Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Buffet of the Week
3 comments
So much has happened. Some good news, some bad news.
- At the World Outgames, a multi-sport event for LGBT people, small bombs were thrown onto the track at the start of the relay run. Police are holding two suspects. Hopefully they're the assholes that did it, because I want them to pay.
- A Fox News host, Glenn Beck, stated on MSNBC that Obama is a "racist" who has "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." How these nutjobs get on news channels is beyond me.
- Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN) introduced a horrifying amendment to ban all federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Thankfully, it was defeated in the House by a vote of 247 to 183.
- Colin Powell commented on the Gates arrest, stating he's suffered from racial profiling "many times."
- Senator Kirstin Gillibrand (D-NY) announced yesterday that a Senate hearing on "don't ask, don't tell" will be held in the fall. Contact your senators now to tell them to do everything they can to eliminate this discriminatory policy!
- Governor Schwarzenegger line-item vetoed close to $52 million in funding to the State Office of AIDS, which would've been used for services such as education, prevention, and testing. Nice.
- File this under: "hypocrisy." A Tennessee senator and abstinence proponent, resigned after admitting having an affair with a 22 year-old intern. Good riddance.
What have you all been reading this week?
Posts
July 30, 2009 at 5:24 PM
I was watching Fox and Friends and they had an artical about removing gendered language from textbooks, and were going on and on about what a big deal it was, about how if we don't have chairman or woman and have to just call them a chair how it makes people into nothing more than furniture? I didn't really understand what they were so upset about it seemed pretty darn awesome to me.
Please excuse the ramble; real life has decreed that I get zero sleep.
July 31, 2009 at 11:00 AM
There are grave issues of injustices that concern us all that need to be addressed.
The corruption in American courts is truly shocking!
I am an advocate currently fighting to uphold the principles of due process in a most disturbing case concerning the rape, battery and near killing of woman left with a broken neck and permanently disabled.
Barbara Bracci, a hard-working New York State corrections officer claimed she was brutally attacked by her work supervisor, Captain William E. Peek. Bracci had made tape recordings she alleged were of her remorseful attacker confessing to his crimes. The NY State Dept. of Corrections (DOC) took the tapes from her.
The case went to the Division of Human Rights (SDHR). Bracci wanted her original tapes played in open court. DOC refused to give the tapes back to her and gave them instead, to the presiding administrative law judge (ALJ) who refused to let the court hear them.
The ALJ then weighed the tapes unlawfully in secret (ex parte, in camera) and ruled they were ‘unreliable.’ So the case was dismissed. Bracci protested that her due process rights were denied and she was granted an Article 78 special proceeding.
The case went before the Appellate Division, Third Department. Inexplicably, the tapes somehow became 'lost' and SDHR refused to give a verified answer in response to Bracci’s serious charges of corruption. So Bracci having proof her tapes were now destroyed and the opposing party declining to defend their actions, duly filed for summary judgment.
However, the Appellate justices bizarrely dismissed the claim on May 14, 2009 upholding the lower court’s judgment. But nowhere in the Appellate decision does the term, ‘Article 78’ even appear.
Shockingly, the higher court had not only condoned the weighing of evidence in secret and then its destruction, it had unlawfully removed Bracci's status as an Article 78 litigant.
Even a layperson looking at the court’s website under ‘Bracci-v-State Division of Human Rights’ (Case no: 506150) can see that this raped, abused and permanently scarred woman was cheated of her most basic rights to due process rights.
http://decisions.courts.state.ny.us/ad3/Decisions/2009/506150.pdf
Now we shall see if the Court of Appeals will be as fair and just on Bracci as they were in the above case. Courts must be compelled to respect every citizen's constitutional rights to a fair hearing.
You see, I’m British and I grew up with a worldview of American as an honorable civilization. Like most people in the English-speaking world I was greatly influenced by Hollywood movies. I confess to have learned that reality of what American Justice is quite different from what I saw in films. Forget the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment of the United States, that Bill of Rights nonsense and the Constitution. The practice of law is very different. American Justice is a fiction told in Hollywood. In real life corruption is the methodology of the courtrooms.
June 25, 2013 at 8:06 PM
Please excuse the ramble; real life has decreed that I get zero sleep.