Go ahead, splurge, waste five minutes and take the quiz: What kind of Sixties Person are you?

You are a Folkie. Good for you.


What kind of Sixties Person are you?

[Link via that 60's radical Makes Me Ralph ]

by TChris

Last year, TalkLeft reported the story of an Oklahoma judge who was accused of pleasuring himself (and using a "male enhancement pump") while on the bench. The (now former) judge, Donald Thompson, was charged yesterday with indecent exposure. Smoking Gun has the story.

by TChris

A New York state senator, Kevin Parker, "flew into a rage after a fender bender in Brooklyn yesterday, tossing a citation into a traffic agent's face and then slugging him, police said." A "source close to the senator" claimed a "renegade" traffic agent was trying to cover his own assaultive behavior, but that isn't the way a witness saw it.

Before flinging punches, Parker tried to throw his weight around, a witness said. "Don't you know who I am?" he asked the agent, according to Luis Perez, 20, who works at a nearby bodega. Perez ... said the traffic enforcement agent struck back after absorbing a push, verbal abuse and several punches. "He's lucky it wasn't a regular cop," Perez said of the hot-tempered senator. "He would have gotten shot."

by TChris

Are ever-increasing sentences the best answer to repeated criminal behavior? An editorial in today's New York Times points to a report prepared for the Council of State Governments that "argues that the country needs to reinvent its corrections system." The report suggests that governments should take steps to help offenders avoid a return to crime after their release from prison as the best hope of reducing recidivism.

This line of thinking is long overdue. The United States has 2.1 million people behind bars on any given day .... The portrait of the inmate population offered in the report leaves no doubt as to why two-thirds of the people who leave prison are rearrested within a few years. These people were marginally employable before they went to jail - nearly half earned less than $600 a month. They are even less employable afterward, thanks to criminal records. In addition, many of them suffer from mental illnesses that often go untreated after release.

Providing help with housing, employment, and mental health care might break the cycle that returns offenders to prison -- at a huge cost to society -- again and again. It's time for state governments to give serious thought to the proposals advanced in the report. (Executive summary here.)

by TChris

Many fear that Congress will react to the Supreme Court's Booker decision by enacting new sentencing legislation that will further restrict a judge's ability to tailor a sentence to the unique circumstances of each case. Fortunately, commentators are asking Congress to take a deep breath before enacting draconian measures that might include even harsher mandatory minimum sentences. Joining that chorus of voices is federal district Judge Myron Thompson, who urges Congress to resist the temptation to legislate a "harsh and unforgiving legal system."

[W]e should keep in mind one basic principle: neither consistency nor codification guarantees justice. While few if any are calling for a return to the practically unfettered discretion that judges had before the sentencing guidelines came into effect, the nuances of individual cases necessitate a certain fluidity in imposing punishment. Congress should seek to shape judicial discretion, not to lock it in a vise.

As Judge Thompson wisely reminds us, "punishment cannot be reduced to an algorithm."

Here's an account of Rudy Giuliani at the Inaugural festivites, along with his guest Bernie Kerik, whom he continues to support.

Giuliani, in an interview before entering his party, told reporters: "Bernie is a very, very good man. He's gone through a difficult time but he is a person who's done a tremendous amount to help my city, my country."

According to the Associated Press, liberal radio show host Al Franken is considering a run for the Senate against Minnesota's Norm Coleman.

Coleman and Bush are friends. It was Bush who suggested Coleman run for the Senate against Paul Wellstone, who was killed in a plane crash in October, 2002, before Election day.

by TChris

FCC Chairman Michael Powell, best known for his controversial efforts to regulate indecency while weakening laws that promote diverse media ownership, will resign today.

by TChris

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a horrifying story in 2003 -- the story of Jumana Hanna, a victim of cruel and abusive treatment (including electric shocks and rape) while imprisoned under Saddam Hussein's regime. Now, it seems, the story is untrue.

A writer who was helping Hanna develop a book proposal tried to verify her claims, and learned that the evidence just isn't there.

In August of last year, as Ms. Solovitch began to try to verify details about Ms. Hanna's experiences, inconsistencies began to appear. An Iraqi doctor who examined her at the request of American authorities discounted her story of rape and abuse, Ms. Solovitch reported. A National Guardsman who was assigned to investigate Ms. Hanna's claims of a mass grave in the yard of the police academy in Baghdad turned up some cow bones but nothing else. All nine of the men who had been arrested on Ms. Hanna's word had been released for lack of evidence, the Esquire article reported, with some of them being compensated for wrongful imprisonment.

Hanna also claimed that her husband was executed in the prison where she was tortured, but her in-laws say he's still alive.

The Washington Post, duped into reporting Hanna's allegations as fact, is now "trying to determine how Ms. Hanna got refugee status and gained entry into the United States."

by TChris

A former police officer convicted of negligent homicide for shooting a 14-year-old boy while placing him in handcuffs has been sentenced to five years of probation and 60 days in jail. The Houston officer was also ordered to write a letter of apology to the boy's parents.

Prosecutor Don Smyth asked the judge Thursday to give Carbonneau six months in jail, the maximum jail sentence allowed under probation. Smyth also suggested several other conditions the judge declined to impose, including an open letter of apology to the residents of Harris County. ''They think their police officers are gun-toting, trigger-happy fools," Smyth said after the sentencing. "He's put everybody in fear and he owes everybody an apology."

The jury recommended only probation.

GW Pharmaceuticals in Britain, maker of the new Cannabis-based Medicine (Sativex®) has published results of its preliminary study of the drug, and finds that it reduces pain in cancer patients. [Via NORML).

U.S. District Court Judge Myron Thompson of Alabama has an op-ed in the New York Times, Sentencing and Sensibility on the recent Booker and FanFan decisions.

... amid the confusion that will undoubtedly follow this decision, we should keep in mind one basic principle: neither consistency nor codification guarantees justice. While few if any are calling for a return to the practically unfettered discretion that judges had before the sentencing guidelines came into effect, the nuances of individual cases necessitate a certain fluidity in imposing punishment. Congress should seek to shape judicial discretion, not to lock it in a vise.