Joshua Lee Crook appears to prove that a name can make a man. However, his list of offenses and the item that triggered the crime spree brings new meaning to the slogan “Dangerously cheesy.”
Continue reading “Can You Guess What This Person Was Charged With?”
There are times when a fantasy seems to unfold before your eyes. Malcolm Perry experienced just that in a moment that rivals Santa coming to Rudolf to ask him to guide his sleigh tonight. Perry is a member of the Navy football team but low on the depth chart and recovering from an illness. However, when QB Tago Smith was injured and backup Will Worth not playing, the coach looked into the stands and saw Perry in his dress whites with his other midshipman.
Continue reading “Navy Midshipman Gets The Call Of A Lifetime”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor.
In a shameful and terrible scene reminiscent of police attacks against civil rights advocates and union busting of the 1920’s, the Dakota Access pipeline company dispatched its “goon squad” which unleashed attack dogs and pepper spray, injuring several Native American protesters. What began as a peaceful protest deteriorated into a new and shameful moment in today’s America, symbolized quite fittingly with images of Native Americans’ blood in the teeth of Corporate America’s attack dogs.
Continue reading “Native Americans Protesting Pipeline Attacked By “Goon Squad” Using Dogs And Pepper Spray”
We recently discussed the courageous stand of the University of Chicago against the growing speech codes and “safe spaces” in campuses around the country. Now, Purdue University has taken its own stand in favor of free speech in adopting “the Chicago principles.”
Continue reading “Purdue Follows University of Chicago In Standing Ground In Favor Of Free Speech”
Well, the real question regarding James Edward Hatley should be what he was not charged with.
Continue reading “Can You Guess What This Person Was Charged With?”
An Ohio man succeeded in drilling himself at a New Carlisle dental office when he appeared to confuse his gun with the cell phone and shot himself in the hand and side.
Below is my column on free speech on college campuses and the courageous decision of the University of Chicago to reject “safe spaces” and speech regulation. We are facing a growing movement to curtail free speech on campuses. Conservatives rightfully complain that they are being silenced as hecklers bar speakers and administrators punish unpopular speech. The forced silence of students and faculty will be the death knell for American higher education. Too many faculty are unwilling to speak against these measures in fear that they will be labeled racist or micro aggressors. Others like University of Chicago Professor Eric Posner have readily embraced speech regulations by belittling college students as just impressionable children.
They think universities are treating students like children. And they are right. But they have also not considered that the justification for these policies may lie hidden in plain sight: that students are children. Not in terms of age, but in terms of maturity. Even in college, they must be protected like children while being prepared to be adults.
So now people who are adults legally will be dismissed as children to justify the imposition of speech codes where faculty dictate what is acceptable or unacceptable viewpoints. It is incumbent upon the rest of us to fight the rising tide of speech regulation and intolerance. To that end, every faculty senate should consider replicating the letter of the University of Chicago to its incoming class, as discussed in the column below.
CNN has become the leading target of conservatives objecting to a bias in the media in both attacking Donald Trump and giving Hillary Clinton a pass on her own controversies. Now Headline News has blurred the name “Trump” on the tee-shirt of a hero former police officer being interviewed for saving a baby. It appears that someone viewed his shirt as unacceptable to be shown as if it were profanity. This followed a controversy at CNN where a Trump tweet was edited to remove the word “Crooked” in front of Hillary Clinton’s name.
Continue reading “CNN Blurs Out Trump Tee-Shirt In Interview With Hero Former Police Officer”
The University of Missouri continues its free fall after the Black Lives Matter protests. “Mizzou” has now lost almost a quarter of its freshman class. That is devastating for any academic institution and Mizzou is reportedly closing dorms due to lack of students.
Now this sounds like a first-year criminal law examination on the parameters of search and seizure law. Buffalo officer Sean McCabe saved a man’s life by performing the Heimlich maneuver. The man, Bryan Ramos, then coughed up a baggie of cocaine and was promptly arrested for possession of narcotics.
I have long been a critic of state and federal rules imposing costs on losing parties or those who turn down settlement offers, particularly when courts have little or no authority to waive costs. We previously discussed how a federal court ordering the family of a fallen soldier to pay $16,000 to the Westboro Baptist Church, an extremist organization that pickets the funerals of soldiers and Marines. Now the victims of the massacre at the Century Aurora 16 multiplex theater have been hit with a $700,000 bill to pay the defendant’s costs after losing their lawsuit. It is a variation of the “English Rule” where loser pays and something that I believe deters lawsuits against corporations and powerful individuals.
Continue reading “Families of Aurora Massacre Victims Hit With $700,000 Sanction For Suing Theater”
The evidence continues to surface in the police investigation of a Florida State Law Professor and leading blogger. Over two years ago, the law professor Dan Markel was murdered. There has been no arrests in the case, but considerable circumstantial evidence has cast suspicions on the family of his ex-wife and fellow professor Wendi Adelson. Much of this suspicion has been drawn to Adelson’s brother and that suspicion has been magnified with a new and bizarre disclosure that Charlie Adelson paid for half of a breast enhancement surgery for the girlfriend of one of the accused killers. Now the heart-wrenching videotape of Wendi Adelson being told of Markel’s death has been released with some particularly odd elements like a prior joke by Charlie about hiring an assassin to kill Markel.
Continue reading “Police Release Videotape Of Wendi Adelson Learning Of Husband’s Murder”
Saudi Arabia has long been an exporter of extremist Islamic values as part of its Wahhabi sect. Despite our close alliance with the Kingdom, it imposes radical Islamic Sharia principles and denies basic rights to women, non-Muslims, and dissidents. In the latest outrage from Saudi Arabia, a court has sentenced a man to ten years in prison and 2,000 lashes for merely expressing his atheism on Twitter. It appears that the Saudi and Sharia courts are terrified that people could actually inform other Saudis of alternatives to Islam or different values. The fear and anger only appeared to grow when the Kingdom could not coerce the 28-year-old who refused to repent and stood by his human right to express his faith. We previously discussed this case, but Saudi Arabia is proceeding with the whippings as this man remains defiant.
We have previously discussed trophy hunters who kill and pose with dead animals. We recently followed the controversy over the shooting of “Cecil the Lion” by an American dentist Walter Palmer from Minnesota. There were other trophy hunting stories that enraged people around the world. (here and here and here) Then there was Josh Bowman who has been denounced around the world for his video from Alberta, Canada as he celebrated the slow killing of a bear with a spear. Now a 12-year-old named Aryanna Gourdin from Utah has posted a series of highly controversial pictures with dead animals and expressed her love for killing animals. One picture shows her holding a giraffe’s heart.
Continue reading “Twelve-Year-Old Girl From Utah Causes International Uproar Over Hunting Images”
I am often reluctant to criticize the work of other academics but this one seemed a bit problematic. The Old Dominion University was awarded a $1 million grant by the National Institutes of Health to conduct a study of lesbian couples to see if stress makes them drink too much. Most people would say that stress drinking for any couple would seem well established in history without a million-dollar study.