Another attorney who doesn't understand the Constitution

The attorney for Andrew Shirvell, the assistant attorney general under fire for his attacks on a University of Michigan student, says his client has been fired.

A hearing that was supposed to be held Tuesday was moved up to this afternoon. Philip Thomas said he showed up for the meeting and was read one sentence.

“They said essentially that as a result of Andrew’s conduct, it’s become impossible for him to carry out his duties as an attorney general.”

Shirvell had been criticized for his blog in which he calls Chris Armstrong, the president of the Michigan Student Assembly, a radical homosexual, a Nazi and Satan’s representative on the assembly. Thomas had said his client is expressing his free-speech rights.

Nobody is saying that Andrew Shirvell, who appears to be a nut job of the first rank, cannot continue to publish his blog. His free speech rights are not being denied.

What the people of the state have Michigan have determined, though, is that someone who publishes a blog dedicated to harassing "Satan's representative" on the Michigan Student Assembly is no longer able to credibly oversee criminal prosecutions in a court of law. Shirvell may have some civil service protections, and i'd bet money that a law suit alleging wrongful termination will be filed this fall. And a job offer from Fox.

That ought to be fun.

UPDATE: This is worth watching.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Look Who's Stalking
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

Continue reading Another attorney who doesn't understand the Constitution

Your best entertainment value

WRAL commenters.

Continue reading Your best entertainment value

Well, i'll be

No rain, but a federal judge has just used the fundies' second favorite amendment to declare the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.

Heads must be exploding from Virginia to Texas.

Continue reading Well, i'll be

A little touch of sanity

Scott Roeder's lawyers failed to show that Dr. George Tiller posed an imminent threat and therefore will not be allowed to ask jurors to consider a voluntary manslaughter charge, District Judge Warren Wilbert ruled Thursday.

Makes sense to me. As plenty of people have pointed out, the alternative is to start pre-emptively saving medical professionals from their would-be murderers. Wouldn't that be fun?
UPDATE: Guilty.

Continue reading A little touch of sanity

What gets my goat

You know what really pisses me off?

Fucking activist judges who bend the law to find loopholes to avoid prosecuting murderers.

That really pisses me off?

What's that? Oh, sorry.

Continue reading What gets my goat

Asheville justice?

A while back i noted a story up in Asheville where some motorist took a shot at a guy on bicycle and put a bullet through his helmet.

Here's some more on the judge who handed out a 4 month sentence in that case:

During Peterson's Nov. 19 trial, seven people testified to Superior Court Judge James Downs about the defendant's redemption. In addition to family members, they included his therapist; GO co-founder Dan Leroy; a juvenile whom Peterson had helped; and Detective Louis Tomasetti of the Asheville Police Department's Gang Suppression Unit.

But apparently, Judge Downs wasn't moved. Although he did rule that Peterson's "local support network" and acceptance of responsibility for his crime were mitigating factors, he still sent the young man to prison for 44 months.

. . .

By coincidence, just after sentencing Peterson, Judge Downs heard the case of Charles Alexander Diez, the former Asheville firefighter who fired on cyclist Alan Simons in July. At the time, Simons was walking away from a confrontation started by Diez, who narrowly missed shooting the cyclist in the head. In court, Diez claimed it was a "warning shot."

After hearing testimony about Diez's good character from former colleagues, Downs suspended most of the defendant's 15- to 27-month sentence. He will spend four months in prison.

Really, go read the whole thing. A commenter at the Mountain Express has helpfully posted Judge Downs contact information, if you'd like to let him know just how bad his decisions make him look.

h/t to PC, via Facebook

Continue reading Asheville justice?

Bhopal

For those of you keeping track, today marks the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, in which a poisonous gas leak from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, killed some 4,000 people directly, with some estimates saying that as many as 25,000 deaths were ultimately attributable to the leak, with perhaps 200,000 people affected in the form of long-term chronic injury, birth defects, etc.

Google Bhopal, Union Carbide, or methyl isocyanate if you're too young to remember, or click here.

Here's a small way to contribute.

Continue reading Bhopal

Wonder what Mike Dukakis would say

On Sunday, Huckabee issued this statement on his Web site: "Should he be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy, it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington state."

In other words, everybody else's fault except yours, Mike.

Continue reading Wonder what Mike Dukakis would say

Coulda

I could have been sitting in a jury room in the Federal Courthouse in Winston-Salem today, waiting to see if i was going to be spending a bit of time on a panel. Got a call last week, though, informing me that "the court session for which I was summonsed" had ended without the need for empaneling a jury.

I guess that's good news, for my employer, at least.

Wonder if it had anything to do with this?

(Warning - the comments may make your head explode)

Continue reading Coulda

Marriage equality resolution passes Durham City Council

No link yet, but all my Facebook friends are saying it, so it must be true.

Unanimous vote. Good for us.

Why were the local media playing up the "controversial" aspects of this?

Continue reading Marriage equality resolution passes Durham City Council

Whatever happened to . . .

that case involving Durham County Democratic party officers and Satan? Google news search shows absolutely nothing, and Google web search has nothing newer than, say, last October. Last i heard it was kicked upstairs to AG Roy Cooper, who was deciding whether or not to press charges, but that was last fall.

Aren't accused entitled to a speedy trial under the US Constitution, or does that document only pertain to morons defending themselves against Obama's euthanasia squads?

Continue reading Whatever happened to . . .

Hello, Bernie!

Hide the silverware:

Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff arrived Tuesday at a federal prison in North Carolina to begin serving a 150-year sentence for what is believed to be the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

Federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Linda Thomas said Madoff arrived at the Butner, N.C., facility after leaving federal jail in New York City on Monday.

Continue reading Hello, Bernie!

Doing God's Work

If you're doing the work of the Lord, why do you have to run away?

Continue reading Doing God's Work

Fuck you, Virginia Foxx

I mean, just, fuck you.

“The hate-crimes bill that’s called the Matthew Shepard bill is named after a very unfortunate incident that happened where a young man was killed, but we know that the young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay,” Foxx (R-NC 5) said during Wednesday’s House debate of hate-crimes legislation.

Shepard, a 21-year-old gay student at the University of Wyoming who was murdered in 1998, is often linked to hate-crimes legislation since his widely publicized killing was viewed as an anti-gay attack.

But Foxx said it is “a hoax” to use Shepard’s name for today’s hate-crimes bill, which includes new protections for gays and lesbians. She argued Democrats are only using it “as an excuse for passing these bills.”

Continue reading Fuck you, Virginia Foxx

Didn't see that coming

The case against a Durham woman accused of aiding in crimes authorities say were carried out by a satanic cult was dismissed Thursday after a judge denied a request to delay the case.

Dianna Palmer, 44, of Cottage Woods Court, was charged in July with one count of accessory after the fact of assault with a deadly weapon.

Police said Palmer knew about assaults alleged to have occurred in a residence on Albany Street in Durham and said she helped Joseph Scott Craig remove evidence from the house.

One down, two to go.

h/t to reader js

Continue reading Didn't see that coming

Deep thoughts

I guess police officers not making their scheduled court appearances is a more common occurrence than i thought.

And "Stay away from Northgate Mall" is a more common sentence condition than i imagined.

Continue reading Deep thoughts

"They must have notified every church in my area"

So says State Senator Stan Bingham, Republican from Denton, explaining why he's going to vote against a "bullying" bill in the legislature, even though he helped to negotiate the compromise language of the bill. The problem? The bill includes "sexual orientation" as one of the descriptors of "bullying or harassing behavior."

Pam has the details, including the link to send a letter supporting this bill to your legislator.

I spent some time yesterday poking around on the website of one of those "family values" groups opposing this legislation. I can't imagine what it must be like to spend your entire life so afraid of anything that you see as "different."

Continue reading "They must have notified every church in my area"

Royal Ice Cream protest commemoration

From left - Mr. R. Kelly Bryant, local historian, Mrs. Mary Clyburn Hooks, Ms. Virginia Williams, Rev. Douglas Moore, participants, lower right foreground Mr. William Marsh, attorney.
The Royal Ice Cream parlor sit-in took place on June 23, 1957. Seven young African-Americans in Durham, including the three survivors pictured above, sat at the white table at the shop on the corner of Roxboro and Dowd Streets, and were arrested for violating the segregation laws in effect at the time.

It's taken several years, but the event will now be commemorated with the marker pictured above.

Continue reading Royal Ice Cream protest commemoration

So, has the world ended yet?

I can't wait for the day when this no longer makes headlines.

Uttering the two simple words "I do," dozens of same-sex couples were wed in the Bay Area on Monday evening as California became the second state in the nation to grant marriage rights to gay men and lesbians.

County clerks braced for an even bigger rush of couples who will tie the knot today when all 58 counties in the state begin issuing marriage licenses that no longer designate "bride" and "groom" but instead "party A" and "party B."

A crowd gathered Monday evening at the Sonoma County clerk's office in Santa Rosa, including 19 same-sex couples who had made appointments to marry. The crowd counted down the last seconds to 5:01 p.m., when the state Supreme Court's decision allowing the marriages took effect.

Mark Gren and Chris Lechman of Guerneville were the first couple to apply for a marriage license and wed.

"Now, by the power vested in me and in accordance with the laws of the state of California, it is my pleasure and honor to pronounce you married," Sonoma County Clerk Janice Atkinson told the couple.

Continue reading So, has the world ended yet?

A lot of that going around

A lot of observers are, rightly if you ask me, bothered by last week's news about city councilwoman Cora Cole-McFadden's apparent role in the firing of former MV Transportation general manager Thomas Hartley. MV is the contractor hired by the city of Durham to run the DATA bus system, and an arbitrator last week upheld his contention that he was "unlawfully fired . . . because of his race."

Ms Cole-McFadden had, according to the arbitrator, told MV that it "needed some diversity in [its] management ranks," which may have led to Hartley's dismissal and subsequent replacement with someone who, the arbitrator wrote, "did not meet MV's own published qualifications for the job of general manager."

Let me be clear. I think that a diverse workforce that reflects the community around it is a good thing. But you don't achieve that by firing competent workers and managers and replacing them with whoever happens to be at hand.

That said, i wonder if any of the commenters in any of the media outlets that have covered this story, including the one here who wrote "Anyone in Durham who's been paying attention, at least since March or April 2006, knows that the white man is under siege . . . " have thought about their reaction to this story:

"Bradley J. Schlozman is systematically attempting to purge all Civil Rights appellate attorneys hired under Democratic administrations," the lawyer wrote, saying that he appeared to be "targeting minority women lawyers" in the section and was replacing them with "white, invariably Christian men." The lawyer also alleged that "Schlozman told one recently hired attorney that it was his intention to drive these attorneys out of the Appellate Section so that he could replace them with 'good Americans.'"

The anonymous complaint named three female, minority lawyers whom Schlozman had transferred out of the appellate section (of African-American, Jewish, and Chinese ethnicity, respectively) for no apparent reason. And in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week in response to questions from senators, the Justice Department confirmed that all three had been transferred out by Schlozman -- and then transferred back in after Schlozman had left the Division.

Schlozman, according to the Wall Street Journal as reported in TPM, is facing increased scrutiny from a federal grand jury for his role in the US Attorney purge scandal.

Just noting that those who have a "bunker" mentality might be well served to broaden the variety of sources they use to develop that particular worldview. It's acutally quite a bit more complicated than that.

Continue reading A lot of that going around