Saturday, January 19th, 2008
- A new study says parallel universes exist. Of course in another universe, the same study says they don’t.
- Another otherwise healthy man dies after being hit with a non-lethal taser.
- Garrison Keilor shows off some of that folksy, down-home populism that’s made him famous–by suing his neighbor for daring to add a wing to his modest home that will partially block the view of Keilor’s palace.
- In Colorado, police may soon be forced to reimburse medical marijuana patients when they raid their homes, steal their medicine, and the marijuana plants die while the case stalls in the courts. Think of it as a kind of poetic justice for all of those asset forfeiture cases.
- John Tierney writes on an issue your humble Agitator has also touched on in the past: the problems with the persistent fear of terrorism, and why our continuing collective pants-wetting is giving Osama & Co. just what they’ve wanted. Earlier this week, Tierney also noted new data suggesting that you’re more likely to die worrying about terrorism than you are of dying in a terrorist attack.
- Police in Alaska arrest a 13-year-old girl for touching male classmates “outside their clothes” on a school bus.
- The Bush White House has apparently just lost 473 days worth of email, despite a federal law requiring them to archive it. Just happens to coincide with some of the biggest scandals of this administration, and includes many of the very emails subpoenaed by Congress. Absolutely criminal, these people.
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on Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 9:23 am by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
So much for Bush’s promise of a “transparent administration.” I guess Bush mistook the word “transparent” to mean, “I’m the prez and I can do whatever the hell I want and don’t complain or you’re an unpatriotic SOB.” Shouldn’t come as much of a shock from a man who still can’t pronounce “nuclear.”
‘Police in Alaska arrest a 13-year-old girl for touching male classmates “outside their clothes” on a school bus.’
Not sure exactly how I feel about this one, yet. Depends on details that haven’t been released. If we’re talking about some of the more ridiculous cases we’ve seen, and the details are “the girl repeatedly poked the boys in the arm”, an arrest is absurd. If the details are “the girl repeatedly fondled the boys’ genitals through their pants”, then, well, less absurd.
I mean, honestly, what else are the boys going to do, if repeated requests to halt go unheeded? Punch her out? It would certainly be the “equal treatment” she might deserve, but I can guess the boys would rapidly go from being the victim to being the aggressor in the minds of the world.
A 13 year old boy who repeatedly groped several female classmates in spite of requests to stop would be hung out to dry. Why is it so absurd when the genders are reversed?
But to *arrest* a girl for fondling a boy through his pants? C’mon, that should mean consultation between school administrators and the involved parents along with the school psychiatrist. And don’t even try to play the “reverse the gender” game here … the same should apply if it was a boy. The cops are hiding their responsibility here behind the old ruse that we don’t know the whole story. Bull. The identities are protected, not the particulars of the crime.
Keillor is pretty well known as a total jackass in St. Paul.
I’m still trying to figure out what kind of 13 year old boy would be offended by being “touched above the clothes” by a girl. Unless she was an uggo.
Absolutely criminal, these people
“These people” need to be hung from the Capitol Building’s rotunda with care, so as to warn all other criminal sycophants that we are a nation of accountiblilty and thus we, the taxpayers, will not tolerate criminals in any office elected or appointed.
No accountiblity no justice, no justice no America.
What would Washington do? Jefferson? Adams? Hale? Hancock?
Madison? Gates? Greene? Burr? etal.
Colorado one small step in the right direction.
Lets give a warm round of applause for common sense.
End drug prohibition now.
I think Bush and bin Laden are both terrorists in that they want to keep people in a low-level state of fear and apprehension: bin Laden with his lo-tech video warnings (is he even still alive? if so, can’t he afford hi-def equipment?) and Bush/Cheney/Chertoff with their Terror Alerts and gut feelings. You just have to tune these people out–like white noise–and get on with your life.
“Turn up the signal, wipe out the noise.”–Peter Gabriel
I think it’s funny that Dickes can charge $5,200 per marijuana plant. The price that the DEA sets so various law enforcement can brag about busting millions of dollars of weed. The price that is so high because drugs are illegal to begin with, creating a black market.
Maybe if more of this happened throughout the US, more people being able to go back and charge hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars for wrongly confiscated property, the government would have to legalize marijuana if for no other reason than to get prices to drop so it would be cheaper for them to reimburse these people. Not to mention they wouldn’t have to continue to confiscate plants that end up being legal and then get sued even more.
It’s important that girls suffer the same consequences as boys, even if it is absurd. A double standard here only perpetuates the problem by making less people have a stake in seeing it ended. When teenage girls are charged left and right, more people may being to think that maybe the solution is to be found outside the state. Until then, it’s only fair that girls get punished the same way. Think of it like the War on Drugs. If there were no sentencing double standards, you’d see far more militant white opposition.
To get the Minnesota tasering story try:
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