Don't Tase Me, Bro!

Though "Beach Bob" had been wearing his Speedo briefs at a local beach in collier County, Fla. for years with no complaints from  local beach goers his briefs offended a Deputy Sheriff, who banned him form the beach and gave him a ticket.

WINK News Reports:

A Bonita Springs man is taking steps to file a civil suit against the Lee County Sheriff's Office after getting kicked off the beach for wearing a skimpy suit.

Bob Hezzelwood, better known as "Beach Bob" says he has been sitting just South of Bonita Beach in Collier County for years.

Beach Bob says that routine was broken up when a Lee County Sheriff's Deputy issued him a citation for trespassing because the deputy felt Bob's Speedo swimsuit crossed the line.

Hezzelwood says, "he said you're going to have to find another beach and wrote a trespass notice."

Other local beach goers told WINK News that they've never had a problem with Bob's Speedo.

"He was ticketed for wearing a speedo, which was evidently too visual for the police officer," Chip Parfet said. "As far as I'm concerned, I've seen bikinis that show a lot more."

Judge issues court order mandating that the father of a 17 year old girl (now 18)  who'd been kicked out of high school for truancy guarantee that she gets her GED. Girl attends classes but fails her GED math. Man thrown in jail for six months.

WCPO TV, Cincinnati reports

A Fairfield man is in jail because his daughter hasn't gotten her General Equivalency Diploma (GED).

A judge ordered the father to stay on top of his daughter's education months ago and when that order wasn't followed, Brian Gegner was sentenced to 180-days in the Butler County jail.

The daughter, Brittany Gegner, says her father shouldn't be punished for her problems.

Especially, she says because she's now 18, an adult.

"It's ridiculously wrong," said Brittany Gegner.

"Of all the punishments they could have given him, to make him go to jail?," she asked. "I mean, probation - until I get my GED - would be reasonable, but to send him to jail? That's overboard."

Butler County Juvenile Court Judge David Niehaus ordered Gegner to jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor by not following a court order which required Gegner to be sure his daughter got her GED.

This comes after ongoing problems of Brittany skipping classes at Fairfield High School and then, Butler Tech.

While Brian Gegner had custody of her, Brittany says it was while she lived with her mother that she was truant.

"I'm about to be 19 and my Dad's being punished for something I did when I was 16," she said.

"It's like I should, if anybody should be punished for this," said Brittany. "I would way rather me go to jail than my Dad."

"They probably should have punished me if they were going to punish anybody," said Brittany's mother Shana Roach. "Because she did live with me at the time, but because he had the custody, that's why he's being punished."

"But I don't understand the punishment all together because she's going to school, she's been going for four months," said Roach. "The only thing that's holding her back is she can't pass her math test."

Brittany has a daughter who's about 18-months-old.

She says she's determined to pass the GED for her daughter - and her father.

The judge says if she passes the test, her father could get out of jail before his six-months sentence is up.

Brittany's step-mother worries the time in jail will ruin their family.

She says he could lose the job he's worked for 15-years.

"I never dreamed they would put him in jail for this - for six months - it's crazy," said Stephanie Gegner, Brittany's step-mother.

(Thanks to the Agitator)

Retailers subject to $500 fine for selling Pot Lickers and Kronic Kandy to anyone under 18.

WSBTV reports

Georgia retailers soon will be banned from selling candy flavored to taste like marijuana to children. Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue signed a measure into law Wednesday that bans the sale of "marijuana flavored products" to minors -- anyone under 18 -- and calls for a fine of up to $500 for each offense. The measure takes effect July 1st. It targets businesses that sell the candies with drug-inspired names such as "Kronic Kandy" and "Pot Suckers." The law says the candies promote drug use. Senator Doug Stoner pushed the bill in the senate. "I don't think that folks are aware this is going on," Stoner told Channel 2 in April. "It's mainly, from what I can tell, particularly targeted to minority communities."

From the "Nation Gone Madd" dept.

Lawrence Taylor at DUI Blog reports:

Jeff Brown was walking his bicycle -- across his own front yard -- when he was stopped by a police officer.  The cop began to cite him for not having a headlight on the bike, then said, ""I smell the presence of alcohol on your breath".  Jeff was stunned -- and refused to take a breath test.  Result: convicted of drunk driving -- with four days in jail, a 6-month driver's license suspension and a criminal record.

So Jeff decided to appeal...and started looking into why the Ohio Legislature in 2004 had changed the drunk driving laws from driving motor vehicles to include operating such "vehicles" as golf carts, lawn mowers, farm tractors and bicycles - and from driving on public roads to include driving on your own private property.  He found the reasons for the new laws were based on supposed fatality figures from MADD and the federal government....figures which are, to say the least, deceptive.  Jeff's film does an exceptional job of analyzing the fraudulent manipulation of these "statistics".

See Brown's YouTube film here

Also check out other DUI classics like "DUI on a Toy Bike"

From the "Because we've got a badge and you don't school of justice" dept.

Texas man with no prior record, or outstanding warrants, jailed for minor traffic infraction (and for failing to show proper deference i.e. asking questions). Police chief acknowledges he's never heard of an arrest for a turn signal infraction, but sides with arresting officer, simply saying state law gives him the power to arrest someone for many crimes, no matter how minor.

WFAA-Dallas reports:

Mark Robinson was driving through downtown Melissa last week when he was pulled over for failing the use his turn signal.

But instead of getting a ticket, the officer took the 24-year-old to jail.

He was booked, strip searched, and sat for 3 hours with criminals. "People talking about using drugs and shooting heroin. They asked me what I was in there for and I said a turn signal violation," said Robinson.

There aren't any warrants out for Robinson. In fact he says he's never been in jail. But he does admit to challenging the officer's questions during the stop.

"It's just unacceptable to me to have my son thrown in jail for such a minor offense," said Mark Robinson, the father.

His father thinks the officer assumed he had drugs because of his age, which he didn't.

"I think if they had stopped me in the same circumstances, I would have never gone to jail, or probably get a ticket," said the father.

In fact News 8 contacted various cities in Collin County, many of which have not made a single arrest this year for not using a turning signal. Even the police chief in Melissa acknowledges he's never seen this happen in his own city. "In the 6 years I've been the police chief, this is the first time," said Chief Duane Smith, Melissa PD.

But he stands behind his officer, saying state law gives him the power to arrest someone for many crimes, no matter how minor.

From the "Anything for an excuse to have a checkpoint, random searches and all that fun stuff" dept.

LA Times reports:

U.S. border authorities no longer apprehend illegal immigrants only as they enter the country. Now they're catching them on the way out.

At random times near the Tijuana-San Diego border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers have been setting up checkpoints, boarding buses destined for Mexico and pulling off people who don't have proper documentation.

The operation appears to be an expansion of a broader federal crackdown targeting illegal immigrants in jails, airports and workplaces across the country.

The checkpoints, which are not announced in advance, are set up on southbound Interstate 5 about 100 yards north of the border. Vehicles in all lanes must stop.

Vincent Bond, an agency spokesman, said departing immigrants are fair targets.

"If our officers come upon people who are here illegally . . . regardless of whether they're leaving the country, we detain them, make a record of the fact they were here illegally and return them to Mexico," Bond said.

Really. From the truth is stranger than satire dept.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names."

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.

Ms. Venkatesan's scholarly specialty is "science studies," which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, "teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth." She continues: "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences. Students told me that most of the "problems" owed to her impenetrable lectures and various eruptions when students indicated skepticism of literary theory. She counters that such skepticism was "intolerant of ideas" and "questioned my knowledge in very inappropriate ways...."

After a winter of discontent, the snapping point came while Ms. Venkatesan was lecturing on "ecofeminism," which holds, in part, that scientific advancements benefit the patriarchy but leave women out. One student took issue, and reasonably so - actually, empirically so. But "these weren't thoughtful statements," Ms. Venkatesan protests. "They were irrational." The class thought otherwise. Following what she calls the student's "diatribe," several of his classmates applauded.

Ms. Venkatesan informed her pupils that their behavior was "fascist demagoguery." Then, after consulting a physician about "intellectual distress," she cancelled classes for a week. Thus the pending litigation.

No, not talking about the banning of old Overkill DVDs. But about how the State of Delaware's war on crime and terror has taken a detour on is now fixated on using its heavy-handed bureaucracy to make enterprise impossible for small scrap metal recyclers.

Delaware Online reports:

Carmen Micucio Jr. thinks state lawmakers may have dealt a death blow to the recycling business he's spent 26 years building in Glasgow.

And he's not alone. Scrap dealers across the state are protesting new regulations that go into effect June 1 requiring, among other things, licensing, detailed documentation on all items bought and sold and waiting periods that will slow the sale of scrap metal in a time of turbulent prices.

"The law puts Delaware dealers at a competitive disadvantage because there are dealers just over the line in Chester, Pa., who are not subject to that law," said Scott Sherr, president of Diamond State Recycling in Wilmington, the state's largest scrap metal processor.

The law, adopted a year ago, was designed to tighten regulation of scrap metal processors, pawnshops and secondhand dealers to help police stem the flow of stolen goods.

A second law passed in April further tightened regulations on the resale of copper after a slew of thefts this spring at homes, farms and construction sites fueled by the rapid jump in world copper prices.

Violations of the new law are misdemeanors punishable by $10,000 fines and the loss of the dealer's license.

Sherr and Micucio say legislators never visited them before writing the law to see how the business works and assess how the new regulations would hurt.

"They railroaded this through," Sherr said. "We're going back to Legislative Hall and tell them why it won't work."

Police and lawmakers contend the law was needed to make sure dealers keep better records so police would be able to track people who pawned or sold stolen property.

The law also requires that dealers keep metals they buy on hand for 18 days before reselling them, a step police say is needed so stolen materials can be tracked -- and the seller identified -- before they are crushed or melted down.

Every scrap metal processor must specifically state on a form how all copper, silver, gold or brass was acquired. The forms must be kept for a year and provided to police upon request.

Sgt. Joshua Bushweller, a Delaware State Police spokesman, said dealers and processors now must create a record of every transaction, identifying the seller and including a photocopy of a photo ID. The form also includes a line to indicate whether the property was stolen.

"If a criminal walks in and tries to pawn off stolen property, it's highly unlikely that it will be listed as stolen, but they are going to have to provide their information," Bushweller said. "It gives law enforcement a direction to follow. If people are selling property with no criminal intent, they have no need to be worried."

The dealers say the record-keeping burden and holding periods will devastate operations.

Micucio, who says he moves 12,000 tons of scrap metal a month, said complying with the law will keep him bogged down in paperwork and disrupt the flow of his operation.

"We have 300 people a day who come though our facility," he said. "We have traffic backed up to Old Baltimore Pike. Now, I have to take identification, buy a copier and the paper, and hire someone to handle all the paperwork. It's going to cost me another $50,000."

Speech code's broad definition of harassment includes all public utterances that might tend to incite, annoy or even "alarm" (as in inform and wake-up?). 

From FIRE:

The University of Louisville maintains such a repressive speech code it's hard to know where to begin. But since we have to dive in somewhere, let's start with the fact that Louisville "requires that public speech and discourse on campus shall be civil." For the sake of the legal profession, I'm hoping that Louisville's general counsel was out sick the day this crossed his or her desk, because there is just no way such a requirement could possibly be constitutional. As far as impermissible restrictions on speech at a public university go, this is a twofer: it's both vague (what counts as "civil," and who gets to define it?) and overbroad (uncivil speech is certainly protected by the Constitution).

But my favorite part (by which I mean the most hilariously unconstitutional part) of Louisville's code is their harassment section:

A person is guilty of harassment when, with intent to harass, annoy or alarm another person, he or she:

(c) In a public place, makes an offensively coarse utterance, gesture, or display, or addresses abusive language to any person present.

The Ministry of Truth Sponsored by Taser International.
The Associated Press reports:

A medical examiner must change her autopsy findings to delete any reference that stun guns contributed to the deaths of three people involved in confrontations with law enforcement officers, a judge ruled.

Friday's decision was a victory for Taser International Inc., which had challenged rulings by Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler, including a case in which five sheriff's deputies are charged in the death a jail inmate who was restrained by the wrists and ankles and hit with pepper spray and a stun gun.

Kohler ruled that the 2006 death of Mark McCullaugh Jr., 28, was a homicide and that he died from asphyxiation due to the ``combined effects of chemical, mechanical and electrical restraint.''

Visiting Judge Ted Schneiderman said in his ruling that there was no expert evidence to indicate that Taser devices impaired McCullaugh's respiration. ``More likely, the death was due to a fatal cardiac arrhythmia brought on by severe heart disease,'' the judge wrote.

Schneiderman ordered Kohler to rule McCullaugh's death undetermined and to delete any references to homicide.

The judge also said references to stun guns contributing to the deaths of two other men must be deleted from autopsy findings. Dennis Hyde, 30, died in 2005 after a confrontation with Akron police, and Richard Holcomb, 18, died the same year after being hit with a stun by a police officer in suburban Springfield Township.

John Manley, a Summit County prosecutor who represented Kohler, said the judge's order went too far. The county is considering an appeal, he said.

``Taser is quite a force to be reckoned with and does everything to protect their golden egg, which is the Model X26,'' Manley said.