Kentucky Case Ends In Greater Police Powers

The Supreme Court, in an 8 to 1 decision, has given police greater powers to force their way into your homes, thanks to a Kentucky marijuana case.

Police officers who loudly knock on a door and "hear sounds that suggest evidence is being destroyed" may now legally break down the door and enter your home without a search warrant. That's right, without a search warrant. And what defines "sounds that suggest evidence is being destroyed"? Well, the police get to determine that for themselves. In other words, they've been given carte blanche to do whatever they want. (Like they don't already in some places.)

Residents who "attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame" when police burst in, said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. I think it's amazing that Mr. Alito is already assuming, hypothetically, that the police are automatically in the right and that evidence was really being destroyed. If someone flushes a toilet, does that count as "sounds that suggest evidence is being destroyed"? Or running their sink's garbage disposal?

Historically, police have not been allowed to just bust their way into a home without a search warrant. That's now officially over. Just like a lot of other things.

The Los Angeles Times tells how we got here:

It began when police in Lexington, Ky., were following a suspect who allegedly had sold crack cocaine to an informer and then walked into an apartment building. They did not see which apartment he entered, but when they smelled marijuana smoke come from one of the apartments, they wrongly assumed he had gone into that one. They pounded on the door and called "Police. Police. Police," and heard the sounds of people moving.

At this, the officers announced they were coming in, and they broke down the door. They found Hollis King smoking marijuana, and put him under arrest. They also found powder cocaine. King was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Did you catch that? They "heard the sounds of people moving." That's all. These idiot cops broke down the door - and the WRONG door at that - because they "heard the sounds of people moving." And they got away with it. And now the Supreme Court has handed all other cops in the nation a license to do the exact same thing with impunity.

Law-abiding citizens like you and me now have to fear that some moron is going to bust down our door if they make a huge mistake like these officers did, and smash it down if they "hear us moving."

Ruth-Bader Ginsburg, apparently the only member of the Supreme Court who still has a soul left, dissented from the rest of the herd and said the decision her fellow lawgivers made "arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the 4th Amendment's warrant requirement".

Ashland Man Sues 136 Companies Over Asbestos

A man named Ronald Eugene Withrow, who was diagnosed with asbestosis on March 28, 2010, has filed a civil suit against 136 companies that he blames en masse for his diagnosis.

That's according to the West Virginia Record legal journal, who says that Withrow - a resident of Ashland, KY - is claiming each of these 136 companies exposed him to asbestos and asbestos-containing products between 1954 and 1999. The defendants are being sued on "theories of negligence, contaminated buildings, breach of expressed/implied warranty, strict liability, intentional tort, conspiracy, misrepresentations and post-sale duty to warn", according to the journal.

The 136 companies named as defendants are:

3M Company; A.C.F. Industries, Inc.; A.K. Steel Corporation; A.W. Chesterton Company; Ajax Magnathermic Corporation; Aker Kvaerner, Inc.; American Crane and Equipment Corporation; American Electric Power; American Electric Power Service Corporation; Allegheny Energy Service Corporation; Allied Chemical Corporation; Amdura Corporation; Appalachian Power Company; Aristech Chemical Corporation; Ashland Oil, Inc.; Aurora Pump Company; Bay City Crane, Inc.; Borg-Warner Corporation; Brand Insulations, Inc.; Bucyrus International, Inc.; Buffalo Pumps, Inc.; Calgon Carbon Corporation; Cashco, Inc.; Caterpillar, Inc.; Certainteed Corporation; Chevron U.S.A., Inc.; Clark Equipment Company; Cleaver Brooks Company, Inc.; Columbus McKinnon Corporation; Copes-Vulcan, Inc.; Crane Company; Crown, Cork & Seal USA, Inc.; Dezurik, Inc.; Dow Chemical Company; Dravo Corporation; Durabla Manufacturing Company; Eaton Electrical Inc.; El DuPont de Nemours & Co.; Elliott Turbo Machinery Company, Inc.; Fairmont Supply Company; F.B. Wright Company; Flowserve US, Inc. as successor in interest to Bryon Jackson Pumps; Flowserve US, Inc. f/k/a Flowserve FSD Corporation f/k/a Durametallic Corp.; Flowserve US, Inc. f/k/a Durco International, Inc.; Ford Motor Company; Foseco, Inc.; Foster Wheeler Energy Corporation; General Electric Company, Inc.; General Refractories Company; Geo. V. Hamilton, Inc.; Georgia Pacific; the Gorman-Rupp Company; Goulds Pumps, Inc.; Grinnell Corporation; Honeywell International; Honeywell International, Inc.; Huntington Alloys Corporation; I.U. North America, Inc.; IMO Industries, Inc.; Industrial Holdings Corporation; Ingersoll-Rand Company; Insul Company, Inc.; ITT Corporation; I.U. North America, Inc. f/k/a the Gage Company; J.H. France Refractories; John Crane, Inc.; John Deere Company; Joy Technologies, Inc.; Kelsey-Hayes Company; Kentucky Power Company; KES Acquisition Company; Kramig Co.; Lawrence Pumps, Inc.; Lockheed Martin Corporation; Manitowoc Cranes, Inc.; McJunkin Corporation; Metropolitan Life Insurance Company; Milwaukee Valve Company, Inc.; Monongahela Power Company; Morgan Engineering Systems, Inc.; Mueller Steam Specialty; NACCO Materials Handling Group, Inc.; Nagle Pumps; Navistar, Inc.; NIBCO, Inc.; National Service Industries Venture, Inc.; Nitro Industrial Coverings, Inc.; Oakfabco, Inc.; Oglebay Norton Company; Ohio Power Company; Ohio Valley Insulating Company, Inc.; Ohio Valley Electric Corporation; Owens-Illinois, Inc.; P&H Mining Equipment, Inc. Peerless Pumps; Pneumo Abex Corporation; Premier Refractories, Inc.; Rapid American Corporation; Reading Crane; Rhone-Poulenc AG Company; Riley Power, Inc.; Rockwell Automation, Inc.; Ross Brothers Construction Co.; Rust Constructors, Inc.; Rust Engineering & Construction, Inc.; Rust International, Inc.; Schneider Electric USA, Inc.; State Electric Supply Company; Sterling Fluid Systems (USA); South Point Ethanol; Stockham Valves & Fittings; Superior Boiler Works, Inc.; Taco, Inc.; Tasco Insulations, Inc.; the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.; the F.D. Lawrence Electric Company; the Gage Company; Trecco Construction Services, Inc.; Thiem Corp.; UB West Virginia, Inc.; Union Carbide Chemical & Plastics Company; Uniroyal, Inc.; United Engineers and Contractors, Inc.; United Engineers & Constructors, Inc.; Viacom, Inc.; Vimasco Corporation; Warren Pumps, Inc.; Weil-McLain Company; West Virginia State Electric Supply; Westinghouse Air Brake Division of Trane U.S., Inc.; Westinghouse Air Brake and/or Wabco; Whiting Crane; Washington Group International; Yale Materials Handling Corporation; and Zurn Industries, Inc.

I doubt this scattershot approach will work out, but you never know. Many asbestosis and mesothelioma lawsuits are settled out of court. Others, however, like the infamous W.R. Grace case in Libby, Montana, dragged on and on and on. (W.R. Grace, incidentally, is the same company also involved in a trichloroethylene case in Massachusetts, as depicted in the John Travolta film A Civil Action. W.R. Grace also had a plant in New Albany, Indiana, just over the river from Louisville, for many years.)

NYC Sues Kentucky Cigarette Company

This morning's Wall Street Journal has an article about how NYC's Mayor Bloomberg has filed a federal lawsuit against "a Kentucky-based ring of firms" that have allegedly been selling cigarettes in New York City illegally.

How does that work? Well, it's complicated. You can read the WSJ article yourself, and I urge you read other sources on this matter as well, but the bottom line is this: the taxation of cigarettes is essentially a scam (like most taxes). And when it came to the attention of Mr. Bloomberg that someone was selling cigs and not bothering to mess with his insane and unfair bureaucracy, well, of course he's foaming at the mouth. Just as any other mobster would when they found out someone that ain't got ethics was chiselin' in on their fix, see.

If I own a hammer - if I really own it - it's mine and I can do whatever I want with it, including sell it to you at a yard sale. If you own a pack of cigarettes, theoretically it's just as much your property as your hammer. By what right does some old man behind a desk call the cops and call you a "smuggler" if you sell your pack of cigarettes to some housewife in Forest Hills? Especially when that old man is a billionaire many times over already.

Of course, they say "well, governments must tax things, to pay for important things like roads and schools". That's the same line they used when America invaded the Phillipines in 1899 and forced our ways upon their society. And all this unfair taxation (didn't we start this country in order to get away from this in the first place?) is really paying for all sorts of pork-barrel-project garbage that the public didn't ask for, didn't want, and can't do anything about. Just like in the Phillipines.

It's not about politics - both parties do "tax and spend" equally, and both are taxing things that ought not be taxed (they're even seriously talking about taxing soda pop now) - and Bloomberg has never really been able to decide whether he's a Democrat or a Republican anyway. (I am neither, for the record.)

Having said all that, the WSJ lists the Louisville-based "Chavez, Inc." as a primary defendant in the investigation, and they have something of a bad reputation, although that means nothing to me. I don't necessarily believe everything I read on the internet, not even my own blog. According to WFPL, Chavez Inc. was raided by federal agents in late 2009 and all of their assets were seized, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Kentucky has an ongoing civil lawsuit against them.

The report also says, "Lawyers for Chavez have said the company was not legally obligated to collect taxes on out-of-state sales."

Chazez, Inc. has also been in trouble with the FDA for allegedly flouting Obama's reprehensible ban on flavored cigarettes, which instantly left tobacco stores across the nation stuck with product they could no longer sell, including clove cigarettes.

I don't know anything about these Chavez folks - I just read the papers and the internet same as you - but it certainly seems as if much of their activities fall under that growing group of citizens whose activities were once perfectly legal and they were made into criminals overnight by the stroke of some corrupt politician's pen.

The solution, of course, is less taxation, less government, and more outrage when someone nib-noses into another person's business and tries to tell them what they can't do. (I understand this philosophy is a major plank of the Tea Party, but I'm not one of them, either.)

Murderabilia

In 1997, a 14-year-old Paducah boy named Michael Carneal, endlessly tormented by school bullies and increasingly hearing voices in his head of a group of entities calling themselves The Danes, finally snapped.

On December 1 of that year, he brought a .38 handgun to school and opened fire upon the school's Christian prayer group, killing three and wounding five more. He then placed his pistol on the ground and said, "Kill me, please". He had been reading the Stephen King novel Rage which, coincidentally, was also in the possession of Dustin L. Pierce, a senior at Jackson County High School in McKee, who held his classroom hostage at gunpoint in a nine-hour police standoff in 1989.

Despite the fact that he was only a child, he was sentenced to life in prison in LaGrange.

Now, probably out of boredom being in a high security institution surrounded by far scarier people than himself, Carneal has turned to art as an outlet. People are actually purchasing his artwork, which inevitably draws the ire of people who don't want prisoners to be able to do anything, have anything, achieve anything.

It all started years ago when killer clown John Wayne Gacy started getting rich in prison selling his crude paintings, and someone decided that maybe it wasnt such a good idea for murderers to profit from their crimes. When you phrase it that way, it does sound logical, but on the other hand, there isn't much "profit" involved when you're in prison for life and all you can really buy with your windfall is stale, overpriced Reese's Cups at the prison commissary. I mean, the guy's in jail for life, it's not like he's living the life of Riley in the VIP room of a Monte Carlo casino.

It's also part of a growing trend to dehumanize prisoners, and to take away any shred of a reason to live for these people. Sooner or later, the same people who say "prisoners shouldn't be able to sell their art" will be saying "you know, prisoners shouldn't be allowed to watch TV or read books either. They committed horrible crimes, so they don't deserve to do anything enjoyable ever again." This mindset that prisons are supposed to be hellish only guarantees that these men and women will only become hardened sociopaths more than ever. No wonder recidivism rates are through the roof.

An organization called "Kentuckians Voice for Crime Victims" (do they have a website? I couldn't find one) has publicly decried the sales of Carneal's artwork and writings, even though Carneal is not actually directly receiving any cash from these transactions. The Courier-Journal devotes a disproportionate amount of a recent article to the opinions of some anti-prisoner-trade activist named Andy Kahan from Texas. According to the article, "Kahan estimates that about half of the criminals get some form of payment, but he argues it's just as wrong for third-party dealers to profit."

By this logic, no one would be allowed to write true-crime novels or even cover the news for profit.

Having said that, the websites offering Carneal's work - such as Ghouls Like Us, Serial Killers Ink, and Murder Auction - don't really seem like serious patrons of the arts. Rather, they seem like a bunch of unhealthy serial-killer fetishists who might need to be checked for Danes themselves.

(As a cigar enthusiast, though, I have to admit that my curiosity perked up just a tad when I learned that Ghouls Like Us is selling a cigar butt from another infamous Kentuckian, Charles Manson, and hyping it by saying "now you can say you've shared a cigar with Manson!")

Louisville's War on Nudity

Do I have my finger on the pulse of the timespace continuum or what? Just days after waggishly dissecting Kentucky's ludicrous anti-nudism statutes, the Louisville Metro Police have made a formal announcement of their intention to crack down on strip clubs, by invoking the city's nudity ordinance.

According to WAVE-TV:

For years, it has been the subject of a court battle. But starting Feb. 8, Metro officials say its inspectors will begin monitoring Louisville strip clubs to make sure nude dancing is a thing of the past.

The city ordinance will stop all nude dancing, eventually cut out alcohol sales and force employees to pay licensing fees. Touching and direct tipping of dancers is out, no lap dances and there's a 6 foot distance that must be between dancers and patrons.

Okay, so the powers-that-be don't like strip clubs. That's fine. I understand these twinks, bears, chickenhawks, and nellies are grossed out by naked women, and obviously, we have to like what they like. And if we have a problem with that, we can always leave, right? I mean, it is their city, after all, not ours, right?

So pray tell, what about nudity in theatrical productions? Riddle me that, Batman. Nudity in the theatre has been a long-honored tradition, hallowed by usage and consecrated by time, right here in Louisville. There was peek-a-boo nudity and see-through costume nudity in my play Toulouse-inations which was staged at the Kentucky Center for the Arts, and it is my intent to have full nudity in my upcoming play Son of Grimaldi. (I also wanted some near-nudity in my play Patrick Amsterdam, but the lovely and talented Sarah East ultimately chickened out on wearing a red thong microbikini as called for by the script.)

I guess my Jefferson County Confidential nude art exhibition a few years ago, which was also a clothing-optional event for guests as well as the art itself, would also be frowned upon in the new regime. The majority of my nude photo work is shown in art galleries in Europe, where people are less squeamish and less superstitious in general. (I'm always seeking models - anyone interested, contact me at jshpaint@gmail.com for more information. Both males and females are welcome, and your age, weight, appearance and body type are absolutely not an issue.)

So, Louisville, maybe this is the night I called it a day. Maybe it's time I gotta travel on, like the old Bill Monroe song says. Between the corrupt cops, the idiotic arena, the smoking ban, and now this, I'm running out of reasons to defend Louisville from its detractors and naysayers. I really am.

I hear Interzone's nice this time of year.

Fortune Telling!

Whilst wading through the manure that is Kentucky's Revised Statutes yesterday in assembling my post on Kentucky's Nudist Society Act, I also happened across good ol' KRS 231.110.

It deals with "Places of Entertainment", and what is forbidden in them. And in typical KRS fashion, it's frightfully vague and disturbingly arbitrary.


Did you know you can't have "drunken" persons in a place of entertainment? I guess that makes every nightclub in Kentucky against the law.

Did you know you cannot have any unmarried man or woman occupy a secreted place together out of view of the public? What year is this, anyway? Sounds more like Saudi Arabia than America to me.

Also says here that persons with a "lascivious reputation" are not allowed to congregate in places of entertainment.

Wait, that can't be right. Can it? Let me just look at that again... hmmmm. Yep, that's what it says.

So, uh, what is the governing body responsible for determining one's "reputation"? Or is it just left to the individual determination of fine morally upstanding law enforcement officers? You know, like Chris Dison.

I know, I know - they always say "oh, those laws aren't really enforced, even though they're still on the books." Yeah. Not enforced much. Except maybe when they need to be, selectively, by serious detectives seeking justice. You know, like Crystal Marlowe.

But most peculiar of all to me is that the statute spends more time being concerned about fortune telling than anything else. Maybe it was a bigger deal in 1978 (when this statute was passed) than it is today, I dunno. Says here an establishment must go through the rigamarole of obtaining authorization to tell fortunes from the county clerk. (Why does an expert in Tarot need to pass muster with some bureaucrat? Is any county clerk knowledgeable about the necromantic arts? Does he/she possess some sort of innate ability to instantly sense the fakes from the "genuine" fortune tellers?)

It further goes on to decree that even after an establishment jumps through all those hoops (and that doesn't even take into consideration each city's own peculiar laws and regulations), it must post in a conspicuous place a schedule showing a detailed breakdown of fees.

It's enough to make a fortune teller not wanna tell fortunes. Or at least go underground. Or at least repaint the sign out front to read "Life Coaching" instead.


I wonder if these statutes ever caused any trouble for Madame Zelda at Squirrely's Magic Tea Room? No wonder she's never there when I drop in.

Oh, how I wish it was 1942 again, when a man could discreetly drive to Madam Brent's trailer and slip through the beaded curtain to have one's fate assessed.

What would Edgar Cayce do?

Kentucky's Nudist Society Act

Here's a real blast from the past. A Time magazine article dated July 15, 1966 - when Hector was just a pup - about how Kentucky's nudist society laws were overturned:

When police arrived, Kentucky Farmers Clarence and Benjamin Roe were holding family religious services in their unfenced backyard. Unfortunately, the assembled Roes of all ages and sexes were not wearing clothes. The Greenup Circuit Court fined Clarence and Ben jamin $1,000 apiece for violating Kentucky's Nudist Society Act, which required all nudist colonies to pay an annual license fee of $1,000, register all members, and segregate the premises with a solid masonry wall 20 ft. high. Unreasonable and unconstitutional, ruled Kentucky's highest court as it voided the Roes' convictions and stripped the nudist law from the books. Calling the wall "prohibitive" and the fee excessive, the court scoffed at the law's definition of a nudist as anyone found naked before "persons of the opposite sex, not his husband or wife, at their solicitation or with their consent, for religious or health purposes." Construed literally, ruled the court, the law would penalize even "a female patient who undergoes an examination by a male physician."

Problem is, two years later, they went back and rewrote the law to allow an exemption for medical professionals, and the flawed law has remained on the books in Kentucky ever since.

How does the state of Kentucky define "nudist"? I bet you've always wanted to know that, haven't you? Provider of Rare Services that I am, here's your answer.


Don't you just love the male-centric language of it? And how it fails to define what "any part of his private person" means? And how it leaves no allowances for nude modeling in the arts? This law reads like it was written half a century ago. Oh, wait, it was.

So, to this very day, you still have to have a license to operate a "nudist society" under these insanely vague definitions? That's right. And wait, it gets better: it specifically states that it makes no difference whether nudity is part of your religion or not (and it is part of several religious belief systems), you still have to get a license to take off your clothes in the private company of other like-minded individuals.

And exactly how does one apply for a license to take your damn pants off in the woods? You must petition the local county judge, who can turn you down based on your "character".

It's not at the top of my list of civil rights issues to crusade for, granted; but it is primitive, it is backward, and it is irksome on many levels.

Statewide Tobacco Ban?

The anti-smoking forces are looming over Kentucky's civil rights like the Death Star over Alderaan once again. The Courier-Journal is reporting that a bill proposing a statewide tobacco ban is now before the Kentucky legislature.

I oppose any attempts to curtail tobacco usage, even though I don't even smoke, myself (aside from an occasional fine cigar after a good meal or a puff of my pipe whilst striking a Sherlock Holmes-esque pose at my fireplace mantle), mainly because I tend to oppose any attempts to curtail people doing whatever they want to do within the law. I repeat, within the law. And there's the rub, you see: tobacco is legal. You'd think we were talking about Heroin or something, the way the rabid anti-smoking militants carry on.

And speaking of drugs, I find it odd that powerful and influential people are on a tirade against tobacco instead of doing something about Oxycontin and Crack and Meth, all of which are major problems for Kentucky's well-being. If these do-gooders would use a tenth of the resources and funding and effort they spend railing against tobacco to instead help put a stop to the Oxycontin pipeline, Kentucky would be a much safer place. But for some reason, they prefer to make second-hand smoke their pet bugaboo. Why is that, I ask aloud? Qui bono?

I believe diet sodas like Diet Coke to be far more harmful than all the tobacco in the Commonwealth, containing as they do dangerous artificial sweeteners like Nutrasweet, Splenda, and Acesulfame-K, as well the equally dangerous High Fructose Corn Syrup. Hell, everything we eat nowadays has corn in it, and not just any corn but genetically modified Monsanto corn. As Ivan Stang once opined, "Cocaine's pretty damn unhealthy, alright, but at least it isn't half our kids' diet."

Nevertheless, you don't see me mounting some goofy campaign to ban these substances, because I do believe it's your right to eat and drink cancerous crap if that's what you really want. Or to play golf amongst nerve gas, even.

Similarly, partially hydrogenated oils are one of the deadliest substances in our food supply, and yet they still are consumed on a daily basis by you and I. Whining about second-hand smoke when you eat and drink poison - literal poison every day of your life - is a little like living inside a septic tank and consuming raw sewage, yet complaining that someone else passed gas.

How about the pollution in Kentucky's air, water and soil caused by Rubbertown, DuPont, and places like Valley of the Drums and Maxey Flats? And these sites are only famous because people found out about them, as opposed to the sites that are still buried out there that you don't know about. Second-hand smoke, compared to what unfathomable chemicals that factories are semi-legally allowed to belch into our air from their smokestacks, is not on the top of my list of things to stress about.

How can you decisively point the finger of blame for any given person's lung cancer when we're swimmming in a sea of mostly-invisible car exhaust at all times, and blobs of ozone float around us constantly? And even though people make jokes like "I believe such-and-such lived too close to the power lines as a kid", it's no joke that people are living too close to the electromagnetic fields of power lines and power stations, and no one is doing anything about it.

And I bet most of these "OMG, your second hand smoke is killing me" people use cellphones. Guess what? You're dead already. Game over.

(Even the ones who don't use cellphones can't escape the radiation from cell towers, which are increasingly being hidden so you won't even know when you're leaning up against one.)

Aluminum is a very toxic metal, yet we cook our food in pans made of it, then wrap the leftovers in foil made of it. We use aluminum-based deodorants, day in and day out. In 1993, the World Health Organization announced their findings that autopsies of Alzheimer's disease victims showed abnormally high concentrations of aluminum in their brains, yet since then absolutely nothing has been done to reduce the public's aluminum intake.

A recent exhaustive analysis of 173 brands of bottled water was recently conducted, and only three of them got an "A". One brand that I often drink was given an "F".

As if arsenic and cryptosporidium in tap water aren't bad enough, did you know that the world's water supply is increasingly contaminated by antidepressants, antibiotics, and other prescription drugs that most municipal water treatment plants cannot remove with their conventional filtration systems? Sewage treatment plants can't eliminate it either, nor can they eliminate MRSA or Clostridium difficile, a truly terrifying superbug which Kentucky is sixth in the nation for reported cases.

Do some Google-cizing around the web and you'll find that practically everything under the sun is being touted as "bad for you" by some nutritional expert or other - peanuts, fish, corn, wheat, protein, caffeine, alcohol, dairy products, red meat, even soy. And we're surrounded by toxic BPA-laden plastics that leach estrogen-mimicking chemicals and more. And don't even get me started on Monosodium Glutamate. The sheer information overload of studying all the data from all these experts will either make you move to a desert island or throw your hands up and say, "The hell with it, it's hopeless trying to be healthy. I'm going to the store to buy a pack of hot dogs and a carton of Luckies."

(So what is the solution? There isn't one. I say, just live your life and let the Lord take you when he decides.)

Did you know that toxic coal ash sludge is now being used as an ingredient in the asphalt on Kentucky roads? It's kind of a complicated and unwieldy subject, and frankly, it's pretty boring - even to me - to read about, and it lacks the clear-cut charm of other causes. You know, causes that people can set up donation-raking organizations for, to whip citizens into a hysterical frenzy over to further their own ambitions. But that doesn't make the coal ash any less toxic a substance being introduced into Kentucky's environment.

How about getting tough on crime before we tackle smoking? There are places in Louisville that are essentially places of total lawlessness and danger, even as the LMPD prefers to spend its time combating perfectly legal strip clubs, and citizens like me who get pulled over and fined for nothing more than forgetting to buckle my seat belt. And let's not forget the LMPD's problematic history of framing innocent people for crimes they didn't commit. Maybe the new Louisville mayoral administration should clean house and start the LMPD all over again, from the bottom up and the top down.

But second-hand smoke? Come on. You're arguing about burnt toast in a burning house.

Finally - and I don't think you need me to remind you of this - I hear tell that it's a statistical certainty that we're all going to die in the end anyway.

Enjoy every sandwich!

Louisville Judge Advocates "Prison Justice"

It would have been nice if Louisville Judge Judith McDonald-Burkman could have kept her mouth shut and simply sentenced child-murderer Cecil New II to a well-deserved sentence of either life in prison or the death penalty. Unfortunately, she seems to have looked to television's Judge Judy as a role model, and apparently believes her position entitles her to be as irrational and hateful as her whims dictate.

To the astonishment of many, Judge Judith announced that she was giving New a sentence of life imprisonment deliberately, so that he would be forcibly subjected to "prison justice" at the hands of his fellow inmates, as opposed to the relative safety of the isolation that comes with Death Row.

With glee, the Judge told New she chose life imprisonment for him specifically because he will be among "bigger, meaner men who have nothing to lose, or who are armed."

That's all well and good - I mean, New is a scumbag and my own personal views on justice have more to do with the Wild Wild West than modern jurisprudence - but there's just one problem. Even though everyone jokes about "soap on a rope" and "sharing a cell with Bubba", there technically is not supposed to be such a thing as "prison justice". By deliberately using the threat of being assaulted by fellow prisoners as a sentence, she is basically admitting that such things happen in Kentucky's prisons and that's it's just fine with her.

"Or who are armed?" Wait, she's admitting that prisoners get away with having weapons in Kentucky prisons? And she's admitting she's okay with it? And that she's now essentially in collusion with these prison loonies, giving them carte blanche to do anything if they can get away with it?

I can see it now, some thug with tattoos all over his neck kills a fellow inmate and then pleads, "duh, that Judge I saw on the teevee acted like it was a normal part of prison life."

To condone prison violence, and to use it for her own ends, makes this Judge nearly as sadistic, barbaric and inhuman as the psychopath she is sentencing.

Man Called Daveiss

Kentucky's Daviess County is named after Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, the Grand Master of Freemasonry in Kentucky. And no, that's not a typo - his name was actually spelled "Daveiss", despite it uniformly being misspelled as "Daviess" on everything from roads to schools to courthouses to entire counties. This would also suggest that the correct pronunciation of his name would be like "Davis" and not "Davies".

Daveiss was something of an eccentric sort, preferring to practice law dressed in the buckskin outfit of a frontiersman. He was the first lawyer west of the Appalachians to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and he wore his woodsman suit even there. Far from being appalled, at least some were apparently impressed with something about Daveiss: he ended up marrying Chief Justice John Marshall's sister Nancy while he was in town!

Daveiss became the U.S. District Attorney for Kentucky, and relentlessly pursued Aaron Burr. In 1806, Daveiss brought treason charges against him but Burr somehow managed to get those charges dismissed thanks to his slick attorney: Henry Clay.

Despite being opponents in the courtroom, Clay and Daveiss were brothers in the lodge: they were both fellow members of the Freemason Lexington Lodge #1 in Fayette County. (And Chief Justice John Marshall was also a Mason - the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Virginia, in fact.)

Strangely, at the age of 47, Daveiss volunteered to fight with the Indiana militia in Tecumseh's War and was killed at the Battle of Tippecanoe. The Freemasons have erected a monument sign dedicated to him on the battlefield site.

Sherry R. Deatrick

Louisville attorney Sherry R. Deatrick wears a lot of hats in addition to her legal career - playwright, gallery curator, theatre critic, award-winning journalist, and - most notably for me - a creator of whimsical and mysterious artistic creations. Not only has she done some amazing mosaics and crochet amigurumi, but her papier-mache miniature heads have charmed art buyers all over the nation. Because her law practice is her primary pursuit, her art exhibitions are rather infrequent - which makes them all the more special occasions.

In 2004, I attended her one-woman show "Heads" at her own Deatrick Gallery in Louisville, and was so captivated by the rows of tiny peculiar papier-mache heads that I purchased one - a duck wearing a small tiara-like gilt crown. It remains a prized artifact in my personal collection of weird Kentucky art.


Some may also know Deatrick from her stint as LEO Weekly's theatre critic, earning three awards for that paper for three consecutive years. During that time, she gave the paper a sorely needed emphasis on the lively arts, with feature articles on celebrities like John Waters and local curiosities like Specific Gravity Ensemble (a group known for putting on micro-plays in elevators, who got a great cover-feature story devoted to them). Unlike many jaded critics who phone it in by the numbers or bluff their way through analyses of theatre aspects they know nothing about, Deatrick's passion and enthusiasm for the subject is always high.

But it's her law practice she's most passionate about, and she's become more and more of a crusader in recent years to protect citizens from unwarranted harassment from creditors. In these times of economic turmoil, a good bankruptcy attorney who cares is hard to find. Not only does Deatrick help people get creditors and bill collectors off their backs, she fights back against the collection agencies who use illegal and invasive practices to pursue their claim. In addition to bankruptcy law, Deatrick takes on many different sorts of cases, including helping people get on Social Security Disability, and helping people prevent their homes from being foreclosed.


Meanwhile, rumor has it that the "Heads" will be returning to Louisville later this year for an all-new exhibition. I'll be there, and I'll keep you posted on the details soon as I learn them myself.

Louisville's Ashtray Ordinance

It's bad enough that Louisville has a smoking-ban ordinance, but some aspects of it are even nuttier than expected when you go through the fine print with a fine-tooth comb. For example, there's this nugget of comedy gold:

"Any permanent structure that functioned or was used as an ashtray shall be disabled or altered to prevent its use as an ashtray."

That would, by definition, include toilets. Who among us has never flushed a cigarette butt in a bar restroom, or flicked ashes into its sink? I don't see any bars and restaurants disabling their toilets to prevent ashing into them. (And as we all know, public restrooms are the new smoking parlors these days.)

For more fun facts on the unconstitutional smoking ban, visit my Louisville Mojo column on creative ways to oppose it.

Mother sues Louisville Slugger over son's death

A woman whose son died in 2003 after being hit with a baseball is now suing Louisville Slugger, the manufacturer of the bat that hit the ball.

Debbie Patch's teenage son Brandon was pitching for the Miles City Mavericks when a ball hit by a Helena Senators batter struck him in the temple, resulting in a fatal injury. The batter was using a Louisville Slugger bat.

She believes that the Hillerich and Bradsby Company were aware that their aluminum bats created a high probability of injury and blames them because the bats are designed to hit a ball with extreme force. Well, heck, that's what Baseball is - hitting balls with extreme force with cylinders of wood and metal. Baseball isn't softball, nor is it wiffleball.

She believes the company should have placed a warning label on the bat.

I believe some things are so obvious that they don't require a warning label. It goes without saying that all sports carry an obvious risk. Where would one put the warning label during a football game, I wonder?

Kentuckian pro baseball player Ray Chapman was killed by an errant baseball during a Yankees-Indians game in 1920, even before the days of high-performance aluminum bats. No matter what kind of bat is used, the game is inherently dangerous.

We're increasingly entering a hyperlitigious world where the right to sue is becoming a speculative game, like daytrading or playing the Lottery. At this rate, we'll soon end up in a world where all food carries a warning that you might choke on it if you eat it. Where doorways carry a warning that unusually tall people might bonk their heads at the top. Where cars carry a warning that you might get smushed if you walk in front of one that's going real fast. Where stairways carry a warning that you might get hurt if you fall down them. Where steaming-hot coffee carries a warning that you shouldn't spill it all over yourself. (Oh wait, someone already did that.)

I certainly sympathize with Mrs. Patch for her terrible loss, but blaming a Louisville Slugger bat for an accident is not the solution.

Merck = Busted

Well, well, this just isn't Big Pharma's month: only weeks after Pfizer was caught defrauding the public about their ineffective and dangerous products and was forced to agree to a $5.4 million Kentucky settlement, another giant in the pill-pushing industry has been busted.

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway has now filed suit in Franklin Circuit Court against the pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. alleging that the company lied to consumers about the risks associated with its anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx (Rofecoxib).

Conway's suit says that he is seeking "injunctive relief, civil penalties, and other equitable relief", alleging that in May 1999, Merck began an "aggressive and deceptive" campaign to promote Vioxx for the relief of conditions including osteoarthritis and menstrual pain but failed to mention the increased risk of cardiovascular complications, including heart attack and stroke. "This kind of deception puts consumers at risk and will not be tolerated in Kentucky", Conway said.

The FDA reportedly estimates that the total number of US Vioxx deaths may be between 89,000 and 140,000. Worldwide Vioxx deaths are estimated to be between 150,000 and 200,000, though these estimates have not been confirmed officially. The number of people whose bodies have been damaged to some degree because of Vioxx is far higher: according to Wikipedia, over 80 million people have been prescribed Rofecoxib at some time.

(Merck, by the way, is the same bunch of charmers who brought you the contaminated Hib vaccine, the dangerous cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil, antibiotics with broken glass, and the controversial SV40-tainted polio vaccine which apparently they've known about all along.)

Coach takes Kids to be Baptized on School Trip

From USA Today:

A mother is angry about a trip led by the head football coach at Breckinridge County High School which took about 20 players on a school bus late last month to his church, where nearly half of them — including her son — were baptized.

Michelle Ammons said her 16-year-old son was baptized without her knowledge and consent, and she is upset that a public school bus was used to take players to a church service — and that the school district's superintendent was there and did not object.

[Coach] Mooney, contacted by phone, said school district officials instructed him not to comment.

But Superintendent Janet Meeks, who is a member of the church and witnessed the baptisms, said she thinks the trip was proper because attendance was not required, and another coach paid for the gas.

Saggy Pants Resolution

And then there's the very funny joke about Louisville's so-called "saggy pants resolution", in which the city Government attempts to dictate fashion by coming out against the popular hip-hop style of having saggy pants. Except it isn't a joke.

Since it's acceptable to go out wearing nothing but shorts, how can it be unacceptable to go out in saggy jeans that reveal part of those shorts peeking from underneath? If you think that sounds insane, welcome to the world of Louisville Councilwoman Judith Green.

According to LEO Weekly:

Despite having sponsored two controversial resolutions, Councilwoman Judy Green, D-1, was missing in action for both of her committee meetings last week. She was still on vacation when Councilwoman Cheri Bryant-Hamilton, D-5, made an amendment to broaden Green’s resolution to rename all of 34th Street in honor of the Rev. Louis Coleman.

And no one knew where Green was at the start of last week’s community affairs meeting, which was scheduled to debate her saggy pants resolution (for which no other council members even bothered to show up). Councilman Bob Henderson, D-14, who chairs the committee, decided to forward the measure to the next full council meeting.

Even more bizarrely, this resolution - which should have been laughed out of the room the second Green had the nerve to even bring it up - has passed the Metro Council Committee. Reportedly, several city lawmakers have privately stated that they consider Green's resolution a total waste of time, yet none of them have had the integrity to come out and publicly say so on the record.

Call me old-fashioned, but I like the U.S. Constitution the way it is, and I believe Americans have the right to dress as ridiculously as they like, and to look just as slovenly and stupid as they care to. What's next - resolutions against Goth fashion? Punk rock fashion? Rasta fashion? Crossdressing? Ugly sweatpants? How about tacky scarves?

From LEO again:

“I think we have got way more important stuff to be dealing with than whether or not a kid has got his pants down on his butt,” says Eddie Woods, executive director of the L.I.F.E. Institute, which works with at-risk youth in west Louisville and also closely with Green’s office. “I’m dealing with murder and mayhem everyday. Sagging is the last thing I’m thinking about.”

Green's scheme is not an ordinance or a ban, of course. It's merely a toothless and legally nonbinding resolution - in other words, it amounts to little more than an unenforceable stern suggestion. That Green would choose to waste the time and resources of the city on something so purposeless is appalling, although it's a given that politicians (especially small-time ones) love to stir up issues like this just to "look busy".

In other cities, these sort of resolutions have been used as trial balloons for cooking up outright laws against saggy pants. This has been a national trend for awhile now (Green is behind the curve in her meddling) but time and time again, these things get struck down as being - duh - unconstitutional.

If you'd like to call Green and tell her what you think of politicians telling American citizens how to dress, her phone number is 502.574.1101 and her e-mail contact form is here.

Pfizer = Busted

Kentucky is among 43 states to have won a $2.3 billion settlement with Pfizer Inc. in the largest health care fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice, to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from the illegal promotion of certain pharmaceutical products. The drugmaker and its subsidiaries paid kickbacks and improperly promoted Pfizer drugs for uses for which they had not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Pfizer will pay Kentucky $5.4 million for consumer protection violations and Medicaid fraud, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway's office has announced. According to bizjournals.com, the money will be directed to Medicare and Medicaid programs, and to federal health care programs that were deemed as being harmed by Pfizer's actions. (Will the other greedy Big Pharma entities clean up their act now? I doubt it. Has the disease-mongering Pfizer learned its lesson now? I severely doubt it.)

Morris Dees ACLU Event

Received via email from the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky:

Despite regular death threats and a thwarted plot to end his life (originating in Kentucky), 2009’s Bill of Rights Dinner featured guest, Morris Dees, has fought for civil rights for the unheard for over thirty years.

Mr. Dees is the Co-founder and Chief Trial Counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that throughout its history has worked to make the nation's Constitutional ideals a reality.

The SPLC legal department fights all forms of discrimination and works to protect society's most vulnerable members, handling innovative cases that few lawyers are willing to take. Over three decades, it has achieved significant legal victories, including landmark Supreme Court decisions and crushing jury verdicts against hate groups.

Please join us on Thursday, October 1st at the Hyatt Regency Louisville, as this civil rights hero comes to share his thoughts on hate groups in Kentucky and across the nation. Buy your tickets today!

In his autobiography, Dees described a dark "night of soul searching at a snowed-in Cincinnati airport" in 1967, after which he vowed to devote the rest of his career to fighting injustice, bigotry and hate. He sold his book publishing business and with the revenue generated by that, he opened the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama in 1971.

Since then, Dees has successfully sued the Ku Klux Klan, Tom Metzger's White Aryan Resistance, The Aryan Nations, and The Imperial Klans of America, among others.

According to Wikipedia, "Over 30 people have been jailed in connection with plots to kill Dees or blow up the center. Most recently a July 29, 2007 letter allegedly came from Hal Turner, a white supremacist talk show host, after the SPLC filed a lawsuit against the Imperial Klans of America (IKA) in Meade County [Kentucky]. During the IKA trial a former member of the IKA said that the Klan head told him to kill Dees."

Death Row

Fayette County prosecutor Ray Larson keeps tabs on Kentucky's 37 "death row" inmates on his website. Read all about it here, but only if you're extremely strong of stomach; the rogue's gallery of Kentucky's condemned men and women includes such nutcases as:

Floyd County's Donald Johnson, a 22-yr-old who killed a 61-year-old woman in a laundromat and mutilated her private parts with a ball-point pen.

Knox County's John Mills, who clubbed his 79-year-old landlord over the head and stabbed him 29 times, in order to rob him of $4.60.

Jefferson County's Melvin Lee Parrish, who stabbed a pregnant woman and her eight-year-old son to death.

Breathitt County's Karu White, who beat three senior citizens to death so brutally that their bodies were in pieces and had to be buried in bags.

Henry County's Parramore Lee Sanborn, who kidnapped, raped, sodomized, and murdered a mother of three. He ripped out all her hair and dumped her body on a rural road.

The Ten Commandments

The hubbub over the Jackson County courthouse's prominent display of a list of Christian moral precepts popularly known as The Ten Commandments is over for now, but those moral precepts are more popular than ever.

According to the great Kaintuckeean Blog:

McKee was most recently in the news when the Ten Commandments were removed from the courthouse after a federal lawsuit was filed. As a result, the Ten Commandments are EVERYWHERE in Jackson County, including this monument on private property just off the courthouse square.

I really don't see why there has to be such a fuss about this, from either side of the debate. If the Jackson County courthouse - or any courthouse, for that matter - wants to get around the ruling, they could conceivably put up an educational exhibit of all the world's religions, safely couching the Ten Commandments amongst the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, the Five Pillars of Islam, the Seven Pillars of Ismailism, The Eight Dynamics of Scientology, various Zen Koans, the Five Sikh Symbols, the Thirteen Mormon Articles of Faith, the Nuwaubian Tablets, the Zhen-Shan-Ren of Falun Gong, the Holy Measures of the ODF, the Jehovah's Witnesses Eschatological Chart, the Hare Krishna Mantra, the Transmissions of Aetherius, the Five Precepts of Aleph (aka Aum Shinrikyo), the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints and Feast Days, the Astara Prayers, the Eight Words of the Wiccan Rede, Kabbalah's 72 Names of God, the Seven Planes of Shamballa (Unarius), the Six Precepts of Ahmadi Faith, the Discordian Law of Fives, the Subgenius "Prescriptures" and even The Church of Satan's Nine Satanic Sins.

Not to mention the doctrines of Wayne Bent, Savitri Devi, The Branch Davidians, The Unitarians, Subud, Heaven's Gate, New Thought, Santeria, The Rosicrucians, The "I AM" Churches, Christian Science, Galactic Messenger Network, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Dianetics, TM, The Temple of the Presence, The Federation of Damanhur, Church of All Worlds, The Juche Idea, Eckankar, Sai, The Way to Happiness, Meher Baba, Odinism, Voodoo/Voudoun/Vodun, The Temple of Set, and The Urantia Foundation.

And also Shamanism, Ordo Templi Orientis, Predestinarians, The Sufi Order, Archeosophy, NXIVM, Barbara Marciniak, MorningStar Ministries, The Nation of Islam, Fiat Lux, Dahn Yoga, The Ancient Order of Druids, The Golden Dawn, WATV, The Grail Message, Hinduism, Apollo C. Quiboloy, The Book of Ruhnama, Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, Luciferianism, The Samaritans, House of Yahweh, Raël, Galac-Patra, the Hidden Words of Bahá'í, and of course, the channelled messages of Ashtar Sheran and the Ashtar Command Crew.

Can't we all just get along?


Since Christianity is pretty much an "open source" religion - that is to say, it's not copyrighted nor under exclusive control of any unified governing ecclesiastical body, thus freely modified - keeping the list of valid moral lessons intact while removing the overt references to the Judeo-Christian God would go far towards making the list more palatable to the ACLU. I wonder what would happen if the list were repackaged for courthouse use as, say, "A secular common-sense list of stuff to not do"? One's cake could be had while eating it too, since theoretically you'd be presenting a secularized version of the Ten Commandments, thus skirting illegality, even though you know and I know (and even people living under a rock in Tierra Del Fuego know) all about the list's religious basis anyhow.


The funny thing is, there are a whole lot more commandments in the Bible besides just these ten. The traditional codified list of what we call the Ten Commandments today was a very late arrangement, created by picking and choosing certain commandments given in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, including the Seven Laws of Noah which predated Moses by, at least, centuries (depending on whether or not you accept the Bible's statement that Noah lived 950 years).

Look it up: the phrase "Ten Commandments" is actually not used in the Bible to describe the litany of laws that we commonly ascribe that term to. It's used, rather, to describe a completely different set of "thou shalt nots" that can be found in Exodus 34:12-26. These Ten Commandments include instructions to destroy places of worship of other religious faiths, to sacrifice all first-born children and livestock to Yahweh, and an admonition not to boil a kid in its mother's milk. This set of Commandments actually supercedes prior ones from which we derived our modern idea of the Ten Commandments from, which Moses smashed to pieces. (In point of fact, the entire Old Testament is superceded for Christians by the New Testament, so the whole matter should be entirely moot anyway.)


As a Christian myself, the most unfortunate aspect of the whole mess for me is not the matter of Church vs. State, but that the controversy has caused a proliferation of plastic Ten Commandments yard signs, and you know how I feel about plastic signs. Sigh.