Birds of a Feather

Huh.

A federal judge has denied ex-Detroit councilwoman Monica Conyers’ request to withdraw her guilty plea in a corruption case and sentenced her to three years and one month in prison.

As guards cleared the courtroom Wednesday, Conyers yelled that she planned to appeal.

Airlines Will Cancel Flights Rather Than Risk Fines

Yup.

Passengers may soon be seeing more cancellations on airport departure boards.

Several airlines, including Fort Worth-based American and Houston-based Continental, say they will cancel flights rather than risk paying stiff penalties for delaying passengers on the runway.

Continental’s CEO told investors Tuesday that the airline will opt to cancel flights rather than chance being fined.

Aviation consultant Denny Kelly expects other airlines to follow suit.

“I think all of them will cancel flights,” he said. “They’ll do it partially because they think they are going to punish passengers, and if they punish them, someone will get this legislation removed.”

Under new federal guidelines that take effect next month, airlines can be fined up to $27,500 per passenger if a plane is stuck on the tarmac for longer than three hours.

Gee, who could have predicted this?

Delays throughout the airport are several hours long.  The airlines don’t want to risk anyone staying out there too long, so they just cancel the flights

Van Hollen Charges Five With Felony Vote Fraud

Good for the AG.

Five Wisconsin residents have been charged with criminal counts of voter fraud in the November 2008 general election, state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced today.

Two of those charged - Maria Miles, 36, of Milwaukee, and Kevin Clancy, 26, of Racine - worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the embattled community organizing group.

“The complaint alleges that Miles and Clancy submitted multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, and also were part of a scheme in which they and other (special registration deputies)  registered each other to vote multiple times in order to meet voter registration quotas imposed by ACORN,” the Van Hollen release says.

Both were charged with one felony count.

Milwaukee Police Delayed Investigating Voter Fraud

Wow.  Here’s a stunning, if not too surprising, report from Dan Bice in the MJS.

Milwaukee police officers sat on their hands for months last year instead of investigating possible voter fraud cases from the 2008 general election.

It’s an incredible claim, but it’s coming from a credible source:

Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, the Milwaukee County prosecutor responsible for overseeing campaign and election issues.

“Honestly, the Milwaukee Police Department largely ignored your double voter (and other) referrals received in January 2009 for the first six months of 2009,” Landgraf wrote in an e-mail to a city elections official on Jan. 26.

Speaking with unguarded candor, the veteran prosecutor said in his note that MPD’s tardy response had a major impact. The cases involve voters who may have cast more than one ballot, felons who may have voted illegally and other cases of possible election fraud.

“Sadly, several probable cases of genuine voter fraud were harmed by that delay,” Landgraf wrote in an e-mail obtained through an open records request.

The assistant district attorney was even more pessimistic about the investigation of more than 500 individuals who registered to vote on election day but whose addresses could not be confirmed later by postcard.

“I do not expect them to ever get to the Address Cards,” he said of the Milwaukee cops.

On Friday, Landgraf declined to provide specifics, referring questions to his boss, District Attorney John Chisholm.

Interestingly, Chisholm wouldn’t elaborate on his assistant’s concerns.

“I’ll let the e-mail speak for itself,” he said while praising Landgraf’s experience and knowledge.

No Lawyers for Animals

Well, I suppose there is a little sanity out there.

The result was emphatic: Swiss voters don’t think abused animals need to have their own lawyers.

It’s a proposal that would never even come near a referendum in other countries, but the measure’s defeat Sunday disappointed animal rights advocates, who say Switzerland’s elaborate animal welfare laws aren’t being enforced.

Judgment In Favor of Open Carry

Judgment.

IT IS ORDERED that judgment in the amount of $10,000.00, inclusive of attorney’s fees and costs, is entered in favor of plaintiffs, Wisconsin Carry, Inc., and Frank Hannan Rock and against defendants, City of Racine, Sgt. Nethery, and R. Prince, as to all claims of said plaintiffs, state and federal, respecting this action.

Good news that the courts are backing legally protected actions.  Here’s the background. 

German Family Receives Asylum Because Homeschooling is Persecuted in Germany

This is an interesting case.

The Romeikes are not your typical asylum seekers. They did not come to the U.S. to flee war or despotism in their native land. No, these music teachers left Germany because they didn’t like what their children were learning in public school - and because homeschooling is illegal there.

“It’s our fundamental right to decide how we want to teach our children,” says Uwe Romeike, an Evangelical Christian and a concert pianist who sold his treasured Steinway to help pay for the move.

Romeike decided to uproot his family in 2008 after he and his wife had accrued about $10,000 in fines for homeschooling their three oldest children and police had turned up at their doorstep and escorted them to school. “My kids were crying, but nobody seemed to care,” Romeike says of the incident. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

This is a mindset that’s becoming more prevalent in America.

Concerns that homeschooling could lead to insularity - or worse, as Kraus puts it, “could help foster the development of a sect” - are shaping policy debates in European countries.

Supreme Court Considers Unconstitutional Chicago Gun Ban

It’s nice to see a momentum toward more liberty.

But many conservative and legal scholars — as well as the Chicago challengers — want the court to employ another part of the 14th amendment, forbidding a state to make or enforce any law “which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

They argue this clause was intended as a broad guarantee of the civil rights of the former slaves, but that a Supreme Court decision in 1873 effectively blocked its use.

Breathing new life into the “privileges or immunities” clause might allow for new arguments to shore up other rights, including abortion and property rights, these scholars say.

This approach might enable challenges to arcane state laws that limit economic competition, said Clark M. Neily III of the public interest law firm Institute for Justice. He pointed to a Louisiana law that protects existing florists by requiring a license before someone can arrange or sell flowers. The licensing exam is graded by florists, he noted.

“No reasonable person thinks that law has a legitimate purpose,” Neily said. But he said, “Right now, once you get a law like this on the books, it’s almost impossible to get rid of.”

Panty Raider

Freak.

A Hales Corners man has been charged with three misdemeanor counts of theft after police said he attended real estate open houses in the Milwaukee area and stole women’s underwear from the homes. He is expected to appear in court Feb. 25.

According to the Wauwatosa police:

Robert Remiker, 58, attended open houses in the 2300 block of North 62nd Street in Wauwatosa, as well as in Greenfield and Franklin. Realtors and other visitors to the Wauwatosa open house said they saw Remiker opening drawers and taking items. When he was stopped by police officers, they found plastic bags containing eight pairs of underwear and printouts of Internet listings for area open houses.

Remiker told officers he was taking the items because he missed his ex-wife. He said he had about 50 more pairs at the home he lived in with his parents.

Stancl Gets 15 Years in Prison

This seems like a fair sentence to me. 

Anthony Stancl, who used the Facebook social networking site to deceive and coerce fellow New Berlin Eisenhower High School students into sexual acts with him in 2008, was sentenced to 15 years in prison and another 13 years of extended supervision Wednesday.

Waukesha County Circuit Judge J. Mac Davis imposed the sentence because he said Stancl had proven he was manipulative, excessively self-centered and could still be dangerous.

“I am afraid of what he can and might do,” Davis said.

Revolving Door

Feel safer?

A review of court records for Parnell and other offenders from Milwaukee who have been released early this year shows that several of the men - convicted of a range of felonies including drug dealing and identity theft - have extensive criminal records and a history of returning to crime during previous stints on the streets.

About 800 inmates are eligible for early release under the program, said Department of Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch, who has the final say in whether an offender is granted early release.

Whaling Protester Held in Custody

It’s inevitable that one of these idiot protesters is going to get someone killed.

An anti-whaling activist from New Zealand was being held in custody on a Japanese whaling vessel Tuesday after secretly boarding it the day before as part of a protest, the whalers said.

Diplomats in New Zealand and Tokyo have been meeting to discuss what to do with Peter Bethune, who jumped aboard the Shonan Maru 2 from a Jet Ski on Monday with the stated goal of making a citizen’s arrest of the ship’s captain and handing over a $3 million bill for the destruction of his protest ship last month.

Girl Arrested For Doodle

What.  The.  Heck?

A New York City junior high student has been arrested for doodling on her desk with a marker.

Twelve-year-old Alexa Gonzalez scribbled “Lex was here 2/1/10” on her desk Monday at Junior High School 190 in Queens. She also wrote “I love my friends Abby and Faith.” The girl says the doodles could have been erased.

Moraima Tamacho says her daughter was released several hours after she was taken in handcuffs to a police station.

Education department spokesman David Cantor said the incident shouldn’t have happened, and that common sense should prevail.

Woman Shoots Son

This story raises all sorts of questions. 

A 21-year-old man whose mother shot him in the groin Thursday night told police he was trying to be funny by wearing a ski mask and pretending to rob her, but investigators aren’t necessarily buying his story, a Milwaukee police spokesman said Friday.

Police are trying to determine if the man was actually trying to rob his 37-year-old mother, Sgt. Mark Stanmeyer said.

The man said he pretended to rob his mother behind their house in the 3700 block of N. 13th St. as she returned from shopping about 9 p.m., according to a statement from the Police Department.

His mother drew a .357-caliber revolver and fired several shots, hitting her son at least twice, the statement says.

[...]

The woman surrendered to the first officers on scene. The gun’s serial number had been obliterated, according to the police statement.

Yeah, I don’t buy the son’s story either. 

Kudos to the woman for taking her personal security seriously.  I don’t have any issue with the fact that she shot a guy in a ski mask who was attempting to rob her.  She has a right to defend herself.  Of course, the obliterated serial number raises an eyebrow, but it isn’t illegal to scratch up your own gun and the ownership of the gun isn’t in question.  Here in Wisconsin, she has committed a crime by carrying the gun in the first place, but I suspect it would be difficult to get any jury to convict her given the circumstances. 

Curious Job Posting

Hmmmm....

The Civil Rights Division encourages qualified applicants with targeted disabilities to apply. Targeted disabilities are deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, convulsive disorder, mental retardation, mental illness, severe distortion of limbs and/or spine.

I’m sure that Rahm Emanuel would oppose “f***ing retarded” people being attorneys for the U.S. government, but…

Hat tip The Volokh Conspiracy.