On April 15, 1963, Anna Marie Yocum was murdered at her home. Robert John Dowlut, age 17, was tried and convicted for second degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. On April 1, 1968 he was release on orders of the Indiana Supreme Court, and a new trial was ordered. This new trial never took place.
Mr. Dowlut went on to become the general counsel for the National Rifle Association and a respected advocate for the expansion of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
In 1931, Harlon Carter, age 17, shot and killed 15 year old Ramon Casiano, a Mexican-American in Laredo, Texas. That case was overturned by the Texas Court of Appeals.
Mr. Harlon, later came to be the Chief Executive Officer for the National Rifle Association from 1977 to 1985 and a respected advocate for the expansion of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
There are extenuating circumstances (serious ones) regarding the two killings. And you can read them in the sources noted. I just thought it was an interesting footnote to two very competent and successful advocates for the expansion of Second Amendment rights for individuals.
Most recently a decision was made to allow citizens to carry guns outside their homes in Washington D.C.. The justice in this case said that previous higher court decisions supported his decision. Much of these previous judgements were directly or indirectly due to the efforts of Robert Dowlut and Harlon Carter.
Sources:
Mother Jones; The NRA'S Murder Mystery: One Court Sent Him To Prison For Shooting A Woman, Another Set Him Free Over Bad Police Work. Was The NRA'S Top Lawyer Railroaded-Or A "Bad Guy With A Gun?", by Dave Gilson
Wikipedia; Harlon Carter
Syracuse.com; Syracuse senior federal judge tosses DC ban on carrying handguns in public, away from home, by Catie O'Toole, July 27, 2014
AND THEY WALK AMONG US
I don't want to diminish this by editing of paraphrasing and possibly water down the comments so:
| "KKK joins immigration debate with calls for "corpses" on the border |
| With thousands of undocumented children amassing at the U.S. border, Robert Jones, Imperial Wizard of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, doesn’t want amnesty. He wants “corpses” on the border. “If we can’t turn them back, I think if we pop a couple of them off and leave their corpses laying at the border maybe they’ll see we’re serious about stopping immigration,” Jones said." |
Photo: Al Jazeera America
(Notice the agency that took the photo? This should impress are friends and enemies abroad)
SOURCE:
Southern Poverty Law Center, August 1, 2014.
THE SPACE BETWEEN
Hypothermia it seems, can save you as well as kill you. There appears to be a space in between that is neither life as we define it and death as we define it.
We're not talking here about cryonics. If you have opted for cryonics, then sweetheart, you are graveyard dead.
No, we are looking at the space in between. It's a space doctors have known for years. They have used this space for people in cardiac arrest. And if you get knifed or shot in Pittsburgh, there is a doctor there that plans to drain all your blood and replace it with saltwater.
So, tell me , if you could be put in suspended animation when would you want to be walking around again? What do you foresee the downside might be if you returned 50 to 100 years from today? Would you be alone? If you are a senior citizen now, how would 'those people' treat you?
I personally want to go back in time, not forward. Unfortunately that is not an option yet.
SOURCE:
New Republic; Science Is Changing What It Means to be Dead: If you could freeze yourself until a future age, are you sure you'd want to?, by Judith Shulevitz, July 24, 2014
AMERICA LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT
Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein are the chief executives for JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs respectively. Both of these men are making big bucks for their companies and shareholders and themselves by actively helping American corporations renounce their American citizenship for lower tax bills abroad. You may have read about this increasingly new scheme called 'inversion'. It appears to be a win-win-win for firms like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, corporations, and shareholders. The only losers are you and me.
Guess what, it's legal. The brouhaha is over money, especially corporate taxes that will no longer go into the United States Treasury. There are attempts in Congress to stop inversions and to even make the prohibition retroactive. My take is that any attempt to thwart inversions by legal means will fail. I can't see lower courts upholding these legislative prohibitions and certainly not the Supreme Court.
Possibly, a change in tax laws will slow down the process, but that may involve reducing corporate tax loopholes and corporate subsidies. Oh, and yes both JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs were bailed out by you.
SOURCE
New York Times; Banks Cash In on Inversions Deals Intended to Elude Taxes, by Andrew Ross Sorkin, July 28, 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment