The top 5 albums of all time:
1. Blonde on Blonde, Bob Dylan, 1966
2. Rubber Soul, The Beatles, 1966
3. The Gilded Palace of Sin, Original Flying Burito Bros., 1968
4. Who’s Next, The Who, 1971 and
5. Live at the Fillmore East, Allman Brothers Band, 1971
Prove me wrong.
Do you believe that dinosaurs cavorted with Adam and Eve together in the Garden of Eden? That the Earth is a mere 6,000 years old? That Noah even got all the dinosaurs on the Ark (not counting all the bugs) in anticipation of the great Flood? If you do; I mean, if you really believe this to have been the way of this planet we live on, in contradiction of the evolutionary evidence that just keeps stacking up day after day, then plan your next vacation for a visit to The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. (more…)
Now that the Amarillo-Globe News has effectively and permanently wrecked whatever expectations the owner of the Amarillo Activity Youth Center might have harbored about its success in this town, one might want to inquire into the motivations behind the paper’s investigative “scoop” into the background of the owner’s son and his “questionable behavior with students.” Granted the article concerning Matthew Hite’s interactions with students created a lot of smoke, it’s now obvious that whatever charges were ever contemplated against the young man were determined to be flighty at best. If not, please explain the circumstances of the Class C misdemeanor assault to which Hite pled to in November of 2006.
David Pittman, cub reporter for the paper, didn’t question the prosecutor who made the offer nor did he contact the child who was the subject of the investigation. He had access to the student’s identity since the paper reported that it had obtained a copy of the APD narrative report which is normally unavailable to third parties. I can only conclude that given these glaring omissions, Pittman most likely have found out that the incident had no sexual connotations whatsoever and that surely would have detracted from the article’s sex appeal. Remember, everything had be geared toward presenting the target in the most compromising light possible since the byline tarred Hite with “questionable behavior with students.” So where’s the fire?
The rest of the article is a textbook case of personal condemnation through the use of casual hearsay, stacking inference on top of inference and incomplete reporting. (more…)
I’ve been meaning to take some time to post the following and thought now would be as good a time as any. I’m dog tired after Maryland and the Court of Criminal Appeals but here goes.
I came across a snippet about how Kenneth R. Willard, a Kansas Republican who voted with the conservative majority in that state in 2005 when the school board changed the state’s science standards to allow the inclusion of so-called intelligent design (the ideological, uptown cousin of creationism), is now running as the only candidate to serve as president of the National Association of State Boards of Education. Scientists who have been active in the nation’s evolution debate say they will thwart his candidacy but it is not clear that they can. Imagine, a man whose views on the origin of life mirrors that of an individual who lived during an era ignorant of the teachings of such intellectual giants like Copernicus, Galileo, Plank, Einstein, Curie, Crick, not to mention Darwin. I wonder if Mr. Willard would deny the existence of astronomy, biology, geology and physics in the same sweeping breath that he does evolution? This causes me to reproduce the following short essay from Charles L. Rulon below. Enjoy. (more…)
On the home page to www.whosarat.com, a website devoted to exposing the identities of government cooperating witnesses, there are three “rats of the week” highlighted for the given week. These cooperating witnesses are identified by name, mug shots and disclosure of court documents which detail the particulars of their bargain with prosecutors in exchange for lenient sentences. The site boasts that it has identified over 4,300 informers and outed 400 undercover agents, many of them from the documents obtained from court files over the Internet. A spokesman for the site, Anthony Capone, says “everybody has a choice in life about what they want to do for a living. Nobody likes a tattletale.” What started out as a modest, part-time project launched by Sean Bucci after he was indicted in Boston on marijuana charges based on information provided by an informant morphed into a site which attracted thousands of postings, many supplemented with court documents. (Mr. Bucci has since been tried and convicted; his sentencing is set for June).
You can imagine what a treasure trove some criminal defense lawyers and defendants might consider whosarat.com. Not so with federal prosecutors. As this is written, the Justice Department is actively engaged in persuading the federal judiciary and the court system to make some fundamental changes to the kind of information made available on line and in particular, they are soliciting support from the courts to remove all plea agreement documents from electronic court files, whether involving cooperating witnesses or not. A federal court in Miami has tentatively adopted most of these recommendations and more courts are expected to follow.
There have been some attempts to shut down whosarat.com and similar sites but each time, the websites prevailed under First Amendment protection. For example, in 2004, an Alabama federal judge refused to block a website created by a criminal defendant by the name of Leon Carmichael, Sr. who has since been convicted of drug trafficking and money laundering. “While the website certainly imposes some discomfort on some individuals, it is not a serious threat sufficient to warrant a prior restraint on Carmichael’s free speech or an imposition on his constitutional right to investigate his case.” But in another part of his opinion, Judge Myron Thompson noted that “a few differences in Carmichael’s site could have changed the court’s calculus.” Some legal scholars have opined that websites like whosarat.com might be subject to prosecution for obstruction of justice or aiding and abetting crimes.
So, it appears for the time being, the Government will be working on ways to restrict the flow of information to the Web as opposed to trying to shut down the sites per se.
Here’s another exoneration but this time, it’s not based on DNA evidence. Instead, Curtis McCarty’s release from 22 years in prison, 16 of them on death row, was based on a presumption of innocence after DNA evidence from earlier trials had been destroyed.
McCarty’s case history reads like a bad dime novel. First tried in 1986, convicted and sentenced to death, that conviction was overturned by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals due to prosecutorial misconduct and improper testing conducted by the crime lab. He was tried again in 1989, convicted and again assessed death only to have that verdict set aside and then later reinstated. Finally, in 2005, the Court of Criminal Appeals then set aside that verdict for good based on new evidence.
On May 12, District Judge Twyla Mason Gray released McCarty, stating that evidence in the case had been destroyed or tainted by former police chemist Joyce Gilchrist who lawyers say switched out samples in order to get a necessary match. In open court, Judge Gray observed that the evidence that Gilchrist collected, “if she inventoried it, if she stored it, if she analyzed it,” was so questionable that it was impossible to determine its evidentiary value. She concluded by noting that “[m]y compassion in this case is not for this defendant because I believe he was involved in some way in what is so horrific.”
McCarty’s case was fostered through the ranks by the Innocence Project.
You all are aware of the latest flap over Jimmy Carter’s recent inane comments concerning the Bush presidency being the “worst in history” and his subsequent “clarification” in which he claimed he was “misquoted and misunderstood.” He now wants the world to know that Bush is worse than Nixon. As if it matters anymore.
This man keeps embarrassing himself, this time with comments that betray a total lack of irony and insight. His previous statements on current Palestinian-Israeli events likewise reveal him to be the crude Jew-hater that he is. Rather than take my word for it, read Christopher Hitchens’ latest commentary on the pathetic ex-president here. I keep thinking to myself - can there be an explanation for Carter’s crude statements and odd behavior independent of his sanctimonious personality? What makes him afraid to take issue and debate his perfidy, especially when his own staffers with the Carter Center accuse him of the monumental lies in his latest book? Why is he so strangely impervious to the hard evidence made public which proves that he appropriated materials and maps used by Dennis Ross, chief negotiator for President Clinton during the Palestinian-Israeli peace accords of 2000-01, and claimed that those materials belonged to him and him alone?
I think there could be a medical explanation. Is he falling prey to creeping dementia and that with the onset of these neurological changes, all of those prejudices (e.g. anti-Semitism) and biases (blame America first, appeasement over defense in the name of international peace) that he has worked so hard to camouflage have now manifested themselves as the true hallmarks of this man’s character?
He is a disgrace as an ex-president. My final questions to the Democratic Party are these: what are you going to do with him once the convention rolls around in 2008? Will he actually be denoted as a keynote speaker? Do you dare risk total alienation with the electorate by displaying this man’s meglomaniacal tendencies for the entire nation to see?
It’s been hectic for me lately with my return trip from Maryland, not to mention that I’m on the hot seat come Wednesday when I have oral argument before the Court of Criminal Appeals on a capital case. There are some advance sheets out there which I should be going over tonight for summary on the Significant Decisions page. At the same time, I have at least two, maybe three cases that look like definite “triers” coming up soon, very soon. My solid predictions got dashed with Curlin’s brave finish in the Preakness so I should be doing overtime to get my props in line for the Belmont. All in due time.
Bear with me. I have a couple of ideas floating around in my head concerning the local bar which I plan to reduce to writing; maybe I can get to it tomorrow night down in Austin after I put the finishing touches on prep for oral argument. And for those who have yet to experience the pleasure of going before the CCA in Austin, particularly on a death case, let’s just say that you have to live through it. There was no joy in Mudville for Casey after his bat; there will be no joy for me the night before oral argument in Austin. But that will pass too.
The business of criminal defense is one which demands a real constitution because, as I’ve often said, it’s a losing business. If you are really in there trading punches, then you’re going to get tagged with the really bad case - I mean the really bad case. It’s the kind of case with no good facts, no defense, nothing in the defendant’s background which could even theoretically mitigate the crime. Those who have been through these kind of cases know exactly what I’m talking about and those of you who do anything possible under the sun to avoid those cases, or get out once you’re in, you also know what I’m talking about. You just have to persevere and get the job done. And that’s the thing about the business. It wears you down. The key is not allowing external events to dominate you psychologically. I could take the time to maybe relate a war story or two but it’s better if I conclude this short post with an extract from a really good essay I have had in my personal library for over thirty years. It’s a book on Muhammed Ali simply titled, Muhammed Ali by Wildred Sheed. This book occupies an exalted slot in the bookcase since it is autographed by the man himself. In the chapter dealing with Ali’s greatest fight (and incidentally his greatest loss), the 1971 bout with Frazier, Sheed described Ali thus:
By the middle rounds, Frazier was dominating the fight in that mystical sense which makes scorekeeping an interpretive art. You can dominate from the ropes or you can dominate from the centerof the ring; you can do it running or you can do it standing still. You don’t even have to land the most punches (by count, Frazier didn’t even come close). All you have to do is call the tune and assert your will.
When a man like Frazier does this, it is usually just a question of guessing the round. Yet, after each one, Ali managed to summon a sneer and a mocking flip of the hand. He would not be dominated psychologically so long as one brain cell remained. He would at least be on top between rounds.
“He would not be dominated psychologically as long as one brain cell remained.” Remember those words the next time that the trial or the oral argument is not going as planned and take strength from them.
This won’t be a long post because the frenetic pace of the last three days has finally caught up with me. I’m not thirty anymore when I could jump in the car, drive over to Raton, N.M., play a full card of ten races and then drive breakneck back to Amarillo, all in 15 hours without so much as blowing out a candle. So, bear with me just a minute while I get my bearings.
Jenny and I took in both Gettysburg and Antietam; Gettysburg yesterday and Antietam today. I’ll probably want to take more time when I get back to Amarillo to write in full about both battlefields. But let me say this: the contrast between the two could not be more stark. Where Gettysburg is sprawling, chocked full with huge, impressive (some being downright gaudy) memorials and crawling with busloads of gawking tourists (yes, I was one of them), Antietam was quiet, lonely, tucked away in some gentle rolling hills but equally beautiful in that eerie way that battlefields command. (more…)
One of my guilty pleasures is reading the obit section in the New York Times. Let’s face it: you were somebody if your death makes it to that particular page. It’s the prose, giving power to the narrative of the given individual’s life and accomplishments, which makes these obituaries so riveting. And it’s enough to scan the obits every day to find out about someone and their contributions of which you may have had no knowledge. Another added bonus is coming across new information about a person recently passed on. Such was the case this morning as I scanned the obituary page in the Times on the flight to Baltimore. (more…)