This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Society

  • Marsha, Marsha, Marsha, You’re Suing the Wrong Person

    The Houston Chronicle has this story

    Marsha Richard, widow of executed Rapist and Murderer Michael Richard is suing Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller in federal court for not giving special treatment to the convicted rapist and murderer’s attorneys. Keller ordered the clerk’s office close at promptly at five o’clock, you know, what most people recognize as the end of the business day. Her lawsuit claims that because her (murdering, raping) husband’s attorneys were not able to file an appeal to the Texas court, which would have had to have been ruled on before their planned appeal to the US Supreme Court, caused her husband to be unjustly executed. Here’s the thing: Richard wasn’t claiming innocence in that appeal, what his attorneys were trying to do was latch on to a case out of Kentucky, that was before the USSC, that claimed lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual punishment. It isn’t the Judge’s job to make sure attorneys do their work in a timely manner. Yes, the attorney had asked for more time due to computer problems, but, you know what? It isn’t the Judge’s job to ensure the convicted murdering rapist’s attorney’s computers worked properly either.
    If Mrs Richard wants to sue someone, perhaps she should sue the attorneys who failed to file the appeal in a timely manner, and who overlooked judges that were available after business hours:

    Three other judges later said they were available that evening and could have handled Richard’s appeal if they had known about it.

    Here is a lovely quote from the grieving widow:
    “He was on death row, so chances are he was going to be executed. But to have your appeal denied for no rhyme or reason? That’s wrong,” Marsha Richard, 43, said during a news conference outside the Houston federal courthouse Wednesday. The home health aide married Michael Richard in 2002. “No matter what side of the death penalty you fall on, we’re still dealing with human beings. Their lives are in the balance.”
    Come on now, Marsha, the appeal wasn’t filed in time, that is neither the fault, nor the responsibility of anyone other than the lawyers who were trying to keep your husband alive, despite his crimes. Mrs Richard is quoted by the AP
    as saying: I would ask her why she just couldn’t wait a few more minutes. It wouldn’t have cost her anything to do this
    I don’t know Marsha, perhaps the Judge thought, as I do, that the rules should apply to everyone equally and that convicted murderers shouldn’t get special treatment. Or, maybe, she [the judge] thought that after over twenty years the victim’s family finally saw Richard pay for his crimes. Either way, justice was done.

  • Rosie O’Donnell May Join MSNBC–Kooks Watch TV Too…

    The NY Times reports that Rosie O’Donnell is in talks and may soon have her own primetime show on MSNBC. Apparently MSNBC wants to be known as the network of the kook fringe.

    Her show would replace “Live with Dan Abrams,” a relatively low-rated program that only recently replaced “Scarborough Country,” which was also little-watched.

    Little watched? That ought to be the motto of the network…
    Inside Cable News shows they don’t do well in the ratings at all…
    549k is hardly challenging to Fox News’ 1.4 MILLION viewers…
    As a matter of fact the vaunted NY Times has another
     article only one day after the first, touting O’Donnell, that claims bashing the Bush admin helps MSNBC’s ratings, well… something had to, although is appealing to the likes of Kos readers and DUmmies really that great a victory? Is “We Cater to Kooks” their new rallying cry? I guess it is, and that is pretty sad when you think about it.
    —UPDATE—
    The fat one announces on her blog, in her typical illiterate fashion, that opening her big mouth blew the deal with MSNBC. I’m of two minds on this one, I want to point at the big ole Kook and laugh, but, at the same time, it would have been fun to watch her drag MSNBC (farther) down.

  • Another Day, Another FAKE Hate Crime

    A Jewish George Washington University student complained of a half dozen swastikas being drawn on her dorm room door. The campus cops put in a hidden camera and caught the perp.
    Yes, she was drawing the swastikas on her own door. Why is this not surprising?
    NBC4 has the rest.

  • Another Invention Comes Along Twenty Years Too Late

    Twins Jared and Justin Serovich maybe just eight years old, but their invention the “Rip Away 1000” could save thousands of geeks, nerds and goobers from the pain and humiliation of a wedgie. MSNBC/AP reports:

    Using rigged boxers and fabric fasteners to hold together some seams, Jared and Justin came up with the “Rip Away 1000,” a pair of underwear that cannot be jerked up to give its wearer a painful “wedgie.”

    “When the person tries to grab you — like the bully or the person tries to give you a wedgie — they just rip away,”

    Genius, sheer, unadulterated genius…

  • House Committee Ignores Common Sense Blames Fires On Global Warming

    Here is a press release from The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming (A creation of Nancy Pelosi)

    Select Committee to Examine Link Between Changing Climate, Frequency and Intensity of Wildfires on Thursday

    MEDIA ADVISORY FOR 10 AM THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2007

    Contact: Select Committee, 202-225-4012

    A Spark Neglected: Wildfires and Global Warming
    Select Committee to Examine Link Between Changing Climate, Frequency and Intensity of Wildfires

    “A spark neglected makes a mighty fire.”
    –Robert Herrick

    Following the devastating fires in Southern California, the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming will hold a hearing examining the scientific link between a changing climate and the frequency and intensity of wildfires.

    Witnesses will discuss the present effects of climate change on wildfires and contributing factors such as increased drought, changes in snowmelt patterns, changes in precipitation, and higher temperatures. In addition, mitigation and adaptation strategies will be discussed.

    The frequency and intensity of wildfires have increased in recent decades throughout the Western United States. Last year, the Forest Service spent a record $2.5 billion fighting wildfires that burned a record 9.9 million acres (4 million hectares), compared to the ten-year average of 6 million acres. This year 8.7 million acres have burned thus far. The current fires burning in California are expected to cause over $1 billion in property damage alone and have already burned an area the size of Rhode Island. Mounting scientific evidence indicates that the growth in wildfires is linked to global warming and that this trend is likely to intensify in the coming decades.

    This ignores a number of factors that actually contributed to the fires. Global Warming didn’t put a stop to the responsible practice removing of deadwood and brush from forests, activists and their willing accomplices in the legislatures did.

  • DUmmies live up to their name

    From the same people who brought you the “Fire can’t melt chicken wire and cinderblocks in my backyard” experiment, we now have the “Waterboarding is torture” experiment from Allahpundit;

    “[I]f it isn’t torture, it can’t be that bad, right?” our hero wonders rhetorically before declaring it most definitely bad — and recounting how he went in for one, two, three, four rounds of the stuff. Which, incidentally, was fewer than his brother managed. A possible alternative standard: If it is torture, you probably wouldn’t be so willing to have it done to you.

    More experiment narrative from Jammie Wearing Fool;

    Let me tell you this, it’s not pleasant. And we were operating under circumstances where we absolutely knew that the other person wasn’t going to kill us with the technique.

    I was wiped out after four tries. My best time was 20 seconds, and I literally gritted it out. It took about all I had, so much so that right afterward on my last try I barely lasted 9 seconds.

    My brother tried it a few more times than I did. He beat me on average times, but his highest was 18 seconds.

    So who’s running the Left these days? Johnny Knoxville? Maybe they can try beheading each other next and see if that’s any easier to withstand.

    jackass.jpg

    I’m sure these goons think that waiting until after you smoke the pot to order the pizza is torture, too.

  • Why Unions are BAD Part MCMLXI

    The AP is reporting that if The Writers Guild of America goes on strike we will be subjected to more “Reality” shows such as “Flavor of Love,” “I Love New York” and “The Surreal Life.”
    I remember Bill Clinton sticking his red nose in to stop Baseball from going on strike a few years ago, isn’t TV more watched than baseball? Should someone do something?

    NO. Unless they were to disband unions altogether, they’d only make things worse.

    Unions were fine, when they were actually needed. With today’s more intelligent and savvy populace they only serve to artificially cause higher prices.

  • A point of honor

    Last night I got an email from Confederate Yankee who has often been running point on the Beauchamp/The New Republic story for the entire blogoshere. He asked me to support a boycott he was starting against The New Republic. Of course I said I would, then I fell asleep waiting for the Redskins to score. But I’m refreshed this morning and so so here’s the gist of the plan from CY;

    We know that TNR allowed all three of Scott Beauchamp’s stories to be published without being competently fact-checked, if fact-checked at all.

    We know that the editors of TNR, led by Franklin Foer, lied when they said that the stories had been competently fact-checked, we know they deceived their readers and misled at least one civilian expert in an attempt to create a whitewash of an investigation.

    […]

    We know The New Republic attempted to stonewall their way through obvious, blatant, and grievous breaches of journalistic ethics. In so doing, they have attacked the service, integrity, and honor of an entire company of American soldiers serving in a combat zone to avoid taking responsibility for their own editorial and ethical failures.

    Alfred A. Knopf Allstate Amazon.com American Gas Station
    American Petroleum Institute Astro Zeneca (current issue) Auto Alliance Bearing Point
    Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (current issue) BP (current issue) Chevron (current issue) CNN
    FLAME (current issue) Federal Express The Financial Times Focus Features
    Ford Motor Company Freddie Mac GM Grove Atlantic
    HBO Harvard University Press History Channel Hoover Institution (current issue)
    MetLife Microsoft Mortage Bankers Nuclear Energy Institute
    The New School New York Times Novartis Palgrave Macmillan (current issue)  
    Simon & Shuster John Templeton Foundation (current issue) University of Chicago Press University Press of Kansas (current issue)
    U.S. Telecom Visa (current issue) The Wall Street Journal Warner Brothers
    Warner Brothers Home Video W.W. Norton Wyeth Laboratories Yale University Press (current issue)

    I’d ask U.S. military veterans, military families, active duty personnel, and the vast majority of Americans who support our servicemen and women to call these companies, institutions and agencies to pull their advertising from TNR, effective immediately.

    […]

    We cannot force The New Republic to behave honorably, but we can make their dishonesty come at a price.

    I’m 100% behind this – Beauchamp has at least decided to rehabilitate himself, on the other hand, TNR hasn’t shown the least bit of remorse for their skullduggery.

    Blackfive‘s The Wolf and Chickenhawk Express are on board.