Friday, July 20, 2012
Big crime, little time
Not even the sickening sight of a child molester professing his love for one of his tormented victims was enough to undo a sweetheart plea deal.
So, despite the pleas of the victim and prosecutors, acting Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Martin Murphy stuck to the two-year sentence he’d offered a serial pedophile.
Andrew Goodman pleaded guilty last month to 48 felonies — “even more than Jerry Sandusky,” as his victim pointed out.
And prosecutors were prepared to seek a seven-year sentence on each count.
But Murphy last month dangled the bare minimum in front of Goodman — who quickly snatched what even his own lawyer called “an amazing deal.”
With time already served, Goodman could be back on the street by September.
In court yesterday, the 27-year-old predator declared an undying love for his victim, who — along with his brother — was molested for “a torturous four years.”
“Every second of every day, all that I think about is [the victim],” Goodman declared. Then he turned to the youth, now 17, and said: “I love you.”
More @ New York Post
The Price
Oleg Volk
still get the same two questions." He never lost his accent and the
two questions came up regularly. This time they came during a lunch
break from that new fellow at work. In the the thirty six years
since his arrival, Addie has learned that Americans were not looking
for detailed answers.
"How did I come to America?" he said lightly. "I ran away
from East Germany."
Addie sipped his tea, quiet for a moment. The new co-worker,
Kent, bit into his sandwich and chewed the stale bologna with loud,
savage chomps. The other question would come after the mastication.
Addie watched the reddish swirl of his tea with unfocused eyes.
Run away was what he did, back in the year the Wall went up.
One day he punctured a tire while pedaling home. Instead of riding
through the park, he cut through directly towards home, pushing his
bicycle along. In the gathering dusk, he walked by the wire-shrouded
circumference of West Berlin, hoping to get home before the curfew.
Rain started as he neared a checkpoint. Several Westerners
were going home after a day of sightseeing, some with bright nylon
umbrellas, a couple with magazines over their heads. Two guards were
glancing at each proffered passport in turn, then waiving the
tourists through the open wire gate. Two more guards, these in
Russian uniforms, were smoking behind the rickety guardhouse.
When Addie got even with the checkpoint, the last of the
tourists had turned a corner and disappeared behind the pockmarked
firewall on the Western side. The rain turned into hail then and the
Russians got under the tin roof of the guardhouse. The other two
stayed put, looking miserable. Audie, already drenched and freezing,
waived at them with a crooked smile of shared discomfort. He must
have looked like a late sight-seer, for the man closest to him
extended a hand expecting a passport.
"Why not?" thought Audie. He stopped, setting the bike close
to the soldier who stretched both hands out to balance it. The man
behind was running fingers over his rain-splattered eyeglasses, a
resentful, tired face turned towards the warm glow of the guardhouse
light bulb. The house on the other side was only a hundred meters
away. A little past that, and he'd be safe behind cover.
Addie bolted. He covered the first twenty when the guard
behind him dropped the bike into the mud. Both he and the man with
eyeglasses screamed something, the latter still trying to get the
earpieces into place.
That year the world record was eleven seconds. It
would take Audie sixteen to run the same hundred meters. He never
heard the screen door tear off the guard house as the Russians
spilled out into the night rain and hail. They screamed, too,
pointing with their hands until the one in the officer's cap
remembered his holster and clawed at the flap.
He never saw the two AKMs get disentangled from the grey
rain ponchos. They come up to the shoulders when he made it halfway
and wet, hurried hands knocked the selectors down hard. He was sixty
meters distant when flashes lit up the slanted muzzle brakes and
reflected a thousandfold in the puddles and falling raindrops. A
glancing bullet broke Addie's rib and he gasped hard, kept running.
The rest of the burst chipped brick off the already pockmarked
firewall ahead.
Another ten meters and the bullets aimed low zapped past
him, ricocheting off the soaked clay ground. Ten more meters,
ignoring the lungs on fire, not seeing the East Germans trying to switch
magazines or the Russians trying to see through the downpour, eyes
squinty over pistol sights. They hit him again at the goal. A spray
of blood preceded him there as his arms dropped and he toppled,
sprawling on the muddy ground. Addie rolled behind the wall,
grunting in pain as the broken arm took his weight. In shock and
bleeding out fast, he never saw the people crouching around him,
safe beyond the first wall of West Berlin.
Kent finished chewing, swirled soda around in his mouth and
swallowed it. Addie lifted his gaze from the teacup and waited for
the second question.
"So, how do you like it in America?"
As he had done so many time before, Addie crossed his arms.
Through the fresh-ironed shirt, his right hand felt the deep, rough
scar on the left shoulder. He got hit four times that night back in
'61. He smiled.
"How do I like it in America? It's worth the price."
Freemen
Oleg Volk
Before venturing out, some essentials I grab
A folding knife, a PDA, a pen, some chewing gum
My camera, a wallet, keys, and a holster with a gun
You ask why bother with the gun, in our day and age
When hardly any dangers lurk and life is pretty safe
This life is safe in part because we stand prepared to fight
And thugs, who wish to rape or rob, mind the heavy price
But let me grant that you are right, this land is not at war
We carry guns but don't expect to fight some hostile horde
We'd carry still as badge of rank, of status as freemen
For being able to go armed sets us apart from slaves
Gnarled hands
Oleg Volk
His mother was a Russian gal of similar descent
He lived up in hills, far from the reds or black and tans
His nose to the grindstone, working with his hands
One day some taxmen came to take that man away
Because he had a muffler left from the olden days
It kept his rifle muffled since 1928, so he could hear
Clearly the words his children say
The taxmen weren't listening, they told him: "five to ten"
For he was a dangerous felon for lack of a single tax stamp
The taxmen had no pity, they were trying to meet their plan
For imprisoning all who weren't properly shackled men
His mother was long gone by then and so was his dad
His children lived in other states far from his little farm
He though about the next decade spent in a prison cell
Decided, on the balance, he'd rather just be dead
He has no weapon that they could see, apart from his two old hands
But years of labor had made him hard, stronger than most men
He strangled one behind the van, hidden from others' sight
Then he had a gun and he had a plan which trumped all their plans
Before the light of that day had waned, he got all of his guests
And vultures had feasted quite well, indeed, on fresh revenuer flesh
And he left his home, escaping again, to where I cannot tell
A testament to the notion that free men cannot be suppressed
O'Keefe Rises: Union Bosses Okay Digging Up–Then Filling Back In–Ditches on Taxpayers' Dime
First, our excavation specialists insert their shovels into the ground and remove the soil. This presents the problem of an existing hole in the earth, creating a dangerous situation that could lead to hazards, including but not limited to tripping, falling, and bodily injuries.
Then there is the renewal process. At Earth Supply, we train professional backfillers to renew the soil in place of the existing hole, restoring the earth to its original condition.
Some folks say we’re just digging ditches and filling them back up again. But it’s about more than that. It’s about jobs.
More @ Breitbart
Yates Mill
Comment by SFMEDIC on Black Confederate in Gen. Forrest’s raid
History that is rewritten is not history, it is propaganda. All true Southerner's know the war was not about slavery or even racial matters. It was about an invasion by a foreign army bent on enforcing the economic dictates of a hostile government upon a people they had no regard for. It was the beginning of what we are dealing with today. The only difference between then and now is I doubt you can find enough liberty loving people to defy tyranny again.
When Sherman was pillaging the South his men set fire to a grist mill that my father was born in and my grandfather operated. Local slaves and black freemen came and put the fire out and circled the mill and defied Union troops by telling them "you will have to kill us too before we allow you to burn this mill."
This mystified the Union but that mill, Yates Mill in Raleigh NC, still stands and bears the scars of that fire today. All Southerner's, black and white, still bear the scars of the War Between the States and always will as long as the Federal government gets to rewrite history to their purposes.
US military allowed to wear uniforms at gay pride march
US military personnel took part in the San Diego march last year - but without uniform
The US military will for the first time allow its members to wear uniform at a gay pride march.
The permission was granted for the Gay Pride Parade in San Diego, California, on Saturday, a military-wide Pentagon directive said.
The memo said the move was a one-off exception for this year's march only.
It comes after a longstanding ban on openly gay people serving in the US military - known as "don't ask, don't tell" - was ended last year.
"Based on our current knowledge of the event and current policies, we hereby are granting approval for service members in uniform to participate in this year's parade," Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Rene Bardorf said in the directive.
Permission was given on condition that military personnel take part in a personal capacity only and adhere to the US military's standards on uniform wear, she added.
Numerous service personnel marched at last year's San Diego event, but wore T-shirts bearing the name of their service branch instead of uniforms.
'Giant leap'