In a 5-1 decision Wednesday, Ohio’s Supreme Court upheld a speeding ticket based solely upon how fast a driver appeared to be moving. You read that right, an officer’s educated guess is now sufficient to overcome the state’s burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Justice Maureen O’Connor (who’s running for chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court this November) wrote (in part):
We hold that a police officer’s unaided visual estimation of a vehicle’s speed is sufficient evidence to support a conviction for speeding in violation of R.C. 4511.21(D) without independent verification of the vehicle’s speed if the officer is trained, is certified by the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy or a similar organization that develops and implements training programs to meet the needs of law enforcement professionals and the communities they serve, and is experienced in visually estimating vehicle speed.
That’s right, no independent verification, just the best guess of a highly-trained and infallible officer of the law. Thank God every police officer in Ohio is completely beyond reproach, otherwise some might abuse a law that gives such sweeping power with absolutely no accountability.
The lone dissenting vote came from Justice Terrence O’Donnell (apparently the only person on the Ohio Supreme Court with any sense) who argued the majority essentially created a standard that the police officer is always right.
This sets a dangerous precedent. In what other areas might an officer’s uncorroborated expert opinion to be admitted as incontrovertible evidence?
On the positive side, imagine the positive impact this will have on the state’s budget. Auction off all that unnecessary RADAR and LIDAR equipment! Speedometers in patrol cars will be a thing of the past!
Hopefully the ACLU (or someone) can get this insane decision before the US Supreme Court where it will be overturned. Unless they, too, have all taken leave of their senses.
Guess who got tricked into thinking he’d overslept, made a mad dash getting ready and getting to work only to discover he was 57 minutes early?
Yeah, it was me. Thanks a whole fucking bunch, George W. Bush. Thanks for turning my ‘never has to be reset CD alarm clock’ into a ‘has to be reset four fucking times a year torture device’.
So, the groundhog saw his shadow, which supposedly means six more weeks of winter. Bah!
At least the New York groundhog (Chuck) fulfilled a long-time wish of mine and bit someone (not just anyone, New York’s Mayor Bloomburg!)
Remember when I said that I didn’t much care about the snow and ice that was forecast for us? Well, I lied. We got it, it’s still around, and I hate it. But I am still taking some solace in my cheerful little Shamrock’s reemergence.
Regular readers may recall a prediction that I made on November, 28 2004.
I said, in part, that I thought Barack Obama might very well be our first “African-American” Vice President, perhaps even President.
That was nearly 4 years ago!
In the name of full-disclosure, I had also picked Wesley Clark as our next president prior to the 2004 DNC and we all know how that panned out.
The Obama-Biden team’s Presidential Transition Project already has a website up which documents their transition into power and solicits ideas from the public.
I submitted the letter from my previous post.
Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.
Like many folks out there, I found myself more engaged in the political process this year than I’ve ever been in my 24 years of (off and on) voting. When I woke up today, something felt different, at the risk of sounding cliché, I actually have hope for the future and believe that things are going to get better. If President Obama can just undo the damage that the Bush administration has done to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that would cement his legacy in my mind.
Dear President-elect Obama,
Please bring back Habeas Corpus. Stop the government, our government, from spying on us without just cause and without a warrant. I want to live in a nation that doesn’t torture, that doesn’t rush to war under false pretenses. I want a nation that holds its politicians, and indeed each of its citizens, accountable. Mr. Obama, you’ve talked a lot about “change” and we listened. Now show us the change. Repeal the Patriot Act. Position us, as a nation, to be at the vanguard of the coming wave of “green” technology and alternative energy. This is our “Space Race” and its implications for our future are even more profound. Give us back our freedoms and lead us to the future. That is how we, as a nation, can reaffirm our title as the greatest and most powerful nation on earth. Please, Mr. Obama, lead us there.
The day after Barack Obama announced Joe Biden as his running mate, I found myself involved in a conversation about his choice.
The person I was chatting with could have been a co-worker, an acquaintance, or a stranger on the street, it really doesn’t matter to the story so, in the name of anonymity, you can select whichever you prefer.
Anyway, this person says to me, quite contemptuously (about Joe Biden):
“That man looks more like a Republican than he does a Democrat.”
I walked away from the conversation at this point, shaking my head and thinking:
“Jesus! And your vote counts just as much as mine does.”
Nothing like having an informed opinion. Honestly! S/he doesn’t like him because he “looks like a Republican.”
Apparently four transoceanic communications network cables have been mysteriously severed. The result of this is that internet traffic in the Middle East has been severely hampered and, according to some reports, completely halted to and from Iran. Even more interesting, what little traffic still exists is being re-routed through the US and UK, but I’m sure there’s nothing fishy going on, it’s probably just a massive series of completely unrelated coincidences.
Here’s more from Monday’s episode of Rocketboom (the pertinent part begins at about 2:15).
Also, on a completely unrelated note, here’s Wikipedia’s page on the USS Jimmy Carter, which says, in part:
Carter is roughly 100 feet (30 m) longer than the other two ships of her class. This is due to the insertion of a section known as the Multi-Mission Platform (MMP), which allows launch and recovery of ROVs and Navy SEAL forces. The plug features a fairing over a wasp-waist shaped passageway allowing crew to pass between the fore and aft sections of the hull while providing a space to store ROVs and special equipment that may need to launch and recover from the submarine. The MMP may also be used as an underwater splicing chamber for tapping of undersea fiber optic cables. This role was formerly filled by the decommissioned USS Parche (SSN-683).
Jimmy Carter, Iran… I’m sure it’s all just a massive coincidence.
Thanks to the combined efforts of “the terrorists”, the news media, and the Bush administration, it appears that we are becoming a nation of trembling Chicken Littles frightened by our own shadows.
I just came across this AP news story by way of Boing Boing, which I will use to illustrate my point.
Basically, here’s what happened:
A Connecticut teacher thought she was alone in the school building. Two teenagers and a custodian, also thinking they were alone in the building began singing “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses over the PA system. Upon hearing the lyric
You know where you are?
You’re in the jungle baby
You’re gonna die
the teacher loses her mind, and fearing for her life, barricades herself in a room then notifies the authorities. Six troopers and three police dogs show up and the kids are handcuffed until the “investigation” reveals that there was no threat or danger.
Now honestly, I can undestand how that would startle, even frighten a person, but come on! Surely most rational people would immediately recognize it for exactly what it was; kids goofing off.
Similarly, apparently all it takes is a “suspicious package” or an errant piece of pipe to fling an entire community into mass-hysteria. Recently our local news reported that a man had found what he thought might be a pipe-bomb in his garage. As you can imagine, the response was immediate and overwhelming. With the help of all manner and sorts of high tech equipment, the bomb squad determined that the “device” didn’t contain any explosives. But even after this discovery, they (the reporters and law enforcement) continued to refer to it as a “pipe bomb”.
Uh, excuse me, but isn’t it the addition of explosives that makes it a “pipe bomb”? Without something that goes “boom”, it seems to me that all you really have is a pipe.
The sad thing is, as society becomes further indoctrinated into the culture of fear, this type of incident will become more commonplace and, I’m afraid, eventually accepted.
So, I was grocery shopping bright and early this morning when a display of pies caught my eye. Marionberry pies.
“I don’t even know what Marionberries are”, I muttered to myself.
I burst into laughter as my mind immediately conjured the grainy FBI surveillance video of disgraced, then inexplicably re-elected Washington D.C. mayor, Marion Barry smoking crack with his mistress in a hotel room.
Yep, it’s quite a life; 5AM, shopping at Kroger, laughing at pies.
Have I mentioned that I’m easily amused?
CD. Do your self (and me) a favor, click the link, buy the cd.
