving his deposition in a small plane crash that is described as “suspicious”*. In life, Connell served as the IT guru for the Bush family and their personal minister of propaganda, Karl Rove. Connell ran a private IT firm called GovTech that created the controversial electronic voting system that Ohio used during the election. GovTech’s system transferred Ohio’s vote count late on election night to a partisan Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by a company called SmarTech. That is when the alleged vote shift happened that led to Bush’s unexpected victory.
Continue reading “Dead Men Do Tell Tales (Of Rigged Elections)”
Rep. David Wu has long been identified as a major liability for the Democrats. The first Chinese-American elected to Congress, Wu has displayed mental instability for years. He is now accused of an “unwanted sexual encounter” with the teenage daughter of a longtime friend.
Continue reading “Tiger By The Tail: Dem Leadership Struggle In Wake Of Latest Sex Scandal”
Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
More potential bad news for Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. as Thursday’s Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. Department of Justice is preparing subpoenas relating to alleged foreign bribery and alleged hacking of voicemail of Sept. 11 victims. This is in addition to a separate FBI probe into the alleged hacking of voicemail of Sept. 11 victims and a possible FCPA-related (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) investigation by the SEC related to allegations of bribing police in Great Britain. There are also a substantial number of civil suits springing up related to the activities of News Corp.’s now shuttered News of the World operation. While Murdoch and News Corp. have attempted to contain the damage done by the News of the World U.K. phone hacking scandal, it seems like their efforts are failing as the investigation into their operations expands across the Atlantic. The real question lies with A.G. Eric Holder’s Department of Justice willingness to act.
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
In Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, Eileen Ann Bower tested positive for opiates after giving birth to her son. Based on the results of the routine blood test, performed by Jameson Hospital, the Lawrence County Children and Youth Services kidnapped seized the baby three days after its birth. Bower claims her last meal, before giving birth, was a pasta salad with Perfect Pinch Salad Supreme Seasoning, which contains poppy seeds (the fourth listed ingredient).
Continue reading “Mother Eats Poppy Seed Seasoning – Has Newborn Taken”
Here is my column this morning in the New York Times. As is the case (even on my own paper, USA Today), the writer does not select the titles. In this case, “One Big, Happy Polygamous Family” seems a bit mocking. Thus, I have added my own title.
Continue reading “Privacy Without Politics: Why The Sister Wives Lawsuit Is About Privacy Not Polygamy”
Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
London plumber, Ian Puddick, was aghast after reading a text message on his wife’s cell phone. It seems Leena, was having an affair with Tim Haynes, an insurance broker at one of London’s hoary financial houses and a City Director. The affair began at a company Christmas Party (don’t they all) and continued for ten years. Rather than an immediate face-to-face confrontation with all the messiness that involves, Puddick set up several websites and then began to Twitter the racy cyber-dialog between the illicit lovers. One read, “Where do you want to have sex next? The office, al fresco, the flat or all three you greedy girl?” He supplemented the shorthand with videos and a blog– all dedicated to the affair.
Contributed by: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
All society’s see themselves as “civilized” which connotes that they are humane in their treatment of all within their purview. One society will compare their society towards another, disparagingly in most cases, seeing the “other” as less “civilized” and more barbaric. We all know the clichés about the cruelties of Mexican, or Turkish prisons for instance and our American tendency is to look down our noses upon the barbarity of those countries in dealing with all prisoners, not just felons. How smug we are in our self-satisfaction that America is a modern culture with no hint of the backwardness and barbarism of less modern cultures. In my view this has been merely the legerdemain of mass delusion. I say delusion because the sad truth we all know is that many of our prisons and many of our Jails are “hellholes”, perhaps only degrees better than certain other more “barbarous” Nations are. Our literature and media have for years dealt with the harshness of our prison system. Indeed our gallows humor puts forth the hardly clichéd image of prison rape as a fit punishment for some. A current story conveys our dilemma in seeing the truth of our own lack of civilization, dealing with those who commit crimes both of heinous and victimless nature. Continue reading “How Should A Civilized Society Deal With Criminals?”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
We have previously discussed the plight of Julie Bass, the woman who was charged with a misdemeanor for growing cucumbers, tomatoes and other vegetables in raised beds in her front yard in Oak Park, Michigan.
Bass’ plight went viral with a blog and a Facebook page “Oak Park Hates Veggies.”