As Illinois attorney general, Senate nominee Roland Burris actively and stubbornly supported the execution of a man later exonerated by DNA evidence, despite plenty of evidence of the man’s innocence. His argument at the time: “It is not for me to place my judgment over a jury, regardless of what I think.”
Here are the winners of Fark’s best headline of the year voting. Amusing, those Farkers.
Beautiful time-lapse video of various sky settings. Someone should make a long-play DVD of these. It’s cathartic.
I missed the Friar’s Club Bob Saget roast last summer. But I caught a clip of Norm MacDonald’s contribution on a year-end list yesterday. The folks at Videogum are right. It’s genius. Goes right up there with Gilbert Gottfried’s version of “The Aristocrats” at the 2001 Hugh Heffner roast as one of the classics of the genre.
Honey laundering! I’d like to think the Seattle paper undertook the entire investigative series just so they could use the punny headline.
U.S. government to try political leaders who order torture! So long as they’re from other countries, that is.
Man runs afoul of campaign finance laws by running ads for his own bakery. As the WSJ points out, even if he’d run the ads for the purpose of promoting his candidacy, something’s amiss when we’re prosecuting commercial speech because it might contain veiled political content.
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on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 2:23 pm by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
They left off my favorite Fark headline ever, which happened in 2008:
Man wins damages after being fired because he was bipolar. He’s reportedly ecstatic. Nope, devastated. Oops, ecstatic agai … hold on, he’s distraught
A slightly younger and thinner Norm:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCFc4gs-pS4
Norm MacDonald, king of deadpan. Canadians are some funny mfers.
I don’t think it’s much of stretch for the U.S. to start trying people from other countries in U.S. courts. After all, we invaded Panama so we could bring Noriega back to the U.S. and try him for breaking U.S. drugs laws in his own country.
We must remember that, as interpreted by the three branches of government, the U.S. Constitution only expressly forbids them from doing anything they can’t get away with.
Comedy Central runs their roasts uncut as part of their “Secret Stash” after Midnight. I saw the uncut roast when it originally ran. To me, Norm’s whole set was a head scratcher. Yes, it avoided the run of the mill jokes of some of the other comics, but I still thought it totally missed the mark.
Why do you find it soooo amazing, Radley…….I accuse my employer of torturing me every day. Hey, prove me wrong…….
#3, M. Krugger,
Although Greewald doesn’t mention it, Emmanuel (Charles Taylor Jr.) is a US citizen. There is the Noreiga type of precedent, but this was not at all similar, it is illegal under longstanding US law for US citizens to do many things in other countries (like fighting in foreign armies or having sex with children). Sort of like controling your children (citizens) even when they are in someone elses’s house. IF Emmanuel was not a US citizen it would have been a lot harder to try him in the US.
RE: Honey Laundering!
Seems to me that there are two roots to the problem. The first is the ineffectiveness of the FDA, DHA and ICE when it comes to inspection and interception of adulterated foodstuffs. The second is the high tariff rates (projected to increase) on Chinese imports that provide a black market incentive.
Removing the latter will take care of a fair amount of the problem. As for the former, I’d say that companies should be responsible for testing each barrel of honey they split out for packaging. If they claim it is “pure” but it is not then it is fraud. Plain and simple.
//We must remember that, as interpreted by the three branches of government, the U.S. Constitution only expressly forbids them from doing anything they can’t get away with.//
The Constitution is a guide to let the people know what they’re supposed to let the government get away with and what they’re not. Unfortunately, few people seem interested in taking the responsibility to oppose the government on those issues where the Constitution demands they do so.
Regarding honey laundering, I enjoyed the article, but I really have to wonder about the lack of background information and the reaction in the P-I’s comment section. The vast majority of comments reflect panick about Chinese honey, worry that the US government isn’t doing enough, and all of it against a general backdrop of “a pox on the free market”. Pfeh.
For all the interesting investigative journalism that I’m sure went into the article, the first question that popped into my head was never answered: How many people have died of aplastic anemia due to chloramphenicol in imported Chinese honey? Or from chloramphenicol in any honey? Or from chloramphenicol at all? I mean, that’s the health concern (and ostensibly why the US government banned it) and presumably the motivation for the article. The rare severe side-effect was noticed in patients treated with standard 3000 mg per day chloramphenicol doses, the adverse reaction only occurring in 1 in several tens of thousands of people. It seems like it would take an awful lot of unlucky people eating an awful lot of tainted honey at one sitting for this to be a statistically significant problem.
But, the article is motivated as though the contaminated Chinese honey is a significant health concern. And, many of the comments (and presumably a substantial fraction of the readers) seem to think the tainted honey is roughly equivalent to rat poison sold as a sweetener. Without the contextual information, there is no way for a reader to judge and that encourages people to take a “perfectly safe is the only acceptable situation” attitude toward the issue. Zero-tolerance (AKA “zero-intelligence”) approaches are rarely realistically enforceable.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a pathologist or poison control expert, so it could be that morgues were piling up with victims still clutching their bear-shaped honey jars. But, even if it is that bad, it seems like the real message of the article is that US Customs isn’t really effective in keeping this stuff off of the market. And, it’s quite possible that the import restrictions and high taxes increase the incentive for Chinese sellers to be sneaky in getting it into the market, making it even tougher for people concerned about the health risks to rely on labels when making a purchase…
RE: Burris
“His argument at the time: ‘It is not for me to place my judgment over a jury, regardless of what I think.’ ”
What the hell? Is it time for me to drag out the old “we aren’t a democracy, we’re a republic” line? As an Illinois resident, I can assure everyone that we have not adopted direct democracy as our official political system. Thus, Burris certainly could have overruled the jury and intervened on behalf of the defendant if he had been so inclined. Guess that wouldn’t have been the politically popular thing to do. So instead, an innocent man sat on death row. Nice.
Fuckin’ Illinois! If I still thought “greener pastures”–my own research has made me skeptical of this notion that natives of Central IL, who seem to be born with regional inferiority complexes, seem obsessed with–existed, I’d probably move.
Re: Burris
Helmut,
Yeah that line is complete and utter bullshit no mater how you slice it. The response to that is the cliched “you can’t or you won’t?” In this case clearly he wouldn’t.
The real problem here is that he wouldn’t even consider it, or take the time to meet with someone as people were resigning all over the place. What a f$!cking a$$hole!
I thought for a second the details would be another one of Radley’s aggressive characterizations of “overwhelming evidence of innocence” based on recanted testimony, or something else that, while clearly significant, is not always the easiest thing for a prosecutor to act on. But, this case wasn’t even close!! This guy clearly cared more about being elected governor than letting a clearly innocent man off of deathrow. And he seemed to know that if he sat for a meeting or took time to look at the case, then his conduct would somehow be even less defensible.
This man should rot in hell.
//“His argument at the time: ‘It is not for me to place my judgment over a jury, regardless of what I think.’ ” //
Such a statement makes sense if, and only if, the prosecutor does not have any information which the jury lacked, and which might have caused a reasonable jury to acquit. If the prosecutor is basing his decision upon more evidence than what the jury had, it may well be possible for the jury to exercise perfect judgment in handing down a conviction and the prosecutor to exercise perfect judgment in overturning it.