Woman Faces 93-Days Jail — for Vegetable Garden

Bureaucrats, evidently with nothing better to do, are taking a Michigan woman to court on a misdemeanor charge … for growing vegetables in her front yard.

Bass’ garden is a little unique because it’s in her front yard.

“We thought it’d be really cool to do it so the neighbors could see. The kids love it. The kids from the neighborhood all come and help,” she said.

Bass’ cool garden has landed her in hot water with the City of Oak Park. Code enforcement gave her a warning, then a ticket and now she’s been charged with a misdemeanor.

As usual, the dispute centers on interpretation of an unclear ordinance.

“That’s not what we want to see in a front yard,” said Oak Park City Planner Kevin Rulkowski.

Why? The city is pointing to a code that says a front yard has to have suitable, live, plant material. The big question is what’s “suitable?”

The bureaucrats of Oak Park define “suitable” as “common.”  That sort of thinking leads to cookie-cutter blandness.

Welcome to the Nanny State Militant.

Via http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/local/julie-bass-of-oak-park-faces-misdemeanor-charge-for-vegetable-garden-20110630-wpms

 

The Loooooong Arm of the Law!

What luck: ticketed for speeding by the same cop — twice — 12,000 miles apart:

The Daily Mail reports that the unnamed driver was pulled over by officer Andy Flitton in the UK two years ago and again recently in New Zealand. The unlucky driver, who island-hopped to New Zealand after 12 years in the UK, recognized the ticket-giver as the same man who caught him breaking the law on the A5 near London. The officer had recently relocated southThe Daily Mail reports that the unnamed driver was pulled over by officer Andy Flitton in the UK two years agThe Daily Mail reports that the unnamed driver was pulled over by officer Andy Flitton in the UK two years ago and again recently in New Zealand. The unlucky driver, who island-hopped to New Zealand after 12 years in the UK, recognized the ticket-giver as the same man who caught him breaking the law on the A5 near London. The officer had recently relocated south after 26 years on the force in England.

 

Limiting Excessive Law-making

Some of those ancient Greeks took the issue law-making seriously:

A Locrian, who proposed any new law, stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.

(From Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume IV, Chapter XLIV : Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.)

via Ancient History Sourcebook: Edward Gibbon: The Idea of Roman Jurisprudence.

 

Dismissal of Black Panther Case a ‘Travesty of Justice’

This is explosive.  So watch the mainstream media ignore or downplay it.

Background: the Dept. of Justice had substantively won a civil rights case for voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party.  Nonetheless, the Obama DOJ suddenly dismissed the case,  to the consternation of the judge and several career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division of DOJ.

Now, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is investigating whether the DOJ refuses to prosecute violations of voting rights if the victims are white.

The Justice Department is ignoring civil rights cases that involve white victims and wrongly abandoned a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party last year, a top department official testified Friday. He called the department’s conduct a “travesty of justice.”

Christopher Coates, former voting chief for the department’s Civil Rights Division, spoke under oath Friday morning before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in a long-awaited appearance that had been stonewalled by the Justice Department for nearly a year.

Coates discussed in depth the DOJ’s decision to dismiss intimidation charges against New Black Panther members who were videotaped outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008 dressed in military-style uniforms — one was brandishing a nightstick — and allegedly hurling racial slurs.

The case has drifted in and out of the limelight over the past year as the commission has struggled to investigate it. Former Justice official J. Christian Adams fueled the controversy when he testified in July and accused his former employer of showing “hostility” toward cases that involved white victims and black defendants. Nearly three months later, Coates backed up Adams’ claims. In lengthy and detailed testimony, he said the department cultivates a “hostile atmosphere” against “race-neutral enforcement” of the Voting Rights Act.

In general, I think a Republican take-over of the House and/or Senate could help Mr. Obama’s 2012 reelection prospects, due to the potential for triangulation that it would offer him.

However, Republicans in control of either house could hold hearings to investigate matters such as DOJ’s alleged refusal to protect the civil rights of white victims.  Those hearings would be political dynamite.

via FOXNews.com – Voting Rights Official Calls Dismissal of Black Panther Case a ‘Travesty of Justice’.

 

BP’s New Scandal: Secret Ticket Request Line

According to Mother Jones, for years BP has used a secret phone line to provide California state officials with free tickets to events at its Arco Arena in Sacramento:

For more than a decade, BP has operated a hush-hush phone line that California lawmakers can call to request box seats to NBA games and concerts at the Sacramento stadium named after its West Coast subsidiary.

In the past five years, BP has given state officials more than 1,200 complimentary tickets to the Arco Arena, hosting them in its corporate suite to see Sacramento Kings games, World Extreme Cagefighting matches, and Britney Spears and Lil Wayne concerts. Getting the tickets is as easy as calling the BP ticket request line, an exclusive, unpublished phone number that appears to exist for the sole purpose of granting freebies to lawmakers, regulators, and their staffs.

The mechanics of this scam sound like a spy novel, or a drug deal:

You make a request, leave it on the voicemail, and at some date the tickets either magically appear or they don’t,” says a legislative consultant who gave me the ticket line’s number and spoke on condition of anonymity. “They don’t talk to you; you just see ‘em or you don’t.” The ticket line’s message was taken down sometime in the past week, shortly after I began my reporting.

Tickets just “magically appear or they don’t”.  Well, then.  It’s okay, because we never talked to anyone.

Besides, I’m sure that all those hard-working politicians and bureaucrats in Sacramento deserve those freebies.  After all, they’re doing such a great job running the state.

Come to think of it, World Extreme Cagefighting is a good description of the California legislature.

via BP’s Secret Ticket Request Line | Mother Jones.

 

Great Read: Agent Zigzag

Just finished reading Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben Macintyre.  Great book. It’s the real-life story of Edward Chapman, an English criminal, scoundrel, and very effective charmer, who became a double agent during World War II, nominally working for the German Abwehr, doubling for the British MI5, and constantly tripling for his own account.  In some ways, Chapman’s story is more improbable than a James Bond thriller, and Macintyre tells it well.

 

Ancient law calls all men to archery practice

Using a defense statute from the Middle Ages, the Vicar of Wiltshire recently summoned every man, woman, and child to gather for archery practice.  Those who complied were rewarded with a bar, a barbecue and live music.

The purpose of the “archery practice”?  To celebrate the addition of a lavatory in the parish church.  The  Brits really are different.

BBC News – Wiltshire vicar revives ancient archery law.

 

Wrongfully in prison for 35 years, but not bitter

James Bain is a man I’d like to meet.

Meeting 54-year-old James Bain, the one thing that stands out is that the smile never seems to leave his face. He appears happy and positive, and the bitterness that might be buried inside a man who was wrongly sent to prison for 35 years is nowhere to be found.

“I kind of see myself as a man of God and being like Joseph,” he said.

“In a sense, I feel like a bear, coming out of hibernation. Like, they come out to eat, mine would be coming out to enjoy what I have missed.”

Bain has missed a lot. His life was returned to him and his family in December, when a Florida judge freed him after DNA testing proved he did not kidnap and rape a 9-year-old boy in 1974 in Lake Wales, Florida.

I cannot fully understand James Bain’s remarkable grace.

A good materialist would say that his attitude is helped by the fact that he’s about to get $1.75 million from the State of Florida ($50,000 per year of wrongful imprisonment).  But that neither seems adequate compensation, nor explains his lack of bitterness.

via Man wrongfully imprisoned for decades happy to start relearning life – CNN.com.

 

Quiz: How many buses to deport all illegal aliens?

A fascinating data point, from Foreign Policy magazine:

If the United States deported all its illegal immigrants at once, how long would the bus convoy be?

a) 18 miles

b) 180 miles

c) 1,800 miles

Answer below the photo.

Answer:

C, 1,800.   To deport the 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States en masse, it would take more than 200,000 buses, stretching more than 1,800 miles, according to a December 2009 Center for American Progress (CAP) report….

The cost would be nearly $300 billion over five years, the think tank estimates.

via Quiz: If the U.S. deported its illegal immigrants at once, how long would the bus convoy be? | FP Passport.

 

Ecaped convicts evade capture disguised as sheep

Two prison escapees have (so far) evaded 300 Argentine police, by disguising themselves as SHEEP.

The pair dressed in full sheepskin fleeces, complete with heads, to lie low among farm flocks.

Robbers Maximiliano Pereyra, 25, and Ariel Diaz, 28, stole the sheep hides from a ranch after breaking out of an Argentinian maximum security prison a week ago.

And they have managed to evade the 300 cops on their trail – despite locals seeing them running through fields at night….

Police say spotting the pair among thousands of sheep is “almost impossible”. But one warned: “They can’t pull the wool over our eyes forever.”

I don’t know; sounds like some pretty woolly eyes!

But I predict that this manhunt will end right about the time that police release an excited ram into the flock.

via TWO escaped convicts dodge manhunt by dressing as sheep | The Sun |News.

 

Piracy: Dutch sidestep EU red tape to rescue German ship

In this image released by the Royal Dutch Navy Monday April 5, 2010, a boarding party slides down a rope from the frigate Tromp’s Lynx helicopter onto the mv Taipan. The Dutch Defense Ministry says one of its Navy frigates has freed a German merchant ship and its 15-strong crew from pirates off the coast of Somalia after the Dutch ship’s helicopter fired on the captured freighter’s bridge and arrested 10 pirates who had boarded the ship on Monday morning about 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of Somalia. The German ship’s crew members had locked themselves into a secure area of the ship and were unharmed. One Dutch marine was slightly injured during the boarding. The Defense Ministry statement says that despite damage to its bridge, the German container ship was able to resume its voyage. (AP Photo/Royal Dutch Navy)

Way to go, Dutch!

via The Associated Press: Dutch sidestep EU red tape to rescue German ship.

 

Fleeing Police, Man Hops Fence Into Prison

Cleveland police have discovered a new way to apprehend fleeing suspects:

If a screenwriter put the scene in a movie, it would seem too far-fetched.

A high-speed chase in Cleveland ended when four suspects abandoned their car on the side of the road and took off on foot. Police say they quickly tracked down three of the men. The fourth, however, managed to scale a 30-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, jumped and landed — in a state prison for women.

And whatever else Cleveland may lack, their police have a talent for understatement:

It doesn’t happen every day, that’s for sure,” a Garfield Heights police spokesman said. “They’re not always this easy to catch.”

Police found several bags of marijuana in the car, and one very unlucky suspect in the prison.

via Fleeing Police, Man Hops Fence Into Women’s Prison – AOL News.

 

Spirit of Liberty

As Judge Learned Hand once observed,

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right….

I wish that Congress would get that message, before it’s too late.

 

German homeschoolers granted US asylum

A US Immigration Judge has granted political asylum to a German couple who chose to homeschool their children, after Germany’s highest court ruled that social services officials could remove children from their parents.

After that decision, Romeike said, “We knew we had to leave the country.”

“During the last 10-20 years the curriculum in public schools has been more and more against Christian values,” he said of his decision to teach his children at home.

According to Mr. Romeike, when his oldest children were in public schools they had problems with violence, bullying and peer pressure.  The Romeikes took their three oldest children out of public school, for which they were fined the equivalent of about $10,000 over a two-year period.

We didn’t pay it all because we couldn’t,” he said. “We went to court and tried to fight against it – without success.”

Reportedly, the Immigration Judge considered the right to homeschool a fundamental human right, and Germany’s attempt to punish the exercise of that right warranted the grant of asylum in the US.

This will make a very interesting precedent.  And opens the question: What other rights have similar status?

via German homeschoolers granted political asylum – washingtonpost.com.

 

North Face Sues South Butt for Trademark Infringement

The North Face clothing company has sued an enterprising teenager for patent infringement.   The teen, Jimmy Winkelmann, formed South Butt to help raise money for college.

Evidently, he’s doing fairly well: North Face’s complaint alleges that South Butt had sales of over $100,000 last month.

I’m confident that North Face will come to regret this lawsuit.  It gives South Butt much more exposure than it otherwise would have, and it makes North Face look like the Evil Empire.  Expect jokes on late night TV.

I liked the statement on the South Butt web site:

If you are unable to discern the difference between a face and a butt, we encourage you to buy North Face products.”

Link: The North Face Sues The South Butt for Trademark Infringement – News – ABA Journal.