Dale Peterson, the Alabama Republican running for Agricultural Commissioner, has railed against “thugs and criminals.” Yet, Peterson is facing a second shoplifting charge in just five months. The latest charge however is over a handful of nuts that he ate at a Sam’s Club. Indeed, it is hard to see why either of these charges were brought rather than requiring a simple payment at the counter.
Category: Society
We have long followed the horrific record of China on the environment. The Chinese regime has continued to push for high production rates as the number of “cancer villages” and lethal pollution rises across the country. This record has made China the worse environmental violator in the world. Now, greed has combined with power to make for what could be one of the greatest single environmental losses with China expanding its destructive record to Latin America. Ecuador has announced a plan to auction off more than three million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies. The loss of such pristine areas (and unique species within it) will cause incalculable damage to feed China’s insatiable demand for energy.
In recent weeks, Muslims in Bangladesh have marched on the capital demanding death for atheists who have simply openly blogged about their their beliefs. Islamic groups have denounced the blogs as an insult to Mohammad and Islam and demanded arrests. In the meantime, they have attacked atheists and engaged in violent attacks in the name of Islam. They have killed eight people as part of their moral crusade. Rather than arresting the culprits, the government has moved against the bloggers.
Continue reading “Bangladesh Moves Against Atheist Bloggers In Blasphemy Crackdown”
The U.S. Supreme CourtToday, the Supreme Court will take up the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA), the law signed by Bill Clinton that denied benefits and equal treatment to same-sex couples. This follows yesterday’s interesting, and at times heated, debate over Proposition 8 in the Hollingsworth case. I will be on MSNBC today discussing the case with NPR’s Here and Now at 12 and then Martin Bashir at 4 p.m.
Continue reading “Supreme Court Takes Up The Defense Of Marriage Act”
While we have been recently discussing the environmental meltdown in China, including unimaginable river pollution, it is important to keep in mind our own environmental problems. A new report from the Environmental Protection Agency captures how bad the situation is for our surface water. Fifty-five percent of U.S. river and stream lengths were found to be in poor condition for aquatic life due to fertilizers and other runoff.
Continue reading “Report: Fifty-Five Percent Of U.S. Rivers Unfit For Aquatic Life”
There is an interesting story out of Galveston, Texas where officials say that a vial of hemorrhagic fever has gone missing from a research facility at the University of Texas Medical Branch. What is striking is that the school has simply said that the vial was probably lost in a cleaning process. I represented Dr. Thomas Butler who was charged with numerous national security counts for the loss of vials of plague. I was brought into the case by the National Academy of Science members who were alarmed by the abuse of this esteemed scientist by the Bush Administration. With the encouragement of federal officials, Butler was vilified in the media as “Dr. Plague” in an absurd federal prosecution despite the fact that he revealed the missing vials and also thought that they were likely cleaned. Yet, the Justice Department not only pursued him viciously but enlisted Texas Tech University to make unrelated contracts claims against him to try to force a plea bargain. Butler is one of the leading experts on plague and is revered by many for his selfless work in some of the poorest areas of the world. He went to jail (on the contract claims) while the Justice Department is just shrugging off the loss of this vial on the same theory.
For months, conservatives and conspiracy theorists have been flogging a story of a huge arms buildup within the Department of Homeland Security. I was a bit taken aback by the purchase of roughly 2 billion rounds by the DHS as well as a report of the purchase of 2700 light-armored vehicles. However, it seemed like the coverage was over-wrought and that such bulk purchases could be viewed as efficient contracting to get the lowest possible price. Yet, now the DHS has reportedly ordered 360,000 addition rounds of hollow tip bullets (sometimes called Dum-Dum bullets) in addition to huge prior orders. I do not understand why such an arsenal has to be created within this one agency, particularly the use of these bullets designed to maximize damage to the human body.
Below is today’s column in USA Today. It is a follow up to my speech at the National Press Club on the 4oth anniversary of Watergate. The event included a number of Watergate figures from Daniel Ellsberg to Liz Holtzman to Alexander Butterfield and others. It was an extraordinary event organized by Common Cause.
In a highly questionable ruling, New York Supreme Court Judge Robert Mueller (left) enjoined the showing of Lifeline’s film, “Romeo Killer: The Christopher Porco Story,” which tells the true story of University of Rochester student Christopher Porco (right) who murdered his father with an axe and tried to murder his mother. It is a case of prior restraint and is rare in the United States. Proco had sued that the movie uses his name “for the purposes of trade.” However, Porco is a convicted murderer in a high-profile case from Nov. 2004. It is not clear how Mueller believes that such cases depictions are not covered by free speech but thankfully Mueller was reversed by the appellate court.
Continue reading “Where Art Thou Romeo? Lifetime Movie Enjoined At Request Of Convicted Killer”
We have previously discussed the lower criminal sentences handed down in England in comparison to the United States. Some such cases truly shock the conscience as in the case of Jordan Sheard (left). Sheard had long bullied Steven Simpson (right) for being gay as well as for his speech impairment and epilepsy. Sheard got Simpson to strip to his underwear and wrote gay slurs over his body which was covered with tanning oil. He then lit him on fire at his birthday party.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
Much has been written about New York City’s stop and frisk policies, but until now, the evidence of who the police were stopping and why was not a matter of public record. A recent class action suit has opened the door to learning the true numbers involved as well as the accurate demographics of just who is getting stopped by the NYPD. “New York police officers testifying before a federal court this week said that racist quotas imposed by ranking officers are behind the police department’s controversial stop-and-frisk program, confirming years of accusations made by civil rights and community advocates that the department’s tactics disproportionately target minorities. Continue reading “Probable Cause..Black, Latino and Young”
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Stung by the historic defeat in last year’s presidential election, the GOP has embarked upon a relaunch of its ideology. RNC chair Reince Priebus has approved a strategy paper (click to read) composed by Republican bigwigs Henry Barbour (Haley’s nephew) and Ari Fleischer that makes a remarkable discovery:
The Republican Party must be the champion of those who seek to climb the economic ladder of life. Low-income Americans are hard-working people who want to become hard-working middle-income Americans. Middle-income Americans want to become upper-middle-income, and so on. We need to help everyone make it in America.
In one of the truly moronic acts from a government official, the Department of Education posted a mangled quote of Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong on its website as the saying of the day for children. It is clear that whoever approved it had no idea who Mao was or the atrocities that he committed, particularly during the Cultural Revolution when intellectuals were massacred. The quote was taken down after various sites pointed out the irony. It was replaced by a quote from Lincoln.
Continue reading “Reeducation: The Department of Education Pulls Mao Quote”
This week’s proof of human intelligence can be found in the new phenomenon called “reverse graffiti” where artists remove dirt from walls to create their masterpieces.
Continue reading “Signs Of Human Intelligence: Reverse Graffiti”
We have been following (here and here and here and here and here) the worsening situation in England concerning free speech. As noted in a recent column, free speech appears to be dying in the West with the increasing criminalization of speech under discrimination, hate, and blasphemy laws. Now, a French Jewish student group is adding its name to the movement to curtail free speech rights. The Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) is demanding 38.5 million euros after Twitter has declined to turn over the identity of people responsible for comments deemed anti-Semitic by the group. The students appear to have no concept or at least concern for the loss of anonymity in free speech. Like others, they are focused only on their insular grievance with no appreciation for the harm caused by such court orders.