The current conservative-leaning Supreme Court has made another surprisingly liberal announcement: they will reconsider the constitutionality of the death penalty for juveniles. The hearing will be held of ’til next term since the Court’s calendar for this term is full.
This is very good news for those of us who are against the death penalty. This court already shocked everyone by ruling executing mentally retarded inmates unconstitutional. It also wasn’t that long ago that the Court ruled that only juries could sentence someone to death (as opposed to judges or panels of judges some states - including Colorado - were using). It almost appears that this Court is trying to banish (or at least severely limit) the death penalty.
This is interesting, mainly because I didn’t know it wasn’t already a law. Colorado legistlators are due to vote on a bill that would legally require a passenger report an accident that causes injuries. This proposed law complements an existing Colorado law which requires drivers in an accident to report the accident.
The bill is prompted by a 2001 incident in which a 16-year old boy left 15-year-old Mallory Funaro pinned underneath a pickup truck after Mallory flipped the truck in the middle of a cornfield. The boy talked to Mallory, but then fled the scene of the accident and did not call for help (he went as far as denying that he was a passenger in the truck).
Mallory’s family members were surprised to find out that the boy had not done anything illegal. He did not have to report the accident. Family members are outraged; they believe that Mallory might’ve survived the accident if he had called for help. Colorado legislators are hoping that this proposed law will prevent similar incidents in the future.
I find this story extremely bizzare. Apparently, a woman was driving on I-25 and someone shot her car. The bizzare part is that the woman apparently did not know that her car had been shot! “The driver pulled over along I-25 near 48th Avenue and discovered that her silver Honda Civic hatchback was bullet-riddled. Her back window was shattered but intact and there were a couple of bullet holes in the driver’s window.”
Now I admit that I’ve never been shot at, but I am pretty sure I would notice something happened if either my vehicle’s back windshield shattered or if a hole was suddenly blown into the window I am sitting next to. If nothing else, the sound of air coming in through the new holes would’ve alerted me.
I’m going to keep an eye out for updates to this story. There’s obviously a lot that hasn’t been told yet.
It was only a matter of time: a federal judge has ruled part of the Patriot Act unconstitutional. The judge (who remains unnamed in theDenverChannel.com’s article) was specifically ruling on the portion of the Patriot Act which banned giving “advice or assistance to groups designated [...] terrorists…” In her ruling, the “judge said the ban is too vague, and therefore violates the First and Fifth Amendments.”
So the first crack finally appears in the Patriot Act. Hopefully groups like the Humanitarian Law Project will continue to challenge the Patriot Act in court. It shouldn’t take long for the bulk of the Act to follow suit and be declared unconstitutional.
I find this very interesting: In a story about Camera Phone Identity Theft, TheDenverChannel.com actually quotes Snopes.com! For those of you who don’t know, snopes.com is a great reference website which catalogs internet hoaxes and urban legends. Snopes mean feature is a search function: enter a search term and snopes tells you whether or not what you searched for is true.
I’ve used this tool quite often to see if email horror stories are hoaxes or not. For the most part, they are hoaxes. But every now and then I run across something that is either confirmed true, or is a possibility. Apparently, someone at theDenverChannel.com decided to do the same thing for their article.
Though there have been claims to the contrary - especially by staunch Microsoft supporters - the entire SCO drama has smelled of Microsoft involvement from the very beginning. After all, Microsoft has a lot to gain if Linux were to be killed. Microsoft has never faced as big a competitor as Linux is becoming. In the past, Microsoft would’ve simply bought out the competitor then killed their technology. But that’s not possible: by definition, Linux’s open source license specifically means that no one can buy and kill it.
So along comes SCO, a company with a grudge and nothing to lose. A company that just happens to hold (or to think it holds) copyrights on one of the original versions of UNIX. SCO suing IBM for a billion dollars was an outlandish move, but a safe one: SCO is going out of business no matter what, so why not try to take the Linux community down with them?
Microsoft was savvy enough to let SCO do all the dirty work. SCO’s name is on the lawsuits that were filed. SCO is the company that will take the heat from the millions of Linux users and supporters. Microsoft can sit back and either reap the rewards of having SCO kill a major competitor, or wash their hands and watch SCO go bankrupt.
However, there is some evidence that hints that Microsoft is behind SCO’s actions. As Business Week points out a direct financial tie between Microsoft and SCO: “Linux is the primary force standing between Microsoft and domination of the computer world. The software giant is happily fanning customers’ fears with an anti-Linux campaign while pumping money into SCO.” Microsoft is paying SCO “licensing fees” ranging in the millions of dollars. Microsoft says these fees are legitimately owed for their UNIX-interoperability software. But those millions also helped keep SCO alive long enough to continue SCO’s lawsuits and attempts to kill Linux.
