We are born naked, wet and hungry.  Then things get worse.

 

I like reading American history. Especially about Oscar Madison.

I’m a big fan of mock outrage. It’s just so transparently insincere and politically correct!  I like it because it makes me forget my own problems.

Instead of just reading the list of dead soldiers on a television program, wouldn’t it be more meaningful if Congress gave us a better country for them to die for?

Charlie in College Station

 

Uganda Might Ban Mini–Skirts, Beyoncé, Other Things

Gawker‎ – 15 hours ago

Editor:  15 years for wearing a mini-skirt? 10 Years for watching Beyonce?  Who knew old lady Christians in America were ahead of the curve in Uganda?

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Holley

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Baseball card sets auction record at $2.1M

The card features shortstop Honus Wagner, who was said to be upset with the tobacco company that produced it. Extreme rarity

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Plastic Fantastic? by jonathanturley

Or the Inability to “Uninvent” Simple Objects

by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger

Disclosure: I consider myself both a liberal and pro-2nd Amendment and my position on gun control is that while reasonable solutions can be found to prevent tragedies such as Newtown that going so far as to repeal the 2nd Amendment is both an ultimately futile solution (for the reasons discussed below) and most unwise Constitutionally speaking (for reasons discussed elsewhere on this blog). This article is not about my position on the 2nd Amendment.

In the wake of the horror of Newtown, a national debate has arisen between those who – at the extremes – would either outlaw guns or have them totally unrestricted.  Most of the debate is somewhere in-between those two polar extremes. Most everyone agrees that keeping firearms out of the hands of the mentally unstable and known criminals is not a bad idea. This column is not about that debate proper over gun control.  It is about the nature of technology and law as it is framed by that debate. In specific, it is about 3-D printing and use of that technology to make firearms. Is the problem the technology or the user?

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Excellent pictures:

 http://bit.ly/10ui05r

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The Rise of “Debtors’ Prisons” in the US by jonathanturley

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

In October of 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union published a report titled In for a Penny: The Rise of America’s New Debtors’ Prisons. The ACLU had found that debtors’ prisons were “flourishing” in this country, “more than two decades after the Supreme Court prohibited imprisoning those who are too poor to pay their legal debts.” In 2011, Huffington Post reported that debtors’ prisons were legal in more than one-third of the states in this country.

According to the ACLU report, some state and local governments “have turned aggressively to using the threat and reality of imprisonment to squeeze revenue out of the poorest defendants who appear in their courts. These modern-day debtors’ prisons impose devastating human costs, waste taxpayer money and resources, undermine our criminal justice system, are racially skewed, and create a two-tiered system of justice.”

Marie Diamond—writing for ThinkProgress in December 2011:

Federal imprisonment for unpaid debt has been illegal in the U.S. since 1833. It’s a practice people associate more with the age of Dickens than modern-day America. But as more Americans struggle to pay their bills in the wake of the recession, collection agencies are using harsher methods to get their money, ushering in the return of debtor’s prisons.

Two years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported—after interviewing twenty judges across the country—that the number of borrowers who were threatened with arrest in their courtrooms had “surged since the financial crisis began.” The Wall Street Journal added that some borrowers who were jailed had “no idea before being locked up that they were sued to collect an outstanding debt” because of “sloppy, incomplete or even false documentation.” Diamond said it was becoming more and more common for debtors to serve time in jail. She added that some debtors are even required to pay for their time spent in jail—which, she said, exacerbates their dire financial situations.

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Charlie:

Bill Cosby Takes the Train, Leaves No Carbon Footprint Posted: 06 Apr 2013 08:43 PM PDT Imagine my surprise Saturday night when I stepped off the Amtrak train from Boston to New York in Penn Station. There, standing nose to nose with me on the platform was a familiar face: none other than the legendary Bill Cosby. That’s right, 10:30pm, and Bill Cosby is standing there with a female porter and a helper from the station, ready to get in the business class car. “What are you doing here?” I asked him. The Cos replied: “I just did a show in Queens. Now I’m going to Philadelphia.” He said the porter was his daughter, and she was going to graduate college soon. The woman blushed. People were backing up around us, making it hard to exit the train for the up escalator. Cosby got on the train by himself. He has a show in Philly Sunday night, then embarks on a fairly tiring tour. But he leaves no carbon footprint. He could have had a driver take him home to Philly. Or he could have flown from La Guardia. I did not tell the train car […]