The very definition of blaming the victim

I understand that every defendant has the right to be represented in court by counsel, but there are some things that should never be thought, much less said aloud. Any defense strategy that hinges on the idea that a person who was shot six times, in front of her two children, could be responsible for provoking the gunman (her estranged boyfriend, against whom she had a restraining order) is probably guaranteed to outrage and disgust everybody who hears it. I really hope it isn’t possible to convince twelve adults that the gunman wouldn’t have fired the gun in his pocket if the victim’s words hadn’t pushed him past the edge of reason. I wonder if this man wouldn’t have been better off pleading guilty or trying to arrange some sort of deal. I hope they put him under the jail.

Ugh.

Do NOT mess with the cheerleader

It’s amazing enough that a 16 year old girl was able to tackle and subdue a shoplifter, but the fact that she did it in a strapless dress is, to me, by far the craziest part of this story.

Jeez

Things I do not understand:

How could this kid have scammed so many prestigious universities and organizations? Why is it that only the Rhodes Scholarship people figured out what a bunch of BS all this was? And why did he keep doing it even after he got caught? (via Metafilter)

Also, if we ever perfect time machines, an early-20s Jake Gyllenhaal would have to be my first choice to play Young Mr. Wheeler.

Tragic

I find it interesting how following seemingly random links on the internet can teach you something you’d never have any reason to know otherwise. I started out looking at this Metafilter thread about the web site dead.atyourage.com. You enter your exact date of birth and find out about famous/infamous/interesting people who died at your age or thereabouts.

The first person on my list was Lyman Bostock, a baseball player I’d never heard of. Apparently, he is still the only MLB player to have been murdered during the baseball season. That’s sad enough, but I went to the Wikipedia article about him and read the story of his death; it’s heartbreaking. He was a great hitter on his way to being a pretty big star, and was murdered by Leonard Smith, the jealous, estranged husband of a woman he’d only just met. Even worse, Smith was found guilty in his second trial (the first ended in a mistrial due to a hung jury), was committed for psychiatric treatment, and was released after seven months when he was deemed to be no longer mentally ill. Including that time and the time he was in jail awaiting trial, he served less than two years for Bostock’s murder. ESPN Outside the Lines also did a story on Bostock’s murder. It seems like a slap in the face of Bostock’s family that Smith has been free for nearly thirty years, even though he was found guilty of murder. As a direct result of this case, the state of Indiana changed the way that the sentences of those found guilty by reason of insanity are handles, so that people found guilty and then deemed no longer insane would go to jail, instead of be released.

So dumb

So Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey believes that ‘not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime.’ How convenient that Mukasey, a Republican Bush appointee, doesn’t think it necessary to prosecute other Republican Bush appointees for systemically failing to hire those suspected of being: Democrats, otherwise liberal, or -gasp- homosexual! No crime’s been committed here, folks! I’m kind of pissed off anyway about people not accepting accountability for their actions, so this just makes me angrier. The No Justice Department can go suck an egg.