Brian Levine, a traffic court judge in Staten Island for the Department of Motor Vehicles, is back and neither lawyers nor drivers appear thrilled. Levine was dispatched to take anger management and “human relations” classes two years ago, but reports indicate that he still has a bit of a sharp edge in dealing with traffic violations.
We appear to have another citizen arrested for exercising his constitutional rights to videotape police in public. Jared Parr, the founder of a YouTube channel called Rockville Cop Watch, has posted his encounter with Montgomery County Police officers at a routine traffic stop. The officers are shown demanding that he turn off his camera and what proceeds is yet another tirade from an officer who seems entirely clueless about the first amendment and basic constitutional rights. For a prior column on this issue, click here.
Continue reading “Montgomery Police Arrest a Citizen For Filming Them In Public”
We have another ruling in a hunting accident case. I have previously written columns and blogs about the different treatment generally afforded to killings committed by hunters. In Salem, Oregon, Eugene Collier, 68, was acquitted of manslaughter in the killing of Marine reservist Christopher Ochoa, 20, after mistaking him for a bear. We previously discussed the case.
Continue reading “Oregon Hunter Acquitted In Killing Of Marine Reservist Who He Misstook For Bear”
This is a video of how a Chinese official deals with news that he has missed his flight. The man is identified in news accounts as Yunnan Mining Co. Vice Chairman Yan Linkun, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the political advisory body in the People’s Republic of China. Linkun reportedly missed a flight from Kunming to Guangzhou because he was eating breakfast. He then missed the second flight when he didn’t hear an announcement. It then went from bad to worse.
Continue reading “Video: Chinese Political Adviser Trashes Airport After Missing Flight”
Something about this just does not sound like a good idea. In the coming months, toxic mice will rain down on the jungles in Guam. They are the solution to the intrusion of the brown tree snake which has wiped out much of Guam’s native bird species after first arriving on the island in U.S. naval ships after World War II. With an estimated 2 million of the snakes on the island, the military has decided to carpet bomb the island with dead mice laced with lethal painkillers. Italy carpet bombed one its islands with poison to combat a similar rat problem. The brown tree snakes have been cutting power lines and even biting residents. However, there is the obvious problem of other animals eating the mice. To reduce this problem, the scientists have developed a flotation device with streamers designed to catch in the branches of the forest foliage, where the snakes live and feed. Yet, if anything goes wrong, we have replaced a brown tree snake problem with an army of airborne paratrooping zombie toxic mice with addiction problems.
Muslim cleric Ahmed Al-abedulqader is a member of the Islamic Ministry for Da’wah, Guidance and Endowments and he clearly has “issues” with women, particularly when they served in public positions. Recently, women were allowed to serve on the Shura Council, a formal advisory body to the King of 150 members who can propose laws and advise him. It was a significant and commendable act by the King — a hopeful sign of reform for women’s rights. That appears to be the very reason that Al-abedulqader and other clerics unleashed sexist tirades. In Al-abedulqader’s case, he took to Twitter to call the women “prostitutes.” Dr. Saleh al-Sugair, a former teaching assistant at King Saud University, also went public and called the women the “fifth of society” for their historic achievement.
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Last December, I wrote a post titled You Call This Justice? DOJ Criticized for Its Settlement with “Too Big to Jail” Bank HSBC. It appears that the US Justice Department isn’t too keen on bringing criminal charges against ANY wealthy bankers—not just those who work for HSBC, a huge international bank that has knowingly laundered money for drug cartels and murderers. The unethical shenanigans of the banksters of Wall Street that led to the near collapse of the US economy and to a recession don’t seem to merit jail time for the perpetrators—just a slap on the wrist and a fine. No individual fines are paid though. The mega banks pay the fines and the banksters continue to go about their business…and continue to earn hefty salaries and bonuses.
At “Wall Street Reform: Oversight of Financial Stability and Consumer and Investor Protections,” the first Banking Committee hearing attended by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA), Warren asked bank regulators how tough they really are on the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street and about the last few times they actually took any banks all the way to a trial.
Continue reading “Just Fine: Don’t Bank on the Justice Department to Prosecute Big Banks”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
Now that the infamous Sequestration cuts are likely to kick in next week, I find it both hilarious and scary, that Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of the deceased debt commission that failed to produce a plan that their own committee could accept, are back in the news calling for cuts to Medicare and Social Security and reduced taxes for the wealthy and corporations as our only way out of our so-called debt crisis! Where have I heard that song and dance before? The so-called Catfood Commission is now back at work trying to do a reverse Robin Hood on the poor and middle class. The only difference this time is that they have a new name, The Fix The Debt Coalition and they are funded by Billionaire Pete Peterson. Continue reading “Catfood Commission Part Two”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
The United States Supreme Court recently issued a unanimous (9-0) decision in Florida v. Harris (2013) that deals with probable cause and drug detection dogs. The Court overturned the Florida Supreme Court ruling (pdf) and held that the police officer had probable cause, based on the dog’s reliability, to search Harris’s truck. The Court also held that: “If the State has produced proof from controlled settings that a dog performs reliably in detecting drugs, and the defendant has not contested that showing, the court should find probable cause.”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
A topic that probably causes among the most heated discussions on this blog is the attempt to either displace evolution from Public School Curriculum, or to at least give “intelligent design” equal footing to evolution. My own opinion is that “intelligent design”, or “Creationism” as some call it, has no place in our public school system. Those who would force it on our schools would be destroying the Constitutional separation of Church and State. We saw a blog post by Professor Turley a week ago discussing some crazy State Legislator in Missouri introducing a bill to teach “Creationism” as a scientific theory and to teach “Evolution” as a philosophy, almost all who commented were not only outraged, but some disparaged Missouri as a backward state. A few of the comments belittled religion in general. http://jonathanturley.org/2013/02/15/missouri-legislator-introduces-bill-to-teach-creationism-as-a-scientific-theory-and-to-teach-evolution-as-a-philosophy/ . Another blog post by Professor Turley in October 2012, about Missouri Senate Candidate Todd Akin brought a firestorm of angry comments, also disparaging Missouri. http://jonathanturley.org/2012/10/15/akin-disproves-evolution/#comments Interestingly this Conservative State voted for Todd Akin’s opponent when Election Day came around. Continue reading “Evolution, Religion and Science”
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Author’s Note: Grace Under Pressure is an on-going series of posts honoring everyday people who courageously and honorably make positive differences in their own lives and the lives of others. It is my own personal affirmation that unexpected heroes reside among us and serves as quiet but unshakable proof that virtue really is its own reward – and ours too.
Most days he just drinks. Hard liquor is his preference but he’ll take most anything – beer, wine, or garage-made moonshine. When he’s not wandering the streets of Dallas looking for any day job he can get or a kind stranger with a spare dollar, Charles “Chucky” Alexander stays in a tiny apartment provided by a charity known as The Bridge. No furniture, no luxuries, just four walls some heat and a bedroll. He lives mostly out of his backpack, and wonders how his seven-year-old daughter is doing in foster care. He thinks back to his days as a gang leader in L.A.’s ruthless, drug-dealing Crips gang, and knows he’s lucky to have made it to his 45th birthday. This past year Chucky was making some headway against his addictions, but his mother died unexpectedly sending the homeless man into yet another downward spiral of booze and despair.
Continue reading “Grace Under Pressure: Chucky Alexander’s Moment”
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Well better late than never, y’all. The great state of Mississippi officially ratified the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution on February 7, 2013. For those counting, we’re now 50 states out of 50 against human bondage. Who says no progress is being made? And to whose credit is this crowning achievement? Why Abraham Lincoln, of course. Well, sort of.
It seems Ranjan Batra, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, just finished watching Steven Spielberg’s Oscar nominated movie, Lincoln (filmed here in Richmond, you know). That got the academic wondering if the Magnolia State ever did ratify the law to free over half its citizens. Batra consulted Ken Sullivan, an anatomical material specialist at UMC, who sliced right into the subject (pun intended). Sullivan’s sleuthing found that while the legislature passed the bill authorizing ratification in 1995, one final requirement had never been met. Mississippi’s secretary of state had forgotten to send a copy of the bill to the federal register’s office for inclusion. On January 30, 2013, the Honorable Delbert Hosemann corrected the oversight and mailed the bill. On February 7 the bill officially became law and Mississippi joined the rest of us. Welcome back!
State trooper Lisa Steed is the first woman to be selected as Trooper of the Year in Utah for her record of hundreds of DUI arrests. She was celebrated as having a type of sixth sense for drunk drivers that allowed her to rake up an unprecedented number of hundreds of such arrests in a year. She is now a former trooper after her arrests were found to be invalid. What is striking is how prosecutors long suspected that Steed was unreliable as a witness but she was allowed to continue to abuse citizens. Ironically, in an interview during her illustrious career, Steed referred to her work as a “numbers game,” where she assumed that one in every 10 drivers stopped for a violation is driving impaired.
Pakistan has been working with the Obama Administration in an effort to create an international blasphemy standard. Now one of its diplomats in Washington is accused of blasphemy herself. She has been accused of blasphemy by a businessman, an offense that carries the death penalty in Pakistan.
Continue reading “Pakistan’s U.S. Ambassador Charged With Blasphemy”
Parents in Ontario, Canada are justifiably angry at a prank pulled by teachers on the graduating students of a South Windsor where students were convinced that they were gong to be taken to Disneyland as a graduation gifts and then crushed when told it was just an elaborate joke. The joke left many students at Roseland in tears and left parents fuming about the worst joke ever.