Yet another incomprehensible verdict from a jury wrapped around the new favorite argument of defense lawyers evereywhere: to convict, the State needs to prove intent.
In other words, a motive, a murder weapon, even a confession are no longer sufficient proof of wrongdoing: the State now has to prove that the person who murders really “intended” to do it all along.
New Hampshire SB 335
Yesterday, the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted by overwhelming majority (223-103) to give adoptees the right to copies of their original birth certificates.
The bill also provides a mechanism for birth parents to approve (or not) the release of contact information to the children they lost to adoption.
Town Elections
For the first time since moving to Mashpee, I attended a candidates’ night sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and the local newspaper.
Color
We’ve started to see Spring colors in the landscape, yellow from the forsythia and daffodils planted by the thousands in numerous public areas; purple hyacinths, vinca and even violets; blue from Pulmonaria and miniature hydrangeas in flower boxes; white and pink.
Gardener’s Diary
Survived the winter:
Crocus (first to bloom)
Bluettes (second)
Tulips (if the squirrels don’t eat them)
Sweet woodruff
Jacob’s ladder
Woodland geranium
Montauk daisies
Fairy rose
Larkspur
Day lilies
Iris
Beach rose
Bachelor buttons
Lemon thyme
Jury is still out on:
Ornamental grasses
Heather
Lavendar
Foxglove
Lupine
Russian sage
Big question: is this the year that the hydrangeas will bloom?
This is the 100th entry in A Blog For All Seasons!
Femme de Chambre
It’s nice when you can do a job that provides instant gratification.
It’s also nice to not have to worry about a lot of rules, or best practices – a chambermaid’s job is binary and unambiguous, either a room is clean, or it’s not.
Liar, Liar
So, Chappell Hartridge, the outspoken juror on the Martha Stewart case who gloated to the press that her conviction was “a victory for the little guys who lose money in the market”, turns out to be an accused embezzler with a cocaine habit.
Hartridge also has been arrested on assault charges, and three lawsuits have been filed against him. In addition, his son was convicted of attempted robbery in 2000.
This ignoble defender of the “little guy” failed to disclose any of these facts on his jury form, which he was obliged to do, and this has become the basis for an appeal by Stewart’s legal team, which after weeks of ineptitude in court actually decided to mount a defense on her behalf.
Oh, and did I tell you that the organization which claims the Hartridge stole from them is the Bronx Little League?
The AP reports that Hartridge, who was so eager to babble to the press after the Stewart trial, “could not immediately be reached for comment. A listed phone number for him was out of service.”
Meanwhile, the prosecution feels that Stewart’s attorneys “are trying to do a very bad thing”.
Excuse me, but I thought that the whole point of bringing Stewart to trial was the fact that she supposedly lied to the government?
So, I guess it’s okay for a black man to lie, but not an uppity white woman?
Friday Five
A little late, better than never….
1. What do you do for a living?
Web applications development.
2. What do you like most about your job?
The intellectual challenge and the enlightenment that comes when understanding how a particular technology “thinks”, the way it is organized and the rules within which it operates.
3. What do you like least about your job?
Honestly? The fact that it takes SO LONG to learn to do things well.
4. When you have a bad day at work it’s usually because _____…
Something has failed, over and over, for reasons that are arcane and ineluctable.
5. What other career(s) are you interested in?
If I had the skills and temperament, I’d have been a skilled craftsman. If I were very wealthy and had a warm, nurturing nature, I’d like to have been a foster parent for as many children as possible.
Yet More Bush Hypocrisy
The current Bush administration, which has cut veterans’ health care benefits and the combat pay of those serving in Iraq, continues to dig in its heels on payment of reparations to 17 POWs from the first Gulf War.
A U.S. district court awarded almost $1 Billion to the POWs last summer, but payment of the award, from Iraqi assets mind you, was blocked by the Bush administration. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada sponsored an amendment to help the POWs last year, but it was dropped under pressure from the State Department.
The administration claims pure motives, of course, but isn’t this action consistent with the notion that the spoils of this particular war belong to Halliburton, Bechtel and other friends of the Republican Right?
Heaven porfend that they should have to share that bounty with soldiers who were starved and tortured by the enemy. In the world of Bush II, that would be downright un-American.
Love Sick, Indeed
So, for the next two weeks, we’ll be seeing a mustachioed Bob Dylan in his new career as advertising shill for Victoria’s Secret. He not only scored but appears in the ad, which features his song “Love Sick”.
Per Orin Snyder, a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips who claims to represent Dylan, this is not a sell-out, nay, nay, but just another way for his client to artistically commune with the public:
“Artists are really yearning for new avenues of communication with their audience.”
(http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/04/04/150552.php)
Dylan’s pathetic mid/late career obsession with sexual and romantic frustration may make him the background songwriter of choice for purveyors of soft porn, but appearing in the commercials is another matter altogether. A leering, dirty old man is still a leering, dirty old man.
I’m with AdAge on this one.