LEFT-WING AMERICAN JEWS VS. RIGHT-WING JEWS

The disdain America’s liberal Jews have for right-wing Jews is nothing new. Even during the time of the Holocaust, they fought the efforts of the right-wingers to save their fellow Jews from extermination by the Nazis. Granted, the Irgun was decreed a terrorist organization by the British, but that Jewish militia was largely responsible for throwing off the British yolk in Palestine and for the establishment of the State of Israel.

BELATEDLY RECOGNIZING HEROES OF THE HOLOCAUST
By Isabel Kershiner

The New York Times
August 6, 2011

HORASHIM, Israel — When 20 people gathered for a modest ceremony in the tranquil cemetery of this kibbutz in central Israel last month, the intimacy and quiet dignity of the event belied the tumultuous historical forces coursing beneath it.

The occasion was the reinterring of the remains of Samuel Merlin, a founder of a small but brazen band of militant Zionists and Holocaust rescue activists who shook America and challenged the Jewish establishment in the 1940s, but who until recently have been largely excluded from official Holocaust history.

The activists, known as the Bergson group, have been credited by modern historians with playing a pivotal role in rescuing hundreds of thousands of European Jews.

But the group was rejected by the Jewish establishment it challenged, both in the United States and in Israel, where its militant tactics and right-wing Zionism clashed with the mainstream. Mere mention of the group stirs up old passions and painful questions about what America did or did not do to save European Jewry, and the extent to which schisms within Jewish ranks hampered more effective action.

More recently, prominent historians have begun to recognize the group’s achievements. On July 17, Yad Vashem, the official Holocaust remembrance authority in Jerusalem, which had ignored the Bergson group in its exhibits, held a symposium on it for the first time.

For those attending the reburial of Mr. Merlin a few days earlier, including some widows and children of the group’s members, the event was a symbolic start of a process of reconciliation.

“This is a moment of healing for American Jews and Israeli Jews,” Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, said shortly after reciting Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, over Mr. Merlin’s grave.

The institute, which has been instrumental in promoting the Bergson group’s legacy, co-sponsored the conference at Yad Vashem.

The Bergson group formed in 1940 when about 10 young Jews from Palestine and Europe came to the United States to open a fund-raising and propaganda operation for the Irgun, the right-wing Zionist militia. The group was organized by Hillel Kook, a charismatic Irgun leader who adopted the pseudonym Peter H. Bergson. Mr. Merlin was his right-hand man.

The group began by raising money for illegal Jewish immigration to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine and promoting the idea of an army composed of stateless and Palestinian Jews. But the mission abruptly changed in November 1942 after reports of the Nazi annihilation of two million European Jews emerged. Like earlier reports of the mass killing of Jews, the news barely made the inside pages of major American newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The Bergsonites were appalled by what they saw as the indifference of the Roosevelt administration and the passivity of the Jewish establishment, which staunchly supported the administration and largely accepted its argument that the primary American military objective was to win the war, not to save European Jews. The group embarked on a provocative campaign to publicize the genocide and to lobby Congress to support the rescue of Jews, roaming the hallways of Capitol Hill and knocking on doors, displaying a degree of chutzpah that made the traditional, pro-Roosevelt Jewish establishment uncomfortable.

The group took out a series of fiery, full-page advertisements in The New York Times and other major dailies highlighting the mass murder, soliciting donations at the bottom of each one to pay for the next. With help from celebrity supporters like the director and writer Ben Hecht, the impresario Billy Rose and the composer Kurt Weill, they staged a flamboyant pageant called “We Will Never Die,” filling Madison Square Garden twice before sending the show on the road.

In October 1943, the Bergson group organized a march of 400 Orthodox rabbis on the White House, most of them in traditional black garb, a spectacle the likes of which had never been seen in Washington.

Finally, in January 1944, under heavy pressure from the Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jr., President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up the War Refugee Board by executive order, leading to the rescue of 200,000 Jews.

“Without Hillel Kook and the Bergson group,” said David S. Wyman, author of the book “The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945,” which first re-evaluated the role of Bergsonites, “there would have been no War Refugee Board.”

Yet the American Jewish leadership at the time fought the newcomers, saying their tactics would lead only to increased anti-Semitism. Rabbi Stephen Wise, the Jewish community’s chief representative, wrote to a colleague in 1944 that the Bergsonites “are a disaster to the Zionist cause and the Jewish people.”

Jewish American leaders were apparently afraid of making waves, and of losing their own prominence.

LAPPL BLASTS COMPUTER PREDICTIONS OF FUTURE BEHAVIOR

California’s budget-saving prison releases and the attendant policy of keeping parole violators from being returned to prison have proven to be deadly. Time after time, California’s computer classifications of prison inmates as ‘non-violent’ and ready for release on non-revocable (unsupervised) parole have turned out to be dead wrong once those inmates have hit the streets. LAPD’s union is fed up with the state’s ineffective parole system.

PAROLE SYSTEM’S FATAL FLAWS EXPOSED AGAIN BY A DOUBLE MURDER
By Los Angeles Police Protective League Board of Directors

LAPPL Blog
July 29, 2011

Computers are a marvelous thing. They store information, churn data and generally make us all more productive. Often, though, there’s a need for human judgment and common sense to interpret a computer’s output.

A case in point is the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s computer program, Parole Violation Decision Making Instrument (PVDMI). It’s a blatant cost-cutting measure touted as a reliable way to predict which inmates are “low risk” and “non-violent," and thus eligible for early release from prison with no parole supervision and no notification to local law enforcement.

PVDMI determined that Zachariah Timothy Lehnen fit that category despite a history of arrests for robbery, domestic violence and drugs. As a result, he was released from prison long before his sentence was to end in November 2013. Back on the streets with no parole supervision, Lehnen is accused of murdering Lucien Bergez, 89, and Erica Evelyn Escobar, 27, on May 3, 2011 in Culver City.

Adam Treanor, president of the Culver City Police Officers’ Association, believes the public deserves a supervised release system that is realistic and makes community safety a top priority. “We need a system,” he said, “that empowers law enforcement officers with the ability to re-incarcerate any and all parolees who view their release from prison not as an opportunity to begin a new life as a productive member of society, but merely as a means to return to the very same criminal, predatory behavior that led to their incarceration in the first place.”

We are in complete agreement with Treanor and support his call to overhaul the fatally flawed system we have today. There will always be a need to supervise parolees just as there will also be a need to run a human reality check on the information a computer program puts out. It is, after all, a matter of life and death, as was proven in the case of Zachariah Timothy Lehnen.

PRISON-THEMED VINEYARDS AND WINE

Pruno is what clandestine brews made in prison lavatories are known as. With prison-themed wines for sale on the open market, why hasn’t anyone ever bottled and marketed any Pruno for the free world?

PRISON-THEMED WINE
By Scott Henson

Grits for Breakfast
August 5, 2011

If you were launching a vineyard and looking for ways to market your product, would you choose prison themes and imagery as your main selling point? For a few years now a vineyard out of California, located next door to the notorious Soledad prison unit, has operated as the Big House Wine Company, with product names like "Big House Red," "Unchained," "The Usual Suspect," "The Bird Man," and "The Slammer." They've got fun art on the labels and if your vineyard operates in the shadow of a famous prison I suppose I can understand the branding decision.

Anyway, last night we had a party at the house to celebrate the missus' birthday and afterward while cleaning up, I noticed one of our guests brought a vintage from "Chain Gang Vineyards" out of California called "First Timer," with a faux mugshot on the label no less. I found no website for the brand, but while searching I did run across something called Rockpile Vineyards in northern California. There, according to SanFranciscoWineTours.com, "Legend has it that the appellation's unusual name comes from the Rockpile Ranch, where Sheriff Tennessee Bishop would put prisoners to work building roads to his mountain home. It was the men on the chain gang who allegedly dubbed the place 'rockpile.'" One prison-themed vineyard may be an outlier; three perhaps signal a trend. Either way, kind of an odd marketing decision, doncha think?

__Grits for Breakfast is the blog and nom de plume of Scott Henson, a former journalist. Most of Henson’s blogs concern criminal justice reforms.

AN ANGRY RABBI

A Jewish congregation in suburban Boston honors its Rabbi for 25 years of service by sending him to Hawaii for a week, all expenses paid. When he walks into his hotel room, he finds a beautiful naked woman lying on the bed.

She greets the Rabbi with, "Hi, Rabbi, I'm a little something extra that the President of the Temple arranged for you."

The Rabbi is incensed. He picks up the phone, calls the President of the Temple and shouts, "Greenblatt, what were you thinking? Where is your respect? I am the moral leader of our religious community! I am very angry with you and you have not heard the end of this."

Hearing this, the naked woman gets up and starts to get dressed as the angry Rabbi slams the phone down.

The Rabbi turns to her and asks, "Where are you going? I'm not angry with YOU! Please my dear, get your lovely tush back in bed!"

FAMILIAR STING STILL WORKS ON DUMB DEADBEATS

These suckers will be good targets for the next Nigerian direct mail campaign.

POLICE USE FREE FOOTBALL TICKETS TO CAPTURE DEADBEAT DADS
By Sean Pendergast

Houston Press Hairballs
August 5, 2011

For a divorced parent, paying your child support should be one of those simple, automatic tasks each month.

First and foremost, it pays to feed and clothe your children, who should be the most important people in your life (even when they're acting up in the back seat or spill Diet Coke all over your computer keyboard).

Second, it's the one expense that if you don't pay, you go to JAIL. That matters.

Unfortunately, some parents choose not to pay, either out of spite or out of stupidity. Up until now, catching deadbeats wasn't always easy, but the Lee County (Alabama) Sheriff's Office may have given us a blueprint.

According to the Opelika-Auburn News, the Sheriff's Office set up a plan called Operation Iron Snare (That's how you know it's a big deal, it has a catchy "Operation" name.) where they sent letters out to 140 wanted delinquent payment suspects telling them they'd won free tickets to the Iron Bowl (the annual Alabama vs Auburn football game, for the non-college football savvy).

All they had to do, the letter said, was bring a photo ID to a specified location to receive the tickets. Naturally, when the "winners" arrived, the only iron waiting for them was handcuffs.

How successful was the operation? Well, they managed to catch about a dozen violators (around ten percent, a solid percentage for any direct mail campaign!) who owed around $270,000 total!

I think of these dozen deadbeats and can't help but be reminded of the show Swamp People, where alligator hunters hang large chunks of meat from large hooks about three feet over the water in order to trap the gators. Gator sees meat, gator swallows meat and hook, hunter shoots trapped gator.

The thing is, any intelligent creature knows that delectable meat levitating above the water (which to the gator, it is) is not only physically impossible but also too good to be true. A lot like free tickets to the biggest college football game of the year randomly showing up in your mailbox.

We cut the gators some slack because they are small-minded creatures who don't know any better, and while deadbeat dads from rural Alabama may fit that description as well, their status as (barely) human beings means they don't get off so easy.

Somewhere the son of the deposed ruler of Nigeria is requesting the e-mail addresses of these specimens for his next direct mail campaign seeking funds to rescue his family and escape the country unharmed. Because they might just believe him.

There are two morals to this story. One, pay your goddamn child support. Two, nothing -- and I mean, NOTHING -- good ever comes in the mail anymore.

THE FRIEND WE ABANDONED MAY SOON BE EXECUTED

For 30 years, Egypt’s Mubarak was our steadfast friend and, besides Israel, Egypt was our best ally in the Middle East. I can understand why we did not back him during the Egyptian revolution, but by declaring our support for the rebels and telling Mubarak to step down, we flushed a long-time friend down the shitter. Worse yet, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not even extend Mubarak the courtesy of offering him asylum in the United States.

ISRAEL OFFERED ASYLUM TO EGYPT’S MUBARAK
By Ryan Jones

Israel Today
August 5, 2011

Israel offered to provide asylum to deposed Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, a leading Israeli lawmaker revealed on Wednesday, the day Mubarak went on trial for corruption and murder.

Speaking to Army Radio, former Labor Party chief and Minister of Industry and Trade, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, said he had personally offered Mubarak asylum in the Red Sea resort town of Eilat.

Ben-Eliezer said Mubarak turned down the offer, reiterating what he had said repeatedly during the revolution that overthrew his regime: that he will die in Egypt.

And if many Egyptians have their way, that is precisely what will happen, and soon.

Though Mubarak is in the last stages of terminal cancer, many Egyptians want him executed for his crimes against his people. The trial of Mubarak and his two sons has become the main attraction in the Middle East over the past few days.

While many Israelis sided with the pro-democracy protestors who eventually ousted Mubarak and his repressive regime, Israelis were also aware that Mubarak was a stabilizing force in a region prone to explosions of extremism.

"The Middle East after Mubarak will be completely different," warned Ben-Eliezer. "He was one of the leaders who was able to keep the stability."

Indeed, the negative fallout is already being seen. While Egypt's revolution began as a movement for greater democratic freedom, it is being rapidly hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, whose followers are now demanding that Egypt be placed under Sharia Law.

That does not mean everything was rosy before. Under Mubarak, Egypt remained icy cold toward Israel, and anti-Semitic productions were a regular feature in Egyptian entertainment.

But, there was also little or no fear that Egypt under Mubarak would ever go to war against Israel. The same cannot be said of the forces now gaining power in Egypt.

WHAT ARE YOU SELLING?

Two young businessmen in Florida were sitting down for a break in their soon-to-be new store in the shopping mall. As yet, the store wasn't ready, with only a few shelves and display racks set up.

One said to the other, "I'll bet that any minute now some senior citizen is going to walk by, put his face to the window, and ask what we're selling."

Sure enough, just a moment later, a curious senior gentleman walked up to the window, looked around intensely and rapped on the glass, then in a loud voice asked, "What are you selling here?"

One of the men replied sarcastically, "We're selling assholes."

Without skipping a beat, the old timer said, "You must be doing well. Only two left."

CHARISMATIC CIVIL SERVANT'S LOVER DOCUMENTED HIS ACTIVITIES

Report from The Onion on recently released historic photos.

NEW DOCUMENTARY FOCUSES ON LIFE OF EVA BRAUN’S LATE HUSBAND

The Onion
July 28, 2011

NEW YORK—The History Channel announced Thursday it will air a new documentary this fall examining the life of the late husband of prewar German model and amateur photographer Eva Braun. "This film is a fascinating, in-depth look at a central figure in Eva Braun's life," said History Channel spokesman Charles Lansing, adding that the broadcast will feature more than 300 archival images of Braun with her husband, a German civil servant and vegetarian noted for his charisma and interest in art. "Braun's longtime lover had a significant impact on her views regarding politics and aesthetics, and the footage of him we've unearthed highlights the persuasive power of the man she often wrote about." Lansing added that the new documentary, entitled The Man Behind Eva Braun, will cover the very active life of Braun's spouse right up to his sudden passing in 1945 in the basement of the couple's Berlin apartment.

AMERICAN DREAM TURNS INTO A NIGHTMARE FOR MANY

The American dream has always been to have a good job, drive a nice car, own a good home and take nice vacations. That dream has turned into a nightmare for 45.8 million Americans who now depend on food stamps. The number for the State of Alabama alone is 1.762 million. That’s right, 15 percent of Americans and 36 percent of the people in Alabama are depending on food stamps for their subsistence.

I was discussing this shocking news with my son. He questioned whether all of those food stamp recipients were really in need of the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. His wife is a nurse at a large Houston hospital that serves a lot of Medicaid patients. She recalled one Medicaid patient who was upset because the hospital did not offer its patients Wi-Fi, pulling out an expensive smart phone and hollering about not being able to use it. Upon discharge, another Medicaid patient was picked up by her husband driving a Cadillac Escalade.

OK, we can question why people with expensive smart phones driving Cadillac Escalades are getting Medicaid. We all know there is fraud in Medicaid, just as there is fraud in Medicare. But are the Wi-Fi and Cadillac owners typical Medicaid recipients? Certainly not!

All this reminds me of the 1950s and 60s when it was common to hear about those ‘Welfare Queens’ driving up to the welfare office in a Cadillac to collect their welfare checks. While there were a few welfare recipients who drove a Cadillac, the fact is that the vast majority of welfare recipients, if they had a car at all, drove what we now call clunkers. Another tale going around then was that most welfare recipients owned a color TV set, a very expensive item at the time.

As a cop and later as a parole agent during those years, I entered the homes of many welfare recipients. I can tell you that I never encountered a color TV set in those homes. While many had black-and-white TV sets, those sets were small and inexpensive. Nor can I recall a single welfare recipient with an expensive car.

Today a lot of former wage earners have been seeking gainful employment for many months without finding a job. Some have lost their homes and are up the creek without a paddle. For them the American dream has turned into a nightmare. When you add these unfortunate souls to the people who have always been mired in poverty, you arrive at that alarming number of people who depend on food stamps for their subsistence.

More than 20 million Americans can’t find full-time jobs and a good number of them, after months of futility, have given up looking for work. Many of us can remember this line from Hamlet: There is something rotten in the state of Denmark. When there are 45.8 million people - or one in seven households - depending on food stamps, with 1.762 million people in Alabama alone, there is something rotten in America!

CAMERA-SHY COPS

Leonard Pitts has it right in most of his op-ed, but he’s completely wrong about the Rodney King beating. When he describes the King beating, he’s doing so out of ignorance of the facts or he’s deliberately misleading his readers. The only thing he got right was the description of the ex-con’s injuries. But what led to those injuries?

Rodney King was a huge brute of a man. After the traffic stop, King’s two companions obeyed all police commands and gave the cops no trouble. Not so with Rodney. He resisted arrest and lunged at the officers. The cops used the tactic of ‘escalating and deescalating force’ as was the policy of LAPD at the time. That called for the use of varying degrees of force depending on the actions of the person being arrested. Despite being tasered and struck with night sticks, King continued to get up and lunge at the officers.

The media had a heyday by showing the video taken by a nearby resident over and over again so that an incident that lasted only a couple of minutes appeared to be much longer than that, thereby making it look like King was struck 50 times. I do not believe the officer who broke his cheekbone when he struck King in the face with a nightstick was aiming there - he missed his true mark, King’s shoulder, when the crazed brute lunged at him.

As far as cops arresting citizens for videotaping police actions, that is uncalled for and just plain stupid. The problem with those video tapes is that they do not tell the whole story of the action, especially what led up to it, and they can be edited by the media – a la Rodney King - to make the cops look really bad. While I would not want someone to video tape me arresting a crook, in most states there is no law prohibiting that.

HYPOCRISY SURROUNDS POLICE EFFORTS TO AVOID CAMERAS
By Leonard Pitts

Miami Herald
August 3, 2011

This all started with Rodney King.

More to the point, it started with a plumber named George Holliday. Had he not been video recording from his balcony, that night in 1991 might have been business as usual for Los Angeles police who struck King, a harmless drunk, 50 times with their batons, breaking his leg, his cheekbone and his skull. Had Holliday not captured video proof to the contrary, they might have gotten away with some lame excuse: Oops, he slipped on the stairs. But thanks to Holliday's camera, we all knew better.

Twenty years later, cameras have become ubiquitous. They have captured entertainer meltdowns, crashes, tasings, deaths and a seemingly endless carnival of police misbehavior: questionable beatings, controversial shootings and unprovoked violence by those we hire to protect and to serve.

Perhaps not surprisingly, many police now identify cameras as the enemy.

Last week, news photographer Phil Datz was arrested on Long Island for videotaping a police action on a public street. In June, a man named Narces Benoit said Miami Beach Police pulled him from his car by his hair, handcuffed him and stomped his cellphone (which police deny) after he used it to record video of a fatal police shooting. In May, a woman named Emily Good was arrested for recording a traffic stop from her own front yard in Rochester, N.Y. In March, a Las Vegas man was beaten and arrested for videotaping police from his own driveway. In March of last year, a motorcyclist was arrested for recording his own traffic stop on a Maryland highway.

According to a 2010 report on the technology blog Gizmodo, at least three states have made it illegal to record an on-duty officer. Other states use existing wiretapping laws to support their arrests, a novel and selective interpretation of those statutes. What makes it novel is that such laws are typically invoked when telephone conversations are recorded; they require that both parties are aware of, and approve, the recording. What makes it selective is that one never hears of people being roughed up and arrested for recording videos that flatter the police.

The only thing more outrageous than the behavior is the excuses used to justify it. One of the cops in Rochester claimed, obviously for the benefit of the camera, that he did not feel safe with Emily Good recording him. Miami Beach Police claimed they confiscated videos only to safeguard the evidence.

Oh, please.

That stench you smell is the reek of official hypocrisy. Because the same police who so violently and vividly resist being recorded in the performance of their duties have no compunction about using the same technology against you and me, from the speed camera that catches you when you go flying through the school zone to the new gizmo that reads your license plate and checks for warrants.

If it is OK for police to use cameras to catch us in our misdeeds, why is it not OK for us to use cameras to catch police in theirs?

There is something chilling and totalitarian about this insistence that cops have the right to do as they wish without what amounts to public oversight. What is it they fear? After all, the officer who is being videotaped can protect himself by doing one simple thing:

His job.

MEDICAL MARIJUANA (PLUS) DISPENSARY

Proof that the electorate in Kookfornia got conned into voting to legalize marijuana - oops, it was supposed to be medical marijuana, wasn't it? Not only are the pot pharmacies dispensing marijuana to anyone who claims to be suffering from depression, hair loss, eye floaters, ingrown toenails, premature ejaculation, orgasm failure, or any kind of made-up illness, but some of them are branching out into the distribution of other illegal drugs. Money talks, bullshit walks!

LAPD SEIZES 9 KILOS OF COKE, 300 POT PLANTS AND WEAPONS IN RAID

Los Angeles Times
August 4, 2011

Los Angeles police seized 9 kilos of cocaine, 300 marijuana plants, several weapons and arrested six people as part of an investigation of an interstate drug-trafficking operation allegedly run out of a Reseda medical marijuana dispensary, authorities said Thursday.

The arrests and seizures were made Wednesday as officers prepared to serve a search at the White Oak Healing Center, the Los Angeles Police Department said.

The probe was launched last year after a fatal shooting at the center that had the "appearances of an organized-crime-style hit," the LAPD said in a statement.

That investigation led to information allegedly implicating the center's owner, Raymond George, 60, in the transportation and sale of marijuana and cocaine between Los Angeles and Cleveland, according to the LAPD.

George was among the six people arrested by officers, who also seized 120 oxycodone pills, a loaded AK-47 assault rifle, two handguns and more that $6,600 in cash, police said. The pot plants were inside the dispensary, which housed a sophisticated growing system.

Police identified the others who were arrested as Haiz Carrera, 51, Reginald Beijer, 59, Francisco Franco, 41, Francisco Vallejo, 30, and Alfredo Gonzalez, 51.

LIBERAL JUSTICES RULE IN FAVOR OF CRIMINALS TO THE DETRIMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY

Once again, public safety has been put at risk by liberal justices concerned with the rights of criminals.

DNA: CALIFORNIA LAW REQUIRING ARRESTEES’ SAMPLES STRUCK DOWN
By Bob Egelko

San Francisco Chronicle
August 5, 2011

A voter-approved California law requiring police to collect DNA samples from anyone arrested for a felony violates the constitutional privacy rights of people who have not been charged with or convicted of a crime, a state appeals court ruled Thursday.

The law expanded previous statutes that authorized law enforcement officials to take DNA from convicts and suspects with felony records. Approved by 62 percent of the voters in 2004 and effective in 2009, it required anyone arrested on suspicion of a felony to be swabbed on an inner cheek for genetic material, which would then be forwarded to a database accessible to state and local police and the FBI.

The federal government and about half the states have laws allowing DNA collection from some or all arrestees. Supporters say the measures are minimally intrusive and a powerful police resource in unsolved "cold cases."

Responding to a federal court challenge to the California law last year, then-Attorney General Jerry Brown called DNA evidence "the fingerprint of the 21st century" and declared, "This is no more a violation of privacy than you have when you give up your fingerprints."

But the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said DNA contains "an extraordinary amount of private personal information" not available from fingerprints. Unlike fingerprints, which are primarily used to identify suspects, DNA evidence is collected in hopes of linking arrestees to other crimes, or to crimes they might commit in the future, the court said.

These searches are conducted "without individualized suspicion" of guilt in those crimes and often before a judge has decided whether police had grounds for the arrest in the first place, the court said.

Courts have upheld DNA testing of prisoners and parolees, but someone who has only been arrested has privacy rights "closer to the ordinary citizen," Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline said in the 3-0 ruling.

A Brown appointee, Kline said studies have questioned the value of collecting DNA from arrestees, but even if it helped police solve cases, "the effectiveness of a crime-fighting technology does not render it constitutional."

Kline cited state records showing that of 407,000 adults arrested for felonies in California in 2009, only 51 percent were convicted. Under the law, DNA samples from the other 49 percent will remain in the database for years unless an arrestee was acquitted at trial or the prosecutor agreed to remove the sample.

It was the first California appellate ruling on an issue that has divided courts elsewhere. A federal judge in San Francisco upheld the law in 2009, but the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put the case on hold while a separate 11-judge panel reviews a challenge to a federal law that requires DNA testing of suspects seeking bail on federal felony charges.

Thursday's decision overturned the misdemeanor conviction and six-month sentence of Mark Buza, who refused to give a DNA sample after he was arrested in January 2009 for setting fire to a San Francisco police car.

It won't do much for Buza, who was also convicted of arson and served a 16-month prison sentence. But his lawyer, J. Bradley O'Connell of the First District Appellate Project, said the court drew a crucial distinction between arrest and conviction.

"Before you're convicted, the only legitimate intrusions upon your freedom and privacy are those that are directly related to the prosecutorial needs of that specific case," O'Connell said. The DNA searches are unrelated to the arrest and are conducted "in hopes of getting lucky and tying the arrestee to some wholly different crime," he said.

State Attorney General Kamala Harris could appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court. Her office said it was reviewing the case and declined further comment. But the leader of an organization that filed arguments in support of the law predicted the state's high court will reverse Thursday's ruling.

"We know of young women that have been murdered that would still be alive" if such a law had been in effect in their state, said Jayann Sepich, a New Mexico woman whose 22-year-old daughter, Katie Sepich, was raped and murdered in 2003.

Gabriel Avila, arrested on a burglary charge in 2004 and later released without DNA testing, pleaded guilty to the murder after he was rearrested in 2007.

Jayann Sepich said mandatory DNA testing wouldn't have saved her daughter but would have solved the case earlier and kept Avila in prison. New Mexico's DNA collection statute is known as Katie's Law, and Sepich's group, DNA Saves, is promoting similar laws nationwide.

HISTORY LESSON FOR THE DAY

Do you know what happened back in the fall of 1850?

California became a state.

This is what California was like at that time:

__The people had no electricity.

__The state had no money.

__Almost everyone spoke Spanish.

__People got stoned smoking dope.

__There were gunfights in the streets.

So basically nothing has changed except then the women had real boobs and the men didn't hold hands.

REWARDING A SLIMEBALL CHILD KILLER

The German courts are more fucked up than ours by a long shot.

GERMAN COURT AWARDS CHILD MURDERER COMPENSATION FOR TORTURE THREAT BY POLICEMAN DESPERATE TO FIND KIDNAP VICTIM ALIVE
By Allan Hall

Mail Online
August 4, 2011

A court in Germany has awarded a child murderer nearly 3,000 pounds in compensation money because he was threatened with torture during his interrogation when police thought his captive was still alive.

Magnus Gaefgen was awarded the cash for 'mental suffering' when a police officer threatened him with pain unless he revealed where his victim was hidden.

In fact Gaefgen, now 36, had already strangled the boy, Jakob von Metzler, the son of a private banker in Frankfurt.

Gaefgen's victory before a German court comes after the European Court of Human Rights ruled three years ago - in a case that cost taxpayers close to 750,000 pounds - that his human rights were not breached and that he did not deserve a retrial.

Jakob, 11, was killed in 2002. The boy had got to know Gaefgen, then a law student, through his sister. On 27 September, 2002, Gaefgen lured him into his flat by pretending Jakob's sister had left a jacket there.

He then suffocated the child and sent a ransom demand to the family for a million euros.

The policeman in charge of the case, Wolfgang Dascher, believed the boy was still alive and threatened to harm Gaefgen unless he told him where the child was being held.

Gaefgen abandoned the boy's body under the jetty of a pond an hour's drive from Frankfurt.

On 30 September, at about 1am, Gaefgen collected the ransom at a tram station. He was placed under police surveillance and was arrested several hours later.

At this point, police thought Jakob was still alive and, under interrogation on 1 October, Gaefgen was told he could expect to undergo 'considerable suffering' if he persisted in refusing to disclose the child's whereabouts. As a result of those threats, he disclosed where he had hidden the child's body.

His confession was ruled inadmissible to be used in court against him as it was obtained under duress, in contravention of EU human rights laws. But on 28 July, 2003, he was found guilty of abduction and murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

It was found that despite the fact that he had been informed at the start of his trial of his right to remain silent and that all his earlier statements could not be used against him, he nevertheless again confessed that he had kidnapped and killed the boy and was sentenced to life.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that, because Mr Dascher and another policeman had been punished with fines and suspension, and because two courts in Germany had refused to hear Gaefgen's request for a retrial while acknowledging he should not have been threatened, he did not qualify for a new hearing.

The case of the punished police officers created considerable debate in Germany. Many thought Mr Dascher was a hero. Now comes the ruling of the court in Frankfurt which rewards Gaefgen with money.

Judge Christoph Hefter said the police who told Gaefgen he would be harmed were guilty of 'serious law breaking' which could only be redressed with money.

Bild, the country's biggest daily, posted on its website after Thursday's verdict: 'Judge, why couldn't you stop this? What cruelties did Jakob endure before his death?'

GOOD OLD SHERIFF JOE

Since the inception of Joe Arpaio’s tent city jail, Sheriff Joe has been sued by various civil rights groups and the Justice Department, but their claims of cruel and unusual punishment have fallen on the courts’ deaf ears. However, when Sheriff Joe hands out pink hand fans BEARING HIS IMAGE, that might be construed as cruel and unusual punishment.

DESERT JAILHOUSE ROCKS: TENT CITY INMATES GET PINK FANS AND AN ELVIS IMPERSONATOR FOR PRISON’S 18TH BIRTHDAY

Mail Online
August 4, 2011

It's one of the most controversial prisons in the world.

But sweltering Tent City defied its critics to celebrate its 18th birthday yesterday - with inmates being given pink fans to keep cool and a performance from an Elvis impersonator.

The tough outdoor prison consists of thousands of rows of canvas tents in the barren desert in Phoenix, Arizona.

Inmates are forced to endure the soaring summer temperatures and freezing winters by working in the sun and sleeping under the stars.

The facility has been widely criticised but the jail's founder Sheriff Joe Arpaio threw a party at the correctional facility this week to mark its success.

In a change from the usual prison routine, inmates were even given a show from an Elvis impersonator.

To help them cope with the intense heat, Sheriff Arpaio gave inmates presents of pink fans bearing his face which they could wave to keep cool.

And convicts will make concrete for an engraved tombstone marker to be planted on the spot where in 1993 Sheriff Arpaio at high noon and in 111 degree heat first announced the opening of the prison.

'Tent City has served as a model program throughout the entire nation as an economical, safe and successful way to house a growing inmate population,' Arpaio told MyFox Phoenix.

'The marker is a very special gift for this Office. This compound is a great accomplishment to the Sheriff’s Office personnel who have tirelessly worked here night and day and often in extreme weather conditions to make this a safe and cost effective housing alternative.'

Sheriff Joe Arpaio promised in 1992 the residents of Maricopa County, where the prison is built, that he would house criminals in army surplus and donated Korean War tents.

The majority of Tent City's inmates are males but a female Tent City was added in the late 1990s. Some half-a-million people have been incarcerated there.

Convicts say that serving time at Tent City is 'rough'. However, many of them work are given the chance to work during the day in air-conditioned facilities.

They also have the opportunity to volunteer to work off-site as part of the sheriff's chain gangs.

'It's not somewhere you would want to be, especially during the summer,' inmate Virginia Muños said.

'The good thing is we have the day room that's open 24 hours.'

The prison has attracted controversy since it opened in 1993.

The Department of Justice, Amnesty International, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have criticised Sheriff Arpaio and the prison for the harsh conditions under which they say inmates are forced to live.

But Sheriff Arpaio has repeatedly responded by saying that troops in Iraq and Afghanistan live in tents in similar conditions.

The Sheriff has himself volunteered to sleep in the Tents to prove that being housed in Tent City is tolerable.

JAMES MADISON GOT IT RIGHT

While our three-branch system of government may seem dysfunctional at times, it serves to keep both the executive and legislative branches from assuming excessive powers.

Blaming the congressional impasse over the debt crisis on James Madison is the same as blaming George Bush for all of the Obama administration’s problems.

DON’T BLAME MADISON
By Dennis Hale

politicalmavens.com
August 4, 2011

Boston College Law Professor Kent Greenfield observed recently on the Huffington Post that if you are looking for someone to blame for the debt crisis, pick on James Madison. Why? Because Madison and his Federalist allies were so afraid of “factions” that they separated the government into three branches, and then divided the legislative branch into two houses. This would make it difficult for the government to do things, Greenfield concludes, and therefore less likely to do the wrong things.

The claim that America’s ‘divided government’ is less efficient than the parliamentary governments found elsewhere in the democratic world has been an important feature of liberal commentary since at least the days of Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was especially contemptuous of the power of congressional committees – and their imperious chairmen – to set the tone and direction of American government, while the president, a mere clerk by comparison, sat helplessly on the sidelines. The hopelessly antiquarian nature of American constitutionalism became a favorite theme of progressives, amplified by the rhetoric of Herbert Croly the theorist and Franklin Delano Roosevelt the practitioner.

A century later we are hearing the same theme again – maybe, just maybe, for the last time. For the plain and simple truth of the matter is that because of the American practice of separation of powers, it is possible for the legislature to chart a different course from that laid out by even a popular president. And because we have midterm elections, it is possible for a president’s course to be stopped dead in its tracks. In Europe, our parliamentary cousins, whose nations are drowning in debt, watch the United States Congress force upon a reluctant president a set of budget cuts, with no increases in either corporate or personal income tax rates, that dwarf what even British Prime Minister David Cameron has been able to accomplish at the head of a Conservative/Liberal coalition government (smaller cuts with increased taxes). As British journalist Toby Young put it recently, for “British conservatives, the US debt deal is a thing of beauty.”

What about the claim that divided government makes it hard for the US government to “get anything done.” It is true that nationalizing health care was much more difficult in the US than in Britain. Clement Attlee’s post-war Labor government promised a national health service in the 1944 election, and enacted the program into law in what was, by comparison to the American experience, a matter of moments. By contrast, what President Truman dreamed of in 1948 was not accomplished (a form of it, at any rate) until 2009. On the other hand, many in Britain no doubt wish that Parliament had had a chance to give the matter a little more thought, given a crumbling infrastructure, crushing debt, and rationing of service.

But the US government did not achieve a $14 trillion debt by “doing nothing.” In fact, we have done too many things, too quickly and too thoughtlessly, in part because Democrats have dominated the conversation for such a long time, and in part because we have listened too readily to progressive blandishments about “streamlining” the political process. That circumstance has now changed dramatically: the conversation is no longer about “hope and change” – i.e., more public spending for more and more favored constituencies, paid for with borrowed and devalued money – but about fiscal sanity and a serious restructuring of programs that have been doomed from the outset. This is true not only in the US, but across Europe, where (to quote Toby Young again) majorities “in nearly all the world’s most developed countries simply aren’t prepared to tolerate the degree of borrowing required to sustain generous welfare programmes any longer.” Yet it is here, in the old-fashioned Madisonian republic, that the tide has finally turned, a direct consequence of the mid-term elections in 2010.

So raise your glass one more time to Jimmy Madison – the smartest man in the room.

DEFENDING A KILLER COP

Every time a police officer kills a crook, ‘witnesses’ climb out of the woodwork to say the cops shot him for no reason and the media eats it up. That’s the way it was in Los Angeles recently and that’s the way it is in Houston now. Breck Porter, publisher of The Police News, had a great commentary on the Houston shooting that I believe deserves to be repeated here.

COP KILLS CROOK – OUR THOUGHTS ABOUT IT
Commentary by Breck Porter

The Police News
August 3, 2011

If you watch TV news or read The Police News Online, you know about the Houston METRO police officer who shot and killed a thug Tuesday who the officer felt was going for a gun.

If you watched the same TV channel I did you also saw the reporter interview some friends and relatives of the dead creep who carried on and on about how the mean old killer cop shot this defenseless man who was merely sitting in his car, and how he had visions of becoming a rap star and what a wonderful somebody he was.

It was Nolton Joseph LaFleur, III they were praising and singing about.

I really get ticked every time a cop has to eliminate one of these rodents, the TV people run all through the neighborhood trying to find someone who will chastise the cop and praise the bottom feeder, just like they did this time.

Now, let me tell you who this vermin was that Metro Officer Richard Hernandez sent home for good Tuesday.

I won't take the time or the space to list how many times Mr. LaFluer has been arrested. Just let me say it's been many. He has seen the inside of more jail houses than I have seen Seagulls, and I live on the beach.

But here is what he's been convicted off. Unlawfully carrying a firearm more than once. This is what got him killed. He's always been a pistol packer, even his kinfolks said that. He was a convicted felon and convicted felons are not supposed to carry pistols. So are we really surprised when the officer says he was in fear of his own life when this character made a move as if he were going for a pistol? I'm not.

Here's another conviction that gives me pause. LaFluer has been convicted of Resisting Arrest and Search. In other words, he likes to fight the cops when they get to close to him. Of course he does. He didn't want them to find his pistol concealed in his britches.

And to prove he is an assaultive, combative out of control thug, get this. He's been convicted over and over for assaulting family members and others, and on at least one occasion choking someone nearly to death.

And oh, did I mention his convictions for manufacturing and delivering drugs? How about Criminal Trespass? That too.

I don't know what you readers will think about this, but I for one think officer Hernandez should be given a commendation for ridding the streets of this thing. They should give him 6 fresh reloads for his service pistol and send him back to work.

Here's something else you won't see in the news. The Metro Police Department stationed officers around officer Hernandez home following the shooting, to protect him and his family from a possible attack by some hoodlum gang members who are mourning their dead comrade's early demise.

I say good riddance Nolton. You were here far too long as it was.

A TALKING JEWISH DOG

As told to Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman by the rabbis of the Boca Raton Theological Seminary…..

Morty visits Dr. Saul, the veterinarian, and says, "My dog has a problem."

Dr. Saul says, "So, tell me about the dog and the problem."

"It's a Jewish dog. His name is Seth and he can talk," says Morty.

"He can talk?" the doubting doctor asks.

"Watch this!" Morty points to the dog and commands: "Seth, Fetch!"

Seth the dog, begins to walk toward the door, then turns around and says, "So why are you talking to me like that? You always order me around like I'm nothing. And you only call me when you want something. And then you make me sleep on the floor, with my arthritis. You give me this fahkahkta food with all the salt and fat, and you tell me it's a special diet. It tastes like dreck! YOU should eat it yourself! And do you ever take me for a decent walk? NO, it's out of the house, a short pish, and right back home. Maybe if I could stretch out a little, the sciatica wouldn't kill me so much! I should roll over and play dead for real for all you care!"

Dr. Saul is amazed, "This is remarkable! So, what's the problem?"

Morty says, "He has a hearing problem! I said 'Fetch,' not 'Kvetch'."


Editor’s Note: For all you gentiles out there, ‘Kvetch’ is the Yiddish term for a person who complains and whines all the time.

OPERATION EXTRA SUGAR

Aw, what a bunch of killjoy cops. Melissa was just offering a personal brand of extra sugar to some of her donut customers.

While there are good reasons to suppress prostitution, especially organized prostitution, I am flabbergasted that the police spent six weeks making a case against a single donut dealer.

DUNKIN’ DONUTS EMPLOYEE BUSTED FOR PROSTITUTION; SOLD SEX OUT OF RESTAURANT, COPS SAY
By Mike Jaccarino

New York Daily News
August 1, 2011

A New Jersey Dunkin' Donuts employee is in hot water for serving up more than just coffee and Coolattas, police said.

Cops hit Melissa Redmond, 29, with a prostitution rap after the Mine Hill, N.J. woman hawked sexual services to thirsty customers at a Rockaway Boro Dunkin' Donuts, the Asbury Park Press reports.

"I had gotten an anonymous tip," Detective Sgt. Kyle Schwarzmann told The Press. "She was a night-time employee, supposedly a very good one."

Redmond's arrest came after a six-week sting, aptly called: "Operation Extra Sugar." During the investigation, cops posed as johns and solicited sexual liaisons from the donut dealer.

The investigation began with Schwarzmann staking out the Dunkin' Donuts on Route 46 in Rockaway Boro - about a 20-minute ride from the city. He witnessed Redmond making lengthy trips to and from the shop's parking lot.

"Sometimes I'd even see money changing hands," Schwarzmann told The Press.

Two other police officers then went in street-clothes to the Dunkin' Donuts' drive-thru window and tried to solicit sex from Redmond.

"She said if he wanted a good time to call her and she gave him her phone number," Schwarzmann said.

The officer then parked in the parking lot and waited for Redmond, who came out a short time later and offered a menu that had nothing to do with bagels and coffee.

Schwarzmann told The Press that the officer returned on another night and repeated the scenario - and Redmond even offered to lower her prices.

The cop told Redmond that he had to go to a bank machine to get out some cash, Schwarzmann said.

When he returned, he parked in the parking lot and arrested Redmond when she came out. Redmond could not be reached for comment.

CAR BATTERIES, DRIVE SHAFTS, FUEL TANKS, ETC.

DEA officials used to say that they were only able to seize about 10 percent of the drugs being smuggled into this country. If that still holds true, there are shitloads of drugs getting through for distribution throughout the U.S.

NARCOTIC BUSTS REACH ALARMING NUMBER ON BORDER

Borderland Beat
August 2, 2011

Mexican drug cartels have stepped up the pressure and are attempting to smuggle narcotics into the United States in alarming numbers and in increasingly creative ways.

From methamphetamine stuffed inside a car battery, to black-tar heroin wedged in a drive shaft, to fuel tanks filled with drugs instead of gas, the cartels are going to great lengths to get their narcotics into the U.S., law enforcement officials say.

Smuggling is nothing new here, yet the sheer volume is surprising.

In just one hour at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, we watched U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents seize more than $250,000 in hardcore drugs, and that's not counting what hadn't yet been found lined inside a SUV.

While showing us a drive train pulled from a newer Ford pickup, Chris Maston, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's San Diego director of field operations, told us, "The trend seems to be much deeper concealments, much more difficult to detect, and this is a real good example of that. This came in this morning ... We got 14 pounds of Mexican tar heroin out of this drive shaft."

Agents here at one of the U.S.'s busiest ports of entry say that they've seen a 70 percent increase in cocaine smuggling, 40 percent in heroin and 20 percent in methamphetamine. On any given day, more than 90,000 people legally enter the United States here, and while the great majority are law-abiding, drug cartels are trying their best to scatter smugglers among them.

"These are significant increases. We have to make sure that we are throwing up every barrier we can out here without choking off legitimate trade and travel, and that's the difficult part of our job," Maston said.

Dog teams weave across the lanes as drivers heading north idle for several hours awaiting their turn. We watch as one young woman in her mid-20s gets asked to pull over. She parks in a secondary inspection area, and, as the dog passes the driver's side of her SUV, he gets a whiff of the cartel problem.

Within two minutes she is being led away in cuffs, and the dog literally attacks the lining inside the driver's door. An agent then carefully peels back the cloth to reveal a stash that has been neatly concealed in hopes of making it pass inspectors. This time, though, the game is up.

When you overlook this point of entry, it is impossible to try and figure out which car to look might have black tar heroin stuffed inside. The task seems impossible, but that does not deter agents, who use the dog teams, gather intelligence and in some cases just observe human behavior.

While agents are making significant busts here, increased hardcore smuggling by the cartels means more black-tar heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine are widely available on the streets, and local law enforcement are seeing increasing numbers of teenagers using the drugs.

"There are more seizures of the harder drugs coming from Mexico, and of course the affects of what that means for law enforcement and the challenges that we face going forward. Not just in a smuggling perspective, but for a quality of life in the communities," San Diego Sheriff Capt. Dave Myers said.

Myers also said the recent decriminalization of drugs on the south side of the border has made their job even more difficult. He says they see marijuana as an entry drug, and its numbers are up just like hardcore drugs.

According to the latest numbers, marijuana seizures in the San Diego sector have already tripled their 2010 levels, at 65,189 pounds. The San Diego Border Patrol has also seized 1,368 pounds of cocaine, already topping the total for all of 2010.

Even with what seems as an insurmountable odds, the agents are unwilling to give in and the seizure numbers show that they are making a dent in cartel business.

As one agent tells me, "if it gets past us here, it immediately scatters across the U.S., and it's our job not to let that happen."

HOODWINKED INTO MASOCHISTIC MODE

A British observer notes that the Tea Party followers have been hoodwinked into a masochistic mode by the billionaire Koch brothers. Those angry seniors in the Tea Partly are going to be a whole lot angrier down the road when they see their Medicare benefits reduced and/or their premiums go up. And the poor who depend on Medicaid are really going to be fucked when that program gets slashed.

DEBT DEAL: ANGER AND DECEIT HAS LED THE U.S. INTO A BILLIONAIRES’ COUP
The debt deal will hurt the poorest Americans, convinced by Fox and the Tea Party to act against their own welfare

By George Monbiot

guardian.co.uk
August 1, 2011

There are two ways of cutting a deficit: raising taxes or reducing spending. Raising taxes means taking money from the rich. Cutting spending means taking money from the poor. Not in all cases of course: some taxation is regressive; some state spending takes money from ordinary citizens and gives it to banks, arms companies, oil barons and farmers. But in most cases the state transfers wealth from rich to poor, while tax cuts shift it from poor to rich.

So the rich, in a nominal democracy, have a struggle on their hands. Somehow they must persuade the other 99% to vote against their own interests: to shrink the state, supporting spending cuts rather than tax rises. In the US they appear to be succeeding.

Partly as a result of the Bush tax cuts of 2001, 2003 and 2005 (shamefully extended by Barack Obama), taxation of the wealthy, in Obama's words, "is at its lowest level in half a century". The consequence of such regressive policies is a level of inequality unknown in other developed nations. As the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz points out, in the past 10 years the income of the top 1% has risen by 18%, while that of blue-collar male workers has fallen by 12%.

The deal being thrashed out in Congress as this article goes to press seeks only to cut state spending. As the former Republican senator Alan Simpson says: "The little guy is going to be cremated." That means more economic decline, which means a bigger deficit. It's insane. But how did it happen?

The immediate reason is that Republican members of Congress supported by the Tea Party movement won't budge. But this explains nothing. The Tea Party movement mostly consists of people who have been harmed by tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor and middle. Why would they mobilize against their own welfare? You can understand what is happening in Washington only if you remember what everyone seems to have forgotten: how this movement began.

On Sunday the Observer claimed that "the Tea Party rose out of anger over the scale of federal spending, and in particular in bailing out the banks". This is what its members claim. It's nonsense.

The movement started with Rick Santelli's call on CNBC for a tea party of city traders to dump securities in Lake Michigan, in protest at Obama's plan to "subsidize the losers". In other words, it was a demand for a financiers' mobilization against the bailout of their victims: people losing their homes. On the same day, a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP) set up a Tea Party Facebook page and started organizing Tea Party events. The movement, whose program is still lavishly supported by AFP, took off from there.

So who or what is Americans for Prosperity? It was founded and is funded by Charles and David Koch. They run what they call "the biggest company you've never heard of", and between them they are worth $43bn. Koch Industries is a massive oil, gas, minerals, timber and chemicals company. In the past 15 years the brothers have poured at least $85m into lobby groups arguing for lower taxes for the rich and weaker regulations for industry. The groups and politicians the Kochs fund also lobby to destroy collective bargaining, to stop laws reducing carbon emissions, to stymie healthcare reform and to hobble attempts to control the banks. During the 2010 election cycle, AFP spent $45m supporting its favored candidates.

But the Kochs' greatest political triumph is the creation of the Tea Party movement. Taki Oldham's film (Astro)Turf Wars shows Tea Party organizers reporting back to David Koch at their 2009 Defending the Dream summit, explaining the events and protests they've started with AFP help. "Five years ago," he tells them, "my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for Prosperity. It's beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organization."

AFP mobilized the anger of people who found their conditions of life declining, and channeled it into a campaign to make them worse. Tea Party campaigners take to the streets to demand less tax for billionaires and worse health, education and social insurance for themselves.

Are they stupid? No. They have been misled by another instrument of corporate power: the media. The movement has been relentlessly promoted by Fox News, which belongs to a more familiar billionaire. Like the Kochs, Rupert Murdoch aims to misrepresent the democratic choices we face, in order to persuade us to vote against our own interests and in favor of his.

What's taking place in Congress right now is a kind of political coup. A handful of billionaires have shoved a spanner into the legislative process. Through the candidates they have bought and the movement that supports them, they are now breaking and reshaping the system to serve their interests. We knew this once, but now we've forgotten. What hope do we have of resisting a force we won't even see?

FREE LUNCH

Several hundred teachers have been laid off by the Los Angeles Unified School District because it is way over budget. Here is how an English teacher sounded off in putting the blame for some of those budgetary problems on illegal immigrants:

As you listen to the news about the student protests over illegal immigration, there are some things that you should be aware of.

I am in charge of the English-as-a-second-language department at a large southern California high school which is designated a Title 1 school, meaning that its students average lower socioeconomic and income levels.

Most of the schools you are hearing about, South Gate High, Bell Gardens , Huntington Park , etc.. where these students are protesting, are also Title 1 schools.

Title 1 schools are on the free breakfast and free lunch program. When I say free breakfast, I'm not talking a glass of milk and roll -- but a full breakfast and cereal bar with fruits and juices that would make a Marriott proud. The waste of this food is monumental, with trays and trays of it being dumped in the trash uneaten. (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK)

I estimate that well over 50% of these students are obese or at least moderately overweight. About 75% or more DO have cell phones. The school also provides day care centers for the unwed teenage pregnant girls (some as young as 13) so they can attend class without the inconvenience of having to arrange for babysitters or having family watch their kids. (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK)

I was ordered to spend $700,000 on my department or risk losing funding for the upcoming year even though there was little need for anything; my budget was already substantial. I ended up buying new computers for the computer learning center, half of which, one month later, have been carved with graffiti by the appreciative students who obviously feel humbled and grateful to have a free education in America .. (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK)

I have had to intervene several times for young and substitute teachers whose classes consist of many illegal immigrant students here in the country less than 3 months who raised so much hell with the female teachers, calling them "Putas" (whores ) and throwing things, that the teachers were in tears.

Free medical, free education, free food, day care, etc, etc, etc. Is it any wonder they feel entitled not only to be in this country but to demand rights, privileges and entitlements?

To those who want to point out how much these illegal immigrants contribute to our society because they LIKE their gardener and housekeeper and they like to pay less for tomatoes: spend some time in the real world of illegal immigration and see the TRUE costs.

Higher insurance, medical facilities closing, higher medical costs, more crime, lower standards of education in our schools, overcrowding, new diseases etc., etc, etc. For me, I'll pay more for tomatoes.

Americans, We need to wake up. The guest worker program will be a disaster because we won't have the guts to enforce it. Does anyone in their right mind really think they will voluntarily leave and return?

It does, however, have everything to do with culture: A third-world culture that does not value education, that accepts children getting pregnant and dropping out of school by 15 and that refuses to assimilate, and an American culture that has become so weak and worried about "political correctness " that we don't have the will to do anything about it.

IT'S WAY PAST TIME TO SCRAP THOSE WORTHLESS FEEL GOOD SEX OFFENDER RESIDENCE RESTRICTIONS

The Sacramento Bee reports that a registered sex offender on parole for child molestation has sued the city of Elk Grove, complaining that a city ordinance restricting where he is allowed to live violates state and federal constitutions. Elk Grove’s ordinance prohibits a registered sex offender from loitering within 300 feet of schools, day care centers, playgrounds, parks, amusement centers or youth sports facilities. The lawsuit by Michael Steven Escobar complains that Elk Grove’s ordinance would prevent him from residing with his mother in Elk Grove and would leave him few choices other than homelessness.

Elk Grove's ordinance is similar to California’s Proposition 83, the 2006 initiative known as Jessica's Law which barred offenders from living near schools and parks where children play. Actually, Elk Grove’s restrictions are quite tame compared to those of many other cities, some of which prohibit sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of any place where children might gather or play. Those 1,500 or 2,500 foot restrictions make it impossible for a sex offender to live anywhere inside the city.

Those residence restrictions may calm the fears that people have about sex offenders molesting their children but they are really worthless in protecting children from sexual predators. The sex offender residence restrictions are nothing more than feel good laws.

As for the report on the lawsuit against the Elk Grove sex offender residence restrictions, here are the comments of some law and order types like me from PACOVILLA Corrections blog:

Paco said: As has been frequently noted on these pages, there is not a single study nor any data to support the notion sex offenders commit offenses at schools or parks near their residence of record. Yet, Jessica’s Law and ordinances such as Elk Grove’s enjoy broad public support, from Left and Right alike. The seeming unanimity notwithstanding, the Constitution clearly lacks a sex-offender exclusion–Residential restrictions for sex-offenders will, sooner rather than later, be overturned. In that context, Paco questions the City’s decision to press forward with the ordinance. Clearly, public safety is best served when predators are housed in known locations. Prohibiting 290′s from residing near parks or schools may sound like a prudent measure but, in practice, falls flat. A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush, after all — Surely this applies to child molesters as well.

King Willis said: I agree with your take on this Paco. These pervs represent a lesser threat to the community when law enforcement knows their whereabouts. Forcing them into homelessness might seem like a backhanded way of inflicting more punishment on a class of persons who richly deserve it, but it creates a situation where they have a greater probability of reoffending. These scumbags need to be watched and watching them is tough when they are roaming as homeless people do.

Bob Walsh said: I am happy to concede that the current law probably makes the people who have children and who live in “protected areas” feel better. It does not necessarily make them actually any safer. It almost certainly makes enforcement more difficult and it certainly makes it harder to track registered sex offenders. It was one of those warm and fuzzy ideas that sounded good to a lot of people but which, in practice, has a lot of negative and unintended consequences.


Paco Jr said: On the home page of the DOJ Megan’s Law Website is a category titled Facts about Sex Offenders. This little tidbit of information has been posted on the DOJ website for years. Nonetheless, millions of tax payer dollars have been spent on Prop 83, lawsuits, etc. Yet government officials and politicians continue to appease the public to “make them feel safe” from the big bad wolf. Most child sexual abusers find their victims by frequenting such places as schoolyards and playgrounds. FALSE. Most child sexual abusers offend against children whom they know and with whom they have established a relationship. Many sexual assaults of adult women are considered “confidence rapes,” in that the offender knows the victim and has used that familiarity to gain access to her.

Bulldogger said: As a sex offender parole agent, Jessica’s law was a great big headache, Thankfully in Region III there is a stay of that law while a lawsuit is pending. The high risk cases are a major pain in the ass as they are all transient because in LA County there are limited areas that do not meet the half mile restriction from a school or park. So the worst of the worst are roaming the streets.

To which I want to add that while I’ve got absolutely no use for child molesters and brutal rapists, I have to come down on the side of Michael Escobar in his lawsuit against the City of Elk Grove. Forcing people, even sex offenders, into homelessness would appear to violate several sections of our great Constitution. It’s way past time to scrap those worthless feel good residence restrictions.

BEYOND BELIEF

In 2005, Hailey Castaneda wound up in Texas Children's Hospital at the prestigious Houston Medical Center. The 6-month-old infant was suffering from two broken legs, a broken arm, skull fracture, lacerated kidney, pancreas and liver, along with a nearly severed tongue. Against all odds, Hailey survived and came to be known as the "miracle baby." Houston police and child protective services investigators still call it one of the worst cases of child abuse they have ever seen.

Emmanuel Castaneda, the miracle baby’s father, was sentenced to life in prison for inflicting those injuries on poor little Hailey. Castaneda had come to the attention of the police in 2003 when Hailey’s older sister Charla, then only 4 weeks old, turned up in an emergency room with a broken leg and a head injury. Charla’s mother told doctors that those injuries had occurred after she left the infant in Castaneda's care.

Now comes the real shocker. It turns out that just six years into his life sentence Castaneda is scheduled for a November parole hearing. To most people that is beyond belief.

For parole purposes the State of Texas considers a life sentence the equivalent of 60 years. Castaneda is eligible for parole because at the time he was sentenced, child abusers, like most other inmates, could qualify for parole after serving a fourth of their sentence. By adding the nine years of "good time" credits that he’s earned to the six years he’s served, Castaneda is now considered to have served 15 years, thus making him eligible for parole.

Castaneda would have had to serve half of his term – 30 years – before becoming eligible for parole had he been convicted after 2007. That year the law was changed by adding child abuse or "injury to a child" to the list of violent offenses that no longer qualify for "good time" and requiring child abusers to serve at least half their sentence.

Police refer to Castaneda as a “cold blooded monster” and to me that is putting it rather mildly. I suspect that the parole board will not approve a parole for this human piece of excrement in November or in the foreseeable future for that matter. Any parole board member who would approve Castaneda for release should be confined for intensive psychiatric therapy at Babbling Brooks Funny Farm.

SADDLING THE PRIVATE SECTOR WITH A STIFLING LOAD OF REGULATIONS

I happened to catch Michael Savage on his Savage Nation radio show the other day when he was doing his usual rants on President Obama, calling him a “traitor” and other vile names and accusing him of trying to destroy this nation. Savage almost makes Roach Limburger – who also thinks Obama is trying to destroy this country - look like a moderate.

I don’t for one minute believe that Obama is trying to destroy this nation. That is absurd! But the Obama administration’s regulatory policies are having an adverse effect on business and that is derailing job growth and the recovery of our depressed economy.

WHY OBAMA’S ECONOMY WON’T IMPROVE
By Mona Charen

Jewish World Review
August 2, 2011

There are some on the right who believe that Barack Obama is intentionally steering the United States into disaster — that he privately rejoices in the dismal economy because it partially fulfills his objective to bring the country down.

This strikes me as, at the very least, overwrought. One would have to accept the idea that Gene Sperling, Timothy Geithner and the president clapped one another on the back when the latest GDP figures arrived. ".04 percent growth in the first quarter. 1.3 percent last quarter. Way to go! We'll be in recession again in no time."

Not likely. The president and his team were no doubt surprised and dismayed by the economy's poor performance in the past six months. The president, after all, has announced for re-election. The country was supposed to be well into the Obama recovery by now. Actually, the summer of 2010 was going to be, the Obama administration promised, "recovery summer."

The president's team has taken to offering ever more creative explanations for the economy's weakness. It was George Bush's fault, or a "bump in the road," or a response to the Eurozone crisis, or a consequence of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, or a result of the drought in the southwest. It's reminiscent of the old Soviet Union's explanation that for the 69th, 70th and 71st consecutive year, poor weather had caused a bad harvest.

The president and his economic advisers should not be surprised, though, because this administration has not been about growth — it has been about "fairness." And in the name of fairness, it has created the most anti-business climate since Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. As Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts, recently complained:

"I'm saying it bluntly, that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I can prove it, and I could spend the next three hours giving you examples of all of us in this marketplace that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our health care costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right."

It's not that the president wants to hurt the country; it's that he believes that the best things the country has ever done have been done by government. "We do big things," he said in his State of the Union address in January. But when enumerating those things, he focused on the things government has done — building the interstate highway system, setting up the Internet, funding education. (Oh, do we ever fund education!) And that's what he wants more of:

"Over the last two years, we have begun rebuilding for the 21st century, a project that has meant thousands of good jobs for the hard-hit construction industry. Tonight, I'm proposing that we redouble these efforts._ We will put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. We will make sure this is fully paid for, attract private investment, and pick projects based on what's best for the economy, not politicians._ Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you to go places in half the time it takes to travel by car."

The president is dazzled by the vision of those shiny high-speed rail trains — and by solar panels, electric cars and other pet projects that have caught his imagination. What he has been unwilling to do is to permit the vast private sector to make its own decisions — to follow its own ideas.

Instead, the administration has been saddling the private sector with a stifling load of regulations. The burden of Obamacare, most of which does not take effect until 2014, is mostly in the realm of fear and uncertainty. Employers do not know how much each new hire will cost under the new health care regime. Nor can they estimate how the 129 new boards, commissions and agencies will affect the business world.

Meanwhile, the EPA is regulating carbon dioxide as an air pollutant. The NLRB is attempting to prevent the Boeing Corporation from opening a new plant in South Carolina. The FCC is seeking to exert control over Internet commerce through the deceptively named "net neutrality" policy. The Department of Labor is strictly enforcing racial and gender quotas. And the Federal Reserve, along with the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (created by the Dodd-Frank law) is practically freezing small-business lending.

This president has spun fantasies about the industries of tomorrow, while punishing the industries of today. His fulminations against "millionaires and billionaires" and his wrath about "corporate jets" betray a fundamentally childish urge to punish success. Under his economic stewardship, there is less and less of that around.

OMG! THE KILLER COPS SHOT HIM IN CHURCH

Those killer cops are at it again. They shot a man to death inside a church of all places. Have they no shame? A down and dirty officer shot the poor soul for no reason other than he was attacking them with a lil ole 10 inch butcher knife, stabbing one of the cops. Let’s get the ACLU, La Raza and LULAC to jump on this senseless shooting.

MAN SHOT AFTER LEAPING FROM AMBULANCE, STABBING OFFICER IN CHURCH
By Scott Weber

NBC LA
July 31, 2011

Investigators are trying to unravel the mysterious circumstances that lead to the shooting death of a man who, after being released from jail, leaped out of a moving ambulance and later stabbed an officer with a butcher knife.

The bizarre chain of events started about 3:00 p.m. Saturday after the suspect posted bail at the Twin Towers jail. The Los Angeles Police Department said an ambulance was taking the 35-year-old Hispanic male to have a minor injury looked at County-USC Medical Center.

For reasons that were not yet clear, the man jumped out of the moving ambulance near Mission and Richmond streets. Medics stopped to help but the man assaulted them and fled on foot, the LAPD said.

"Really the mystery is why this guy jumped out of a moving ambulance when he was really free to go," said LAPD Commander Andrew Smith.

After a five mile chase, the suspect broke into El Divino Salvador Presbyterian Church at 515 Escandia St. and attempted to hide, the LAPD said.

Police eventually sent in a dog after the man and then a search team confronted him. Armed with a ten-inch butcher knife from the church rectory, the suspect allegedly stabbed an officer through his left bicep, the LAPD said. Another officer fired at least one shot, killing the suspect.

"No one really knows why he jumped out of the back of the moving ambulance and assaulted the ambulance attendant and then took off running and hid inside this church," Smith said. "Our detectives are looking into it to try and come up with an answer to that."

The name of the suspect was being withheld pending notification of his family. An autopsy will be performed.

AUSTRALIAN COP KILLER IS A HERO TO SOME

Thanks to Dorina Lisson for the heads-up on this report. Dorina wrote: ‘Fact is ... almost every convicted prisoner maintains their innocence or wrongful conviction.’

DISGUST AT COP KILLER’S SICK TAUNTS
By Wayne Flower

Herald Sun
August 1, 2011

COP killer Jason Roberts is continuing to taunt his victims from behind bars by professing his innocence online and calling on penpals to write to him.

Roberts, who is serving a life term over the 1998 [Australian] murders of Sgt Gary Silk and Sen-Constable Rodney Miller, has been receiving mail from sympathizers for more than three years, courtesy of an insensitive rant on a website catering for penpals and MySpace.

In it, Roberts claims he was "wrongly implicated by others" and that he was continuing to look for avenues of appeal to "re-address the injustice" imposed on himself and his family.

"I maintain my innocence," he writes.

The posts, which he claims were added by his support group on the outside, provides the address for Barwon prison, including the unit in which he is housed.

A Corrections Victoria spokesman said it was believed the websites were being maintained by someone outside jail.

"No Victorian prisoner is allowed access to the internet," he said.

"Limited access to computers is provided in specified circumstances, such as if a prisoner has a disability, or for educational reasons."

John Forbes, who founded the Tynan-Eyre Memorial Foundation and was chairman of the Blue Ribbon Foundation for 21 years, said the posts disgusted him.

"It's just unbelievable ... Someone's got to do something, because this can't go on."

It is not the first time Roberts has used his contacts to post rants on the internet.

In 2007, he dodged a jail internet ban by mailing lengthy diatribes to supporters, who posted them on a website.

Roberts was jailed for life with a 35-year non-parole period in 2003.

A jury convicted him and an accomplice of murdering Sgt Silk and Sen-Constable Miller in Cochranes Rd, Moorabbin, early on August 16, 1998.

The pair were secretly taped coldly describing the shootings as "a little thing", and taunting police, shouting "bang bang, suck on that" as they drove past other officers.

The tapes also revealed they considered murdering Sen-Constable Miller's widow, Carmel, and young son, James.

Blue Ribbon Foundation CEO Neil Soullier said: "It doesn't seem right that they've got free access to the outside world. It would concern me if they did have free access, because that could open the door to them creating menaces with members of the family, witnesses."

Graham Thwaites, the first policeman at the murder scene, said anyone who had written to Roberts should be ashamed: "This guy is not a hero - he's a cop killer."

NORWAY IS THE MOST ANTI-SEMITIC AND ANTI-ISRAEL NATION IN EUROPE

Norway’s left-wing government shows its hatred of Jews and its official anti-Israel stripes. And this comes from a country that suffered under the Nazi occupation during WWII.

NORWAY DELEGATE: TERRORISM AGAINST ISRAEL WARRANTED
By Alan Dershowitz

Newsmax.com
July 29, 2011

In a recent interview, Norway’s Ambassador to Israel suggested that Hamas terrorism against Israel is more justified than the recent terrorist attack against Norway. His reasoning is that, “We Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel.”

In other words, terrorism against Israeli citizens is the fault of Israel. The terrorism against Norway, on the other hand, was based on “an ideology that said that Norway, particularly the Labor Party, is foregoing Norwegian culture.”

It is hard to imagine that he would make such a provocative statement without express approval from the Norwegian government.

I can’t remember many other examples of so much nonsense compressed in such short an interview. First of all, terrorism against Israel began well before there was any “occupation.”

The first major terrorist attack against Jews who had long lived in Jerusalem and Hebron began in 1929, when the leader of the Palestinian people, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, ordered a religiously motivated terrorist attack that killed hundreds of religious Jews — many old, some quite young. Terrorism against Jews continued through the 1930s.

Once Israel was established as a state, but well before it captured the West Bank, terrorism became the primary means of attacking Israel across the Jordanian, Egyptian, and Lebanese borders.

If the occupation is the cause of the terror against Israel, what was the cause of all the terror that preceded any occupation?

I was not surprised to hear such a historical bigotry from a Norwegian ambassador. Norway is the most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel country in Europe today. I know, because I experienced both personally during a recent visit and tour of universities. No university would invite me to lecture, unless I promised not to discuss Israel.

Norway forbids Jewish ritual slaughter, but not Islamic ritual slaughter. Its political and academic leaders openly make statements that cross the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism, such as when Norway’s Foreign Minister condemned President Barack Obama for appointing a Jew as his chief of staff. No other European leader would make such a statement and get away with it.

In Norway, this bigoted statement was praised, as were similar statements made by a leading academic.

The very camp that was attacked by the lone terrorist was engaged in an orgy of anti-Israel hatred the day before the shooting. Yet I would not ever claim that it was Norway’s anti-Semitism that “caused” the horrible act of terrorism against young Norwegians.

The causes of terrorism are multifaceted but at bottom they have a common cause: namely a belief that violence is the proper response to policies that the terrorists disagree with.

The other common cause is that terrorism has often been rewarded. Norway, for example, has repeatedly rewarded Palestinian terrorism against Israel, while punishing Israel for its efforts to protect its civilians.

While purporting to condemn all terrorist acts, the Norwegian government has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism as having a legitimate cause. This clearly is an invitation to continued terrorism.

It is important for the world never to reward terrorism by supporting the policies of those who employ it as an alternative to reasoned discourse, diplomatic resolution, or political compromise.

I know of no reasonable person who has tried to justify the terrorist attacks against Norway. Yet there are many Norwegians who not only justify terrorist attacks against Israel, but praise them, support them, help finance them, and legitimate them.

The world must unite in condemning and punishing all terrorist attacks against innocent civilians, regardless of the motive or purported cause of the terrorism. Norway, as a nation, has failed to do this. It wants us all to condemn the terrorist attack on its civilians, and we should all do that, but it refuses to live by a single standard.

Nothing good ever comes from terrorism, so don’t expect the Norwegians to learn any lessons from its own victimization. As the ambassador made clear in his benighted interview, “those of us who believe [the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel] will not change their minds because of the attack in Oslo.”

In other words, Norway will persist in its bigoted view that Israel is the cause of the terrorism directed at it, and that if only Israel were to end the occupation (as it offered to do in 2000-2001 and again in 2007), the terrorism will end.

Even Hamas, which Norway supports in many ways, has made clear that it will not end its terrorism as long as Israel continues to exist. Hamas believes that Israel’s very existence is the cause of the terrorism against it. That sounds a lot like the ranting of the man who engaged in the act of terrorism against Norway.

The time is long overdue for Norwegians to do some deep soul searching about their sordid history of complicity with all forms of bigotry ranging from the anti-Semitic Nazis to the anti-Semitic Hamas. There seems to be a common thread.

COURT ENDS TOILET PAPER WAR Some Would Say The Case Was Full Of Shit

It took the courts to finally end the bloody toilet paper war.

JUDGE ON A ROLL WITH TOILET PAPER OPINION
By Steve Schmadeke

Jewish World Review
August 1, 2011

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago takes on many weighty legal issues of the day. This was not one of them.

In a legal battle between two titans of toilet paper, the court held this week that quilted bathroom tissue is too basic a product to be trademarked, upholding a lower court that threw out the lawsuit.

"Toilet paper. This case is about toilet paper," Judge Terence Evans led off the opinion. "Are there many other things most people use every day but think very little about? We doubt it."

At issue was a lawsuit in which Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products LP, which makes Northern Quilted brand toilet paper, accused Kimberly-Clark Corp., maker of Cottonelle tissue, of infringing on its trademark for its "diamond quilted" design of toilet paper.

Despite the mundane subject, the stakes were high. As the opinion pointed out, the toilet paper industry is a $4 billion-a-year business

And with lawyers being lawyers, the case produced a staggering 675,000 pages of evidence — enough paper, printed out and laid end-to-end, to stretch from Chicago to Michigan City, Ind., and back. (We have no idea how many rolls of toilet paper that would equal.) The lawyers also cited almost 120 cases and 20 federal statutes in arguing the legal issues.

"That's quite a record considering, again, that this case is about toilet paper," opined Evans, who is that rare appeals court judge who can have some fun with his writing when the opportunity presents itself.

Given the subject, the judge missed few opportunities at puns, at one point noting that despite the fact that the lower-court judge "dutifully plied her opinion, we now wipe the slate clean and address Georgia-Pacific's claims."

Judges Michael Kanne and Diane Sykes joined in the decision.

A Georgia-Pacific spokesman said the company was disappointed with the decision and is considering its options. A Kimberly-Clark spokesman said the company does not comment on pending litigation.

This was by no means the only arcane trademark case the court has ruled on of late. Last year it held that circular beach towels once sold by actor Woody Harrelson couldn't be trademarked either.

THE U.S. AND NATO DO NOT HAVE THE GUTS TO STOP THE SLAUGHTER OF UNARMED SYRIAN CIVILIANS

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had his troops and tanks storm the anti-government stronghold of Hama and other cities before dawn on Sunday, killing at least 75 people and injuring hundreds of others. That brings the death toll of unarmed civilians to 1,600 during four months of anti-government protests.

When Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi sent his troops to attack armed rebels in their stronghold of Benghazi, the mere threat of civilians being killed resulted in a strong military response by the United States and the European military forces of NATO. Gadhafi’s troops were attacked by fighter-bombers and long range missiles. Gadhafi’s compounds and other targets in Tripoli were heavily bombarded.

Far fewer civilians have been killed by Gadhafi’s military than the number of unarmed protesters that have been killed by Assad’s troops. There has been no military response by the U.S. and NATO against Assad’s bloody regime. Public condemnations of Assad are the only responses that President Obama and the European leaders have been able to muster.

For instance, President Obama really 'hammered' Assad when he called the attacks on Hama “horrifying” and declared that Assad is “completely incapable and unwilling” to respond to the legitimate grievances of the Syrian people. Now that ought to make Assad shake in his boots. Yeah, right.

Why has there been no military response to the slaughter of unarmed Syrian civilians? The main reason the U.S. and NATO will not attack Syria is because that nation is much stronger militarily than Libya. Assad’s regime has been armed to the teeth by the Russians. While we would certainly be able to defeat the Syrian forces, unlike in Libya, we would suffer some serious losses. And then there is always the possibility that Syria’s ally Iran would be drawn into the conflict.

So what it all boils down to is that the U.S. and NATO have gone to war with a very weak Libyan military, but they do not have the stomach to go to a war against the stronger armed forces of Syria as Assad continues to slaughter hundreds of civilians every week.

JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT

Another poster boy for the death penalty. It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court ruled that nobody can be put to death if they committed murder while under the age of 18.

THE PUKE JUST WANTED TO KILL SOMEONE FOR THE FUN OF IT
By Bob Walsh

PACOVILLA Corrections blog
July 31, 2011

A 17-year old Norteno Gang member is under arrest for a murder in the teeming metropolis of Hanford. The cops say he just wanted to kill someone.

Denise McVay, 49, was a single mom working two jobs. She was washing her car at the Royal Car Wash on her way home after work early Tuesday. She was stabbed 30 times and her throat slit by the 17-year old, as yet unnamed by authorities. He then took her money and her car, though it appears to the cops like the theft was an afterthought. After the murder he drove to a friend’s house and they went to the mall to spend the money. They then dumped the car, but were caught on surveillance cameras. The 18-year old buddy, Mauricio Ortiz Jr., is also in custody as an accessory after the fact.

“I have never seen a more calculated murder in my 35 years in law enforcement,” Hanford Police Chief Carlos Mestas said. “This was not a robbery or a carjacking. It was murder just for the sake of killing someone. Quite frankly, he was just killing for fun.”

McVay worked as Lemoore Naval Hospital and also at a local convalescent hospital.

It is likely the D.A. will seek to have the 17-year old thug tried as an adult. Unfortunately because he was under 18 at the time of the crime the state can not fry him (not that they would likely actually do it anyway).

FIRST IT WAS TWINKIES, NOW IT'S DIETS

Back in 1979, Dan White blamed Twinkies for his killings of San Fransicko mayor George Moscone and supervisor Sean Penn – oops, I mean Harvey Milk. White claimed he was suffering from Diminished Capacity brought about by a high consumption of sugar.

White’s ‘Twinkie Defense’ worked in that he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter instead of the capital murder charge for which he was tried.　(Actually, White’s lawyers never mentioned anything about Twinkies before, during or after his trial. The term ‘ Twinkie Defense’ was something cooked up by the media.)

And now we have the Diet Defense:

CRASH DIET DEFENSE FAILS TO WORK FOR SOLDIER

Associated Press
July 29, 2011

SAVANNAH -- A Georgia soldier who argued he shot a superior to death because a crash diet drove him to a violent state of delirium was convicted of premeditated murder Thursday by a court-martial.

Under military law, 30-year-old Staff Sgt. Rashad Valmont of Jonesboro gets an automatic life sentence. The only question left for the five-member military jury that convicted him is whether Valmont should ever be eligible for parole.

Valmont was convicted in the June 2010 slaying of Master Sgt. Pedro Mercado. Both men served in a medical administration unit of the Army Reserve stationed at Fort Gillem outside Atlanta.

Sentencing would come today at the soonest at Fort Stewart, where the trial was held in southeast Georgia.

TRUCK NUTZ 1, COPS 0

Things must be really slow in Bonneau, South Carolina for the police chief to cite a 65-year-old woman for violating the state’s obscenity laws by dangling a set of popular truck nutz from the rear bumper of her 2004 Dodge pickup. The citation was for having an “Obscene Bumper Sticker” which, according to the chief, falls under a state law involving displays that community standards deem “patently offensive” and include “sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body."

It turns out that the crime fighting police chief is also a deadbeat dad. Just a few days after issuing that dipshit citation, the chief’s ass was thrown in jail for failing to pay $15,000 in child support payments dating back to 2006.

THE DEATH OF FUN
by Kirsten Boyd Johnson

Smoking Gun
July 27, 2011

OH COME ON, as though somehow there are people out there who don’t love Truck Nutz? Judging by the number of people who sent us this tip, absolutely NO ONE in all of space/time except a humorless douchebag police officer who issued a $445 ticket to a 65-year-old woman for putting giant red balls on her truck, along with some prosecutor who ran out of black people to throw in prison and will now make this lady stand trial for being a public fan of novelty testicles. We might as well be living under Stalin.

Virginia Tice, 65, was issued the ticket earlier this month after her truck was pulled over by Bonneau Police Department Chief Franco Fuda who saw the popular adornment known as “Truck Nutz” or “Bulls Balls” hanging from her 2004 Dodge.

Her violation was recorded by the chief as “Obscene Bumber Sticker” which falls under a state law involving displays that community standards deem “patently offensive” and include “sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body.”

According to a court clerk a trial will be scheduled for late August. It will allow Tice’s peers to determine what the community standard is when it comes to dangling novelty balls off the back of one’s truck.

SOUTH CAROLINA COP THROWN IN JAIL AFTER ISSUING ‘TRUCK NUTZ’ TICKET
by Kirsten Boyd Johnson

The Post and Courier
July 28, 2011

INSTANT COMEUPPANCE, BIYOTCHES. The killjoy police chief who gave an obscenity citation to a 65-year-old woman for hanging red Truck Nutz off her pickup truck turns out to be a bit of a “Joe Walsh” himself. He was tossed into the clink for owing $15,000 in back child support payments that he hadn’t paid since 2006. Is it sheer coincidence that he was finally arrested mere days after he decided to hunt down Truck Nutz? TRUCK NUTZ 1 POLICE 0.

Berkeley County sheriff’s deputies took the chief of Bonneau’s police department to family court Wednesday and held him there until he came up with over $15,000 in overdue child support.

Judge Wayne Creech found Chief Franco Fuda in contempt of court and gave him the chance to pay what he owed to an ex-wife in Illinois before sending him to Berkeley County Detention Center, according to court documents.

According to court records, Fuda kept up with his $275 per-month child support payments from December 1992, when his wife gained custody of their infant son in their divorce, until January 2004, when his payments became more sporadic. In June 2006, Fuda stopped paying altogether for at least three years, records state.