Domestic Violence and the Supreme Court

Ah! Another visit into case law and the Supreme Court reviewing what can and can't be done when spouses fight.

TONI LOCYAssociated Press Writer
The Supreme Court considered Monday
whether statements made by victims to 911 operators and police officers at crime
scenes should be barred as evidence because they were not made under oath or
subjected to cross-examination by a defendant.
In cases from Washington and
Indiana, the justices focused on whether the rights of Adrian Davis and Hershel
Hammon were violated because their accusers did not testify at their
trials.
The issue is significant because the high court's ruling could affect
the ability of prosecutors to bring criminal charges - particularly in domestic
violence cases - when victims or key witnesses are not willing or not available
to testify.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out that "many women in these
situations are scared to death" and don't want to testify.
Ginsburg also
recalled that "it wasn't so long ago" that police wouldn't bother trying to
gather evidence to prosecute cases of domestic abuse.
She worried aloud that
if the justices issue a ruling that police consider more trouble than their
efforts are worth, officers might wonder why they should bother pursuing
domestic violence cases.
Lawyers on all sides of the cases - as well as the
Bush administration - want the justices to clarify a 2004 decision that barred
prosecutors' use of statements from victims or witnesses if a defendant did not
have a chance to question them in court.
Justice Antonin Scalia, the author
of the 2004 majority ruling, grilled lawyers for Washington and Indiana about a
defendant's right to confront his or her accuser.
Scalia worried about what
would happen to defendants who were charged with crimes based on "false"
statements from witnesses who never testified. And he wondered whether 911
operators, by asking so many questions of victims, aren't being used by police
as "a prosecutorial device."
James M. Whisman, senior prosecuting attorney in
Seattle, conceded the 911 tape was "powerful" evidence of the abuse victim
Michelle McCottry said she endured at Davis' hands.
"Powerful is part of the
problem," Scalia said. "To hear her voice on the phone ... it makes it an even
more damaging violation" of the defendant's right to confront his accuser.
At
Davis' trial, a judge allowed the tape of McCottry's February 2001 emergency
call to be admitted into evidence but barred police testimony about what
McCottry had said to officers. She disappeared before trial and did not testify
despite a subpoena.
In the other case out of Peru, Ind., Amy Hammon also did
not testify. But a judge allowed a police officer to testify that she had told
him that her husband, Hershel, had thrown her into the glass panel of a gas
heater.
Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to give prosecutors and police
the benefit of the doubt in both cases.
Roberts was skeptical when Davis'
lawyer suggested that prosecutors, armed with powerful 911 tapes, might keep
"bad" witnesses off the stand to win their cases.
And the chief justice said
police officers have mixed motives in trying to protect victims and build
criminal cases.
Jeffrey L. Fisher, who represents Davis, told the justices
it's not always easy to determine when police officers stop protecting victims
and when they begin gathering evidence to support criminal charges.
The cases
are Davis v. Washington, 05-5224, and Hammon v. Indiana, 05-5705.

This one really has me conflicted. I am a Constitutionalist and read the Constitution as the letter of the law. If someone does not testify against you you do not have a case. But domestic violence can be very very bad So bad in fact that the court system has ruled that police officers can no longer have discretionary rights in domestic violence cases. If someone made physical contact against someone else. Even a shove and a walk away. Then we arrest. They have ruled this way because some cases that officers thought the violence was nothing. Escalated into people getting killed. So the question is if a wife tells us her husband punched her. And if we arrest him and take him to jail. Will we get a conviction when the wife doesn't testify? They almost never do, they love their spouse, even to the point of taking lumps from him/her. (I've seen girls arrested for DV too. I call it equality in a new society.)

It is different when they have visible marks. But why should an officer arrest if he can't testify, and can't use witnesses statements without the victim taking a stand? The cooling off in jail period may do the husband good. But if it comes down to that iin all likelyhood the husband will take out more agression on the woman when he finds he can't be judicially punished.

Sounds like we are going to need a reform in the law if the police cannot use victim statements at trial. Why arrest if you can't convict?

And as an aside note. Any determination the Supreme Court makes will be wrong in the end. Permit just statements without someone taking the oath and we bring about presidence that could ruin our judicial system. If we take the Constitutional stand it would be likely that more than a few DV cases will result in death.


We will have to wait and see.

Supreme Court Limits Searches...

This is really old news. But I didn't have time to comment until now.

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police without a warrant cannot search a
home when one resident says to come in but another tells them to go away, and
the court's new leader complained that the ruling could hamper investigations of
domestic abuse.
Justices, in a 5-3 decision, said that police did not have
the authority to enter and search the home of a small town Georgia lawyer even
though the man's wife invited them in.

The officers, who did not have a
search warrant, found evidence of illegal drugs.
The Supreme Court has never
ruled on whether the Constitution's ban on unreasonable searches covers a
scenario when one home occupant wants to allow a search and another occupant
does not.

The ruling by Justice David H. Souter stopped short of fully
answering that question - saying only that in the Georgia case it was clear that
Scott Fitz Randolph was at the door and objected to the officers entry.
In
his first written dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts said that "the end result
is a complete lack of practical guidance for the police in the field, let alone
for the lower courts."
The case fractured a court that has shown surprising
unanimity in the five months since Roberts became chief justice. Justices
swapped barbs in their writings, with Souter calling Roberts' view a "red
herring."
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas filed separate
dissents, and Justice John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer wrote their own
opinions to explain their votes in favor of the man whose home was searched.
Stevens said that "assuming that both spouses are competent, neither one is
a master possessing the power to override the other's constitutional right to
deny entry to their castle."
Georgia had asked the court to allow it to use
evidence obtained in the 2001 search in Americus, Ga., that followed a police
domestic dispute call.
Randolph and his wife, Janet, were having marital
troubles. She led officers to evidence later used to charge her husband with
cocaine possession. That charge was on hold while the courts considered whether
the search was constitutional.
Georgia's Supreme Court ruled for Scott
Randolph, and the high court agreed.
"This case has no bearing on the
capacity of the police to protect domestic victims," Souter wrote. "No question
has been raised, or reasonably could be, about the authority of the police to
enter a dwelling to protect a resident from domestic violence; so long as they
have good reason to believe such a threat exists."
Justice Anthony M.
Kennedy was the swing voter, joining the court's four more liberal members.
Roberts' dissent was unusually long - almost as long as the main opinion. He
predicted "severe" consequences for women who invite police in only to be
overruled by their husbands.
Justice Samuel Alito did not participate in the
case, because he was not on the court when it was argued.
The case is
Georgia v. Randolph, 04-1067.

I think it was a good choice. The domest violence thing can cause a problem because if the wife ask to come in and the man says no after she had been beaten it can cause a few problems. But I definitly see Souter's side stating that one person cannot toss out the civil rights of another when one says yes and another says no. If she wanted her husband arrested all she had to do was drag out the drugs in view of the police.

I'm a geek!

I recently aquired a star wars light up Light Saber for $5 and spent the past hour giving it a custom paint job. I have never ever painted anything on my own outside of school projects. I had some silver and gold paint lying around from marking some heroscape figures. (So I can divide the 2 sets when I need to.) And I figured I'd just paint a lightsaber.

I'm not quite done. It is silver and black and I was gonna paint all the silver gold and paint some of the buttons on it silver. But some of the gold got sloppy and ran onto the black. So I may repaint the black as black or silver. Either that or try to use a dental pick to lift the runny paint. Also it looks a bit rough since the paint didn't take too well to the plastic or previous factory paint job. But as a first paint project it looks pretty neat.

Word Verification....

Hello my loyal readers!

I turned on word verification in the comments. Which means you need to read some random word written in odd text and write it out before posting. It is supposedly great at getting rid of bots and even though I haven't suffered from that problem yet. I'd rather nip it in the bud before that happens.

So if you don't like it let me know and I may go ahead and toss it.

Creekstone vs Big Beef and the FDA

In whole, with a fisking.

By LIBBY QUAID, AP Food and Farm Writer Wed Mar 22, 6:51 PM ET
WASHINGTON - A Kansas meatpacker has sparked an industry fight by proposing
testing all the company's cattle for mad cow disease.

Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to look for the disease in every
animal it processes. The Agriculture Department has said no. Creekstone says it
intends to sue the department.
"Our customers, particularly our Asian
customers, have requested it over and over again," chief executive John Stewart
said in an interview Wednesday. "We feel strongly that if customers are asking
for tested beef, we should be allowed to provide that."
Creekstone planned a
news conference Thursday in Washington to discuss the lawsuit.
The department
and larger meat companies oppose comprehensive testing, saying it cannot assure
food safety. Testing rarely detects the disease in younger animals, the source
of most meat.

I think the testing would assure all of the Japanese that, as a company, Creekstone takes their health serious and would be more than willing to dish out the money to do the testing.

"There isn't any nation in the world that requires 100 percent testing,"
department spokesman Ed Loyd said Wednesday.Larger companies worry that
Japanese buyers would insist on costly testing and that a suspect result might
scare consumers away from eating beef.

For one thing, they are not buying our meat already! And the second. Creekstone has said in the past that they loose $100 dollars on each cow a day because the Japanese buy parts that Americans reject. So if they can spend $37 a head to test they make a net profit of $63 per cow. The FDA and the major beef companies don't want to have that bite in profits and would rather starve out both Japan and the the smaller companies than do any sort of testing. This is where free market should be allowed to work the magic in the business world. Not the FDA.

Japan was the most lucrative foreign market for American beef until the
first U.S. case of mad cow disease prompted a ban in 2003. The ban cost
Creekstone nearly one-third of its sales and led the company to slash production
and lay off about 150 people, Stewart said.
When Japan reopened its market
late last year, Creekstone resumed shipments. Japan has halted shipments again,
after finding American veal cuts with backbone. These cuts are eaten in the U.S.
but are banned in Japan.

Both the bigger beef companies and the FDA say they know what is better for the industry. Right before they screw up and get meat banned again.

Stewart said that when trade resumes with Japan, Creekstone is in a position to
rehire the laid-off workers and then some.
Creekstone would need government
certification for its plan to test each animal at its Arkansas City, Kan.,
plant. The department refused the license request in 2004.
The U.S. has been
testing around 1 percent of the 35 million head of cattle slaughtered each year,
although officials have been planning to scale back that level of testing.
An
industry official said the U.S. testing program should reassure customers inside
and outside the United States.

I am beginning to think there may be more contamination in our cattle than previously thought. Either the FDA is wanting to protect the larger cattle industry from smaller sellers. Or they have more mad cow problems than they want the public to know about. Remember, Americans for the most part do not eat the parts that mad cow comes from. So they may think there is little need for them to know about it and curb testing. Nevermind the fact that they found another mad cow-infected animal just two weeks ago. It would also explain why they don't want to allow a company to take its own risk in testing and hiring more employees and become more successful.

"The U.S. risk of
BSE is miniscule and declining, our proactive
prevention strategies have worked and the safety of American beef is assured,"
said J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute.
He was
referring to the formal name for mad cow disease, bovine spongiform
encephalopathy, or BSE.
While individual companies in Japan may want
comprehensive testing, Japan's government is not asking for it.

Nah! Japan and the U.S. have been allies for decades. The Japanese Government doesn't want to hurt that over economics. Especially if they rely on us for protection against North Korea and China.

Japan does have lingering questions about the shipment of prohibited veal, even
after the U.S. sent a lengthy report to Tokyo explaining the mistake was an
isolated incident. The report blamed the company, Brooklyn-based Atlantic Veal
& Lamb, and a government inspector for misunderstanding new rules for
selling beef to Japan.

Here os a government entity that wants us all to defer judgment calls and expertise to them. When they themselves can't understand that one slab of meat is not suppose to ship as opposed to another. Government ineptitude at its best!

Japan's agriculture minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, said Wednesday that further
talks are needed.
"We do want to keep going back and forth with the U.S.
over this issue," he said. "We want the U.S. side to squarely answer our
questions."

Sounds like someone is doing a square dance around the issue.

The Agriculture Department announced Wednesday evening it will send a team led
by Acting Under Secretary Chuck Lambert to Tokyo next week for talks.
The
U.S. has had three cases of mad cow disease. The first appeared in December 2003
in a Washington state cow that had been imported from Canada. The second was
confirmed last June in a Texas-born cow, and the third was confirmed last week
in an Alabama cow.
Japan has had two dozen cases of BSE.
Mad cow disease
is a brain-wasting ailment in cattle. In people, eating meat products
contaminated with BSE is linked to more than 150 deaths worldwide, mostly in
Britain, from a deadly human nerve disorder, variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease'.

_____________________

Really, the problems with all-out testing is minimal. Except to the competition who does not want to pay the money, or would lose money if the smaller companies gained more contracts. This is just big brother protectionism.

Kid Takes Joyride Inside a Tornado

Hmm, I'd hate to be him.


He also set a world record for farthest distance travelled without dying in a tornado.

Logical Assumption

A few weeks ago I mentioned that all the super powers will likely start a space race to the room for the Helium 3 element that can make a clean chain reaction for power. (I did not know the Russian Government had a press release on this in January. I just heard about research on the project on Coast To Coast talk radio.)

Well now Russia plans to put a base on The Moon to mine the element.

According to an official statement released in January, the mining of helium-3
on the Moon will be the main
purpose of the Russian space
exploration program. “We are planning to set up a permanent station on the
Moon by 2015. The industrial mining of helium-3, a rare isotope,
is expected to begin on the Moon in 2020,” said Nikolai Sevastianov, head of the
Rocket and Space Corporation Energia. The lunar mission will involve the use of
a Russian space shuttle Kliper and an interplanetary space tug Parom.

I think the big drive to space travel will be economics. And not the exploration-based missions that most movies and shows are based on.

Saturday = Long Hours

I put a fifteen hour shift in at work saturday. I am still recovering since my hours have been screwed up royal. My normal 8 hour shift was changed because the normal guy who does security was hospitalised. He will be okay but they asked and begged and I said yes. The problem was is this is a free dump day and the farm just needed a good cleaning. The boss told me if I wanted to I could grab the security phone and just answer calls as they come in. And since spring break was in effect it shouldn't be a problem. Well Murphy is not satisfied with that answer and I had to do the 15 minute drive back to work on multiple occassions. I think I got about 1 hour of work done on the farm. The neighbors were the saving grace. They and the rest of the family got stuff done while.


The big kicker of the day was right after I tossed my dinner in the oven a gentleman had called in an almost panic and said he must get into his room. That he lost his key while swimming on break. He needed in there now to get stuff, to put stuff up, good vs evil end of the world sort of thing. I told him if he could calmly wait with a friend, that I was on dinner, I had just started cooking it, and was fifteen minutes away at best speed. He settled down and said okay. So ten minutes to cook a pizza, 5 mouth-burning minutes to eat, and fifteen minutes later I meet up with him. I open the door and apologize and he is happy as a clam to get in. He swings the door open. Tosses his jacket in, looks around. And says he'll unpack his car when his room mate gets back and goes back into his friends dorm!

.....

.....

.....

This guy does not know it but he came extremely close to expiring in a violent and painful way. The only thing that saved him is because this is not his home country, and he was extremely polite.

I've been naughty!

Hmm, four, ergh technically five days since the last update. Something I promised to remedy but occassionally lapse into. Apologize to all my readers. (All three of you.) Regular posting should resume without a hitch. (Hopefully.)

Awesome Day!

Kansas is now the 39th State to pass a Conceal and Carry Weapons Bill.

On top of that tonight I get sworn in as a Reserve Police Officer!


I am so excited words cannot describe! IT IS AWESOME! Woohoo!


I got to get ready to go and will do a bit of commenting but in the mean time here's some fast info.

Text of the Veto Bill

The Good News

Text of the Law - pdf

Woman Sues Over Failed Abortion...

Someone who can't deal with life no matter what.

Time for a fisking.....

Mother who gave birth after failed abortion 'has no grounds' to sue
NHS
LOUISE HOSIE AND GORDON CURRIE
A WOMAN suing a hospital after giving
birth to a baby girl despite having an abortion was given no guarantees that the
termination would be successful, a court heard yesterday.
Stacy Dow, 21, of
Perth, has launched a £250,000 civil damages claim against Tayside University
Hospitals NHS Trust for the "financial burden" of raising her daughter Jayde,
who she had when she was 16.

An abortion, according to NOW is usually a last ditch effot to stop a prgnancy. I honestly don't see how you can sue for breech of contract since there are no guarantees.

Miss Dow decided to have an abortion when she became pregnant with twins.
But a few months later she discovered she was still pregnant with one of the
twins, by which time a second abortion was too late.
Miss Dow is said to
have suffered "distress and anxiety" from the discovery of her continued
pregnancy and "pain and discomfort" when she had her daughter by Caesarean
section. She also argues she has suffered a loss of earnings because she is a
single mother.

Oh, cry me a river! She has suffered as much as any woman throughout history. And they have to pay her because they made her a single mother? I think she risked that when she went all the way with some un-named guy. And hurt earning potential? Businesses in this day and age are pretty flexible about having kids. Granted, you'll less-likely be on call with a kid but if the child gets in your way to your career you can always put it up for adoption. I know that sounds cold but this woman here still acts like she doesn't want her child and it would be in girl's best interest if she was up for adoption.

She claims the NHS failed to properly carry out the abortion at Perth Royal
Infirmary in January 2001, constituting a breach of contract.

You don't sign contracts with hospitals. Also, why sue 5 years after the event? Did you just decide all of a sudden that you had some expenses that the hospital could cover?

Hospital bosses, who are defending the action, say Jayde is a normal,
healthy child and that the £250,000 claim is excessive. They accept one twin was
not terminated during the abortion, but say a doctor carried out the proper
checks after the termination and could find no evidence of a remaining
foetus.

Um. I don't see how a doctor can have it both ways. With an abortion a baby dies. Without the abortion a baby is healthy? Ingenious! If I would screw up someone would live... It is like the old undertaker joke. You'd think they'd be a bit liable for something. (Not that I agree with abortion, but if we take the side of the doctor who says they find nothing wrong with the baby living. If that is the case why promote abortion in the first place?)

Advocate David Stephenson, representing the hospital authority, said
yesterday that no contract had existed between Miss Dow and her consultant when
she was told an abortion would be carried out, so her claim was not relevant.
"Nothing said to the pursuer [ie Miss Dow] by the doctor could or did mention a
warranty that her pregnancy would be terminated," he said.

Funny how he is right. You don't sign contracts when you get medical care. It has been that way throughout history because medicine is a lot of guestimation as to the problem. If you signed a contract and expected to get well every doctor would be sued out of existence by litigation and tort law with people who want fast bucks. The doctor does their best in a treatment or cure and that is all they can do. Even if something is flat-out pinpointed there are still no guarantees because each person has a different reaction, each cancer cell acts differently, each patient doesn't do every step on time. Their are too many variables to effectively litigate on.

He said: "NHS patients do not normally contract with their health trust or
health boards for the provision of medical service. These services are delivered
as part of a statutory obligation."
And he added that only in "truly
extraordinary" circumstances would any sort of contract between a doctor and a
patient be entered into. "Nothing is said that could take this case out of the
ordinary class of NHS treatment," he said.

I think what he means is experimental treatment is contracted because of heightened risk and less effectiveness of a cure/tratment. And that is because things can go bad. Very very bad

Also take note of the "Statutory Obligation" comment. A quick look in any country with socialised medicine and you'll find response times for medical treatment are lagging, less effective, and not as liable. The reason is it is a state mandated program and when the state gets control of certain things they get Sovereign Immunity from suits. The reason is, as the courts declare, because it is free access to everyone nation-wide, with low or no cost, and no warranties implied. In other words, an abortion was performed, they did goof up and did not detect a second baby, but because abortion is available to all and streamlined no less, and to keep cost down for service, the case will be dismissed. Well that is how they'd rule here and in Canada. (Free clinics and their liability is also more limited.) I've seen a bit of Sovereign Immunity in play in my Emergency Communications classes. Some cases that were stupid won big dollars. Some that should have won were tossed out. It all depends on availability of service to the public by a government agency.

Andrew Smith QC, representing Miss Dow, said the case was "extremely
important" and almost unique in its legal considerations. According to court
papers, Miss Dow - who had been on the contraceptive pill until it made her ill
- had been expecting dizygotic twins (non-identical from two separate eggs) who
would both have been viable.
Her action states: "This [the birth] was caused
by the fault and negligence of the medical staff. They ought to have known that
further inquiry following surgery was necessary to establish the success of the
termination of both foetuses.
"They had a duty to take reasonable care to
establish that the termination had been successful. They ought to have known the
contraceptive jag could have masked the symptoms of continuing pregnancy. But
for these failures, she would not have suffered the loss, injury and damage she
has."
Sheriff Fletcher adjourned the case until March 29.

Once again. Blaming the staff for her getting pregnant and not "curing" her pregnancy. They did all they could, you did not do all you could, like not sleeping around. Go take a hike.

Woman with Perfect Memory.....

She must not have kids.

I wonder if having such a thing is a blessing or a curse. Granted, you'd be the person to go to for knowledge and time keeping. But would it even be worth it to play a videogame or watch a movie more than once?


On the other hand, someone who read a lot of books on their particular field of work would be a billion times more qualified than the average person on the street. If their memory retention is near 100 they could do some amazing things.

The Patriot Act!

-opoly?

Article in full because it is so funny.

Patriot Act Game Pokes Fun at GovernmentMar 18 7:14 PM
US/Eastern Email
this story

By WAYNE PARRY Associated Press
Writer
HAMILTON, N.J.
In this send-up of "Monopoly," players don't pass
"Go" and they don't go directly to jail _ they go to Guantanamo Bay.
Instead
of losing cash for landing on certain squares, they lose civil liberties. And
the "Mr. Monopoly" character at the center of the board is replaced by a
scowling former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

"Patriot Act: The Home Version" pokes fun at "the historic abuse of
governmental powers" by the recently renewed anti-terrorism law, according to
its creator's Web site.
But while it may be fun, creator Michael Kabbash, a
graphic artist and Arab civil rights advocate, is serious about how he feels the
law has curtailed Americans' freedom.
The object of the game is not to amass
the most money or real estate, but to be the last player to retain civil
liberties.
"I've had people complain to me that when they play, nobody wins.
They say `We're all in Guantanamo and nobody has any civil liberties left,'" he
said. "I'm like `Yeah, that's the point.'"
The real Patriot Act, passed
after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and renewed earlier this month, gave
law enforcement new investigative and prosecutorial powers. Critics say it
unacceptably impinges on civil liberties, but the government defends the law as
a vital tool that has helped prevent another terror attack.
Kabbash decided
to keep Ashcroft as the visual focus of the game, even though he stepped down in
January 2005, because "he really is the icon that people associate with the
Patriot Act."
In a nod to President Bush's prewar comments, the "Go" space
in is renamed "Bring It On!" Players roll the dice to determine how many civil
liberties they start out with, accumulating them from a variety of categories:
U.S. citizens get 5; non-citizens 1. Whites and Asians get 5; Arabs 1. Ultra
right-wingers get 6; Democrats 3 or 4.
Instead of landing on, say Oriental
Avenue, players land on a color- coded spaces corresponding to the national
terror alert. A player who lands on a red space loses one civil liberty, as does
anyone else within five spaces. A player who lands on an orange space gets to
designate another player to lose one civil liberty.
"Chance" cards are now
"Homeland Security Cards," with orders such as, "FBI wants you for questioning;
Lose one turn;" and "You provide the local authorities with speculative
information on your next door neighbor; Collect one civil liberty from each
player."
Kabbash, of Green Brook, created a few full board sets but is also
distributing the game free over the Internet, with the game board and playing
cards all printable. More than 2,000 copies have been downloaded since it
debuted in 2004.
"I wanted it to be not only a parody but a teaching tool,"
said Kabbash, 38, who teaches graphics at the College of New Jersey. "This is my
way of putting my political ideas forward, hoping people will wake up. There's a
lot of apathy, and we have to realize that we're in a democracy, that we're all
allowed to say something."
Ashcroft had no comment on the game when asked
about it Saturday during a crime conference in Miami Gardens, Fla., but he
laughed when told "jail" had been replaced with Guantanamo Bay. U.S. Justice
Department public affairs did not immediately return a call Saturday seeking
comment.
Kabbash says his next project will probably have something to do
with the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program. He is
reasonably certain "there's a file on me somewhere."
Asked if the FBI keeps
a file on Kabbash, a bureau spokesman refused to comment.
___
Associated
Press Writer Jessica Gresko in Miami Gardens, Fla., contributed to this report.
___

I want one of these really bad! Granted, it mocks my own political classification of right-winger. But I am more against big government and the Patriot Act rather than one who tows the line. And no, I don't think Gitmo or the war in Iraq is evil. I do think a loss of civil freedoms are.

"Go" is "Bring it On" and "Jail" is "Guantanamo Bay." I love it!

WHAT THE HELL?!

Not for the faint at heart. Don't complain if you click, you've been warned.

A man goes crazy, runs around naked, breaks into a house, steals a bunch of knives. And when the po-po shows up. He tosses knives at them, and then his...uh, 5th appendage.

Of course, the cops freak out, taze him, and send him off to the funny farm. Hopefully never to be seen again.

I'd hate to be the rookie cop at that department.

Sergeant Johnson: Hey new guy, pick that up and tag it for evidence.
Patrolman Leary: No friggin’ way Sarge! Franklin, you do it!
Patrolman Franklin: Why the hell should I have to?!
Patrolman Leary: Because I graduated 3 months ahead of you.

Garrgh! Pirates!

The United States Navy had two ships stationed off of Somalia where some idiot pirates attacked them. I could imagine the Navy Cruiser and Destroyer were both dozens of times the size of the ship that attacked them. Talk about idiots.

A bit of machine gunning later, one pirate is dead, five injured, with twelve arrested.

Tragedy!

A friend of mine I met at college faces a grave sorrow. His son has just been diagnosed with Terminal Brain Stem Glioma. He has 3 to 9 months to live.

Anyone who wishes to, please offer your thoughts and prayer to Mark and Kelly Shultz and their son, Gunner.

Moonquakes?

According to this link scientist believe that The Moon suffers from quakes.

Odd, everything I have read said that The Moon wasn't capable of having seismic problems. I can't recall the source but it sure was faulty since they have had this data since 1977.

March 15, 2006: NASA astronauts are going back to the moon and when they get
there they may need quake-proof housing.That's the surprising conclusion of
Clive R. Neal, associate professor of civil engineering and geological sciences
at the University of Notre Dame after he and a team of 15 other planetary
scientists reexamined Apollo data from the 1970s. "The moon is seismically
active," he told a gathering of scientists at NASA's Lunar Exploration Analysis
Group (LEAG) meeting in League City, Texas, last October.Between
1969 and 1972, Apollo astronauts placed seismometers at their landing sites
around the moon. The Apollo 12, 14, 15, and 16 instruments faithfully radioed
data back to Earth until they were switched off in 1977.

And what did
they reveal? There are at least four different kinds of moonquakes: (1) deep
moonquakes about 700 km below the surface, probably caused by tides; (2)
vibrations from the impact of meteorites; (3) thermal quakes caused by the
expansion of the frigid crust when first illuminated by the morning sun after
two weeks of deep-freeze lunar night; and (4) shallow moonquakes only 20 or 30
kilometers below the surface.
The first three were generally mild and
harmless. Shallow moonquakes on the other hand were doozies. Between 1972 and
1977, the Apollo seismic network saw twenty-eight of them; a few "registered up
to 5.5 on the Richter scale," says Neal. A magnitude 5 quake on Earth is
energetic enough to move heavy furniture and crack plaster. Furthermore, shallow
moonquakes lasted a remarkably long time. Once they got going, all continued
more than 10 minutes. "The moon was ringing like a bell," Neal says.

Wow! 5.5 on our scale. (Does gravity factor in? :P ) And ten minutes long?!

I'd imagine this would cause new problems. A quake in construction could rip a hole in a dwelling. A hole in your house may be a pretty big hazard to your health since all the oxygen would be ventilated out in space. Most humans like yours truly have a liking to oxygen, we like it even more when we miss it in such environments as on another planet.

Drug Test Goes South.

This is a shocking story.

And I know that The Sun is almost the equivelent of Matt Drudge. Who is slightly more respectable than some of the stuff you see at news stands. But I bet it is true since stuff like this will get you sued for defamation.

By NICK PARKER,EMMA MORTON andJACQUI THORNTONA VOLUNTEER who escaped the
drug test disaster told last night how he saw six healthy young men turn into
wailing wrecks within minutes.
Human guinea pig Raste Khan — who did not
know he had been given a harmless placebo in the test — said it was like a
horror film unfolding before his eyes.
The 23-year-old TV technician
added:
The test ward turned into a living hell minutes after we were
injected. The men went down like dominoes.
First they began tearing their
shirts off complaining of fever, then some screamed out that their heads felt
like they were about to explode.
After that they started fainting, vomiting
and writhing around in their beds.
It was terrifying because I kept expecting
it to happen to me at any moment. But I felt fine and didn’t know why.
An
Asian guy next to me started screaming and his breathing went haywire as though
he was having a terrible panic attack.
They put an oxygen mask on him but he
kept tearing it off, shouting ‘Doctor, doctor, please help me!’ He started
convulsing, shouting that he was getting shooting pains in his back.
Last
night two of the victims were still fighting for life in Northwick Park
Hospital, North West London, while the other four were listed as “seriously
ill”.

What ticks me off is a bunch of people are posting and using this tragedy as a political statement against animal testing. Come on people! Not every animal is going to have the same awful reaction a human does. This just cuts the chances down. Quit turning a tragedy into a political assault. You vile waste of salt and air!

Your Groceries have been HAX0RED!

Apparantly, the RFID tags that one day may be on everything like the current barcode can be infected with a virus.

For fun, I'll quote the whole article and interject with red text.


Wednesday, March 15, 2006; Posted: 3:59 p.m. EST (20:59 GMT)

Scientists say just about anything can be tracked using radio tags.

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands (Reuters) -- Cheap radio chips that are replacing
the ubiquitous barcode are a threat to privacy and susceptible to computer
viruses, scientists at a Dutch university said on Wednesday.
Researchers at
the Amsterdam's Free University created a radio frequency identity (RFID) chip
infected with a virus to prove that RFID systems are vulnerable despite the
extremely low memory capacity on the cheap chips.

It amazes me how the system builds the incypherable and then goes into shock when people smarter than them figure it out.

The problem is that an
infected RFID tag, which is read wirelessly when it passes through a scanning
gate, can upset the database that processes the information on the chip, says
the study by Melanie Rieback, Bruno Crispo and Andrew Tanenbaum.
"Everyone
working on RFID technology has tacitly assumed that the mere act of scanning an
RFID tag cannot modify back-end software and certainly not in a malicious way.
Unfortunately, they are wrong," the scientists said in a paper.

Anti-computer anarchist of the world unite! The revolution is near!

Actually, this reminds me of the X-Files episode where Dana Scully has in her possession an implant chip that was found on a guy who said he was abducted. She is shopping for groceries and out of curiosity scans the chip in the counter when the teller isn't looking and he machine goes haywire. Receipt tape gets spit out, mumbled code goes over the display, the machine starts clicking and beeping and opening. It was funny but supposedly fiction. Not anymore!

"An RFID tag
can be infected with a virus and this virus can infect the back-end database
used by the RFID software. From there it can be easily spread to other RFID
tags," they said.
As a result, it is possible that criminals or militants
could use an infected RFID tag to upset airline baggage handling systems with
potentially devastating consequences, they said.
The same technology could
also be used to wreak havoc with the databases used by supermarkets.
"This is
intended as a wake-up call. We ask the RFID industry to design systems that are
secure," Tanenbaum said in a telephone interview.
RFID has been touted as
"The Internet of Things", in which anything from shampoo bottles to marathon
runners can be tracked using radio tags.
Civil liberty groups say RFID could
lead to an unacceptable invasion of privacy and argue that airline ticket
information could be used by law enforcement agencies and divorce
lawyers.

I resent that! Putting my chosen honorable career in the same sentence as divorce lawyers?! Please, we don't break up families. By the time the law gets involved the family has been screwed up for generations. (It is amazing how family begats family who turn to life of crime.) And I know, some divorce in society is a good thing. A woman shouldn't have to put up with an abusive husband. But the way they wrote it was pretty spiteful. They should have concerns though. Since liberal hell-holes like Illinois are seriously looking at putting in RFID tags to track and monitor guns.

Metro , Germany's biggest retailer, said at the CeBIT technology
trade show it plans to save 8.5 million euros ($10.1 million) annually by using
RFID to track stock from suppliers and at its flagship Future Store in Rheinberg
town.
Industries in which tracking goods is crucial such as pharmaceuticals,
governments, logistics, airlines and manufacturing already use RFID
technology.
A recent study by ABI Research found that 10 drug products are
expected to have RFID tags on a large scale this year.
The cost of making an
RFID tag is about 14 euro cents today and needs to fall, Metro's head of
technology Gerd Wolfram said.
But Ian Furlong, manager of Intel's Solution
Services division for Central Europe, said at CeBIT that the price of RFID tags
was "rapidly falling toward the 5 euro cent mark".
Andrea Huber, managing
director of Informationsforum RFID, a German group raising public awareness
about the technology, said most companies were waiting for the price of tags to
fall to 1 euro cent before they start widespread use.

Mark my words people. Soon these babies will be inbedded in your driver license, your auto tag, your cell phone, even your clothes. If someone wanted to they would be able to track you pretty much anywhere. Before you say I'm crazy, just remember that the average grocer wouldn't even think of tracking everything they ever sold ten years ago, and that has now come to a reality.

Copyright 2006 Reuters.
All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
redistributed.

Public Access

You know, for someone who really gets cranky for a security officer casually looking in their room as he walks by they should really work on the squishy stuff God gave them in that thick round bony mass we call a skull.

Granted, when I make my rounds some of the things I look for is violations, it is part of my job. Others is making sure rooms are not being broke into. Another is a room being left open and unattended. (Biggest crime of all on any campus is un-occupied rooms and theft.) So I really didn't know whether to laugh or be ticked off for the rest of the night after I walked by a room that contained some burnette attempting to make herself more beautiful and the said individual slams the door as hard as she can in an act of...protest maybe?

Maybe I should have gone back and slapped her with a noise violation.


What is the reason to get your panties in a bind? Were you gonna get dressed? This is a full access dorm, any guy could be walking by since this wasn't restricted hours yet. It is friday and the theatre show is almost over, what do you plan on doing anyway? do you plan on going out to do some underage drinky? What would you rather have me do? Sit in my office for the whole shift? (I know some people would.)

It is also very funny how people whine about their rights in a search. Be it a dorm room search,(something I haven't partaken into yet.) and police searches. You see if a person has a legal right to be on a space, say a sidewalk, and someone see's that there is marijuana sitting on a dash. Well than there are no Constitutional rights for you to hide under. Well, there are but if an officer or person has a legal right to be there and sees illegal items then the case is closed.

Noah's Ark Discovered?

Eh... I doubt it.

The object does remind me of a WW2 submarine, which matches the 6:1 ratio. But it could also be a very weathered ridgeline that has an interesting unique look to it like all the other ones I saw in Oregon and Idaho. If it was the Ark it would be so old and falling apart it would hardly be recognisable anyway. A lot of the terrain above it it matches the look of the mountain beside it. This could be snow but it looks more rocky whereas the snow is noticible white.

They should just drop someone in there once and for all to shut everyone up.


Yes, and turkey won't allow much of any expeditions in there for one of two possible reasons. One is it proves Christianity. Which I doubt. Or two, if it was discovered not to be there Turkey loses out on a lot of tourism.

Scientist find fire and ice in comet.

Hmm....

I really don't find it all that fascinating. They must already have this image as to how comets are formed or they wouldn't be surprised. I think that since no one knows how a comet is formed they really can't expect to know what is in it. They are possibly made in large gravitational wells where all kinds of material are tossed around and after they get so big they get thrown out. Sort of like hailstones in the sky. Hence also how they get high heat-based and low heat-based objects in the comet. Scientist will even tell you they are not sure how they are formed and they are trying to figure out the universe before they figure out these things? Talk about thinging big and skipping steps.

FBI: Blowing money like there is no tomorrow!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/03/13/fbi.computers.ap/index.html


Obsolete computer system that will be abandoned before implimentation: $170 Million.

Lawsuit for illegal killing of ranch owner: $3.1 million.

Purchasing a new computer system that will do the same thing as the old one, 3 years later, at $500 million? Priceless.

Interesting.....

Went to the PD to drop off some paperwork that I usually toss to the dispatcher. I was a bit shocked that he'd just buzz me in with no officers at the department at the time. Then I realised, I am an officer. :D

Busy, Games, And More!

Okay, I had my butt kicked on Saturday. Hence for slow updates. My policy is every other day atleast but I failed in that area. I had to work at 7:00 AM and get off at 12:00 PM so I could see the best Aunt and Uncle anyone could have in the world. Oh yeah, one detail, I had only four hours of sleep because my hours were messed up from a previous shift. Well after a three hour or so lunch the whole family went home and visited with a friend for a bit. and I managed to squeeze a thirty minute nap in before I worked from 5:00 PM to 1:00 AM. Oh yes, ran into a Sheriff Deputy and a Police Officer who came on campus for official duty business that I can't really talk about. That was the big highlight of my day. Got to chat with them for a bit and talk about my reserve status. We had some written tickets that needed matched up to their owners so I went to the PD to run some tags and got to chat with some friends too. The funny thing is access is closed off to the inside internal PD workings since a law exist that keeps the public from accessing the dispatch center and messing up energency communications. Since my Ride-along days I have been granted access to this almost universally because of how much trust has been placed to me but I never go in that area without an invite from an officer anyway. Well why outside in the public access area one officer who came in chatted with me for a bit, opened the door and saw me staying out there and told me to come in since I am part of the crew now. TALK ABOUT AN AWESOME FEELING!

Oh yeah. The games. In the slow lonely boring working hours I face occassionally I rediscovered www.itsyourturn.com So anyone who wants to challenge me go there and find "Rhettro". It was different since the last time I played back in 2002 because now you only get 15 moves a day instead of unlimited. (Unless you want to pay their unlimited use fee.)

My speciality is Chess, Battleboats Plus, and Backgammon. I'm open to try Dark Chess sometime too.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity!

I hate people who say that.


Scientist have accidently reached a record breaking 3.6 billion degrees Kelvin in a lab when they were trying for tempertures in the millions. Think of that for a moment. That is 3,600,000,000 degrees. A neat side effect is the system produces more energy than it takes to run so they may have created a new unknown form of hot fusion with probably little or no radiation.

The scary thing is these are the types of people who are creating black holes in laboraties and claim it is perfectly safe.

Horse chip inplants.

The government is considering legislation that would require mandatory electronic chip implants of all horses to keep track of diseases. (I also heard this on the radio and for the life of me I can't find an article on it.)


Doing a search for the research on this article I stumbled here.

Microchips are tiny implants that are usually put under the skin on the
horse's neck. There are several microchip manufacturers. Because of this, if a
horse is stolen that carries a microchip that was manufactured by Company A and
the particular slaughterhouse that they end up at has a scanner manufactured by
Company B, this horses microchip will not be read by that particular scanner.
Universal readers/scanners have been promised for a number of years, but until
such time that they are made available, far too many horses may never be
recovered because their chips weren't read. There is also the problem of
possible duplication of the identifying numbers on the chip depending on who has
inserted it. A few other problems are that microchips can be removed and
microchips can also be implanted by anyone with the money to buy the chip
set-up. This is a great for someone wishing to identify their own animals - but
a horse thief can also implant a microchip very easily as well. Microchips have
been known to migrate to other parts of the horse's body from where they were
originally implanted and we really don't know what the long term health effects
of microchips might be. The microchip is no deterrent to horse theft in my
opinion because there is no visible mark that the thief would see.

So they want to mandate something that would be almost useless. Score one for goverment bureaucracy!

Dubai ports deal

I cannot find any news stories on it but listening to Coast To Coast last night I heard that the Dubai port company had imported some ceramic carbon items to Iran from China that are used in the production of nuclear materials. SOmething that I believe is prohibited by the U.N.

This whole thing has really made me mad. Granted, to speak truthfully and logically a port company is not in charge of security. It is the governing country. Granted, what difference is there between having a foreign U.K. company versus a foreign Middle Eastern company handle the ports? (Let's ignore the argument that the U.K. has been our biggest ally in anything since the 1900s and that the people who flew planes into our stuff were not M.E.s.) A non-home-based company wouldn't have as much interest in national security as one based in the country they inport stuff to.

But ignoring the fact that a foreign country already controls most of our ports. I want to vent about the fact that through the Patriot Act and other actions the government has removed a lot of our freedoms in the name of security. Go on an airplane and get searched ten ways to sunday. If they don't make it mandatory that everyone gets searched then they can't search likely muslims because "That is profiling." So 80-year-olds and 7 year olds gets the same scrutiny as the next likely Atta or or Moussaei.

And our security does matter depending on who controls our ports. I trust a U.K. company well over trusting one from a country that would more likely bring in terrorist and perform smuggling operations.

And Mr. Bush, whom I voted for, who said would protect us, who would take all security measures possible. Well he wants this deal to go through fast and without scrutiny. (This from a company that may have sneaked nuclear weapons manufacturing material to Iran!)

I'm not one to take the evil rich republican "people lied" mentality. But Bushy has gone way overboard in his policy making. He has put huge restrictions on the American citizens and doesn't care what happens with businesses as long as he and his group make money hand over fist.

Oh, yes, even his own party has turned on him with this fiasco. Rep Jerry Lewis. Republican of California has put an ammendment to a spending bill that kills the Dubai port deal. The spending bill is one designed by, or created for Bush in that it funds Hurrican relief and also funds the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is why Bush wants new line item veto powers. He wants to be able to remove small pieces of legislation like the the dubai port killer and leave his baby intact so he can fund the war and katrina and keep his legacy intact.

Oh, yes. To stir the pot more. Hillary Clinton has been a big opponent of the Dubai deal. Doing everything she could to trash Bush. But guess what? Her husband helped in every way possible with political clout to bring the deal to a pass.

If it passes. I doubt it would hurt our security all that much. You don't need a port to offload a speed boat on some inhabited coast and walk the nuke into America. Our southern border is so porus we can't keep out 8 million illegals. But if they want to push for a billion other regulations for the American public than a few companies can also suffer.

Woot!

I just recently recieved my police uniform and some of my gear. I still have to be sworn in and obtain firearms training first. But this is a step I've been working at for two years now and everything is finally coming to fruit.

Mr. Flintstone. The dentist is ready.

It looks like people around 15,000 years ago had the same problem modern man does. Inpacted wisdom teeth.

It is a bit funny to look at it. I had mine removed a while ago because of the same problem. Luckily I did not have the complications associated with the removal. When you are sitting there in that chair you kinda wonder if God (or evolution for some people) may have forgotten to deal with something. Why do our teeth do this? What is the purpose if 90 percent of the population has to have them removed? Diet is one possibility. But I really doubt it. We definitly had a different diet in 13,00 B.C. then we do now. So what do the scientist do when they can't find an old enough example for the teeth-diet explaination? They make uo a new theory to keep themselves employed.


Jeeze. It would suck to have the teeth painfully impact themselves into your jaw and the closest dentist being about 10,000 years away.

Robert Pollard

First, to clarify. I am not a racist. I have friends from all corners of the ancestry pool. This is one issue that gets my goat however.

This link here is an interview with Robert Pollards' handler and a little bit of info on his arrest. He was arrested around 20 years ago for passing on secrets we had of arab movements to Israeli agents.

The contention here is that Pollard gave secrets that did not reveal any names of Soveit agents working for the U.S. Supposedly the Government and their case against him based that Pollard exposed 11 agents to soviet counter-intelligents and risked their lives. The lying on the goverments part could be true. There are a few very screwy things that did go on. Pollards' lawyer did not file the proper paperwork to gain an appeal so he cannot appeal no matter what happens with his case. (I have never ever heard of this, this is third hand.) There actually could be a conspiracy to deny him justice and keep him behind bars.

I don't care!


I think Aldrich Ames should have been executed because his information killed agents. If your information does not kill agents it should be a mandatory life behind bars. When stuff is marked top secret and from the intelligence sources you don't go jumping up to another country, the neighbor, or even a different agency and start passing along files. I don't care how you justify it, how you clarify it, or all that other bull. Treason is treason. If other countries find out our intelligence capabilities methods start drying up on how to gain intelligence.

Pollard knew this risk. So did his handler. Look at the quote.

"Despite this, his motivation to help us, the State of Israel, was above and
beyond. I thought this motivation stemmed from the Zionism instilled in him from
the moment he was born, at the home he grew up in. I had great appreciation for
an American Jew willing to risk everything – his position in the U.S. Navy and
in American society, and even his freedom, in order to help Israel and save the
lives of Israelis."

They all knew that jail time would be the risk of doing what he did. He accepted that risk and now I think he can't go around whinning at how unfair his sentence is compared to that of others. All of these are treated on a case by case basis and even though you and Ames pretty much share a life sentence even though only one of you two resulted in death I think you both atleast deserve that much and if I headed the intel and justice services I would have gone for the death penalty for both of you.

I love Isael. I think they are God's chosen people. I think we should remain allies. But in the Liberty incident they screwed Americans over by attacking a U.S. ship flying colors. It could have been that they did that to hide war atrocities. It could have been the fact that they didn't like us using them and the arabs as a test of American and Soviet technology. But they screwed us over and when you do that, even an ally, you are gonna lose a bit of intelligents. And when you employ agents against an ally you shouldn't whine about the results. The interviewee was mad that his government made him testify against his agent. He is mad that Pollard got an almost indefinite sentence. And he thinks it is a racist conspiracy against him.

When you do illegal actions. Do not whine about the consequenses. Even when they follow the letter of the law and nail you for everything they can. Just because they cop a plea with one agent doesn't mean you'll get the same plea for doing less.

Doomsday calculator!

A while ago I explored technology that can move an asteroid away from a not-so-friendly Earth visit. Space.com has an article on the effects of an inpact and a website that can generate a damage area to any city you input.

To quote:

But hurling big virtual rocks at the planet is admittedly kind of fun. And
in this case it's at least more scientifically meaningful than the average video
game. I started by dropping a 9.3-mile-wide (15-kilometer) asteroid -- the
estimated size of the suspected
dinosaur killer -- on San Francisco.
The Bay Area doesn't do so
well.
The resulting crater, at 113 miles (181 kilometers) wide, pretty much
tells the story. The entire metropolis vanishes faster than you can say where
you left your heart. What isn't consumed is knocked over in an earthquake of
magnitude 10.2, bigger than any in recorded history. Heat from a scorching
fireball would turn much of the state, and parts of others, into toast.
The
quick end to the Bay Area turns out to be a blessing compared to what Los
Angeles residents face.
About 10 seconds after impact, radiation from the
fireball sears Southern California, igniting clothing and even plywood. Within
two minutes the ground under Hollywood begins to shake. Weak brick structures
crumble. Concrete irrigation ditches are damaged. Frame houses not properly
bolted to their foundations are knocked off. Even tree branches fall.

Isn't science fun?

Crater found in Sahara

They found a huge crater in the Sahara Desert previously unknown.

Scientists have discovered a huge
crater in the Saharan desert, the largest one ever found there.
The
crater is about 19 miles (31 kilometers) wide, more than twice as big as the
next largest Saharan crater known. It utterly dwarfs Meteor
Crater in Arizona, which is about three-fourths of a mile (1.2 kilometers)
in diameter.
In fact, the newfound crater, in Egypt, was likely carved by a
space rock that was itself roughly 0.75 miles wide in an event that would have
been quite a shock, destroying everything for hundreds of miles. For comparison,
the Chicxulub
crater left by a dinosaur-killing asteroid 65 million years ago is estimated
to be 100 to 150 miles (160 to 240 kilometers) wide.
The crater
was discovered in satellite images by Boston University researchers Farouk
El-Baz and Eman Ghoneim.

Amazing that this stuff has been around forever and even as advanced as we are. We, the human race, are still finding mysteries on The Earth.

Awe Hell!

A good friend of mine in law enforcement. A good friend of the family. Has lost a close relative. Those of my friends that pray I ask that you send a few up for his familys' sake. Those that do not please keep him in your thoughts.

This really hearkens to me. This gentleman was at our side the night my Dad died and there is really no way I can return the favor. I really don't know how to approach him right now. I'll figure something out though.

All over a stupid drug overdose! This really bites.