Missouri GOP to use caucuses to pick presidential nominee
JEFFERSON CITY • Missouri Republicans will probably still get to cast a ballot for a presidential nominee in February, but that vote won’t actually count.
That’s because the Missouri Republican Party voted Thursday to strip the state’s presidential primary of its traditional purpose — picking who gets the Show-Me state’s coveted presidential delegates. Instead, those delegates will be decided using a caucus system.
Unless the Legislature votes to change it, the Feb. 7 Republican primary will still take place. It just won’t have any impact on the selection of a presidential nominee. For members of the GOP, that process will start officially more than a month later on March 17 at party-run county caucuses.
The process for Democrats, who also will vote Feb. 7, remains unchanged.
Under current state law, a primary must be held in February. But national party rules dictate that only Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada can hold presidential nominating contests before March 6, mostly because of tradition. States that violate that rule have been threatened with the loss of half of their delegates to the national convention.
So, let me get this straight. We get to pay for a public vote on a partisan primary that won’t count because the National Republican Party doesn’t want it to count? Therefore, interested Missourians will have to caucus in Mid-March. Why bother with the primary, then? If I were a liberal Democrat, I’d be hacked off as hell, because I’m helping to pay for what will in essence be a meaningless Republican straw poll.
I’m still sticking to my Michele Bachmann vote. But it won’t be worth even going to the polls to vote for her if it won’t matter in the delegate tally. And I’m certainly not enthusiastic enough about her to go and caucus for her. I did caucus for PJB in 1996, because we really had something to work with there.
By the way, National Republican Party — In spite of your “tradition,” is it really a good idea to be telling Missouri Republican primary voters that they don’t matter? Missouri is a swing state, after all.
It’s not the best thing in the world, but it’s also not the worst thing in the world. What gets my goat is that the same kind of people making it out to be a total travesty are the same ones who don’t show one iota of concern about anything else getting more expensive. There’s more bitching about $5 that BofA wants from you than about $500 that Uncle Sam wants from you, ceteris paribus. Bank of America wants $5 for a month from you? End of the freakin’ world. Ameren UE has raised its electric rates three times since Obama took office, mainly due to Obama’s anal-retentive enviro-nut fixation about coal? No outrage at all, even though you’re paying way more than $5 a month on average for it.
Evidently, the whole thing is a result of Dodd-Frank. I haven’t bothered to grok the exact nuance, but I’m not surprised that something the left wing Democrats wanted and got is to blame. I love it when their own shit blows up in their faces.
On the flip side of the coin, BofA and the other banks doing this aren’t handling the PR very well, and it’s going to hurt them and hurt them badly. I predict that they will either reverse course or reduce this charge to $1 or $2 a month, or something similar. The reason is that the public paranoia over these fees are going to lead to bank runs and, if left unchecked, it will strain the fractional reserve system and collapse the banking system. If people get it in their heads that they “need” to do as much of their financial business in cash as possible to avoid a piddley monthly fee, then people are going to go to their banks asking for cash as much as possible and as often as possible. It’s called a run on the bank. I’m sure the bank execs will find it better that they simply absorb these extra costs and not pass them along than pass them along and create public anger and create constant runs on their banks.
As an aside, for those of you who think that you can ditch this dinky little monthly fee and live in a personal cash-only microeconomy? Money orders aren’t free, I know the Post Office wants a buck a piece (maybe more) for each one, and even more if you purchase high dollar amounts (over $300). Just five money orders will cost you at least the same $5 you think you’re saving — I know you have more than five monthly bills. Too, you’re not allowed to buy more than a certain amount of any kind of money orders per day (I think it’s $1,500), thanks to the PATRIOT Act, because money orders were a staple of the financial lives of the seventh century throwbacks among us before 9/11. On top of that, I think the PATRIOT Act mandates a legal maximum $1,000 for any single money order — A lot of people have mortgage payments higher than that. On top of that, other PATRIOT Act regulations of money orders have gotten so stringent that a lot of places won’t accept them anymore as payment. And that’s not counting all the time and hassle and running around you’ll have to do – In case you haven’t noticed, gas still isn’t cheap. Point is, a typical middle class American household cannot reasonably financially operate on cash and money orders alone. Then again, a typical middle class American household should be able to afford the extra $5 a month — If it can’t, then it has a lot of problems.
Just thinking out loud here, maybe this is why BofA et al. won’t do away with this fee, because most of the people popping off about it now will realize that they have no real functional alternative. I do imagine that the banks will, or will be prodded into, adopt(ing) workarounds and/or forebearances for lower-income account holders.
A number of years ago, Citibank did something that pissed the NRA off. Gun owners ran Citibank asking to close their accounts and get their money in cash. Citibank quickly reversed whatever they did and got on their hands and knees and begged for forgiveness.
TRENDING: Cain: Black community ‘brainwashed’ into voting for Dems
Washington (CNN) – The one African-American running for the GOP presidential nomination said Wednesday the black community was ‘brainwashed’ for traditionally siding with liberal politicians.
“African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open minded, not even considering a conservative point of view,” Godfather’s Pizza executive Herman Cain said on CNN’s “The Situation Room” in an interview airing Wednesday between 5-7 p.m. ET. “I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative. So it’s just brainwashing and people not being open minded, pure and simple.”
Brainwashing, huh, Herman?
Black voters have voted almost monolithically for Democrats in almost every national election since 1932. If that’s all a result of mere brainwashing, then the Democrat Party of the United States has the most effective propaganda machine in the history of the world. If they suddenly came back to life, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot couldn’t work up enough combined envy worthy of this Democrat “Brainwashing Machine” that would be truly worthy of its “prowess.”
Let me posit an alternate and perhaps somewhat crazy explanation, Mr. Cain: Black voters vote almost 100% Democrat almost 100% of the time because they’re relatively sane people, even if they’re not high IQ Einsteins, and they’re merely choosing what is for them the more beneficial of the two major parties. The Democrat Party has been for a long time, is currently, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, far better than the Republicans (even as hard as today’s Republicans try) at handing out tangible and intangible government goodies to blacks.
Oh, and by the way, I have a better chance of hanging the moon than your 9-9-9 plan has of actually becoming law, even though I like it in theory and most of the substance, though I think there still needs to be a capital gains tax and a stair-stepped one. If there was any hint of the 9-9-9 plan taking credible legs in Congress, the tax lawyers, CPAs and their buddies both in and out of government would launch a head-spinning lobbying putsch to kill it. There are too many people making too much money off the complicated and convoluted tax laws for them to be undone with one stroke of an ink pen. Better to salami slice the big bad system out of existence one piece at a time.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry is defending his policy of allowing tuition assistance for illegal immigrants at state colleges and universities, saying the lack of a cohesive federal immigration policy forced his hand.
Perry tells CNBC in an interview that “we need to have an immigration policy that’s thoughtful.”
The Republican says that when he embraced the concept of tuition assistance in 2001 for illegal immigrants, he believed “it was in the best interest of our state to have these young people educated than kicking them to the curb.”
Perry also says that if elected president, he would solve the problem of drug trafficking, illegal immigration and violence along the southern border of the U.S. He declares that “we will stop the drug cartels and we will stop the illegal immigration.”
Oh, I get it now. His support for in-state tuition for the illegal alien children of illegal alien parents, his opposition to E-Verify, his dogged opposition to real physical border security, and his push for expensive multi-modal corridors (while the official TTC website was up, it showed a map of Texas and only Texas conjoined with Mexico, with the proposed TTC routes hooking up with important Mexican roads and highways), was all part of a secret Machiavellian plan to stop the drug trafficking and violence of Mexican gangs.
I’m a master of two of the three, and no slouch in hyperbole. Believe me, she was speaking her mind.
That said, this must mean that the Democrats think 2012 is going to be a disastrous defeat of Waterloo proportions.
Conveniently, she’s up in 2012 herself. North Carolina Gubernatorial elections are, like Missouri’s, held during Presidential years. Self-preservation, perhaps, Bev?
In the latest ruling, a Birmingham federal judge this afternoon again upheld most sections of Alabama’s tough new immigration law.
U.S. District Judge [***] this afternoon ruled on a lawsuit filed by a coalition civil rights groups and individuals seeking to block the law.
[***] did block the state from barring illegal immigrants from enrolling in public universities.
In the lawsuit filed by the Hispanic Interest Coaltion of Alabama and others, [***] also stopped the state from enforcing two new traffic laws, which would have set up $500 fines for blocking traffic to hire workers on a street.
But she let most other sections of the 72-page law take effect.
Earlier today, in her ruling on the lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, [***] refused to block a provision of the state law related to police stops and detentions of people suspected of being in the country illegally.
Similar laws in Arizona and Georgia had been blocked by other federal judges, but in her 115-page order, [***] disagreed with those rulings. She determined Congress has not prevented states from playing a role in immigration enforcement.
She also declined to block sections requiring schools to check the citizenship status of children and sections that would nullify contracts knowingly entered into with unauthorized aliens.
[***] refused to block a section making it a felony for “an alien not lawfully present in the United States” to apply for a license plate, driver’s license, business license or other business license.
[***] agreed with the Department of Justice on just four portions of its legal challenge. [***] ruled the state:
» Can’t stop an “unauthorized alien” from seeking work as an employee or independent contractor.
» Can’t prosecute those who assist unauthorized aliens. She blocked a large section that would make it against the law to conceal, harbor, transport or encourage an illegal alien to stay in Alabama. This includes portions of the law referring to landlords.
» Can’t stop businesses from deducting the wages they pay to unauthorized aliens from their state taxes.
» Can’t create a new protected class of workers. The new law would have allowed workers who were fired or not hired in favor of unauthorized aliens to sue employers for discrimination.
This Federal judge’s decision about Alabama’s immigration laws seem to be different than her counterpart’s injunction of Arizona SB 1070 last year. As an example, the Arizona section about day laborers avoid being enjoined because it was merely state traffic law. Yet, this one in Alabama enjoins that similar section.
However, her statement about states being able to help enforce Federal immigration law is profound. No judge who has ruled in the injunctive phase of the Arizona proceedings has issued a statement like that in any of their opinions. Taken as precedent, (which can’t always be assumed), this would strike down any Federal mechanisms that they use to limit immigration enforcement to themselves only. This could also be a stake through the heart of Obama’s “administrative amnesty.”
The NHL chose not to discipline Philadelphia Flyers forward Wayne Simmonds for his alleged homophobic slur because it could not “substantiate” that Simmonds hurled the epithet toward New York Rangers winger Sean Avery.
After a hearing with Simmonds on Tuesday, NHL senior vice president of hockey operations Colin Campbell released a statement calling commentary about race, ethnicity and sexual orientation “absolutely unacceptable,” but said there was not enough evidence to punish Simmonds.
“We have looked into the allegations relating to the possible use of a homophobic slur by a Flyers player in the Rangers/Flyers preseason game last night in Philadelphia. Since there are conflicting accounts of what transpired on the ice, we have been unable to substantiate with the necessary degree of certainty what was said and by whom,” Campbell said.
Translation: Mr. Simmonds is higher up on the PC Totem Pole than homosexuals, in the opinion of the NHL.
I can remember at least two instances in the last dozen or so years when white players supposedly made anti-black slurs, and the evidence was either as flimsy or even more so that they actually did it. But the players were fined or suspended anyway, and the NHLPA couldn’t be bothered to display any outrage.
Honestly, the NHL should mind its own (increasingly faltering) business.
It makes me wonder: Who else haven’t I heard of that I should have?
Ask me about a fifth place finisher in a New Hampshire U.S. Senate partisan primary in 1932? I could do it in my sleep. To tell you who Bob Cassilly was before yesterday? Couldn’t have done it to save my own life.
This conversation has probably taken place at least a hundred thousand times in St. Louis since yesterday morning:
Is this Labour’s William Hague? Schoolboy, 16, steals the show at party conference
A teenage schoolboy became the star of the Labour Party Conference and was hailed as ‘brilliant’ after a rousing speech in which he ripped into the ‘vicious’ Coalition.
In echoes of a teenage William Hague addressing the Tory conference in 1977, Rory Weal received a standing ovation from thousands of delegates and had Ed Miliband rushing to shake his hand.
Rory, 16, who lives with his mother Elaine and eight-year-old sister Emma in Maidstone, Kent, had the week off school to attend the conference in Liverpool.
The article shows at the bottom the 16-year old William Hague in the same situation in 1977.
So, if Mr. Weal is on the Hague Track, this means he’ll lose in a landslide national election in 2035, and then settle for Foreign Secretary in 2044.
Except by then, England will be part of The Caliphate, especially if the Labour Party he loves so much and even the Tories he hates so much have any say in the matter. Better convert to Islam now, buddy boy.
But if you’re going to steal, you should probably steal deodorant.
WMAQ-NBC-5 Chicago:
Exonerated Death-Row Inmate Charged with Theft
A former death row inmate who was exonerated days before execution was arrested Friday, accused of stealing deodorant from a South Side Walgreens.
Anthony Porter’s 1999 release from prison was key to Illinois ending the death penalty this year.
The Chicago Tribune reports the 56-year-old was arrested and charged with retail theft. He’s been ordered held on $10,000 bail.
Unfortunately for him, for what Walgreens asks for most of its merchandise, he probably elevated himself into felony theft just by stealing a few sticks.
By the way, that post of mine from April 2010 is still in my top three daily traffic winners day in and day out, sometimes number two, but rarely anymore number one.
Patrons mistake ice cream shop mascot for KKK robes
Once and for all, people, it’s an ice cream cone.
The owners of Ice Cream Family Corner and Sandwiches at the busy intersection of South Pine Avenue and Southwest 17th Street say their two-month-old business is getting creamed because passers-by have mistaken their white-hooded ice cream cone mascot for a KKK protester.
(snip)
Interestingly, Diaz, who is from Puerto Rico, had never heard of the KKK before this controversy. She can’t even quite get her tongue around the name, referring to the white supremacist group as the “Ku Ku Klan” without a hint of irony or sarcasm.
Sure, that’s because Puerto Rico, for all its many faults, doesn’t have an anal-retentive media nor a panoply of paranoia-industrial complex money hustling outfits spreading fear and invective about an organization that hasn’t mattered since the late 1920s.
Despite such carnage from “errant gunfire,” public health officials know little about it. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks accidental shootings. But they do not count stray bullets.
Dr. Garen Wintemute wanted to know more. He is a professor of emergency medicine at the University of California-Davis. Wintemute and his colleagues first had to decide what made a bullet a stray one. They came up with a bullet that “escaped the sociogeographic space or perimeter customarily set by the circumstances surrounding the firing of the gun …”
Basically, Wintemute said in an interview, you know it when you see it. A bullet fired at five men on a corner but that hit the wrong person was not a stray. But it was stray if the unintended victim stood a block away.
IOW, “stray bullet” is like “porn.” You know it when you see it, but if you have to define it for legal purposes, you wind up with some convoluted language. In the case of legislation that attempts to define “porn,” the wording is pretty much verbal porn all by itself. I’ll give you a hint: The words “penetration” and “emission” (use your imagination) are found in numerous places in Missouri’s criminal statutes. In the case of “stray bullets,” one has to invent a new vacuous phrase like “sociogeographic space.” I get the feeling that “sociogeographic space” is a politically correct way of saying that black thug doesn’t have a good enough aim to hit another black thug.
Jennifer Joyce: Prosecutor for life — or something else?
(snip)
Does Joyce want to prosecutor forever? Maybe — that’s apparently the approach being taken by Mayor Slay, who is also seeking a fourth term.
But Joyce has become a tad more visible recently, hiring a public relations consultant and working social media.
Her campaign also commissioned a citywide poll this month that, a volunteer says, had “remarkable” results.
If Missouri Democrats ever wanted an attorney general that didn’t come from the State Senate, Joyce’s long legal CV certainly has the makings of a law-and-order candidate.
Others have used the prosecutor’s office as a springboard — most notably Tom Eagleton, who was elected St. Louis circuit attorney in his 20s.
If Joyce is looking to expand her political horizons, she has just the right person as a the “featured guest” at her campaign event Thursday: U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, who before her Capitol Hill career was the district attorney in Kansas City.
Actually, I don’t vote for “None of the Above.” I vote for her and Bob McCulloch to team up and have a nice, long, and very prosperous private law practice, with Glenn Boyer as the Chief of Security for the firm’s physical plant and cub lawyers.
Then and only then will it be truly safe to be an Obama critic in this town.
Five St. Clair County Jail inmates face new charges after fighting in jail
It was a fight over cigarettes that sparked a major disturbance at the St. Clair County Jail according to sheriff’s deputies. Now five inmates are facing new charges and bringing new attention to serious safety concerns.
The St. Clair County Jail has a capacity of 365 inmates but it’s housing more than 500. Sheriff’s deputies say to handle the overcrowding 27 inmates were living in the gym when the fight broke out.
(snip)
No one was seriously injured but one attacker, 31 Year old Antonio Brown, suffered a broken jaw. He and four others are now charged with mob action including 20 year old Dominic Cooks, 30 year old Deasires Cox, 30 year old Terrann Garrett, and 27 year old Torel White, all felons.
All felons? Why aren’t they in state prison?
Oops, I forgot. This is Illinois. No room, no money, or rather, no money until it wants to start a “please don’t deport me” hotline.
Monkeys at typewriters ‘close to reproducing Shakespeare’
The virtual monkeys, created by an American programmer, have already typed up the whole of the poem A Lover’s Complaint and are 99.99 per cent of the way through the Bard’s complete works.
The experiment attempts to prove the theory that an infinite number of monkeys sitting at an infinite number of typewriters would eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare by chance.
Yeah, but the problem is that the monkeys, either virtual or real, don’t have the ability to hold their accidental creation in high literary esteem.
Sorry, but I’ll leave the literature writing to real human authors.
UPDATE 9/29: As you can see, the Googitburo hit delete. Thankfully, I downloaded and saved it before they could do that. I’ll e-mail it to you if you want.
U.S. Government Used Taxpayer Funds to Buy, Sell Weapons During ‘Fast and Furious,’ Documents Show
Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel — the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.
This disclosure, revealed in documents obtained by Fox News, could undermine the Department of Justice’s previous defense that Operation Fast and Furious was a “botched” operation where agents simply “lost track” of weapons as they were transferred from one illegal buyer to another. Instead, it heightens the culpability of the federal government as Mexico, according to sources, has opened two criminal investigations into the operation that flooded their country with illegal weapons.
Unfortunately, Drudge flubbed this story when he flashed it in big bold letters about how taxpayers paid for F&F. Most people who would read that banner would say, “Duh.” Except this is an important distinction and difference to grok — Until now, we were led to think that F&F/Gunwalker/Gunrunner simply involved the ATF telling gun dealers to let illegal purchasers buy guns with their own money to let them “walk” into Mexico. Now we know that, at least in a lot of these deals, the ATF/DOJ actually bought the guns with taxpayer money, then sold them to the Mexican cartels.
What does this mean? You and I murdered Brian Terry.
Christie Begins Three-State Tour as Donors Urge 2012 Bid
(snip)
Christie today was to attend a luncheon for the New Jersey Republican Party in Clayton, Missouri, and then a dinner at a private residence for the Missouri Republican Party, according to a schedule released by the New Jersey party.
Tomorrow he will attend a morning event for Ann Wagner, a Missouri Republican running for Congress, and then he will head to California for three fundraisers to benefit the New Jersey Republican Party. On Sept. 29 he will be in Louisiana to help raise money for that state Republican Party’s Victory Fund.
(snip)
Contributors to New Jersey’s Republican Party this year include New York billionaire John Catsimatidis, who gave $25,000 in June; Kenneth Langone, co-founder of Home Depot Inc., who gave $10,000 in June; and Paul Fireman, founder of Reebok International Ltd., with $25,000 in May, according to campaign finance records.
Christie has said Langone urged him to run for president during a meeting in June. Langone is one of the donors again urging a reluctant Christie to enter the race, Politico reported. Langone has been asking potential donors to hold back on supporting Perry or his top rival, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Politico said.
So, a co-founder of Homespanic Depot wants Krispy Christie to run? That should tell you everything you need to know about Christie. Homespanic Depot is the store which practically brought the world the day laborer “phenomenon.”
BTW, do the dullards that run the Republican Party here in Missouri think that Christie has big war chest of political capital? I’m not taking this as good news that the the Missouri Republican establishment is hitching their wagon to Krispy Christie, and any sympathy I had toward Ann Wagner just went out the window — Of course, that really happened when Todd Akin got in the race. If Wagner has her money in the Krispy Christie/Homespanic Depot money pot, you know she’ll be open borders and amnesty if she gets into the Senate.
Note: The misspelling of the title of the publication I quote is deliberate.
I’m taking comments now, on stories on or later than September 21. I’ll leave a story open for comments for three weeks (21 days), and any comment with 5 or more URLs is considered spam. Also, don’t expect me to participate much, maybe except for today, as I’ve been stuck inside since yesterday morning with an earache and now a low-grade fever.
* The New Map IS being taken to court, just for not the reasons I thought. Though it will go nowhere — The ONLY kind of lawsuits against redistricting maps that usually have a prayer are in Federal court and on Civil Rights/Voting Rights (i.e. racial) grounds. Since the NAACP is happy with MO-1 and MO-5, nothing doing on that front.
NATIONAL
* I just don’t get it. Public schools practically teach teenagers the best way to have sex of every kind, but when they want to hint around it at homecoming, then the schools have a problem with pretend sex or dry humping all of a sudden.
* It seems to me that these parents did right by raising their son, except for one major mistake — Sending him to public schools.
Pardon me, but didn’t Starbucks recently make the executive decision to brand itself out of existence? Because a typical Starbucks customer has a problem with “big corporations,” (even though they really don’t, in all honesty), and Starbucks was getting to be a big corporation, the suits in Seattle thought they had to convert their coffee houses into entities which seemed to be generic mom-and-pop owned shops, going so far as it genericize its coffee cups. The problem is, there are more regular Starbucks customers whose patronage has far more to do with status — Like a Rolex on the wrist or a BMW in the garage, the allure of Starbucks wasn’t the merchandise, it was showing off that you can afford Starbucks. When Starbucks self-genericized, it pissed off that crowd, because they could no longer run around with cardboard coffee cups that read “Starbucks” as a status symbol.
Except that EMAW is more a sports thing and a recruiting tool — I doubt too many people in Manhattan, Kansas make a pastime of going to the women’s softball games.
* I looked it up — Dung Heap passed the Iowa bar, and is still currently a lawyer, so I presume he kept up with his CLE.
Remember, lawyers who are admitted to the state bar are officers of the judicial system of their state, and implicitly, because the state is part of the United States, officers of the Federal judicial system, also. They are not allowed to advise people to break the law.
Just remember, when you invade the world, you necessarily invite the world. While neither Denmark nor Belgium are pure white paradises, they have their own troublesome non-white lumpen populations, they’re far better organized in the populist-nationalist resistance that will eventually solve the problem.
* So attached is the Labour Party to the welfare state that it’s too much for its current leader to call welfare cheats “cheats.” I think Miliband’s reticence in this stead has a lot to do with a good portion of those “cheats” being non-white, therefore important Labour voting blocs.
SCIENCE AND TECH
Sadly, this is taken from the same orbiting space station that we do not have the public ability to reach at this moment.
This makes sense, even from a relatively recent historical standpoint — English is the world’s dominant language mainly because of the testosterone of English-speaking white men of the last few centuries.
1. At the time of his execution, 23 years old, Utz was a Major in Sterling Price’s Army. Without knowing anything, one would conclude that either Utz was that skilled to rise that far that young, or Price’s Army was that desperate. I understand, from local SCV experts and historians, that it was far more the former.
2. With Utz at the time of his capture was a male ancestor of the modern day Fusz family of St. Louis car dealers. Obviously, he was not executed — that family, even back then, had the money and influence that they spread around to save his life. He did a few years in Jefferson City (?), and I think was out before the WBTS ended.
Yeah, I’m sure its name is right, but I suspect wrong age. Reality a few years higher than pretense.
* Francoeur, Giavotella and Moustakas. France, Italy and Greece. Who knew Kansas City could be so ethnic? That was always our strong suit on this side of the state.
Sharpton: “Time For Feds And Not States To Try Death Penalty Cases”
Rev. Al Sharpton will call upon the U.S. Justice Department to take the lead in capital punishment cases across the country, and strip states from prosecuting them.
Sharpton, who called the execution of Troy Davis, a “bleak day in the American justice system,” appeared on the Today Show to state his reasoning behind his trip to D.C. on September 23rd calling for the new law.
“We must not only mourn what happened to Troy Davis but take strong measures so that it does happen again. I promised Troy when I got involved in this case in 2007 that NAN and I no matter what the outcome would fight to change the law. We are calling upon the federal government to supercede and set boundaries before any State can move forward with capital punishment prosecution,” said Sharpton.
Sharpton says that unless scientific or physical evidence is part of a case, the states should have no right to execute a person who many presume to be innocent.
“We must not forget that Troy Davis was executed by the eye witness testimony of nine people with no physical evidence, no DNA, and no scientific evidence. Seven of those eyewitnesses recanted,” said Sharpton. “Under the law, we are proposing that the Troy Davis case would never have been tried as a capital case in the first place. Multiple studies have established how flawed eyewitness testimony is and 75% of the cases overturned by DNA evidence were cases that also had flawed eye witness testimony.”
“Flawed eye-witness testimony.” There were 34 eye-witnesses, only two really “recanted,” the other five suddenly “don’t remember,” all probably at the pressure of Davis’s defense lawyers. Problem is, testimony given on the witness stand is under oath, while a post-trial recantation isn’t under oath. I tend to believe the story given under oath, when the sword of Damocles of felony perjury is hanging over your head. Still, that leaves 27 people who stuck to their story.
Then there’s Sharpton’s main point. Why does Mr. Resist We Much want all capital cases going through the Federal courts?
I can give you a few “good” (i.e. bad) reasons:
1. Five words: President Obama has commutation power.
2. Four words: Democrat Federal Judicial appointments.
3. In a Federal criminal trial, the U.S. Attorney’s office is the prosecution. U.S. Attorneys are all appointed by the President, and s/he gets to hire and fire his or her Assistant U.S. Attorneys at will. The problem (for us) is that in the post-Reagan era, the U.S. Attorneys tend to have the racial courage that God gave a snail. If they’re not out and outright evil on race, the ones that Clinton and Obama appointed, they’re milquetoast and scared of the race issue, the appointees of the two Bushes. A Democrat-appointed USA/AUSA will almost never bring a capital case against a black defendant, a Republican-appointed one might want to, but is too scare of the “R” word and too cowered by the civil rights loudmouths really ever to do so.
The only possible way which this plan might backfire in Sharpton’s face is that Federal jury pools can come from a wide area. For instance, in St. Louis, a Federal cause that the USA/AUSA at St. Louis brings can draw from a jury pool of residents of most of Eastern Missouri, not just St. Louis City, even though the Federal Court House is in St. Louis City. With a less black jury pool, you have a better chance at conviction and application of the death penalty in the cases where the USA/AUSA brings a capital case. However, like I said above, that would hardly happen with black defendants.
It would take a Federal Constitutional amendment to make Sharpton’s wishes a reality, because most capital murders are state jurisdiction trials. There is no way that you’re going to get 290 House members, 67 Senators and the majority of 38 state legislatures at this time or at any point in the foreseeable future to sign on to this, and by “this,” I mean a mechanism which would effectively end the death penalty for black and Hispanic murderers.
Parents look for a way out of Kansas City School District
The Kansas City School District took its case to the people Wednesday evening, urging a packed house to rally around schools that have been abandoned too many times in the past.
While many in the crowd joined in support, it was apparent by the number of questions about a chance to change districts that many parents also are eyeing a way out.
Parents plotting an escape from the district may think their day comes Jan. 1 — when the district loses accreditation and triggers a law allowing transfers.
But the real day to circle on their calendars may be Jan. 23. That’s when a St. Louis County circuit courtroom is scheduled to take up the matter of Turner v. Clayton School District.
It’s a good bet that few if any students will be moving between any districts before then.
That court case now carries the weighty fortunes of school districts that would receive students — districts that want to preserve their ability to control the number of students entering their doors.
The case likewise will reveal the fate of the unaccredited districts, including St. Louis and Kansas City, which could incur financial disaster if they have to pay transportation and tuition for too many departing students.
I mean, why would anyone want their kids not to go to the KCPS? After all, they got Olympic sized swimming pools and Model UN Halls. A Federal judge ruled that the state had to pony up the money to make it so.
Waiting for the SPLC to declare possession of the Federalist Papers to be a hate crime.
Why? Read Fed 46, and grok Madison’s response to the Anti-Feds over their worries that the 1787-drafted Constitution would dangerously deposit power to the Federal government at the expense of the States. The last long paragraph is the meat.
Too bad history itself had less faith in Madison’s assumptions than Madison himself did.
An arrested teen admitted to participating in a robbery and attack on a 73-year-old man as part of the Knockout Kings game, according to the probable cause statement for the case.
Prosecutors charged Edduar Reyes, 17, with second-degree robbery and resisting or interfering with an arrest.
According to the documents, a group of people attacked the man as we he was walking to his car. The man was knocked unconscious and when he woke-up he realized his wallet was missing and called police.
Two officers attempted to stop the suspect, but he took off running.
After the suspect was captured, he admitted to participating in the crime.
The title is Spanish for “Knockout King,” in case you were wondering.
Perry: “I Don’t Think You Have a Heart” If You Oppose In-State Tuition for Children of Illegal Immigrants
During Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum all took shots at Rick Perry’s record on illegal immigration. Bachmann said that Texas’s law allowing in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants acted like a “magnet” for illegal immigrants. Perry’s response was forceful and personal. “I don’t think you have a heart,” Perry told his critics.
“If you say that we should not educate children who come into our state for no other reason than that they’ve been brought their through no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart,” Perry said. “We need to be educating these children because they will become a drag on our society. I think that’s what Texans wanted to do. Out of 181 members of the Texas legislature when this issue came up [there were] only four dissenting votes. This was a state issue. Texas voted on it. And I still support it today.”
Except this very same Rickroller Perry in this very same debate said that instead of physical border security, we would do better to remove the magnets for illegal aliens, the implication being that hardly any would come and most illegals presently here would self-deport. What is free education for your children? Sounds like a benefit magnet to me.
By the way, I bought that reasoning until recently, that we could remove the magnets and could do without real physical security (fencing, walls, troops, etc.). However, the more I come to read and understand, I think there would STILL be a massive south-to-north “migration” even if we removed or never had the benefit magnets. The reason is that life in Mexico and points south sucks, and it sucks that much. Any real permanent solution to the immigration issue won’t come until the Hugo Chavez style center-left of Latin American politics gains and holds power long enough to implement redistributionist programs. Mexico need not suck — It’s one of the wealthiest nations on Earth.
One more thing from last night’s immigration section of the debate — I have to address this Ron Paul hobby horse head on, about a fence that could keep them out is one that could keep us in. That’s true in theory, but here in the practical reality and history of the real world, border security is only used for the intended purpose of its creators. The Berlin Wall was built to keep Easterners in, and while it “could” have been used to keep Westerners out, for propaganda purposes, the Eastern Bloc openly welcomed West-to-East defectors, the few that there were. A real physical set of walls, fences or troops at the Mexican border would only be put there with the intent to keep them out, and therefore, that’s all it would be used for. And besides, what kind of American would want to flee to Mexico anyway, other than someone on the lam? I suppose Ron Paul has never heard of airline flights — They can easily scale fences and walls.
This is big time egg in not only the Rickroller’s face, but also the other Rickroller’s face, that being Florida Governor Rick Scott. He was popping off all week about how the winner of the straw poll would be the eventual nominee. (I wonder if he still thinks that.) He mainly said that because he thought Perry, whom he has quasi-endorsed, would win. When you tell white Republican voters in a state heavily impacted by non-white immigration right to their own faces in their own state that they don’t have a heart if they want to give the children of illegal aliens a benefit ahead of native-born citizens, what do you think is going to happen to you when they have a say in the matter?
As for Herman Cain, I suppose the straw poll voters think that since we’ve gone black, we really shouldn’t be going back. (Rimshot) I still hold to me prediction that Cain will get no more than 10% of the vote in any one Primary state and average about 5% — This straw poll was an anomaly.
One more thing in the update — I bought up the issue of this Ron Paul hobby horse in AR this weekend. Someone responded to me by listing a number of legislative mechanisms that have grown out of control, being used for non-intended purposes. All that is true, but moot. Here in the real world, the kind of people who want to construct that Leviathan state also oppose physical border security at the US-Mexico border, and not coincidentally, I might add. The kind of people who want the border security also oppose the Leviathan state, again, not a coincidence. Leviathan worshipers need massive non-white immigration and a browning America to help make their dreams come true, and likewise, in our idea of a relatively controlled government (though not necessarily Anarcho-Capitalist), we need America to stay as white as possible. If one is really worried about border security being used to keep us in simply because it wouldn’t have that intent at first, one really shouldn’t worry that much. The only way the border fence/wall/troops ever happens is if us WNs/RRs gain power, and we wouldn’t want the Leviathan state anyway. If we don’t gain power, the border wall will never get built, and Leviathan will grow. Likewise, theoretical models can be used to “prove” anything. If the summer was hot, there’s a model that proves that man-made global warming is happening, and there’s also a model that proves that AGW isn’t happening. If the winter was cold, same deal. If it was 72 and sunny in Malibu yesterday, same deal. There are models that prove that the “official” 9/11 story was true, there are models that prove that the official 9/11 story cannot possibly be true. Point is, global climate and 9/11 didn’t happen in the realm of theoretical models, they happened in the real world.
USDA Secretary: We Must ‘Create Appropriate Transition’ for What Americans Eat
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told members of the National Restaurant Association on Monday that Americans need to “adjust” their tastes so that they like the kind of food the government believes they should eat—and “we have to make sure that what we do is create the appropriate transition.”
