“But Iron Head, What About That Thingey?”

This came to mind when I found out that DL Cameron Heyward out of Ohio State went with the second-to-last pick in the first round of the NFL draft to the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Heyward is the son of the late Craig “Iron Head” Heyward, a RB that was with the Rams for one season.   But the elder Heyward’s biggest contribution to society was making it safe for all us straight men to use those “thingeys.”  As you can see, the above ad used film from his practices as a Ram.

The younger Mr. Heyward was one of three men with the first name “Cameron” to be drafted in the first round yesterday, including the #1 pick overall.  Since NFL draftees must be at least three years removed from their senior year of high school, this means that draftees are somewhere between 20 and 23 years old.  There must have been a fad of parents naming their newborn sons “Cameron” in the 1988 to 1991 time frame — I was alive and coherent then, but I can’t remember any reason why “Cameron” was popular.  Maybe Kirk Cameron, whose big claim to fame was playing the problematic firstborn son on the ABC sitcom “Growing Pains,” which was going strong in that period, but that’s my best guess.  That all three Camerons drafted yesterday are black probably borks this theory, because I hardly think “Growing Pains” was appointment television for too many blacks.

Sixty Seconds on the Clock

P-D:

At Old Courthouse ceremony, Nixon vetos discrimination bill

Standing in front of the building where slave Dred Scott sued to gain his freedom, Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed a measure that would have made it easier for employers to avoid discrimination suits.

The bill would have raised the threshold for proving bias cases, requiring claimants to prove discrimination was a “motivating” factor, and not just a “contributing” factor, which is the current standard.

It would also have capped damages awarded to plaintiffs, and exempted individuals — such as a boss or supervisor — from liability.

“Protecting human rights is not a matter of politics,” Nixon said. “It is a matter of principle. That is why I will veto Senate Bill 188.”

Standing in front of the Old Courthouse, Nixon evoked the names of prominent local civil rights leaders such Minnie Liddell, the St. Louis mother who started a marathon desegregation case…

Some emphasis mine.

Contestants, you have exactly one minute to spot the irony.  Clues may be found in bold in the above article fragment.  Good luck.

The clock starts now.

Civil Rights for D.C. Residents

For as long as I can remember, the left has been beating the drums for voting rights for residents of the District of Columbia.  Translated into English, this means they want statehood for D.C. so there can be one or two extra Democrats in the House and (more importantly to the left) two extra Democrats in the Senate.

How about 2nd Amendment rights for D.C. residents?  Because you have to purchase firearms from an FLFD who is licensed in the same state in which you live, D.C. residents can only buy from D.C.-based FLFDs.  Or rather, I should not have pluralized that acronym, because there is only one FLFD in the whole District, and thanks to bureaucratic snafus with his lease (maybe not so accidental, IMHO), he is out of business for the time being, and with it is one of the ten items of the Bill of Rights in the District of Columbia.

A computer scientist named David Wheeler proposes that a district ceded to a Federal government from a state in order to be the national seat of government be treated as if it were still part of its state for the purposes of Federal elections.  Originally, the Feds took territory from both sides of the Potomac River.  Look at a road atlas’s D.C. inset, and you can see how Arlington, Virgina sorta “completes the square” with D.C.  For some reason, the Feds didn’t think it would need any of the Virginia territory, so it quickly returned what it had taken from Virginia back to the state, and kept only the Maryland portion.  Wheeler’s proposal would mean that D.C. residents would be counted and apportioned as Marylanders for House elections, the number of House seats MD would get would consider the D.C. population count plus its own state population, and Maryland’s state government would draw Congressional boundaries in accordance, D.C. residents would vote in Maryland U.S. Senate elections, and D.C. residents would vote for which slate of Maryland electors are sent to the Electoral College for Presidential elections.  It would not mean that D.C. residents would vote for Maryland statewide offices (Governor, etc.) or its state legislative body.  The beauty of this plan is that it gives the left what they apparently want, and when they start crowing against it for some contrived reason, then their hypocrisy will become plain even to the biggest moron — Maryland by itself is solid blue, so adding more blue votes from D.C. won’t change the balance of power in the Senate.

The same should be done with the ATF regulation that you have to buy from an FLFD within your state — D.C. residents should be treated as Maryland residents for this purpose.  So they can purchase from an FLFD in rural Maryland if worse comes to worst.

Registry

No, I’m not talking about Wills and Kate.

This is too much.  Just too much.

WMAQ-NBC-5 Chicago:

Murderer Registry? How About Life In Prison Instead?

Earlier this month, the Illinois House of Representatives passed a law creating a “murderer registry” that would require criminals convicted of first-degree murder to check in with the state for 10 years after their release from prison.

The bill was named for Andrea Will, a young Batavia woman who was strangled to death by her boyfriend in 1998, when they were both students at Eastern Illinois University.

The boyfriend, Justin Boulay, was set free last year after serving only half his 24-year sentence. For taking away an estimated 70 years of his girlfriend’s life, Boulay did just 12 years in the joint.

Here’s an even better plan for keeping an eye on killers: don’t let them out of prison. I was all in favor of repealing the death penalty, but if Illinois isn’t going to have capital punishment, we should have another method of permanently removing murderers from society. The penalty for first-degree murder should be changed to a mandatory life sentence, with no chance of parole. It’s a lot easier to keep track of people in prison. Instead of asking murderers to check in with the state, we’ll have prison guards check their beds every night.

I don’t know if Mr. Boulay was a beneficiary of the Pat Quinn Open Jail Cell Policy.  He might have been released just because Illinois has permissive murder laws.

Missouri, on the other hand, only has two possible punishments for a Murder 1st conviction:  Death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Then there is the matter of pardons.

There’s a good reason why Presidents and Governors have the absolute power of pardon and commutation, because sometimes prosecutors and juries screw up, or get it wrong, or are just plain devious and evil.  Sometimes, the law is an ass.  Sometimes, the law is arcane.  (Frank Sinatra was once arrested for “carrying on with a married woman.”  The charges were dropped because the prosecutors didn’t think they could prove that Sinatra knew the woman was married.)  Sometimes, we just want to forgive.

However, I think that a pardon or commutation that results in someone being released from incarceration should be treated differently than pardoning someone whose conviction was long ago and punishment was served long ago.  Personally, I think a pardon or commutation that results in a release from incarceration should be approved by the relevant legislative body before happening.  The U.S. Congress if it’s a Presidential pardon, the state legislature if it’s a gubernatorial pardon.