Archive for Law & Order - page 5

So close!  We’re nearly there!  Just a few more things to ban, then a few more things to mandate!  We can do it!

In its first test since a deal brought formerly opposed lawmakers on board, a bill banning single-use plastic bags in California passed the Assembly Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday. – SacBee.com

“it is not fair to our children to ask them to pay a potential price…for a hypothetical benefit to adult smokers.” In fact, he said, “it is egregious to suggest that we need to have kids do this in order for adults to quit.”

This is taken from the testimony of Tim McAfee, director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at a Senate Hearing on Thursday May 15th, 2014.  It seems that among some health experts there is a fear that the use of electronic cigarettes (or e-cigs, or “vaping”) will encourage teenagers to smoke actual cigarettes.

All well and good – I suppose that’s why we have highly paid people working at places like The Office on Smoking and Health – to worry about things that hardly anyone else worries about.  I mean, things have a right to be worried about don’t they?  Hmmm…might have to think about that one.  Because there are some things that deserve to be worried over that aren’t getting the attention they deserve;  Specifically whether the liberaliztion and in some cases outright legalization of marijuana use might be encouraging teenagers to smoke –  not cigarettes, but marijuana.

As I have written before, I believe there are these two things taking place today, the “normalization” of marijuana use and the appearance of E-cigs as a smoking substitute and that they have obvious parrallels; and it is unfathomable to me that nowhere in the media or government do I see anyone connecting the dots.  Cigarette smoking is considered a public health issue, and deservedly so, though I do take some issue as to where the line is being drawn between regulation/prohibition and one’s personal freedom to chose.  You see, I’m pro-choice regarding cigarette smoking;  I’m also pro-choice regarding marijuana smoking.  What I do not understand is how all the worrying and hand-wringing about the ever so slight possible harm posed to children and teenagers by e-cigs does not in any way carry over into what I believe is the more likely potential harm caused to young people by increased marijuana use.  I don’t think anyone is arguing that there is no risk to young people associated with relaxed marijuana regulation – I just don’t think anyone’s talking about it at all.  To the extent there even is a debate, it is primarily whether legalization/increased use is better for adults or society as a whole.  Meanwhile there is frequent discussion nationwide over the looming threat posed by e-cigs, a threat so dire they should be banned.  Banned – instead of being hailed as a benefit to public health, which in my opinion they are.  Banned – also in my opinion, because they “look like” smoking, and are percieived a successful “end-around” of smoking regs by smokers.  And we can’t let the smokers win.

Since these public health “debates” always end up being about the best way for do-gooders to bully adults around because their behavior might possibly wound a precious child, can we at least invite marijuana to the witch trial?

This post inspired by an article I read at Reason.com

I haven’t written lately about the diappearance of the Malaysian Airline Boeing 777 for awhile since there was really nothing new to report.  As of my last post, the plane was presumed crashed in the Indian Ocean, with all passengers and crew lost even though not a trace of wreckage has been recovered.   The presumtion of a crash and also the presumed crash location (vague as it may be) have been inferred by analysis of communication signals between the plane and  a satellite done by the satelite’s owner, British telecommunications company Inmarsat.  Authorites have based their search on the assumption that the plane was somewhere within a large area of the Indian Ocean where no possible landing could have occurred when the signals stopped and this assumption was based on the sattelite data analysis done by Inmarsat. Since no trace of the airliner has yet been discovered, outside experts are attempting to confirm Inmarst’s analysis – and they are finding inconsistencies which call into question the accuracy of the analysis that all investigative assumptions have been based on so far – mainly the assumtion that the plane took a southern flight path over the Indian Ocean instead of north toward Pakistan.

Apparently since I am over 50, I am a dinosaur as are most of my family and acquaintances.  I know this is true because when I tell people I know to read my blog, they say “what’s a blog?”  I am so screwed – since I don’t write about Beyonce or Justin Bieber no one under thirty will ever read this and no one over thirty knows what a blog is.  So let me tell you a little bit about how I found out about blogs, became a reader of blogs and then went on to blogging.

I have never thought of myself as an early adopter of technology but I have been using the internet since the early 1990’s.  Thinking about it now, it was the dawn of time.  My chosen portal: AOL, now just a footnote to history.  I started out reading what they called “newsgroups” which were kind of like discussion boards where someone would post an article or website adress, people would read and discuss.  Usually I would “lurk” in these newsgroups, a term that means to look in, read the article and discussion but not participate – if you don’t speak up, no one knows you’re there.  This evolved into general web surfing and a few sites helped fuel that, mainly The Drudge Report (which started out mainly as movie industry news and gossip) with it’s many links to news stories.  Another was Lucianne.com founded by Jonah Goldberg’s mother, Lucianne Goldberg.  It’s still around.  Finally, sometime in the early 2000’s a Radio Talk Show host I listen to named Hugh Hewitt began talking about this new thing on the internet with a funny name.  Blobs?  No, that can’t be it.  BLOG!  That’s it – internet lingo shorthand for weblog.  Weblog = weBLOG = BLOG.  He wrote a book about it.  Anyway, the amount of information and perspectives on information available to me online took a quantum leap with that revelation.  There are blogs about everything you can think of.  I zeroed in on politcal blogs mostly, but also branched out into Law, and Science as well as general interest.  Many bloggers write about other subjects in addition to their area of expertise if they have one.  When 9/11 happened, I started reading the military blogs or MILblogs.  Yes, the blogosphere has covered the War on Terror.  Over the course of years, I came to admire some of these bloggers (whom I have never met, nor communicated with) and at some point decided that imitation would be the best form of flattery.  On the sidebar to the right you will see a heading that says “Some Blogs I Like”:  Click on any of those, they are worth your time.

The subtitle of Hewitt’s book sums up the what Blogging is to me and why I decided to become a participant instead of just an observer:  “Why You Must Know How The Blogosphere Is Smashing The Old Media Monopoly And Giving Individuals Power In The Marketplace Of Ideas”.  I have decided to exercise my power and transform my exploration of life into a creative exercise – and to invite you along.  If you are lurking here, your journey has already begun.  Step into the light, introduce yourself and we can all continue our journey together.

I write about anything that happens to be of interest to me, and the subject matter is varied.  The posts are  in chronological order, the newest at the top – you can keep scrolling down to the bottom of the page and keep going back to view older  posts, all the way back to the beginning of time…err.. when I started this blog in February of 2014.  If you like what I write about some subjects but don’t care for others, look on the sidebar to the right.  You will see “categories”.  All my posts fit into one or more of these categories.  Click on the category you are most interested in, and you will see only posts in that category.  Simple.  Within my posts I often link to additional information and/or another blog or article that inspired the post.  When you see a word in red text, that is a link to additional information.  Click on it and the link will open in a new tab.  Any pictures within a post can usually be viewed in a larger version by simply clicking on the picture.

Please comment! To the left of the title you will see a box with the date and below it a box that says comments.  Click there and a dialogue box will open where you will be able to write comments on the article. This is how I know you’re reading and I welcome all feedback on my writing. You will be asked for your name and e-mail adress but don’t worry!  You can use an alias if you don’t want to disclose your name and your e-mail adress will not be displayed, nor will I spam you.  I moderate all the comments so I will see your comment.

Thanks! and Enjoy!

This is all over the internet right now.  A little boy is playing outside his house – a neighbor’s dog is loose and attacks the little boy.  The kid’s cat comes flying out of nowhere and chases off the dog!  The family’s home video surveillance system catches it all:

It is a happy ending, but the boy was bitten and required stitches – mom apparently was also bitten. It could have been much worse.  That is one awesome cat!

…Aaand that’s the good news.  It appears to some observers that the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) may have wanted to obscure that fact from the public.  The San Francisco based engineering firm URS corp. was tasked with preparing a revised cost estimate, and complained that they had been “instructed” by the CHSRA to hold estimates to a baseline established in 2012.  URS said in their March report that the new estimate of $7.13 billion, an increase of $.94 billion was accurate and that “in their professional opinion” CHSRA was incorrectly assigning cost increases to a contingency account.  In response, the Rail Authority sent a letter to the firm asking it to revise it’s report, stating that the estimates were “misleading and not accurate”.  That settles it then.

“The  ultimate cost of the Central Valley segment will be determined by many factors not yet known, …which may explain why URS produced a higher estimate”...”It is noteworthy that over the life of a project, as design progresses, there will be several estimates,” the authority said. “A change in one estimate does not necessarily result in a change to our budget.” – CHSRA Statement

Ahh…the “Living Breathing Budget” theory.  The California taxpayer may now rest easy.

Close enough.  “Massive Tunneling Machine Stuck Under Downtown Seattle, Fix Could Cost Taxpayers Millions”

Seems that there is a large construction project in Seattle for which the contractor purchased one of those giant machines that bores tunnels – like the English Channel Tunnel* – and the gizmo has broken down and is stuck.  A lot of cash is needed to free it.  The question is, whose cash will it be?  So far the State of Washington says the contractor should pay, the contractor says their not paying.  Could there be a lawsuit on the horizon?

The repair is likely to cost $125 million, which is $45 million more than the machine cost to begin with.  The project has already incurred cost overruns of $190 million due to “unforeseen problems”:

“Among the issues the project has encountered are: too much groundwater; a labor dispute involving the International Longshore and Warehouse Union; and a well that Bertha ran into, damaging her massive cutter head and main bearing.”

By the way, Bertha is the boring machine, that is the machine that bores the hole not the boring machine.  Anyhoo…who could possibly have foreseen a labor dispute?  I mean..c’mon.  That never happens.  And when there’s a labor dispute nothing bad ever happens at the worksite.  Nice giant boring machine you have there…be a shame if something happened to it while it was in the middle of a tunnel 1000 feet under ground.  Oh, wait.  Something did happen to it.  Never mind…move along…nothing to see here.

*The English Channel Tunnel  passes under the English Channel and connects England and France via railway.  The Brits call it “the chunnel”.  The French call it “le chunnel”.

Oklahoma Inmate Dies After Execution Is Botched.  First, if it’s an execution and the inmate dies, is it really botched?  I mean, come on.  Mission accomplished.

I respectfully disagree with opponents of the death penalty.  They are entitled to their opinion as am I, a proponent of the death penalty.  I believe there are some crimes so serious at to merit the forfeiture of the perpetrator’s life.  In fact, I think that society has an obligation to  execute perpetrators of anti-social violent crimes, after due process of course.  I do not believe in slow, painful executions.  A hanging, firing squad or a bullet to the head would have been more humane treatment of the inmate in the above story than the idiotic lethal injection regimen most states been forced into by the courts.

OK, let’s have the debate:

Execution won’t bring the victim(s) back!  Keeping the perpetrator alive won’t bring ’em back either.

The death penalty is not a deterrent!  It’s not meant to be a deterrent – it’s a punishment.  Using that logic, we should just repeal all laws since they don’t seem to deter the criminals who violate them.

The Bible says Thou Shalt Not Kill!  The 5th Commandment Says Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder.  There’s a difference.  The Bible also says take an eye for an eye.

Alright, time’s up.

We should take no pleasure in the execution of a murderer – I do not.  It is not done for vengeance.  But it is neccessary.  There are evil people in the world and those that commit crimes such as the Oklahoma inmate deserve death.  If there is mercy to be meted out, it will be done at the hand of the Father.

Or what makes a human “human” and an animal “not human”?  Well, it’s not physical charactersitics because there are animals that share our physical characteristics.  Humans have a soul and animals do not?  There is no physical proof of the presence or absence of a soul in humans or animals for that matter.  These questions and rebuttals can proceed ad infinitum.  Eventually the question is begged: Do Animals Have Rights?

I don’t think this stuff up on my own.  Usually someone a lot smarter and more articulate than I am writes something that get me thinking.  And this time it’s no different.  Via Althouse I found this article:  http://althouse.blogspot.com/2014/04/in-his-animal-law-classes-wise-told-me.html

Which in turn led me to this NYT article: “Should a Chimp Be Able To Sue It’s Owner?”

Both of these articles look at the question more from the perspective of “in the eyes of the law, what makes a human different from an animal?”  For one thing a human can communicate with his/her attorney or the court.  If the client can’t then someone is given power of attorney and the right to speak for the one who can’t.    Well that could be done for an animal as well, right?  Hmmm…  One thing seems for certain – humans are unique among the other animals of the earth and I don’t make that statement simply from the arrogance of being the Apex Predator.  And since we are unique, there is something that makes us so.  But exactly what is it?  Up for debate – ad infinitum.

And it will only get more complicated…

What about Robot Animals?