Local judge stands up to lying cops

~ susie

Made in America Festival 2014 3 twitter

And takes much criticism as a result, of course. Pretty shocking story, even to me. I can’t stand Lynne Abraham, she was a stain on the city’s reputation and I’m glad she’s gone:

“There’s an enormous inequity in a system that permits a police officer’s testimony to be unassailed and have absolutely no repercussions,” he warned. “No one man’s testimony should be elevated by any status in his life. It’s a charge we give regularly to our juries.”

Betts was not the first officer to have his testimony called into question by Rau. After taking the bench in 2001, she quickly became, the Inquirer reported, “one of Philadelphia’s most controversial judges — developing a reputation for refusing to believe sworn testimony from police officers and for throwing out key evidence.” It’s a reputation that’s rare among city judges.

District Attorney Lynne Abraham’s office, according to media reports, began to collect a “dossier” on her objectionable rulings. In 2002, she criticized Rau’s conduct as “horrible” and “grotesque,” accusing her of having an “institutional bias against police officers” and for handing out lenient sentences.

In one case, Abraham contended that Rau had not sufficiently explained her decision to suppress evidence of a handgun allegedly seized from a 23-year-old West Oak Lane man. But the two officers’ accounts of the incident differed, and Rau questioned their credibility.

“Judge Rau and others, they show no safe haven for any citizen in the city,” Abraham told the Daily News. “Sometimes the only thing to do to get them to do the right thing is to embarrass them.”

Critics say that Abraham wanted to instill fear in judges like Rau who dared to cross her and question police.

Another reason to despise 9/11 hysteria

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

dronepainting

Insane legal cases like this, where a man is serving a 65-year-sentence for charity work:

Yesterday, on the eve of the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11, I received an email from my father saying that the photos affixed to the walls of his prison cell were ripped down and called “contraband” by the officer who took them.

My father is a political prisoner, convicted of terrorism charges in the vacuum of post-9/11 hysteria and incarcerated at a federal prison in southern Illinois—all under allegations stemming from his indisputable philanthropic work.

Until recently, the walls of my father’s 9-by-5-foot cell were covered with eleven photos of children from all over the world—children who were injured or killed during recent political events. My father wrote my family, heartbroken, to say that even though he had collected these images from The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and other publications, they were still seized—with no notice.

My father, Ghassan Elashi, is currently serving a 65-year-prison-sentence at the Communications Management Unit in Marion, Illinois for conspiracy to send Material Support in the form of humanitarian aid to charities in the West Bank and Gaza that prosecutors claimed were associated with designated terrorists; our biggest defense thus far (and the reason my father may be vindicated in due time) is that his charity, the Holy Land Foundation, used the same exact Palestinian charities that our own government agency —the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—used to distribute its aid.

His ass is grass

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Governor Visits GMVC

Bye, Tom! Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, etc.:

PHILADELPHIA — A poll of voters likely to cast ballots in Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial election shows they prefer Democrat Tom Wolf over Republican incumbent Tom Corbett by a 24-point margin.

The Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday shows Wolf, a wealthy businessman, is favored by 59 percent of likely voters compared with 35 percent for Corbett.

At least half said Wolf would do a better job handling the issues of jobs, education, government spending and taxes. Fifty-four percent said they believe Wolf is honest and trustworthy but they were tied at 43 percent over Corbett.

Quinnipiac culled the 1,161 likely voters from more than 1,500 registered voters, based on their stated intentions and voting records, in telephone interviews between Sept. 3 and 8. The sampling error margin is plus or minus 2.9

The hillbillies of Wasilla

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Sarah Palin

Remember, folks: John McCain and Bill Kristol put her one heartbeat from the presidency!

Hell hath no fury like a Palin family visit: Just when I was about to give up on them, the Gods of gossip came visiting this week, and as they’ve done in the past, they beckoned me to look towards Wasilla, towards the fortress of Our Lady of the North, the woman who was almost a heartbeat away from the presidency, whose family had a dramatic weekend, Wasilla style!

As many of us have read, Bristol Palin was visited by a Floridian stalker on Sunday who somehow ended up on the family’s balcony. The stalker currently sits in jail. That’s pretty dramatic. But that’s the least of it.

The night before, Saturday, was a doozy. The details are a little sketchy, but there’s enough of them, from enough different sources, that a story emerges, a story that according to the gossip Gods, looks kind of like this:

There’s some sort of unofficial birthday/Iron Dog-type/snowmachine party in Anchorage. A nice, mellow party, until the Palins show up. There’s beer, of course, and maybe other things. Which is all fine, but just about the time when some people might have had one too many, a Track Palin stumbles out of a stretch Hummer, and immediately spots an ex-boyfriend of Willow’s. Track isn’t happy with this guy, the story goes. There’s words, and more. The owner of the house gets involved, and he probably wished he hadn’t.

At this point, he’s up against nearly the whole Palin tribe: Palin women screaming. Palin men thumping their chests. Word is that Bristol has a particularly strong right hook, which she employed repeatedly, and it’s something to hear when Sarah screams, “Don’t you know who I am!” And it was particularly wonderful when someone in the crowd screamed back, “This isn’t some damned Hillbilly reality show!”

No, it’s what happens when the former First Family of Alaska comes knocking. As people were leaving in a cab, Track was seen on the street, shirtless, flipping people off, with Sarah right behind him, and Todd somewhere in the foreground, tending to his bloody nose.