Holy shit, I've rarely read or heard something so nauseating. Over at Crime and Federalism, Mike talks about the case of five Tennessee sheriffs who tortured a poor illiterate man, Lester Eugene Siler, in order to get him to confess to a crime. I'm not taking "torture" in a metaphorical sense, either. As Jason at Positive Liberty summarizes:
The police are attempting to get the illiterate man to sign an admission ofHow do we know that this isn't a far-fetched tale told by a drug dealer in trouble? Because the interrogation, amazingly, was tape recorded by his wife. You can hear it here, all 40 minutes worth. It's chilling to think that something like this would go on in 21st Century America.
guilt without telling him what it says. They beat him, over and over, hook
electrodes up to testicles and shock him, threaten to kill him, and threaten to go after his family.
The five shitbags involved have all pleaded guilty to federal offenses. Siler's alleged crime? Selling drugs. Another piece of dignity lost to the "war on drugs." Of course, this is how we fight wars, so why should we be shocked?
5 comments:
Yep, shitbags every one. Hey, how's this for the new moniker? I was going by c.ross until I started defending the ACLU on the Rightie brother-in-law's blog today and decided to go a little more creative for flamesake. Check it out...under the "Chuck Norris" post of all things (URL was in one of my last emails).
Like the moniker - I can see the TV ad now:
"Here at Kanobi, Skywalker, and Cochran*, we'll use the power of the force to get money . . . for YOU!"
* Of counse, of course - he did develop the Chewbaca defense, for cryin' out loud.
I changed my mind again. I thought that this one was a little more clever and has aliteration to boot. What do you think?
OK, that one's a little too clever - I had to go look up "japer." Plus it ruined my Jedi law firm joke!
See, that is part of why I thought it was clever. As a bonus, if I'm posting in a right-wing thread a good number of those people will probably think that I'm disparaging Japanese people and might give me a pass. I liked the "to quip" version of the definition over the "to joke" one but both should work.
I guess that I started running through different ideas that wouldn't make me stick out as a lawyer (more fodder). I thought about "jedi hobbit" but that is too geeky (even if it is ironic). I ran through other types of occupations, aliens, and characteristics (i.e. "jedi jaffa", "jedi jerk", "jedi joe"...like G.I.Joe, and even "jedi junta"). None of these really worked and I kind of liked the idea of using aliteration. So I went through my Scrabble list of "j" words and "jape" just popped out at me (I knew this one from a Philip K. Dick novella).
Other options were "jedi java", "jedi jingo" (good for right-wing bashing), "jedi jism" (might get me banned), "jedi juju" (something I considered), "jedi jibb", "jedi jest" (I thought "japer" was better), and "jedi juke" (too many definitions).
Two that I just thought of while writing this were "jedi jambalaya" (which could be good) and "jedi jawa" (which is a funnier play of opposites than "jedi hobbit"). What do you think?
Yes, I'm a terrible geek and my life sucks...sorry.
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