08:45 – This is pretty disturbing. I just read a news story about a man who committed a crime, was sentenced by the judge, served his sentence and was released upon completing it, and has now been hauled back into court to be re-sentenced to a longer term for the same crime. Seems to me that the government had its shot, didn’t like the results, and now has gone back for what amounts to double jeopardy. The case, of course, is the teacher in Montana who was sentenced to a 30-day term for statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl who was his student. From the judge’s comments, it’s pretty clear that he thought the girl initiated things and was “older than her chronological age”. Complicating matters is that the girl killed herself while the teacher was awaiting trial. Whether or not one believes that the 30-day sentence was too short, the fact is that the government had its chance, and going back for a second bite at the apple is simply unacceptable. If the government wants to go after someone, they should go after the judge who decided the sentence.
We were running short of bottles and caps, but UPS is supposed to show up today with about 8,000 of them. I’ll be making up chemicals and filling and capping bottles, trying to cut down on the backlog of labeled bottles before Barbara starts labeling the ones that arrive today.
Found the link. I see your point, but I think the argument is this: the sentence is being appealed. However, that process takes longer than 30 days, so his initial sentence is already over.
The thing that I find disturbing is that the crime took place in 2007. Why does the US justice system drag these things out for years and years?
Well, as I’ve said, I think it’s ridiculous for anyone–male or female, of whatever age–to face criminal charges for having consensual sex with a 14-year-old, who is a young adult by any reasonable definition. Arbitrarily defining an age of consent doesn’t change that.
The guy should have been fired, obviously, but that should have been all that happened. Having to face criminal charges and being branded as a “sex offender” is ridiculous. You can call consensual sex “rape”, but that doesn’t make it so.
The state sentenced this guy, so for the state to come back and say that it should have imposed a harsher sentence is ridiculous. The state is blaming itself for the outcome, but making that guy pay the price for its own error.
That re-sentencing business after someone has already served the originally imposed sentence was a hallmark of the old Soviet gulag system; sometimes the authorities would release someone, say, into miserable internal exile, and then years later pick them up and send them back again for another “tenner.” Our rulers seem hell-bent on recreating that system here, complete with crashed economy, permanent war footing, and our very own gulag system, where ordinary prisoners are used to provide dirt-cheap or slave labor for various industries. Just wait until they start sentencing politicals, who, in the Soviet model, would be thrust in among hardened criminal scum and given the worst possible and most dangerous assignments.
A bunch of us here on this board would be classified as “politicals.”
What do you think of the use of the Civil Rights Act to have a second try when state courts acquitted people down south in the Sixties?
Thank goodness I’m not among that group. As an anarchist, I’m about as apolitical as it’s possible to get.
It was double jeopardy. The government (at all levels) gets exactly one chance. Retrying an acquitted person for the same actions or group of actions under a different jurisdiction or under a different supposed named crime is double jeopardy, period.
One more quick point: regardless of what the asswipe teacher thought as to the girl’s chronological age, he had no business fiddling with any of his *students.* That is a blatant violation of the implied or otherwise ‘contract’ between a subordinate and someone who has power over them.
“As an anarchist, I’m about as apolitical as it’s possible to get.”
That didn’t cut any ice in the old Soviet system; in fact, anarchists were specifically targeted, not only from the earliest days of the communist regime, but also previously, under the Tsars. If my hypothesis is correct about our rulers seeking to replicate that system, you’re gonna be among the first people rounded up, and more so because you “led” an “organization” online here. Then they’ll get to old vets like Ray, me, MrAtoz and others, because we’re cynical, experienced and potentially dangerous ourselves, and also foment agitprop in this ‘organization.’
Useful types who can fix machines and make shoes and suchlike will be sent off also, but get preferential treatment in our gulags, though, so there’s that hope.
I’m in lovely downtown Hawtfud, CT. Rabble rousing and getting ready for my tenner in an Obummer gulag.
My wife speaks tonight at “The Hartford Club.” Suppose to be foo-foo. I brought a suit and chiny choos. A nice tie, too.
Also enjoying Jay Carney lieing about Benghazi. He makes it seem like Obummer is personally hunting down the terrorists. Like OJ and Jerry Rivers.
Useful types who can fix machines and make shoes and suchlike will be sent off also, but get preferential treatment in our gulags, though, so there’s that hope.
That means that you get an unheated cabin while the rest get a tent. No heating because that will promote global warming.
It’s “Haht-fud,” dammit. Learn the lingo. You is in the lovely, and in light of recent events, badly misnamed “Constitution State,” also known as the Nutmeg State. Home of my surviving uncle and his broods of kidz and their kids, none of whom I’ve ever met, I don’t think. One was running a restaurant down there but that was years ago; we are cold English ice-people and don’t stay in touch well; it was him who told me that, also many years ago.
You should do multiple selfies and post them online, Mr A.
For your tenner just remember not to bring anything worthwhile with you when you report, other than what tiny items you might be able smuggle somehow; not in your hair because they shave yer head. And in winter you’ll be wearing the equivalent of flimsy jammies and decrepit slippers while working on a slag heap and getting searched, beaten and screamed at by big fat muthas in heavy overcoats and hats and nice boots.
For your subversive comments and sabotaging remarks about the Press Secretary and Dear Leader you will get a second tenner added on a couple of weeks after you complete the first one.
(The old Soviet regime used to put away people in their 80s and 90s all the time with tenners. At hard labor, too.)
It hit 70 here today with sun and blue skies but it’s clouding up fast and we’re gonna see some more heavy rains, exactly what we do not need right now. Had a nice chat with a local ‘character’ here in the Bay who gave me more chapter-and-verse on other residents, past and present, and the historical building landscape. Good to know about the pot growers, dope dealers, and pedophiles. All duly noted.
“… you get an unheated cabin while the rest get a tent.”
Yeah, an unheated and drafty cabin shared with other zeks who fart and belch all the time and half of them are stoolies. And quite a few zeks were transported out into the bitter Arctic wastes and tundra and simply dropped off with some convoy guards and told to start digging, hewing timber and building their quarters, the night they arrive, sometimes while a blizzard was raging. If half of them croak, no big deal.
It’s “Haht-fud,” dammit
I never could get used to the accent up there, despite working in Boston for a couple of years. “Ahm gonna warsh the cah” How do they teach children phonetics? Is “r” a silent letter? And exactly which vowels are followed by what the rest of us think as the “r” sound?
Y’all otta lern ta talk raht.
I never could get used to the accent up there
You’ns aurght to mosey down south where we’s ain’t got no accent.
We were taught phonetics in the old-fashioned way back in the late 50s; not sure if they even bother with that now. Yes, the ‘r’ is mostly silent, except when it’s the first letter in a word or doubled up within a word. It gets added to other words, though, like “ideer.”
The accent/dialect in Nova Anglia comes mostly direct from 17th-C East Anglia; and it is still found pretty close to the original on islands off the Maine coast and similarly off the coastal Carolinas. You can also hear it pretty accurately among the actor/employees at Plimoth Plantation down there in Ye Old Commonwealth, a.k.a. the Bay State, a.k.a. the Mayflower State.
The dialect and accent of natives of Harker’s Island is pretty much Elizabethan as it was actually spoke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harkers_Island,_North_Carolina#Local_dialect
Outer Banks Brogue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXs9cf2YWwg
And people say Canadian talk funny! 🙂
Yup, and some of the relatively still-isolated fishing communities on islands off the coast of Maine; how much longer, who knows? Tangier Island off Virginia is another such place. The New England accent mainly divides along the Connecticut River, which runs from way northern New Hampshuh down to the Connecticut coast. East of it is what everyone recognizes as the typical accent, and where I was born and grew up. With little variations, depending on how fah outta Boston, how close to the swamp Yankees in Rhode Island, etc.
Bill wrote:
“And people say Canadian talk funny! :)”
Well… They do.
One of my physics professors is from Canukistan (BC I think) and he’s a bit hard to understand at times, even mispronounces aluminium. At least he knows the metric system.
Another odd thing with Canadian accents, demonstrated here now frequently by our daughter who’s been going to school in Montreal and living and working there now for a couple of years, is how normally declaratory sentences nearly always end with an interrogatory tone. As in: “I’m quite amused by this?” Or: “I haven’t been to Montreal in several months now but will be going there again soon?” Like the “eh?” on the end most times. Not sure if that is the case in the western provinces, though.
I figure that we will know that things are going in the ditch when the feddies seize XXXXX invest our 401Ks / IRAs and ship Matt Drudge off to the gulag formerly known as Buffalo.
As Bob has said before, and I agree, the plan seems to be deliberate massive failure for ObummerCARE and the public health system in this country so that the rulers can then spout ‘national security’ baloney and start lumping everyone’s Medicare/Medicaid, SS, retirement funds, and pensions into a gigantic pile, which they, of course, will administer for us, but which they will relentlessly loot and plunder until it’s all gone. Meanwhile the usual suspects are shrieking that we need to get into a war with Russia now while also putting China in its place and solve all the issues in the Middle East.
As the man once said, ‘war is the health of the state.’ And they’ll gin up more wars overseas and probably another one right here at home they way they’re going.