Archive for March 20th, 2013

Blog meet: Saturday, March 23rd.

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

It looks like we’re still on for the blogmeet at Mangia’s on Mesa this coming Saturday (the 23rd) at 6 PM.

Lawrence says he’s heard from five or six of his readers. I haven’t heard from any of you. Perhaps you all read Lawrence’s blogs as well as mine, and just decided to reply to him directly. Perhaps all of my readers hate me (well, okay, with one exception, and she has small children to deal with). Perhaps you all hate pizza. Perhaps Ken White promised you a pony if you didn’t show up.

That’s okay. I’ll just sit in the corner nursing a soda and a massive grudge against humanity in general.

Posted in Admin, Food, Sarcasm | 2 Comments »

Banana republicans on trial: March 20, 2013.

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

Woo hoo woo hoo hoo!

I was out and about until just now and returned home to find out we have verdicts in the Bell corruption trial.

Maybe.

Former council member Luis Artiga: acquitted on all twelve of the charges against him.

Former council member George Cole: found guilty of two counts of misappropriation of funds from the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority, and not guilty on two counts of misappropriation of funds related to the Public Finance Authority. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on four other counts.

Former council member Victor Bello: found guilty of four counts of misappropriation of funds from the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority, and not guilty on four counts of misappropriation of funds related to the Public Finance Authority. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on eight other counts.

Former mayor Oscar Hernandez: found guilty of five counts of misappropriation of funds from the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority, and not guilty on five counts of misappropriation of funds related to the Public Finance Authority. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on ten other counts.

Former council member Teresa Jacobo: found guilty of five counts of misappropriation of funds from the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority, and not guilty on five counts of misappropriation of funds related to the Public Finance Authority. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on ten other counts.

Former council member George Mirabal: found guilty of five counts of misappropriation of funds from the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority, and not guilty on five counts of misappropriation of funds related to the Public Finance Authority. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on ten other counts.

The LAT has a handy cheat sheet covering who was convicted of what, in addition to their news coverage.

But.

…In a note, Juror No. 7 told Judge Kathleen Kennedy that he had misgivings about the deliberations.
The cryptic note said that the juror “questioned myself on information that had me on a [doubt] of thing [sic] that were not presented properly.”

A second juror sent a note saying “she believes the jury is ‘getting away from your instructions’ and possibly misunderstanding a law on ‘several levels.'”.

The judge, at this point, seems to be disinclined to “reopen verdicts that have been reached”, but the jury is supposed to report back to the courtroom tomorrow at 9 AM. We’ll see what happens; the judge may question the jurors about the returned verdicts, the judge may ask them to deliberate more on the undecided verdicts, some combination of the two, or possibly something I haven’t even thought of yet. We shall see.

By the way, the council members apparently have a good shot at getting probation and community service, if the verdicts stand.

But it still a good day. And this comic strip seems appropriate.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Upholding the doctrine.

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

Oddly enough, FARK made note of this yesterday, but I wanted to link it here: it is one of the few things that’s actually made me happy recently.

Yesterday, on a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court upheld the doctrine of “first sale”. Specifically, the Court stated that, if you legally purchase copyrighted material in another country, you have the right to rent out or resell it in the United States.

In the case before the Court, Supap Kirtsaeng, a student at Cornell and USC, got his family to purchase textbooks in his home country of Thailand, where they were cheaper. His family shipped the textbooks to him in the United States, where he re-sold them for a profit. The publisher John Wiley & Sons sued Mr. Kirtsaeng, alleging this violated copyright law. Wiley and Sons won a $600,000 award in lower courts, but the Supreme Court decision tosses out the lower court verdicts.

Two points I’d like to make:

  1. Justice Breyer wrote the majority opinion, and was joined by Chief Justice Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagen. Ginsburg and Kennedy wrote a dissenting opinion. Scalia partially joined the dissenting opinion, but also took exception to parts of it. I have not found the actual opinions online yet; when I do, I will link to them.
  2. It might be worth keeping in mind that John Wiley and Sons was in favor of restricting your right to lend or resell things you’d purchased. I’d suggest that you consider the role of John Wiley and Sons in this case very carefully before purchasing any publications from John Wiley and Sons.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

“Likable scamps”

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

That’s how the prosecution described two NYPD detectives, Stephen Chmil and Louis Scarcella, at the trial of “a drug-addicted, unemployed printer” named David Ranta:

At trial, prosecutors acknowledged the detectives had misbehaved but depicted them as likable scamps.

Mr. Ranta was charged with shooting Chaskel Werzberger, a Hasidic rabbi, during a robbery that went bad. Mr. Ranta was convicted in 1991 and has spent the years since in prison.

Mr. Ranta could walk free as early as Thursday. In the decades since a jury convicted him of murder, nearly every piece of evidence in this case has fallen away. A key witness told The New York Times that a detective instructed him to select Mr. Ranta in the lineup. A convicted rapist told the district attorney that he falsely implicated Mr. Ranta in hopes of cutting a deal for himself. A woman has signed an affidavit saying she too lied about Mr. Ranta’s involvement.
Detective Scarcella and his partner, Stephen Chmil, according to investigators and legal documents, broke rule after rule. They kept few written records, coached a witness and took Mr. Ranta’s confession under what a judge described as highly dubious circumstances. They allowed two dangerous criminals, an investigator said, to leave jail, smoke crack cocaine and visit with prostitutes in exchange for incriminating Mr. Ranta.

Yeah. “Likable scamps” fabricated evidence and put an innocent man away for 22 years.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law, Louis Scarcella | 3 Comments »