You are in LA and you get up to no good. I mean what is the point of going to LA for anything else really? Well you might be in need of Criminal Attorneys Los Angeles | California Criminal & DUI Defense Lawyers. You know the type of people that are well experience with local Police and courts. The type of firm that features ex-prosecutors and lawyers who really know their stuff? By good I mean top 5% in the US and there are a lot of lawyers here.

Salon: (You need a “site pass” —by clicking on the featured ad—to read the article in full.)

Free from handcuffs, but under the watchful eye of guards, the two brides wore street clothes during the ceremony, which was performed by a minister. The Mrs. and Mrs. inmates’ names were not released, but one is serving a 34-month sentence for breaking and entering, assault with a weapon and aggravated assault, while the other has been doing six years hard time for manslaughter, assault and assaulting a peace officer. The wedding night was reportedly chaste, since the prisoners must continue to sleep in separate cells. But both brides are scheduled to be released by the end of this year, on Nov. 18 and Dec. 6, respectively.

Not everyone involved in the wedding shed tears of joy. The Canadian prison guards’ union opposed the match. “It’s the value and ethics of getting married in jail while they’re serving time together in the same institution,” said Kevin Grabowsky, president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers. “It’s not Club Fed, where you go and meet your spouse.” He raised theoncern that the union might cause security problems; for instance, if the couple had a “marital spat,” or if one spouse had a dispute with a guard, the other might try to exact revenge. Talk about a killjoy. C’mon, Grabowsky, lighten up, it’s a wedding! Also, haven’t you ever heard the one about how love will find a way?[emphasis mine]

Edmonton Sun:

Two female inmates, who married in a quiet ceremony in January at the Edmonton prison – the first time a same-sex marriage was held inside a women’s prison – have endured a stormy relationship right from the very beginning, said Grabowsky.

And when the pair get into squabbles, like the one that left one of them suffering a swollen eye, the other takes out her frustrations on the guards, he said.

Guards have had a door slammed in their face and have had profanities hurled at them, he said. The inmates have also smashed up appliances and broken windows.

CSC offered the women counselling to get through their rough patches and the warden even played Yagtzee [sic] with the pair to ease their tensions, Grabowsky said.

But nothing has seemed to work.

“These two feed off each other,” Grabowsky said. “If one does something to piss off the other, we’re the ones who take the heat.”

Separating the pair by sending one to another institution would put an end to the situation, Grabowsky said.

It was when all else failed that guards at the jail hoped one of the pair would be transferred.

But when the Correctional Service of Canada balked, 14 of 15 guards at the jail asked for transfers out of the maximum security cell block where the female inmates live in different cells.

MADD Canada has been in the news of late:

Mothers Against Drunk Driving has stopped fundraising efforts at a time when holiday merrymaking means more intoxicated drivers are on the roads.

The organization’s efforts have been put on hold following an investigative report by the Toronto Star that claimed just 19 cents from every dollar raised actually goes to victim services and fighting drunk driving.

The report alleges that the majority of donations go to professional telemarketers and people who go door-to-door raising money for the charitable organization.

But Andrew Murie, MADD Canada’s CEO, has called the article misleading and said 83.6 per cent of donor money is used on MADD Canada programs.

I don’t know if there’s any significance to it, but organizations formed to combat drug and alcohol abuse tend to perform poorly in the eyes of charity oversight groups. The American Institute of Philanthropy gives its “A” status to none of them. The “target=”new”>Charity Navigator awards MADD’s US parent foundation an overall rating of 47.60 (out of 100]; HOPE International and The American Jewish Committee, to choose two others at random, scored 60.68 and 62.54 respectively.

The intrusion of harassment law into office politics can only make matters worse by poisoning relationships. Already there have been calls for yet more zero-tolerance anti-harassment codes, more policing of e-mails, more awareness training. At this rate, we might all soon be scared to talk to workmates, unless reading from a script approved by company lawyers.

Schools were the first to expand the definition of bullying to include such everyday playground issues as being shouted at or excluded. Now it is being imported into the adult worlds of the City – and even the Armed Forces.

Mick Hume looks at the worrying trend of using the courts and government to regulate any and all manner of personal conduct. If you wonder who’s employing those otherwise unemployable psychology majors, wonder no more.

the blog québécois

Reuters:

Women going on boozy nights out have been warned by police to “wear nice pants” in case they fall down drunk in the street.

A Suffolk police safety campaign magazine shows pictures of young women slumped on the ground next to messages urging them: “If you’ve got it, don’t flaunt it.”

“If you fall over or pass out, remember your skirt or dress may ride up,” the magazine says. “You could show off more than you intended—for all our sakes, please make sure you’re wearing nice pants and that you’ve recently had a wax.”

Ah, yes. When you’re lying unconscious in a puddle of vomit in the alley, nothing says “unladylike” more than untrimmed shrubbery. You might attract men this way, but probably not the type you want to take home to the drunk tank to meet Mother.

And you’ll have to get there by yourself. The cops have better things to do.

the blog québécois

Head of the formitable MBA has a new blog and its called Words in Edgewise. Well worth a read for those interested in the legal state of blogging.

I remember reading some years ago that, besides institutional consumers like the police and military, the biggest private buyers of body armor in the U.S. were divorce lawyers and family-court judges. I’ve no idea where to look to check out that factoid, but it makes sense to me.

There was an odd coincidence of links that I ran across yesterday; though I suspect it is no mere synchronicity, but reflective of a deeper pattern.

The first was the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Leskun v. Leskun:

The emotional consequences of a spouse’s misconduct can be weighed by the courts when judging spousal support payments despite Canada’s system of no-fault divorce, the nation’s top court has ruled.

But the landmark decision from the Supreme Court of Canada on Wednesday stresses that misconduct alone is not a reason to financially support a wronged spouse.

“Misconduct, as such, is off the table as a relevant consideration,’’ wrote Justice Ian Binnie. “Consequences (however) are not rendered irrelevant because of their genesis in the other spouse’s misconduct.”

Sheer sophistry. It’s not an issue unless we can make it an issue, legislative word and intent be damned. The awestruck reporter went on to describe the decision as “highly nuanced,” which well might be the case, to a J-school grad.

Here’s how the courts decide such things: Court hears woman’s side; court hears man’s side. Court sides with woman. Nuanced enough for you? Try imagining the same verdict with the roles reversed. That doesn’t take nuance. It takes powerful psychotropic drugs.

Barbara Kay wrote an excellent column—not specifically about the Leskun case, but touching on the legal climate surrounding it—in the National Post (I’m not sure how long the link will last, so I’ve taken the liberty of reprinting it in full in the extended post section):

The family law system is now systemically colonized by radical feminists. Their goal is the complete autonomy of women (except for financial support), via the incremental legal eclipse of men’s influence over women’s spheres of “identity” interests, which includes children. Thus the custody issue has become a front line in the gender wars.

By no means an exhaustive list, radical feminism is supported by collective rights-dominated law school curricula; feminism-riddled “cultural studies” and the humanities in general; women’s studies departments, in reality feminist recruitment and networking centres/ideological boot camps; politically powerful, tax-funded feminist groups who extend strategic mentorship to a wide substratum of women’s causes; supine prime ministers and go-with-the-zeitgeist justice ministers; and a critical mass of ideologically aggressive judges, whose juridical archives, bristling with subjective, gender-biased judgments, discredit their vocation and call into question the whole notion of equality under the law.

A few minutes later I ran across a link at A Welsh View titled something like “Wild Courthouse Shootout.” I seldom click on items like that, but I had a hunch about it, and I was right. It stemmed from a family court dispute last year in Texas:

Tyler Police have confirmed two people outside the Smith County Courthouse have been killed after dozens of shots were fired starting just before 1:30 PM Thursday.

The two killed at the courthouse have now been identified: Maribel Estrada, the estranged wife of the alleged shooter, David Hernandez Arroyo, and citizen Mark Wilson. Wilson is licensed to carry a concealed weapon and fired several shots at Arroyo. Arroyo, however, was wearing a bulletproof vest.

Four other people were injured in the shooting. Those have been identified as a Tyler Police Detective, Two Smith County Sheriff’s Deputies and Arroyo’s son.

The Arroyos were at the courthouse for a child support hearing said Tyler Police Chief Gary Swindle.

Video here. Warning: Sounds and violence. There’s no obvious gore, but there are scenes showing the dead and wounded and the gunman is killed by a police sniper as he attempts to escape.

Now, I don’t know anything about this story beyond the news report and particularly can’t say what was in the mind of the killer. It could have been that he was a timebomb set to go off at the slightest provocation.

It also could have been that he was driven over the edge by a relentless, corrupt machine dedicated to crushing him. (Family law in both Canada and the States is very similar.) I’ve read enough horror stories about men caught up in this Kafkaesque system to believe it could happen. Certainly someone who plans an armed attack in front of a courthouse isn’t expressing great faith in the future.

Me, I’ve got no plans to test the hypothesis. I’m not married, have no children, and no desire to change in either regard.

Others might see things differently. So you stalwart Officers of the court might want to start checking out the price of Kevlar underwear.

Oops, I forgot: Private citizens in Canada are not allowed to possess body armor.

Pity, that.

the blog québécois

Cathy Young at Reason magazine writes:

It is a shocking sign of the times that we are having a debate about the appropriateness of torture. Some would say that it’s a sign of our democracy’s moral decline; others, of the desperate times that have driven us to desperate measures. Either way, those of us who do not want the free world to lose its soul to terrorism must stand up and be counted.

As predictable as a wet English summer, nastiness has kicked off involving antiglobalista thugs and the Scottish police in advance of the G8 summit.

I am sure that Africans suffering in places like the war-torn Sudan or Congo will be impressed. Not.

Update: I posted this almost the same time as Andrew wrote his comment. Was he channelling me or vice versa?

There are more than half a million illegal migrants living in Britain, according to Home Office figures. Sheesh. Several things spring to mind: one, it makes a mockery of our supposed security laws against terror because among many of the folk moving into Britain, a handful may have hostile intent, and it also underscores the scale of organised crime now involved in smuggling people into the country, creating fake IDs, etc. It goes without saying on a robustly free market blog like this that immigration per se is a fine thing especially when the migrants entering a nation do not expect, and do not get, a penny of state subsidy and just get on with building a new life. I want to live in a Britain that enterprising people want to join. (Let’s face it, migrants are not exactly rushing to live in Belgium). But illegal migration on this scale can only undermine harmonious relations between ethnic groups and weaken respect for the law.

We don’t need an ID card system to fix this. All that is needed is that no immigrant to the UK gets access to state welfare for a minimum of five years apart from in dire emergencies. It is that simple.

Well at least on the scale outlined in today’s Telegraph.

Psychologists have attempted to come up with a way of measuring exacctly how evil someone is, based on actions and, importantly, motivation.
Examples here.

Interestingly, only Florida, of all the US states has a legal code which refers specifically to certain acts as evil rather than some more politically correct term.

i been doing it since i was a young kid
ive come out grinnin
when i fight authority
authority always wins

john mellencamp

[Homeowner] Castillo went down to the kitchen and confronted the [burglary] suspect, Chris Kemp, who is unknown to Castillo and his family. Kemp, who was dressed up in Castillo’s mother’s clothes including her leopard skin hat and matching scarf, was moving kitchen appliances around.

The Owner’s Manual links the original story, if you’re interested. For me, the cited portion and especially the picture will suffice. As a commenter on Gary’s blog noted:

If you were born to look like that, your only choices are petty crime and crime lord in a comic book. No other jobs are available.

the blog québécois

like a criminal
did you think it could be like on tv?
where you could be big in your own movie?
—john lydon

I came across this recently by accident, but I remember reading about it at the time—it happened quite a few years ago and I thought it was funny enough to clip and enter into a database (sadly, now irretrievably corrupted) that I was using at the time.

Stettler is a small town in Alberta, about midway between Edmonton and Calgary.

the blog québécois

So no one told you life was gonna be this way
Your job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love life’s D.O.A
It’s like you’re always stuck in second gear
—the rembrandts

You might have heard of the sexual harassment suit filed by a woman who worked as an assistant to the writing staff on the TV show Friends.

The Guardian:

The case arose after a former writers’ assistant on the show, Amaani Lyle, accused the creative team of sexual harassment, though none of the remarks she complains about had been directed at her.

Among the frequent discussions about sex that had formed part of the creative process for the show, she claimed the team talked about how one of the writers had missed an opportunity to sleep with Jennifer Aniston, who played Rachel, and had spoken pejoratively of part of Courteney Cox Arquette’s (Monica) anatomy.

The writers admit they discussed their own sex lives and their fantasies about actors in the show, but argue she has no case for ‘passive’ sexual harassment.

I think I’ve watched one episode of Friends from start to finish, and it was competently done, but nothing that I cared to watch again. I do remember that the plot revolved around sex or something. There was some subplot involving . . . sex, I think. There were a lot of double entendres, and even more single entendres.

Call it a hunch, but I’ll bet the topic of . . . sex got batted around in the writers’ bullpen from time to time.

Lyle admits she was warned conversations would be more explicit than in her previous job, working as a writers’ assistant on the children’s channel Nickelodeon. She was fired in 1999 for typing too slowly and went on to file a sexual harassment suit against the makers of the show, Warner Bros Television Productions Inc.

Hm-hmm. Anyone notice something of a pattern here?

Lyle, 31, is now in Germany with the US air force.

Consider this a heads-up, flyboys.

the blog québécois

He skewers both some touchy-feely Swede and Stephen Pound MP about their attitudes towards self-defence. Let’s hope it’s one of their loved-ones that gets robbed or brutalised by some thug, rather than someone else’s.

“Earlier this year, Mark Kram revealed to his two teenage children a secret he had kept for two decades: He killed a man. That man was
Carl Brown, who killed more people in one day than anyone else in Miami-Dade’s history. On a Friday morning in August 1982, Brown, 51, fuming over a $20 repair bill, marched into a Miami machine shop and shotgunned 11 employees, killing eight. Within minutes, Brown — a schoolteacher on psychiatric leave — was the ninth person to die. Kram, at work in a nearby machine shop, and another man set out to stop Brown, who fled the scene on a bicycle. They ended up fatally shooting Brown and running him down with a car, essentially dealing the mass killer a dose of street justice — no arrest, no trial. Instant retribution for eight innocent lives.” (10/14/03)

Via: Rational Review

From ifeminists.net:

When Hillary Clinton says it takes a “village” to raise a child, does this mean that snooping, nosey, prying and gossipy people will be surrounding all of us — snoopers who are employees of the state with the power of police?

This woman wonders. I was forced by DSS to attend a “support group” for abused women, against my will. Or else I would never see my daughter again. That is what they told me. I was required to report every week to the Independence House, Hyannis, although it’s supposedly for women who seek their help. It’s run primarily by volunteers who are not counselors, therapists, or psychologists. They are all former battered women. Yet my DSS “service plan” stated that I had to attend for “treatment.”

I’ve fortunately never had any run-ins with the — frankly, creepy — people who inhabit the social service bureaucracies, but I’ve heard enough horror stories that I believe every word of this woman’s tale. Orwell and Kafka foretold it to those who would listen.

But, as they say, read the whole thing here.

This is just vile and contemptable. Certain persons on the net have used the Child Protective Services to harass the family of someone whose opinions they don’t like. I found out about this nasty occurence from Andrea. Dean has written about this noxious event as well. My thoughts go out to Electric Venom and her family.

Kevin Myers has written a biting piece where he calls for those falsly accused of rape suffering as severe punishment as those who are convicted of rape. He details the case of a women who faked a rape to get back at a boyfriend. The male spent two years in jail on the trumped up charge, yet she has gotten only a year for the grief she has caused. This is not the first time; a few years ago a young man at Oxford had his life ruined by a similarly vindictive female.

This is just wrong! Not only do these malicious cretins destroy the lives of those they accuse, but, when a case like this comes to light, it hurts legitimate rape cases as well.