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A Man In Transition

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Helen Thomas, Lynne Stewart, a vat of anchovies and me ... indeed!
-Glenn Reynolds

Fraud in the Media

Why on earth should anyone be fired for that?  That's the question that Mary Mapes is asking.  No answer yet from CBS.

Posted by: Jheka at December 10, 2004 16:35 | link | comments (8) |

Another Soldier Has a John Kerry Moment

Army Sergeant Dennis Edwards went back to his old high school and told of his time in Iraq, including of a horrific episode when he had to kill a ten year old Iraqi boy who was shooting at him.  And who did he blame?  He blamed President Bush, and his ''personal vendetta."  One problem.  The story was a complete lie.  Sergeant Edwards made it up to drive his political vendetta (or maybe he just wanted to run for President one day).  Keep this story in mind when you read about other soldiers and their politically motivated tales.

Posted by: Jheka at December 10, 2004 14:54 | link | comments |
leftist idiocy

Friday Poetry - Advice from The Bard

Carpe Diem

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear! your true-love's coming
That can sing both high and low;
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journey's end in lovers' meeting--
Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty,--
Then come kiss me, Sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

William Shakespeare

Posted by: Jheka at December 10, 2004 10:39 | link | comments (1) |

The Barry White of Whales

Who knew that Barry had a cross-species soul mate?

Posted by: Jheka at December 09, 2004 08:57 | link | comments |
miscellaneous musings

Homeland Security and Your Money - Part Two

So I got the case and I went to visit Yuri, who was being held at the Oakland city jail.  Funny thing about federal administrative detention (which is what it's called when the Department of Homeland Security holds a person during deportation proceedings); they don't generally hold a person in federal prison or other federal facility.  They put the detainee in whatever local detention center happens to have space and they contract with these places to hold the detainees.  What that means for the detainee is that he or she never knows where they'll be held or for how long.  You may be in Oakland one day and then, if Oakland is running out of room, transferred to San Jose or Bakersfield or somewhere in Arizona.  Anyway, I met Yuri for the very first time in Oakland on November 4, 2002.  He seemed like a nice enough young man.  A bit confused by his situation.  Scared.  But nice enough. 

Well, job one was to get him out of jail and then we would worry about the deportation case.  I got an opportunity to get Yuri released a few days later during a bond hearing in Immigration Court in San Francisco.  Looking back, I think that that may have been my very first experience inside an Immigration Court courtroom.  It is quite an experience.  Much, much less formal than most other courts, San Francisco Immigration Court courtrooms are relatively small rooms.  There are about five rows of benches that are divided by a row down the miffle.  The benches on the right are for women, the ones on the left are for men.  You learn this after the prisoners are brought in in two groups, shackled together in their matching orange jumpsuits. 

The thing that really struck me and has stayed with me about the IC courtrooms was the benches and, specifically, what was carved into them.  In a regular courtroom the bailiffs will watch for talking, gum chewing, newspaper reading, sleeping and any other behavior that is not appropriate for court.  Carving something into a court bench?  Yeah, right.  In this courtroom, the bailiffs care about the prisoners and just the prisoners and, specifically, whether they attempt violence or escape.  It seems that carving messages into court benches, something that one would not get away with in a regular courtroom, doesn't much bother them.  As I waited for the judge, I read the backs of these benches.  Notes about where the prisoners were from (and, likely, where they were about to return to), pleas for help, expressions of rage, prayers ... it was a depressing mix.  When the judge finally arrived, he turned out to be a pleasant, helpful sort.  Just the kind of judge an attorney who is new to a process always hopes to get.  Judge Applewhite* called the cases quickly and was very good at working with the attorneys to move things along.  I need to note that in a process that was horribly flawed in many ways, Judge Applewhite was a real bright spot.  Anyway, when Yuri's case was finally called, Judge Applewhite held a bond hearing and, after talking to me, Yuri, Olga and the government attorney, decided that Yuri was neither a flight risk nor a danger to society and granted bail over the government's objections.  Now all Yuri's mother had to do was find a way to come up with $5,000.  Without getting into too much detail, she finally did it with the help of new credit cards and a bond company that took 20% ($1,000) to post the bond (this is about double what a bond company typically takes in a regular criminal case).  The government appealed the bond decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals. 

This is where the case stood for a while with the trial set for September, 2003.  In the meantime Yuri got his life, which had been something of a mess, together.  He fulfilled his remaining obligations relating to his earlier convictions, he got a job and he was doing well when the Supreme Court, on April 29, 2003, issued its ruling in the case or Demore v. Kim (full case opinion here).  The Demore case essentially held that anyone in deportation proceedings due to criminal acts was to be held in custody for the duration of those proceedings.  What this meant for Yuri (and thousands of other men and women throughout the country who were in his position) is that, in spite of the fact that an immigration judge had granted him bail, in spite of the fact that he was judged to not be a danger or a flight risk, in spite of the fact that his bail had been posted, Yuri had to leave the job that he had just gotten and turn himself in to government custody, which he did in late July, as ordered.  Yuri and thousands upon thousands of others were suddenly being housed, fed and processed at taxpayer expense.  The government's appeal and my opposition were suddenly moot and Judge Applewhite could do nothing but move up the trial date to mid-August so that, win or lose, Yuri would not be incarcerated longer than necessary.  Suddenly, a trial in a San Francisco courtroom was right around the corner and my client, who was incarcerated in Yuba City, California (125 miles away) was not even available to prepare with.  I next saw Yuri when he was brought into court on the afternoon of the trial.  Continued ...

*Again, all names have been changed.

Posted by: Jheka at December 08, 2004 13:33 | link | comments (2) |
miscellaneous musings

The 1/8 Does Battle in Fallujah

I'm working on the next installment of the Yuri story and it's taking some time.  While you wait, check out this excellent video of what the battle in Fallujah was like for the First Battalion, Eighth Marines.

Hat tip: Grand Junctionite over at LGF.

Posted by: Jheka at December 08, 2004 09:54 | link | comments (3) |

Ted Rall - An Example of What Would Happen if The Ebola Virus Got a Column

Ted Rall, as I have mentioned before, is a complete waste of skin and organs.  Seriously, humanity would be best served if his salvageable parts went to more deserving individuals, which would be just about anybody, frankly, and the remainder was used for compost/bait/speedbumps.  Rall, it seems, recognizes his loathesomeness and is now wallowing in by returning to the subject that really moved him in the public consciousness from shrill, annoying, talentless leftist idiot to disgusting anti-American scumbag; Rall is going back to attacking Pat Tillman as he did in April.  Now Rall is comparing Tillman, who sacrificed his life for his country, to a fictional Islamist Al-Qaeda jihadi because, after all, in Rall's world Tillman and the American soldiers are just like the fanatic, mysoginistic, homophobic (phobic? ... no, ... how about homo-cidal), anti-Semitic, anti-Western ultra-religious cultist psychopaths that attacked us on 9-11 (and before).

Cox and Forkum still have the best Rall cartoon of all time:

Posted by: Jheka at December 08, 2004 08:10 | link | comments (2) |
schmucks, leftist idiocy

Viktor Yuschenko was Poisoned

Viktor Yuschenko, the Ukrainian opposition leader vying for the Ukrainian Presidency was apparently poisoned in an attempt on his life. the fact that this has come out on the eve of the re-vote is very, very bad news for Viktor Yanukovych, who is the man backed by the Kremlin. Whether or not it was Yanukovych who was behind the apparent assassination attempt, he and his backers will be the prime suspects. If the trail somehow leads back to Moscow ... well, there's no telling what would happen. Here are before and after pictures to give you an idea of what the poison did to Yuschenko:

Update:  Then again, maybe he wasn't poisoned.  Stay tuned.

Posted by: Jheka at December 07, 2004 20:46 | link | comments |

Even More Good News

An anonymous tipster lead police to the murderer of Ali Kemp, who was strangled two years ago.  Then the person turned down the $40,000 reward, electing instead to give the money to a charity set up in Kemp's name that offers scholarships to high school students and self-defense training.  Just when you start to think that the world is nothing but whack-jobs and psychopaths ...

Posted by: Jheka at December 07, 2004 20:37 | link | comments |
what s going right, mensches

And Now, for Some Good News

You know how you sometimes hear about someone winning the lottery and it's someone who doesn't need it or, worse, doesn't deserve it? Not this time. Debi Faris-Cifelli, who rescues abandoned babies and buries those that cannot be saved, just won $27,000,000. Yay, Debi!!

Posted by: Jheka at December 07, 2004 20:31 | link | comments (1) |
what s going right, mensches

Baseball and Steroids - Why it Matters

Not to go all George Will on you or anything but this baseball/steroids thing is important because, whether you realize it or not and whether you are a fan or not, baseball is important.  Baseball is important to America. 

Allow me to explain.  America is a wondrous country with many, many positive attributes that most of the world can only hope to one day attain.  However, in at least one important respect, the U.S. of A. lags well behind the rest of the world.  Specifically, we are impoverished when it comes to common national history and common national culture.  As a young nation and a nation of immigrants, we have precious little that binds us.  We have no common national religion.  We have no common national ethnicity.  We have perhaps two uniquely American holidays (Thanksgiving and, arguably, Halloween).  We are a populace of some 300,000,000 people who, while American, are, and always have been, divided by political disunity, race, economics, ethnicity, cultural heritage, and, in many instances, even language.  While we have many strengths, national cohesion has long been a fragile thing for the most diverse nation in human history.

This is where baseball comes in.  Baseball is a unioquely American sport.  While other, similar games have been played around the world for centuries, baseball, more or less in its modern form, has been a part of America since the Knicks played the Nines in Hoboken in 1846 and before.  Since the middle of the 19th century, everywhere Americans settled in large numbers, baseball followed.  In a nation with virtually no national culture or religion, baseball became the national ritual that could be passed from generation to generation regardless of whether you were Italian or Irish or Baptist or Jewish.  A rich Brooklynite who could trace her roots to the Mayflower and a Pollack who had stepped off of a boat three months prior could find common ground in love of the Brooklyn Dodgers and hatred of the Yankees. 

It is no accident that Baseball is perhaps the most statistic-laden sport there is.  In those numbers we find our national history and for a long, long time, those numbers tied us to our past.  Sixty home runs was amazing.  "Ruthian."  Thirty was a lot.  As recently as 15 years ago, thirty home runs qualified you as a real slugger.  Forty was a career year.  Hammerin' Hank Aaron, the all-time home run champ, never hit more than 44.  He hit 3 in one game exactly once in 23 years. 

A few years ago it all unravelled.  Suddenly, the numbers began to lose their meaning.  The thread that allowed one to relate Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner to Joe DiMaggio and Duke Snyder and Stan Musial to Reggie Jackson and Mike Schmidt and Don Mattingly was suddenly frayed and snapped.  All of a sudden, light hitting shortstop Kevin Elster (for example) was hitting more home runs in one year (1996) than he had managed in the previous seven combined and hitting three home runs in a game at the end of his career.  Suddenly Sammy Sosa, who had managed a very respectable 207 home runs in his first 8 years as a pro hit 243 in his next 4.  A tall. lanky, Mark McGwire suddenly became Paul Bunyan and Jose Canseco, who has admitted taking steroids, said years ago that steroids were everywhere in baseball and that "it's completely restructured the game as we know it." 

So how do you compare Barry Bonds to Hank Greenberg?  What do you do with Canseco's first-ever 40 home run, 40 steal season?  What kind of asterisk do you put next to the career of the recently deceased Ken Caminiti, who admitted taking steroids and was the 1996 NL MVP?  The damage done may be irreperable because we may never know when it started, who was involved or what the real effect was.  It is far, far worse than anything that Pete Rose ever did and yet, Bonds, Giambi et al. will get away with it and may even get their Hall of Fame plaques on schedule.  We know this, though:  Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, Ken Caminiti, Jason Giambi and the many, many other cheaters cannot be compared to Mickey Mantle and Mike Schmidt and Willie Mays and Hank Aaron and Ted Williams and Carl Yaztremski because we'll never know what they would have done on a level playing field.  Moreover, the, the people who disgraced and scarred the national pastime do not deserve to be compared to the men who helped build and strengthen the one great American ritual.

Posted by: Jheka at December 07, 2004 17:25 | link | comments (1) |
miscellaneous musings

Syria Frees Political Prisoners

Sounds like good news, right?  A horribly repressive regime relents and let's the fresh air of political dissent and free thought in, right?  Well, not exactly.  The 112 political prisoners who were released are, apparently, Islamist extremists who are members if the Muslim Brotherhood.  Those are the nice people who brought you Hamas and modern Islamist terrorism.  Syria gets to be lauded by Amnesty International, the U.N., et al., saves itself the trouble and expense of feeding these terrorists, scores points with troublesome Islamist extremists and it's U.S. soldiers that will likely wind up having to kill these fanatics in Iraq and elsewhere. 

Posted by: Jheka at December 07, 2004 15:13 | link | comments |

Female Genital Mutilation - It's Not Just For Africa Anymore

Yup ... it's now on the rise in Europe and coming to a community near you.  There I go, being culturally insensitive again ...

Posted by: Jheka at December 07, 2004 13:14 | link | comments (1) |
general idiocy

We Should Do the Right Thing

When I lived in Washington D.C. in January, 1997, high ranking Georgian Diplomat Gueorgut Makhardadze was driving near Dupont Circle (speed limit 30) at 90 mph when slammed his car into four cars stopped at a red light, including the car of 16 year old Joviane Waltrick, which flipped over and killed her instantly.  He was apparently quite drunk at the time.  This was a big deal because it seemed for a time that  Makhardadze would walk away scott-free due to diplomatic immunity.  However, then-Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze did the right thing and waived Makhardadze's diplomatic immunity so that he could be prosecuted and convicted in the United States.  He was sentenced to 7 to 21 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter and four counts of assault (unfortunately, he only served about three and a half years). 

Now the United States is faced with a similar situation as a U.S. marine Staff Sergeant Christopher R. Van Goethem stands accused of killing Teofil Peter, a popular Romanian musician, while driving drunk.  I do not know if Staff Sergeant Van Goethem is guilty or not.  I do believe, however, that if we were right to demand the right to prosecute Gueorgut Makhardadze and Georgia was right to acquiesce, then Romania is right to demand the same right with respect to Staff Sergeant Van Goethem and we would be right to follow Georgia's example.

Posted by: Jheka at December 07, 2004 13:01 | link | comments (1) |
miscellaneous musings

Homeland Security And Your Money

I don't generally write about my work here on The Daily Blitz. In fact, I've been pretty good about keeping my work segregated from this blog and, frankly, it hasn't been that hard because most of what I do as an attorney has little to do with what I write about here. However, I'm going to make an exception. I just got a ruling that has everything to do with what I write about here on TDB and I think that you should know about it.

This is about the case of Yuri Pavlovich*, who was released from federal custody, on Friday, December 3, 2004. Yuri was placed into federal custody by the Department of Homeland Security in July, 2003. Let me take you to the beginning. Yuri and his mother, Olga, came to the United States from the Ukraine in August, 1995 as Jewish refugees from the Ukraine. They applied for and received refugee status based on systemic anti-Semitism in the Ukraine as well as their own expreiences with anti-Semitism. They arrived, legally, and settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. At that time, Yuri was 21 years old. Neither Yuri nor Olga spoke any English when they arrived and they only knew a few relatives, who had arrived a few years earlier. Yuri went to school at a local community college and Olga took classes and went to work. Olga had a particularly hard time learning the language due to a hearing disability but, since Yuri picked up English pretty quickly, they managed.

As young men sometimes do, Yuri got in with a bad crowd and wound up getting into a bit of trouble. In December, 1997, Yuri was convicted of petty theft for shoplifting something from a drugstore. A few months later, in April, 1998, Yuri got a second conviction for a similar misdemeanor petty-theft offense. Yuri paid the fines, did the community service, etc. that the convictions called for. Yuri was 23 years old. To date, he has never had another conviction.

In October, 2002, Yuri was picked up by the police for an alleged parole violation. However, no charges were ever brought and, had he been a U.S. citizen, he would simply have been released. Unfortunately for Yuri, he was still a legal resident and not yet a citizen and he lived in a post 9/11 world. His name popped up in an INS computer and, rather than releasing him, the San Francisco Police Department turned him over to INS, custody who imprisoned him, based on the two petty thefts, and initiated deportation proceedings. This is where I came in.

Continued in a later post ...

*All names have been changed.

Posted by: Jheka at December 07, 2004 12:32 | link | comments |
miscellaneous musings

Did Barry Bonds Use Steroids?

You tell me:

    Bonds, 1991                                                                          Bonds, 2004

Yeah, I know it's 13 years ... but how many people do you know who worked out so hard that their head got bigger? As it happens, that's one side-effect of human growth hormone (adult bone growth).

Do you know what's truly pathetic? It's pure, unadultarated greed. Bonds wasn't a AAA player trying to get off of the Toledo-Rochester-Norfolk bus tour with a little extra juice. As Jason Luft of SI.com points out, Bonds was a multi-millionaire future hall of famer ... one of the 10 or 20 greatest players of all time, by my estimation, when he started juicing. Pure greed.

Posted by: Jheka at December 07, 2004 12:01 | link | comments |
schmucks

There are Insane People In The World

And some of them are very, very dangerous. This is a fact worth remembering for those of you who insist on trying to interact with people. I'm not saying that you shouldn't interact with people. Not at all. I'm just saying that a good pair of running shoes and a trip to the gym now and then is a good investment in one's long-term health because, well, you never know.

Update:  It appears that she may be (or may have been, at the time of the incident) insane.  As an attorney, I find this case fascinating.  My prediction is that this woman will wind up in a mental hospital and not a prison. 

Posted by: Jheka at December 07, 2004 11:04 | link | comments (2) |
general idiocy