BarkGrowlBite

CHILD KILLSERS AND CHILD MOLESTERS DO NOT FARE TOO WELL IN AUSTRALIAN PRISONS EITHER

2012-01-28T01:52:00.001-06:00

Prisoners in Australia apparently have the same moral justice code as prisoners in the U.S. Child molesters and child killers are in for a rough time and often have to be placed in administrative segregation for their own protection.

In this particular case, a child killer complains that his life sentence, of which he has to serve at least 33 years, is excessive. Excessive my ass!

The piece of shit should have been executed. Look at what he told the murdered child’s mother on the phone: ''I've killed her. She's just lying there next to me with her guts hanging out. It doesn't matter anymore. All I need to know is should I dump the body somewhere and how much time do you think I am going to get for this? I killed her, man, I killed her. I killed her to get back at you. I don't care. Even if I go behind bars, I know that you are suffering.''

PRISONERS PLAN SPECIAL ‘TREATMENT’ FOR CHILD KILLER RAMAZAN ACAR
A man who boasted about killing his daughter on Facebook before stabbing her has been singled out by other prisoners for special ‘treatment’, a court has been told

Herald Sun
January 28, 2012

News of Ramazan Acar's "difficult" time was revealed in his bid to appeal against a life term with a 33-year minimum.

Acar, who appeared in the Court of Appeal via video link from Port Phillip Prison yesterday, argues the sentence is manifestly excessive.

Acar, now 24, pleaded guilty to murdering daughter Yazmina, 2.

He was dubbed "the Facebook killer" because he posted chilling messages, one reading: "bout 2 kill ma kid."

He also rang the girl's mother, Rachelle D'Argent, and said: "You're not getting her back."

Justice Mark Weinberg has reserved his decision until next week on whether to grant leave to appeal.

EXACTLY WHAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND THE EUROPEANS DO NOT WANT ISRAEL TO DO

2012-01-28T01:39:00.003-06:00

Fear of getting sucked into a major Middle East conflict and fear of severe oil shortages with skyrocketing oil prices if Israel strikes Iran have the Obama administration and the Europeans shaking in their boots.

REPORT: ISRAEL COULD TAKE OUT IRAN’S NUCLEAR INFRASTRUCTURE ‘IN TWO DAYS’

WorldTribune.com
January 4, 2011

WASHINGTON — Israel could destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure with three combat air squadrons, a report said.

A report by a leading aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israel Air Force could destroy most of Iran’s infrastructure in two days. The report by Yoaz Hendel, a senior adviser to Netanyahu, said air strikes could be augmented by naval operations.

“The Israeli Air Force is capable of striking the necessary targets with two to three full squadrons of fighter-bombers with escorts to shoot down enemy aircraft,” the report titled “Iran’s Nukes and Israel’s Dilemma,” said. “However, most of the escorts will require refueling to strike the necessary targets in Iran. In addition, the Israelis can make use of ballistic missiles and cruise missiles from their Dolphin-class submarines.”

The report, published by the Philadelphia-based Middle East Quarterly, was the first by a senior Israeli government official. The publication said Hendel wrote his report before his recent appointment by the prime minister.

Hendel, a military historian, asserted that Israel was expected to target at least five main Iranian nuclear facilities. He cited the Bushehr light-water reactor facility, heavy-water plant in Arak, uranium conversion plant in Isfahan, the uranium enrichment facility in Qom and the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz.

“Military planners may also feel compelled to attack Teheran’s centrifuge fabrication sites since their destruction would hamper the efforts to reestablish its nuclear program,” the report, released in late December 2011, said. “However, it is believed that the Iranians have dispersed some centrifuges to underground sites not declared to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]. It is by no means clear that Israeli intelligence has a full accounting of where they are.”

Hendel stressed that Iran has already fortified most of its nuclear facilities. He said Natanz was mostly underground and surrounded by Russian-origin TOR-M1 air defense batteries. Qom, designed to accommodate3,000 centrifuges, has been built into a mountain.

“The Israelis may also choose to bomb Iranian radar stations and air bases in order to knock out Teheran’s ability to defend its skies, particularly if multiple waves are required,” the report said.

Hendel said the Israel Air Force deploys an arsenal of munitions, including the U.S.-origin GBU-27 and GBU-28 laser-guided bunker-buster bombs that could penetrate Iranian nuclear facilities. He said the Air Force was training for deep strike missions since at least 2009 that included air and rapid ground refueling.

In all, Israel might have to attack as many as 60 targets in Iran. The report, citing Israeli electronic warfare capabilities, envisioned few aircraft losses and cited possible attack routes, including flying over Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

“The difficulties also depend on the precise goal of the air strike,” the report said. “A short-term, financially costly degradation of Iran’s nuclear program can be achieved in one wave of attacks, but Israeli defense analysts have estimated that a decisive blow could require hitting as many as 60 different targets with return sorties lasting up to two days.”

The analysis marked the latest effort by Israel to enhance deterrence against Iran. Middle East Quarterly said Hendel’s report reflected his personal view, but diplomats said the study was released in coordination with the Israeli government.

Hendel also envisions that Israel would target Iran’s energy sector in an attempt to prevent a massive counter-attack. He said Iran was likely to use both Hizbullah and Syria in any war with Israel.

“The Israelis will ultimately have to choose between launching an attack likely to spark a large-scale regional conflict and allowing Iran to go nuclear with dire long-term implications,” the report said. “Notwithstanding some disagreement about the immediacy of the threat and possible
repercussions, the large majority of Israelis favor military action over living with the ubiquitous threat of nuclear annihilation.”

IT WOULD BE MORE COMFORTING IF OBAMA WERE INSANE

2012-01-28T01:36:00.000-06:00

Well put!

WHAT’S NEW, BARACK? NOTHING
By Monica Crowley

politicalmavens.com
January 27, 2012

It’s often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. President Obama keeps giving us the same thing—the same policies, the same rhetoric, the same tone—over and over again. I’m not sure he expects a different result, though. And that’s the point: he’s neither insane nor stupid. He’s a pure leftist ideologue who will not—indeed, cannot—change.

And so in last night’s State of the Union address, he gave us more of the same warmed-over, failed stuff: more spending, more government programs (six new federal programs in the first 30 minutes alone!), more lip-service to debt reduction, more class warfare, more wealth redistribution, more self-aggrandizement. He actually used the same words—verbatim!—from speeches he gave in 2010 and 2011. His speechwriters have a fondness for beer-pong, and apparently they’re playing a lot of it these days. No need to change his words when he hasn’t changed policies or intentions.

If anyone is still wondering who this man is, what he believes, and what he intends to do, last night’s speech should have cleared that up. In fact, since he announced his candidacy in 2007, every speech, every policy, every action he has taken should have cleared it up. Still, many people refuse to see it. A pity, since it’s all right there in front of us. Last night’s leftist Alinsky hoedown had him once again doubling down on his radical agenda. No one should be surprised.

He is a totally committed leftist. In many ways, it would be more comforting if he were insane.

WHOOPEE! CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS WILL MINGLE WITH FEMALE INMATES THROUGHOUT THE DAY UNTIL LOCKUP AT NIGHT

2012-01-28T01:32:00.000-06:00

Hmm, looks to me like a lot of correctional officers, both male and female, are going to fall for having improper sexual relations with inmates. And Bob Walsh says, “I feel so warm and cuddly I can hardly stand it.”

INMATE SPACES HIGHLIGHT NEW HEADINGLEY WOMEN’S PRISON
By: Larry Kusch

Winnipeg Free Press
January 27, 2012

HEADINGLEY -- The new Women's Correctional Centre in Headingley is different from every other jail in Manitoba in one important respect -- it was built with the female offender in mind.

The $79.5-million facility, six years in the making, will begin to receive inmates in the next two weeks. It replaces a 19th-century women's jail in Portage la Prairie that is bursting at the seams with little space to provide proper programs.

The new digs are unique in North America and could become a model for other women's jails. Prison superintendent Margo Lee said she and others toured facilities across Canada as well as some in the United States during the design process, looking for best practices wherever they went.

Even though the new jail has yet to open, Lee and the building's designers (Number Ten Architectural Group) have already spoken about the project at a convention sponsored by the American Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles.

During a media tour of the new facility on Thursday, Lee said society is starting to realize women need different jails than those designed for men. "We can't just take a male facility and paint it pink and say, 'There you go, girls.' "

She said women don't function well in large settings. They want more intimate spaces. So the new correctional centre is divided into many sub-units where corrections officers will mingle with inmates throughout the day until lockup at night.

"Men are very different," said Lee, who began her career in corrections 20 years ago at the Headingley Jail, a men's facility. "They're wanting to know who's in charge, the hierarchy. Men will want to see the person in charge to have a problem dealt with, whereas women will go to somebody that they've got a relationship with and (who) will listen to them."

The Portage Correctional Centre, built in 1893 and officially designed for 35 inmates, now incarcerates 85 women. It lacks the space to properly carry out rehabilitative programming.

That won't be the case at the new prison. There are several classrooms and meeting rooms so program providers -- be it for anger management, coping skills, addictions counselling or relationship counselling -- won't compete for space. Meeting rooms are also available for folks from social agencies to meet with inmates to ease their return to the outside world.

There's a spacious medical unit, a dental suite and even an area set aside for palliative care. The large kitchen will double as a training facility for learning life skills (such as math and measuring) as well as food safety and culinary skills.

If a jail can be cheery, this one may be it. The new facility is bathed in natural light. Each cell has a window, and even interior rooms receive an abundance of natural light either from skylights or indirectly, such as from atop a dividing wall.

HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE STUDENTS ENJOY CHOKING THEMSELVES

2012-01-27T01:04:00.000-06:00

Mom and pop are shelling out big bucks so their kids can choke themselves to death. The Choking Game is somewhat different from autoerotic asphyxiation in that it is a feel-good game, while the latter is performed in order to experience an orgasm. Many autoerotic asphyxiation deaths are misclassified as suicides instead of accidental deaths. When an autopsy reveals evidence of ejaculation, it wasn’t a suicide.

THE CHOKING GAME: TEXAS SURVEY SAYS LOTS OF KIDS STILL PLAYING
By Craig Malisow

Houston Press Hair Balls
January 24, 2012

Sixteen percent of Sam Houston State University students responding to a survey about "The Choking Game" reported to having played the dumb-ass, potentially fatal game.

The Crime Victims' Institute study states that, of the 827 students who completed the survey, males were more likely than females to have played; "students who were bisexual or unsure of their sexual orientation" were more likely to have played than those identifying as hetero- or homosexual; and the average age of the first-time experience was 14.

Also known as "The Fainting Game," "Pass Out" and, for some reason, "Space Monkey," the "game" is pretty self-explanatory: a person restricts blood flow to the brain in order to produce a high. It was the subject of our cover story in 2007. Determining just how many kids have actually died from playing the game is pretty tricky; the Centers for Disease Control suggests that 82 kids died between 1995 and 2007.

Because other deaths may have been misclassified as suicides, the number might be higher, according to the study. When we first wrote about the Choking Game in 2007, we found the tragic story of a 14-year-old Spring girl who died while choking herself with a scarf, and her death was originally ruled a suicide.

Fortunately, the study actually includes a table of "techniques," which reduces the amount of guesswork for you folks who've never heard of it. The majority of respondents (31.6 percent) indicated they had someone squeeze their neck; 14 percent had someone press on their chest; nearly 13 percent squatted down and stood up repeatedly until they got all goofy; 3 percent took the ligature route; and an extremely determined 17 percent squeezed their own neck.

One of the most interesting claims in the study is that adolescents may have played the game for centuries; this is based on the claim that "the similar, the often unrelated practice of autoerotic asphyxiation has been documented as early as the 17th century" and that "ancient Native and Eskimo tribes detailed the practice of autoerotic asphyxiation among children." Eskimos? Really? Weird.

The study states that "even though awareness of the Choking Game is growing and more parents have reported understanding the risks of this activity, it should be noted that encouragement for parents to discuss this activity with their children should be stressed."

Hopefully enough parents will take heed, and there won't be a need for another study.

MOST ISRAELIS DO NOT BELIEVE OBAMA WILL KEEP HIS COMMITMENT TO DEFEND THE JEWISH STATE IN THE EVENT OF A MAJOR ATTACK

2012-01-27T00:54:00.002-06:00

I don’t believe it either. Our people have had enough of this nation's involvement in armed conflicts and they have absolutely no stomach for any further shedding of American blood.

‘OBAMA PRESIDENCY HAS HARMED ISRAEL,’ SAYS ISRAELI OFFICIAL
By Ryan Jones

Israel Today
January 24, 2012

Former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman firmly stated last week that Barack Obama's time in the White House has caused great harm to Israel.

At a time when libelous accusations and efforts to delegitimize Israel are peaking, Obama's "weakness" has meant that "Israel has to keep apologizing for itself all the time," Gillerman said during a panel discussion at the annual Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO) conference in Tel Aviv.

"We shouldn't have to be on the defensive," Gillerman added.

Gillerman went on to note that the ongoing turmoil and regime changes in the Middle East were all the more reason to replace Obama with a stronger president in the upcoming US presidential election. Israeli officials have been critical of Obama's response and approach to the takeover by forces such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which they have labeled as everything from lackadaisical to appeasing.

Obama has been far more unpopular with average Israelis than any US president before him. Most Israelis believe Obama wants them to take unreasonable risks for peace with the Palestinians, and that in the event of a major attack on Israel, Obama would abandon the US commitment to defend the Jewish state.

ACTOR’S BELOVED MERCEDES CHOPPED TO BITS

2012-01-27T00:43:00.001-06:00

Unfortunately for John Travolta, his beloved convertible probably cannot be put back together again. The perp pled guilty and in addition to jail time, he has been ordered to pay Travolta $50,000 for the car. Lots of luck collecting it, John.

JOHN TRAVOLTA’S STOLEN CLASSIC MERCEDES FOUND CHOPPED TO PIECES

Los Angeles Times
January 25, 2012

While authorities arrested two men they say stole John Travolta's classic Mercedes-Benz, the actor won't be seeing his beloved convertible any time soon, police officials said Wednesday.

Los Angeles police Det. George Molina, part of a countywide auto theft task force that broke the case open, said parts from the actor's 1970 Mercedes 280 SL convertible were found late last year on the proverbial chopping room floor.

"They chopped up the car," Molina said. "We have interior and some exterior body parts."

Molina said the men specialized in stealing classic cars and chopping them up, making money by selling the lucrative body parts. But sources familiar with the case said it wasn't exactly a sophisticated operation.

The break in the case took place last fall, when Santa Monica police acted on a tip that came in after they released a flier about Travolta's stolen car, according to sources familiar with the case. The tip identified suspect Michael Green.

That led to the Dec. 6 arrest of Green, who was on probation after pleading guilty to petty theft with priors in connection with stealing jewelry from a Sears store.

D.L. Rayford Jr. also was arrested in the case and has already pleaded no contest to grand theft auto. He has been sentenced to 16 months in state prison, Los Angeles County prosecutors said.

Authorities said Green told police in December that he stole Travolta's car and a second vehicle, described as a 1962 Mercedes 220 SE. The other car was the same vehicle LAPD officers reported in 2010 as being pushed off the 101 Freeway at Cahuenga Boulevard by a gold Chevy Cavalier.

Police were not able to make an arrest at the time because one of the suspects jumped out of the Mercedes and jumped into the Cavalier, driven by another man. That Mercedes was found to have been hot-wired but was returned to its owner.

That was not the case with Travolta's car, stolen in September when he left it parked for about 10 minutes in a Santa Monica residential neighborhood.

During the investigation, Santa Monica police detectives said they obtained video footage of the vehicle and the suspects as it was being taken from the 1400 block of Berkeley Street.

GOLDEN BOY OR FOOL’S GOLD BOY? Former champ, now chump, enjoys wearing women's undies

2012-01-27T00:30:00.005-06:00

This is not the first time Oscar has been seen wearing women's undies. And he’s admitted to a cocaine addiction. Golden Boy? More like fool’s gold. If Oscar is going to cheat on his wife, surely he can find a sex partner with more class than Angelica.

PLAYBOY MODEL WANTS $5M AFTER CROSS-DRESSING BOXER OSCAR DE LA HOYA ‘HOSTED DRUG-FUELLED HOTEL SEX ROMP AND ATTACKED HER’
His lawyer says the only way she suffered was to miss dentist’s appointment

By Mark Duell and Inderdeep Baines

Mail Online
January 26, 2012

A model who claimed retired boxer Oscar De La Hoya assaulted her wants him to apologize and pay her $5million in damages for taking 'advantage of her in every way possible'.

Angelica Marie Cecora, 25, claimed at a lawsuit hearing that he held a drug-fuelled hotel romp last March, wore women’s underwear and intimidated her and her friend when they tried to leave.

‘It would be nice to start with an apology,’ said the Maxim and Playboy model outside court on Wednesday, dressed demurely in a ruffled shirt, short skirt and heels.

‘Oscar needs to acknowledge his mistakes,’ Ms Cecora, reported the New York Daily News. ‘He knows he did something wrong.’

After consensual sex, the married fighter put on Ms Cecora’s underwear and ordered drugs to his room at New York's Ritz Hotel, the lawsuit said.

He allegedly then requested an extreme sex act and Ms Cecora obliged before having her roommate come over with sex toys.

Ms Cecora and her friend then fell asleep but De La Hoya allegedly tried to pull her out of bed three times for more sex, reported the Daily News.

She was ‘afraid to leave the hotel room because she feared the defendant would attempt to have sex with her against her will,’ the lawsuit said.

Suites at the lavish Ritz-Carlton on Central Park South in Manhattan go for up to an eye-watering $4,500 a night.

He allegedly ran off in the morning and left the women with a $1,500 bill for the room. They in turn ran off, but Ms Cecora claims De La Hoya's manager called her later on to try to settle the bills, reported X17 Online.

She is not pursuing criminal charges, but Ms Cecora is seeking damages for imprisonment, emotional distress, assault and battery. The retired boxer's lawyer said this was all a con.

Judd Burstein told the court that the worst thing she experienced was missing a dentist appointment the next morning, reported the Daily News.

The attorney wanted sanctions imposed on Ms Cecora’s lawyer, Tony Evans, for bringing a ‘frivolous’ suit filled with ‘salacious’ allegations.

‘I’m embarrassed to have to argue this case,’ Mr Burstein said, reported the New York Post - adding she just wanted another ‘15 minutes of fame’.

But Mr Evans responded by saying the case facts are ‘salacious because the acts of Mr De La Hoya were deviant’, reported the Daily News.

‘It’s a man against a woman in a hotel room,’ Mr Evans said, reported the Post. ‘(He) was a professional boxer who’s knocked out 34 people.’

Barcelona 1992 Olympic gold medalist De Lay Hoya, of Los Angeles, California, is worth $175million and generated $700million in pay-per-view TV revenue during his career.

Known as 'Golden Boy', his idol is Sugar Ray Leonard and he has a professional record of defeating 17 world champions and winning 10 world titles in six different weights.

His most famous wins were against Mexican great Julio Cesar 'Caesar of Boxing' Chavez in 1996 and Pernell 'Sweet Pea' Whittaker in 1997. He retired in April 2009 and is now a boxing promoter.

Mr Burstein told the court that De La Hoya began rehabilitation therapy last spring because his life had spiraled out of control.

He labeled Ms Cecora ‘a prostitute and a grifter’ in court papers and said the boxer had become a ‘changed man’, reported the Post.

But Mr Evans claimed De La Hoya used his fame to manipulate Ms Cecora and had told her she would be used as a ringside girl in his boxing promotion work.

'It's the old Hollywood show business story,' he said. 'Find a girl who wants to be a model and say: "Oh you can come work for me".'

De La Hoya admitted a cocaine addiction in September and said photos of him from 2007 dressed in fishnets and lingerie were authentic.

The Olympic gold medalist was not at the Manhattan Supreme Court hearing - during which his lawyers asked that the lawsuit is dismissed - but denies the attack. The judge reserved a decision.

De La Hoya's wife Millie Corretjer, whom he married 10 years ago and has two children with, has not publically commented on the case.

This was the second time De La Hoya has been accused of wearing women’s underwear.

The first woman to do so, Siberian beauty Milana Dravnel, was rumored to have been paid $20million to go away in 2008.

DENIED RESTROOM BREAK, 12-YEAR-OLD STUDENT EMPTIES BLADDER INTO WATER BOTTLE

2012-01-26T00:29:00.000-06:00

A month in alternative school? Are they kidding? Send the teacher to alternative school for a month, not the poor kid.

LAWYER: TEXAS SEVENTH-GRADER FORCED TO URINATE IN WATER BOTTLE AFTER TEACHER DENIES RESTROOM BREAK

FoxNews.com
January 25, 2012

Sometimes, when you have to go, you have to go.

A Texas seventh-grader, who repeatedly asked his teacher if he could use the restroom, was forced to relieve himself in a water bottle after his requests were denied and was allegedly told by his teacher that she hopes he pees in his pants, MyFoxHouston.com reported.

The boy, 12, was given an in-school suspension after the Jan.13 incident and was not named in the report. But his lawyer told the station that he somehow worked an empty water bottle up his pant leg and urinated. He was found out after the bottle fell out of his sweatshirt pocket, Bill Hawkins, his lawyer, said.

"They called the district attorney's office to explore criminal charges," Hawkins said, the station reported. The office determined the boy did not commit a crime, the report said.

The boy attends Klein ISD near Houston and was placed in an alternate school for a month, a move his parents are appealing, the report said.

"The boy's conduct would not have taken place if not for the teacher's actions," Hawkins said, according to the report. "He had an impossible choice and he came up with the best solution he could under the circumstances."

Due to the school’s policy, it is unclear if the teacher faced any disciplinary action for allegedly not allowing the student to use the restroom, the report said.

DENTIST WHO USED PAPER CLIPS TO CLIP MEDICAID, NOW GETS WINGS CLIPPED

2012-01-26T00:25:00.000-06:00

He probably figured his Medicaid patients would never be the wiser or if they did get wise, they would never report him.

DENTIST USED PAPER CLIPS IN ROOT CANALS

Associated Press
January 24, 2012

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. - A former dentist has pleaded guilty to Medicaid fraud for using sections of paper clips instead of stainless steel posts in root canals in an effort to save money.

Michael Clair, who had a practice in Fall River, is scheduled to be sentenced next week. He pleaded guilty Friday to defrauding Medicaid of $130,000, assault and battery, illegally prescribing prescription drugs and witness intimidation charges.

Some of Clair's patients reported infections after he performed root canals on them, said Grant Woodman, a spokesman for state Attorney General Martha Coakley, whose office prosecuted Clair.

Prosecutors say Clair was suspended by Medicaid in 2002 but continued filing by using the names of other dentists in his practice.

Clair's license to practice dentistry was suspended in Massachusetts in July 2006. Woodman said Clair is no longer licensed to practice dentistry in any state.

Clair's lawyer, John Dingee, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment Tuesday. The 53-year-old Clair now lives in Crofton, Md.

James Kulild, a professor of endodontics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Dentistry, said there are very limited circumstances under which a paper clip could be used during dental procedures. He said a paper clip should never be left in permanently.

"Paper clips do not satisfy the requirements for posts, not only because they aren't made of stainless steel but because their shape and consistency will not allow them to be functionally acceptable to use," Kulild said.

WOMAN INJURED BY IDIOT’S FLYING BODY PARTS WHILE WAITING TO CATCH A TRAIN

2012-01-26T00:21:00.000-06:00

Bob Walsh says the train that hit the idiot was doing 70 mph and ‘it kind of shredded him.’

DEAD MAN’S ESTATE SUED FOR DAMAGES CAUSED BY HIS FLYING BODY PARTS
By Mitch Kowalski

Financial Post
January 3, 2012

When people do really dumb things that result in their own deaths, the buck does not stop with the dead.

The Chicago Tribune reports on the decision by an Illinois Appeals Court that the estate of a man hit by a train can be held liable for damages caused when parts of his body are flung down the track.

In 2008, Hiroyuki Joho decided to run across train tracks to reach the station platform for a northbound commuter train into Chicago. He failed to look while crossing and was struck by a southbound train. His body parts were tossed over 100 feet and struck Gayane Zokhrabov who was waiting on the southbound platform to catch another train. Mr. Joho’s flying body parts broke Ms. Zokhrabov’s wrist and leg. Her shoulder was also injured.

The court of first instance ruled that Mr. Joho’s estate could not be held liable for Ms. Zokhrabov’s injuries as Mr. Joho would not have anticipated that his body would cause damage when struck by the train.

An Appeals Court has now over-turned that decision.

As Leslie Rosen, Ms. Zokhrabov’s lawyer, told the Tribune, ”If you do something as stupid as this guy did, you have to be responsible for what comes from it.”

Mr. Joho’s estate is now appealing to the Illinois Supreme Court.

PIG FARMERS AND SHEEP RANCHERS DEMAND SAME RIGHTS AS GAYS

2012-01-26T00:17:00.001-06:00

By Pamela Putz

The Schalotte
January 25, 2012

OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON – About 30 noisy pig farmers and sheep ranchers demonstrated in front of the state capitol demanding the same rights of marriage as gays.

A bill to legalize gay marriage in Washington now has enough votes to pass the state legislature, a lawmaker who sponsored the measure said on Monday, as the state moved closer to becoming the nation's seventh to legalize same-sex unions. Governor Chris Gregoire, a Democrat, announced earlier this month that she would support the legislation.

The farmers and ranchers stood out among hundreds of other demonstrators, with some demonstrators clamoring in favor of gay marriage and others protesting against same-sex marriage.

Fred Finley, 37, a pig farmer from Farmington, demonstrated alongside one of his pigs. Finley told the Schalotte that because of his occupation he had been unable to establish any lasting relations with the opposite sex. “No matter how many times I bathe, I can’t wash off the smell,” he said. “Whenever I go into town, people scatter in all directions.” Finley said that he began having sex with his pigs about six or seven years ago. “Myrtle here is my favorite pig. We’ve been lovers for the past three years. If Gays are allowed to marry, then I should be allowed to marry my sweet Myrtle.”

Hank Brownlee, 34, a sheep rancher from Green Meadows, was standing with one of his sheep, shouting “We demand the right to marry our sex partners.” Brownlee told us he had been having sex with his sheep for more than 10 years and he found it more satisfying than having sex with women. “Francesca here is my steady,” he said. “I’ve been in a loving relationship with Francesca for four years. Our anniversary was last week.” Brownlee said he supports Gay marriage. “I believe that if Gay lovers can marry, then the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment requires the state to let me marry the love of my life, faithful Francesca.”

The Schalotte found Marilyn O’Mara, 28, an attractive redhead from Olympia, and her Great Dane standing among the farmers and ranchers. She told us that she hated men because her husband, a psychology professor at The Evergreen State College, had left her for one of his students. “I’m not into Gay relationships,” she said. “But I love my Hamlet,” pointing to her Great Dane, “and I want to marry him. After that no good bastard left me, I let Hamlet sleep in bed with me. One night I woke up to find Hamlet mounting me, and it’s been whoopee ever since. He satisfies me more than any man I’ve ever slept with. He’s been mounting me almost every night for two years now and I think that if Gay lovers can marry, I should be able to marry this handsome stud. The only thing Hamlet ever wants from me is for me to love and feed him. In my mind, that makes for a perfect marriage.”

AMERICA’S RAPID FALL FROM POWER IN THE ARAB WORLD

2012-01-25T01:55:00.001-06:00

“America lost most in ‘Arab Spring’. Sadly, most voters still don’t grasp the extent” is an op-ed by Caroline Glick that was published in the January 24 issue of Jewish World Review. Glick detailed a lengthy examination of America’s rapid fall as a regional power following the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya. Here are some excerpts:

TO UNDERSTAND the depth and breadth of America's losses, consider that on January 25, 2011, most Arab states were US allies to a greater or lesser degree. [Former Egyptian president Hosni] Mubarak was a strategic ally. [Former Yemen president Ali Abdullah] Saleh was willing to collaborate with the US in combating al- Qaida and other jihadist forces in his country.

[Libya’s Muammar] Gaddafi was a neutered former enemy who had posed no threat to the US since 2004. Iraq was a protectorate. Jordan and Morocco were stable US clients.

One year later, the elements of the US's alliance structure have either been destroyed or seriously weakened. US allies like Saudi Arabia, which have yet to be seriously threatened by the revolutionary violence, no longer trust the US. As the recently revealed nuclear cooperation between the Saudis and the Chinese makes clear, the Saudis are looking to other global powers to replace the US as their superpower protector.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect to the US's spectacular loss of influence and power in the Arab world is that most of its strategic collapse has been due to its own actions. In Egypt and Libya the US intervened prominently to bring down a US ally and a dictator who constituted no threat to its interests. Indeed, it went to war to bring Gaddafi down.

Moreover, the US acted to bring about their fall at the same time it knew that they would be replaced by forces inimical to American national security interests. In Egypt, it was clear that the Muslim Brotherhood would emerge as the strongest political force in the country. In Libya, it was clear at the outset of the NATO campaign against Gaddafi that al-Qaida was prominently represented in the antiregime coalition. And just as the Islamists won the Egyptian election, shortly after Gaddafi was overthrown, al-Qaida forces raised their flag over Benghazi's courthouse.

US actions from Yemen to Bahrain and beyond have followed a similar pattern.
In sharp contrast to his active interventionism against US-allied regimes, President Barack Obama has prominently refused to intervene in Syria, where the fate of a US foe hangs in the balance.

Obama has sat back as Turkey has fashioned a Syrian opposition dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Arab League has intervened in a manner that increases the prospect that Syria will descend into chaos in the event that the Assad regime is overthrown.

Obama continues to speak grandly about his vision for the Middle East and his dedication to America's regional allies. And his supporters in the media continue to applaud his great success in foreign policy. But outside of their echo chamber, he and the country he leads are looked upon with increasing contempt and disgust throughout the Arab world.

Obama's behavior since last January 25 has made clear to US friend and foe alike that under Obama, the US is more likely to attack you if you display weakness towards it than if you adopt a confrontational posture against it. As Assad survives to kill another day; as Iran expands its spheres of influence and gallops towards the nuclear bomb; as al- Qaida and its allies rise from the Gulf of Aden to the Suez Canal; and as Mubarak continues to be wheeled into the courtroom on a stretcher, the US's rapid fall from regional power is everywhere in evidence.

MAN HARASSES COPS WHO KILLED HIS BROTHER

2012-01-25T01:50:00.000-06:00

Of course, this poor parolee was the victim of two brutal cops who shot the poor bastard to death for no reason at all while he was entangled in a car’s seat belt. This is just further proof that cops are just itching to kill Latinos and other racial minority folks every chance they get.

LOCAL COPS GET RESTRAINING ORDER AGAINST DEAD PAROLEE’S FAMILY
By Bob Walsh

PACOVILLA Corrections blog
January 24, 2012

In a very interesting turn of events the Manteca Police Officers' Association has obtained a temporary restraining order (TRO) protecting two police officers against the family of a Lathrop man who the officers shot to death in June of last year.

Officers John Moody and Armen Avakian had made a traffic stop when Officer Moody shot Ernest Duenez, Jr. Junior was on parole at the time when the traffic stop went bad. He came at the cops with a gun in his hand and the cops shot him.

Since that time Duenez’s brother, Gabriel Duenez, has been allegedly violating their personal space, shouting obscenities at them outside of the Manteca police building and following them and their families off duty. He has photographed their families in public spaces, specifically referenced was an incident at a theme park.

The Duenez family asserts that Junior was not armed and was tangled up in his seat belt at the time he was shot. They have, of course, sued.

THE SCHALOTTE UNCOVERS DIABOLICAL GOVERNMENT PLOT

2012-01-25T01:45:00.001-06:00

Secretary Napolitano demanded to know who told us about the plot

By Adolf der Schweinehund

The Schalotte
January 24, 2012

On our promise not to reveal his identity, a high ranking official at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) informed us that the government planned to deport seniors to lower the federal deficit and to save Social Security and Medicare. He advised us to contact a friend of his who is high up in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for more information.

When we promised not to reveal his identity, the HHS official confirmed what the ICE official had told us. Here is the diabolical plot that The Schalotte has uncovered:

__To help lower the federal deficit, the Government will announce next month that instead of rounding up and deporting illegals, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will start rounding up and deporting seniors, thereby reducing the staggering costs of Social Security and Medicare.

__The Obama administration believes that older people are easier to catch than illegals and will not remember how to get back home. And by getting rid of enough seniors they will save Social Security and Medicare from insolvency.

When we contacted Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and asked her about the information we obtained, we heard her mutter ‘God damn it’ before she demanded to know who gave us that information. After telling her we could not reveal his identity, we again asked her about the plan to round up and deport seniors. She said, “I can’t comment on that now. Why don’t you talk to the Vice President about it.”

When we contacted Vice President Joe Biden and asked him if the information we obtained was correct, he exclaimed “Oh shit! You’ll have to get with Secretary Napolitano on this one.”

DOPE DEALER’S CONVICTION OVERTURNED BECAUSE OF WARRANTLESS GPS USE

2012-01-24T01:34:00.002-06:00

I’m surprised that the conservative justices agreed that the warrantless use of a GPS to track a suspect violates the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

SCOTUS UNANIMOUSLY RULES WARRANT NEEDED FOR GPS TRACKING
Associate Justice Antonin Scalia said that the government’s installation of a GPS device, and its use to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a search

By Pete Yost and Jesse H. Holland

Associated Press
January 23, 2012

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects.

The GPS device helped authorities link Washington, D.C., nightclub owner Antoine Jones to a suburban house used to stash money and drugs. He was sentenced to life in prison before the appeals court overturned the conviction.

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia said that the government's installation of a GPS device, and its use to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a search, meaning that a warrant is required.

"By attaching the device to the Jeep" that Jones was using, "officers encroached on a protected area," Scalia wrote.

All nine justices agreed that the placement of the GPS on the Jeep violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

Scalia wrote the main opinion of three in the case. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor.

Sotomayor also wrote one of the two concurring opinions that agreed with the outcome in the Jones case for different reasons.

Justice Samuel Alito also wrote a concurring opinion in which he said the court should have gone further and dealt with GPS tracking of wireless devices, like mobile phones. He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

A federal appeals court in Washington had overturned Jones's drug conspiracy conviction because police did not have a warrant when they installed a GPS device on his vehicle and then tracked his movements for a month. The Supreme Court agreed with the appeals court.

The case is U.S. v. Jones, 10-1259.

OWNER OF JEWISH NEWSPAPER NEEDS TO BE LOCKED UP IN A PADDED CELL

2012-01-24T01:31:00.000-06:00

What a jerk! The Secret Service should go after this head-case full blast, his apology notwithstanding!

ATLANTA JEWISH TIMES PUBLISHER RESIGNS OVER OBAMA ‘ASSASSINATION’ COLUMN
Andrew Adler suggested Israel should assassinate U.S. President Barack Obama to counter Iran’s nuclear weapons program

Haaretz.com
January 23, 2012

The owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, Andrew Adler, who suggested Israel should assassinate U.S. President Barack Obama, has resigned from his post, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on Monday.

Adler, who has since apologized for his article, listed three options for Israel to counter Iran’s nuclear weapons in an article published in his newspaper last Friday. The first is to launch a pre-emptive strike against Hamas and Hezbollah, the second is to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and the third is to “give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.”

Adler goes on to write: “Yes, you read “three correctly.” Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence. Think about it. If have thought of this Tom-Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?"

According to JTA's report, Adler announced Monday that he is “relinquishing all day-to-day activities effective immediately,” and that he named John McCurdy as interim managing editor.

RUNNING HOT, A MAJOR PROBLEM IN ALL POLICE AGENCIES

2012-01-24T01:26:00.000-06:00

Traffic crashes involving cops running hot has long been a serious problem. Younger officers seem to get off by putting the pedal to the metal with lights flashing and siren blaring. The golden rule of running hot is that your emergency lights and siren seek the right of way, they don’t give you the right of way.

There is really no excuse for a police car to exceed 90 mph, even in an ‘officer down’ or ‘shots fired’ call. The difference in time between arriving at a scene when driving 80 or 90 mph and driving 100 or 110 mph is miniscule.

A lot of police car crashes occur when cops are speeding without their emergency lights or siren on. A good way to stop that kind of driving is to make the officer pay for the damages to a police car if the crash was his fault.

LAPD TRIES NEW POLICIES TO CUT COSTLY, DANGEROUS TRAFFIC CRASHES
LAPD officers are involved in an average of one traffic crash a day – they cost taxpayers millions of dollars a year and in some cases result in serious injury or death to other drivrs

By Joel Rubin

Los Angeles Times
January 22, 2012

At any given moment in Los Angeles, scores of police cars are out on the streets — either rushing to calls for help or prowling around in search of trouble.

Despite the training cops receive in how to speed safely through traffic, they are an accident-prone bunch. Police were involved in traffic accidents more than 1,250 times in the last three years — an average of about one a day.

Most of the crashes were minor, but some resulted in life-threatening injuries or totaled police cars, or were the result of the officer violating traffic laws, according to LAPD records. In at least two incidents, the driver of another car was killed.

And at a time when the Los Angeles Police Department is trying to stem the steady stream of lawsuits filed against officers that cost taxpayers millions of dollars each year, traffic accidents remain a significant and costly obstacle. They represent nearly one out of every four lawsuits filed against the department. The city has paid nearly $24 million in settlements or verdicts in about 400 LAPD traffic-related lawsuits over the last nine years and must contend with dozens more cases that remain unresolved, city records show. In all but a few of the closed cases, city officials opted to pay a negotiated settlement instead of taking their chances at a trial — a strong indication that the officers were in the wrong.

"It is a top priority for us to get a comprehensive risk management plan in place, and addressing traffic accidents has to be a big part of that," said Richard Drooyan, president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, the civilian board that sets policy for the LAPD. "We need to look at what kind of training, supervision and policies could be implemented to prevent these accidents."

In a recent article, The Times highlighted a 2009 traffic collision in which a 25-year-old woman was killed when her car was broadsided by an LAPD police cruiser without its emergency lights and siren on. The officers claimed that they were driving between 40 and 45 mph, but after data from an onboard computer showed the car had been traveling nearly 80 mph, the city settled last year with the woman's family for $5 million.

And next month a civil trial is scheduled for another deadly crash involving an LAPD squad car. In that 2010 collision, 27-year-old Jovanna Lugo had backed her car out of her driveway onto the street at night and was hit by a police cruiser. Attorneys representing Lugo's young son and husband alleged in court filings that the officer was speeding without the car's headlights or emergency lights and siren on. Attorneys for the city did not respond to a request for comment.

Lugo's death spurred LAPD officials to reconsider the way the department investigates serious accidents in which officers are suspected of negligence or other significant misconduct, said Cmdr. Andrew Smith. Such investigations now are treated like typical misconduct inquiries, but the department is considering whether to treat them similarly to officer-involved shootings. In shooting inquiries, officers are separated from each other at the scene to avoid collusion, and special teams of detectives spend months gathering evidence and witness testimony. The commission ultimately rules on whether the officers were justified in using force.

In nearly all traffic accidents, the officers are not accused of serious breaches of conduct but instead are faulted for being inattentive. With hundreds of such cases each year, the workload was a major drain on Internal Affairs investigators. So in late 2008, the department switched to a point-accrual system similar to the one the state Department of Motor Vehicles uses for driving violations and accidents.

Under the LAPD's point system, in accidents determined to have been their fault, officers are assigned one, two or four points, depending on the seriousness of the crash. If an officer is issued 3 points in a 24-month period, he or she is required to undergo driver retraining. Cops lose the right to drive for six months if they acquire five points over three years.

Commissioner Alan Skobin, who helped write the new procedures, said that beyond reducing the caseload for Internal Affairs investigators, the plan addresses a fairness issue. "Minor things happen, and we shouldn't always be taking a punishment mode," he said during a discussion of the plan at a recent Police Commission meeting.

Skobin added that he is hopeful the point system will lead to a reduction in the number of crashes caused by officers. With only a few years of statistics, police officials said they cannot yet determine whether the points system is, in fact, contributing to a decrease in the number of accidents. The preliminary figures indicate it has done so, as the number of crashes each year appear to have declined between 2009 and 2011.

However, the point system appears to have done nothing to help the department as it tries to slow the number of lawsuits people file against it. In a three-year period since the point system was implemented, 205 traffic-related lawsuits were filed, according to city records. That is 40% more lawsuits than were filed in the three years before the points plan went into effect.

Drooyan said he plans a thorough review of the points system to determine whether more changes are needed in how the department deals with traffic accidents.

Crashes account for about a quarter of the nearly 1,900 lawsuits brought against the Police Department since 2002, city records show. Large numbers of lawsuits involve civil rights violations and workplace issues, such as harassment and retaliation, and can result in tens of millions of dollars in payments.

In cases that have been closed, the city has paid a total of $138 million of taxpayer money in settlements and verdicts — more than the combined cost of resolving lawsuits brought against all other city departments. Elected officials have long criticized the LAPD for its inability to address problems that lead to lawsuits.

Repeatedly over the past year, Drooyan and Chief Charlie Beck have identified lawsuits as one of the most pressing issues facing the department. Beck has said the department needs to be better at identifying problem officers and correcting behavior before lawsuits result. Coordination between the LAPD and the city attorney's office, which defends the city in lawsuits, has also been uneven. Beck recently created and filled a new risk manager position, saying he is hopeful the addition will help matters.

MURDERER DOING TIME LOOKING FOR ROMANCE ON FACEBOOK

2012-01-24T01:22:00.001-06:00

67 prior convictions and he got only nine years for shooting some bloke dead? What kind of shit is that? There's something drastically wrong with the Australian justice system.

Thanks to Dorina Lisson for the heads-up on this story.

BROWN PRISON INMATES SET-UP FACEBOOK PAGE TO FIND PENPALS
A LOVESICK killer locked away inside one of Victoria's toughest prisons is looking for romance online

By Wayne Flower

Herald Sun
January 23, 2012

Dressed in his baggy black prison-issued shorts and a white T-shirt, Marcus Phillips, also known as Smiley, grins from ear-to-ear with delusions of love.

A Facebook profile of the killer, who shot dead 47-year old Michael Horn in 2005 after a dispute, describes Phillips as a happy, easygoing bloke who enjoys a chat.

It proudly lists the 41-year-old as doing nine years at Barwon Prison for manslaughter, showcasing his great sense of humour, love of rock 'n' roll and need of female company.

The site, titled Guys At Barwon Prison That Want Girls To Write To Them, has been active for just over a year and provides the prison's postal address.

Barwon houses criminals such as the "Mornington Monster" John Sharpe, child killer Arthur Freeman and rapist John Xydias.

Phillips received six years' jail with a non-parole period of four years when found guilty of manslaughter.

The sentence was increased on appeal to nine years with a minimum of seven, making him eligible for parole at the end of this year.

The court heard Phillips had a long criminal history comprising 67 convictions, including a year's jail for reckless conduct endangering life and assaulting a police officer.

The Police Association's Inspector Bruce McKenzie said the page was offensive.

"Surely he has wreaked enough havoc on society and that Facebook site should be taken down," he said, calling on Corrections to investigate how the photographs from inside jail appeared online.

"Clearly a privilege here has been abused and hopefully the prison authorities deal with him in a fairly severe way."

A Corrections Victoria spokesman said the website should be taken down.

"This site and post seem to have been created by someone outside the prison," he said.

"We would ask they remove it out of respect for victims."

THE GHOST OF JACK DANIEL’S DID IT

2012-01-23T01:57:00.001-06:00

Thanks to Aussie Dorina Lisson for the heads-up on this Wisconsin ghost story.

Jack Daniel’s ghost often shows up in domestic disputes.

FON DU LAC MAN SAYS WIFE PUNCHED, STRANGLED BY GHOST
By Russell Plummer

The Northwestern
January 19, 2012

A Fond du Lac man was arrested after he told police a “ghost” punched and strangled his wife.

Michael F. West, 41, of 281 Fond du Lac Ave., was charged Wednesday with strangulation and misdemeanors of battery, disorderly conduct and resisting or obstructing an officer.

At about 8 p.m. Jan. 15, police arrived at West’s home to find the woman crying and bleeding from her nose.

According to allegations contained in the criminal complaint:

The woman was upset after West blamed her for the house being foreclosed. When the woman pointed out that she works while West sits on the couch, he became angry.

West strangled the woman twice. He then told her to call the police. As she went to grab the phone, West punched her repeatedly in the face.

West told police the woman got her injuries from falling. When asked specifically about the neck injuries, West responded, “A ghost did it.”

Officers had to struggle with an intoxicated West to place him in handcuffs after he made the ghost comment.

The woman said West has made comments about killing her.

West is being held in the Fond du Lac County Jail on $1,000 bail. He was ordered to stay sober while the case is pending.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Jan. 27.

MOTORMOUTH CHAMPIONS

2012-01-23T01:40:00.001-06:00

Last week, President Hugo Chavez spoke for more than nine hours at Venezuela’s National Assembly during his annual report to the nation. I believe that even beats Fidel Castro’s former marathon speeches.

Here in Houston, we have a U.S. Congresswoman who could give Hugo a run for his money. Once Sheila Jackson-Lee opens her big mouth you can’t shut her up. Many of us would like to send Jackson-Lee to Cuba or Venezuela where her motormouth would fit right in.

QUALITY CONTROL

2012-01-23T01:36:00.000-06:00

A toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes, without the tube inside. This was due to the way the production line was set up, and people with experience in designing production lines will tell you how difficult it is to have everything happen with timings so precise that every single unit coming out of it is perfect 100% of the time. Small variations in the environment (which can’t be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean you must have quality assurance checks smartly distributed acr oss the line so that customers all the way down to the supermarket don’t get pissed off and buy another product instead.

Understanding how important that was, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the company together, and they decided to start a new project, in which they would hire an external engineering company to solve their empty box's problem, as their engineering department was already too stretched to take on any extra effort.

The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, third-parties selected, and six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution — on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time.

They solved the problem by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box weighed less than it should. The line would stop; someone would walk over and yank the defective box off of it, pressing another button when done to re-start the line.

A while later, the CEO decides to have a look at the Return On Investment of the project: amazing results! No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place. Very few customer complaints, and they were gaining market share. “That’s some money well spent!” – he said, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report.

It turns out, the number of defects picked up by the scales was 0 after three weeks of production use. It should have picked up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report. He requested an inquiry, and after some investigation, the engineers come back saying the report was actually correct. The scales really weren't picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good.

Puzzled, the CEO traveled down to the factory, and walked up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed.

A few feet before the scale, there was a cheapdesk fan, blowing the empty boxes out of the belt and into a bin.

“Oh, that,” says one of the workers — “one of the guys put it there 'cause, he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang."

A NEW 2012 FORD

2012-01-23T01:34:00.000-06:00

Renault and Ford have joined forces to create the perfect small car for women.

Mixing the Renault 'Clio' and the Ford 'Taurus' they have designed the 'Clitaurus'.

It comes in pink, and the average male car thief won't be able to find it - let alone turn it on - even if someone tells him where it is and how to do it.

Rumor has it though, that it leaks transmission fluid once a month, and can be a real bitch to start in the morning!

Some have reported that on cold winter mornings, when you really need it, you can't get it to turn over

New models are initially fun to own, but very costly to maintain, and horribly expensive to get rid of.

Used models may initially appear to have curb appeal and a low price, but eventually have an increased appetite for fuel, and the curb weight typically increases with age.

Manufacturers are baffled as to how the size of the trunk increases, but say that the paint may just make it LOOK bigger.

This model is not expected to reach collector status.

Most owners find it is best to lease one, and replace it each year.

99 PERCENT, 1 PERCENT

2012-01-22T01:14:00.002-06:00

The Occupy Wall Street movement was started to protest the unequal distribution of wealth, where 1 percent are filthy rich while 99 percent of us poor slobs are allegedly being screwed by the 1 percent. There is also a 99 percent, 1 percent divide among California welfare recipients.

The other day I received a video clip of David Spady, the State Director of Americans for Prosperity in California, talking about California’s welfare funds being spent on vacations in Hawaii and Las Vegas, as well as on cruise ships sailing out of Miami.

The video was made well over a year ago. The fraud occurred from January 2007 through May 2010. Spady leaves the impression that this type of welfare fraud is the case, not the exception. He got his information from a Los Angeles Times report (below). Spady conveniently failed to mention that the $69 million represents only one percent of the almost $11 billion in welfare funds allocated during the time covered by the LA Times report.

That’s not to say that welfare fraud isn’t a serious problem. Of course it is, and $69 million is nothing to sneeze at. But in this case, California had a problem where one percent of its welfare funds were spent on vacations. How much of the other 99 percent was spent fraudulently is another question.

$69 MILLION IN CALIFORNIA WELFARE MONEY DRAWN OUT OF STATE
By Jack Dolan

Los Angeles Times
October 4, 2010

More than $69 million in California welfare money, meant to help the needy pay their rent and clothe their children, has been spent or withdrawn outside the state in recent years, including millions in Las Vegas, hundreds of thousands in Hawaii and thousands on cruise ships sailing from Miami. State-issued aid cards have been used at hotels, shops, restaurants, ATMs and other places in 49 other states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, according to data obtained by The Times from the California Department of Social Services. Las Vegas drew $11.8 million of the cash benefits, far more than any other destination. The money was accessed from January 2007 through May 2010.

Welfare recipients must prove they can’t afford life’s necessities without government aid: A single parent with two children generally must earn less than $14,436 a year to qualify for the cash assistance and becomes ineligible once his or her income exceeds about $20,000, said Lizelda Lopez, spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services.

Round-trip flights from Los Angeles to Honolulu on Orbitz.com Sunday started at $419 — more than 80% of the average monthly cash benefit for a single parent of two on CalWorks, the state’s main aid program. “How they can go somewhere like Hawaii and be legit on aid … they can’t,” said Robert Hollenbeck, a fraud investigator for the Fresno County district attorney’s office. “This is money for basic subsistence needs.”

The $387,908 accessed in Hawaii includes transactions at more than a thousand big-box stores, grocery stores, convenience shops and ATMs on all the major islands. At least $234,000 was accessed on Oahu, $70,626 on Maui, $39,883 on Hawaii and $22,170 on Kauai. The list includes $12,433 spent at the upscale Ala Moana shopping center, $3,030 spent at a group of gift shops next to Jimmy Buffett‘s Beachcomber restaurant on Waikiki Beach and $2,146 withdrawn from ATMs on the island of Lanai, home to a pair of Four Seasons resorts and little else. “If it’s on Lanai, that should trigger an investigation,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. “California taxpayers, who are struggling to keep their own jobs, are subsidizing other people’s vacations. That’s absurd.”

Of the nearly $12 million accessed in Las Vegas, more than $1 million was spent or withdrawn at shops and casino hotels on, or within a few blocks of, the 4.5-mile strip. The list includes $8,968 at the Tropicana, $7,995 at the Venetian and its Grand Canal Shoppes, and $1,332 at Tix 4 Tonight, seller of discount admission for such acts as Cirque du Soleil. Although many Las Vegas casinos block the use of welfare cards in ATMs on gambling floors, more than $34,700 has been spent or withdrawn from the ATM at a 7-Eleven in the shadow of Steve Wynn’s new Encore casino and a couple of blocks south of Circus Circus….

The data show addresses of stores and ATM locations where the cards have been used and the amounts of the transactions by year. They do not reveal the identities of the welfare recipients or show how many users visited a given retailer.

Of the $1.5 million accessed in Florida, $13,109 was spent or withdrawn in South Beach, most of that at bars and restaurants along trendy Lincoln Road. More than $7,000 was withdrawn from ATMs a few hours north, at Walt Disney World.

The data also show $16,010 withdrawn from 14 cruise ships sailing from ports around the world — Long Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing. Eight sail primarily from Miami.

The out-of-state spending accounts for less than 1% of the $10.8 billion spent by welfare recipients during the period covered, and advocates note that there are legitimate reasons to spend aid money outside of California. From the data provided, it cannot be determined whether any of the expenditures resulted from fraud. “I think when somebody hears it’s in a fancy hotel in Hawaii or Vegas, it’s too easy to assume the [welfare recipient] is visiting that place and it wasn’t somebody who stole their card,” said Jessica Bartholow, a legislative advocate for the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

There is no rule preventing welfare recipients from leaving California, as long as they get clearance from their county case worker to be absent from the program’s 32-hour-a-week job training requirement. County investigators, who state authorities say are responsible for rooting out fraud and abuse, typically don’t question a recipient’s whereabouts until transactions on a welfare card show that he or she has been gone for more than 30 days.

“If it’s a one-time thing in Miami, we would never check that out,” said John Haley, commander of the financial crimes division of the San Diego County district attorney’s office, who said 24% of all new welfare applications in his jurisdiction contain some form of fraud. “We look for patterns of abuse.” In Los Angeles County, investigators hadn’t been checking until a recipient was gone for three months, said Department of Public Social Services Director Philip Browning. The inability to do more was “really just a resource issue,” he said. Following questions from The Times, Browning said investigators would start inquiring once the data show that a recipient has been gone for more than 30 days.

Many recipients travel to other states in an emergency such as a death in the family, investigators say. But with government resources scarce, it’s difficult to sort those cases from incidents of abuse. An anti-fraud unit in Orange County, which won praise from state officials last year for saving the state millions, has since had to slash its budget and lay off 15 investigators, said Paul Bartlett, commander of the county district attorney’s Bureau of Investigation. Those cuts saved $900,000 in operating expenses but allowed “an estimated $9.6 million in suspected fraud payments out the door,” according to an Orange County Grand Jury report released in May.

A state audit last year found that none of California’s 58 counties was adequately following up on information that could help root out fraud, including monthly computer matches that list clients who are receiving duplicate aid from other states, those who are ineligible because they’re in prison and others who have died.

ROMNEY COMPARED WITH A STATUE OF ROMNEY

2012-01-22T01:09:00.002-06:00

Friday in Charleston, S.C., during a rally at the College of Charleston, TV comedian Stephen Colbert cracked, "The only difference between Mitt Romney and a statue of Mitt Romney is that the statue never changes its position."

Colbert sure has got Mitt Romney pegged right! No further comment is needed.

TWO ALLIGATORS

2012-01-22T00:55:00.002-06:00

Two alligators were sitting around talking, and the smaller alligator turned to the bigger one and said, 'I can't understand how you can be so much bigger than me. We're the same age; we were the same size as kids. I just don't get it.'

'Well,' said the big gator, what have you been eating?'

'Politicians, same as you,' replied the small gator.

'Hmm. Well, where do you catch them?'

'Down the other side of the swamp near the parking lot by the Capitol.'

'Same here. Hmm. How do you catch them?'

'Well, I crawl up under one of their Lexus cars and wait for one to unlock the car door. Then I jump out, grab them by the leg, shake the shit out of them and eat 'em!'

'Ah!' says the big alligator, 'I think I see your problem. You're not getting any real nourishment. See, by the time you finish shaking the shit out of a politician, there's nothing left but an asshole and a briefcase.'

NEWT FIRES BACK WITH GUNS BLAZING

2012-01-21T01:21:00.003-06:00

When CNN’s John King started off Thursday’s Republican debate by asking Newt Gingrich about his ex-wife’s accusation in the Washington Post and on ABC’s Nightline that he asked her for an open marriage, Newt fired back with guns blazing. And to the audience’s delight, he excoriated King and the media for their bias against the Republicans in favor of Obama.

Whether they like Gingrich or not, and regardless of political affiliation, all Americans should applaud Newt for putting the media in its place.

Here is a transcript of the exchange between Gingrich and King:

JOHN KING: And just as speaker Gingrich surged into contention here in South Carolina, a direct fresh character attack on the Speaker.

And Mr Speaker, I want to start with that this evening.

As you know, your ex-wife gave an interview to ABC News and another interview with The Washington Post. And this story has now gone viral on the internet.

In it, she says that you came to her in 1999, at a time when you were having an affair. She says you asked her, sir, to enter into an open marriage.

Would you like to take some time to respond to that?

GINGRICH: No, but I will.

(APPLAUSE)

GINGRICH: I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Is that all you want to say, sir?

GINGRICH: Let me finish.

KING: Please.

GINGRICH: Every person in here knows personal pain. Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. To take an ex-wife and make it two days before the primary a significant question for a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.

(APPLAUSE)

My – my two daughters – my two daughters wrote the head of ABC and made the point that it was wrong, that they should pull it, and I am frankly astounded that CNN would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: As you noted, Mr Speaker, this story did not come from our network. As you also know, it is a subject of conversation on the campaign. I'm not – I get your point. I take your point.

GINGRICH: John, John, it was repeated by your network. You chose to start the debate with it. Don't try to blame somebody else. You and your staff chose to start this debate with it.

(APPLAUSE)

Let me be quite clear. Let me be quite clear. The story is false. Every personal friend I have who knew us in that period said the story was false. We offered several of them to ABC to prove it was false. They weren't interested because they would like to attack any Republican. They're attacking the governor. They're attacking me. I'm sure they'll presently get around to Senator Santorum and Congressman Paul.

I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.

(APPLAUSE)

THOUSANDS OF DEAD AMERICANS, FOUR FRENCH DEAD

2012-01-21T01:16:00.000-06:00

On D-Day, when we landed on the beaches of Normandy on the way to liberate the French from the Nazis in WWII, 2,500 American troops lost their lives.

Earlier this week, a rogue Afghan soldier killed four French soldiers and wounded 15 others. On Friday, responding to this incident, French President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to pull all 4,000 French troops in the NAT) force out of Afghanistan.

2,500 American soldiers gave their lives on the first day of the fight for the liberation of France. Did we pull our troops back to England? No, we went on, loosing many more of our soldiers before France was finally liberated. But the French are threatening to pull their troops out of Afghanistan because four of their soldiers were killed. Fuck Sarkozy and his fellow frogs!

SIX BLACK AND HISPANIC TWO-LEGGED YOUNG ANIMALS MAUL VIETNAM VET

2012-01-21T01:12:00.000-06:00

Yes, that’s right, they’re animals, wild ones at that. There is no place for these pukes in the juvenile justice system. They deserve to spend the rest of their lives cage up in an adult prison, no ands, ifs or buts about it.

‘THEY SMASHED EVERY BONE IN HIS FACE’: VIETNAM VETERAN, 64, BEATEN TO A PULP BY GANG OF TEEN THUGS
He was just walking down the street to meet his wife when he was attacked from behind

Mail Online
January 20, 2012

A Vietnam veteran was so badly beaten up in a random attack by a gang of teenagers that his skull was fractured.

Edward Schaefer, 64, who lost an eye while serving his country, was attacked from behind as he walked to meet his wife at a bus stop in the Olney district of Philadelphia.

Police have now arrested one of the six male suspects, after dozens of tip-offs from the public and help from schools, CBS News reported.

But the search is on for the remaining members of the gang who left Mr Schaefer with injuries to his head and hands.

Officers say one of the gang started the attack and then the others joined in.

The attack would of been a lot worse had it not been for the intervention of a good Samaritan who scared off the thugs, say police.

Donald Jones told CBS: 'He fell and that’s when I came across the street. When they saw me, that’s when they scattered.'

'He was trying to talk and I said: "No, stay there. I got you."'

Immediately after the attack the teenagers fled on foot.

Kate Schaefer, the victim’s wife, told Eyewitness News, 'They just smashed every bone in his face. I can’t tell you the words. I guess I was just happy that he was alive.'

The attack happened shortly after 6pm on Tuesday.

Lt. George McClay said.'These animals are specializing on our elderly people out here and a gentleman who served our country.'

He added: 'I’m disgusted by this whole thing. I’m surprised he survived.' Lt McClay said 'one more shot the wrong way' and Mr Schaefer could have died.

The suspects who are described as six black and Hispanic males, between the ages of 16 to 18.

Police are offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to their conviction.

CROSS THE CARTELS AND YOU MAY LOSE YOUR HEAD, EVEN IN T HE U.S.

2012-01-21T01:10:00.000-06:00

From Borderland Beat:

EXPERT SAYS BEHEADINGS IN U.S. LOOK LIKE WORK OF CARTELS

KRGV Channel 5
January 18,2012

Three beheadings in two different states and they happened here in the United States, not Mexico.

Former DEA supervisor Phil Jordan says all three beheadings have cartel written all over them. They happened in Arizona and Oklahoma in the past year.

A murder mystery is now unraveling on a stretch of North Reservation Road in Tucson, Ariz. County workers found a headless man lying on the side of the road Jan. 6. The man's hands and feet were reportedly missing, too.

"It would lead me to believe the message wanted to be sent. This is one of the ways they do it in Mexico, Colombia and other places," says Jordan.

Jordan says the cartels are getting bolder in carrying out their beheadings across the border. He says we only used to see these crimes in Mexico.

"They don't have any borders," says Jordan.

More than 600 miles from the border, a 19-year-old human trafficking victim was found beheaded in Oklahoma. Carina Saunders was stuffed into a bag and left in a grocery store parking lot.

"People know if they get on the wrong side of the fence, they'll be dealt with," says Jordan.

The police chief in the area says two men running the trafficking ring killed Saunders to send a message to the other victims. Jordan says the cartels' calling card is all over this case. Trafficking and smuggling are their top moneymakers. Revenge is the price of doing business.

"Definitely a cartel hit," says Jordan.

Investigators in Chandler, Ariz., say cartel operatives came from Mexico to kill 38-year-old Martin Alejandro Cota Monroy. His beheaded body was found in his apartment.

"One is too many; two is too many. Three should send an alarm," says Jordan.

He says investigators were too late to stop the killings three times in the last 12 months. Jordan says agents are trying to develop more informants to get to the cartels before they can commit the crimes. He says the cartels will only specifically target their victims and aren't interested in random beheadings.

UNIQUE PAROLE OF UNWANTED ‘SPEED FREAK KILLER’ COMES TO AN EARLY END

2012-01-21T00:57:00.001-06:00

It looks like self-proclaimed ‘World Famous Bounty Hunter & Godfather of Bail’ Leonard Padilla pushed one of the ‘Speed Freak Killers’ over the edge while the other killer keeps gaming the system.

BOUNTY HUNTER CALLED CALIFORNIA PAROLEE BEFORE SUICIDE
By Paul Elias

Associated Press
January 19, 2012

The apparent suicide of a parolee suspected of killing as many as 19 people occurred after a bounty hunter called him earlier in the day with an ominous warning.

Bounty hunter Leonard Padilla told paroled killer Loren Herzog that his partner in crime — who is languishing on death row — was prepared to disclose the location of missing bodies and was trying to pin their murders on him.

Padilla said in a phone interview Wednesday that he agreed to pay Herzog's co-conspirator Wesley Shermantine to disclose the bodies' locations. Padilla says he called Herzog on Monday afternoon to warn him to get a lawyer after Shermantine implicated him in the alleged killings.

"There's a certain way to do things with felons," Padilla said. "I didn't want this to come as a surprise to him."

Authorities found Herzog dead inside his Lassen County trailer hours later. Herzog is believed to have hanged himself in his state-issued trailer just outside the gates of the High Desert State Prison in Susanville.

"I told him I was communicating with Shermantine," said Padilla, who agreed to pay Shermantine a little more than $30,000 if bodies were found. "He knew what was coming down the road."

Padilla said he hoped to recoup the payment through outstanding rewards that family members of victims and others offered for information about their loved ones. At least two families had at one time each offered $20,000 for information about their missing daughters.

Lassen County Sheriff Dean Growdon said "all evidence indicates" that Herzog's death was a suicide.

Growdon said Herzog left a note, but he declined to disclose details other than to say the note was meant for his family and "made no reference to his criminal history, crime victims, etc." Herzog was married with three children.

High Desert Prison officials were asked to check on Herzog in his trailer Monday after his parole agent received a warning that the batteries in Herzog's electronic tracking device on his ankle were running low.

Herzog became a pariah upon his parole to the trailer in California's remote northeast corner in 2010. He was released after an appeals court tossed out his confession as illegally coerced and prosecutors reduced three murder convictions and a 78-year prison sentence to a manslaughter charge and 14-year term. Herzog's parole caused an uproar in San Joaquin County, which persuaded prison officials to locate him elsewhere. Lassen County and Susanville officials then filed a lawsuit to bar his settling in the region after prison officials placed him in the trailer outside the prison, which allowed him to come and go.

Herzog was allowed to remain in the trailer pending an appeal in that suit. The trailer on state property was seen as the best solution for a parolee unwelcomed everywhere in the state.

Investigators believe Herzog and Shermantine killed as many as 19 people during a methamphetamine spree in the 1980s and 1990s. The two were dubbed the "Speed Freak Killers" when arrested in 1999. Each blamed the other for masterminding the murders.

Shermantine is on death row after he was convicted of killing four, including 16-year-old Chevelle "Chevy" Wheeler in 1985. In letters to the Stockton Record, Shermantine has promised to lead authorities to the bodies of Wheeler, Cyndi Vanderheiden and a covered well holding at least 10 more bodies.

Shermantine has provided false leads before, including during his 2001 trial when he demanded $20,000 in exchange for revealing the location of Wheeler and Vanderheiden. The families and district attorney refused the deal. Then Shermantine turned down a prosecution offer to sentence him to life without parole instead of death row in exchange for information about the missing bodies.

Shermantine also wrote the Stockton Record last year offering to return Herzog to prison by providing the information. In return, he wanted prosecutors to agree to let him out of San Quentin in 10 years.

A search in December of Calaveras County property once owned by Shermantine's parents yielded nothing. But Padilla claims investigators were searching in the wrong area and said California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation investigators and FBI agents were planning to transport Shermantine to the area for a search Wednesday.

But San Joaquin County Sheriff Steve Moore put a halt to those plans late Tuesday after belatedly learning about them.

"Security is the main issue — Shermantine is on death row and has nothing left to lose," sheriff spokesman Les Garcia said. "He's done this before. He has led law enforcement on a wild goose chase, and it's kind of hard to believe what he's saying now."

The San Joaquin sheriff has scheduled a Friday meeting with the Corrections Department, FBI, Calaveras County sheriff and others to discuss Shermantine's latest claims. One of Moore's proposals to live-stream a search into Shermantine's cell so the inmate can direct searchers without leaving death row, which is in San Quentin Prison in Marin County.

A Corrections spokesman declined to comment. An FBI spokesman didn't return a phone call.

Wheeler's father, reached by phone in his Crossfield, Tenn., home said he doesn't believe Shermantine either.

"This is the second time he's pulled this, and I don't believe a word he says," Raymond Wheeler said. "I think he's just playing a game."

SUDDENLY IT WAS LIKE HIS WHOLE LIFE FLASHED BEFORE HIS EYES

2012-01-21T00:54:00.000-06:00

RICK PERRY EXPERIENCES OVERWHELMING FEELING OF CLARITY AND CONTENTMENT IN FINAL MOMENTS BEFORE DEATH OF CAMPAIGN

The Onion
January 19, 2011

COLUMBIA, SC—Texas governor Rick Perry experienced a profound moment of peace and serenity Thursday morning just before his campaign to be president of the United States slipped away into the darkness, meeting its death. "It's all so clear now—so breathtakingly, beautifully clear," said Perry, tears streaming down his face as his bid for the 2012 Republican nomination drew its final, gasping breaths. "All that time I spent accusing people who disagreed with me of treason, labeling more or less all Muslims as terrorists, and generally alienating the American public, I should have been reaching out—I should have been celebrating our differences, and learning from them. It's ironic, but now, with the end so very near, I finally know what it means to be a good candidate. Goodbye." Gov. Perry told reporters he plans to return to Austin, where he will lead a state-sponsored Christian prayer service, mandatory for all residents, on the steps of the Texas Capitol.

DEBUNKING THE ‘LESS HARMFUL THAN ALCOHOL’ MYTH

2012-01-20T01:13:00.002-06:00

The proponents of pot keep harping that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

The current issue of The California Narcotic Officer reported a link between the regular use of marijuana and the early onset of psychotic disorders.

The study proved that users who smoked two joints of marijuana a day developed psychotic disorders an average 2.7 years earlier than people who did not use pot. On the other hand, alcohol was found not to be associated with early onset of mental disorders. The report was published in the June 2011 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry and concluded that the results "provide evidence for a relationship between cannabis use and earlier onset of psychotic illness.” The study was conducted by researchers in England, Australia and the United States.

I know that the pro-pot crowd will say that this is just some more phony crap put out by the narcs, but that’s not what the scientific research shows.

Another recent study reported that among 190 patients with schizophrenia, 121 of whom had used marijuana, cannabis appeared to affect the age of psychosis onset in a subgroup of 44 patients. The affected patients either had their first symptoms within a month of smoking pot for the first time, or experienced a severe worsening of psychotic symptoms each time they smoked. That study was conducted by Marie-Odile Krebs, professor of psychiatry at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) laboratory in France, and her colleagues.

There have been many other studies that have indicated a link between pot use and the onset of psychotic disorders.

And what about the problem of driving under the influence of pot? In California alone, nearly 1,000 deaths and injuries each year are blamed directly on drugged drivers, according to CHP data. Law enforcement puts much of the blame on the rapid growth of medical marijuana use in the last decade.

"Marijuana is a significant and important contributing factor in a growing number of fatal accidents," said Gil Kerlikowske, director of National Drug Control Policy in the White House and former Seattle police chief. "There is no question, not only from the data but from what I have heard in my career as a law enforcement officer."

But none of all that deters the pot crowd from there relentless onslaught with the myth of marijuana being less harmful than alcohol.

Don’t get me wrong though. I know that alcohol is a dangerous substance. No one needs to remind me of that. I’m merely pointing out that marijuana is NOT less harmful than alcohol.

Now what about all those glowing tributes put out by the proponents of medical marijuana? Well, the feds strongly contend that marijuana has no legitimate place in medicine.

Last July, the federal government ruled that marijuana has no accepted medical use and should remain classified as a highly dangerous drug like heroin. In a letter, DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart declared that marijuana "has a high potential for abuse," "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States" and "lacks accepted safety for use under medical supervision." The letter and 37 pages of supporting documents were published in the Federal Register.

Despite all the studies showing that marijuana is not the benign substance its users and proponents claim, there is a good chance that the idiot voters of California will approve a measure to legalize pot. But even if they don’t, for all practical purposes, pot has already been legalized by the way the medical marijuana law is being perverted by prescribing doctors, marijuana growers and pot dispensers.

AUSTRALIAN PRISON INMATES RIOT OVER TOOTHBRUSHES AND SHIRTS

2012-01-20T01:09:00.000-06:00

Dorina Lisson sent me the following description of an Australian prison riot:

__There was a prison riot yesterday, in one of the Victorian medium secuity prisons. It lasted some 24 hours and nobody was hurt. A few hot-heads burnt and destroyed some prison property and staged a protest on the prison rooftop. When night time arrived they got cold and asked for bed sheets, which they put over their heads and body - looking like ghosts. Then, they got hungry and asked for pizzas to be delivered. They ate the pizzas. One prisoner stole a prison van and was driving it like a hoon - doing burn-outs within the prison grounds. The prisoners refused to come down from the rooftop and eventually tear-gas was used by authorities. The prisoners surrended.

__Why were the prisoners protesting? Because they don't like the prison-authorized tooth brushes and they don't want to wear the issued shirts. (Australian prison clothing is blue/green jeans and shirt.) The prisoners claim they don't like prison clothing and want to wear their own clothes. Also, they want more television channels to choose from.

__Many years ago, Australian prisoners won a long battle to refuse to display their prison ID's.

I believe the prison authorities handled this riot poorly. When the rioters on the roof got cold, I sure as hell would not have sent them anything to keep them warm. And when they got hungry, I wouldn’t have sent them pizzas or anything else for that matter.

Cold? Come on down and return to your cells. Hungry? Come on down and return to your cells. Otherwise, stay on the roof and freeze your assess off and forget about getting anything to eat. I think that under those circumstances, they would have returned to their cells sooner or later. Despite giving them everything they wanted, the rioters still had to be tear-gassed down.

And what’s this crap about giving in to their refusal to display their IDs? Who in the hell is running Australia’s prison system? It doesn’t appear to be the prison authorities.

Dorina said that all Australian prisons have an elite Security and Emergency Services Group, a highly trained specialist squad developed to quell prison riots, usually by negotiating with the rioting prisoners. The group's main priority is that nobody gets hurt.

As far as I’m concerned, all they did was to give the rooftop rioters everything they wanted. That's not negotiating, that's capitulating. If they had let the rioters shiver in the cold while going hungry, the assholes probably would have come down and gone back to their cells.

A SECOND AMENDMENT BELIEVER

2012-01-20T01:07:00.000-06:00

Thank God this little old lady was armed and knew how to use her gun. If the anti-gunners had their way, she could have been raped and even murdered.

LITTLE OLD LADY, 1, SCUMBAG BREAK IN ARTIST, 0
By Bob Walsh

PACOVILLA Corrections blog
January 19, 2012

Jesse Theis used to be a burglar. He is now compost, thanks to a 68-year old homeowner. Thursday, two weeks ago, Jesse was released from the Shasta County Jail due to overcrowding and realignment inmates. Friday morning early he tried to break into a home owned by the aforementioned woman, Donna Hopper. He tried to climb in through her bedroom window. She shot him twice. He died. End of story. Don’t you love happy endings?

WONDER WOMAN

2012-01-20T01:03:00.000-06:00

I’d have to say she was brave, lucky and stupid.

WOMAN FIGHTS OFF SIX THUGS
By Bob Walsh

PACOVILLA Corrections blog
January 19, 2012

A woman in the courtyard of her Stockton apartment happened to see a man trying to get through a gate at the complex Tuesday night about 8:40 p.m. She had reason to believe that he was a burglar and confronted the man. He called out to five of his buddies and the six of them attacked the woman. The woman, however, came up with a toad sticker and shanked on of her assailants twice. He fled, then called for a meat wagon.

All six dirtbags were caught by the local constabulary and identified by the victim. They are all being charged with ADW and conspiracy. They range in age from 13 to 35.

It might not have been a smart thing for the victim to do, but I can understand why she did it.

CIVIL LIBERTARIANS CALL FOUL

2012-01-20T00:59:00.001-06:00

The left, of course, always sees a dark side to any new police technology.

NYPD TESTING SCANNERS TO REVEAL CONCEALED GUNS
The technology, similar to infrared imaging, can detect a natural energy know as terahertz radiation

UPI
January 19, 2012

NEW YORK — New York City police say they are testing a new way to find concealed guns by using radiation scanners that can detect people carrying firearms.

NYPD Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the new technology can reveal a firearm concealed under clothing, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.

The technology, similar to infrared imaging, can detect a natural energy known as terahertz radiation emitted by the human body, Kelly said during his State of the NYPD address Tuesday.

Because that energy cannot travel through metal, a concealed gun can be detected from the image captured by the detector, Kelly said.

"This technology has shown a great deal of promise as a way of detecting weapons without a physical search," he said.

The technology has been undergoing testing by the NYPD and the U.S. Department of Defense for the past three years.

The NYPD hopes to install the heat-seeking devices on police vehicles in the near future, Kelly said.

"We want to use new technology to protect the public and police officers from illegal guns," he said.

But civil libertarians say they worry the scanning devices will be unable to distinguish between a gun and other harmless metal objects such as an iPod.

If the technology only picks up only fuzzy images of possible guns, civil liberties lawyer Norman Siegel said, it could prompt police to make unwarranted stops.

"It will make an already aggressive policy of stop, question and frisk seem tame," he said.

IT’S PAST TIME TO CHANGE OUR JUVENILE LAWS AND STOP CLASSIFYING DANGEROUS YOUTHS AS DELINQUENTS

2012-01-19T01:34:00.000-06:00

Our outmoded juvenile laws were designed for "delinquents in need of help" on the assumption that children are still in a developmental stage and are incapable of forming criminal intent or understanding the consequences of their wrongful acts.

Our state and federal laws have set an arbitrary age, usually 18, at which an offender is judged to be an adult. In some states it is 16 or 17. If a juvenile commits a really serious crime, he can be referred from a juvenile jurisdiction to an adult court.

I've always believed that setting an arbitrary age divide was a lot of horseshit. Delinquents are those little farts who are truants or commit petty crimes, not those assholes that shoot up neighborhoods, sell dope, forcibly rape women, commit armed robberies and other serious crimes.

Our laws on juveniles should be rewritten to protect the public from young criminals. Instead of letting a juvenile court determine whether a juvenile should be tried as an adult, it should be the other way around. For serious crimes, a youth should be handled as an adult from the get-go and then the courts can determine whether or not he should be referred to a juvenile court as a delinquent.

That’s my take on how our laws should be rewritten to handle young pukes like this 14-year old worthless piece of shit.

14-YEAR OLD WANTED IN TWO RAPES SURRENDERS
By Bob Walsh

PACOVILLA Corrections blog
January 17, 2012

A 14-year old suspected in two armed robberies and rapes surrendered to the cops today.

Brionn Glasper was wanted in the robbery and rape of two women, both 28, in two separate incidents over six days in Oakland. The cops took the unusual step of releasing his name, though not his photo due to legal issues, to the press while he was being sought.

The first victim was attacked at 10:00 p.m. on January 6. She said a young man who was possibly simulating having a gun walked up to her, demanded her wallet and raped her. The second victim was attacked about 9:30 p.m. on January 12 by a young man on a bicycle. Both women were forced to isolated areas where they were sexually assaulted.

Glasper surrendered at Juvenile Hall in San Leandro about 10:00 a.m. today. I wonder if that was wishful thinking on his part? With luck this little shit will be prosecuted as an adult for kidnapping, robbery and rape. It’s times like this where a reasonable person gets angry that the Supreme Court outlawed execution of juveniles, no matter how heinous their offense. If I remember correctly, Chessman was executed for kidnapping under roughly similar circumstances, though he was of course not a juvenile when he committed his infamous “red light robberies.” Nice thing about trying the little bastard as an adult, the county won’t have to pay to keep him locked up.

HEY KIDS, THE COURTS SAY YOU CAN CALL YOUR SCHOOL PRINCIPAL A ‘BIG FAG’ AND A ‘BIG WHORE’

2012-01-19T01:31:00.000-06:00

But I believe school officials would still be able to sue those kids for defamation of character.

SUPREME COURT TO PRINCIPALS: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
By David G. Savage

Jewish World Review
January 18, 2012

WASHINGTON— School officials were put on notice they can be sued for violating the First Amendment if they discipline students for vulgar and malicious postings on home computers.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down appeals from two Pennsylvania school districts that were successfully sued by students who were suspended for creating mock profiles of their principals as sex addicts or drug users. The students contended their MySpace postings were off-limits to school authorities.

The cases highlighted how social media have blurred the line between on-campus and off-campus speech at schools.

In ruling for the students last year, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said school officials cannot police "off-campus speech" unless they can show it caused a major disruption at school. Based on that standard, the appeals court said the MySpace profiles of the two principals were protected as free speech.

In one case, an eighth-grade girl posted a mock profile of her principal, with his photo, that called him a "sex addict" who enjoyed "hitting on students" in his office. A district judge described the posting as "vulgar and lewd," but the appeals court saw it differently. "The profile, though indisputably vulgar, was so juvenile and nonsensical that no reasonable person could take its content seriously," the majority said.

In the second case, a high school senior from western Pennsylvania won free-speech protection for a MySpace profile of his principal as a drug user, a "big fag" and a "big whore." In a third case from West Virginia, a girl sued but lost after she was suspended for creating an online site that made fun of another girl as a "slut" who had herpes.

A national coalition of school administrators and counselors had urged the high court to take up the issue because of the legal confusion. The Constitution "does not demand that school officials remain idle in the face of vulgar and malicious attacks," the administrators said.

But without comment, the high court turned away the appeals in all three school cases. Five years ago, in their last school speech case, the justices were closely split on the reach of the school's authority. A 5-4 decision rejected a free-speech claim from a student who was suspended for holding a banner on the sidewalk that said "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."

PINKBERRY FOUNDER LIKELY TO BE WITHOUT YOGURT IN HIS COMING PLACE OF RESIDENCE

2012-01-19T01:23:00.000-06:00

He’s facing a long prison term and because he committed a violent crime, he won’t be Moonbeamed to serve his time in a county facility. I don’t think they serve yogurt in the prison chow hall.

SEXUALLY EXPLICIT TATTOO ANGERED PINKBERRY FOUNDER, OFFICIALS SAY
By Andrew Blankstein

Los Angeles Times
January 17, 2012

A founder of the Pinkberry yogurt chain allegedly beat up a homeless man with a tire iron because he found the transient's sexually explicit tattoo offensive, according to L.A. prosecutors.

The incident took place in June 2011 on an off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway at Vermont Avenue, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Young Lee was stopped at a light when he was approached by a man seeking money, police said.

Words were exchanged, and Lee and another man in the car chased the homeless man and "beat him down" with the tire iron, police Capt. Paul Vernon said.

According to a statement by the district attorney's office, Lee felt disrespected by the tattoo. Officials did not provide a detailed description of the tattoo.

Lee is scheduled to be arraigned Feb. 8 on charges of assault with a deadly weapon. The charge carries a special enhancement of causing great bodily injury.

"This case is emblematic of how the homeless are among the most vulnerable in our society," said Vernon, commanding officer of the Central Detective Division. The extent of the homeless man's injuries hasn't been disclosed.

Detectives spent several months probing the case against Lee, who was in South Korea for part of that time.

Lee, 47, was taken into custody at Los Angeles International Airport on Monday night by the LAX Fugitive Task Force, which includes LAPD officers and FBI agents. He was booked at the LAPD's Pacific Division station, according to online Sheriff's Department booking records.

A former kick-boxer and later an architect, Lee co-founded Pinkberry with Shelly Hwang in 2005.

The first shop opened that year in West Hollywood and featured a low-calorie yogurt that came in two flavors: plain and green tea. The small shop on Huntley Drive quickly generated a loyal following.

At one point, Pinkberry was drawing 3,000 customers a day and became known as the yogurt shop that spawned 1,000 parking tickets.

The business now has more than 100 locations in the United States, Mexico and the Middle East, according to the company website.

Lee was released Tuesday on $60,000 bail.

THAT BIG LUMP IN HIS DRAWERS WAS NOT HIS MANHOOD

2012-01-19T01:20:00.000-06:00

That thief is lucky he didn’t try to stash a live lobster. Had he done so, he could be singing alto now.

DWAYNE PORTER: TRIES WALKING OUT OF CORPUS H-E-B IN CRUSTACEAN-STUFFED PANTS
By John Nova Lomax

Houston Press Hair Balls
January 18, 2012

You have to admire the more stylish of our low-end thieves. Late last year we brought you the story of a guy who went on a penniless high-end dining spree in and around downtown, culminating in a steak dinner he refused to pay for at McCormick and Schmick's. He was busted for those shenanigans three times in four weeks.

And now there's Corpus Christi's Dwayne Porter. Police there say that employees of an H-E-B watched as the 53-year-old attempted to leave the store without paying for the lobster tail that was, rather unfortunately for Porter's dinner plans, protruding from his pants.

And that was not all he had down there, lurking in the depths of his britches.

Once police arrived, a seafood counter worker told police that he had prepared Porter a bag of fresh shrimp, and on searching, cops found those little boogers in Porter's drawers too. (Fortunately, there were no crabs.)

Porter subsequently told police he was hungry and couldn't afford the expensive delicacies he yearned for, so he tried to swipe them. Total value of this utterly shellfish thief's catch of the day that got away: $57.91.

Since the lobster tail likely cost $15 or less, that must have been a big ol' bag of shrimp. Maybe he had a date.

H-E-B employees "disposed of" the funky seafood.

OBAMA WANTS DRONE RETURNED, GETS TOY MODEL INSTEAD

2012-01-18T01:22:00.000-06:00

Did Obama really think that the Iranians would agree with his request to have the downed RQ-170 Sentinel drone returned to the U.S.? Most likely not. He was probably just going through the motions because once the Iranians released the drone’s photograph he couldn’t just ignore the incident.

A toy model. Who said the Iranians don’t have a sense of humor?

IRAN WILL GIVE U.S. MODEL OF DOWNED STEALTH DRONE, REPORT SAYS
Iranian state radio says gift comes in response to American request to retrieve the RQ-170 Sentinel which Iran says it captured late last year

Associated Press
January 17, 2012

Iranian state radio said Tuesday that Tehran will give the United States a model of the American surveillance drone captured by the Islamic Republic.

The report said the toy model of the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone will be sent to the White House in response to a formal request from Washington last month asking Iran to return the aircraft that went down over Iran in December.

State radio said the model will be one eightieth the size of the original aircraft. The report says the models also will be sold on the Iranian marked for about 70,000 rials, or around $4.

Last month, U.S. President Barack Obama pressed his request that Iran return the U.S. surveillance drone captured by the country's armed forces.

Obama said he would not comment "on intelligence matters that are classified." But, he said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said.

The U.S. president spoke following initial reports, which were later confirmed by American officials, that Iranian experts were in the final stages of recovering data from the RQ-170 Sentinel, which went down in Iran.

0 TO 200 IN 6 SECONDS

2012-01-18T01:17:00.000-06:00

Bob was in trouble. He forgot his wedding anniversary. His wife was really upset and felt forgotten.

She told him "Tomorrow morning, I expect to find a gift in the driveway that goes from 0 to 200 in 6 seconds AND IT BETTER BE THER !!"

The next morning he got up early and left for work. When his wife woke up, she looked out the window and sure enough there was a box gift-wrapped in the middle of the driveway.

Confused, the wife put on her robe and ran out to the driveway, brought the box back in the house.

She opened it and found a brand new bathroom scale.

Bob has been hospitalized in the intensive care unit since Friday.

DON’T PUNISH THOSE MARINES!

2012-01-17T00:48:00.004-06:00

On Sunday, Rick Perry ripped into the Obama administration for its over-the-top reaction in condemning the four Marines shown on a video peeing on the dead bodies of some Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. I strongly agree with Gov. Perry.

Once the video was released to the public, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta came before the television cameras to announce that such behavior is not the American way and that the four Marines will be harshly dealt with.

Sen. John McCain piped in by saying that the images could damage the war effort and hurt our standing in the international community. Even though McCain is probably right on both counts, I do not believe that those Marines deserve to be punished.

In every war, soldiers on both sides often desecrate the bodies of enemy fighters. We are quick to point out when the other side does it while we try to cover up our soldiers’ battlefield misconduct. The problem in this case is that someone released a video that got instant widespread coverage on the internet.

I remember in WWII when we propagandized the mass shooting of American prisoners by Nazi SS troops. We also propagandized the cruel treatment afforded our troops by their Japanese captors. We never mentioned that our soldiers often killed surrendering German soldiers and desecrated the bodies of dead Japanese soldiers.

During the Viet Nam War there was the My Lai massacre in which American soldiers killed several hundred Vietnamese villagers, many of them women, children and infants. The Army tried to cover it up and even Colin Powell whitewashed his investigation of the massacre. The only reason that atrocity became public was because Congressman Morris Udall and Senators Barry Goldwater and Edward Brooke launched a congressional investigation after receiving a soldier’s letter describing the massacre.

It should not come as a surprise to anyone that when people are trying to kill each other in the heat of battle there are going to be abhorrent acts committed by some of the combatants.

There are those who say the Marines have to be punished as a lesson to our troops on battlefield decorum. If that’s what it takes, I could go for cancelling their off-base passes for a month and putting them on latrine duty for 30 days, but anything beyond that, including reduction in rank, would be excessive. But that’s not what Panetta and the Pentagon brass have in mind. Those poor bastards are facing prison time. They are going to be served up as sacrificial lambs to those who hate America.

I certainly do not approve of what the four Marines did but I can understand why they did it. What really bothers me is that they were so stupid as to let someone videotape them peeing on those Taliban bodies.

Those four Marines are being scapegoated in order to show the world how righteous America is. To hell with that crap! I say, DO NOT PUNISH THOSE MARINES! If anyone deserves to be punished, it’s the asshole who released that video.

300 L.A. POT SHOPS MAY BE SHUT DOWN

2012-01-17T00:43:00.001-06:00

L.A. is closing them down for the wrong reasons. They should be banned because the possession, sale and distribution of marijuana is prohibited by federal laws and those laws make no exception for ‘medical’ use.

L.A. MOVES TOWARD BAN OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES
By Rick Orlov

Los Angeles Daily News
January 13, 2012

After years of struggling with the issue, the city of Los Angeles headed down the road Friday to a total ban on medical marijuana shops.

The City Council's Public Safety Committee sent to the Planning Commission a series of recommendations to ban the estimated 300 dispensaries now open until the state Supreme Court decides if the city can regulate pot shops.

Councilman Jose Huizar, whose Eastside district has 47 dispensaries, called for the ban even as he said he supports the right of people to have access to medical marijuana.

"But if there are no tools to control the dispensaries, we have no choice but to ban them until we see what happens in the Supreme Court," Huizar said.

A state appellate court, in what is known as the Pack decision, ruled that federal law banning marijuana pre-empted state and local measures allowing dispensaries to provide medical marijuana. It also banned the lottery system being considered by the city to allow some dispensaries to open.

As a result, city officials said Los Angeles basically has no way to regulate dispensaries, even as it is fighting some 60 lawsuits from pot shop operators against the city's previous attempts to create rules on where pot shops can open.

City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, in a rare appearance before a committee, said the lawsuits have tied up his office staff.

"We have people working nights and weekends to prepare for these cases and we have no choice,"

Trutanich said. "If we aren't prepared to be in court, we will lose these cases. That's why we decided the best course of action is to ban all the dispensaries."

Special Assistant City Attorney Jane Usher said they are proposing a "gentle ban."

"We will continue to allow patients and caregivers to cultivate and have access to marijuana," Usher said.

Kris Hermes, spokesman for the pro-medical marijuana group American for Safe Access, however, said dispensaries aren't giving patients anything that state law doesn't allow.

"The fact is many patients are unable to cultivate their own marijuana and need access to a safe supply," Hermes said.

"The city is being pretty devious in what it is trying to do and they are ignoring other court cases that do allow dispensaries to operate."

Hermes said an organized campaign is being launched with emails asking city officials to find ways to keep dispensaries operating.

"The issue here is whether the vast majority of patients in Los Angeles who need marijuana will have access to it," Hermes said.

Also, he said, the marketplace is helping to determine the number of clinics in operation.

At one point, the city had an estimated 700 to 1,000 dispensaries in operation.

That has fallen in recent years because there was not enough demand to support the operations, he said.

Councilman Mitch Englander, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, said the problem he has seen is the effect dispensaries have on neighboring businesses and residents.

"We all know of people who benefit from this, but we also need to look at what it has done to communities," Englander said.

"One of the things they do to communities - not necessarily the operators, but their patrons - is to create problems."

LAPD Capt. Bill Murphy of the Northeast Division, said he has received a number of complaints over the years from residents and others.

"We get complaints about the smells, about teens hanging around to buy the marijuana like they used to do outside liquor stores," Murphy said. "Residents see a problems with people drinking and smoking. We have congestion type issues."

If the measure is approved, Huizar said he would envision the city sending out letters, similar to eviction notices, telling the operators they will need to shut down.

DRINKING IS PART OF THE POLICE CULTURE

2012-01-17T00:39:00.000-06:00

There is no question but that cops do a lot of drinking off-duty. There is both the camaraderie and the stressfulness of the job. And it is true that as a result there is a lot of alcoholism among cops. However, if there is peer pressure to drink, that pressure comes from within and not from fellow officers. And to call it ‘binge drinking’ is quite a stretch.

While Tanya Eiserer wrote a good story, that doesn't mean she's got all her facts right or that the ones she got right apply to all police agencies. Eiserer's cherry-picking story notwithstanding, cops do not binge drink like those idiot college fraternity and sorority members.

PEER PPESSURE PROMOTING POLICE BINGE DRINKING BEGINS IN ACADEMY

Grits for Breakfast
January 16, 2012

Tanya Eiserer at the Dallas News has a crackerjack story on the hot-button topic of alcoholism and law-enforcement culture ("They drink when they're blue: Stress, peer pressure contribute to police's alcohol culture," Jan. 16, behind paywall):

__Drinking is part of the police culture.

__“They drink a lot, and they drink together,” said John Violanti, a research associate professor at the University at Buffalo and a former New York state trooper who studies police stress and alcohol use. “It’s part of the macho image, part of being a cop.”

__Experts on police, and many officers, say cops drink because of peer pressure and high stress levels. They get into trouble with alcohol because they feel invulnerable and, as society’s helpers, are less likely to show weakness by seeking help. As mores change and technology advances, they’re more likely to get caught and their colleagues less likely to risk assisting them in covering up their problems.

Her article is filled with examples of officers binge drinking with other officers then getting in serious accidents. The story opened with these anecdotes:

__Kelly Beemer drank heavily at a South Dallas bar before hitching a ride home in a squad car, where she fired a gun through the floorboards.

__Rachel Nicely downed margaritas at a Greenville Avenue bar before climbing behind the wheel, hitting a parked car and being arrested for drunken driving.

__Jesus Cisneros had eight beers and four shots at a birthday party and later slammed his city vehicle into another car, killing the driver.

__All were police officers with promising careers. All drank heavily with other off-duty officers on the day they got into trouble.

__Their careers were ruined.

Other tales included an officer who showed up at a SWAT assignment with alcohol on his breath and later, in another incident, was found passed out in a running city vehicle with a can of Foster's in his lap. Despite those lapses, he was allowed to remain on the force eleven more years until another DWI forced his resignation. So some of these issue arises form lax police management giving second and third chances to chronically alcoholic officers, even when they drink on the job.

A treatment provider said that "suppressing trauma and stress" is a root cause of alcoholism in law enforcement, but it's also clear that peer pressure to participate in police drinking culture begins well before officers ever hit the street. According to one expert quoted, "Rookies are indoctrinated into the brotherhood in blue and the culture of alcohol consumption at the police academy." One of the ex-Dallas officers interviewed said that's where her problems started:

__Former Dallas police officer Shelly Pierce said in an interview that she drank a lot while in the academy and afterward. She typically drank, off duty, with other officers and a shared expectation that it was going to be a wild night.

__“When we go out, we’re going out,” said Pierce, who lost her job over a 2006 drunken-driving arrest. “We’re getting drunk. We’re going to be the loudest. All the attention is going to be on us. … It’s because of that whole ‘shock and awe’ thing. I’m going to be the one that shocks.”

__Laura Brodie, a California-based psychologist who worked with the Los Angeles Police Department’s employee assistance program, said she has found a lack of moderation prevalent in the police culture.

__“It’s all or nothing,” she said. “When they get into drinking, they start competing in their drinking.”

First-rate reporting by Eiserer on a seldom-discussed subject. As she'd reported in a 2009 story, roughly 89% of police suicides (which occur far more frequently than deaths in the line of duty) involve alcohol abuse, so this subject not only impacts the safety of the public (nobody wants a drunk in uniform wielding a gun or arrest authority) but also the officers themselves.

THE COSTA CONCORDIA DISASTER

2012-01-17T00:36:00.004-06:00

By Adolf der Schweinehund

The Schalotte
January 16, 2012

Francesco Schettino, 52, captain of the ill-fated Costa Concordia, and First Officer Ciro Ambrosio have been arrested on suspicion of multiple manslaughter and abandoning ship when the cruise liner started to list after it ran aground.

Passengers reported seeing the captain spending much of the evening drinking in the bar with a beautiful woman on his arm before the ship smashed into some rocks, sustaining a 160 foot-long gash in the port-side hull. Passengers also reported they were left to fend for themselves by the ship’s officers and crew who shoved women and children out of the way as they rushed to get into lifeboats.

Schettino was seen wrapped in a blanket on a lifeboat and then standing on shore long before most of the passengers were able to escape from the capsizing ship.

As soon as the Schalotte learned about the accident we flew our chief investigative reporter to the scene. By slipping his jailers a few bucks and several bottles of Ciucciami il Cazzo, we were able to obtain an exclusive interview with Capt. Schettino in his jail cell.

Here is the interview:

Q. Captain, why did you inform the passengers that everything was OK when the ship ran aground and that you were only experiencing a temporary electrical failure?

A. Because the lights went out. That’s why.

Q. No, I mean, why didn’t you inform them of the real problem, that the ship ran aground?

A. Because I didn’t want to worry them needlessly.

Q. Captain, were you drinking in the bar with a beautiful woman much of the evening before the accident?

A. Oh merda! I hope my wife doesn’t hear about this.

Q. Well what about it?

A. You mean about the woman ….. you don’t expect me to spend time trying to seduce an ugly woman, do you?

Q. No, no! Not the woman. I mean how much did you have to drink?

A. Two beers, my good man, only two beers.

Q. Yeah, right. Captain, did you abandon ship before most of the passengers were able to escape?

A. That is a lie! I was one of the last to leave the ship.

Q. Then how can you explain that many passengers, as well as people who live on the island of Giglio, reported seeing you standing on shore while most of the passengers were still on the ship?

A. They did? Oh merda! Well, would you believe that I only left the ship because, as I was trying to help passengers into the lifeboats, all of a sudden the ship listed between 60-70 degrees. I tripped and fell into one of the lifeboats. The next thing I knew was that I was standing on the shore.

Q. No, can’t you come up with a better one than that?

A. Then would you at least believe that I was standing on shore to direct the rescue operations?

Q. Not on your life! Ciao.

A. Well, at least give me credit for turning the ship around after it struck those rocks and beaching it. If I had not beached the ship, it would have sunk in deep water and then hundreds, possibly thousands of passengers would have been lost. Ciao.

The Schalotte also interviewed surviving passenger Martha Foster from Milwaukee. Here is that interview:

Q. Martha, what were conditions like once the ship started to list?

A. It was sheer chaos, sheer chaos! There was no one telling us what to do. Everyone was screaming and running in all directions.

Q. Didn’t crew members give the passengers any directions? Didn’t they try to help you get safely off the ship?

A. Help? Shit! As soon as the ship started to roll over on its side, those sorry gutless spineless fucking bastards were clawing their way topside and shoving the passengers, including little children and old people, out of the way in their haste to escape on the few available lifeboats. They didn’t give a holy fuck about any of us. Excuse my language, but I’m fucking pissed off!

Q. That’s OK Martha, I fully understand. But the cruise line is saying that ….. let me read from their official statement ….. “As we are learning more about the event itself and the evacuation, however, it is becoming clear that the crew of the Costa Concordia acted bravely and swiftly to help evacuate more than 4,000 individuals during a very challenging situation.” What do you make of that statement?

A. Say what?! Now I’m really getting pissed off! The only crew members that stayed to help us were the cooks and waiters and some of the entertainers and, like us passengers, none of them had any idea of what to do. The fucking officers and the rest of the fucking crew abandoned us to save themselves. As I said before, those motherfuckers didn’t give a holy fuck about any of us.

Q. Martha, the cruise line has just announced that all passengers will be awarded a free passage on a future cruise. How do you feel about that?

A. Oh yeah? Well, they can shove that free passage up their fucking spaghetti-bender stinking asses. Fuck ‘em! They’ll be hearing from my lawyer ….. you bet they will!

Q. I’m really glad you’re OK, Martha. Thanks for answering our questions.

A. You’re very welcome. Just be sure to tell everyone about the fucking Captain and his worthless God damn crew!

THE ADVERSARY SYSTEM BREEDS LAWYER MISCONDUCT

2012-01-16T01:23:00.001-06:00

Our justice system, both criminal and civil, is based on an adversary system that pits lawyers on one side against the lawyers on the other side. Success is all about one side defeating the other. Justice comes in as a distant second. That leads to a ‘win at all costs’ attitude. It leads lawyers to lie – the only difference between a lawyer and a liar is the spelling – and to suppress evidence that might be helpful to the other side.

In criminal cases, the ‘win at all costs’ adversary system is the root cause of prosecutorial misconduct. And the defendants that get shafted are usually the ones without the means to hire the best law firms, firms that employ high-dollar investigators and expert witnesses.

Although I am a strong law and order advocate, I abhor prosecutors who suppress evidence, use witnesses they know to be lying and otherwise resort to unethical or even illicit tactics in order to defeat the defendant’s lawyers. The prosecutor who is more interested in winning than in seeking justice should not only be barred from prosecuting criminals - he should also be disbarred from the practice of law!

The following editorial is about Texas, but the problem of prosecutorial misconduct is certainly not unique to the Lone Star State.

EVIDENCE HIDDEN?
Another DNA exoneration raises troubling questions that need to be answered

Houston Chronicle Editorial
January 14, 2012

Texas has the distinction of having more convicts exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence than any other state.

Forty-five individuals have been cleared of serious crimes in the last decade, including murder.

One of them is Michael Morton, who was sentenced to life in prison for the beating death of his wife in their Georgetown home in 1986.

Morton had no criminal record. There were no eyewitnesses or physical evidence to link him to the crime.

In 2010 after years of pleading by Morton, a court ordered DNA testing of evidence related to the crime. It connected a felon, Mark Norwood, to the murder of Christine Morton and to the murder of an Austin woman two years later. In October, Morton was released after serving 25 years behind bars.

How was former Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson - now a state district judge - able to obtain a conviction? Morton's attorneys claim evidence that would have weakened the prosecution's case was suppressed.

Last month, visiting District Judge Sid Harle of San Antonio formally cleared Morton of the murder charge. Harle has yet to rule on Morton's request that he seek the establishment of a court of inquiry to determine whether evidence was withheld illegally in this case. Harle should rule affirmatively.

Anderson's prosecution resulted not only in a miscarriage of justice against Morton. It was also an injustice for Debra Masters Baker, the Austin woman who Norwood is suspected of killing after prosecutors blindly went after the wrong man and declared the Morton case closed.

The final report of the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions cited evidence that seven of the first 39 DNA exoneration cases in Texas "involved suppression of exculpatory evidence or other prosecutorial misconduct."

Why wasn't exculpatory evidence shared with the defense team or trial judge in the Morton case, as required by law?

Texans deserve to know.

WORLD HOMICIDE RATES

2012-01-16T01:20:00.000-06:00

From Borderland Beat / January 14, 2012:

Juarez is no longer world king of homicides as it drops to second spot, so says a Mexican study group called the Citizens Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice. The findings were released this week that reveals Juarez has lost its number one spot after three years, replaced by San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

Homicides rates are predicated by homicides per 100,000 residents. 40 of the 50 most violent cities in the world are in Latin America according to the study.

It is no surprise to learn that Mexico holds 5 of the top 10 spots or 12 in the top 50. What is slightly surprising is that 45 of the 50 top spots are in the Americas and of those 40 in Latin America.

Of the top 50 countries: Mexico tallies at 12, Brazil 14, Colombia 5.

As for the U.S., the most dangerous US city “honors” goes to New Orleans and the city comes in 21st in the world with a murder rate of 58. Detroit ranked 30th with 48, St. Louis 43rd with 35 and Baltimore sliding into the 48th spot with 31 murders per capita.

The top 10 cities:

1. San Pedro Sula, Honduras
KILLINGS: 1,143 | POPULATION: 719,447 | RATE: 158.87

2. Juarez, Mexico
KILLINGS: 1,974 | POPULATION: 1,335,900 | RATE: 147.77

3. Maceió, Brazil
KILLINGS: 1,564 | POPULATION: 1,156,278 | RATE: 135.26

4. Acapulco, Mexico
KILLINGS: 1,029 | POPULATION: 804,412 | RATE: 127.92

5. Central District, Honduras
KILLINGS: 1,123 | POPULATION: 1,126,534 | RATE: 99.69

6. Caracas, Venezuela
KILLINGS: 3,164 | POPULATION: 3,205,463 | RATE: 98.71

7. Torreón, Mexico (metropolitan area)
KILLINGS: 990 | POPULATION: 1,128.152 | RATE: 87.75

8. Chihuahua, Mexico
KILLINGS: 690 | POPULATION: 831,693 | RATE: 82.96

9. Durango, Mexico
KILLINGS: 474 | POPULATION: 593,389 | RATE: 79.55

10. Belém, Brazil
KILLINGS: 1,639 | POPULATION: 2,100,319 | RATE: 78.04

SAYING ‘I LOVE YOU’ CAUSES PAIN THAT HAS NO KNOWN EQUIVALENT Patients in a coma should not be visited by a loved one

2012-01-15T22:05:00.002-06:00

The Schalotte
January 15, 2012

The Schalotte is grateful to The Onion for a heads-up on the hazards of visiting a loved one hospitalized in a coma.

STUDY FINDS HEARING LOVED ONE’S VOICE INDUCES EXCRUCIATING PAIN IN COMA PATIENTS

The Onion
January 14, 2012

BALTIMORE—According to a study published Monday in The New England Journal Of Medicine, people in comas experience excruciating, indescribable levels of pain whenever they hear the sound of a loved one's voice.

The Johns Hopkins University study, which used fMRI brain-imaging technology to monitor the cerebral activity of more than 400 coma patients while friends and family members talked soothingly at their hospital bedsides, found that every second a loved one was speaking, subjects felt pain so agonizing that researchers have likened it to the sensation of having one's skin slowly removed with dull scissors before being doused in gasoline and set on fire.

"Whether the patient's sister was reading aloud from a favorite book or a spouse was relating shared happy memories, the data conclusively proved the participant was experiencing wave after wave of pain so torturous that you or I couldn't even begin to imagine it," said Dr. Adam Tyner, lead author of the study. "After hearing a loved one speak, every single coma patient we observed exhibited a huge spike in activity within the pain centers of the brain, at levels comparable to those of someone dropped into a vat of hydrochloric acid and then forced to roll around in salt."

"If you are in any way significant to or loved by a coma patient, it appears visiting that person in the hospital is the absolute worst thing you can do to him or her," Tyner continued. "You have to understand, if these individuals could speak, they would be screaming at their loved ones to please, for the love of all that is good and holy, stop talking."

Tyner said the data also proved that patients were very much cognizant of their surroundings and seemed to know precisely who was causing them the worst pain any human being could possibly experience. He went on to stress that what the subjects were experiencing was not simply emotional pain, but a very real and horrible physical pain, similar to the sensation of being dragged naked behind a truck over miles of jagged lava plains covered with tacks and broken glass.

"During trials in which a young son or daughter urged a parent to please, please just wake up, the pain reached an intensity so severe we can safely hypothesize these patients would gladly have jumped to their deaths from hospital windows cursing their children's names, had they the capacity to do so," Tyner said.

In addition, the study found many other stimuli besides vocalizations that caused immense pain in coma patients. The smell of fresh flowers, the presence of Mylar balloons, or a loved one gently running fingers through the subject's hair all caused pain so extreme it would cause a healthy person to mercifully black out. However, because of their condition coma patients are unable to scream for help, and are instead forced to remain completely silent and aware as they endured a pain 10 times worse than that of a torture victim.

"No stimulus compared to utterances of 'I love you,'" Tyner said. "Those three words resulted in a pain that has no known equivalent, but the closest approximation would be the sensation of hot, rusty needles flowing through one's very blood stream."

Tyner said that the full implications of the study were still not totally clear, but that loved ones could take immediate steps to improve the palliative care of those in comas.

"Don't talk to them, don't gaze upon them lovingly, don't even think about them," Tyner said. "Not surprisingly, the evidence suggests those in comas are so sensitive they can faintly pick up sympathetic thoughts from friends and family, which also causes them terrible, unimaginable pain."

"The best advice I can give is that if you care for these people at all, just leave them completely alone until they either wake up or die," Tyner added.

SINGING OF THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER

2012-01-15T01:30:00.002-06:00

Last night it was Armed Forces Night at the Air Canada Center in Toronto for the New York Rangers – Toronto Maple Leafs ice hockey game. Maple Leafs season ticket holders had given up their seats so that 500 Canadian troops and their families could attend the game. (The Rangers won 3 – 0.)

During an impressive pregame ceremony, Canadian soldiers repelled down from the rafters onto the ice. After the introduction at center ice of a general and several military personnel with their children, a Canadian soldier sang the Star Spangled Banner and Oh Canada, the Canadian national anthem. As the camera panned through the huge arena, you could see that every uniformed Canadian trooper, from the general on down, stood smartly at attention and saluted during the singing of the Star Spangled Banner.

Which brings me to the singing of our national anthem. I’ve watched many a sporting event in our country where some guest celebrity sang the Star Spangled Banner and butchered up the tune by putting their personal signature on it. I don’t think that is showing the proper respect to our national anthem.

I’ve also watched a lot of hockey games being broadcast from Canadian cities. To the credit of our northern neighbors, the Canadians in the audience always stand up and pay their respect to our anthem, many of them holding their right hand over their hearts.

But best of all, every Canadian singer who has performed the Star Spangled Banner at the arenas has sung our anthem straight forward without deviating from the tune the way it was originally composed. God bless the Canadians! As for America’s celebrity singers who want to make an impression by butchering up the Star Spangled Banner tune, I say shame on you!

MORE ON THE DEATH TOLL IN MEXICO’S DRUG WAR

2012-01-15T01:27:00.000-06:00

From Borderland Beat:

47,500 VICTIMS IN FIVE YEARS?
Mexico's drug war has claimed more than 47,500 victims in five years, according to a government body count

The Telegraph
January 13, 2012

The figures came as two decapitated bodies were found inside a burning SUV early on Wednesday at the entrance of one of Mexico's most luxurious malls, feeding fears the drug violence is beginning to infiltrate privileged realms previously thought safe.

Police recovered the mutilated bodies before dawn off a toll highway at a shopping mall entrance in the heart of the Santa Fe district that is a haven for international corporations, diplomats and the wealthy. The heads and a threatening message were dumped a few yards away, Mexico City prosecutors said in a statement.

Hours later, the government released the drug war body count figures.

Local media published images of the charred car and reported that a note written on hot pink paper was signed by the drug gang Mano con Ojos, or Hand with Eyes. Mexican police had said the gang was weakened by the arrest of its leader, Oscar Osvaldo Garcia, in August.

The victims, a man and a woman in their 30s, had not been identified, prosecutors said. They said the SUV with license plates from neighbouring Mexico state had been stolen.

Nationwide, 47,515 drug-related killings occurred from December 2006, when President Felipe Calderón deployed thousands of troops to drug hot spots, through September 2011, the Attorney General's Office said Wednesday.

Drug-related killings rose 11 per cent in the first nine months of 2011, when 12,903 people were killed, compared to 11,583 in the same period of 2010, the office said.

The figures indicate that three-quarters of all homicides in Mexico are now linked to the drug war.

The Attorney General's Office found one small consolation: "It's the first year (since 2006) that the homicide rate increase has been lower compared to the previous years."

There was a 70 per cent jumped in drug-related killings for the same nine-month period of 2010 compared to January-September 2009, when 6,815 deaths were recorded.

Prosecutors said the vast majority of last year's killings occurred in eight of Mexico's 32 states.

The Mexican government had been periodically releasing the number of drug war dead, but it stopped a year ago when the number reached nearly 35,000. Mexico's freedom of information agency had said it would ask for an investigation if prosecutors didn't release the data requested by several journalists by Wednesday.

Also Wednesday, Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said during a conference in Washington D.C. that in the first five years of the offensive against drug cartels, Mexico's federal police had arrested 2,700 gang suspects and 205 gang leaders, had investigated 283,000 extortion complaints and seized 10,000 tons of marijuana, 111 tons of cocaine and seized 136,000 weapons, 11,000 grenades and 13 million rounds of ammunition.

Mr Garcia Luna said Mexico has seized $935 million dollars presumed related to illegal activities.

STRICT ENFORCEMENT AND LONG PRISON SENTENCES WORK TO KEEP CRIMINALS OFF THE STREETS

2012-01-15T01:21:00.002-06:00

While some of the crime reduction stats have probably been manipulated and inflated, I’ve always believed that aggressive law enforcement and harsh sentences serve to put criminals behind bars and keep them off the streets.

Here is an interesting op-ed by Mark A. Stelter, a professor of criminal justice at Lone Star College-Montgomery, Texas.

ENFORCEMENT IS BEHIND THE SHARP DROP IN CRIME
By Mark A. Stelter

Houston Chronicle
January 13, 2011

The dramatic decrease in crime is one of the most significant events in our nation's history ("Homicides in Houston take tumble," Page A1, Jan. 1). If the murder rate had remained what it was in 1991, there would have been 600 more murders in Houston last year and an additional 13,000 murders nationwide. This unprecedented drop in homicide has saved more than 100,000 lives since 1991. How did this happen? Surprisingly enough, the consensus among criminal justice experts seems to be: We don't know. But while we may not agree upon the precise causes, we have learned much.

Immediately prior to the great crime decline that began in the 1990s, the vast majority of criminologists predicted a crime increase. Most experts were convinced that crime would not drop until other social maladies were cured, such as poverty and racism. Most academics scoffed at the idea that tougher penalties (such as three-strikes-and-you're-out laws) and stricter enforcement (such as zero-tolerance policies) would reduce crime.

While no one factor explains the dramatic crime decrease, it turns out that the very things scholars believed caused crime (poverty, racism, inadequate education) seem generally unrelated to crime rates, and the very things most scholars ridiculed (tougher sentencing, more effective policing) seem to be among the things that actually work to reduce crime.

When nearly all the professional thinkers in the field so badly miss the mark, it should teach us to be wary of placing too much faith in self-appointed social engineers.

While there is no one reason crime rates fell, the best candidates are the solutions offered by our mothers and not the solutions suggested by scholars. Our great crime decline has generally refuted the supposedly sophisticated view that crime is caused by social problems, ranging from bad schools to unequal distribution of wealth, and has generally supported the more common and obvious view that crime will drop if we rigorously enforce the laws and keep criminals in prison longer. The great crime decline correlates almost perfectly with laws designed to take criminals off the streets and keep them in prison longer. While this common-sense approach may seem obvious, it was anathema to most of the liberal academic establishment - and still is - in spite of strong evidence that it works.

The incredible decrease in crime did not just happen. The steps taken to reduce crime were vigorously championed by such people as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Reagan's crime czar, James Q. Wilson. These men fought against the status quo and their views have been vindicated. The lesson is that some things work.

When we find things that actually work, whether these solutions are liberal or conservative, we should put aside our ideological beliefs and embrace those programs. Doing so has enormous consequences. In the case of crime policy, there are more than 100,000 people who are alive today who would have been dead if we continued the failed policies of the past.

LOW-LIFE WHO FATHERED SEVERAL CHILDREN WHILE IN PRISON GETS JUSTICE FROM HIS FELLOW INMATES

2012-01-15T01:19:00.000-06:00

New Mexico must have a very liberal conjugal visitation policy.

PRISONERS DO HAVE SOME STANDARDS
By Bob Walsh

PACOVILLA Corrections blog
January 13, 2012

Prisoners as a group are not nice people. Many of them are low-lifes. They do, however, have some standards. Michael Guzman doesn’t meet those standards.

Michael Guzman, 48, is a really not nice person. By most reasonable descriptions he is a quasi-human lump of shit. That is causing the New Mexico DOC some problems in placing him.

Some thirty years ago, at the age of 19, he was convicted of rape, murder and attempted murder and sentenced to death. He kidnapped two girls from the University of New Mexico, raped and murdered one of them and tried to murder the other. She survived multiple stab wounds, dozens of them.

In 1986 Governor Toney Anaya commuted his death sentence to life. After he served 30 years he is now eligible for parole consideration. His first parole hearing was in April of last year.

Guzman has at times confessed to committing the crimes and denied doing so. He has confessed to the murder, but not the rape of the victim. He has the names of the two young women tattooed across his back. He has been married several times in prison and fathered several children while in custody.

Guzman was shipped to the Clayton prison in November due to safety concerns. The New Mexico system keeps track of enemy claims by inmates and considers them in placement. Santa Fe was the only prison in the system where Guzman had no declared enemies. That lasted three days.

Guzman was attacked by about 15 men in the orientation pod and thumped. Pretty thoroughly actually. He was unconscious in a medically induced coma for a month at the University Hospital. On December 8 Guzman recovered to the point that he was moved to a long-term care unit at the Los Lunas prison. He is still trying to beat the original rap, this time claiming that he was drunk at the time and the jury was not informed of that. He maintains they might have found him guilty of second degree murder had they been aware of that.

The inmates who administered impromptu justice to Guzman are under investigation by the Clayton P D and may face prosecution or administrative discipline.

HE KILLED ONE OF MY BEST BUDDIES (2)

2012-01-14T00:49:00.002-06:00

Bob Walsh sent a letter in his own unique style to California authorities to stop my good buddy Al Stewart’s killer from being paroled. Let me urge you again to send a letter letting the authorities know that cop killer Gerald Youngberg (B50097) should NEVER EVER be released from prison on any type of parole.

Even if you do not live in California, it is still important that your opposition to Youngberg’s parole be known.

Bob is very well known and respected in California’s correctional community and it expects him to write in his unique style. However, when you write your letter, I would suggest you not resort to Bob’s colorful descriptions.

Your letters should refer to “Penal Code 3550 Parole Hearing for Gerald Youngberg, Inmate Number B50097” and be sent to:

High Desert State Prison
Attn: C&PR/Records Office –Board Desk
475-750 Rice Canyon Road
P.O. Box 750
Susanville, CA 96127

Board of Parole Hearings
Attn: Lifer Scheduling Analysts
PO Box 4036
Sacramento, CA 95812-4036

Here is Bob’s letter:

01-11-2012

High Desert State Prison
C&PR, Board Desk
P O Box 750
Susanville, CA 95127

RE: Gerald Youngberg - B50097

It is my understanding that this quasi-human lump of pond scum is applying for a medical parole. I sincerely hope that the board elects to allow him the privilege of rotting in prison.

Besides the fact that he is not fully disabled and therefore still a threat to society the simple interest of justice demands keeping this murderous asswipe in custody. He executed two law enforcement officers and a private citizen in cold blood for no other reason than they were inconvenient to the continuation of his criminal career. A sane and just society would have turned him into compost 35 years ago. It didn’t go down that way. With luck the board will agree that keeping this crud in prison is the sane, reasonable and just thing to do.

Respectfully submitted,

Robert R. Walsh
_________________ Way
_________________ CA 952__

LETTER TO PAM

2012-01-14T00:46:00.001-06:00

The Schalotte
January 13, 2012

Dear Pam,

My husband and I live in South Florida. He is a successful businessman and we have been married nine years. Our sex life is not good because he is away on so many business trips.

The other day I was relaxing topless by the side of our backyard swimming pool when Rodrigo, the pool serviceman showed up. I immediately covered my breasts with a towel. Rodrigo is quite a hunk. Suddenly I felt a strong urge to ask him to rub some more suntan lotion on my back. Rodrigo said he would be glad to do so.

Rodrigo rubbed the lotion over my back and butt, but when he started to apply it between my legs in my crotch, I began to tingle all over. Without thinking, I rolled over and exposed my breasts to him. He pulled off my bikini bottom and …. well, from then on I had the greatest sex of my life. We had sex in a dozen different positions. I almost went crazy while he was going down on me and I enjoyed giving him several blow jobs too. I lost count of the number of orgasms I experienced. We made love nonstop for over two hours until I was completely exhausted.

My problem is that now I want Rodrigo more than my husband. What should I do?

Singed,
Completely Exhausted

Dear Completely Exhausted,

You’ve gotten yourself into some predicament. Your options are few. You can divorce your husband and sue for spousal support so you can take up with Rodrigo. Or you can change pool service companies and forget that hunk if you can.

If you decide to stay with your husband, let me know the name and telephone number of Rodrigo’s company so I can come down there and rent a vacation home with pool for a week. Then I’ll have Rodrigo service my pool.

The more I think of it, the more I feel that you should stay with your husband. And please be sure to send me Rodrigo's phone number.

Signed,
Pam

HE KILLED ONE OF MY BEST BUDDIES

2012-01-13T01:39:00.002-06:00

Al Stewart was one of my best buddies. We became close friends through working together on a number of narcotics cases.

I would consider it a personal affront if the California Board of Paroles were to release the worthless piece of shit that killed Al. I am herewith urging all of you to please write to the authorities listed at the end of the LAPPL Blog and DEMAND in the interests of justice that Gerald Youngberg NOT EVER be granted any type of parole.

NO PAROLE FOR COP KILLERS – NO EXCEPTIONS
By Los Angeles Police Protective League Board of Directors

LAPPL Blog
January 11, 2012

SB1399 was aimed at saving California millions of dollars in prison health care expenses by allowing the parole of medically incapacitated inmates. It’s unfortunate and outrageous that this law is being used by cop killers like Gerald Youngberg to seek parole.

In 1973, Youngberg took the lives of San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Al Stewart, CHP Officer Larry Wetterling, and gas station attendant Robert Jenkins in execution-style murders. He was sentenced to death, but his sentence (along with hundreds of others’) was overturned in the mid-1970s when the California Supreme Court declared the state’s version of the death penalty unconstitutional.

Since then, Youngberg has applied for parole on 11 occasions and been denied each time. His last denial came in 2010 when he was told he would have to wait five years to reapply. But the enactment of SB1399 has made possible another hearing on Feb. 8, 2012, when Youngberg’s application for a medical parole will be heard by the Board of Parole Hearings at High Desert State Prison in Susanville.

“Although Youngberg is precisely the type of person who was not intended for medical parole, drafting provisions of that law make him eligible for an application,” said Sacramento Lobbyist John Lovell. “Since he has received a certification from the head physician at High Desert State Prison, defeating this effort will be a daunting one. This is true even though the stroke which afflicts Youngberg took place eight years ago, and he is not totally disabled. The only restrictions on his prison activities are that he is confined to a wheel chair and must have a lower bunk in a cell.”

Law enforcement agencies and organizations throughout California strenuously oppose parole of any kind for Youngberg. The League is joining the effort and encourages others to do the same.

Letters opposing Youngberg’s parole should reference “Penal Code 3550 Parole Hearing for Gerald Youngberg, Inmate Number B50097” and be sent to:

High Desert State Prison
Attn: C&PR/Records Office –Board Desk
475-750 Rice Canyon Road
P.O. Box 750
Susanville, CA 96127

Board of Parole Hearings
Attn: Lifer Scheduling Analysts
PO Box 4036
Sacramento, CA 95812-4036

We also wish to take this opportunity to call on SB1399 author Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, to consider amending his legislation to preclude the use of “medical parole” for anyone convicted of murdering a law enforcement officer.

PTSD MADE ME DO IT

2012-01-13T01:35:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I wrote about the firing of a Canton, Ohio cop and his police union’s claim that the behavior which led to his firing resulted from post-traumatic stress disorder. I noted that his defenders are resorting to the same tactics defense lawyers use every time an Iraq or Afghanistan war veteran is tried for a crime – he did it because he was suffering from PTSD.

Well, here we go again, and this one is a real jewel.

Joran van der Sloot, 24, the primary suspect in the 2005 disappearance in Aruba of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway, has been roosting in a Peruvian prison for 19 months awaiting trial for the murder of 21-year-old Peruvian student Stephany Flores.

On Wednesday, van der Sloot pled guilty in a Peruvian courtroom. He could be sentenced for up to 30 years in prison. A Peruvian official says that because of prison overcrowding – where have we heard that before? – he would serve only 7 – 9 years if he received the maximum sentence.

His attorney asked the judges for leniency on the grounds that – now get this – van der Sloot has been suffering from PTSD, the result of having been hounded in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway.

Come to think of it, that does beat blaming the murder on a troubled childhood.

MISSOURI CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR GOT DEGREE IN BAKING COOKIES

2012-01-13T01:31:00.000-06:00

The campaign website for Dave Spence, a Republican candidate for governor of Missouri, says he "earned a degree in Economics" from the University of Missouri.

Well not exactly! Oops, Spence forgot to insert one little word - Home – in describing the degree he earned. His degree is actually in Home Economics, not in Economics. So Spence got a degree in baking cookies, rather than one that could help him to grapple with Missouri’s economic problems.

On Monday, Spence told the media that, while at Mizzou, his grades did not meet the threshold to enter the Business School. So he chose a different academic path that would allow him to graduate on time.

"I was not the greatest student in the world," Spence said. "I'll make fun of myself: I was a 60-watt bulb in a 100-watt society.

Now I am sure that the failure to insert the word ‘home’ was just an inadvertent little omission and that candidate Spence had absolutely no intention of deceiving the voters of Missouri.

If Spence succeeds in becoming governor of Missouri, his degree should enable him to serve his constituents freshly baked cookies.

OLDER MOTORISTS DON’T COUNT

2012-01-13T01:27:00.000-06:00

The new ‘infotainment’ technologies are leaving us old fogies in the dust.

CD PLAYERS BECOMING EXTINCT
By Jerry Reynolds

The Car Pro Weekly
January 12, 2012

CD players in cars look set to go the same way as the dodo bird, according to a report in industry trade publication Automotive News.

With content and computing power migrating to smartphones, which can now channel music, navigation and other applications to relatively simple and low-cost onboard infotainment systems, CD players are becoming increasingly irrelevant in cars, the report says.

Automakers also want to get rid of optical drives -- that is, CD or DVD players -- because they are expensive and appeal mainly to older motorists, according to the report.

Indeed, the 2013 Chevrolet Sonic RS, which debuted this week at the Detroit auto show and will go on sale in the United States this summer, features an optional MyLink infotainment system that lets motorists make hands-free phone calls, listen to MP3 music and get route guidance by linking their smartphones to the vehicle's infotainment system, but no CD player, Automotive News said.

"We asked potential Sonic and Spark customers what they were looking for in infotainment," Sara LeBlanc, MyLink's global infotainment program manager, told Automotive News. "They were very worried about cost. They said to us: 'Get rid of the CD player. We don't use it.'"

SUPREME COURT SAYS NO TO NEW RULE ON EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY

2012-01-13T01:24:00.000-06:00

By Warren Richey

Jewish World Review
January 12, 2012

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to create a new constitutional rule that would have required judges to test the reliability of eyewitness testimony whenever the witness's observations were made under suggestive circumstances.

In an 8-to-1 decision, the court said various trial protections, including specific jury instructions, are adequate to safeguard the fairness of trials where eyewitness testimony is introduced.

"The fallibility of eyewitness evidence does not ... warrant a due process rule requiring a trial court to screen such evidence for reliability before allowing the jury to assess its creditworthiness," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion.

The issue arose in the case of a New Hampshire man, Barion Perry, who was arrested after a witness told police she had seen him remove a large box from her neighbor's car.

When asked by police to identify the man, she motioned toward the window and said he was standing in the parking lot with a police officer.

A month later, however, the witness was unable to identify the suspect's face in a police photo array.

Mr. Perry's lawyers asked the judge at his trial to exclude the witness's testimony. The judge refused, in part because the suggestive circumstances of Perry's identification had not been orchestrated by police.

Perry was convicted

On appeal to the Supreme Court, Perry's lawyer asked the justices to establish a new rule that would help prevent unreliable eyewitness testimony from being introduced at criminal trials.

Under existing precedent, judges are required to screen witness testimony for reliability whenever police are suspected of using suggestive tactics. Such prescreening has been deemed necessary to preserve the fairness of a trial in the face of suggestive police procedures.

But Perry's lawyer wanted the court to significantly expand that practice to all witnesses whenever an identification was made under suggestive circumstances.

Studies have shown that faulty eyewitness identifications are a big factor leading to wrongful convictions. One study found that eyewitness misidentifications contributed to the wrongful conviction of 76 percent of the first 250 individuals whose cases were overturned with DNA evidence.

Despite that acknowledged danger, the high court refused on Wednesday to establish a new rule.

"We hold that the due process clause does not require a preliminary judicial inquiry into the reliability of an eyewitness identification when the identification was not procured under unnecessarily suggestive circumstances arranged by law enforcement," Justice Ginsburg wrote.

In a statement from the bench, Ginsburg said one reason to exclude eyewitness evidence that had been generated by suggestive police tactics was to deter police from using such tactics. "The aim is to stop law enforcement officers from using improper arrangements, for example, suggestive lineups, showups, or photo arrays," she said.

But she added, "Where there is no improper police conduct, there is nothing to deter."

Many factors, Ginsburg said, may cast doubt on the reliability of eyewitness testimony, including poor vision or a witness with a grudge. But the criminal justice system is designed to help a jury determine the reliability of evidence.

In a lone dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the court's focus was misdirected toward police deterrence rather than the broader goal of witness reliability.

"The court's holding enshrines a murky distinction — between suggestive confrontations intentionally orchestrated by the police and, as here, those inadvertently caused by police actions — that will sow seeds of confusion," she wrote.

The holding, she said, "ignores our precedents' acute sensitivity to the hazards of intentional and unintentional suggestion alike."

The case is Perry v. New Hampshire (10-8974).

ANY COP WITH PTSD SHOULD BE TERMINATED ON DISABILTY

2012-01-12T02:12:00.000-06:00

Daniel Harless, a Canton, Ohio cop, has been fired for a controversial June 8 traffic stop involving a man with a permit to carry a concealed handgun. The patrol car video shows that Harless unleashed a flurry of profanities at the driver, shouting he should have gunned down the driver for being stupid. The city revealed that Harless has been involved in similar incidents in the past.

The city justified the firing because “It is quite clear that (Harless’) actions represented a pattern of behavior where inappropriate verbal abuse and threats of death or great bodily harm of the various complainants occurred. This escalating pattern of potentially dangerous behavior cannot be justified or excused and clearly illustrates the seriousness of the departmental infractions.”

The police union defended Harless and is opposing his firing on the grounds that the cop has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The head of the union said, “Obviously, it’s an unfortunate set of circumstances that transpired. We feel that due to the fact that (Harless) has PTSD, that nobody realized it for eight-plus years, for it to come to light the way it did ... this is not a way we wanted this to play out. PTSD is obviously a disease.”

The police union claims that his PTSD stems from a 2003 incident in which Harless was involved in a life-and-death struggle with a suspect. “It affects people in different ways. Unfortunately, (Harless) had PTSD, and it wasn’t realized for eight years. Unfortunately, he was fired, and we will address that situation at a later time.”

Here is my take on the firing. It sure looks like Harless and his defenders are resorting to the same tactics defense lawyers use every time an Iraq or Afghanistan war veteran is tried for a crime – he did it because he was suffering from PTSD.

If Harless is suffering from PTSD he has absolutely no business being a police officer. You cannot predict the behavior of someone truly suffering from PTSD and an armed cop with this disorder should be considered a very dangerous person.

The bottom line is that a person with PTSD is not mentally fit to be a cop. It may be cold, but in the interest of public safety, any officer with PTSD should be terminated on disability!

GATSOS GOTCHA

2012-01-12T02:08:00.000-06:00

These devices are not at all like the Red-Light Cameras that have created so much controversy in the U.S.

ISRAELI POLICE TURN TO HIGH-TECH TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT TOOLS
State-of-the-art speed cameras expected to net over a million traffic tickets per year, including tickets for red-light runners

By Daniel Schmil

Haaretz Daily
January 11, 2012

Drive too fast over two metal sensors hidden in the pavement and first you'll see a bright flash in your rearview mirror. Then, within 96 hours, you'll get a traffic ticket in the mail, not only accusing you of speeding but proving it with a photograph. The fine can be anywhere from NIS 250 to NIS 750, depending on how egregiously you broke the law. What are your chances of winning an appeal? Not good.

Barring any additional delays, in two weeks the Israel Police's spanking new speed cameras will come online and the traffic tickets will start to flow. The cameras are called Gatsos, after their Dutch manufacturer, the traffic-enforcement company Gatsometer.

Unlike the traffic cameras we all know and fear, Gatsos don't use radar, lasers or any other form of radiation aimed at cars. The whole system is based on metal strips with sensors hidden in the road. The faster you drive, the less time it takes for the front wheels to pass over the two strips. The cameras are also more advanced. Because of the system's accuracy, its findings will be harder to appeal.

Within three years the police intend to deploy 300 Gatsos nationwide, 100 of them catching errant drivers speeding through intersections, or running red lights. (Think about it: the same technology still applies. In the case of red lights, the speed at which the driver passes over the two sensors doesn't matter: the fact that he passes at all means he's sinning. ) The other 200 Gatsos will be devoted solely to catching speeders.

The cameras' resolution is a hefty 12 megapixels, which means the pictures are all but unassailable. The photos are transmitted immediately to the police, where a human team confirms that a traffic offense has been committed.

Replacing Israel's speed-trap systems wasn't a casual idea. The 300 units cost NIS 147 million, and their operation over ten years will cost another NIS 450 million. The thought, however, is that the Gatsos may return the investment at the same speed with which Israelis take to the highway: extreme.

It's not rocket science. For one thing, each camera can take two photographs per second. Additionally, the police are confident the Gatsos will catch almost all errant drivers. In other words this system alone can produce 1.25 million tickets a year, thereby generating income of about NIS 875 million a year.

Given the almost inconceivably enormous number of tickets and commensurate boost to the state's revenues, one almost overlooks the fact that this blessing depends on drivers misbehaving, and that the ultimate purpose isn't to beef up the state's coffers, it's to reduce the incidence of traffic violations.

So, do the Gatso systems really change bad habits on the road? Or are they just a clever way to squeeze more money out of Yossi Israeli?

"There is no argument over the system's efficacy," says Dr. Shai Sofer, the chief scientist at the National Road Safety Authority. Studies around the world have demonstrated a significant decrease in speeding and accidents thanks to the cameras, he avers. Britain stopped using Gatsos entirely because they worked so well that the investment had been returned and new tickets were slowing, he says. Maybe in Israel, it will be like the campaign against picking rare wildflowers, says Sofer: "There's no need to advertise any more, because nobody picks them."

It is important for the public to see the system as a good thing, says Sofer, which can be done, for instance, by assurance that all money from fines will be used for road-safety purposes.

Shmuel Abuav, chairman of the Or Yarok (Green Light ) association, is worried about the implications if antagonism toward the Gatsos develops. He is also unconvinced that the government won't expropriate the income for other uses, rendering proceeds from the system as just another tax.

Two weeks before the system goes live, neither the Interior Ministry nor the police are revealing where the cameras are. The only information is from drivers who saw a Gatso and told their friends on social networks or through cellular applications such as Waze (a mobile navigation tool for smartphones ).

Nor will the police say at what speeds exactly the cameras swing into action. Right now, informally but very clearly, drivers are given a grace of 10 kilometers per hour over the speed limit. Which means, a cop won't give you a ticket on a highway where the speed limit is 100 kph if you drive at 110 kph. At 115 kph, he will. That isn't because the enforcement authorities have soft, forgiving hearts. It's because of the speed guns' margin of error. If the speed offense falls within the margin of error, it's hard to defend the ticket in court.

What will the policy be regarding the new, highly accurate machines? That remains to be seen.

IF IT’S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE ……….

2012-01-12T02:05:00.000-06:00

IT PROBABLY ISN’T. But this hilarious case is true.

HANDCUFFED MAN ESCAPES IN ‘TOWN’S ONLY POLICE CAR’ – THEN RADIOS IN TO ASK FOR THE KEY AND HOW TO USE THE LIGHTER
Fugitive uses police radio to ask how to get his handcuffs off

By Hugo Gye

Mail Online
January 11, 2012

A criminal was on the run this morning after stealing a police car while he was handcuffed inside.

William Blankenship is considered armed and dangerous - because the car he took was full of loaded weapons.

Shortly after escaping with the vehicle in northwest Indiana yesterday, he was heard on the police radio asking for help in finding the car's cigarette lighter and a key to unlock his hands.

It is unclear how the bizarre situation - with the man held in the back of the car managing to take the wheel, eject the officer who arrested him and drive while still in cuffs - took place.

The vehicle is the town's only police car, according to some reports.

Blankenship, 22, had been arrested on drug charges in the small town of Kouts after being stopped for traffic violations.

But he somehow escaped from the back of the squad car and drove off, leaving the officer who had been driving the vehicle behind. The officer is unhurt.

According to the Post-Tribune, he took to police radio and asked officers where he could get the key to the handcuffs and a cigarette lighter.

Police are still looking for the Kouts squad car, a white 2010 Chevrolet Impala with 'Kouts Police' written on the side. It is the only Kouts police car on the road.

Several different agencies are involved in the search, which is being aided by a helicopter borrowed from a neighboring police force.

Anyone who sees the car is asked to call 911 and warned not to approach the suspect.

GOVERNOR MOONBBEAM’S REALIGNMENT AT WORK (2)

2012-01-12T02:02:00.000-06:00

Moonbeam’s realignment program is designed to save the state lots of money. I’ll predict it will end up costing the taxpayers a lot more than what it saved them in the short term. And you can add to that the countless rapes, robberies, burglaries and murders that are going to be perpetrated as a result of Moonbeam’s ‘non-violent, non-serious’ inmate releases.

In this case one of Moonbeam’s non-violent offenders broke into a home while the victim showered, then robbed and raped the woman, before running away.

REALIGNMENT’S FIRST WILLIE HORTON?
By Bob Walsh

PACOVILLA Corrections blog
January 10, 2012

We all knew it would happen. There is no dead body on this one, but it is nasty. Aaron Suggs, 29, is under arrest for a home invasion, kidnap, rape and robbery in Sacramento. He was caught by the cops with some of the stolen property still on him. He was a realignment inmate, a 3-non [non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual] offender with a 70 page rap sheet including violence. However, since his commitment offense was for a non-violent drug charge he got realigned and out early. Somehow I feel his victim will not be appreciative of the distinction.

POORLY WORDED OKIE AMENDMENT BLOCKED

2012-01-12T01:59:00.001-06:00

This amendment was obviously a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11. The amendment probably would have passed muster had it merely required judges to only apply the law of the United States and Oklahoma.

OKLAHOMA’S ISLAMIC LAW AMENDMENT CAN’T GO INTO EFFECT, COURT RULES
By Stephen Ceasar

Jewish World Review
January 11, 2012

A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling that blocked the implementation of an Oklahoma law barring judges from considering international or Islamic law in their decisions.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a ruling released Tuesday, affirmed an order by a district court judge in 2010 that halted the law from taking effect. The ruling also allows a Muslim community leader in Oklahoma City to continue his legal challenge of the law's constitutionality.

The measure, known as State Question 755, was approved with 70 percent of the vote in 2010. The law is an amendment to the state constitution and bars courts from considering the legal precepts of other nations or cultures. "Specifically, the courts shall not consider international law or Sharia law," the law reads.

The appellate court opinion pointed out that proponents of the law admitted to not knowing of a single instance in which an Oklahoma court applied Shariah law or the legal precepts of other countries.

"This serves as a reminder that these anti-Shariah laws are unconstitutional and that if politicians use fear-mongering and bigotry, the courts won't allow it to last for long," said Muneer Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma. Awad sued to block the law, contending that it infringed on his First Amendment rights.

Proponents of the law argued that it was intended to ban courts from considering all religious laws and that Shariah was simply used as an example. The appeals court, however, disagreed.

"That argument conflicts with the amendment's plain language, which mentions Shariah law in two places," the court opinion read.

Sen. Anthony Sykes, who sponsored the measure in the state Senate, said that the law's goal is simply to require judges to only apply the law of the United States and Oklahoma. "Shariah merges religion and the law. Our constitution is totally different," he said. "I think it is something that competes with our constitution - it just doesn't mesh."

Shariah - which translates roughly to "path" - is intended to guide Muslims to connect with God and is rooted in mercy and compassion, said Salam Al-Marayati, the president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles.

Al-Marayati argues that campaigns to ban Shariah present a distorted view of Islamic law. "They equate it with unjust and abusive practices originated by tyrannical regimes in the Middle East," he said. "They use misconceptions about Muslims to misinform the American public."

THE NEXT WAR WILL STILL REQUIRE LOTS OF BOOTS ON THE GROUND

2012-01-11T01:42:00.000-06:00

If we have to fight another war, the American people want it to be a casualty-free war for our side. Unfortunately though, we will not be able to fight a war using only ships, planes, drones, missiles and robotic weaponry. The next war will still require lots of boots on the ground.

Robert Scales, former commandant of the U.S. Army War College, blasts the Obama administration for repeating the same post-WWII mistakes all previous administrations - with the exception of Ronald Reagan’s - have made in downsizing our military.

Administration officials and the media have made much of the support Obama is getting from the top military brass. Of course the top generals and admirals are going to support the president and Leon Panetta, his secretary of defense – they don’t want to be forced into an early retirement.

REPEATING A MISTAKE BY DOWNSIZING THE ARMY AGAIN
By Retired Major General Robert H. Scales

The Washington Post
January 5, 2012

Here we go again. President Obama made the same mistake Thursday in announcing his new military strategy that virtually all of his predecessors have made since the end of World War II. He said:

“Moreover, we have to remember the lessons of history. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past — after World War II, after Vietnam — when our military was left ill-prepared for the future. As commander in chief, I will not let that happen again. Not on my watch.”

Unfortunately, Obama’s plan does exactly that. It forgets the lessons of history. Some facts: Harry Truman seeking to never repeat the costs of World War II reduced the Army from 8 million soldiers to fewer than half a million. Without the intervention of Congress, he would have eliminated the Marine Corps entirely. The result was the evisceration of both land services in Korea, a war Truman never intended to fight.

With Dwight Eisenhower came the “New Look” strategy that sought to reduce the Army and Marine Corps again to allow the creation of a nuclear delivery force built around the Strategic Air Command. Along came Vietnam, a war that Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson never wanted to fight. But by 1970 our professional Army broke apart and was replaced by a body of amateurs. The result was defeat and 58,000 dead.

After Vietnam, the Nixon administration broke the Army again. I know. I was there to see the drug addiction, murders in the barracks and chronic indiscipline, caused mainly by a dispirited noncommissioned corps that voted with its feet and left. Then came Jimmy Carter’s unique form of neglect that led to the “hollow Army” of the late ’70s, an Army that failed so miserably in its attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran.

The only exception to this very sad story was the Reagan years, when the land services received enough funding to equip and train themselves to fight so well in Operation Desert Storm. Then tragedy again as the Clinton administration reduced the ground services, intending to rely on “transformation,” a program that paid for more ships and planes by reducing the Army from 16 divisions to 10. In the George W. Bush administration, Donald Rumsfeld continued a policy that sought to exploit information technology to replace the human component in war. Had it not been for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Army would have gone down to fewer than eight divisions.

So, here we go again. The Obama administration will reduce its long-service, professional land force to pay for something called “Air Sea Battle,” a strategy that seeks to buy more ships and planes in order to confront China with technology rather than people. This strategy shows a degree of a-historicism that exceeds that of any post-World War II administration. So much for remembering “the lessons of the past.”

Here’s what the lessons of the past 70 years really teach us: We cannot pick our enemies; our enemies will pick us. They will, as they have always done in the past, cede to us dominance in the air, on sea and in space because they do not have the ability to fight us there. Our enemies have observed us closely in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they have learned the lessons taught by Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Saddam Hussein: America’s greatest vulnerability is dead Americans. So our future enemy will seek to fight us on the ground, where we have traditionally been poorly prepared. His objective will be to win by not losing, to kill as an end rather than as a means to an end. And we will enter the next war again tragically short of the precious resource that we have neglected for six administrations: our soldiers and Marines.

SHE PUT HER POLITICALLY INCORRECT MOUTH IN MOTION BEFORE SHE PUT HER POLITICALLY CORRECT BRAIN IN GEAR

2012-01-11T01:40:00.000-06:00

Hmm, I wonder how many Aussies agree with the inflammatory statements made by this Member of Parliament?

MP TERESA GAMBARO SORRY FOR SAYING MIGRANTS DON’T KNOW HOW TO WEAR DEODORANT
By Jessica Marszalek

Herald Sun
January 11, 2012

A LIBERAL MP who said migrants should learn how to use deodorant has been reprimanded by her party and ordered to apologize.

Opposition citizenship spokeswoman Teresa Gambaro said lessons on hygiene and common courtesy would make immigrants fit in better in Australia.

Acting Opposition Leader Warren Truss said Ms Gambaro had been left in no doubt she was out of line.

"She obviously went too far in her comments and they're certainly out of step with modern Australian attitudes," he said.

While declining to say who doled out the discipline, Mr Truss said: "Certainly she's been made aware that the comments were inappropriate. They weren't in line with Coalition policy and she's acknowledged that."

Ms Gambaro had said new arrivals should be taught to use deodorant on public transport and not push in when queuing, as well as other lessons like the importance of immunization.

"Without trying to be offensive, we are talking about hygiene and what is an acceptable norm in this country," she said in an interview with The Australian.

The comments sparked a tirade of community anger, followed by a statement in which Ms Gambaro said the comments were "taken out of context".

But she admitted they were inappropriate and did not reflect Coalition policy, and apologized for any offence caused.

Migration groups said the comments were offensive, pointing out that migrants on 457 visas were skilled professionals such as managers, engineers and accountants.

Ms Gambaro's comments caused a backlash on Twitter, with most users saying the remarks "stank".

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said the comments were ridiculous in any context and better suited to the 1950s.

"These are a gross stereotyping of migrants," he said.

GOVERNOR MOONBEAM’S REALIGNMENT AT WORK

2012-01-11T01:34:00.001-06:00

Californians are going to be in for a wave of crimes committed by felons classified as ‘non-violent, non-serious’ by the prison system’s pundits.

SACRAMENTO’S NEW PRISON REALIGNMENT PLAN IS OFF TO A TERRIBLE START
By Los Angeles Police Protective League Board of Directors

LAPPL Blog
January 9, 2012

State leaders might have seen an ideal budget fix in their new law allowing felons with prison terms of six years or less to be housed in local jails and then supervised by local law enforcement agencies, but the last 48 hours have already given us two examples of just how terribly bad this idea will turn out.

Steven Hoff was paroled from state prison in January 2011, but the parole was suspended in July, which typically means he broke contact with his parole officer, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Parole agents had been looking for him for a parole violation when he allegedly shot and seriously wounded a parole agent on Wednesday. He was apprehended after an hours-long manhunt in Lake View Terrace that forced the closing of the 210 Freeway and lockdown of two schools.

Within hours, details of his violent past began to emerge. Among other things, according to the Times, Hoff was involved in a standoff with LAPD SWAT officers in the same general area nearly a decade ago. On Aug. 21, 2002, he barricaded himself in a Sylmar home to evade police and state parole agents searching for him in connection with a parole violation and the slaying of a motorcycle club member in Kern County.

In the coming years, the Steven Hoffs of the world won’t be supervised and tracked by parole agents. Instead, the state will have turned over the job to local law enforcement agencies. What will happen when they simply abscond to another county to get away from local supervision? Who, exactly, will go look for these dangerous individuals if there is no statewide parole agency?

And speaking of local inmate housing commitments, the first inmate sentenced to local jail in lieu of prison escaped on Wednesday. William Scott Woodin, jailed locally because of the new law, escaped from Orange County’s Theo Lacy maximum-security jail by ‘wiggling through a kitchen window.’ He may be the first inmate to escape from that jail in 20 years, but he is a precursor of problems that will only multiply in the coming years. Jails are built to house pre-trial inmates and low level offenders. They are not equipped – by facility design or in staffing levels – to house inmates for years on end. Woodin was a mostly a thief and drug addict; but what will happen when violent felons like Steven Hoff start filling our local jails on multi-year sentences?

We’ve already seen the death and destruction caused by the state’s now abandoned “low level, non-violent” release program, whose sole aim was to release unsupervised inmates into our communities. This state’s latest effort, placing inmates into county jails and leaving local authorities to supervise them, looks doomed to be just as much of a public safety failure.

COP INJURED BY 240 POUNDER GETTING LAID BY HIGH SCHOOLER IN BACK SEAT OF HONDA CIVIC

2012-01-11T01:29:00.000-06:00

I have a hard time picturing a 240 pound gal squeezing down onto the back seat of a Honda Civic with her legs spread apart. …. And I thought the Civic was a compact car.

TOMBALL COP’S SHOULDER BROKEN AFTER SHE STOPS BACKSEAT TEEN SEX
Police report morphed ‘fractured scapula’ into ‘fractured scalp’

By John Nova Lomax

Houston Press Hair Balls
January 10, 2012

Ask a cop about their most dangerous types of calls and you hear about drug raids, boozy domestic disputes and armed robberies. Seldom if ever have we heard of "catching two teenagers bonking in the back seat of a Honda Civic" as the type of call cops dread, but one such incident almost cost a Tomball [Texas] cop her life last Monday.

According to a police report on file in the Harris County courthouse, Tomball cop / detective Kristina Tikal was headed to work from her apartment on January 2 when she noticed something funny about an old blue Honda Civic in the parking lot: the left rear door was wide open and there were a pair of naked legs sticking out, toes pointed toward the ground.

Tikal stopped the car and told the man to pull his pants up, and then saw that there was a 17-year-old woman in the backseat who was also not wearing pants.

A very large young woman, in fact. Court records list the teen as packing 240 pounds on her five-foot-five frame, leading one to wonder if the backseat of a Honda Civic was the best possible venue for the sexual contortions that both the young woman and the man later told the cop were about to ensue.

Tikal reported that she ordered the man and the woman to get dressed and told them that they were being detained. She said that while she was standing between the open door and the backseat, the young woman managed to bound into the driver's seat and start the car. Tikal said she told the woman twice to shut the engine down, but the woman instead threw the Civic into reverse, smashed down on the accelerator and fled the scene.

In doing so, she clipped Tikal's shoulder, hurling her ten feet from the vehicle and causing her to suffer a fractured scapula, injuries to her hip and elbow, and abrasions to her arms and legs.

(UPDATE: Earlier reports that Tikal had fractured her skull were erroneous: in typing up the original report, a police source morphed "fractured scapula" into "fractured scalp.")

The young woman got away, but not without several witnesses giving detailed descriptions of both her and the car to police, and a few days later a tipster told police where the young woman lived, and cops found a damaged blue Honda Civic in the driveway.

Police later went to Tomball High School and talked to the young woman, who matched the description they had been given. The woman and her mother later gave a statement saying that the woman had panicked when Tikal walked up on her. She claimed to have known only that she had hit a truck. She said she had no idea she'd hit a cop.

Tomball cops aren't buying it. The woman has been charged with aggravated assault of a police officer and felony evading arrest. Had she not driven away, all the woman would have faced were charges of either indecent exposure or disorderly conduct.

LETTER TO PAM

2012-01-11T01:27:00.000-06:00

The Schalotte
January 10, 2012

The Schalotte is proud to announce that Pamela Putz has started a ‘Letter to Pam’ advice column for the lovelorn. Here is the first letter Pamela received:

Dear Pam,

My husband has a long record of money problems. He runs up huge credit-card bills and at the end of the month, if I try to pay them off, he shouts at me, saying I am stealing his money. He says pay the minimum and let our kids worry about the rest, but already we can hardly keep up with the interest. Also he has been so arrogant and abusive toward our neighbors that most of them no longer speak to us. The few that do are an odd bunch, to whom he has been giving a lot of expensive gifts, running up our bills even more.

Also, he has gotten religious. One week he hangs out with Catholics and the next with people who say the Pope is the Anti-Christ, and the next he's with Muslims..

Finally, the last straw. He's demanding that before anyone can be in the same room with him, they must sign a loyalty oath. It's just so horribly creepy!

Can you help?

Signed,
Lost

Dear Lost,

Stop whining, Michelle. You're getting to live in the White House for free, travel the world, and have others pay for everything for you.

You can divorce the jerk any time you want. The rest of us are stuck with Barack for at least one more year and maybe for five more years!

Signed,
Pam

MEXICO’S DRUG CARTELS OWE THEIR SUCCESS TO THE POLICE AND TO SOCIETY’S TOLERANCE OF DRUG USE

2012-01-10T13:11:00.001-06:00

From Borderland Beat:

INSECURITY: THE CAUSE AND EFFECT OF SYSTEMATIC CRIMINALIZATION
In the final analysis the problem will be addressed by either the willingness of society to live with the drug cartels and tolerate the harmful nature of drugs, or for society to unite behind the better laws and strategies necessary for a frontal assault against the drug cartels

by Carlos Ramirez

Borderland Beat
January 8, 2012

The security offensive the federal government has undertaken from 2007 to 2011 has revealed the role of society and politics in the crisis of violence facing the nation: the existence of organized crime was only possible through the collaboration of society, politicians, institutions and even the State.

Consequently, the irrational violence and the number of deaths has been the effect of a problem of decadence within the political power structure as its cause. The Army itself has seized 106,000 weapons and 41,000 vehicles, which give us an idea of the size of organized crime.

But the magnitude of organized crime is much greater than what those numbers represent. The Army has detained 41,000 criminals and the number of those killed may be up to 60,000, so can estimate that up to 100,000 criminals have been taken out of the game. If we add to those numbers that of the seizure of 10,000 tons of marijuana we can then get a clearer picture of the size of the crisis of insecurity.

The existence of organized crime can is best understood in terms of a dynamic process: the growth of criminal gangs was only possible under the protection of political powers and the State. Following the 1985 kidnapping and assassination of DEA agent Enrique Camarena Salazar by a cartel of Sinaloans headed by Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, the U.S. government revealed that the federal police forces, the DFS (Mexico’s former national security police force under Gobernacion, or the Interior Ministry), the Policia Judicial Federal (the disbanded federal judicial police under the PGR, or the Attorney General’s office), and the Mexico City police were responsible for the protection of drug traffickers and their shipments. The administration of the then President Miguel de la Madrid was forced to terminate a slew of police commanders.

The federal police forces were responsible for ensuring the national security of the State in the face of both violent and nonviolent political dissidents and as a result accumulated enormous power (Mexico under the PRI was ruled, in general, as a single party authoritarian state). After the 1982 presidential elections, with political power within the PRI changing hands from a bureaucratic elite to economic technocrats, the federal security apparatus was set adrift with a high degree of autonomy from the political leadership. It was then when the federal police forces changed its raison d’etre from pursuing political dissidents (who had gained some breathing space with political reforms enacted in 1978) to the protection of organized crime.

Another moment forgotten in the shaping of organized crime’s power structure is found in the period between 1981 and 1985 when a government financial crisis forced the administration of President Miguel de la Madrid through clandestine mechanisms to collect and officially launder U.S. currency from drug traffickers to neutralize the bleeding of U.S. dollars used to prop the peso that was resulting in constant devaluations.

The crisis over the official protection of drug traffickers was precipitated, not by a desire by the State to fight criminality at its root, but by the assassination of Camarena. It was not a coincidence that Jose Antonio Zorrilla Perez, the director of the DFS under Interior Minister Manuel Bartlett Diaz and President De la Madrid and at the center of accusations by the U.S. of protecting drug traffickers, was removed from his post and entered as a PRI candidate for a federal congressional seat from the state of Hidalgo. And it was no coincidence that the Interior Minister, Attorney General and Mayor of Mexico City (all three posts whose police forces protected drug cartel kingpins) in 1987 were seen as prospective PRI presidential candidates.

The change in ruling parties with the victory of the PAN in the 2000 Presidential elections marked another phase in the revelations of the harmonious relationship between the drug cartels and the PRI political power structure. However, the PAN’s lack of experience in forging secret agreements with organized crime and the loss of PRI guarantees of protection to drug cartels presented opportunities for the cartels to become relatively autonomous. At that moment the cartels found protection with other international criminal organizations and took full advantage of the space created by the PRI’s departure from the presidency to consolidate their power. Above all, the drug cartels power grew because of the decision of the Vicente Fox administration to look the other way.

The Calderon administration’s security offensive against organized crime is only one phase of the solution to the problem. The other still awaits the greater engagement of society and urgent legislative action to end the drug cartels’ circumventions. This is where the topic of insecurity will be centered in 2012, especially as the Mexican drug cartels form part of an international network the links organized crime from South America to the United States.

In 2012 the nation faces the decisive hour to put into action the final strategy against organized crime or to negotiate an agreement with the criminal organizations; there is no more room for halfway measures. In the final analysis the problem will be addressed by either the willingness of society to live with the drug cartels and tolerate the harmful nature of drugs, or for society to unite behind the better laws and strategies necessary for a frontal assault against the drug cartels.

In the end, the violence is an effect and not the cause.

__Carlos Ramirez is a political analyst and columnist for the newspaper El Financiero

LAWSUIT IMPLIES THAT ARMED THUGS SHOULD GET TO SHOOT AT COPS FIRST

2012-01-10T01:56:00.003-06:00

Bob Walsh says the family of an armed thug shot to death by the Oakland PD has the notion that even though their son was armed with two handguns, one of which had been fired, the cops should not have shot him because he did not shoot at them first. Maybe if they had done a better job of raising the little crud the cops wouldn’t have had occasion to shoot his sorry ass.

FAMILY OF MAN KILLED BY OAKLAND COP SUES CITY
By Henry K. Lee

San Francisco Chronicle
January 8, 2012

The family of an armed man shot dead by Oakland police at the end of a high-speed chase last year has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city.

Martin Flenaugh, 19, of Oakland was a passenger in the car police were chasing Jan. 26, 2011, in connection with a shootout moments earlier. He had a 9mm semiautomatic gun in one hand and a .45-caliber handgun in the other and was shot when he refused to drop the weapons after the car ran a red light, crashed into two vehicles and burst into flames at 85th Avenue and San Leandro Street in East Oakland, police said.

But Flenaugh's mother, Spring Mathews of San Mateo, said in a lawsuit filed Friday in Alameda County Superior Court that "no reports suggest he fired a weapon at the police officers before they shot at him."

The lawsuit also said Flenaugh was "left to bleed and die in the street without being provided early or appropriate medical care."

The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, further said that police failed to "correct the defective communication system" used by the department, citing reports by officers that radio problems during the chase forced them to rely on hand signals and cell phones. The department is now using a new radio system.

Alameda County prosecutors said the officer who shot and killed Flenaugh, Richard McNeely, had acted properly and would not face criminal charges. Deputy District Attorney John Creighton wrote in a report that Flenaugh, who had convictions for burglary and marijuana possession, may have fired a .45-caliber gun at McNeely because a casing was found at the scene.

The incident began when police responded to reports that men in a maroon Infiniti had fired shots on the 7600 block of Lockwood Avenue. No one was hurt. Police found spent 9mm and .45-caliber casings at that location. After the crash, the driver, parolee Jereme Brown, was arrested after he ran to a nearby auto shop.

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND THE EUROPEANS SEEM EAGER TO GET CONNED BY THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

2012-01-10T01:19:00.001-06:00

Here are some excerpts from ‘The land-for- peace hoax,’ an op-ed by Caroline Glick that was published in Monday’s issue of Jewish World Review:

As it has become more apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist parties will hold an absolute majority in Egypt's democratically elected parliament, Western governments and media outlets have insistently argued that these anti-Western, and anti-Jewish, movements have become moderate and pragmatic. Leading the charge to make the case has been the Obama administration. Its senior officials have eagerly embraced the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood Yusuf Qaradawi is reportedly mediating negotiations between the US and the Taliban.

Qaradawi, an Egyptian who has been based in Qatar since 1961, when he was forced to flee Egypt due to his jihadist politics, made a triumphant return to his native land last February following the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak. Speaking to a crowd of an estimated two million people in Cairo's Tahrir Square, Qaradawi led them in a chant calling for them to invade Jerusalem.

Over the years, Qaradawi has issued numerous religious ruling permitting, indeed requiring, the massacre of Jews. In 2009, he called for the Muslim world to complete Hitler's goal of eradicating the Jewish people.

As for the US, in 2003, Qaradawi issued a religious ruling calling for the killing of US forces in Iraq.

Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists are happy to cater to the propaganda needs of Western journalists and politicians and pretend that they are willing to continue to uphold the peace treaty with Israel. But even as they make conditional statements to eager Americans and Europeans, they consistently tell their own people that they seek the destruction of Israel and the abrogation of the peace deal between Egypt and Israel.

RAPE VICTIMS AND DUI VICTIMS ARE NOT ONE AND THE SAME

2012-01-10T01:07:00.002-06:00

I believe that a rape victim has the right to request that a parolee who raped her be required to live at least 35 miles away from her home. But that’s not what we have in this case. I agree with the ruling of the two judges. Not allowing this parolee to live with his ailing mother would have punished the woman for her son's fatal PCP induced wreck.

35-MILE PAROLE BUFFER DOESN’T APPLY TO VICTIM’S NEXT OF KIN
By: Bob Egelko

San Francisco Chronicle
January 6, 2011

When a prisoner is paroled after serving time for a violent crime, California law allows the crime victim or a witness to ask the state for a buffer zone requiring the parolee to live at least 35 miles away. Prison officials invoked that law in 2010 to bar Terrance David from moving in with his ailing mother in Burbank, 26 miles away from the sister of a woman who was killed when David, while driving under the influence of PCP, slammed into her car in 1986.

But a state appeals court has now overturned the restriction and allowed David to stay in his mother’s home and take care of her after spending 21 years in prison for two counts of second-degree murder. In a 2-1 ruling Friday, the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles said the law’s definition of “victims” doesn’t include next of kin, and its application in a case like this one would make no sense.

The parole board has independent authority to impose conditions on newly released inmates to protect the public and might have reasonably prohibited David from living in or near the same community as the victim’s sister, said Justice Richard Mosk in the majority opinion. But he said Burbank was an entirely separate community many miles away from Lynwood, where the sister lives, and the chances of any contact between them are remote.

The residence restriction “has no relationship to (David’s) crime and will not deter future criminality,” Mosk said. “It does not bear on the safety of the victim’s family. And, because of the distance involved, it does not reasonably affect their well-being.”

In dissent, Sanjay Kumar, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge temporarily assigned to the appeals court, accused the majority of rewriting the law and contributing to the mental anguish of the victim’s sister.

David had two previous convictions for driving while intoxicated when he ran a stop sign at 80 mph in November 1986 and broadsided a car driven by Lavell Hunter, killing Hunter and his fiancee, Gladys Coral. Convicted of murder in 1989, he was denied parole six times before the Board of Parole Hearings approved him for release in July 2010.

At the parole hearing, the court said, David expressed remorse and apologized to the victims’ families, and Coral’s sister, Elizabeth, said she and her family had forgiven him. But she later asked prison officials to prohibit him from residing wihtin 35 miles of her, to protect her — as a parole agent described it — from “living in fear and under the stress of knowing that (he) lives in her community.” The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation granted the request, as it generally does in such cases, but court orders allowed David to move in with his mother while he appealed the decision.

In Friday’s ruling, Mosk said the law authorizing the 35-mile buffer zone, passed more than 20 years ago, refers to a request by a “victim or witness” whose safety or well-being is at risk. Unlike other victims’-rights laws, he said, it does not mention a victim’s next of kin.

Even if his victim’s sister was covered by the law, Mosk said, there is no evidence that David posed any threat to her safety or well-being. Those criteria would be meaningless, he said, if they included “the understandable anguish of a victim’s family member,” which is present in virtually every case.

Kumar, in dissent, said the Corrections Department found that the buffer was needed to protect the well-being of Elizabeth Coral, who testified that she is still in pain from her sister’s death.

David’s lawyer, Richard Pfeiffer, said the ruling would affect many other cases, because prison officials “routinely” order such restrictions without evidence that a parolee poses a threat to a victim’s family. He said David, a young man who used drugs and drove recklessly before his conviction, behaved well in prison and is now attending law school and getting top grades.

HOW WOULD YOU GRADE THE ANSWERS TO THIS EXAM?

2012-01-10T01:01:00.001-06:00

The primary stated goal of public school educators is to get students to think. Here is how a student answered the following quiz. What kind of grade should he get?

Q1. In which battle did Napoleon die?
A. His last battle

Q2. Where was the Declaration of Independence signed?
A. At the bottom of the page

Q3. River Ravi flows in which state?
A. Liquid

Q4. What is the main reason for divorce?
A. Marriage

Q5. What is the main reason for failure?
A. Exams

Q6. What can you never eat for breakfast?
A. Lunch & dinner

Q7. What looks like half an apple?
A. The other half

Q8. If you throw a red stone into the blue sea what it will become?
A. It will simply become wet

Q9. How can a man go eight days without sleeping ?
A. No problem, he sleeps at night.

Q10. How can you lift an elephant with one hand?
A. You will never find an elephant that has only one hand..

Q11. If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and three oranges in other hand, what would you have ?
A. Very large hands

Q12. If it took eight men ten hours to build a wall, how long would it take four men to build it?
A. No time at all, the wall is already built.

Q13. How can u drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?
A. Any way you want, concrete floors are very hard to crack.

SEEING EYE DOGS

2012-01-10T00:54:00.002-06:00

Two women were out for a Saturday stroll. One had a Doberman and the other, a Chihuahua . As they walked down the street, the one with the Doberman said to her friend, "Let's go over to that bar for a drink."

The woman with the Chihuahua said, "We can't go in there. We've got dogs with us."

The one with the Doberman said, "Just watch, and do as I do."

They walked over to the bar and the one with the Doberman put on a pair of dark glasses and started to walk in.

The bouncer at the door said, "Sorry, lady, no pets allowed."

The woman with the Doberman said, "You don't understand. This is my seeing-eye dog."

The bouncer said, "A Doberman?"

The woman said, "Yes, they're using them now. They're very good."

The bouncer said, "OK, come on in."

The woman with the Chihuahua thought that convincing him that a Chihuahua was a seeing-eye dog may be a bit more difficult, but thought, "What the hell." So she put on her dark glasses and started to walk in.

Once again the bouncer said, "Sorry, lady, no pets allowed."

The woman said, "You don't understand. This is my seeing-eye dog"

The bouncer said, "A Chihuahua?"

The woman with the Chihuahua said, "A Chihuahua? They gave me a fucking Chihuahua?!"

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD LIKELY TO BITE OFF THE HAND THAT KEEPS REACHING OUT TO IT

2012-01-09T01:32:00.001-06:00

Obama’s foreign policy of ‘sweet talking’ to our adversaries has produced few if any positive results. His efforts in reaching out to the Muslim world will inevitably lead the Muslim Brotherhood to bite of his hand.

WHY IS OBAMA LYING TO COVER FOR THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD?
By Ryan Jones

Israel Today
January 8, 2012

The Muslim Brotherhood on Saturday reaffirmed a statement by one of it's leaders last week that it intends to negatively alter or cancel Egypt's peace treaty with Israel after the group assumes power in Cairo.

The Muslim Brotherhood's affirmation came in response to a claim by US State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland last Thursday that the Obama Administration had received secret assurances that the Brotherhood would uphold the Camp David Accords following its electoral victory.

Nuland's assertion was itself a response to an interview published in the Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat last week in which Muslim Brotherhood deputy leader Dr. Rashad Bayoumi insisted that his group will never recognize Israel or its right to exist.

"This is not an option, whatever the circumstances, we do not recognize Israel at all," said Bayoumi, adding, "The Brotherhood respects international conventions, but we will take legal action against the peace treaty with the Zionist entity."

In her press briefing, Nuland dismissed Bayoumi's remarks and his commanding position by stating that he is "just one member of the Muslim Brotherhood." Nuland said that Washington had "other assurances from the party" that it would not follow the policies communicated by Bayoumi.

Essam Arian, deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood's political wing the Freedom and Justice Party, shot back by insisting that neither Nuland nor anyone else in the Obama Administration had received any such guarantees.

"No one in Egypt can promise anything on behalf of the entire nation," Arian told the London-based Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.

Another Brotherhood official, Subhi Saleh, added that while "the Muslim Brotherhood will honor all agreements...no agreements are sacred and any signed agreement can be reconsidered."

That revelation again raised concerns that once in power, the Muslim Brotherhood will hold a national referendum on maintaining the peace treaty with Israel, a move that Bayoumi previously championed.

In light of the results of Egypt's parliamentary election - the Muslim Brotherhood won 40 percent of the vote, while second place went to the even more radical al-Nour Party - and the fact that the Brotherhood's official party position is to reject Israel, such a referendum would certainly be the end of the Camp David Accords.

No one is more pleased by that realization than Gaza-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who told British newspaper The Independent on Saturday that with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, "Israel is in a security situation they have never been in before."

Hamas was born out of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and Haniyeh sees the group as a natural ally in Hamas' quest to eventually eradicate the Jewish state.

MEXICAN DRUG CARTEL DOING BRISK BUSINESS IN NORTH TEXAS

2012-01-09T01:23:00.002-06:00

After leaders of the La Familia in North Texas were arrested, replacement leaders were assigned to take their place. And that pretty much sums up what happens every time some Mexican drug boss gets busted.

From Borderland Beat:

METH BUST INVOLVING MEMBERS OF LA FAMILIA
Feds Announce (Another) Local Meth Bust Involving Members of La Familia Drug Cartel

By Robert Wilonsky

Dallas Observer
January 7, 2012

In October of 2009, James Capra, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Dallas Division, invited media to a press conference so he could show off the massive haul from a long-in-the-works bust involving the Mexican drug cartel known as La Familia: 220 pounds of methamphetamine, 4.5 kilos of cocaine, $660,000 in cash and dozens of machine guns.

The feds and other law-enforcement officials said they'd nabbed some 1,100 people around the country during an operation known as Project Coronado; 84 of them were taken into custody in and around Dallas, a major distribution hub for drugs brought in from Mexico -- Michoacan, specifically, La Familia's home base. Six months later, Ricardo Hernandez-Cruz, a.k.a "Rica," a 37-year-old who handled the merch, pleaded guilty to meth trafficking.

Since then La Familia, which, per Time, attempts to mask its infamous, well-documented brutality behind quasi-religious camouflage, has overhauled its operations, at least from the looks of the latest heads-up from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

A Dallas federal grand jury this week indicted 16 more members of La Familia, all of whom were arrested December 14 in Tyler and Dallas. Some were nabbed in rural Tyler, at the so-called "ranch" of Sergio Renteria Echeverria, otherwise known as "Trippa," the 30-year-old who Capra and U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldaña say is the "cell-head" who "concealed large amounts of drugs" on the premises. They also say he maintains another residence in Richardson, on Midway Drive, which the feds will seize if he's convicted.

This time around, authorities say they got about $700,000 in cash, 20 pounds of meth, one kilo of cocaine and 70 firearms. They also discovered a meth conversion lab in Duncanville. It's not just shipping the drugs to Dallas-Fort Worth; La Familia is now manufacturing them locally.

According to the government, this investigation into La Familia's doings on U.S. soil has been going on since '06; that '09 bust was part of that. But it's like cutting off the head of a hyrda:

While the LFM cartel itself is based in Michoacan, the investigation identified several LFM distribution cells throughout North Texas. Intelligence obtained from the investigation revealed that after leaders of the LFM were arrested, replacement leaders, or "cell-head leaders" were assigned to continue the distribution of narcotics in the Dallas area and to other parts of the U.S.

Since the LFM Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) investigation began, agents with DEA Dallas have arrested more than 100 defendants on federal charges and seized approximately $7.6 million in cash and assets, approximately 900 kilograms of methamphetamine, more than 85 kilograms of cocaine, approximately one kilogram of heroin and numerous firearms.

FEUD BETWEEN FLORIDA HIGHWAY PATROL AND MIAMI POLICE CONTINUES

2012-01-09T01:17:00.002-06:00

In ‘Reckless Driver Was An Off-Duty Cop” (11-1-11) I wrote: This jerk needs to be drummed out of the police service. There is absolutely no excuse for putting other drivers at risk by this kind of driving, whether on duty or not. No emergency really requires a cop to exceed a speed of from 90 to 100 mph, not even to assist another officer.

Fausto Lopez, an off-duty Miami cop, was driving a police car 120 mph because he was late for his off-duty extra job working security at a school when he was arrested by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper.

That set off a nasty fight between the FHP and the Miami police. Someone even dumped several gallons of human shit on an FHP cruiser parked in front of a trooper’s home. The trooper happened to be former Miami City Commissioner Joe Sanchez.

Instead of condemning Lopez’s reckless behavior, the Miami police union chose to excoriate the FHP trooper.

FHP CLEARS TROOPER IN TRAFFIC STOP OF MIAMI COP
An internal review cleared FHP Trooper Jane Watts, who stopped a speeding Miami officer

PoliceOne
January 7, 2012

MIAMI, Fla. — Trooper Jane Watts did not violate policy when she pulled over and handcuffed a Miami officer in October, an internal review by the Florida Highway Patrol concluded.

A report released Wednesday stated Watts used discretion during the traffic stop of Officer Fausto Lopez, in which she stopped Lopez for driving at speeds of up to 120 mph, drawing her gun in the process and launching lengthy media scrutiny and a back-and-forth feud between the departments.

Watts, though cleared, did disobey an order from supervisor Sgt. Reynaldo Sanchez and did not "back off" when instructed, according to the Sun Sentinel. According to Watts, she thought Sanchez was asking her to slow down, so she did, and turned off her emergency lights — but Lopez accelerated, she said, so she stopped him.

After pulling over Lopez, a trooper and a corporal stopped to help Watts, the report said, but when they arrived on the scene and saw Lopez, they believed a supervisor was needed.

The two assisting officers called Sanchez, who spoke to Watts on the phone and told her to remove the handcuffs, they said in the report.

When Sanchez later arrived at the scene, he told Watts to write an incident report, not knowing until he viewed dash cam of the stop that Watts had drawn her gun — a detail she left out when she spoke to him.

The report made no recommendations and said Watts acted within the realm of "judgment and discretion afforded to her as a Florida state trooper."

"She believed he was intentionally not stopping for her," the report said. "The driver was driving recklessly. She thought that possibly the police vehicle could have been stolen."

Not everyone is satisfied with the report's lack of disciplinary action. After vice president of Miami's police union Sgt. Javier Ortiz read the report, he said there remain "continued hard feelings over the trooper's treatment of Lopez."

"It is clear that Trooper Watts lacks two of the most important values in police work: integrity and responsibility," Ortiz wrote in a lengthy email obtained by the Palm Beach Post.

Asked if she would have done anything differently, Watts said no.

WIFE WANTED

2012-01-09T01:15:00.001-06:00

Sam Davis, a lonesome farmer from Marfa, Texas put a “Wife Wanted” ad on craigslist.

The next day Sam received more than a 100 responses before his computer crashed.

They all said the same thing: “You can have mine.”

One response also said: “You know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to.”

Another responder added: “I’ve had bad luck in both of my marriages. My first wife left me and the second one is still with me.”

A PRIVATE HELL

2012-01-08T01:36:00.001-06:00

Trey Rusk is a retired state police lieutenant now working with an auto theft task force. Here are his comments on the shooting of 15-year-old Jaime Gonzales by two Brownsville, Texas cops:

I guess a lot of people have forgotten the Columbine School shooting. The officers in Brownsville who responded to the 15 year old with a gun acted correctly.

The carnage would have been terrible had the 15 year old started shooting other students with what was perceived as being a Glock handgun.

These officers will never get over this shooting. We should thank them for doing their job because their lives will be changed forever. I hope the police department is getting them much needed counseling.

Brownsville is not that big a place. The cops involved in the shooting will be forever known as ‘the cops that shot that kid in school.’ The whispers and looks are bound to impact them and their families.

Historically, police officers have been plagued with alcoholism, divorce, depression and suicide. So, try to put yourself in their place. The public scrutiny is just beginning, but the private hell will go on forever.

HACKERS ARE TERRORISTS, NOT PRANKSTERS

2012-01-08T01:32:00.001-06:00

The recent cyber-attack on STRATFOR Global Intelligence in which the hacker group calling itself ‘Anonymous’ obtained credit card information on thousands of STRATFOR subscribers and the confidential correspondence between STRATFOR’s clients, including government agencies, points to the havoc hackers can create.

Israel has got it right. We should take a page from their book and treat hackers as terrorists, not as thieves or pranksters!

ISRAEL VOWS TO HIT BACK AFTER CREDIT CARDS HACKED
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon says cyber-attacks are a ‘breach of sovereignty comparable to a terrorist operation, and must be treated as such’

Reuters
January 7, 2012

Israel said on Saturday the online publication of thousands of its citizens' credit card details by a hacker claiming to be Saudi was comparable to terrorism, and vowed to hit back.

The data theft, which appeared to focus on commercial web sites, was one of the worst Israel has said it has faced. While the financial damage was reportedly minimal, the breaches have heightened concerns about the potential use of stolen information by the Jewish state's foes.

Such cyber-attacks are "a breach of sovereignty comparable to a terrorist operation, and must be treated as such", Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said during a speech at a community center.

"Israel has active capabilities for striking at those who are trying to harm it, and no agency or hacker will be immune from retaliatory action," he said, without elaborating.

The hacker, identifying himself as Saudi-based OxOmar, said on Thursday he had leaked private information about more than 400,000 Israelis. Credit card company officials said around 25,000 numbers, some of them expired, had been posted as of Friday.

After Israeli media ran what they said were interviews conducted with OxOmar over email, the Haaretz newspaper said a blogger had tracked the hacker down and determined he was a 19-year-old citizen of the United Arab Emirates studying and working in Mexico.

An aide to Ayalon, Lital Shochat, said Israel was aware of the report but had not yet requested help from Mexican authorities.

BURGLAR'S LIFE SPARED BY VICTIM'S SOUND SLEEP

2012-01-08T01:27:00.001-06:00

Had Iron Mike not been a sound sleeper, society would have had one less thief roaming in its midst.

THE WORLD’S BRAVEST (OR DUMBEST) BURGLAR: TIP-TOEING INTRUDER BREAKS INTO MIKE TYSON’S HOTEL ROOM… AS EX-HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMP WAS SLEEPING
Life imitates art: Tyson had tiger stolen in ‘The Hangover’

By Lee Moran

Mail Online
January 5, 2012

A tip-toeing intruder has been dubbed the world's bravest (or most stupid) burglar - after he broke into Mike Tyson's hotel room as the ex-boxer was sleeping.

The raider fled the suite at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas after Iron Mike, infamous for biting off an opponent's ear in a bout, woke to the sound of rustling.

It was a lucky escape for the thief, who could have been on the end of Tyson's powerful right hook had the heavyweight been fully alert.

Nothing was taken in the break-in and security at the resort, where top suites cost up to $1,500 per night, has now been stepped up.

Knock-out Hollywood actor Tyson, who floored a burglar as he played himself in The Hangover film after his tiger was stolen, was staying at the hotel with his family on New Year's Eve after attending a Stevie Wonder concert.

The TMZ website reported: 'We're told Tyson was sleeping like a baby when all of a sudden, he awoke to rustling sounds and saw a flashlight.

'But by the time Iron Mike realized what was happening, the intruder had already run out of the room.'

A hotel spokesman added: 'We have received a report of an incident that is currently under investigation. As always, guest safety is of the utmost importance.'

The run-in with the sleepy pugilistic pigeon-fancier, who raises the racing variety of the bird in his spare time, should be considered a lucky escape.

Tyson first began boxing at a centre for juvenile delinquents in upstate New York at the age of 12.

Eight years later he became the youngest heavyweight champion when he knocked out Trevor Berbick in 1986.

But in 1990, he was defeated by James 'Buster' Douglas in one of the biggest upsets in boxing history.

LIFE'S STAGES OF SUCCESS

2012-01-08T01:24:00.002-06:00

At age 3, success means: Not shitting in your pants.

At age 12, success means: Having friends.

At age 18, success means: Having a driver’s license.

At age 20, success means: Having sex.

At age 35, success means: Having money.

At age 50, success means: Having money.

At age 60, success means: Having sex.

At age 70, success means: Having a driver’s license.

At age 75, success means: Having Friends

At age 80, success means: Not shitting in your pants.

WHEN THE BOSS IS AWAY

2012-01-08T01:22:00.001-06:00

When my boss phoned me today, he said, "Is everything okay at the office?"

I said, "Yes, it's all under control. It's been a very busy day, I haven't stopped for a minute."

"Can you do me a favor?" he asked.

I said, "Of course, anything, what is it?"

He said, "Hurry up and take your shot, I'm right behind you on the 7th hole."

FLIP FLOPPING ON THE DEATH PENALTY

2012-01-07T01:46:00.002-06:00

Dorina Lisson, my Aussie human rights activist friend, sent me the following e-mail with a link to a four-page article describing flaws in the trial and conviction of Jermaine Wright who has been roosting on Delaware’s death row for 20 Years:

Death sentence overturned
Delaware man Jermaine Wright, who has spent 20 years on death row could be freed

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20120104/NEWS01/201040340/Death-sentence-overturned

Superior Court Judge John A. Parkins Jr. overturned the conviction and death sentence of Jermaine Wright. Parkins said he had "no confidence" in the evidence against Wright, despite a videotaped confession.

Laurie L. Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said; "It should make everyone stop and gasp that a man could come so close to being put to death when there were so many problems with his conviction. Bells and sirens should go off for the criminal justice system, that such stunning turnarounds are happening more and more in cases like this one, cases that are 10, 15 or 20 years old. This is probably why we are seeing that juries are less and less willing to give the death penalty. We are seeing how easy it is to get it wrong."

Here is how I responded to Dorina:

You've done it. You've succeeded in getting me to switch to your side. I am now unalterably opposed to the death penalty. How could I do otherwise with so many innocent victims of a corrupt criminal justice system sitting on death row or serving life terms in prison. I'm sick to my stomach for my past stance. It's all I can do to keep from puking.

But wait a minute, I must be out of my mind. I just got through reading all four pages of the linked article and while the investigation obviously had flaws, there is nothing in the story that proves this scumbag is innocent. On the other hand, there is his confession. The fact that he changed the details several times does not mean the confession is invalid.

As for being under the influence of heroin during his interrogation, that should not invalidate the confession either. When I was a cop I dealt with many heroin addicts and when I was a California parole agent, I had a special case load of only heroin addicts. I have dealt with many addicts under the influence and believe me when I tell you that they can be completely rational at the time. The fact that Wright ate slips of paper and curled up in a fetal position during the interrogation is not indicative of someone under the influence of heroin, but it is indicative of someone putting on an act.

So I hate to disappoint you, but I'm switching back to my old self as a committed advocate for the death penalty.

And Dorina came back at me with this:

I never suggested the Delaware man was innocent !!! There is a big difference between innocence and wrongful conviction.

Hey, you said it ... "The investigation obviously had some flaws". Holly Sheet, no, really ???

I do not fight for abolition of the death penalty by only using the 'innocence' theory. But then, that's an excellent point.

Please, don't get me and the group ACADP [Australian Coalition Against Death Penalty, the organization Dorina leads] confused with all other anti-death penalty activists. Don't put us all in the same basket !!! Please understand that I am an 'individual' anti-death penalty activist - not easily brainwashed by anybody. Allow me to make myself very clear on this issue. My passionate reasons for being opposed to the death penalty (regardless of crime) are ...

The death penalty is a barbaric, brutal, cruel, degrading, inhuman, uncivilized and repugnant state-sanctioned act of pure vengeance. It is a 'Government Program' - a vile legalized 'hate crime' that has no place in a modern-day criminal justice system. It makes me sick to my stomach - it makes me puke !!!

The death penalty is discriminative. It is seriously flawed. It is riddled with legal errors (wrongful convictions). It is corrupt. It is bias - some offenders are ‘chosen/selected’ to be executed and others are not. It is applied arbitrarily, capriciously and at random. It is a system that has been proven time and time again to be rotten to the core, literally, no matter where you look. It is a seriously broken system that cannot be fixed. It has been declared by the UN to be a 'cruel and unusual' punishment (botched executions). It is a direct violation of the most fundamental human right - the right to life. It creates more victims (the innocent family members and loved ones of the executed offender). It brutalizes a society. It degrades a society. It is a lethal lottery - politics, quality of legal counsel, police misconduct, prosecution misconduct, eyewitness errors, false and coerced confessions, use of snitches as informants, ominous jury members, who you are, your ethnicity, your financial status, your intellect, the jurisdiction where the crime was committed, the political climate at the time of the crime and death sentence and the political rivalry are more often the determining facts - more than the actual facts surrounding the crime itself.

Human Rights is universal. Human Rights belong to everyone - all people on this one planet. Human Rights is all of our business. As members of the human race, every human being has a born right to protect the life of another human being, regardless of location on this planet. Every human being is equal with equal human rights, regardless of nationality. Governments do not give nor grant us human life and they should have no right to take away a human life. The death penalty cannot be separated from human rights. Universal human rights is everybody's business !!!

The death penalty is the most pre-meditated, meticulously prepared, carefully planned, cold-blooded ‘legal ritual’ of killing a human being by government-chosen stealth executioner/s who then go home to their families and sleep peacefully at night. Governments cannot be trusted to control their own power over society, their own bureaucrats and their abuse of taxpayers' money - much less choose the executioner/s and which offenders they want executed. What kind of a decent civilized individual would want a job as a state-sanctioned executioner ??? It takes a 'certain' individual to kill another human being in a stealth, sadistic, chilling, blood-thirsty, carefully-prepared, cold-blooded, pre-meditated, primitive 'ritual' of state-sanctioned killing. A killer is a killer, is a killer. The job of executioner/s should be looked at with the ultimate of contempt !!!

In the words of United States former executioner Jerry Givens ...“The job of executioner turned me into an animal, it transformed my life to become I hate to say - an animal.” Givens spent 17 years as a professional legal killer from 1982 to 1999 and presided over 62 executions. He now opposes what he calls ... “the ultimate revenge”

My final word:

What Dorina says about human rights is absolutely true. But while I can pick apart what she says about the application of the death penalty, I’ll let it go at that.

A RIGHTEOUS SHOOTING

2012-01-07T01:42:00.003-06:00

By now most of you know that on Wednesday two Brownsville, Texas cops shot and killed 15-yer-old Jaime Gonzales inside a middle school after he pointed a .177-caliber pellet gun at them. Before they opened fire, the officers had shouted ‘numerous’ commands at the 8th-grader to drop the gun. The pellet gun looked very much like a Glock pistol, leading the officers to fear for their lives.

Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez confirmed to The Brownsville Herald that following the shooting, telephone calls were made overnight to the police department's dispatch center threatening the lives of police officers for the killing of Gonzales.

According to the Associated Press, the boy's father, Jaime Gonzalez Sr., called the shooting unjustified and said he had no idea where his son got the pellet gun. "Why was so much excess force used on a minor?" he asked. "Three shots. Why not one that would bring him down?"

"What happened was an injustice," Noralva Gonzalez, the boy’s mother, said angrily. "I know that my son wasn't perfect, but he was a great kid."

After she returned from viewing her boy’s body and taking cell phone pictures of his wounds, the mother sobbed, “I saw the wounds, in the chest, in the heart. I'm not crazy. He was hit in the head, from behind. He was a boy, like any boy. They didn't have the right to do that.”

Already convinced that the shooting was not necessary, the South Texas Civil Rights Project released a statement calling for Brownsville police to conduct an investigation in 30 days, hire an expert on the use of deadly force, institute “de-escalation policy and training” and involve parents from the Brownsville Independent School District in the investigation and new policies and training.

I am sure that in the days to come, many armchair detectives will sprout forth to criticize the 8th-grader’s shooting. The police do not have the luxury of sitting back and dissecting a situation bit by bit before making a life or death decision. In every police shooting there are the second and third guessers accusing the cops of using excessive force. But in most cases, and certainly in this one, whenever the police kill someone, it is a righteous shooting.

Whenever cops shoot at someone while they are in imminent fear of their lives, it is a natural reaction to fire a volley of rounds at that person, rather than only one or two shots. If someone looks like they’re about to shoot me, I’m going to keep popping caps at them until they’re down and out and until I’m dead certain the threat to my life is over and done with!

And the age of the person posing that threat is not relevant to a ‘shoot, don’t shoot’ decision. The perceived threat determines that decision. To the two Brownsville cops, 15-year-old Jaime Gonzales posed an imminent threat to their lives. This was a righteous shooting, no doubt about it!

A TRUE HORSE LOVER

2012-01-07T01:32:00.002-06:00

I wonder which mares he favored - white, black or brown?

CIRILO CASTILLO, JR: ACCUSED OF MULTIPLE COUNTS OF HORSE SEX
Hide yo' sheep, hide yo' mares, he (allegedly) rapin' everthang 'round there

By John Nova Lomax

Houston Press Hair Balls
January 6, 2012

If the comment sections of Rio Grande Valley newspapers are any indication, Hidalgo County is regarded as something of a rustic backwater by its more urbane neighbors. Stories like this one sure can give a stereotype like that some legs.

Yesterday afternoon, 41-year-old Cirilo Castillo Jr. was arraigned on two counts of trespassing and two counts of animal cruelty after a local rancher captured him on video having sex with one of her mares.

The woman had gone to authorities on December 30. The surveillance tape she brought cops allegedly shows Castillo entering her barn without permission, tying the mare to a fence and then lashing its legs together, presumably to prevent him getting a swift kick in the nuts. (We can but hope that was a lesson he had to learn by painful experience.) And then Castillo is reportedly seen dropping his pants and having sex with the mare.

Cops recognized Castillo, who has a long record of weed and harder drug offenses. They picked him up on Tuesday, and he confessed to that stump-breaking episode, as well as at least one more, at a ranch a mile or so down the road.

According to the McAllen Monitor, another rancher had told police back in November that he had caught a man named Castillo having his wicked way with his mares on no fewer than four occasions. That man later picked Cirilo Castillo out of a line-up.

A commenter at Valleycentral.com recalled a similar area case from a few years back:

__I remember when I was working at Chanell 4 a few years back, there was a man who was arrested for the same crime in Hidalgo Co. The owners of the horse would notice some cinder blocks would stack up during the night and remnants of carrots and apples were found by the horse. So they set up a security camera in the stall and voila! Perv was caught!

No word on whether Castillo was as willing to wine and dine the mares on the receiving end of his vile horsing around, nor if he left any tell-tale stepping-stones behind.

WHY SOME MEN WEAR EARRINGS

2012-01-07T01:29:00.000-06:00

Did you ever wonder why earrings became so popular with men? Well, here is one reason:

A man is at work one day when he notices that his co-worker is wearing an earring.

The man knows his co-worker to be a normally conservative fellow, and is curious about his sudden change in "fashion sense"

The man walks up to him and says, "I didn't know you were into earrings."

"Don't make such a big deal, it's only an earring," he replies sheepishly.

His friend falls silent for a few minutes, but then his curiosity prods him to ask, "So, how long have you been wearing one?"

"Ever since my wife found it in my truck."

PISTOL, SHOTGUN PACKING YOUNG MOMMA BLOWS AWAY INTRUDER

2012-01-06T01:34:00.004-06:00

This incident will give all those anti-gunners a good case of apoplexy. There isn’t a more shining example on behalf of a well-armed citizenry than 18-year-old Sarah McKinley. Three cheers, no make that five, for this pistol, shotgun packing young momma!

And Bob Walsh tells all those anti-gunners that when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

OKLAHOMA WOMAN SHOOTS, KILLS INTRUDER: 911 OPERATOR SAID DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO
By Kevin Dolak and Ryan Owens

abc News
January 4, 2011

A young Oklahoma mother shot and killed an intruder to protect her 3-month-old baby on New Year's Eve, less than a week after the baby's father died of cancer.

Sarah McKinley says that a week earlier a man named Justin Martin dropped by on the day of her husband's funeral, claiming that he was a neighbor who wanted to say hello. The 18-year-old Oklahoma City area woman did not let him into her home that day.

On New Year's Eve Martin returned with another man, Dustin Stewart, and this time was armed with a 12-inch hunting knife. The two soon began trying to break into McKinley's home.

As one of the men was going from door to door outside her home trying to gain entry, McKinley called 911 and grabbed her 12-gauge shotgun.

McKinley told ABC News Oklahoma City affiliate KOCO that she quickly got her 12 gauge, went into her bedroom and got a pistol, put the bottle in the baby's mouth and called 911.

"I've got two guns in my hand -- is it okay to shoot him if he comes in this door?" the young mother asked the 911 dispatcher. "I'm here by myself with my infant baby, can I please get a dispatcher out here immediately?"

The 911 dispatcher confirmed with McKinley that the doors to her home were locked as she asked again if it was okay to shoot the intruder if he were to come through her door.

"I can't tell you that you can do that but you do what you have to do to protect your baby," the dispatcher told her. McKinley was on the phone with 911 for a total of 21 minutes.

When Martin kicked in the door and came after her with the knife, the teen mom shot and killed the 24-year-old. Police are calling the shooting justified.

"You're allowed to shoot an unauthorized person that is in your home. The law provides you the remedy, and sanctions the use of deadly force," Det. Dan Huff of the Blanchard police said.

Stewart soon turned himself in to police.

McKinley said that she was at home alone with her newborn that night because her husband just died of cancer on Christmas Day.

"I wouldn't have done it, but it was my son," McKinley told ABC News Oklahoma City affiliate KOCO. "It's not an easy decision to make, but it was either going to be him or my son. And it wasn't going to be my son. There's nothing more dangerous than a mother with a child."

WHAT DIRECTION WILL MEXICO’S FIGHT AGAINST THE CARTEL INSURGENCY TAKE?

2012-01-06T01:30:00.000-06:00

From Borderland Beat:

2012 WILL BE A DECISIVE YEAR IN MEXICO’S DEADLY DRUG WAR AS THE COUNTRY ELECTS A NEW PRESIDENT AND FIGURES OUT HOW TO COMBAT THE CARTELS
By Larry Kaplow

The Daily Beast
January 4, 2012

The Executionmeter began counting the deaths almost as soon as 2012 began.

New Year’s Day in Mexico saw six bodies discovered in five different places, apparent victims of drug-related organized crime. All of the bodies were male. Most of the victims had been shot to death apparently in cartel violence. It was actually a peaceful day by Mexico’s blood-drenched standards. But it registered on the Executionmeter—a graphic on the website of Mexico’s Reforma newspaper that acts as a grim reminder of this country’s bloody internal war.

This year, 2012, will be a pivotal year for determining the direction of Mexico’s and, by proxy, America’s drug war. While there is bipartisan agreement in the United States that the war is needed to interdict drugs and shore up Mexico’s stability, the war is sure to come under further debate in Mexico, where the price is paid on the ground in killings and decapitations.

That price continues to be high, according to the Executionmeter, or Ejecutometro, as it runs in Spanish and counts the deaths since President Felipe Calderon launched the war in December 2006. Reforma reported Monday that there were 12,359 killings related to organized crime or the battle against it in 2011, up 6.7 percent from the year before. The daily said the number of beheadings rose to 595 from 389 and noted an increase in brazen displays of corpses hanging from bridges. Another major daily published a study by an organized crime expert saying drug gangs exercised some type of control—enough to operate openly—over local institutions in 71 percent of the country’s municipalities.

And responding to doubts about the war, Joaquin Villalobos, a former Salvadoran guerrilla commander who advises Calderon on strategy, published a 10,000-word defense of staying the course in the Mexican intellectual journal Nexos. “The violence is inevitable,” wrote Villalobos, warning that a pause, downsizing or negotiation could create a “status quo that gives criminals an advantage over citizens.”

True, Mexico is a large country of about 113 million people and most Mexicans see little cartel violence. You could read the figures as leveling off, since killings rose a staggering 76 percent (to 4,996 murders) from 2009 to 2010. Reforma counts a total of about 38,000 killings over the five years while others put the figure several thousand higher. In an interview, respected security analyst Eduardo Guerrero said violence levels could decline very slowly this year. But as some notorious areas have improved, violence has spread to new ones like Acapulco and Cuernavaca, close to Mexico City. The killing surges as cartels fight each other, branch into new turf and enterprises—from drugs to extortion to kidnapping—and as security forces pursue them. It creates an unpredictable whack-a-mole dynamic.

Heavy majorities still support the military deployment and other anti-crime operations. About a third want to negotiate with the cartels or legalize drugs.

In July the country will elect a new president who will surely size up the war’s progress and popularity before taking office in December. An October poll showed that only 18 percent of Mexicans believe the government is winning. But heavy majorities still support the military deployment and other anti-crime operations. About a third want to negotiate with the cartels or legalize drugs.

Last year saw the birth of an antiwar movement, headed by poet Javier Sicilia after his son was killed with six friends. His rallies aim to show that innocents are getting killed, not just warring narcos. A series of high-profile massacres drove that point home, such as in August when 52 people, mostly middle-aged women, were killed in a Monterrey casino torched by extortionists. A mother and two teen-aged daughters from Ft. Worth, Texas, dual U.S.-Mexican citizens, were killed in December during an attack on their bus as they visited the coastal state of Veracruz. Human Rights Watch documented 170 cases of torture and 63 killings or disappearances by security forces. Some leftists see the war as a U.S.-backed pretense to militarize Mexico and stifle activism.

Of the alternatives, experts warn that the criminals are too divided and unruly to make pacts with them, which would, in any case, just perpetuate their corrupt hold on police and politicians. But there are strategic changes being floated, from concentrating law enforcement on the most violent actors rather than emphasizing the capture of kingpins, to addressing the bad schools and poverty that produce gang soldiers. Everyone agrees local institutions are too weak. Calderon has focused increasingly on rooting out corrupt police and often disbands or arrests entire local police departments in areas where soldiers are deployed—a tactic that seems to help but requires months for vetting of new cops.

American officials warn that if Mexico becomes a narco-state, the border will open to even more smuggling or, possibly, terrorist infiltration. About half of $1.4 billion in promised U.S. nonlethal aid, like helicopters, has been delivered. Calderon adviser Villalobos writes that the war has splintered the cartels into smaller factions that can be more easily eliminated. He blames the cartels’ criminal ambitions, while others blame the splintering, for most of the violence. He boasts that more than 150,000 criminals have been detained, which could either be a sign of the war’s progress or of its futility. Calderon advisers say the war could continue several more years and, reading the public mood, most politicians vow to press on in some form after he leaves office. But what regular Mexicans hope for most of all is to see a drop on the Executionmeter.

JIMMY HOFFA MAY BE HOLDING UP THE GENERAL MOTORS BUILDING

2012-01-06T01:25:00.001-06:00

Something tells me no one is going to tear it down to see if he is supporting the structure.

SNITCH SAYS JIMMY HOFFA IS BURIED UNDER GM HQ BUILDING
By Jerry Reynolds

The Car Pro Weekly
January 5, 2012

The disappearance of Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa remains one of America's most enduring mysteries, but now, nearly four decades after Hoffa vanished, his driver has claimed he knows where he is buried - and how he got there.

Marvin Elkind said Hoffa was killed by a mob enforcer and buried in the foundations of the towering General Motors' HQ in Detroit, Michigan.

Jimmy Hoffa, leader of the Teamsters labor union throughout the 1960s, went missing in 1975. His driver has claimed he was killed by a mobster.

Informant Marvin Elkind claims a mob boss insinuated Hoffa was buried at the Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan - now General Motors' HQ known as the Ren Cen by those in the auto industry.

'It was his own people who did it,' Mr Elkind said in excerpts of a new book published in the New York Post, adding Mafia member Tony Jack insinuated he was responsible.

The startling claim comes 36 years after Hoffa, who led the labor union for 13 years, vanished while on his way to meet two mobsters he knew well, Anthony Provenzano and Tony Jack - real name Anthony Giacalone.

The GM Renaissance Center was under construction when he disappeared.

Mr Elkind explains how, during a Teamsters conference in 1985, he was among a group of men walking from the city's Omni International when the Center came into view.

Tony Jack nodded toward the tower's base and said, 'Say good morning to Jimmy Hoffa, boys', Mr Elkind alleges in The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob by Adrian Humphreys.

He also describes the rush to build the Renaissance Center following the disappearance of Hoffa - and claims the body was buried in wet cement.

'There was a mad rush to get the concrete poured,' the New York Post quotes the book as saying.

Hoffa was declared legally dead July 30, 1982, when he would have been 69.

He was a union stalwart, serving as its General President from 1958 to 1971 and playing a key part in its growth and development. During his term as its leader, membership surged to more than 1.5 million members, becoming the largest single union in the country.

As well as a role as Jimmy Hoffa's driver, Mr Elkind had careers as a loan collector, a boxer - and a police informant. He was working as a busboy in a Toronto restaurant frequented by Jimmy Hoffa's crew when he was poached as a driver.

Mr Elkind initially said he didn't want the job, but he was told: 'Nobody's asking you.'

He began testifying against the mob when police discovered he'd worked with a con man. They gave him an ultimatum - tell or be charged.

THE FEDERAL DEBT CEILING

2012-01-06T01:23:00.000-06:00

Here's another way to look at the Debt Ceiling:

Let’s say you come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood.

Your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.

What do you think you should do? Raise the ceilings or pump out the shit?

WEEDING OUT POLICE APPLICANTS WHO ARE UNABLE TO WRITE INTELLIGIBLE REPORTS

2012-01-05T01:27:00.006-06:00

Ask any cop what he dislikes most about his job and he’ll likely tell you it’s writing those damn police reports. And yet, those reports are crucial to good police work and to the successful prosecution of criminals.

The process of selecting police applicants is costly and time consuming. In most police agencies it begins with a written test, a physical exam and a physical agility test. If the applicant passes those tests, he will have to pass a polygraph examination. Then he will have a psychological evaluation. After that comes an extensive background check. So far the process may have taken several months to complete. If finally accepted, the recruit will attend a training academy that can last anywhere from 6-9 months. (Some agencies shorten the training period for graduates of a college criminal justice program.) If he passes the academy, the recruit will have to pass a 6-12 months probationary period under the supervision of a field training officer (FTO).

During the probationary field training phase it is not uncommon for a police agency to discover that it has recruited an applicant who cannot write acceptable police reports. Because of all the expense and time expended, the recruit who cannot write intelligibly is usually retained rather than dismissed.

Those reports should clearly tell readers, whether they are other officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys or probation officers, what the patrol officer or detective saw, did and discovered during an investigation. If the report is well written, the reader should be able to place himself in the shoes of the report writer as if he (the reader) were conducting the investigation himself. Poorly written reports, when scrutinized by outsiders, are an embarrassment to the agency and worse yet, they can result in failed prosecutions.

It has been my experience, both as an officer and as a criminal justice educator, that many high school graduates and even some college students are unable to write intelligibly. Unfortunately, many applicants with unacceptable writing skills have been allowed to enter the police service. A good part of the problem is that while there are plenty of whites who cannot write intelligibly, police agencies fear being accused of discriminating against minorities.

Police agencies can do something about those poor writing skills. The Riverside County (California) Sheriff's Department, had a unique way of weeding out applicants who were unable to express themselves well enough to write acceptable police reports.

After submitting an application and before being administered any tests - written, physical, psychological, polygraph - applicants were required to come into the recruitment office to write two one-page essays. In one essay the applicant had to write why they wanted to become a police officer and in the other essay the applicant had to describe the duties of a police officer.

The two essays would then be evaluated by a committee of officers to see if the applicant expressed himself well enough to write acceptable police reports. (Punctuation and spelling were not considered in the evaluation.) If the essays indicated that the applicant would not be able to write intelligible police reports, he/she was informed that his/her application had been rejected. He/she would be encouraged to take remedial writing courses at a local community college and upon completion of the courses, resubmit an application.

A significant number of applicants were rejected in this way. That allowed RCSD to save the time consuming and expensive tests and background checks of applicants who would be unable to write those all-important police reports intelligibly. And while the Al Sharpton types will scream that the writing tests discriminate against minorities, those essays are entirely race and gender neutral.

Retired Riverside County Sheriff Cois Byrd says, “It's a very simple, but honest test.” And he corrected me by adding, “'Terribull Spellink' does count, but minor errors are not a cut factor.”

In my experience and my research I have yet to come across a program that beats Riverside's for weeding out unqualified applicants without depending on the usual testing and background checks, as well as beyond. I hope the sheriff who succeeded Cois Byrd was smart enough not to scrap this unique application process.

A COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF A NUCLEAR POWER WHO HAS NEVER LED ANYTHING

2012-01-05T01:24:00.002-06:00

By Ima Schmuck

The Schalotte
January 4, 2012

EDITORIAL

As editor of The Schalotte, I am really concerned about North Korea's appointment of the "dear leader", Kim Jung Ill's youngest son to be the new leader of North Korea-- a nuclear power!

After all, Kim Jung Un (pronounced Kim's young-un?) had NO military experience whatsoever before daddy made him a four-star general in the military. This is a snot-nose twerp who has never accomplished anything in his life that would even come close to military leadership: he hasn't even so much led a cub scout troop, coached a sports team, or commanded a military platoon.... So, setting that aside, next they make him their "beloved leader" of the country. Terrific!

Oh, crap! I'm sorry. I just remembered that we did the same thing here in the United States. In North Korea, the Commander-in-Chief is chosen by his predecessor. Here the people elect him. We took a community organizer who has never worn a uniform and made him Commander-in-Chief; a guy who has never led anything more than an ACORN demonstration and made him the leader of this country.

I'm sorry I brought Kim Jung Un up, never mind.

TRAGIC DEATH OF PARK RANGER NO REASON TO REPEAL THE LAW ALLOWING PEOPLE TO TAKE LOADED WEAPONS INTO OUR NATIONAL PARKS

2012-01-04T01:59:00.005-06:00

The tragic Mount Rainier National Park shooting death of Ranger Margaret Anderson at the hands of Benjamin Colton Barnes is being blamed on the law Congress passed in 2010 that allows people to take loaded weapons into national parks so long as the carrier is in compliance with state concealed weapons carry laws. The gun control crowd is calling for repeal of the law, citing Ranger Anderson’s death as the need for Congress to revisit the law.

My heart goes out to Ranger Anderson’s loved ones and her fellow park rangers. Her husband is also a MRNP ranger. But Anderson’s death has absolutely nothing to do with the law permitting people to take loaded weapons into our national parks. Calling for the repeal of the law on account of her death is sort of a cheap shot by the anti-gunners.

The only bright spot in this dark and dreary picture is the fact that Barnes froze to death in the icy waters of a MRNP creek. Now Anderson’s family will be spared the agony of sitting through a lengthy trial listening to his lawyers and their expert witnesses bullshit a jury about how Barnes got all fucked up in the Iraqi war and by a troubled childhood.

According to his family members, Barnes suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder following his deployment to Iraq in 2007-2008. Whether that’s true or not, a law prohibiting loaded firearms in our national parks would not have prevented Barnes from taking his arsenal into MRNP.

No law will ever prevent lawbreakers or the mentally deranged from carrying loaded firearms anywhere. Repeal of the law allowing people to take loaded weapons into our national parks will only hurt law abiding citizens, like those of Texas and other states, who have obtained concealed weapons carry permits. It is the pinnacle of idiocy to punish law abiding citizens for the acts of criminals and the mentally deranged.

DOGGONE THAT DOGGONE DOG

2012-01-04T01:56:00.001-06:00

It seems to me that since the dog was outside the house when he sniffed the marijuana coming from inside the house, the cops were not intruding on the sanctity of the home.

SUPREME COURT MAY PONDER K-9 SNIFF
The nation’s high court has previously said a home deserves special protection from law enforcement searches

By Curt Anderson

Associated Press
January 3, 2012

MIAMI — The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether a Florida police K-9's sniff outside the front door of a marijuana grow house violates the Constitution.

Florida's attorney general wants the justices to reverse a state Supreme Court ruling that the dog's sniff violates the sanctity of the home.

The nation's high court has previously said a home deserves special protection from law enforcement searches. Lawyers for Florida say a dog's nose is different because it detects only illegal activity that's not entitled to privacy.

The justices could decide later this month whether to take the case.

Law enforcement officials say a finding against the use of K-9s outside the home could jeopardize an essential police tool. But the state Supreme Court said police cannot cross that constitutional line.

MEXICO LOSING THE WAR AGAINST ORGANIZED CRIME

2012-01-04T01:52:00.001-06:00

Mexico is being torn apart with 12,000 deaths resulting from the drug war just in 2011. Compare that to the deaths of 4,800 U.S. soldiers and marines during the nearly nine years we were fighting in Iraq.

From Borderland Beat:

MEXICO’S DRUG-WAR DEAD: 12,000 IN 2011
An estimated 50,000 dead since 2006

by Sarah Childress

Global PostQue Pasa?
January 3, 2012

According to La Reforma, a major, respected daily, there were 12,359 deaths last year, which they say is a 6.3 percent increase from 2010. La Jornada, on the other hand, counted only, 11,890 deaths, which it said was a slight decrease from the year before.

Do those numbers really matter? Not really. What's most important is the public perception — that the drug war has only gotten worse since President Felipe Calderon put the cartels in his crosshairs in 2006.

You could even argue that it has failed. After five years, the fight has cost too much in blood and treasure — an estimated 50,000 dead over the entire period. That doesn't count the missing. Worse, Mexicans have very little to show for their sacrifice.

Instead of breaking the backs of the cartels, the drug gangs have spread further into Central America, hitting Costa Rica, Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala.

In Mexico, the drug war has sapped people's basic sense of security in cartel-controlled areas. Business owners pay bribes to keep the cartels at bay. Mexican security forces are accused of abusing civilians under the pretext of the drug-war battle. The cartels are no longer content to run their businesses in secret, and instead have become emboldened to do as they please.

They behead, disembowel, and string up their rivals. Or innocent civilians who by chance step into the crossfire. They have murdered people en masse. And they have done almost all of this with impunity.

What kind of country is it when this kind of violence can go unpunished so often it becomes banal?

The government response has been muted. Calderon's biggest PR push this year was to encourage tourism to Mexican resorts, which have been hit hard by the violence.

The government hasn't even released its own figures on the body count, despite promising to track deaths on its own.

49 KIDNAPPINGS PER DAY OCCURRED IN MEXICO IN 2011

Associated Press
January 3, 2012

An average of 49 kidnappings per day occurred in Mexico in 2011, marking a significant increase from the prior year, the Council for Law and Human Rights, or CLDH, said.

A total of 17,889 kidnappings occurred in Mexico last year, up 32 percent from the 13,505 abductions registered in 2010, the non-governmental organization said.

“It is important to note that official complaints to the authorities have remained at a rate of one for every 10 cases,” said CLDH president Fernando Ruiz in an e-mail.

The figures do not included “express kidnappings,” in which a victim is held for only a few hours, the CLDH said.

Hundreds of express kidnappings occur in Mexico City daily, with taxi drivers usually assisting the criminals, the NGO said.

Kidnapping gangs are increasingly using technology to target victims, and some criminals have negotiated the payment of ransom with victims’ relatives outside the country, the CLDH said.

“That is, some gangs of kidnappers have influence at the international level, making it impossible to obtain a partial identification of their members and capture them,” the NGO said.

The number of kidnapping cases in which police and soldiers were involved rose from 70 percent in the first half of 2011 to 80 percent in the second half of the year, the CLDH said.

“Their level of participation ranges from leaking information about a victim’s profile to providing protection during the actual kidnapping and directly carrying out the kidnapping,” Ruiz said.

About one-third of the kidnappers arrested by the Federal Police, according to official figures, have links to drug cartels.

The CLDH, which was founded in 1991, provides assistance to kidnapping and extortion victims, and works to root out corruption in the ranks of the police.

FOUR TOO MANY ZEROS

2012-01-03T01:58:00.001-06:00

Chuck Shepherd says, “Once again, a genius tried to pass a piece of U.S. currency in an amount not even close to being legal tender, a $1 million bill, apparently expecting change of $999,524.22.”

And leave it up to Bob Walsh to refer to Walmart customers as Walmartians.

COPS: MAN TRIED TO USE $1 MILLION BILL AT WALMART

Associated Press
December 31, 2011

LEXINGTON, N.C. (AP) - Do you have change for a million-dollar bill?

Police say a North Carolina man insisted his million-dollar note was real when he was buying $476 worth of items at a Walmart.

Investigators told the Winston-Salem Journal that 53-year-old Michael Fuller tried to buy a vacuum cleaner, a microwave oven and other items. Store employees called police after his insistence that the bill was legit, and Fuller was arrested.

The largest bill in circulation is $100. The government stopped making bills of up to $10,000 in 1969.

Fuller was charged with attempting to obtain property by false pretense and uttering a forged instrument. He is in jail on a $17,500 bond, and it isn't clear if he has an attorney. He is scheduled to be in court today.