Tag: law

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internets uncategorized

link roundup

Best of Craigslist: “From an Angry Soldier” – a must-read.

Songbird, a “a desktop Web player, a digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up” – have not tried it yet, looks promising!

Awesome contraption a la Rube Goldberg!

Some Dayton, OH YouTube-ness. (Bonus: look for some great Brainiac live footage!)

Some things never change: what my mom’s been up to lately. (This last apparently involving something along the lines of stealing cable.) (Also i found some interesting busts from the early 90s here, including petty theft, unlawful use of property, and drug abuse.)

Information relating to the indictment (for involuntary manslaughter) of my good friend Derek Bayes, a kind and gentle fellow musician, who, according to anecdotal personal testimony, was defending himself against his girlfriend’s enraged, blind, shotgun-wielding estranged husband (or something very similar), when he accidentally choked the guy to death. According to some mutual friends, when the ambulance and police came, he was still on top of the guy and was crying when they took him away. A trumped up case, especially after the local media got ahold of it and spun it the wrong way round like the bloodthirsty vampires they are. I know Derek, and he is a harmless and sweet man with a good heart. And he’s still sitting in prison, with a couple years left on his nine-year sentence. (Don’t let his mug shot fool you, he was obviously having a very, very bad day.)

Another good friend of mine: Dee, who shares my birthday and who is yet another extraordinary kind human being who was caught up in some bad circumstances. Thankfully, Dee’s free again.

Historic South Park District in Dayton, OH (where we now live).

We’re thinking about buying the house we’re in, and this information has been pretty helpful thus far. Also, knowing more about bad mold can’t hurt!

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current events internets media uncategorized

Jim Gilchrist (ostensibly) on “Democracy Now!”

Massive props to Karina Garcia, Political Chair of the Chicano Caucus at Columbia University, where she is a senior, for taking on that racist, slimey, pig-fucker Jim Gilchrist (founder of the anti-Mexican Minuteman Project, a vigilante group which patrols the US-Mexican border, taking the law into its own shotgun-carrying hands).

Recently, he was at Columbia University, where his lap dogs kicked a student, who was passing in front of the stage, in the face. The resulting chaos, in which students waved banners and protested peacefully, was labeled by his hatemonger group (and, go figure, by FOXNews) as a “riot” by “thugs”! You can see a clip of this happening at the link below. Hopefully someone will post this to YouTube soon…

Check out the RealPlayer video of Gilchrist on the progressive syndicated program “Democracy Now!” (128k stream, 256k stream) where he abruptly cuts off a barely-begun debate as soon as he is asked a question. What a coward.

Categories
current events internets

link roundup

Top 10 places to find royalty free, public domain, stock photos

Stephen Hawking in the news: “It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species… Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.” – He’s also working on a children’s book a la Harry Potter, sans magic. Dude!

Footage of meteoroid hitting the moon.

Court orders Bob Taft (Governor- OH) to disclose potentially scandalous records. Corrupt Bob must give up. What a loser.

Aussie lyrebird is like a freaking dictaphone of nature! I’ve heard wild stories about this bird, but hear it imitate – perfectly! – a buzzing chainsaw, and two different camera shutters!

After the Rodney King riots in South Central, the city gave residents a plot of land in good faith. How nice! They’ve since turned it into the largest urban farm in America! Unfortunately, it is at this very moment under corporate and police attack. It seems the land was dubiously sold out from under The People to developers. Shame, shame, shame! This is outrageous, and reeks of the kind of “indian-giving” that white people are most famous for.

Don’t even try to cancel AOL. They’ll just give you the runaround and, erm, ask for your father. WTF.

Sexy ro-bots having sexy sex.

An even weirder video: “dancing” Japanese girls teaching defensive English. I guess. Don’t make fun of them.

EFF‘s The Corruptibles!

The Show with Zefrank is a freaking riot!

Categories
current events internets uncategorized

Impeach Bush for Peace

Here’s an idea: DIY impeachment!

If you don’t think there’s enough evidence to mandate an impeachment of George W. Bush, you might not have been aware of the facts. That’s okay. We don’t actually blame you.

Categories
current events

Jon Stewart vs. Bill Bennett

You don’t want to miss Jon Stewart skewering conservative Bill Bennett over gay marriage. Way to go, Jon!

Stewart: So why not encourage gay people to join in in that family arrangement if that is what provides stability to a society?

Bennett: Well I think if gay people are already members of families—

Stewart: What?!

Bennett: They’re sons and they’re daughters—

Stewart: So that’s where the buck stops. That’s the gay ceiling.

Bennett: Look, it’s a debate about whether you think marriage is between a man and a woman.

Stewart: I disagree. I think it’s a debate about whether you think gay people are part of the human condition or just a random fetish.

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current events

Geneva Convention? What Geneva Convention?

I can see it now: “But sir! Nobody told us we couldn’t torture & humiliate suspected enemy combatants!”

Pentagon to omit Geneva ban from new army manual: report – Yahoo! News

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – New policies on prisoners being drawn up by the Pentagon will reportedly omit a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans “humiliating and degrading treatment.”Citing unidentified but knowledgeable military officials, the Los Angeles Times said the step would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift by the US government away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.
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current events uncategorized

“Family values” in the state of Misery

In the St. Louis, MO suburb of Black Jack, “Family Values” means getting legally married, or living on the street in a cardboard box with your kids.

CBS News: Black Jack, Mo., To Evict Unmarried Couples With Children From Homes

Mayor Norman McCourt said starting Wednesday the city will begin trying to evict groups who do not fit into Black Jack’s definition of family…

So, essentially, this means that if this kind of thing flies, the gummint will have a say in who you’re with, where you live, and how many children you have. What’s shocking is the the idea of evicting a couple with children. Homeless kids, i’d hazard, are never good PR for a city.

Categories
current events

“It’s not working,” indeed.

Here in Ohio, in the latest botched execution, a convicted killer takes over an hour to die from lethal injection.

The deadly chemicals started to flow at 10:25 a.m., [prison spokeswoman Andrea Dean] said.

“But after about three or four minutes,” she continued, “the inmate was able to raise his head off the gurney and said, ‘It’s not working.’ ” The vein had collapsed, she said.

Is this cruel and unusual? Or is it merely the thought that counts? I am inclined to go with the former.
Now come on, should we really be killing people? Is it truly in our mortal hands to kill members of the tribe who have committed atrocities against other members? Who is fit to judge? We talk about the sanctity of life regarding unborn fetuses, which almost certainly have no awareness or consciousness, but what about real, proven, fully-formed human life?

I believe that there are better punishments out there; alternatives to taking life away from someone who may or may not have repented, who may or may not still have some good left in them… and especially when the certainty of guilt is within a shadow of a doubt.

Life is precious, and i just can’t believe that anyone – be it a killer, or a judge – has the right to kill another human being.

Categories
current events

two very different Republicans

Stephen Colbert is a shining beacon for all of Republica!

“I’ve never been a fan of books. I don’t trust them. They’re all fact, no heart. I mean, they’re elitist, telling us what is or isn’t true; what did or didn’t happen. What’s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was built in 1914? If I want to say it was built in 1941, that’s my right as an American. I’m with the president: let history decide what did or did not happen. The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man’s beliefs never will.”

George W. Bush has abused over 750 laws? I knew he was a dangerous lunatic, and a criminal, but i didn’t know he was quite that arrogant. Talk about abuse of power!

Presidential Abuse of Power

Categories
current events

Texas “justice”?

Texas teen smokes pot while on probation, gets life sentence while a well-connected killer smokes crack and is no longer even on probation. Same judge. Judge Keith Dean, of Dallas, to be precise about it.

Why this disparity of justice? Or is there disparity, in the eyes of the man charged with interpreting the law?

Judge Dean, a widely respected 20-year veteran of the Dallas criminal bench, said he wouldn’t discuss the two cases because he might have to rule on them again someday. In general, he said, he tries to evaluate “the potential danger to the community” when someone violates probation “and what, in the long run, is going to be in the best interest of the community and the person themselves.”

Meanwhile, the kid, 16 years older now, has tried to commit suicide and where is the outcry, i ask you?