Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said jurors who acquitted actor Robert Blake of the murder of his wife are “incredibly stupid” and insisted his office put on a good case.

Ah, no they didn’t. Most who followed the trial thought the evidence against Blake was flimsy at best. But, as mentioned here before, “the L.A. D.A. always blows the big cases.”

 ”To hear him say we aren’t a smart jury is sour grapes,” Blake juror Chuck Safko said. “They didn’t have a good case. Their case was built around witnesses who weren’t truthful.”

Added Laurie Levenson, a professor of criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who attended portions of the trial: “To criticize the jurors is unprofessional. It is unbelievable.” 

In Orange County though, their D.A. got a conviction on the three alleged human teenage boys who sexually assaulted an unconscious girl, videotaped it, then bragged about it. Even one of the boys wealthy ex-sheriff dad and their lawyers, who tried “to paint the victim as a would-be porn star who pretended to be unconscious in the video for dramatic effect”, couldn’t save them. Sheesh, shouldn’t what lawyers say in court be required to at least have a vague passing acquaintance with reality and to what might have happened?

Back in L.A.

Lana Clarkson, 40, was found Feb. 3 slumped in a chair in Spector’s hilltop mansion in suburban Alhambra, east of Los Angeles. Her broken teeth were scattered around the foyer and stairway, and a blood-spattered  .38-caliber Colt revolver lay under her left leg.

Spector was the only other person in the house. He says she shot herself (after breaking her teeth first and scattering them hither and yon presumably?). Will the L.A. D.A. manage a conviction on this one - or even a competent prosecution? Maybe not

“They think they know these celebrities. They think they know Robert Blake. They think they know Phil Spector,” Cooley said. The jury will hear about Spector’s lifestyle of “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll,” Cooley said.

Spector’s lifestyle - and even Joey Ramone once said Spector was one strange dude - has little if anything to do with whether he pulled the trigger. One assumes the L.A. D.A. will present actual evidence at the trial, not lifestyle insinuations and smears, but who knows?

No Comments »

From Sue:

The decision of whether to maintain marginal life or to accept death is one made many thousands of times each year in hospitals.  Ask any of the many ministers who are hospital chaplains, who help families and doctors to make that decision. 

This kind of decision is also made with the fully conscious, for example, patients on organ transplant waiting lists.  Not everyone on the list will get an organ … doctors and chaplains make the determination of who will, based on current health and lifestyle.  (No use giving a new liver to an active alcoholic). 

These decisions are made with … and without … the consent of patients and their family members.

Given this, I don’t understand the actions of a segment of the Christian population in interfering with the Shiavos.  Why doesn’t one … just one … of the many hospital chaplains in this country step forward and say something?

No Comments »

Nearly half of the Latino and African American students who should have graduated from California high schools in 2002 failed to complete their education, according to a Harvard University report released Wednesday.

The report concluded that the public remains largely unaware of the true extent of the problem because the state uses “misleading and inaccurate” methods to report dropout and graduation rates.

Shouldn’t someone be fired over this?

The troubling graduation rates are most alarming in minority communities, where students are more likely to attend what researchers call “dropout factories.”

These would be substandard schools with no supplies while somehow schools in wealthier anglo areas have lots of supplies and equipment.. 

“Whether or not students graduate is the most important thing that happens to them in school,” said Gary Orfield, director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project. “If students don’t make it through high school, they really have no chance in our economy.”

Not entirely. Graduation is not the important thing, being able to read and write is. A friend who teaches junior math at Beverly Hill High says he routinely gets students who will fail because they can’t read well enough to understand the textbook -and that these are native born, English as a first language students.

The problems here are huge and systemic, reaching into the society at large.

No Comments »

Kyrgyzstan president resigns

What brought this about? Why did the people rise up? Left Coaster has an excellent background piece on why the populace revolted.

The World Trade Organization is at it again, trying to force a dogmatic one-size-fits-all privatization scheme onto every people in every place. As  The Yes Men  so aptly describe the WTO dogma, it’s –

“Eat, destroy, swallow, devour, gobble, despoil, maraud, munch, slay, smash. Hurrah, cheers, kudos, honor, exalt, extol, salute.”

Among the joys brought to Kyrgyzstan by the WTO and the forced ‘liberalization’ of their economy are

Almost all of the government-owned enterprises have been transferred to private hands.

WTO-mandated budget cuts diminished the resources of the government and balooned its debt

The value of the nation’s currency fell by 50%

Exports of gold, antimony, mercury, electricity, dead animal skins, and other natural resources have increased while –

“There is a tendency of slow but consistent displacement of Kyrgyz goods” with imports

 ”Depreciation of the domestic currency rendered foreign debt unserviceable”

This same pattern has happened over and over again. Forced WTO policies destroy the economy of a country they are pretending to help, leaving the country hugely in debt to wealthy bankers who just get richer. Until, of course, the country revolts and cancels their debt payments. Capitalists are nothing if not short-sighted.

No Comments »

The Sissy Tsunami, the Faggot Floods, the Dyke Disaster!

Wait for it …

There it is!

A Muslim cleric has declared that HOMOSEXUALS caused the tsunami!

He and Jerry Falwell, who thinks gays caused 9/11 - and Pat Robertson, who has warned that
pride flags attract natural disasters and even meteors - should all get together and play strip cribbage.

No Comments »