Carolina Politics Online

Frivolous?  Partially.

There is absolutely no case here against Taser whatsoever.  This is like trying to sue gun manufacturers for making guns.  It’s not the Taser that’s the danger but the human being operating it.

Now, in the case of the N. Charleston police department, that’s a different story.  I can’t think of a single reason why the police would need to subdue somebody with a Taser ten times.  That sounds more like torture to me.  However, the Coronor’s office stated Black’s cause of death as “excited delirium syndrome.”  He was high up on drugs.  Go figure.  So it would not appear the Taser jolts caused the man to die so there may be no case against the police either.

Charges against a former Charleston County principal accused of grabbing a teacher’s arm during an argument have been dismissed.

The Post and Courier

Is the arm grabbing inappropriate?  Yes.  Should the principal have been dismissed for it?  That’s quite possible.  Criminal charges?  I don’t think so.  This was a frivolous lawsuit and thank goodness there was a judge behind the bench with enough sense to see that rather than some aging hippie liberal douche who would have taken it to a kangaroo court.

A photo posted at a Web site that depicted two white men preparing to lynch a black man is not a violation of federal hate crime law, the FBI said Monday.

The Post and Courier

Well I should think not.  We have a right to free speech in this country even if that means entertaining the expressions of bottom of the gutter rednecks like Mr. Chance Jones who posted the photograph.  The picture wasn’t a direct threat towards any one individual so there is no crime.  It’s just an ignorant kid showing the rest of the world exactly that.

In a nut shell, Congressman Henry Brown started a fire on his property in 2004 that spread to a nearby national forest, negligent behavior that comes with criminal liability, or at least it used to until Brown had the law changed.  He was charged and fined almost $6,000 for the incident after a top Forest Service law enforcement agent was given the go ahead by the U.S. Attorney to do.  Brown eventually paid a reduced fine of under $5,000 after he huffed and puffed around Capitol Hill and entangled several Federal officials in the mess eventually costing taxpayers $100,000 to save himself $1,000.

Brown claims he was treated unfairly and made an example of because he was an elected official and he was just shocked at this treatment he received.

“I was so taken aback that I’d be treated so impersonal — like I was some kind of crook,” Brown said Wednesday. “Those were criminal charges that were filed against me. I felt like I was the victim.”

The State

Well duh, McFly!  You mean after all of these years in Washington you haven’t figured out that the government which is supposed to be of and by the people shits on us regular schmoes every day of the week?  How many mistakes does the government make that it never has to pay up for?  Do you think a regular guy off the street could have fought back against the Federal bureaucracy that you have easy access to?

So what happened here?  Was the Federal law too harsh and unfairly criminalizing people over an accident?  Was this an instance of Congress not giving a crap about the effects their laws have on people until one of them experiences it personally?  Or did Brown take advantage of his position as an elected official and use it as a bully pulpit to achieve, as Mr. Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said “ticket-fixing at the highest levels?”

COLUMBIA — A federal judge here ruled against Green Party candidate Eugene Platt’s request Thursday for court intervention to place him on the November ballot for House District 115.

The Post and Courier

Platt was sued by the Charleston County Democratic Party earlier this month for breaking South Carolina Code of Laws Title 7, Chapter 11, Paragraph 210. Platt ran in the primary as a Democrat and lost.  By signing the candidacy pledge he effectively agreed that he would not petition to be on the general election ballot as another party’s candidate should he lose the primary.

The Democrats definitely wanted Platt off the ballot because as a Democrat in 2006 he almost beat incumbent Wallace Scarborough by coming up short a mere 40 votes.  Clearly, his Green Party candidacy was viewed by the Democrats as a spoiler for this race this year.

Horry County Council members gave an initial nod to essentially banning wet T-shirt contests during motorcycle rallies at a committee meeting Thursday, weeks after the council narrowly decided against approving the proposal.

The measure would abolish temporary adult entertainment permits, which have been issued to bars for the motorcycle rallies that allow them to hold the wet T-shirt contests, pudding wrestling and similar events. Ten $250 permits were issued this past May.

The Sun News

So what will be the point of going to Myrtle Beach from now on?

HILTON HEAD ISLAND — A 10-year-old South Carolina student has been suspended from school after his pencil sharpener broke and he didn’t immediately get rid of the blade inside.

Authorities tell The Island Packet of Hilton Head that a teacher at Hilton Head Island International Baccalaureate Elementary School found a small razor blade on the boy in class Tuesday.

A police report says it was obvious the blade came from a pencil sharpener. The report says the boy is a well-behaved, good student and cried when he was suspended for at least two days. He could face further punishment.

School district spokesman Randy Wall says the district has a zero-tolerance policy on weapons, but wanted to be reasonable. He says they needed to make sure the student understood the seriousness of having the blade.

The Post and Courier

Yet another example of why zero tolerance policies are not only the products of mental midgets, but defeat the entire purpose of their existence.  No gain will be made by suspending this child.  It also doesn’t help that the people running the school are by-the-book drones who have never held a single job outside the shell of academia, thus denying them valuable life lessons of common sense.  If I was this child’s father, I would probably have to go to the school, punch somebody out for satisfaction, and then begin the home schooling.

Among other shortcomings, this lawsuit accuses the agency of mistakenly putting James Belli Jr. in a wing with violent offenders, even though he had no violent convictions on his record. Once there, it says, understaffed, poorly trained employees didn’t take necessary steps to protect Belli from the other prisoners.

The Post and Courier

Am I supposed to feel bad?

Belli was serving an eight- year sentence for burglary and other property crimes in Dorchester County. He was housed alongside hardened criminals, including convicted murderers. An escape charge on Belli’s record, which would have put him in a higher-risk group, was dismissed when he pleaded guilty to other offenses.

Belli was stabbed in the neck while in the Ashley Unit A-Wing of the Ridgeville prison on the morning of Aug. 23, 2006.

Perhaps the prison staff is somewhat culpable for releasing him into the more violent population, but the bottom line is if this kid wasn’t out stealing other people’s property he wouldn’t have been in that jail in the first place.  As far as I am concerned there is one less parasite leaching off of society.

Prostitution has become in increasing problem in Charleston over recent years and continues to persist despite police stepping up efforts. It’s grown to the point to where prostitutes are hanging around schools, propositioning faculty and others, and walking alongside students every morning on their way to school.  The consensus from the police department seems to be that it’s not a crime ranking high in importance compared to others such  as drugs and that’s the reason for laxadaisic enforcement.  That may be true, but here is my abstract thinking on this.  Why is it illegal to begin with?

It’s a serious question.  What is the harm in two adults consensually and privately engaging in sexual acts for a monetary value?  If I go out and wine and dine a woman and then she comes back to my place or vice versa and we have sex that’s perfectly fine, but if I want to cut through the bullshit and just hand her a hundred and do it and be done that’s wrong.  What’s the difference?  The form of payment?

All of this goes back to a cultural stigma that labels sex as dirty and sinful, that you should somehow be ashamed for engaging in it unless you plan on doing it with one wedded individual your entire life.  Never mind the fact that none of us would be here if we didn’t do it.  So because of religious influences and centuries of dogma we have to keep spending billions of dollars on enforcement at failed attempts to prevent what is essentially a victimless crime.  The result is today’s black market.

If governments want to keep street walking out of sight, that’s fine, but allow people who want to engage in this “profession” to do so legally in private quarters behind closed doors.  The government can regulate it like everything else to make sure all parties involved are not put in any unnecessary jeopardy and they can tax the earnings if they want.

Prostitution is one of the world’s oldest professions.  It’s been around since men started bartering for goods and it’s not going away.  A common sense approach is to stop unnecessarily making people criminals and thereby eliminate the unwanted elements in the community.  It’s tried and true in Nevada so why not follow the example?

I’m trying to wrap my brain around Clyburn’s statement here:

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn told delegates in Denver that real national security requires “visionary leadership,” not arsenals of weapons, miles of chain-link fences or shallow tough-talking.

We don’t need an arsenal of weapons.  So what are we supposed to use when threatened by our enemies, throw spitwads at them?  It is that large arsenal of weapons that keeps us from being invaded by the likes of the Russians, the Chinese, and the radical Islamic extremists razing cain across the Middle East and Northern Africa.

We don’t need chain link fences.  I assume he is referring to a border fence.  I don’t necessarily disagree with that.  There are other methods, like fiercely punishing employers who hire illegals, eliminating anchor baby status, and denying social services to illegals, but Obama will never do any of these thing and the border fence ain’t gonna hurt.  It has in fact worked in San Diego.

I don’t know what he’s referring to when he says shallow, tough talking.  Maybe he was dismayed by McCain’s statement on Russia and Georgia.  Maybe he means the Axis of Evil comments by Bush.  Maybe it’s everything.  What I do know is that a President Obama will show great weakness in the face of our nation’s enemies.  I am by no means a neo-con, being very opposed to the view behind the Monroe Doctrine that we are to be the world’s police, but how much more diplomacy are we to be expected to engage in?  We’ve talked and talked and talked with Iran and they are still following through with their nuclear ambitions.  We’ve angrily shaken our finger at Russia and shamed them for their invasion of Georgia and yet they are still occupying parts of the country.  Sometimes force is going to be the only answer.  Sometimes the enemy makes that choice for you.  Obama does not have the strength nor the judgment to know when to make that decision.

After reading about a funding uproar for a new library on St Helena Island in Beaufort I got to thinking.  Are libraries becoming obsolete?  There is no denying that we have jumped into the information age with both feet in the water.  Everything is computerized now and shared over the Internet.  It has given us an infinite amount of resources from all over the world for all kinds of information.  Who really needs to go to a library any more other than people who don’t own a computer or have an Internet service?  Libraries still serve a purpose, but not the way they used to when I was a kid.  I don’t think we’re far enough along to up get rid of them, but is it fiscally conscious for Beaufort County Councilman Bill McBride to demand that $5 million of taxpayer dollars be spent to renovate and expand an existing library in today’s new information age?

Beaufortonians soon may do several things they haven’t done in awhile: dock their boat at Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park, buy a hot dog in Waterfront Park, eat a meal at a sidewalk cafe and pay a school impact fee.

The Beaufort City Council passed a resolution Tuesday to join Beaufort County and Port Royal in assessing fees on new developments, with the money dedicated to local school construction.

Developers will now be charged $6,000 per home and $2.50 per square foot of commercial space. They will receive a 75 percent credit toward the fee for affordable housing.

The Beaufort Gazette

These school impact fees are deceptively named because they are required in every instance of new development whether an actual school impact is involved or not.  For example, a builder of a retirement community in Fort Mill appealed to the circuit court earlier this year a decision made by the York County Council to deny them a requested waiver of the fees.  They claimed they should not be subject to the school impact fee because there will be no resident children.  I agree with them.  If they truly are a school impact fee as states, how is a retirement community of the elderly going to put additional strain on school services?

S.C. Sen. Robert Ford of Charleston is unfazed by the urging of Democratic leaders for party unity. Wednesday, he’ll cast his delegate vote at Denver’s Democratic National Convention for longtime friend Hillary Clinton.

“Party unity? That’s national media crap,” Ford said Monday between bites of bacon and sausage at the S.C. delegation breakfast. “Democrats have always had divisions.”

The State

I have no doubt that Obama will get the nomination.  Circumventing the primary results by superdelegates would be political suicide for the Democratic Party.  They aren’t that stupid.  I am intersted to see, however, in what way this will carry forward to the general election.  There is a deep divide among the party nationwide with Hillary backers feeling snubbed.  Several polls show that a large chunk of them will not vote for Obama in November or haven’t decided.  In the end, the I think the majority of those people will come around and pull the lever for him, even if holding their noses, but the chance of a sizable enough portion of them sticking to their guns and voting for McCain or not at all could and costing the Dems the election is plausible.

“We will have a national energy policy,” Clyburn, the House Majority whip and a top-ranking Democrat, said. “It will be wind, it will be solar, it will be biofuel, and, by golly, it will be nuclear.”

Clyburn and Graham, South Carolina’s senior Republican senator, said the state doesn’t have the potential for wind power and solar energy that other states enjoy but that South Carolina is a leader in both nuclear power and nuclear know-how.

The Post and Courier

It’s about damn time the Feds are getting sensible.  Nuclear energy is the cleanest there is and as far as the storage of nuclear waste goes, surely we can take some tips from the French.  They’ve been on it for decades and have obviously dealt with the issue successfully.

Wendell Gilliard has heard all the jokes about his crusade to ban people from wearing their pants below the waist:

The City Council is finally doing something about all those sidewalk cracks.

Councilman Gilliard must own stock in a belt company.

When saggy pants are outlawed, only outlaws will wear saggy pants.

He’s heard it all — but he’s not laughing.

The Post and Courier

Wendell, people are laughing at you because you’re an authoritarian blockhead.  Your proposal is a joke and you’re now the “butt” of it.  Oops!  There’s another one!

Gilliard says wearing your britches like you’ve just spent three years on the Subway diet is a gang sign; the lower you wear your pants, the deeper you are into the thug life.

That is absolutely ridiculous.  This stupid saggy pants fad started back in the early 90s when I was in high school and nobody in my school who wore their pants like this were members of a gang.

He says the folks who dress like this are often the rapists, robbers and hoodlums causing a lot of problems around here. Talk to him for a minute and he can sway your opinion.

Show me proof.  Where are the statistics?  There aren’t any.  It’s Gilliard’s flawed assumption based on his own shell of a world.  Science need not apply.

Still, gang experts with the Charleston Police Department told The Post and Courier Thursday that they had no proof that saggy pants are a gang sign

I rest my case.

Gilliard concedes that not everyone with this very questionable “fashion” is a gang member. There are plenty of kids at suburban high schools doing the same thing.

So which is it?  Gang sign or “ass”inine?

Speaking of problems and the constitution, Tim Mallard got in a little bit of trouble for defending Gilliard’s move. He was quoted as defending the proposal, in part by saying, “I don’t care if it’s unconstitutional, it sends a message.”

Well, it’s not like we actually use the Constitution anymore any how.  Mallard can put his jackboots on and start sending his message around the city.

According to his Web site Fundamentalist whack job Steve Lefemine announced his write-in candidacy for the Second Congressional District on the steps of the state capitol yesterday afternoon.  I’m sure the entire four people that showed up were real impressed.  The fact that an individual would think they can win a write-in campaign in a Congressional race during a presidential election year is really all you need to know to in order to realize they’re about a nut short of a whole set of screws, but if you want some amusement I encourage you to visit his Web site.  Mr. Lefemine’s goal is a world theocracy, not to mention he believes in every kook conspiracy that even World Net Daily won’t touch.  He reminds me of the street preacher who hangs out on Tryon St in uptown Charlotte pointing his finger and screaming at everyone who walks by accusing them of fornication.

The State Election Committee has given the Republican Party the middle finger regarding the attempts of the Dorchester County GOP to throw Independent Bill Collins off the November ballot.  Without Collins on the ballot, Republican Mike Rose wins uncontested as no Democrat is in the race.  It doesn’t sound like the local GOP has given up, though.  They are insistent on pissing off the voters and possibly costing themselves this safe seat.  More power to ‘em!

I missed this little gem while I was vacationing in the People’s Republic of Taxachusetts last week, but I ran across a mention of it on FITSNews.  The issue at hand is a bill that Congressman Henry Brown (R-SC) introduced into the House on June 26th, H.R. 6389 for the purpose of removing several dozen acres of Kiawah Island from the John H. Chafee Coastal Barrier Resources System which would allow these acres to be developed and homes built.  As reported by the Post and Courier, the developer is in favor of allowing the future owner of these homes to qualify for federal flood insurance.

Leonard Long, executive vice president of Kiawah Development Partners, said his company approached Brown about the legislation earlier this year.

Long said he and his partners support the bill because they believe future homeowners on the spit should qualify for federal flood insurance just like other homeowners on Kiawah Island.

Big bucks are at stake - for the developers as well as future homeowners. People with houses in the Coastal Barrier zone must buy flood insurance from private companies. That can cost $40,000 a year or more for a $900,000 home, compared with less than $2,000 for government-backed flood insurance.

There is a reason for that.  There is a high risk of natural disaster.  If you are going to choose to live in a place exposed to that kind of risk then you need to be responsible for it.  Others shouldn’t be carrying the weight for you, but Brown thinks that is perfectly acceptable.

U.S. Rep. Henry Brown on Thursday defended a bill that would help future homeowners on the undeveloped southwestern end of Kiawah Island qualify for federally subsidized flood insurance.

It’s not going to be your regular Joe Sixpack buying these homes; it’s going to be upper class elitists.  These homes are going to be expensive because of the natural amenities nearby and also because of the higher costs of insuring them due to hurricane risks.  Therefore, you and I are paying higher taxes so as to not burden “the Rockefellers” who will be living there.

With higher gas and food prices and a stagnant economy, why is Henry Brown asking the poor to prop up the wealthy?