We recently saw NBC air an outdoors program showing a NRA lobbyist shooting an elephant in the face and then celebrating with champagne. Given the outcry over the show, he may want to check out Montana where hunters can make a real killing with a $19 license to kill up to five wolves. That is slightly above $3 a wolf. The problem is that the state has issued 6000 permits which would allow the killing of 30,000 wolves. The entire wolf population however is down to 625 in the entire state.
Category: Society
Former Democratic congressman and Auditor General Don Bailey, 68, had his law license suspended for five years by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for allegations and criticism directed at judges in the state. Bailey denounced the ruling and said that he would challenge it in federal court while denouncing the state justices as corrupt and malicious. While some would agree with the case, there is a worrisome line of cases targeting lawyers who criticize judges.
It may be true that “good fences make good neighbors,” but is it also true that bad donations make for bad cases? This week, Tim Bernaby, 44, pleaded guilty and was given a $100 fine for stealing two letters and 13 Christmas cards written by Frost that were left in a donated desk. The status of the property complicated the criminal case with both the availability of the property and a key witness in doubt. As for the donating family, they insist it never intended to give away the valuable letters and cards. The donor, who has since passed away, saw no need to take the property to a more secure location. After all, Frost himself said “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.” In this case, it would be walling in property worth tens of thousands of dollars and walling out one Tim Bernaby.
We have previously followed the suspensions and discipline of students under zero tolerance policies that are used by teachers to justify zero judgment or responsibility. I have long criticized zero tolerance policies that have led to suspensions and arrests of children (here and here and here and here). Here is a prior column on the subject (and here).Children have been suspended or expelled for drawing stick figures or wearing military hats or bringing Legos shaped like guns or even having Danish in the shape of a gun. Despite the public outcry over the completely irrational and abusive application of zero tolerance rules, administrators and teachers continue to apply them blindly. If you do not have to exercise judgment, you can never been blamed for any failure. That seems to be the logic out of Harmony, Florida where teachers have suspended eight-year-old Jordan Bennett for using a finger as a play gun. This is only the last of such absurd finger gun cases. In the meantime, a student in Rhode Island was suspended for having a key chain with a tiny gun the size of a quarter on it.
Continue reading “Florida Student Reportedly Suspended For Using Finger Gun In Playground Game”
Jehovah’s Witnesses in Arkansas will soon be called to be witnesses of a different kind for John Baldwin, 35. Baldwin is charged with aggravated assault after firing 13 times at the Jehovah’s Witnesses who approached him in his front yard. After Baldwin told Laura Goforth, 47, and Rachel Boshears, 55, to get off his lawn, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were leaving when one of them heard Baldwin tell his wife “Get me my 9.” (A referenced to his Springfield XDM-9). While Isaiah 43:10 may proclaim “Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen,” these pious folk will soon be called by a more earthly authority to bear witness.
This is McGill grad student Tim Blais explaining string theory and we should just give him a Nobel for this and send him along his way.
Police have made an arrest in the extraordinary case of a gang of bikers who terrorized a family of Alexian Lien, 33, in New York City. One of the bikers filmed the entire chase and attack and then posted it on YouTube. He may have succeeded in incriminating his colleagues, including Christopher Cruz, 28. Cruz was charged with reckless endangerment, menacing, reckless driving and acting in a manner injurious to a child less than 17. (Update: A second suspect — Allen Edwards, 42, of Queens, charged with reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and menacing. He is believed to be the man seen on video below striking the Range Rover windows with his fists.).
Continue reading “New York Police Make First Arrest in Biker Attack on Family (Updated)”
Al Arabiya is reporting a bizarre warning issue by a leading Muslim cleric that women who drive risk damaging their ovaries and pelvises and birth defects. The announcement from Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al-Luhaydan comes as women continue to demand to be able to drive in the Kingdom and international pressure is growing for Saudi to make fundamental reforms. Judging from today’s other Saudi story, I thought the greatest danger was the religious police on the roads.
We have long covered the abuses of the Saudi Arabian religious police known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. These are the religious fanatics who reportedly forced girls back into a burning school in Mecca because they were not sufficiently covered in public — 15 died as a result. When they are not apparently burning girls, they are forcing women to cover up “attractive eyes” or shutting down dinosaur exhibits or shutting down lingerie stores or arresting women having coffee. When it comes to their own crimes, however, they appear less committed to harsh Sharia punishment. A young Saudi was killed in a car chase last week trying to flee the religious police. After he crashed, the police fled the scene.
The hatred for educators by Islamic extremists is well-known. It is difficult to keep people in a pre-historic mindset if they attend schools that open them up to the world and different ideas. For that reason, students and academics are routinely targeted in various Muslim countries for acid attacks, bombings, and shootings. However, even with this history, the slaughter last week in Nigeria is breathtaking. Some 50 students are dead, including some burned to death in the name of Islam by these extremists who use religion as an excuse for murder.
Continue reading “Islamic Militants Kill Dozens Of Students and A Priest in Nigeria”
If you recall, last week we discussed how NBC Sports Network was airing an episode of “Under Wild Skies” that showed NRA lobbyist Tony Makris shooting an elephant in the face and then celebrating with champagne. NBC has issued a convoluted statement that promises not to air the episode but the far more interesting statement came from Makris who reportedly condemned those who object to shooting elephants for fun.
Submitted by Darren Smith, Guest Blogger
In accordance of a new strategy to protect the citizens from bad things happening, London Police Services has instigated last fall Project L.E.A.R.N. Quoting from the police website:
“Successive L.E.A.R.N. Projects have addressed quality of life issues and targeted specific geographic areas traditionally plagued with nuisance type behaviours. L.E.A.R.N project members have provided strict but fair enforcement of by-laws related to parties, parking, open fires, noise, litter and public urination. Provincial offences were strictly enforced in relation to excess alcohol consumption, open alcoholic containers in public, public intoxication, illegal sale of alcohol and any related offences. The most severe behaviours warranted criminal charges such as causing a disturbance and mischief.”
Well it seems that this includes now such broken windows type nuisances as the University’s Cheerleading Squad on its way to the game.
Continue reading “Police in London, Ontario Cite Cheerleaders for Public Nuisance.”
By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
“A government’s allowing people to starve when it is preventable reflects a lack of concern for human rights, and well-ordered regimes…will not allow this to happen.”
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (1999)
It ought not be a matter of serious debate that every human being is entitled to nourishment sufficient to sustain life. The right to sustenance is subsumed within the right to life. We acknowledge in our founding documents that protection of that right is a primary function of government. No rational person would choose to live in a society that permitted its members to die for lack of food. Nevertheless, the food stamp program, now called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), is under attack by Republican members of Congress. The recent vote in the House of Representatives to cut funding for the program, and the arguments advanced in support of the cuts, suggest that the GOP believes that providing the poor with enough to eat is a discretionary exercise , demanded by neither law nor morality. It appears that the Republican Party has adopted what I call the Bauer Theory of Behavior Modification. Continue reading “SNAP and the Bauer Theory of Behavior Modification”
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in bliss
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger.”
“Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ.”
– Wm. Shakespeare, Othello, Act III, Sc. 3
Shakespeare had a lot to say about human nature. He was particularly fond of addressing jealousy. Indeed, jealousy is the axis around which his play Othello revolves although it features prominently in some of his other works as well. He so profoundly understood human nature, one has to wonder what he would make of the NSA surveillance state. To go to the other end of the literary scale, but to a no less valid observation and aspirational goal, Spiderman’s prime operating principle is a lesson he learned both directly from and from the death of the character of his uncle, Ben Parker. “With great power comes great responsibility.” Not all people behave responsibly, let alone consistently responsible. This is why we build systems that allegedly contain oversight mechanisms – to prevent, catch and rectify irresponsible behavior as quickly as possible. When these systems fail, we must evaluate the wisdom of creating such a power to begin with. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should do something. Which brings us to the NSA’s total information awareness strategy, their employees and policies for dealing with abusive employees and the tools to implement this ongoing violation of our 4th Amendment right “to be secure in [our] persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures”. An NSA employee was found to have twice collected communications of an American and had been secretly intercepting the phone calls of nine foreign women for six years (1998-2003) without ever being detected by his managers. The consequences of this criminal abuse of power upon discovery?
Nothing of substance.
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Know much about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? If you don’t, it’s not your fault. According to Zoë Carpenter (The Nation), Congress hasn’t heard much about TPP either. That’s because this so-called “free trade” agreement is being negotiated in “extreme” secrecy by representatives of twelve different countries—the United States, Japan, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Carpenter says that the Obama administration has ignored “repeated calls from legislators to make the process more transparent, while pressing to finalize the agreement this year.”
In his article titled Multinationals Are Plotting to Steamroll What’s Left of Our Democracy to Make Huge Profits, Dave Johnson says that the TPP negotiating process “has been rigged from the start.” While hundreds of representatives of corporate-interest groups have been providing their input— “representatives of labor, human rights, civil justice, consumer, environmental and other stakeholder groups have been kept away from the negotiating table.” Members of Congress have not seen the agreement yet. United States Senators “have been barred from seeing negotiation points or drafts.” The public has been denied any access to TPP negotiating texts. We the people—as well as our elected representatives—are being “kept in the dark” as to what is going on behind closed doors. Yet, “600 corporate advisers” have been involved in the negotiation process. Multi-national corporations like Monsanto and Walmart are helping to craft the agreement.