From the Decatur Daily:

The America’s Junior Miss program is looking for a new choreographer after its last one was arrested in Florida on charges of having sex with teenage girls.

…

Authorities in Lake Mary arrested Fagan, 39, on charges accusing him of plying teenage girls with drugs and having sex with at least seven of them.

There’s no truth to the rumor that Fagan has asked his lawyers to get the case moved to Judge Karen Hall’s court.

Read David Prather’s editorial in the Huntsville Times regarding the egregious probation sentence handed down by Judge Karen Hall in the Jerry Wayne Love case.  Remember, Love was accused of multiple sexual assaults against three minors and the charges he faced could have resulted in life in prison.  Instead he’s probably sitting at home watching baseball.

Prather’s piece falls well short of actual criticism of the DA or the judge.  He does go so far as to call the sentence “troubling.”  I hereby nominate Prather for the Understatement of the Year Award.  He goes on to say that he is “left with lots of questions” about the sentence.  Not me.  It was wrong.  Period.

Prather says that prison addresses four criminal justice concerns:

• Punishment
• Deterrence
• Correction
• Protection

He left off one that I mentioned yesterday: faith.  The public must have faith that the criminal justice system will deal with criminals in an appropriate manner.  Otherwise, we the people will take matters into our own hands in order to ensure that justice is meted out accordingly.  No one can have faith that Karen Hall or DA Tim Morgan’s office will properly punish sexual predators in Madison County.

Suppose these were your children: Would you risk their futures for retribution?

It’s not just retribution.  It’s the protection of all other kids that a predator might harm if he is set free.  My answer?  Yes, I would compel my children to testify.  It would be absolutely reckless of me to put others in jeopardy out of sensitivity.

But those kids aren’t statistics in a theory. They are young souls who will have a difficult, maybe impossible, time making happy lives.

Because of Jerry Wayne Love!

Everyone is aware that victims, especially victims of sexual assault, don’t want to discuss the crimes.  That is understandable.  But for our society to properly function we need those people to testify against their assailants.  If they did not then our streets would be rife with rapists and pedophiles that avert jail time simply by virtue of reluctant victims.  We also need prosecutors and judges with enough common sense to know that these criminals should not be left on our streets.

A source forwarded me an email with some potentially troubling information.  Judge Karen Hall may have received at least one campaign contribution from one of the defense attorneys in the Jerry Wayne Love case.  You might recall that Love was accused of molesting his three adopted children repeatedly.  Judge Hall, succumbing to a request from the prosecution, gave Love probation.  That’s right - no jail time at all.

The first page of this campaign finance report from Judge Hall shows a $500 contribution from a “Walter Allen Davis” with an address of 100 Jefferson St. here in Huntsville.  Mr. Davis is an attorney and the Jefferson St. location is his office.  The Huntsville Times has reported that Love’s two attorneys are Steven K. Aldridge and Alan Davis.  The article states that Aldridge hails from Florence, AL, but it doesn’t say where Davis is from.  Could it be that the Times spelled Mr. Davis’ first name incorrectly?  I know it would be shocking to see an inaccuracy in a newspaper.

Should Judge Hall have recused herself in this case?

Also, Loretta Nall is saying that she will be on Hannity and Colmes tonight to discuss this case.

From AL.com:

Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” news talk show was scheduled to focus its Friday night segment on a self-ordained Huntsville preacher who will serve no time in jail even though he pleaded guilty Monday to molesting three adopted boys.

Tom Holmes, a producer with show in New York, said the case of Jerry Wayne Love is the kind of story the show’s producers could not pass up.

Good for them.  You can read my original post on this incident here.

We can partially rectify this situation by voting Judge Karen Hall (R) off of the bench.  I’d vote for a sack of potatoes before I voted for her.  Unfortunately we’ll have to wait until 2010 to get rid of her, but we can vote District Attorney Tim Morgan (D) out of office next year for allowing one of his attorneys to suggest probation for a habitual sex offender.

Un-freaking believable.

An unordained preacher who pleaded guilty today to three felony charges of first-degree sodomy in the repeated sexual abuse of three of his adopted children will not serve any time in prison.

Circuit Judge Karen Hall sentenced Jerry Wayne Love to 15 years on each charge to be served one after the other. But she accepted prosecutors’ recommendation and ordered Love to spend five years on probation and undergo treatment in a sex offender program.

Love, 51, of 3202 Overhill St., pleaded guilty to charges of sodomizing three young boys he and his wife adopted. In exchange, the prosecution dropped 10 counts of sodomy and three counts of sexual abuse against Love.

Get a load of the judge’s bio:

Prior to serving as circuit judge, she was a Madison County District Judge and an Assistant District Attorney. She served as the Division Chief in the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Unit from 1989 to 1993 and prosecuted only violent crimes from 1994 to 1996.

I can only hope that she accepted this sorry ass plea deal because the prosecution had a shaky case.  District Attorney Tim Morgan’s office is going to have some ’splaining to do.

Kudos to Loretta Nall.

Update (7/11/07): Link to AL.com article fixed. 

From CNN:

President Bush has commuted the prison term of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, facing 30 months in prison after a federal court convicted him of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators.

This is just another betrayal of the rule of law by the Bush administration.  I’ll readily concede that no underlying crime was committed in the outing of Valerie Plame, although the outing itself was reprehensible.  Regardless of Plame’s covert status no government official should be spouting off to the media about the identity of a career intelligence official.  So, if no real crime was committed, why would Scooter Libby feel compelled to commit perjury?  For whatever reason he choose to lie, he was convicted, and he should serve out the lawfully imposed sentence.

Decisions like this illustrate the fact that the GOP has abandoned their former platform of being the law and order party.  Hell, maybe Bush should commute the sentences of Scrushy and Siegelman.

That is the only way to sensibly interpret their landmark ruling this week.

The case in question essentially boils down to children in two school districts being denied access to particular government run schools on the basis of their race.  Any rational person might see a problem with that, but the school districts thought that discrimination was the best way to promote diversity, which itself is a goal that serves no useful purpose other than to make racial bean counters happy.

Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, summarized my idealistic view on race relations.  He wrote, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”  It’s kind of hard to argue with that one.

Roberts continued to spew even more of his vile common sense.

“Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on color of their skin. The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again — even for very different reasons.”

The Left has reflexively proclaimed this decision to be the “upending” of Brown v. Board, which is a shaky argument at best.  The court ruled that schools couldn’t discriminate on the basis of race.  The Brown court ruled that schools couldn’t discriminate on the basis of race.  Seems pretty consistent to me.

What is lost in the argument is the absurdity of how much our society focuses on race rather than characteristics more meritous of such governmental meddling (if ever warranted).  Money and social circumstances (i.e. good parents) have a substantive impact on the odds of a child being able to obtain a good education.  In our government run, districted school system poor schools (fiscally speaking) follow poor people and the parents are powerless to seek out better opportunities due to their financial situation.  Supportive parents who instill the importance of education and adherence to the law are of incalculable value.  The problem is that the government cannot easily or accurately quantify who is “rich enough” or which parents are “good enough.”  Instead we carry with us the legacy of using a terrible proxy, skin tone, for those (and other) very real factors that affect educational success.

Governmental social engineering is not the key to improving race relations.  Constantly telling people that we’re all equal, but some deserve special privileges simply due to skin color defeats the intended goal.

My personal experience tells me that the free market (as we know it) is the best means to achieve racial harmony.  In a truly free market companies that choose not to hire the best talent available are ultimately punished by the market when competitors hire the spurned individuals.  Individuals and businesses who choose to discriminate against anyone for any reason (skin color, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) will lose to those who do not.  In the end bigots are marginalized or converted to tolerant people as they interact with others they might have previously chosen not to associate with.

Only in America.

A $10 dry cleaning bill for a pair of trousers has ballooned into a $67 million civil lawsuit.

Plaintiff Roy Pearson says in court papers that he’s been through the ringer over a lost pair of prized pants he wanted to wear on his first day [at work].

He says in court papers that he has endured “mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort.”

He says he was unable to wear that favorite suit on his first day of work.

He’s suing for 10 years of weekend car rentals so he can transport his dry cleaning to another store.

The plaintiff, by the way, is a friggin JUDGE.  Unbelievable.  No offense to any lawyers who might occasionally read my blog, but I hate lawyers.

“The whole city is aware of this lawsuit,” said Bob King, who represents Fort Lincoln on the Advisory Neighborhood Commissions. “Everybody’s laughing about it.”

Everybody except the Chungs, who have spent thousands of dollars defending themselves against Pearson’s lawsuit.

“It’s not humorous, not funny and nobody would have thought that something like this would have happened,” Soo Chung told ABC News through an interpreter.

Her husband agreed.

“It’s affecting us first of all financially, because of all the lawyers’ fees,” Jin Chung said. “For two years, we’ve been paying lawyer fees. & We’ve gotten bad credit as well, and secondly, it’s been difficult mentally and physically because of the level of stress.”

Later, Soo Chung broke down in tears.

“I would have never thought it would have dragged on this long,” she told ABC News. “I don’t want to live here anymore. It’s been so difficult. I just want to go home, go back to Korea.”

“I’ve been in the dry cleaning business for 14 years, but this has never ever happened before. If anything happened to our customers’ clothing, we would always compensate them accordingly and fairly,” Jin Chung said through a translator.

I’m a political news junkie, but I’m sick of hearing about the US Attorney controversy.  It’s such a snoozer that it *almost* makes me want to watch coverage of who the father of Anna Nicole’s baby is.  I thought that, at the very least, I should pen one post on the topic.  Keep in mind that I’m an engineer, not a lawyer.

The whole situation seems very simple.  The USAs are political appointees that serve at the pleasure of the President (how many times have you heard that lately?!).  That should be the end of the story, but the Dems are flexing some political muscle and demanding explanations.  They have now authorized subpoenas for Rove and others.  The White House is stonewalling and claiming executive privilege.

The ExPriv claim is bothersome to me.  It’s analogous to an alleged criminal pleading the fifth, which to unbiased observers is practically an admission of guilt.  It makes me wonder what the Bush administration has to hide.  If the dismissal of the USAs is justified then give your reasons under oath.  Sure, they might seem shallow and self serving, but that is better than the alternative of rampant speculation.

I personally don’t approve of what appears to be the reason for the firings.  Depending on what you read it seems that Rove wanted more vigorous prosecution of Dems than GOP members for ethics abuses.  So instead of fixing the real problem of unethical elected officials Rove thinks the best solution for the party and the country is to simply install people that will look the other way and prosecute the other party.  I can’t abide by that.

I’m done with this story until something with meat on the bones comes out.

The Scooter Libby farce is over and unless he gets a presidential pardon he’ll be doing some hard time.

The moral of this story is simple: don’t lie - especially under oath.

The mere fact that Libby was on trial was a shame.  He was accused of covering up a non-crime.  Plame’s “outing” did not violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.  He wasn’t even the government official responsible for the initial leak.  Richard Armitage, who was working in the State Department, took care of that.

Still, Libby lied under oath and I have no qualms with him being prosecuted for that.  What we can all take from the case is how the Bush administration was eager to discredit skeptics of their policies even if it meant potentially unmasking a covert agent.  That should trouble all of us.  The apparent fact that no laws were broken during the disclosure of Plame’s identity gives ammunition to the right to cast aside the entire inquisition, but I still view the tactics of the Bush administration as abhorrent regardless of legality.

The trial also exposed the media as a willing cog in the political machine, publishing talking points in exchange for access.  It has placed a dark cloud of suspicion over all of their coverage of politics.  The media is, of course, falling all over themselves reporting this conviction.  Their coverage of Sandy Berger, whose actions I view as at least equally damaging as Libby’s, was quite lacking in comparison.