The insane just gets insaner…

Justice Plummer Lott declared a mistrial Monday afternoon in the case of Lee Woods, 30, after a female juror, who had reported hearth palpitations and high blood pressure on Friday morning, said that she was unable to resume deliberations until she underwent more tests.

State law prohibits substituting an alternate juror once deliberations are underway, unless the defendant agrees. That didn’t happen.

“He is upset in the first instance because he wanted a verdict,” said lawyer Sam Karliner. “He wanted to see this through…However, the jury that he wanted, including that juror, was unable to continue.”

The parties will return to court Jan. 14 to plan for the retrial.

He wanted a verdict? My ass. He wanted to delay it and try again. Getting a verdict wouldn’t have been a difficult thing, particularly since the jury was already in deliberations; what he wanted was a favorable verdict. Most definitely not the same thing.

And secondly, what the hell is going on with the DA’s office? Three cut and dried cases of murder, and they got one conviction, one walk, and a mistrial? For a baseball player, .333 is a good average. For a DA? It’s a disgrace.

Between this case, and the Brancato case, maybe it’s time we cleaned house and got some competent prosecutors? I think Michael Cutter would work.

Well color me stunned. A few days after a jury let Robert Ellis walk for murdering Russell Timoshenko, they also let Lillo Brancato walk for murdering a police officer. To be honest, I never saw that coming.

Former actor Lillo Brancato has been cleared of the most serious charges against him, including murder in the shooting death of off-duty police officer Daniel Enchautegui.

However, the jury did find him guilty of attempted burglary in the first degree and will be sentenced on January 16th.

The jury weighing the case against Lillo Brancato was sent home Friday because a juror had a prior obligation.

Jurors told the judge last week they were deadlocked 11 to 1, and asked the judge for two of the charges to be read to them again.

I have to wonder if the jurors heard about Ellis getting the skate before they made their decision, thinking that if they couldn’t pin a murder rap on him when he was admittedly in the same car a few feet away from the shooting of Timoshenko, how could they in good conscience send Brancato away for a similar offense?

Whatever the case, Brancato will be sentenced soon and I fully expect the judge to show a ton of leniency. I wouldn’t be surprised if rehab was involved, either.

Source

We’ve heard the word sacrifice come up quite often in recent weeks; usually in the same context; how much the “rich” (whichever loosely defined income group they decide “rich” are) needs to give back as a privilege for making money.

What shouldn’t surprise you, however, is that Congress has no intention of taking the lead and giving anything up. At a time when many Americans are starting to live paycheck to paycheck, and state governments are figuring out new and exciting ways to tax every little thing that people do, think about, or enjoy, Congress is about to get a nice little raise in the form of a $4,700 “Cost of Living” increase.

Each lawmaker’s annual salary is due for a $4,700 cost-of-living increase starting in January, which will amount to a cost to taxpayers of $2.5 million in 2009, infuriating watchdog groups.

“Members of Congress don’t deserve one additional dime of taxpayer money in 2009,” said Tom Schatz, president of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste.

“While thousands of Americans are facing layoffs and downsizing, Congress should be mortified to accept a raise,” he said in a written statement.

Members of Congress make an average of $169,300 a year, with Congressional leaders making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Cailf., makes $217,400, while the majority and minority leaders in the House and Senate each make $188,100.

The raise will increase the average salary to about $174,000, up 2.8 percent.

Pelosi’s and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s offices did not respond to FOXNews.com’s requests for comment.

So as the government hands out tons of free money to bank after bank, automakers, and manufacturers of arrows for childrens’ bows and not figuring out for one minute how we can afford these massive “fix your crappy business” fees, we now have to watch congress people collect an additional $4,700 for doing, well, whatever the hell it is they do.

Apparently, at a time when consumer prices are low, inflation is non-existent, and gas prices are through the floor, we now have to accept that poor Representatives and Senators just can’t function on a mere $170,000 a year, despite the fact that much of their daily lives is already subsidized by taxpayers anyway!

In the end, what does Congress give up as they preach to everyone about how gluttonous they are and what they need to sacrifice? It would appear that the answer is absolutely nothing.

But you already knew that.

Fox News via Wizbang

From the NY Daily News:

A jury convicted triggerman Dexter Bostic of murdering Officer Russel Timoshenko Friday night, ensuring he will rot in prison.

The verdict – guilty on all counts – was handed down after 14 hours of deliberations over two days.

“It was a pretty watertight case,” said a 29-year-old juror, the only white person on the jury of 10 African-Americans and one Latino.

“The men [on the jury] were saying, ‘These were bad dudes, these were gang bangers,’” said the woman, who asked not to be identified. “We felt they were on a crime spree that weekend.”

The decision came as a relief to Timoshenko’s parents, who were shocked when another jury acquitted Bostic’s co-defendant, Robert Ellis, two days earlier.

A third jury will continue deliberating the fate of the final suspect, Lee Woods, on Monday.

The most horrific part of the Dexter Bostic conviction is that it was based on a crime that happened inside a car that Robert Ellis, who was not convicted of murder last week, was driving. Defense lawyers made a point of telling everyone that he wasn’t, in fact, the shooter, and was just the driver in a car where the shooting happened. Well, now that we know for sure that one of the passengers in the car did, in fact, kill Russell Timoshenko, how can Richard Ellis walk on the murder rap?

That doesn’t make any sense to anyone with half a brain.

Put that in context with the absolute insane vigor that the prosecutors in the Bronx are using to go after actor Lillo Brancato, Jr., a case the jury is still deliberating on.

A Bronx jury finished its third day of deliberations yesterday without a verdict in the cop-killing trial of actor-turned-drug addict Lillo Brancato.

The panel, after announcing a day earlier that it was deadlocked by a single holdout, deliberated all day until being dismissed at 4 p.m.

The jury, which spent its first day in acrimonious talks, will return Monday.

Brancato, 32, is charged with felony murder in the Dec. 10, 2005, shooting of off-duty Officer Daniel Enchautegui. Brancato’s drug-addled friend, Steven Armento, shot the three-year veteran.

Note that Brancato was charged with murder even though he wasn’t the trigger man. If the jury found that Ellis didn’t pull the trigger based on testimony that proved that at least one of the other passengers of the car he was driving did, why is he not guilty of murder? I don’t know anyone in this city, police officer or civilian, who isn’t baffled by the Ellis / Bostic / Woods case, and it ought to be interesting to see the verdict when the jury gets back on the Brancato case because the situations are almost identical.

My guess is that Brancato gets put away and we’re left scratching our heads trying to figure out how Ellis beat a clear-cut murder rap.

Governor Paterson warned that a tax on the “wealthy” may be hitting New York State soon in an effort to close the budget gap that no one saw coming. In a prepared statement to the media, Paterson warned:

“Taxing the wealthy is probably going to be part of the solution if the deficit gets any worse, and all indications are that it probably will. If the deficit starts to grow again, then we’re out of moves. I’ve cut as much as I could.”

While the Governor gives his doomsday scenario and tells everyone that he’s already made cuts to everything, anyone in the know can just sit back and laugh because despite the “cuts,” Paterson’s plan for FY 2009 will see spending go up 5.5% from where it is right now. The question is, what did Paterson actually cut that caused spending to actually rise 5%?

Well, nothing. In a word, Paterson has done what politicians (particularly activist Democrats) have been doing for years; they call a slowed rate of growth a cut.

Allow me to give you an example.

Let’s say your allowance is $5 a week from mom and dad. Every year they raise your allowance one dollar, so that after five years, your allowance is now ten dollars a week. Realizing they can’t keep up the pace, they decide to raise it in year ten by only fifty cents. Your allowance after five years is now $10.50 instead of the $11.00 you were expecting it to be. In any normal mind, you got a $0.50 raise because your allowance went up $0.50. In the activist Democrat mind, your allowance was cut $0.50 because you didn’t get the dollar you normally got.

For example, while people gnash teeth about things like the “$700m cut to education,” buried in the explanation is that most of that relies on a four-year delay in increased aid to pre-kindergarten classes and a hike to tuition for CUNY and SUNY schools. The “doomsday” budget also includes “cuts” to Medicaid that, by some miracle, manage to raise spending on Medicaid by $1.1bn. How does that exactly work?

In the end, the New York State budget is a damn joke. Albany has no idea how to balance a budget, and for years has done so by increasing taxes and fees but rarely ever makes any cuts in their budget. This year is no exception because despite the “devastating effects” of the budget and the huge deficit we face, the Governor’s new budget is higher than the one that got us into this mess to begin with.

From Fox News, Wednesday December 17th:

Twenty-two of the 36 states facing budget deficits this fiscal year are increasing spending. Yes, increasing. Many states are collecting significantly less revenue than they counted on when budgets were drafted six months ago.

Spending cuts or tax increases will be necessitated because a number of states are required by law to balance their budgets. Cybercast News reports a survey from the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers released this week says the biggest offender is Nevada which at mid-year was $115 million in debt but plans to increase spending by just over 11%. New York will spend about 5.5% more despite being $1.8 billion in the red. Rounding out the top five are Ohio, North Carolina and Connecticut.

If that doesn’t stand out to you as utterly ridiculous, nothing will.

This chick cracked me up.

Just for the record, I hate the jewelry commercials, too…

via Meg @ Consumerist

UPDATE: The stupid video embed isn’t working, so you can watch it here also.

I was going to write a long post about Mark Felt and how I think his fame is highly overrated and based on the fact that he took down a piece of garbage president that wasn’t a popular guy, not because anything he did was particularly courageous.

Then I remembered, I did that already: June 26, 2005, when he first came out as being Deep Throat.

Felt’s actions do not ring true to anyone who believes in standing up for anything. I’ve said before and I’ll say again it took no courage to run to the press as an anonymous source. Anyone could have done that. It took no risk. No courage. Nothing. In fact, it was a weasly way out. He waited until most of the people involved were dead, decided he could cash in without consequence, and then came out.

Now, let’s roll back a few months.

Remember “the Whistleblowers?” The darlings of the american media for months on end? The two analysts from the FBI who continuously tried to blow the doors off the american intelligence system? The ones who Time wrote article after article about telling us how wonderful and patriotic they were for what they were doing? Surely you do.

Well, it’s no secret that I wasn’t exactly on their side because after reading their stories, I didn’t see anything in it that was more than hindsight. However, what they did was courageous, honorable, and even in some minds heroic.

They risked everything coming out in public. They risked their careers, their pensions, going to jail, everything. Why? Because they felt they had a need to get the story out. They believed their superiors, who they went to first, weren’t listening to them.

The contrast between the two approaches couldn’t be more stark. On one hand you have the FBI’s number two, who felt he had his hands tied on what he could do so he worked in the shadows to save his own skin, coming out only when there was a buck to be made. On the other hand you have two lowly analysts who were able to bring a scandalous story to the front of the american consciousness, become posterchildren for intelligence reform, and did so at great personal risk to themselves.

The whistleblower ladies were courageous. Mark Felt is an opportunist of the highest order, who despite being a “law and order” guy did nothing to further law and order.

Pardon me if I don’t get in line to kiss Saint Mark’s feet.

Yep. I pretty much nailed it.

It’s insane how grabby some states are becoming with their citizens’ money. Take North Carolina, for instance. Their “congestion” problem is so bad that they want to tax drivers based on the amount of miles they drive in a year, as if that’s going to somehow lessen the number of cars on the road.

With gas-tax revenues plummeting, the state of North Carolina is looking seriously at taxing motorists for how far they drive.

If the “road-use tax” is implemented, it would at first be simple – with the state checking your odometer annually and taxing you based on how many miles you have driven. But transportation experts say new GPS technology could allow the state to charge people different rates based on when and where they drive, in an attempt to manage congestion.

I don’t get how this manages congestion. At best, it’s a punitive tax on people who drive their cars. Oddly enough, that form of taxation is the most regressive, since it’s a flat rate for people no matter how much they make. At a time when people are closer and closer to living paycheck to paycheck, the State of North Carolina decides that now is the time for them to start managing congestion?

What, was I born ten minutes ago?

One commenter nailed it, however.

Isn’t this another multiple-multiple tax? They have a sales tax on the purchase of the vehicle, they tax the gasoline, they tax the tires, they tax the upkeep-repairs-service of your vehicle, they have a licensing-registration tax, they have an emissions check tax, they have a vehicle property tax, and now they want to tax the usage. Oh yeah, don’t forget about toll roads too.

Are we ever going to stand up to this kind of thing? Or have we gotten so comfortable and afraid of rocking the boat that we willingly accept a blatant reach into our wallets like this? Frankly, I’m appalled that this idea even got far enough to make it into a newspaper.

At what point do we tell the government “the next time you reach into my pocket, you have to answer to me for doing so?” As much as I hate to say it, this is part and parcel to our crappy two-party system. People, in the year 2008, would rather keep their party in office than revolt and tell them enough is enough and risk the “other guy” gaining power.

That’s where we are in 2008.

Source via Bridget

Peter King isn’t really all that enamored with the idea of Caroline Kennedy becoming the next Senator from the great state of New York. In an interview with CNN, King said:

I’m not saying you have to be a politician or to have held office … but you have to be somewhere in the public arena. The fact is that she has a well-known name, her face has been on a lot of magazines but, really, very limited involvement in the public sphere.

Wow. That’s gonna leave a mark.

Of course Democrats are lining up to make sure another vagina is in the seat because, after all, the number one qualification to whether or not you can be a Senator these days is your genitalia. Andrew Cuomo, another likely candidate and one that is far more qualified than Sweet Caroline wouldn’t make the feminazis happy.

Sending Cuomo to the Senate, however, might anger feminist groups that are pressuring Paterson to appoint a woman to replace Clinton. Considering that Clinton’s departure will leave only 16 women in the Senate out of 100 senators, many feminists believe women are underrepresented on Capitol Hill.

“It’s really important to us that we don’t lose another seat in the U.S. Senate,” said Cathy Lasry, president of the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee. “I think that we’ve proven that once we are in there, obviously we can govern. … We just need that extra push and some help in getting in there.” Video Watch the Kennedys’ hold on American politics »

Choosing Kennedy would allow Paterson to maintain the number of women in the Senate, but she is not the only female candidate the governor is reportedly considering. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-New York, has also expressed interest in the seat.

And of course, Donna Brazile, who’s always good for a few ounces of vapidity:

“As a woman, as a feminist, I think it’s time to put another woman in the seat,” CNN contributor and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said. “I think Caroline Kennedy will bring a great deal to the table.”

Amazing what qualifications a vagina represent.

New York Governor David Paterson’s budget includes an 18% tax on non-diet soda, meaning if you decide to avoid the poison known as aspertame in your soda, you’re going to be paying more for it. I don’t drink soda, and I don’t care one bit if it was $200 a bottle, but I did find one thing rather annoying.

Yesterday, during an interview, some moron woman on the street said that the tax is a good thing because it’ll keep kids from buying soda and might help the obesity epidemic in New York City. The Governor has hinted, similarly, that raising taxes on television and soda will increase activity and make people think twice about popping open a coke and vegging out on the couch.

The only problem with our Governor’s logic? He isn’t paying attention to punitive taxes we’ve tried implementing in the past. New York City and State have tried for years to milk every penny out of smokers they could. In fact, the tax on a pack of cigarettes makes up almost 50% of their price and yet, despite the price of a pack of cigarettes hovering well above $7-$8 for years, the number of smokers hasn’t moved, and when it has, it’s because of health problems associated with smoking and not the cost of a pack. If you don’t believe me, ask someone who’s quit. I know a few who have, but they did it because of the health benefits, not the cost. Most smokers I know on this very day don’t give a damn about how much a cigarette actually costs; they just need their fix.

Both Governor Paterson and the dope who was interviewed by CBS need to get their crap straight. These taxes are not designed to be anything else but a cash grab for the state government that’s too bloated to make real tangible cuts. $4.1 billion dollars isn’t a whole lot of money if you stop paying every State Senator to have 30 staffers sit in Albany and do nothing. Or maybe you stop paying for the EZ Passes that officials have been abusing for years (they claim it’s research; they need to know how the system works so they need a government-supplied EZ Pass). Or maybe you stop the stupid summer lunch programs in schools when school isn’t in session. How about all the dumb advertising for Niagara falls? Or maybe you can even stop sending me fourteen tons of mail right around every election on the state’s dime? I wonder how much that would save?

Nope, none of that. There are cuts in the budget, but let’s be honest; the cuts aren’t where a bulk of the money will be coming from, and knowing New York, those cuts are only proposed; they’ll never happen. The taxes on us, however, will be passed because in the end, Albany doesn’t feel that pinch.

We do.

An ex-con accused of the cold-blooded slaying of Police Officer Russel Timoshenko in a Brooklyn traffic stop was cleared of murder Wednesday night – a verdict that drew outrage and bewilderment.

A Brooklyn Supreme Court jury also found Robert Ellis, 35, not guilty of trying to murder Timoshenko’s partner, Officer Herman Yan, 27, but convicted him of three counts of weapons possession, with each count punishable by up to 15 years.

Prosecutors convinced that Ellis was a triggerman in the attack are expected to ask for the full 45 years. He had faced life without parole on the murder charge.

And the amount of outrage in the city? Zero. You don’t see people running around the city jumping in front of mics to tell reporters about the racist injustice in this city. Why? Because when a black piece of garbage kills a cop, there’s never a racial undertone (unlike when Saint Sean Bell was killed; that was obviously racist because he was black! No justice no peace!). When a white piece of garbage cop kills a black kid in Harlem, we have to withstand days and days of marches, protests, and outrage.

We sat here for months and watched Sean Bell’s opportunistic fiance weep on camera about the devastating death of her future husband and then watched as every schmuck who could afford a microphone rushed to get on a camera and protest because of the injustice.

Where’s the outrage here?

Oh there is none. It’s a cop. And he was white. And the shooter was black.

Tell me there isn’t a double-standard in this city; I dare you.

And just to complement the story, I’ll leave you with a quote from one of the jurors:

“There’s no argument in my eyes,” said alternate juror Luis Viera, 44, who sat in the jury box for five weeks. “If he was in the car, he killed them. If you’re acting in concert, you should be held accountable. They were planning to shoot the poor cops.”

Yep. It really is that obvious.

via

Apparently the folks over at Planned Parenthood (an organization founded by an admitted eugenist)aren’t too concerned over parental notification laws, seeing as they’ve completely ignored them in at least two videotaped incidents.

Live Action Films, home of the Mona Lisa project, has just released yet another tape of a Planned Parenthood worker suggesting that a 13 year old girl who was raped by a 31 year old man should sneak across state lines to have an abortion and avoid parental notification laws in place in Illinois. Below is the video:

According to reports last night and today the worker has been fired, but it sure does make you wonder, doesn’t it? Planned Parenthood is doing quite well with their assembly-line abortion business and they get taxpayer funds, but they feel as if they’re above the law.

Ever since 9/11, every decision made by any agency in New York City and New York State has been couched with the term “in the age of terrorism” or “in the post 9/11 world” and we’re supposed to believe that because 9/11 is mentioned, we suddenly are living in a safer world because our politicians are “on it.” What we have, however, is a major disconnect in common sense.

The MTA has begun rolling out a pilot program designed to pick up some revenue, save money on scratched train windows, and commercialize one of the last few spaces that aren’t already overly commercialized; the outside of subway cars. Check this brilliance out:

In an article about the tacky and stupid visual vomit, Gothamist says the following:

Addressing a major safety concern, Soffin added that “You can see through the windows, as verified by the NYPD in approving the pilot” (the NYPD has yet to comment on the matter). The material the ad is printed on is called Scotchcal, a 3M product; essentially it’s a perforated window graphic film that allows one to see from the inside-out, but not the outside-in (so basically not at all helpful when you are being attacked in a subway car and no one can see you from the outside).

Does that pass the stink test for you? It certainly doesn’t for me. Imagine, in a post 9/11 world (to borrow a phrase) a train rolling into Grand Central. You can’t see inside said train because of these stupid window decals, but the crazy terrorists inside with guns come out, guns ablazing, and shoot the hell out of a surprised and unaware public during rush hour.

Is it paranoia? Maybe. As Gothamist notes, however, the idea that someone could be getting attacked on a train and the police wouldn’t even know it has to be a scary one that would give a New Yorker pause, especially for those who don’t ride the trains during rush hour.

For an agency that continues to remind us that they’re very interested in our safety to make such a boneheaded and counter-intuitive move as far as safety goes proves one thing: our safety doesn’t really mean anything to them and the agency is just loaded with a bunch of dopes.