A Canadian police officer is the focus of an inquiry after a citizen filmed him shooting a Taser in the face of a teenager involved in a street brawl. While the 17-year-old is recovering, he took a surgery to remove the prong from his ear.
Continue reading “Police Taser Teenager in Face To Stop Fight With Another Teenager”
Category: Society
There has long been an reasonable expectation among citizens that, if they are falsely accused of an offense, they will not have to pay either the fine or the cost of a hearing. Indeed, even if found guilty, there is generally not a charge for seeking justice in a court. Not in Salem, Massachusetts. The state supreme court ruled last week that motorists must pay the state even if they win their cases in court. The cost of fighting a ticket is $75, which can be roughly the cost of the ticket itself. It is a system that makes a mockery of the right to challenge a charge. No wonder so many witches were burned in the town . . . most could not afford the cost of an appeal.
In Bay Minette, Alabama, felons are being given the opportunity to climb the wall. Not the prison wall, mind you. The Alabama court and local police are helping felons over the wall of separation of church and state by giving convicted citizens an opportunity to avoid jail if they volunteer — so long as it is with a church.
Continue reading “Alabama Courts Give The Convicted The Choice Between Jail and Church”
Former Circuit Judge Mary Ann Gunn of Fayetteville has added her name to the expanding number of lawyers who are degrading the legal profession with faux court shows that mete out justice as a form of entertainment. I have previously denounced these shows and the types of lawyers who reduce their profession to the level of farce and freak shows (here). In Gunn’s case, the state bar informed her in 2010 that she was violating ethical rules by arranging to have her hearings filmed and released to shows. Rather than give up her desire for fame, Gunn resigned from the court and created a fake court called “Last Shot with Judge Gunn,” a show criticized by drug law experts as harmful and misleading. The problem with people like Gunn is that these shows are the product by unrestrained and self-consuming egotism built on the ruins of such professional values.
Continue reading “Arkansas Judge Barred From Using Her Court For Show . . . Resigns And Rents Courtroom For New Reality Court Show”
We often criticize Saudi Arabia for its treatment of women and religious minorities under its extreme religious laws. Accordingly, we should also not hesitate to praise the country when it moves toward giving greater freedoms or embracing tolerance for minority groups. On Sunday, Saudi King Abdullah announced on Sunday he was giving women the right to vote and run in municipal elections.
Continue reading “Saudi Women Given The Right To Vote”
Campus Republicans at the University of California Berkeley have reportedly received threats after creating a novel form of protests against California schools considering race in admissions. The students created a sale of baked goods priced according to their race: white men for $2.00, Asian men for $1.50, Latino men for $1.00, black men for $0.75 and Native American men for $0.25. All women will get $0.25 off those prices.
Continue reading “A Pinch of Satire: Bake Sale Causes Uproar at Berkeley”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
To my mind the greatest movie satire on the idiocy of the Cold War and the fear it inspired in humanity, was Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece “Dr. Strangelove, or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”, released in 1964. The plot in brief was, “An insane general starts a process to nuclear holocaust that a war room of politicians and generals frantically try to stop”. For those unfamiliar with one of the best American movies of all time check this link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/
Rent the movie if you haven’t seen it, for it will bring you dark laughter and present you with much to ponder. At the time of its release, some disparaged the movie as being un-credible in its characterizations and not believable in it premises. I hadn’t thought of the movie in years until I came across this article at the website Buzzflash.com titled “The Theology of Armageddon” by Robert Koehler. http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13024 . The article is relatively brief, but well worth your time.
The article deals with a course titled “Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare” at Vandenberg Air Force Base, given under Air Force auspices. As the Robert Koehler states:
“(I)t turns out that the point of the mandatory course, which was recently canceled by the Air Force after officers of numerous faiths complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation about it and Truthout published an exposé in July, was to give officers in the first week of missile-launch training a Bible-verse-studded indoctrination in faux-Just War Theory (cynically known in the ranks as the “Jesus Loves Nukes” training)”.
What got me thinking of the movie Dr. Strangelove was a quote in the article from Dr. Wehrner Von Braun, which makes credible the satiric reality of the movies title character, Dr. Strangelove, hysterically portrayed as a heavily accented former NAZI, by Peter Sellers. Seller’s character was widely denounced as being unfair to Von Braun, at the time, but seeing this quote from him makes me wonder:
“We knew that we had created a new means of warfare and the question as to what nation . . . we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else,” von Braun is quoted as saying. “We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.”
To me this is post facto justification by von Braun of his choice of the comfort of an honored life in the U.S. mirroring his NAZI lifestyle and providing a sop to detract from the truth that he was an enthusiastic war criminal. Von Braun had developed the V (I & II) guided missiles for the NAZI’s and became the head of the United States Ballistic Missile Program. Von Braun was a NAZI Party member of distinction and it seems dedication. His missiles fell upon Great Britain in the closing days of WW II as an attempt to cause terror within the British people and were random in their destruction. That he then became an honored man in the U.S., rather than a defendant at Nuremburg, is a tribute to our own hypocrisy in prosecuting the Cold War. A similar mindset seems to have infected some in our Air Force as I will show. Continue reading “As We Careen Towards a Dream of Armageddon”
In another bad turn for the White House, Solyndra executives repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment on the company’s financial collapse and its receipt of $535 million federal loan guarantee. President Barack Obama has been criticized for ignoring warnings that the company was poorly structured and in danger of failing before highlighting the company as an example of his program of stimulus funds.
Continue reading “Solyndra Executives Plead The Fifth In Deepening Scandal”
We recently discussed the shocking outburst by conservative judges on the Seventh Circuit and Fifth Circuits. Now, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has joined the ranks of jurists engaging in visceral and, in my view, inappropriate commentary from the bench. The circuit sitting en banc split 6-6 Wednesday on whether to grant en banc review on a challenge of the federal wiretap law. What was most striking, however, was not the sharp division but the rhetoric of Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs. Building on a trend of federal judges to so narrow standing as to block any meaningful avenue to challenge government actions. However, Jacobs decided to vent his anger at public interest attorneys and their causes and clients.
Continue reading “Judges Behaving Badly (3): Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs Attacks Civil Libertarians and Lawyers Before Second Circuit”
There is an interesting controversy in Fort Worth, Texas where Dakota Ary, an honors student was suspended for turning to another student in his German class and saying that he viewed homosexuality as wrong. The teacher at Western Hills High School became angry in overhearing the comment and accused Ary of being a bully.
Continue reading “Student Disciplined For Telling Friend In Class That He Views Homosexuality As Wrong”
It has long been a tradition to give a dying man his last requests for dinner. Lawrence Brewer took that request to an extreme, ordering a meal fit for an entire cellblock. That produced a backlash from state Senator John Whitmire who demanded an end to the tradition in Texas. He succeeded and now death row inmates will simply get whatever is served that night at the prison.
Continue reading “Texas Ends Last Meal Tradition After Brewer Execution”
Chief Judge Edith Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has long been unpopular with many lawyers and judges. Now her reputation for a certain nastiness has emerged in a public scandal after she screamed at her colleague Judge James L. Dennis to “shut up” or get out in the middle of an oral argument.
Ken Anderson, 47, is understandably confused. As a teenager, he was abandoned by his mother, Shirley Anderson, 73, and had to live with other families, quit school, and raise himself. Now his elderly mother has filed in British Columbia for parental support.
Continue reading “Mother Dearest: Man Abandoned By Mother As A Teen Is Sued By Mother For Parental Support”
Harris County judge Charley Prine, a Republican judge in Texas, is under fire for a clearly homophobic order barring a gay father from leaving his children alone with his husband. William Flowers (pictured, left below) and Jim Evans (right) were legally married in Connecticut and are appealing the order that says that the children cannot be left alone with with any man who is not related to them by blood or adoption unless his ex-wife consents.
Continue reading “Texas Judge Rules Gay Father Cannot Leave Children With His Husband”
We have previously explored our concern for a possible eating disorder by a leading Republican. Now, it appears an entire agency could have a serious need for intervention. A report found that the Department of Justice spent roughly $500,000 for food and beverages — at just 10 conferences. That included $16 muffins and coffee at a dollar an ounce.