http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…

Keith Hopkins attacked Winifred Phipps, grabbing her bag and dragging her across the ground until she had to let go.

Since then she has worred about leaving her home and has to walk a different way into town because she cannot bear to be reminded of that day.

But Judge Anthony Cleary said he had to “exercise a degree of mercy” when sentencing Hopkins because he had suffered a number of traumatic events while in prison on remand.

Instead of sending him to prison, he handed him a community sentence for two years.

Mrs Phipps, of Leamington, Warks., branded the sentence a joke and slammed the judge for being too soft.

She said: “I’m very disappointed with what’s happened here.

“There are people that have had a lot harder lives than him and not done the terrible things he has.

“I was very surprised to hear he’d got away with not getting a jail sentence.

“My nerves are completely shot to pieces after what’s happened.

“I couldn’t go anywhere by myself and often have to go to the doctors for my aches and pains.

“Because it happened near there I still can’t go there alone.

“My husband Frank always comes with me and we even have to take a different route to town because I can’t bear to be reminded of that day.”

Warwick Crown Court heard Hopkins, 27, had suffered psychological problems brought on by a number of factors including an attack by others while on remand.

He also suffered childhood abuse and was haunted by the death of a friend he stabbed during the drunken and drug-fuelled argument he was convicted of manslaughter for in 2003.

Judge Cleary said: “While on remand in prison something terrified you.

“No-one would want anyone to be subjected to such terror as was clear to me in that earlier occasion.

“I do not consider you to be wicked or evil.

“It is appropriate to exercise a degree of mercy in your case.”

In a resititution based system this guy likely wouldn’t be held in prison. He would have paid off his debts to the family and friends of his victim and let go. Without further information it sounds as if it was likely prison that caused him to become a petty criminal. Prison and jail aren’t designed to reabilitate or even provide an enviroment for the criminal (or so called criminal) to pay off the debts for their crime. It’s a melting pot of some of the worst in society and they keep adding in more people, both true criminals and not, and acting as if things will get better for them. That they won’t be worse off, that we all won’t be worse off, when they get out.

Create a loser pays, restitution based system and get rid of the war on drugs and much of our criminal problems and court abuse would disappear.

https://docs.google.com/View?id=dhbvr2gz_18gk9wt8gt

Note: the below was created from OCRing screencaps of a Flash based chatroom. Excuse the mistakes.

Xaq Fixx 3:39 pm
Alright… Question 1:
Political Identified Profile field, when will it return

Lee Doren
As soon as I get confirmation to add it back—it was my intention to add at asap Friday, but then it was unclear what my authority was to do so
The only reason why it was removed was so I could add something else asap
Like an open-ended political affiliation
Read More…

http://www.nytimes.com/…

Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers – eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 – face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots – BAM! BAM! – fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence – an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

“Our end goal is to create more agents,” said April McKee, a senior Border Patrol agent and mentor at the session here.

The law enforcement posts are restricted to those ages 14 to 21 who have a C average, but there seems to be some wiggle room. “I will take them at 13 and a half,” Deputy Lowenthal said. “I would rather take a kid than possibly lose a kid.”

Just as there are soccer moms, there are Explorers dads, who attend the competitions, man the hamburger grill and donate their land for the simulated marijuana field raids. In their training, the would-be law-enforcement officers do not mess around, as revealed at a recent competition on the state fairgrounds here, where a Ferris wheel sat next to the police cars set up for a felony investigation.Their hearts pounding, Explorers moved down alleys where there were hidden paper targets of people pointing guns, and made split-second decisions about when to shoot. In rescuing hostages from a bus taken over by terrorists, a baby-faced young girl screamed, “Separate your feet!” as she moved to handcuff her suspect.

In a competition in Arizona that he did not oversee, Deputy Lowenthal said, one role-player wore traditional Arab dress. “If we’re looking at 9/11 and what a Middle Eastern terrorist would be like,” he said, “then maybe your role-player would look like that. I don’t know, would you call that politically incorrect?”

This is seriously fucked up. YAY fascist police state Hiter youth brigade!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

The rightwing attacked Stewart for his cool and well-thought-out position that Truman was a war criminal for his atomic bombings.

So here Stewart is, cravenly retracting his wonderful moment of truth and logical consistency. He bends over backwards to make himself look respectable, to laugh off his “stupid” condemnation of Truman’s murderous actions.

Of course Truman was a war criminal. Beyond Hiroshima and Nagasaki was Operation Keelhaul, whereby Truman helped Stalin round up millions of expatriates and subject them to Soviet slavery (and in many cases death). Then there was his undeclared war of aggression in Korea, where he targeted civilians with napalm and deliberately destroyed dams to flood villages filled with helpless people.

Truman is one of my litmus tests for the left. For all their problems, leftists who at least are antiwar enough, and nonpartisan enough, to recognize that Truman, domestic dictator, architect of the Cold War and butcher of millions and destroyer of cities, is not any more admirable than the relatively less criminal George W. Bush, tend to get my respect. Those who defend Truman’s acts of mass barbarism represent all the worst “liberal” ideals of the 20th century. On the other hand, those, like Stewart, who seem to have the instinctual desire to speak the truth, only to backtrack and defend one of history’s greatest murderers, are perhaps even more obnoxious than the latter group.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

The article itself is fine but the comments are beyond ignorant. Rather than looking into the historical facts which Paul spoke of or attempting to argue political theory, philosophy, or the language of the US Consitution these Huffington Post’ers just blather on.

• The war against the CSA did not answer the question of secession. It answered the question of who was more powerful / had more people to send to their death.
• The Constitution makes no mention of secession. In the early years of the country there was no question that if a group could voluntarily enter into a governing agreement that they could not back out of it. The Declaration of Independence points this out clearly.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

• Ron Paul has not all of a sudden, due to a black (he’s not “black” but born of  “white” and “black” parents, what is this the slavery “one drop” days?) president, start supporting the concept of secession. It’s an ignorant and likely bigotted statement to claim such a thing.
• Ron Paul does advocate removing at least the property rights infringement aspects of the Civil Rights Act. The federal government has no authority to make such a law and it’s a gross infringement to one’s right to property.
• FACT: The Pledge of Allegiance was created by Francis Bellamy in the late 1800’s to get people to more or less worship the state given he was a a state socialist and a flag salesman who would gain from such a pledge becoming popular.
• IMO it helps to make actual arguments based on logic and facts rather than mud throwing and ad hominems.