 |
 |
 |
« November 2007 | Main | January 2008 »
Friday, December 28, 2007 - 14:23:35
Reason #43 Gov. Beebe is doing a great job
Gov. Beebe has declined to accept box seats at the Cotton Bowl. This isn't a big deal but I think it shows his dedication to avoiding an "appearance of impropriety" even if accepting box seats was legal. I don't know if our former Governor ever accepted box seats but he certainly didn't have any problems with improprity, and made accepting gifts a custom.2007 Darwin Awards - Arkansas connection
I don't remember this story but if it's true I want to see the video:Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.
The rest of the awards are in the extended entry.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 11:30:23
The old becomes new
Every old story, already beaten to death here in Arkansas, becomes new with the temporary surge in Huckabee's support among likely Iowa voters. Like this one, about his son torturing and hanging a dog at scout camp.The RIAA is worse than the cigarette industry
The agency that represents the recording industry, the RIAA, has obviously been in a legal battle to stop "illegal" music downloads and has won a few cases here and there. Now they are at least hinting that not only downloading music is illegal but simply ripping your own CDs to your home computer is illegal if you put it in a "shared" folder. Outrageous. Not only are they wrong, they are contradicting statements they made to the US Supreme Court not long ago stating backing up CDs is fair use. I think the RIAA is worse than the cigarette industry when it comes to a misuse of the law. I guess I should be careful what I say or I might be sued for backing up my Yanni CD.
December 17, 2007
RIAA Continues to Backtrack on 2005 Statements
Back in 2005, the Cartel argued in front of the Supreme Court admitting in part that it was legal to rip one's own CDs. They've regretted that ever since and have hemmed and hawed about it.
Now they're in open (court) denial, claiming precisely the opposite. Props to PATNEWS's Greg Aharonian who pointed to an online PDF of an RIAA brief in Atlantic Recording Corporation et al v Pamela and Jeffrey Howell. If you scroll forward to page 15 of the brief you find language asserting that the Howells converted their own recordings (presumably CDs) to MP3 format and in this process "they are no longer the authorized copies."
It appears that Howell is self-representing. I wonder if he's aware of Grokster or if someone would like to make him aware...
the supplemental brief: http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?filename=atlantic_howell_071207RIAASupplementalBrief
Sunday, December 16, 2007 - 16:21:18
The Mitchell Report On Use Of Steroids In Baseball
I haven't had time to read the entire report - 409 pages - but it is public and can be found right here.Friday, December 14, 2007 - 20:18:19
Arresting reporters doesn't fit in well with "To Serve and Protect"
Many eons ago, I was a deputy prosecutor - mainly in the various district courts in Pulaski County. For about a year - I was Maumelle's assigned prosecutor - which was - to put mildly - a little slow ( therefore, I simultaneously did Jacksonville, which is like the wild wild west compared to Maumelle) The crime rate is Maumelle is almost nil unless you consider swearing at your golf club a crime. I doubt much has changed since I have been there. Then I see this report - that a reporter is arrested for - reporting. Craziness. sheer craziness. This reminds me when LRPD was harassing Rod Bryan, that guy who ran for something, last year. Of course - he was yelling at the police ( to slow down ) but they acted as though they had caught public enemy #1. Same in this case -- some state trooper ( not the Maumelle Police) with a little too much ego thinks no one can question him and arrests a guy for doing his job. If the reporter's facts are accurate - I think the trooper should be arrested for civil rights violations -- really - this wasn't an honest mistake. This was a intentional infringement on a resident's civil rights. As the reporter described the trooper, "[h]is demeanor was abusive, intimidating and downright scary." In my current job I work with the state police very closely and have never seen anything like this before. I'm generally very pro-law enforcement and when there is a judgment call - I will usually lean in their favor but this is someone using his badge to be a bully - this is not a policeman doing his job and merely getting carried away.The thing is - if this is something the state police find deserves discipline - but he isn't fired - we will never know unless he is suspended. The reporter might decline to seek civil damages because he wasn't injured and like most normal people we don't sue just to "make a point." So there might never be another public word said about this incident which is sad because if this wasn't a reporter - it would have never been believed. I hope this is the only trooper in the state that is willing to treat people so unjustly but that means there is one trooper too many.
Here is the Monitor's article - see for yourself. ( apparently the charge for obstruction was dismissed, Mr. Lawson has filed a complaint, and the trooper is currently on desk duty temporarily )
Newspaper Reporter Arrested Covering Story
This article was published on Tuesday, December 11, 2007 6:43 PM CST in News
By Bill Lawson
Maumelle Monitor
Editor's Note: This is a first-person account of Bill Lawson's arrest by a state trooper while attempting to take pictures at a house fire in Maumelle on Monday evening.
MAUMELLE -- Having lived 59 years, battled cancer, worn the country's uniform for 26 years and proudly worked as a journalist -- a profession I always admired -- I thought I'd seen it all. That is until Monday night, when I was arrested and charged with a criminal offense just for trying to do my job and take photos of a residential fire in Maumelle.
Being arrested, searched, having my camera, reporter's notebook and billfold confiscated, humiliated in front of friends and people I write about every week was a difficult way to be arrested for the first time in my life. The only other time I wore a pair of handcuffs was 10 years ago during a training class at the Law Enforcement Training Academy in Camden.
When I was told that I was being arrested it seemed like a dream. I knew I'd done nothing wrong. But I knew better than to argue with a sate trooper who obviously had an attitude.
Although I was arrested and handcuffed, not once was I read my rights. In fact, the State Police trooper told me I was being charged with obstructing governmental operations and one other offense. I can't remember what the second one was. It was such an incredulous feeling to be stopped from doing my job, much less to be arrested, that it was difficult to consider what was really happening.
All I was doing was what Capt. Gloria Weakland, State Police Troop A commander, advised me to do when I inquired via telephone months back about a fatality accident near Cabot and talked to her about covering the news. Capt. Weakland told me that I was welcome at any accident or incident scene and for me to approach the trooper there and identify myself with the news media and that I would have access to do my job.
That's all I was trying to do Monday evening. I didn't think the trooper in Maumelle had seen the press credential on my windshield and I approached him as she suggested to let him know who I was and why I was there. That's when he said he was going to arrest me for approaching him. He told me that he saw the press sign on my windshield and the ID around my neck but that it didn't mean anything to him.
Life has been difficult for me since my battle with cancer. The cancer, radiation treatments and multiple surgeries have all left their marks on me. Thank God I'm cancer-free, but I'm not half the young man who used to run the 100-yard dash in 10.2 seconds. In fact, this past weekend has been one of the most painful in my life. The medicine that I still must take often depletes my potassium and my muscles hurt so badly it's very difficult to move. I actually have to hold on to something to pull my way in and out of my vehicle so that I don't generate more pain in my legs. I use my arms and hands as much as possible to keep from using my legs to even lift me out of chairs because of the pain.
Of course, being overweight makes it even more difficult. For the first two years of my battle with cancer, I had to take steroid shots along with the 18 different kinds of medicine, to even feel like getting out of bed. A combination of the cancer's damage to my kidneys, bladder and colon and the steroids added about 100 pounds to my already large frame. But I tell people everyday that I'd rather be fat and alive than skinny and dead. My physician tells me that some of the kidney medicine I take contributes to the retention of fluids in spite of other medicine to help relieve that problem.
The combination of medical problems and being overweight makes for a slow-moving wide body. Walking is a chore and an occasional run or climbing stairs leaves me breathless. After being handcuffed and forced to stand still for more than 30 minutes beside his Arkansas State Police vehicle with unit number A-54 on it, I couldn't move a muscle. When I squirmed, the trooper was yelling at me to stop resisting. Standing with my arms behind me was difficult and painful to the point of being unbearable. I know what resisting is and I did nothing that could be considered that. The too-tight handcuffs hurt my wrists and I have scratches from them on my right arm where the trooper hit it while slapping the handcuffs on me. All of that and the pain of standing still for so long was unbearable, but I knew better than to complain or suffer the trooper's wrath.
His demeanor was abusive, intimidating and downright scary.
Some of my friends on the Maumelle Fire Department came over to check on me. I was still 50 to 75 yards away from the minor fire and they all wondered what was going on. They asked if they could help and I told my publisher's son-in-law, who is a firefighter, to call him in case I needed to be bailed out of jail. The firemen later told me they couldn't believe I had been arrested for attempting to take photos far away from the fire. In fact, they called the Maumelle Police Department to come and check on me because they said they were worried about me.
After my boss' son-in-law left, the trooper came over and asked if I was somebody special. I told him no, I'm just a reporter. Then he wanted to know whom I asked the fireman to call and I explained that it was my boss. He then asked which newspaper I worked for and I tried to explain that I worked for several newspapers owned by Stephens Media. He wanted to argue with me, telling me I'd mentioned a specific newspaper earlier. Every time I tried to explain, the trooper would interrupt me, like a trial attorney would do when they're trying to discredit you.
I wanted to tell him that I needed to sit down but I was afraid he'd charge me with something else, or worse. After all, he had the gun and authority of a state trooper and I was just a journalist with a notepad and a camera. As mad as he was, I feared for my safety. He had roughed me up a little bit, pulling my left hand behind my back and then demanding that I let go of the camera in my right hand. I wasn't about to drop a $1,500 camera with a $400 strobe light on it. He grabbed it and yelled at me until I let it go. He took it, walked off behind me and later placed the camera on the trunk of his vehicle.
After he visited with several Maumelle police officers, he came up to me and asked me, "If I take these handcuffs off you, are you going to behave?"
I was stunned. From the moment he told me to turn around because I was under arrest for taking his photo, I attempted to follow his every command for fear of what he might do. I was handcuffed and defenseless. Not that I'd have tried to resist; I have too much respect for law enforcement officers to do that, even when I know I didn't do anything wrong.
As I was handcuffed, he tried to tell me that I'd stuck the camera "up in my face, inches from my nose, snapping it over and over attempting to blind me." I tried to explain that the camera had been set on motor drive in order to capture the firefighters in action and that I had actually only snapped it once. He wanted to argue and said that I held it down for 10 seconds or longer, telling me that he knew all about cameras.
Even hours after the arrest, it all seems like a dream. A very bad dream. Maumelle Police Chief Sam Williams told me that I should file a complaint against the state trooper. I told him that wasn't my style because I have so much respect for all police officers and the difficult jobs they do.
I've worked closely with state troopers and count many of them as friends. In April 2006 when a trooper sergeant died out on a roadblock, I was so inspired when I attended his funeral in Searcy that I wrote a newspaper column tribute to him and all troopers, entitled "The Thin Blue Line," that ended up being reprinted in the Arkansas State Police Association's magazine.
After the episode, Chief Williams told me he might have yelled at me if he thought I'd overstepped my bounds, but he said he certainly wouldn't have arrested me for just doing my job.
Standing on a public street in a city where I've covered much more serious fires than this one, I couldn't have believed that my First Amendment rights to cover and report the news would have been abridged. Even worse than the painful handcuffing episode, the state trooper turned me around so that I could not even see the firefighters in action putting out the fire. That was adding insult to injury. Now I can't even report on their outstanding efforts to save a home -- because I wasn't allowed to see it and I can't report what I didn't see.
Bill Lawson covers Pulaski County government for Stephens Media's Central Arkansas Newspapers, but currently is assigned to Maumelle.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - 17:06:31
Iowa Electronic Market Quotes
Someone recently showed me the Iowa Electronic Market Quotes, where they treat the presidential race like the stock market. (http://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/quotes/Nomination08_quotes.html) This "market" fluctuates every day. Although Huckabee's poll numbers are better he is a solid third now if you go by this barometer. I also notice Hillary still has 20 points on Obama on this scale. Market Quotes: DConv08 2008 Democratic Convention Market. Quotes current as of 17:00:01 CST, Wednesday, December 12, 2007. Symbol Bid Ask Last Low High Average CLIN_NOM 0.578 0.580 0.580 0.577 0.600 0.592 EDWA_NOM 0.060 0.064 0.061 0.049 0.068 0.058 OBAM_NOM 0.344 0.345 0.344 0.341 0.345 0.344 DROF_NOM 0.015 0.017 0.015 0.012 0.022 0.014 | Prospectus | Price History | Graph | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Market Quotes: RConv08 2008 Republican Convention Market. Quotes current as of 17:00:01 CST, Wednesday, December 12, 2007. Symbol Bid Ask Last Low High Average GIUL_NOM 0.375 0.379 0.375 0.375 0.379 0.376 HUCK_NOM 0.181 0.198 0.183 0.175 0.224 0.202 MCCA_NOM 0.101 0.118 0.102 0.101 0.120 0.111 ROMN_NOM 0.247 0.250 0.245 0.240 0.260 0.245 THOMF_NOM 0.039 0.040 0.039 0.039 0.041 0.040 RROF_NOM 0.030 0.032 0.030 0.030 0.031 0.030Shocker ! Huckabee homophobic
I love kooks
 |
  |
| © 2004 - 07 Arkansas Times. All Rights Reserved. |  |
