Category Archives: Crime

Don’t Worry, There Is No War Against Women

Republicans like women just fine.  As long as they fit a very specific mold.  First, you have to be attracted to men.  But not too much.  No sleeping around.  Viagra, yes.  Birth control, no.  Second, you have to be attractive to men.  But not too much.  Aim for something sexier than a burqa but not as sexy as yoga pants.  Your sexiness level will be individually judged by every man you meet.  You must please them all.  Third, you really only should get beat up by men who are your significant others.  All that talk about lesbians and transgendered folks really creeps Republicans out so stop being all non-cisgendered.  Fourth, you really should try to be white.  You should especially not be Native American.  Well, no, that’s not quite true.  You can be Native American, but white people can do what they want with you and don’t come running to us when the law doesn’t protect you.

Never say that Republicans aren’t highly principled.  Their principles just happen to be abhorrent and they’re willing to scorch the earth to defend them.  “Only the women that we recognize as real women will be protected from violence or no women will be protected from violence.”  Class acts, all of them.

Unfortunate Ad Campaign Of The Day

Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius was arrested today for the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.  You may remember Oscar as the “Blade Runner”.  He’s the one that had both his legs amputated below the knees when he was a year old and now uses carbon-fiber blades to run.  He shot Reeva Steenkamp four times and claims that he thought she was an intruder.  It turns out there’s no evidence of that being true so away to jail he goes.

Nike, who has Pistorius as a spokesperson, had to quickly pull an ad featuring Pistorius and the tag line, “I am a bullet in the chamber.”  Can’t imagine why.

This should be viewed as an overall win for the the Paralympic community.  Pistorius has broken the stereotype and proven that even athletes with no legs can be dickishly abusive and homicidal.  One small step for man and all that.

1,118 In The Last Five Years

That’s the number of homicides of children under the age of 25 in the city of Chicago.  The Chicago Muckrakers has a map of all the homicides.  As they say in the article, “you can see where and when they died, their name, race, age and gender.”  Homicide deaths are the red dots, non-homicide deaths are various other colors.

It’s kind of shocking.  That’s a lot of death.  It’s very easy to dismiss this.  Say that a 25 year-old is an adult.  Say that they were criminals.  In doing so, we completely dismiss the traumatic experiences these kids go through in life.  And its easy to dismiss that as well.  Out of sight, out of mind.  This, though, is the end result of hopelessness.  1,118 dead children.

This Is Why Environmentalism Is So Important

A recent article from Kevin Drum points to the fact that there is a pretty good causal effect between crime rates and lead poisoning.  Crime rates in the United States are on a sharp decline and the removal of lead from everyday life may be the cause.  How cool is that?

This is why environmental issues are so important and also why people have a hard time seeing environmental issues as needing to be solved.  It can take decades for the effects of what we are doing to the environment to become readily apparent.  Eat lead paint as a toddler today and you kill someone 15 years from now.  Your average person would never make that connection.  There are hidden costs to many of our everyday activities that we would never be willing to pay if the costs were known up front.  Corporations know this.  Science takes decades and there is a lot of money to be made in those ensuing decades before something is considered harmful.

The lead we pump into the atmosphere from factories and coal fired plants costs us more for correctional facilities.  Your tube socks you buy at Wal-Mart cost you much more than what you pay for it because of the welfare support needed for its employees since Wal-Mart refuses to pay a living wage.  The meat you eat costs much more than what you pay for it because of the diseases they cause and the harm the factory farms do to the local environment.  Carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere decades ago is causing global warming now.

Humanity has trouble taking responsibility for things that happened yesterday.  It is no wonder that it is nearly impossible for us to take responsibility for things that happened decades ago.

And I Think To Myself What A Horrible World

It is really hard, as a winner of the genetic lottery, to wrap your mind around how much tougher it still is to be a woman in society today.  Instead of simply teaching men not to rape, we have an entire industry teaching women on how to not get raped.  If they do get raped, they then often get blamed for being raped.  After all, there is this whole industry dedicated to rape prevention and they didn’t follow the rules.  Ergo it must be the woman’s fault.  Women are taught by society that they have to be sexy and then society blames them for being too sexy.  This would fuck up the sturdiest of women as certainly as war fucks up the sturdiest of soldiers.

All that is bad enough.  But then you have stories like this.  An Indian woman was literally raped to death by six attackers.  If it can be considered good news, her father has demanded that her name be known in the hopes that other women may find courage to come out if they have been raped.  Her name was Jyoti Singh Pandey.  Everywhere, there is a stigma associated with being raped.  In India, with its caste system, it is worse than most places.  Her family is very brave in releasing her name.  I hope her father is right and something good does come of this.

And then you have stories where someone brags for 12 minutes on camera about a girl that was gang raped at a party.  I find this one even more abhorrent than poor Jyoti’s.  Why?  Because this one has countless accomplices who will never be charged with any crime.  Not only was there assuredly countless witnesses to the gang rape(s) of this poor teenage girl that haven’t come forward, but it looks like there were attempts by authorities to minimize the fallout because of the involvement of a local high school football team.  You can follow the link in the above story for all the gory details.  Be warned they are pretty horrific.  If the allegations are true, police knew and did nothing.  Prosecutors knew and did nothing.  Coaches knew and did nothing.  Students knew and did nothing.  I can only forgive the students.

Society enables monsters like those above.  Chances are YOU enable monsters like those.  Chances are you know someone like them.  Chances are you know you know someone like them.  Call a woman a whore, you enable them.  Criticize a woman for dressing too sexily, you enable them.  If a woman says no and you push her to change her mind, you enable them.  Think it’s ok to get a woman drunk enough to have sex with you, you enable them.

There’s the old quote, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”  I disagree.  If you do nothing, you were never a good person.

Legal Question of the Day

Say that I am standing on the Illinois side of the border.  There is another man standing a little way away from me, but on the Wisconsin side of the border.  I shoot that man dead.  Who has jurisdiction?

A murder definitely occurred, but on which side of the border did the actual physical crime occur?  Is the act of firing the gun with the crime or is the result of the act the crime?  Can you separate the two?    Or is this one of those jurisdictional nightmare situations where you have two district attorneys fighting for the prestige of getting a conviction for an unusual crime and all the press that goes with it?  I certainly couldn’t be tried for murder in both states because that would violate double jeopardy.

Never a lawyer when you need one.