When a Texas jury sentenced LaDondrell Montgomery to life imprisonment for armed robbery, he insisted that he was innocent. Police and prosecutors, however, insisted that he was the man who robbed a T-Mobile store. It turns out that he was telling the truth, but it was not until after his sentencing that his father showed that Montgomery could not have committed the crime because he was in jail at the time.
Continue reading “Texas Man Sentenced To Life Imprisonment Released After Records Show He Was In Jail At The Time Of The Crime”
We have been following a line of cases involving faux doctors performing cheap cosmetic surgery by using such medical material as “Fix-A-Flat” gel. The latest such case comes from New Jersey where Justin Street, 22, died after Kasia Rivera, 34, allegedly injected his penis with silicone in an enlargement procedure. Street died the day after the treatment in Rivera’s home.
Continue reading “New Jersey Man Dies After “Doctor” Injects Silicone Into His Penis in Home Procedure”
Laurie Ann Martinez, a prison psychologist, has been arrested in Sacramento, California in a bizarre alleged hoax where she staged a rape by splitting her own lip with a pin, scraping her knuckles on sandpaper, ripping her clothing, and having a friend punch her in the face. The reason? According to police, it was to convince her husband to move to a safer neighborhood.
Continue reading “California Prison Psychologist Arrested For Allegedly Staging Rape and Burglary”
In a rather shocking appeasement of anti-Muslim activists, Lowe’s home improvement store withdrew advertising from the reality show, “All-American Muslim,” a show featuring various Muslim families in the United States. The show is being targeted by the Florida Family Association as “dangerous” and Lowe’s Chief Executive Officer Robert A. Niblock decided to yield to such prejudices in pulling out of the advertising on the show.
Continue reading “Lowe Blow: Retailer Bows To Anti-Muslim Campaign And Withdraws Advertising From TLC’s “All-American Muslim””
Respectfully Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty(rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
Now that I have gotten over the Bears overtime loss to the Bronco’s, it is time for the Night Shift to get to work. I imagine that most of us remember the so-called “Gang of Fourteen” that came to prominence during the George W. Bush Administration. This group of Senators actually decided that the Senate should give all Judicial nominees an up or down vote in the full Senate except in some very extreme circumstances. “In 2005, a group of senators known as the “Gang of 14” determined that all judicial nominees should receive an up-or-down vote absent “extraordinary circumstances.” As Senator Lindsey Graham explained the agreement at the time,’ “ideological attacks are not an ‘extraordinary circumstance.’ To me, it would have to be a character problem, an ethics problem, some allegation about the qualifications of a person, not an ideological bent.” ‘ American Constitution Society It is a shame that the Gang of Fourteen, or at least the survivors of that group have decided that politics is more important than fairness! Continue reading “Filibusters Gone Wild”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger.
During the Cold War a phrase “The Enemy Within” became popular. It was a reference at first to Communist subversion exemplified by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt. Later it was used with other issues such as in Robert F. Kennedy’s book “The Enemy Within” which dealt with corruption in the Labor Movement, specifically Jimmy Hoffa and his teamsters. Recently, Michael Savage, right wing talk show host, wrote a book using that same title, though in this case referring to liberals and progressives as being seditious. The connotation of this phrase is that the group so labeled represents an internal movement that is so dangerous to the interests of the United States, that it can be seen as subversive.
Some may be shocked then by the title of this post. Almost all of us have grown up thinking of the Chamber of Commerce as a uniquely American Institution. Throughout the US whether in cities or in hamlets, the business community has banded together to promote local commerce and build interrelated networks. When we think of this, we think mainly of local small businesses, which are the backbone of this nation’s economy. To be honest until this week I’ve never give much thought to the Chamber of Commerce until as a MoveOn.com member I received a petition from an affiliated new organization called SumOfUs.
“SumOfUs is a brand-new global movement of consumers, investors and workers using our collective economic power for good. Together, we will work to hold the world’s corporations accountable to the public interest and move our global economic system towards social equity, democratic principles, and long-term sustainability.” http://googlequitthechamber.org/about/
The purpose of the petition was to get Google to follow the lead of other large corporations and quit the US Chamber of Commerce. The petition made various claims regarding the US Chamber of Commerce which I’ll deal with in this post.
However, I wouldn’t present this post without doing some research on the “Chamber” and its’ activity to look into the validity of the claims being made by the SumOfUs organization. In doing this research I came to realize that in my opinion the United States Chamber of Commerce is an organization that does not act in the best interests of this country and that one can call it subversive, even though it is not treasonous. These are my reasons for this belief. Continue reading “The US Chamber of Commerce, the Enemy Within?”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In the aftermath of the financial crisis back in 2008, a number of conservative commentators—including Mike Huckabee and Neil Cavuto—blamed minorities and low income people for the subprime mortgage mess. According to some of these conservatives, the responsibility for the mortgage mess lay at the feet of the Community Reinvestment Act and the poor/minorities among us who took out subprime mortgages. There didn’t seem to be any mention of banks and their predatory lending practices being at fault in any way.
Well, James Theckson, a former banker who was a regional vice president for Chase Home Finance in southern Florida, claims that banks are mostly culpable for the subprime mortgage fiasco. He told Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times that his team wrote $2 billion in mortgages in 2007—and that some of them were “no documentation” mortgages. Theckson said, “On the application, you don’t put down a job; you don’t show income; you don’t show assets. But you still got a nod.” He continued, “If you had some old bag lady walking down the street and she had a decent credit score, she got a loan.”
Continue reading “A Sordid Tale of Discriminatory Lending Practices and “Ghetto Loans””
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
If Republican Sen. Bill Heath’s bill, Senate Bill 293, is enacted the phrase “In God We Trust” will be printed in the area where the county name used to go. While many states sell, at an extra cost, specialty plate with the phrase, the Georgia plate will be the default plate.
Continue reading “Georgia Bill Will Put “In God We Trust” On All License Plates”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Solution below the fold.
Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
Does art imitate life? When it does, is that imitation in the eye of the beholder or the mind of the artist? Does it make a difference? A new building design raises those very questions.
Two luxury rental towers designed by Daniel Libeskind of Dutch architectural firm MVRDV raised ire this week when the designs were revealed to the public. Scheduled to be completed in 2015 as part of the Yongsan Dream Hub in the South Korean capital of Seoul, the two rectangular towers feature a “cloud” that would connect both buildings on the 27th floor. Some people think the design is evocative not of a cloud, but of the events of 9/11. The fuss started Friday after Dutch newspaper the Algemeen Dagblad published a front-page architectural rendition of the project under the headline: “Inspired by Twin Towers?”
Continue reading “Does Art Imitate Life? – New Building Design Raises Questions”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
A scent lineup starts with the collection of scent from a crime scene. Scent samples are also collected from potential suspects. A dog is presented with the crime scene scent and then presented with the scents from the suspects. The dog then communicates the matching scent to its handler. The dog handler then testifies at trial and his testimony has been presented as “scientific identification” in Texas courts.
Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
I’m not sure which story is worse. Under South Fulton, Tennessee’s, “Pay For Spray” program, rural property owners won’t receive fire fighting service unless they have the foresight to pay a $75.00 fee. In September, 2010, the city was lambasted when a home was allowed to burn because the homeowner hadn’t paid it. Now just over a year later the same thing happened again as firefighters watched helplessly when city officials refused to let them fight the fire of Vicky Bell. Bell isn’t eligible for the service because she can’t afford homeowner’s insurance.
Continue reading “Tenn. Firefighters Watch Home Burn For Want of $75 Fee; National Review Applauds”
Yeshiva University has taken a step that appears to affirm that it is religious first and a university second. The school’s study body stripped an online student newspaper of funding over a column that discussed a sexual encounter between two students. The attack on free speech and free press occurred after the students rightfully refused to censure their own newspaper and writer. It is a shameful act by Yeshiva that puts the university squarely in the category of intolerant, orthodox institutions — a blow to many faculty and students who have struggled to make Yeshiva something more than a school teaching Jewish values.
Continue reading “Yeshiva University Strips Newspaper Of Funding For Standing Up For Journalistic Principle and Refusing To Retract Article”
We have previously discussed the assault on free speech around the world, including in the West. The Thai courts have added to this ignoble trend by sentencing American Joe Gordon, 55, to two and half years for “defaming” the Thai Royal Family. Defamation law is quite different in other countries, including close allies like Italy, France, and England, and often used to punish critics of the government. Gordon was convicted for simply posting a link to an unapproved biography of the King. It is an example of the outdated use of lese majesty offenses — offense against the dignity of a sovereign.
University of Illinois Law Professor Dhammika Dharmapala was the victim of a shocking violent attack this week at a train station when Joshua Scaggs, 23, allegedly stabbed him in the neck after shouting something about this being Scaggs’ country.
Continue reading “Illinois Law Professor Stabbed In Throat At Train Station”