For months on end, hundreds of thousands of people across South Korea have mounted daily demonstrations, candlelight vigils, boycotts, and almost every form of protest up to and including setting themselves on fire - against American beef, the new conservative government, and George W.Bush. So why is it, exactly, that South Koreans are so angry?
“The Korean heart wants to afford people that kind of hospitality, so when Koreans tell someone they aren’t welcome, you have to ask why. … The way the United States treats Korea is not the only problem. Let’s set aside for a moment, the hypocrisy and ignorance of how the U.S. divides the world into good and evil and maintains a constant global tension, while making itself out to be an apostle of peace and justice. What’s really dangerous is that American capital considers the entire world its prey. In its arrogance over being on a throne of power, it won’t be satisfied until everything belongs to it. All of this and its habit of never hesitating to go to war for money are the greatest factors threatening world peace.”
The suicide of a suspect in the post-9/11 anthrax attacks in 2001 seems to have tied up that trauma into a neat package that can be filed away under national scare stories, case solved.
But the subject is too important for such a quick and tidy solution. As shocking as the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon were, it was numbing weeks of public anxiety over deadly letters to the media and US Senators that spread fear across America to create an atmosphere that let Bush-Cheney Neo-Cons take us to war in Iraq and trample the Constitution.
Now, the anthrax story presumably ends with the death of researcher Bruce Ivins in the face of a therapist’s taped testimony that he had a “detailed homicidal plan” to kill his co-workers after learning he was going to be indicted on capital murder charges in the mailings.
But secrecy so far, according to Glenn Greenwald in Salon, “has generated far more questions about the anthrax attacks than it has answered” as he cites MSM complicity in efforts to tie the 2001 threat to “Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program.”
August 4th, 2008 by DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
The 8th circuit just held that the practice of shackling pregnant women to their bedpost while they are in labor does not violate the constitution, because the state has an interest in protecting against them attempting to escape. The case is here, my commentary is here.
State lawmakers will be tempted to ratchet up penalties for the crime of child prostitution and declare the problem solved. But Georgia already has very tough laws in this area. Like the rest of the states, it needs to significantly expand treatment programs for sexually exploited children. And even more important, it needs to broaden community-based prevention programs that spot and help troubled children before they end up selling their bodies on the streets.
A report earlier this year by the Barton Child Law and Policy Clinic at Emory University estimated that hundreds of children were being used as prostitutes throughout Georgia. They come from troubled families and often have histories of truancy. They typically run away from home after being sexually abused. […]
The men who drive the sex trade by patronizing prostitutes rarely figure into discussions of the problem. Shirley Franklin, the mayor of Atlanta, has changed that through advertisements underscoring the damage that these men do to their communities.
The city is also considering legislation under which first-time offenders on adult prostitution charges will be required to attend classes where they would learn about the broader social harm associated with their activities. Restitution and community service may be required.
Georgia’s state budget shortfall and the cuts called for by the governor make funding for such initiatives difficult.
In an editorial today, the NY Times argues that the decision about where a sex offender should live properly resides with law enforcement agencies
A disturbing new development is the proliferation of local ordinances that go beyond the reporting requirements of legislation like Megan’s Law by restricting where sex offenders may live. In some New Jersey towns, offenders cannot live within 2,500 feet of a school or playground. Often, the banned areas are so large as to effectively prohibit a sex offender from living anywhere in town.
The law in Georgia prohibits offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a church, school, bus stop, or recreation center! The problem extends beyond Atlanta. Last week ABC reported on a massage parlor sting in Macon, GA that counted 17-year-olds among those arrested.
RELATED: A case was brought before the Georgia Supreme Court arguing that the recent Kennedy decision suggests that imposing a mandatory life sentence on a sex offender for failing to register should be unconstitutional.
Rather than devoting a larger share of our shrinking resources to incarceration, society’s dollars would be better spent on crime prevention. Reducing poverty and providing meaningful opportunities for a sound education, affordable housing, and well-paying jobs would help combat the despair and hopelessness that breeds crime. Helping parents learn to raise children in homes that are free from violence would also have a beneficial impact on crime rates. These are not easy or inexpensive solutions to implement, but they are more worthy of investment than supermax prisons.
Reserving incarceration for offenders who pose a true threat would also reduce the harm that imprisonment fosters. Punishment of nonviolent offenders should focus on restitution, rehabilitation, and community supervision, not on deprivation of liberty. We need to stop using the criminal justice system to battle social problems like drug abuse and prostitution and public drunkenness. Locking people up is a simple-minded response that doesn’t solve the underlying problem, and until the focus of society’s response is on the cause rather than the behavior, recidivism is almost inevitable. If anything, prisons only exacerbate lawlessness by assuring that new offenders are surrounded by veteran criminals who pass along their knowledge of ways to beat society’s rules.
Finally, to the extent that society needs to incarcerate the incorrigible to protect itself from harm, it has no right to dehumanize the confined. If we expect others to be respectful of our rights, we should show them the respect to which all people are entitled. Prisons should protect offenders from rape and intimidation. Prisons should provide decent health care, should screen for and treat mental illness. Prisons should not be warehouses. Prisons should provide opportunities for improvement so that offenders, upon release, will have the tools to change their lives.
Since Tasers arrived on the law enforcement scene, there have been many problematic and troubling stories involving their use.
Myself, I’m of the opinion that the Taser is just like any other tool: dangerous in the wrong hands.
It’s bad enough when someone misuses power, but it’s downright appalling when a (now former) police officer could rampantly and repeatedly abuse it… and that the environment in which he lives and works allowed him to do so.
Nationally recognized legal scholar Jonathan Turley calls it ‘a very problematic rationale.’ I’ll say. The police came to her apartment looking for her son.(WDTN.com)
Her family said she was yelling at officers because she was scared.
"She was terrified. She was extremely terrified," said Harris’s niece, Dionna. "She was scared because the person identified themselves as a police officer. But she’s been robbed before by someone using the same technique."…
"She’s blind and they pulled her off her Futon, handcuffed her and tased her because he said she swung at him. She can’t see," said Harris’s sister Elvita Harris. "I’m very frustrated and upset. Dayton police need to implement a sensitivity program." (WDTN.com)
John Stossel reprises Friday’s 20/20 report on TownHall today. He says it’s time to get rid of stop signs:
Rolling through a stop sign in Michigan puts two points on your driving record. That hikes your car insurance premium. Fighting the ticket could cost even more. So to avoid the points and legal fees, most people plead guilty to a lesser offense: impeding traffic. The court sounds like an assembly line, ” … no points … $135 … ”
Last year, the town made half a million dollars from such fines. Some drivers told us it “seems like a moneymaking scam.
I don’t know if that’s true, but when some angry motorists complained to Heather Catallo, reporter for Detroit’s ABC affiliate, she took her cameras out to see if the cops themselves stopped at the stop signs. Most didn’t.
Her expose caused a ruckus in town. The mayor hired a new police commissioner, who told me the cops might have been on emergency calls. “They don’t necessarily have to have their lights and sirens on,” Commissioner William Dwyer said.
I told him the tape showed police cars rolling through stop signs on the way back to the police station.
ABC put cameras by stop signs in Warren, Mich., and in New York City and found that 72 percent of Michigan drivers and 82 percent of New Yorkers did not come to a complete stop. He points to John Staddon in this month’s Atlantic on why stop signs and speed limits endanger Americans:
For one thing, there’s the placement of the signs—off to the side of the road, often amid trees, parked cars, and other road signs; rarely right in front of the driver, where he or she should be looking.
Then there’s the sheer number of them. They sit at almost every intersection in most American neighborhoods. In some, every intersection seems to have a four-way stop. Stop signs are costly to drivers and bad for the environment: stop/start driving uses more gas, and vehicles pollute most when starting up from rest. More to the point, however, the overabundance of stop signs teaches drivers to be less observant of cross traffic and to exercise less judgment when driving—instead, they look for signs and drive according to what the signs tell them to do.
Stossel sticks to stop signs but Staddon moves on to “a more severe safety hazard” the speed limit:
A particularly vexing aspect of the U.S. policy is that speed limits seem to be enforced more when speeding is safe. As a colleague once pointed out, “An empty highway on a sunny day? You’re dead meat!” A more systematic effort to train drivers to ignore road conditions can hardly be imagined. By training drivers to drive according to the signs rather than their judgment in great conditions, the American system also subtly encourages them to rely on the signs rather than judgment in poor conditions, when merely following the signs would be dangerous.
In this Staddon is joined by University of Chicago Law Professor Lior Strahilevitz who took up the topic of traffic law a couple years ago and has found empirical studies documenting that when municipalities have budget woes, traffic fine collections increase. He has not found that when traffic safety measures are implemented fines plummet.
Staddon advocates virtually no traffic signs — any minimal instruction given can be painted on the road itself. He might like the scheme Strahilevitz has concocted and presented in his fascinating paper, “How’s My Driving?” for Everyone (and Everything?):
A few weeks ago, I was driving to the airport in Seattle. Traffic was flowing reasonably well on the freeway. Just two car lengths ahead of me, a driver in a pickup truck began swerving violently between the two leftmost lanes, nearly colliding with a minivan. The minivan blared its horns and the pickup driver proceeded to drive like a maniac for the next half mile or so, violently jerking his car from lane to lane, swerving unpredictably across multiple lanes, and forcing numerous drivers to brake suddenly and become agitated during an otherwise uneventful morning commute. The pickup driver then swerved for the exit ramp, and abruptly left the freeway.
This scenario — atrocious driving on the freeway by an anonymous motorist, observed by dozens of bystanders, yet sanctioned in no meaningful way — plays out thousands of times daily on American freeways. The police can’t be everywhere, we rarely know the people driving near us on the freeways, and this combination of rare surveillance and practical driver anonymity contributes substantially to aggressive driving. Largely as a result, vehicular collisions are the leading killer of Americans aged 15 to 29. I have just posted a brand new paper on SSRN (free download available here), that shows how the law can take much better advantage of the information that you and me obtain about our fellow motorists every day on the roads.
Existing programs reduce accidents between 20 and 53 percent. I was skeptical when I heard it described, but completely sold when I listened to his Chicago’s Best Ideas talk last January:
Before buying a product from an eBay seller, a prospective buyer is likely to examine the seller’s feedback score and peruse the comments of others who previously dealt with that merchant. A strong feedback score enables merchants to fetch more money for their products, and the fear of negative feedback helps keep the overwhelming majority of eBay sellers on their best behavior. Imagine if every driver on the roads had a similar sort of feedback score and these scores were made available to insurance companies. Would aggressive and unsafe behavior on our roadways be reduced? Could drivers and pedestrians do a better job of keeping the roadways safe than the police? Would the feedback be reliable enough? Yes, Yes, and Yes, says Professor Strahilevitz, who will elaborate on this idea and explore applications beyond the roadways.
Here a follow-up post from Strahilevitz with some interesting discussion of extending reputation and feedback systems beyond driving to bring big urban areas some small town qualities.
Once again, from the Daily North Korea of South Korea, an interview with someone who is said to actually live in the Hermit Kingdom. According to the newspaper, which is staffed in part by North Korean defectors, this member of the ‘North Korean Elite class,’ says he is fully aware of the mass protests in South Korea over U.S. beef, and in his words:
“I can speak not only for myself. No North Korean citizen, apart from on holidays, ever eats meat. When I see protests against the import of U.S. beef, I only wish it could be sent to the North.”
When the interviewer - clearly opposed to the protests over U.S. beef - asks what it would be like if a North Korean protested in such a fashion, the man, using the name An Chul-jin, replies:
“I can’t even imagine a citizen beating an agent of the People’s Safety Agency. Even if it’s just a verbal attack, such a person would be automatically sent to the Labor Training Corps. As a consequence, citizens never speak out against them, even if the agent is at fault. If they physically assault an agent, they are taken to a reeducation camp. They’re the ones with the power, so citizens are automatically captured, and sometimes subject to terrible acts.”
It used to be that Latin Americans viewed Europe as far more humane than the United States because of the way undocumented workers there were treated. No more …
According to this editorial from Diario Co Latino of El Salvador:
“According to news coming from the Old Continent, a law passed by the European Parliament on the 18th of this month not only permits the expulsion of undocumented immigrants, but also provides for prison terms of up to 18 months and five-year prohibition on returning to Europe. … Many believed that today’s Europe, because its past was so appallingly bloody, was more democratic and humane than the U.S. But with this newly-adopted law, it has demonstrated that it’s the equal of the United States.”
A decision by Georgia legislators to relax the state’s gun laws has led to a dispute over whether people can legally carry concealed firearms in the nation’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International.
A Georgia gun rights group filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Atlanta on Tuesday after airport officials said they would continue to enforce a ban on concealed weapons in the terminal despite the changes to the state law. The changes, which were approved by the Georgia legislature in the spring and took effect on Tuesday, relax the state’s prohibition on carrying weapons on public transportation and in some other areas, including restaurants serving alcohol.
“This is a matter of national significance,” Mayor Shirley Franklin told reporters at a news conference. Permitting guns inside an airport, even weapons carried by permit holders, would create an unsafe environment that “would endanger millions of people,” the mayor said.
Franklin vowed Tuesday to lobby Congress and federal officials to mandate that any public facility receiving federal money be declared a “gun-free zone.” That would affect airports nationwide.
The Georgia state law allowing civilians to carry concealed weapons on public transit, state parks, and restaurants has been highly controversial.
Still last week the Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle announced a new committee led by pro-National Rifle Association senators to study the state’s “complex firearms laws and recommend new legislation for the 2009 session.”
According to the resolution creating the study committee, it will “examine Georgia’s firearms law and the way these laws are applied in our state to ensure that the constitutional right to bear arms and the right to self-defense are properly protected.”
Following up on yesterday’s post about the Georgia Supreme Court considering proportionality in a sex offender case, there were some hopeful signs in the courtroom yesterday.
The request was unusual in that it was made by both the prosecutor who wants the life sentence upheld as well as the public defender who contends the sentence is cruel and unusual punishment.
At issue is a mandatory life sentence imposed in December on Cedric Bradshaw in Bulloch County for failing to register as a sex offender for the second time…
[Public defender Robert L.] Persse asked the justices to look to their decision in the Genarlow Wilson case. In October, the justices ruled Wilson’s 10-year prison sentence was unconstitutional. Wilson was given the sentence in Douglas County for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.
If the state Supreme Court follows the same reasoning it used in overturning that sentence, it should throw out Bradshaw’s life sentence as well, Persse said…
But Assistant District Attorney W. Scott Brannen told the justices that the Wilson decision was handed down after the Legislature changed the law. Lawmakers lessened the sentence for such a crime from a 10-year prison sentence to no more than one year in custody.
Brannen argued that in this case the legislative intent was to increase prison time for a second offense. In 2006, the prosecutor noted, lawmakers increased the sentence for failing to register for the second time from three years in prison to life.
The Legislature’s action reflected the will of the community and should be given great deference, Brannen said…
But Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears asked whether legislative intent should always carry the day. “What if the Legislature had said of this crime, ‘We give the death penalty’?” she asked…
Justice Carol Hunstein also expressed concern the law makes no distinctions between “fixated pedophiles and teenagers” convicted of sex offenses. The court is expected to issue its decision in the coming months.
“Will the one who wants to be the bringer of ‘change we can believe in’ keep his promise if elected on November 4? To win this election, Mr. Obama is ready to abandon or modify some of his strongest commitments. So he decided to refuse public financing for his campaign and the spending limits attached thereto. Thus he is prepared to vote yes in the Senate for a bill that would justify the wire tapping authorized by Mr. Bush. He has also revised his position on the presence of troops in Iraq and has given assurances to pro-Israeli organizations. … These are the rules of the game and we shouldn’t exaggerate the importance of such tactical gestures. And neither should anyone imagine that politics has ceased to be politics, nor that it’s possible to win an election in the United States or elsewhere without being a realistic politician.”
The Supreme Court looked at death penalty as deterrent arguments before ruling to reaffirm its constitutionality in Baze v. Rees this term. The opinion [pdf] cited research by both Cass R. Sunstein (arguing that the data points to deterrence) and Justin Wolfers (no deterrence).
As two of the supposed flag bearers for the competing views cited by the court, Sunstein and I thought it worth poring over the data to see what we agree on. It turns out there’s a lot of agreement between us:
“In short, the best reading of the accumulated data is that they do not establish a deterrent effect of the death penalty.”
To support their competing conclusions on the legal issue, different members of the court invoked work by each of us on the deterrent effects of the death penalty. Unfortunately, they misread the evidence.
Justice John Paul Stevens cited recent research by Wolfers (with co-author John Donohue) to justify the claim that “there remains no reliable statistical evidence that capital punishment in fact deters potential offenders.” Justice Antonin Scalia cited a suggestion by Sunstein (with co-author Adrian Vermeule) that “a significant body of recent evidence” shows “that capital punishment may well have a deterrent effect, possibly a quite powerful one.”
What does the evidence actually say?
After a very interesting review their conclusion is… inconclusive:
The number of homicides is so large, and varies so much year to year, that it is impossible to disentangle the effects of execution policy from other changes affecting murder rates. Moreover, execution policy doesn’t change often or much. Just as a laboratory scientist with too few experimental subjects cannot draw strong conclusions, the best we can say is that homicide rates are not closely associated with capital punishment. On the basis of existing evidence, it is especially hard to justify claims about causality.
Justice Stevens argues, “In the absence of such evidence, deterrence cannot serve as a sufficient penological justification for this uniquely severe and irrevocable punishment.” Perhaps. But the absence of evidence of deterrence should not be confused with evidence of absence.
Why are we talking deterrence anyway?
A prominent line of reasoning, endorsed by several justices, holds that if capital punishment fails to deter crime, it serves no useful purpose and hence is cruel and unusual, violating the Eighth Amendment. This reasoning tracks public debate as well. While some favor the death penalty on retributive grounds, many others (including President Bush) argue that the only sound reason for capital punishment is to deter murder.
We concur with Scalia that if a strong deterrent effect could be demonstrated, a plausible argument could be made on behalf of executions. But what if the evidence is inconclusive?
We are not sure how to answer that question. But as executions resume, the debates over the death penalty should not be distorted by a misunderstanding of what the evidence actually shows.
The judge had only one option when he sentenced Cedric Bradshaw: life in prison. Bradshaw had not committed murder, rape or armed robbery. His offense was failing to properly register as a convicted sex offender for a second time — even though he had repeatedly tried to follow the law….
On Monday, the state’s highest court will consider whether the law is unconstitutional on grounds it is cruel and unusual punishment.
No other state calls for a life sentence for failing to register as a sex offender the second time, and even rape and armed robbery convictions in Georgia do not carry mandatory life terms, said Bradshaw’s lawyer, Robert L. Persse, the circuit public defender in Statesboro. “The punishment for a second violation is grossly disproportionate to the offense,” Persse said. “That is particularly true when this is essentially a paperwork offense not accompanied by aggravating circumstances like violence, sexual deviance or being out in a schoolyard hunting for children.”
The Bulloch DA’s office is urging the state Supreme Court to uphold the life term. “The courts look at the Legislature’s intent in determining the best evidence for the appropriateness of the sentence,” Assistant District Attorney W. Scott Brannen said. “When they increase it [to a life term], that too is evidence of the intent and the will of the people.”…
Brannen, the prosecutor, said the law is on the books and “it’s not my place or the court’s place to decide what we like and don’t like and what we want to enforce or not enforce.” Bradshaw, Brannen said, broke the law by failing to give a valid address within the 72-hour reporting deadline. “There are no exceptions in the law,” he said.
I am not sure what I find more remarkable: the fact that Georgia punishes this regulatory offense with a mandatory life term, or the fact that in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Kennedy ruling the defendant here could have sexually molested and beaten a dozen children without facing a harsher sentence.
As regular readers know, I have long been troubled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s eagerness to hyper-regulate the reach of the death penalty through the Eighth Amendment has not extended to regulating extreme prison terms for relatively minor crimes. The Georgia high court has previously shown the courage and wisdom to do something about a seemingly crazy prison sentence, and this would seem to be another case calling out for some remedy.
Read the whole AJC story. The facts are pretty darned sad. Barely more than a child himself at 19, Bradshaw was charged with statutory rape for having sex with a 15-year-old girl. Fine. That’s punishable. I’d prefer it had been kept out of the criminal justice system (see here for more) but its punishable. He gets 5 years.
After he gets out he gives an invalid address. For that, too, he pleads guilty and is sentenced to time served. When released he moves in with his sister but can’t live there because Georgia’s draconian sex offender law won’t let him live within 1,000 feet of a recreation center!
He moves in with an aunt but can’t stay there because the home is within 1,000 feet of the First Baptist Church! Growing desperate, he finds a family friend but this time inadvertently transposes the street address!
Now the cops move in. Bradshaw is arrested because he hadn’t moved into the friend’s single-wide trailer within the legally required 72 hours — and lied and said he did! His mandatory sentence for this infraction is life in prison.
This is not proportional punishment! This is sex offender hysteria gussied up as protecting children. And it’s great big a waste of tax payer money.
This column is by Tony Campbell, who is a columnist for Examiner.com This cross post deals with the Supreme Court’s gun decision.
The Wild, Wild (North) West - A Supreme Mistake
by Tony Campbell
Earlier this week the Supreme Court outlawed the gun ban enacted by the District of Columbia. In a 5 to 4 decision, the Justices decided that the ban was unconstitutional as it violated the right of an individual to own a firearm through the Second Amendment.
In my opinion, they have made an error in judgment based on an incorrect interpretation of the Constitution. For those of you who have not read it lately, here is what the Second Amendment says:
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The key phrase is the one before the comma; “a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State.” The Constitution was a compromise between the states and a national government that allowed both entities to share power in a federal system. A State militia was necessary to protect the States from the National government and to protect the United States from foreign invasion (the British). The Second Amendment was written out of necessity because there was no standing army therefore mobilization of citizen soldiers was crucial to our defense as a nation.
In their landmark decision the Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment differently. The majority decision reads: “Therefore, the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, which “amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of ‘arms’ that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense,” and the requirement that any firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock, which “makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense,” is ruled unconstitutional.”
The Second Amendment mentions nothing about a “lawful purpose of self-defense” against other citizens. The purpose was to secure the State, not for people to practice their personal brand of justice. This decision will have long-term consequences for public safety at every level of society. In Chicago, gun right activists have already filed a lawsuit to get their gun ban law repealed and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
I am a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. I am a veteran, a member of the American Legion, and a citizen soldier in the Army National Guard. Repealing the gun ban in D.C. is wrong because the reason given for the decision is not applicable under the Constitution.
This is the wrong signal to send to a municipal jurisdiction that was making good strides in the reduction of homicides (85 as of June 27th) and a record number of firearm recoveries in 2007 (2,924). Time will tell if this ruling will be a blessing ….or will signal a return to record shattering homicide rates of the early 1990s.
I was watching one of the Sunday morning news shows and caught a portion of an interview with Alabama Attorney General Troy King. He was talking about a potential voter fraud investigation in the western portion of his state, which seems to tie into this report from Alabama.com from this week. There were numerous allegations, including reports of absentee voter ballots being sold for $40 each.
ALABAMA ATTORNEY General Troy King and U.S. Justice Department officials shouldn’t be fighting over who gets to investigate possible election fraud in Perry County.
There’s enough evidence of voting irregularities in that west Alabama county to keep state and federal investigators busy getting to the bottom of it.
Mr. King also thinks something may be rotten in the voting in Bullock, Jackson and Lowndes counties. He should go all-out in determining whether, as one anti-fraud activist put it, a “crime against democracy” occurred in those jurisdictions.
Mr King spoke of one of his investigators being arrested for “harassment” in Perry County when they went to collect handwriting samples and conduct interviews. What is so unusual in Perry County to warrant all of this attention? Apparently it’s the incredibly (some might say unbelievably) patriotic and civic minded attitude of the county’s residents.
Perry County tends to have remarkably high turnouts and an equally remarkable number of absentee voters. Consider the June 3 primary, which attracted about 16 percent of the state’s registered voters to the polls. In Perry County, more than 50 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots in the primary election.
A turnout that high is enough to raise eyebrows, but the most surprising thing about the primary vote totals was the number of Perry County residents who voted absentee. In a county with a population of about 11,000, 1,114 absentee votes were recorded. That’s about a fourth of the total turnout.
I went to Election Atlas to take a peek at the 2006 gubernatorial election results in the Yellowhammer State. You’ll want to follow the link and poke around, because some of these results are sure to raise eyebrows. Little old Perry County had an estimated population of roughly 11,000 and turned out 4,270 voters in an off year. Impressive! And nearly a quarter of them were absentee ballots. (Must be hard to get time off from the farm to head down to the polling places.) For a comparison, take a look at their neighbors in Bibb County. Demographically, along lines of race, income, religion, etc. the two seem nearly identical. Bibb is a bit larger, though, with an estimated population of nearly 22,500 and they only managed to turn out 5,550 voters. (Under four percent were absentee ballots. They probably have better cars there I’m guessing.)
Of course, it wasn’t just the number of voters which was notable, but also how they voted. In Bibb County it looked like a hard fought, somewhat close race for such a conservative area. Republican Bob Riley managed a win by a margin of 58% to 39%. It was a respectable victory, but hardly outside of the margins of what you would expect. But in tiny Perry County, the massive number of civic minded citizens delivered a 70% to 29% victory for Democrat Lucy Baxley. 70%? Really? And for the Democrat? I’m not sure if we could get 70% of America to agree that strangling kittens was “bad.”
Of course, none of this provides rock solid proof of wrongdoing without more evidence. I suppose it’s theoretically possible that Perry County is just a hugely politically active bastion of Democratic support. But let’s wish the A.G. the best of luck in his work. It certainly sounds like he’s got plenty of it in front of him.
I’ve seen victims of child rape while growing up in southeast Michigan. Drug dealers and pimps who indoctrinate young girls into sick harems by raping them. Young boys being raped as punishment for not doing a “dirty deed” right or just as some toy for a wackjob. Drug addicts pimping their own children to feed their habits. These light brown eyes have seen the horrific results first hand. And I say the following without a shred of compassion:
Child rapists need to be executed.
The mental destruction of a child by rape is almost unbearable to see. Those children either become shells of themselves that do anything without protesting or sick and angry projections of themselves that seek to do harm to any and everyone in anyway (or both). And when (if) they grow up, many are very dysfunctional adults with massive trust, relationship, and sexual issues. Frequently they become criminals themselves. So why do the men and women that commit this terrible crime still get to see the light of day after effectively destroying another human being? Why?
To me, there are certain criminal acts that have to send the perpetrator(s) to the other side quick, fast, and in a hurry. And child rape is one of them. I’m terribly disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision. Terribly and completely disappointed. And what’s happening to state’s rights?
* NOTE: Even though I feel very strongly about this issue, I won’t attack people that comment to the contrary. That’s not the way I roll here on The Moderate Voice.
When we did this in NYC, even the police ignored it (a visit last month found them still chatting away in their cars). I live in Georgia now. But come July 1 in California…
…drivers talking on their mobile phones without a hands-free device are subject to a $20 fine and a run-in with the law. The Golden State’s new traffic ordinance follows similar versions adopted in Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington state, the District of Columbia, New York and the Virgin Islands.
While the fines aren’t wallet-busting, there’s a hitch. Except in Washington state, an officer can pull you over solely for talking on the phone without a headset.
The laws are even stricter for new drivers. As many as 17 states and the District of Columbia ban cellphone use entirely for minors and new motorists while operating a vehicle (see map). They include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
The states’ cellphone driving laws were adopted with safety in mind. Studies by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (.pdf) suggest 2,600 people are killed and as many as 330,000 people are injured each year in the United States in cellphone-related driving accidents.
Is hands-free the answer?
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have noted that voice-activated or hands-free calling is a major distraction, too.
And, of course, there’s all those other distractions drivers are so fond of. Automated driving! That’s what I’m looking forward to…
I was watching one of the Sunday morning news shows and caught a portion of an interview with Alabama Attorney General Troy King. He was talking about a potential voter fraud investigation in the western portion of his state, which seems to tie into 
