A 27-year-old local man has been charged with assault over an incident in Parkes, in NSW's mid-west Windows 7 product key free, in which a woman was left with a fractured skull Windows 7 oem key, two broken arms and blinded in one eye.

The Parkes man has been charged with assault occasioning grievous bodily harm, and break Cheap windows 7 key, enter commit grievous bodily harm.

He was refused bail and will appear before Parkes Local Court on Saturday.

The injuries to the 51-year-old woman were sustained on Thursday at Parkes residence.

If we could do it all over again, I wish Jenna Fischer was never on The Office.

I wish she won’t be forever remembered as Pam Beesly-Halpert. I wish my mind wouldn’t always associate her with the color beige and sweaters a crotchety old librarian would wear.

Instead, I wish Fischer did what Parker Posey did in the ’90s; star in every single independent film, ever. Of course, everyone fell in love with a then unknown Fischer because of The Office, but I really, really fell for her for her performances in a string of indies (OK, and Blades of Glory). She was fantastic in Solitary Man as Michael Douglas’ daughter and as Sean William Scott’s wife in The Promotion. But, she really left me jaw-dropped in last year’s overlooked, A Little Help. She played a beer-guzzling widow who had to deal with her kid telling everyone his scummy dad died in 9/11, even though he didn’t. It was one of the year’s best performances.

This was the moment Fischer transcended the limits of an NBC sitcom and became a thespian’s thespian.

In her new project, The Giant Mechanical Man, Fischer is Janice, a 30-something whose promising future seemed to pass her up a long time ago. She gets fired from a temp agency because she doesn’t care about the work. She gets evicted from her apartment and is forced to move in with her matriarchal little sister (Malin Ackerman) and her husband (Rich Sommer from Mad Men). They seemingly have it all figured out — including what’s best for Janice right now. They try to set her up with a self-aggrandizing, dickhead, self-help author (a hilarious Topher Grace) because this could potentially be her ticket out of living a milquetoast life.

While watching the news one night, she sees an interview with a giant mechanical man who performs in downtown Detroit. You know, one of those robot/living statues you see in the city who are half-creepy and half-amusing. Covered in metallic paint and wearing stilts replica watches, he remains motionless until you drop a few bucks in his basket for a brief robotic interaction. In the interview, the mechanical man explains his craft; he hopes that people who live their life by going through the motions, aimlessly like a robot, will see a living robot and be inspired to change. Or something like that.

The robot is Tim (Chris Messina), another 30-something with no real aspirations other than to impact people with his not financially profitable art. He gets dumped by his corporate girlfriend (Lucy Punch) and is also rapidly trying to get his life in order.

Seeking purpose (and money), Janice and Tim both end up with jobs at a Detroit zoo doing trivial work that is beneath them… but is it really? In the sweetly cosmic way that their world works, they hit it off and unbeknownst to Janice, Tim is the mechanical man and the inspirational catalyst in her life.

There’s so much backlash for the new HBO show, Girls, because people can’t relate to a bunch of spoiled brats in their mid-20s who are finding themselves, feel entitled and would rather die than work at McDonalds. While the two characters in The Giant Mechanical Man aren’t liberal arts graduates who rely on their parents for money, they are very much going through the same self-discovery, except they’re about a decade older. And inherently more likeable.

These characters are fascinating and frightening. Like, they’re in their 30s! Society says they should typically be settled down by now, maybe with a few kids and a nice job. They should have at least SOME consistency. Instead, they are blue-collar Bohemians who kind of just meander. Janice and Tim have much more to offer the universe, but they can’t seem to figure it out, or figure out a way to make money doing so. Is that important? Isn’t it important? Can’t they just exist?

The Giant Mechanical Man is quietly charming and instantly memorable. It’s no such much a romantic comedy as it is a romantic exploration through what existentialism and destiny means to a person living in 2012. Fischer continues to buff up her indie resume with another against-type performance and major hats off to Messina for simultaneously being a robot and a beanie-wearing struggling artist. This is one of those movies that snuck up on me hours after watching it — forcing me to question my own existence as compared to that of Janice and Tim. I don’t want to sell grape juice at a zoo when I’m 30. I’d rather be the robot.

I must also point out that as a suburbanite of Chicago who was has never been to the Motor City, in my head, I’ve been conditioned to think it’s some sort of urban apocalyptic wasteland. But writer/director Lee Kirkland replica watches, who is Fischer’s husband, has crafted a romanticized version of Detroit. He takes us to the zoo, swanky bars and restaurants replica watches, downtown, old theaters, weird and luxurious apartments — I kind of want to visit. Kind of.

I guess Robocop was wrong.

7:29 PM Saturday, May 12, 2012

PIQUA — Edison Community College will implement a written evaluation process for administrators and has strengthened its contractual oversight after an employee was indicted of two felony crimes.

Former Edison public relations director Jack Kramer was indicted in March in Miami County Common Pleas Court on two counts of having an unlawful interest in a public contract. Kramer’s trial is scheduled for Aug. 7-8.

Prosecutors allege Kramer used his position as a public official in 2008 and 2009 to secure authorization of public contracts benefitting his private business, ScoresBroadcast.com.

Billing records obtained by the Dayton Daily News show ScoresBroadcast.com, a Shelby County High School sports website, billing Edison Community College $1,500 per month for several months for advertising on the website.

A Dayton Daily News open records request of Kramer’s personnel file and documents related to ScoresBroadcast.com show Kramer had not had any written reviews since the 1994-95 school year.

Edison spokesman Ryan Honeyman said the school would be “rolling out a new policy this summer annual written reviews for all employees, not just for supervisors.”

Written evaluations may provide another layer of accountability and resource for future supervisors. Edison has had a few employees leave under cloudy circumstances Homemade Tattoo Machine, including the controller who signed the checks to the website.

Kim Norris with the Ohio Board of Regents said the evaluation process is up to each public university and its trustees to decide.

A message seeking comment from Edison Community College President Cristobal Valdez’s office was not returned.

When asked about the timing of the written evaluation policy change, Honeyman said it was because Edison “did not have one. We were looking to establish one.”

School officials said Kramer’s reviews were done in person, usually by then-President Kenneth Yowell, who retired in 2011 after 23 years in that role. Edison’s Academic Senate passed a no-confidence resolution against Yowell 44-1 with four abstentions in 2009.

Kramer declined to speak about his case on the record, but did confirm he had verbal reviews, often with the school president’s office.

When he retired Aug. 31, 2010, Kramer’s annual salary was $76,219.66. When he started in 1985, Kramer’s annual salary was $29,000.

Honeyman said “raises at the college have been awarded across the board, and have not been merit based.”

As for the change in contracts, Honeyman said Tattoo Inks, “Current procurement policies at the college now require that any contracts must be signed off on by the vice president of business and finance.”

The documents also show other Edison Community College employees knew about the contract with ScoresBroadcast.com. — a web-based radio site run and owned in part by Kramer, a longtime TV and radio sports broadcaster.

A string of emails from Oct. 24, 2008 show purchasing clerk Diane Arnold questioning the billing invoice process. Other purchase orders list then Web adviser Nancy J. Stager.

Many of the checks to ScoresBroadcast.com were signed by ex-Edison controller Darrel Isaacs Buy Tattoo Gun, who was convicted of falsifying personal tax withholdings.

Isaacs was sentenced in 2009 in Miami County Common Pleas Court to three years probation and 300 hours of community service for using the college’s payroll system between 2002 and 2009 to file fraudulent federal withholding so he would receive a larger income tax return, according to a police report.

Other requisition documents list Vice Presidents Sandy Brubaker and Daniel Reke (Business and Finance) in the approval box. An email exchange in July 2009 show Reke and Brubaker communicated with Kramer about dealings with ScoresBroadcast.com.

In late 2009, the Ohio Ethics Commission subpoenaed Edison Community College for documents relating to ScoresBroadcast.com. Honeyman said when that investigation began, all advertising with the website was halted, payments stopped and that all further purchase requests had to be approved by the chairman of the college’s marketing committee.

Honeyman said: “There was no disciplinary action taken against Mr. Kramer by the college due to the pending investigation by the Ohio Ethics Commission because Mr. Kramer retired before the commission completed their investigation and the subsequent indictment.”

I wanted to write a quick blog on what I believe to be the most useable and seam free way of organising your home paperwork. I get asked about this all of the time and although many may see it as obvious I think there are so many storage solutions out there to cater for this area it is difficult to know which ones work and which don’t.

In my opinion (which it goes without saying you don;t have to listen to at all Tattooing Kits!) the below it what works for me and my clients when I introduce them to it and I have not yet had a single complaint. More in fact a big sigh of relief.

I would say about 20% of my bookings are for paperwork re-organisation. For some reason it is one of those tasks that has us stumped. People not only hate doing it and avoid it like the plague but in my opinion they have it all wrong. Once a simple system is in place there really is nothing to fear/ avoid/ dread!

A common problem I come across when ‘fixing’ systems already in place is the very incorrect idea that the more sections/ dividers/ labels (and complication!) then the better the system. Personally what I think this does is create an avoidance of the task. If simple filing becomes to complicated and long winded then it also becomes a bigger job to think about doing and more likely to be one that is put off.

So working backwords – we avoid the filing and instead have piles…this is because we also avoid the opening mail in the first place…..therefore we avoid completion if any action is needed….bad all round and exactly how you can get in a right pickle!

So anyway Tattoo Inks, here are my simple solutions and methods for the working, practical home paperwork system.

1. The 3 tier filing trays. As you will see they have 3 clearly labelled sections:

1-POST – Obvious really but in other words this is your inbox.

From here you open your mail and put it either the 2-ACTION tray or the 3-FILE tray.

This is a really straight forward method but it’s amazing how many people have nothing in place even slightly like it. Instead they have piles of paperwork and unopened mail lying around the house with no home, shuffling about and gathering dust…

You can buy these drawers in so many colours and materials to match your home. They don;t have to be clinical, plastic or too office like. Have a look in your local high street stationers as well as home-ware sections of department stores.

Labels for your drawers don;t have to be to detailed. You will know what’s where by the brief description on the front. How ofter do we need bills for example? Put them all together in one drawer rather than separating them out? The same for ‘Car’ ‘Mortgage’ ‘IR’ (Inland Revenue) ‘Health’ ‘Home Insurance’ ‘Travel’ etc etc…

2. Invest in one of my favorite paperwork storage items, the 10 drawer filing drawers. No hole punches, no dividers just back to basics simple.

The process? Well again so easy. You take your filing pile and instead of hole punching, sectioning, pulling the right folder down from the shelf. Instead you simply open the drawer and pop it in. Obviously the most recent items will be on top.

No need to sift through if you need to find something just pull the whole pile out.

I usually find if there are children in the house or even pets it may be useful to invest in two of these. You don’t want to run out of drawers.

Again these come in a range of colours and sizes. Usually in a metal finish. They sell (depending on the brand) from around £50 – £150. The ones I used in this photograph were £71 from a leading online stationer.

3. The Ten Second Rule

You should be able to open a piece of mail Professional Tattoo Kits, access ‘file’ or ‘action’ and put it in the correct pile within ten seconds easily! So even with a big bunch of mail it would only take a couple of minutes maximum to get it in the correct place. So way do we dread it so much?

Hopefully these systems will mean you won’t.

Allow a day to get everything in place as it should be then just enjoy how little time it takes up in the future.

Vicky x

Buy Bandage dresses

While this no-weld rail bike conversion looks like it would be unsafe at any speed DKNY Clothes sale, it does look like a ton of fun (isn’t that always the case?). There are miles and miles of unused tracks that carve their way through America’s backcountry that have yet to be converted to bike trails. Something like this could make these hidden corridors and seldom used easements instantly accessible to folks crazy enough to attempt riding it. [via BikeHacks]

2011 Chevrolet Cruze – Click above for high-res image gallery

The 2011 Chevrolet Cruze is finally coming Stateside and during a private event held earlier this evening ahead of the LA Auto Show, General Motors – 20 minutes after announcing the departure of Fritz Henderson as CEO – unveiled the U.S.-spec version of its Cobalt replacement and Toyota Corolla competitor.

Sharing much of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt’s architecture, the Cruze has the potential to be a massive leap forward for Chevy in the mid-size/compact segment. Larger than the Cobalt in almost every dimension and packing a choice of either a turbocharged 1.4-liter four-cylinder putting out 138 horsepower and 148 pound-feet of torque or a naturally aspirated 1.8-liter four-pot, fuel economy and efficiency take center stage. However, “driving enjoyment” was mentioned more than once during the presentation Tattoo Supplies, so to aid both its fuel consumption (an estimated 40 mpg with the turbo’d four) and enhance the experience, buyers will be able to choose between a manual or automatic six-speed gearbox.

Although we’ve seen the Cruze in person before (it’s been on sale in Europe and other markets for over six months) Tattoo Supplies, its sharp lines, taut headlamps and enlarged grille play Dr. Jekyll to it’s rather staid, Mr. Hyde rump. Inside, the two-tone brown and black leather interior is a tremendous improvement over the model it replaces, with an artfully sculpted dash and center stack surrounded by soft touch materials, brushed fauxluminum and a smattering of chrome. Back seat passengers should be equally pleased with the appointments and a 60/40 split bench ups the ante for usability.

The Cruze’s arrival late next year couldn’t be better timed, as Ford is readying the next generation Focus and Honda is toiling away on a reworked Civic. We’re expecting to get some seat time in the coming months, and for the first time in recent memory, we’re looking forward to sampling a new mid-size product from the General. Full details in the press release below the fold and check out the gallery of live images below.

Related GalleryLA 2009: 2011 Chevrolet Cruze
Related Gallery2011 Chevrolet Cruze

Decades before Roger Ailes birthed the Fox News Channel for proud papa Rupert Murdoch, he had already played a role in creating a national conservative television news network—Television News Inc.

In Dark Genius, a new biography of Ailes, Kerwin Swint revisits the dawn—1973—and early demise—1975—of the news service funded by conservative brewer Joseph Coors to counter the “liberal” TV networks. Coors, a profligate donor to conservative candidates, causes, and institutions, thought the media needed an ameliorating conservative voice, too.

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TVN was less a network than a video wire service, producing and distributing segments to network- and independent-TV stations. The Coors brain trust hoped ultimately to leverage the service into a fourth network, one based on emerging satellite technology.

Swint describes TVN’s early months as fractious, in which the professional news team was pitted against Coors management. Jack Wilson Karen Millen Dresses sale, TVN’s president Herve Leger sale, considered Martin Luther King Jr. “an avowed communist revolutionary” and declared King’s associates unworthy of its coverage in a memo reproduced in Dark Genius. Other memos reproduced by Swint indicate management’s nutty news sense. It was a mistake to call Leonid Brezhnev the “Soviet leader,” Wilson wrote, because that made him the political equivalent of Richard Nixon, who had been elected. A Spiro Agnew clip depicting the vice president “in a relaxed and human fashion” won praise from Wilson as “one of the stories we could be proud to show our friends.”

Ailes didn’t join TVN until 1974 after a big shake-up at the news service. Ailes was experienced in entertainment and politics, having worked as a Mike Douglas Show producer, a Nixon media consultant, a Broadway producer, and a political consultant. But he had never worked in news Bandage dresses sale, making him a strange choice as TVN’s next news director.

Ailes has attempted to distance himself from TVN, Swint reports. In a 2004 C-SPAN interview, Ailes claimed that he had only been a TVN “consultant,” even though he bragged to the Columbia Journalism Review in 1974 of his power to “hire, fire, and program” the news service.

Swint labors to establish TVN as the ideological progenitor of Fox News by comparing Wilson’s comments to the famous set of news-twisting memos addressed to the Fox newsroom by Fox News Executive Vice President John Moody in 2003 and published by Media Matters for America. Moody was one of Ailes’ first hires at Fox News Cheap DKNY Clothing, and the two men are simpatico in the extreme. Even though Ailes left no discernable fingerprints at TVN, Swint declares him the TVN-Fox “common denominator” who “appears to have picked up TVN’s technique of managerial manipulation and filed it away for future use.” Continuing on this tack, Swint attempts to show that such Fox News slogans and buzz phrases as “Fair and Balanced,” “We Report, You Decide Buy DKNY Dresses,” and “We’re an alternative to the ‘liberal’ media” were derived from the mouths of TVN’s founders. I’m not completely convinced.

At its high point, TVN employed 50 people and claimed to feed 20 news segments a day to 80 subscribing stations in North America. By October 1975, TVN’s money-losing news division was dead, its bureaus in Washington, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles shuttered. (See Slate staffer James Ledbetter’s book Made Possible by …: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States to learn how Coors’ nomination to the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting played a role in TVN’s demise. It’s too weird to summarize.)

Dark Genius never really assesses TVN’s quality. In the Washington Post archives, I found a May 5, 1975,feature reporting that three Washington, D.C. Herve Leger sale, outlets—Channels 5, 7, and 9—found TVN’s work of high-enough caliber to air. Citing the Columbia Journal Review article, the Post reported that “most of the output of TVN has been free of a noticeably conservative slant.” The Post article did, however, allow that fired staffers complained that Wilson and his managers had pushed them to tilt the news to the right.

Conservative activist Paul Weyrich, who helped Joseph Coors steer his TVN venture, complains in the Post piece of a lack of influence at the service. “In fact, it’s been the single most frustrating experience I’ve ever had,” Weyrich said. “I think it comes down to the fact that if I suggested something, that was enough for it not to be covered. I think they were afraid they would get tagged.” Weyrich was obviously trying to be modest: The CJR story has him giving a list of questions to a TVN reporter to ask at a Capitol Hill news conference. But there you are.

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James O’Keefe

There are many words to describe conservative prankster James O’Keefe’s plan to secretly record NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller over lunch and release the (heavily edited and pretty embarrassing) tape on the Web, costing Schiller his job: wrong, deceitful, cruel, unfair, juvenile, and just plain rude. But it’s not illegal.

Most states, as well as the District of Columbia, allow surreptitious recording of conversations—on the phone or in person—as long as one person involved gives permission, even if that person is you. Because the two men conducting the NPR sting were aware of their own recording, which took place in Washington, D.C., it was legal. (If no parties know about it, that’s wiretapping Discount White Herve leger, which requires a warrant.) What’s surprising is how many states, in this age of Flip cams and camera phones and surveillance cameras and helmet cams,have “two-party consent” laws. In 12 states—California Cheap Emilio Pucci Dresses, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington—all parties involved need to consent before one of them can record the conversation.

There are some exceptions to the two-party consent rules. In California, for example, you can record a conversation without the other person knowing if you believe it will collect evidence of a serious crime. During the trial of Scott Peterson, the court admitted a phone recording made by his mistress Amber Frey at the behest of police when she believed Peterson might have killed his wife. There are also exceptions to two-person consent when there’s no “reasonable expectation of privacy.” For example Replica Christian Audigier Clothing, a conversation at a legislative hearing could be recorded without informing all parties, since recording things is what people do in legislative hearings. Same with public speeches, shouting matches on the street, or any other scenario where you simply can’t expect privacy.

That still leaves some gray area. In your house, you can reasonably expect privacy. But what about conducting a loud conversation on your porch? If you don’t want to be recorded Karen Millen Dresses sale, a judge might say, go inside. Or say two people are chatting in low voices on a bench in a public park, with no one else around. On the one hand, they’re in a public park. On the other, if one interlocutor reasonably expects privacy since no one else is within earshot, the recording could be illegal. A restaurant conversation like the one in which Schiller was recorded might fall into the same gray zone—if he was in a state that required two-party consent. But since D.C. requires the consent of only one party, the stingers are in the clear.

As skeezy as secretly recording a conversation may seem, it gets less so every day. We broadcast everything, from our meals to our whereabouts to our deepest (and not especially deep) thoughts. Sure, those broadcasts are voluntary. But inevitably, we get involuntarily entangled in everyone else’s voluntary broadcasts. There is still a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” It’s just that the expectation isn’t as broad as it used to be.

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You’d think the iPhone panopticon would make two-party consent laws look antiquated. Yet some states are enforcing them more vigorously than ever. In Illinois, for example, civil-liberties advocates are challenging a law that says you can be thrown in jail for 15 years for recording a conversation with a police officer. The penalty for recording a private citizen is up to three years in prison for a first-time offense, and up to five years for a second offense. Boston police, too Cheap Bandage dresses, have arrested people for videotaping them in public areas.

Setting aside the hypocrisy of police routinely recording traffic stops yet refusing to be recorded, it’s no longer reasonable to throw people in jail for what these days amounts to turning on your phone. There’s also bound to be confusion about which technologies count as “recording.” So you can’t videotape your arrest. Can you tweet it? Tumblr it? Take a Twitpic of your handcuffs and send it to all your friends?

What’s to stop everyone from taping all their private conversations? Are we all suddenly on the record? Not necessarily. Even in those jurisdictions where it’s legal to tape your every interaction with another human being Discount DKNY Clothes, it’s not exactly acceptable. Despite the ubiquity of Flip cams, recording private conversations is still really creepy. And that creepiness deters most people. James O’Keefe and his friends won’t go to jail for their NPR stunt. But they will pay a price: Most reasonable people will conclude that, the merits of their project aside, they’re total skeezeballs.

The incredible Chief Justice John Roberts

It’s dark and silent. Reporters trickle into the grand ceremonial room from a door on the left; like everyone, they’ve been instructed that no recording devices of any sort are allowed. A clutch of spectators, some of whom have been waiting for hours, enters at the rear. At 10 a.m. on the dot, never earlier and never later, the marshal utters her incantation: “The honorable, the chief justice and the associate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.” Then they file Buy Chanel Dresses, from behind the velvet curtain, wearing long black robes; they sit behind a tall dais, sipping water from silver cups. Silent footmen glide back and forth bearing thick books. For the justices, it’s a typical oral argument day, but if you didn’t know better Discount Herve Leger gown, you’d think you were watching the initiation into Harry Potter’s school for wizards, Hogwarts; or, better yet, the Penn and Teller show at the MGM Grand in Vegas. Magic, mystery, and hush everywhere you look.

The metaphor is more than apt. There’s another, newer Discount Bandage dresses, layer of illusion at work at the highest court of the land. Under the stewardship of its boyish chief justice, John Roberts, the court has taken the law for a sharp turn to the ideological right, while at the same time masterfully concealing it. Virtually every empirical study confirms this rightward turn. Yet recent public opinion polls indicate Americans continue to see a bench that is, if anything, a wee bit too liberal.

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How to explain the justices shoving the law rightward, while everyone thinks it is dead center or too far left? The answer is that Roberts is a brilliant magician. He and his four fellow conservative justices have worked some classic illusionist tricks to distract us from seeing the truth. Roberts is likely the first chief justice to understand that the message matters as much as the outcome. He has played his role with consummate skill, allowing the law to shape-shift before our very eyes Discount White Herve leger, even as he and his fellow conservatives claim that nothing is happening.

How does the Roberts Court work its magic in that marble mega-mall of the law? Here, revealed, are the top tricks of the illusionist Roberts Court.

Trick 1: Stacking the Deck

Magicians cut their teeth on card tricks. And the easiest way to woo a crowd is the time-tested one: stacking the deck. The Roberts Court has proven itself adept, brilliant even, at stacking the deck that is its annual docket. It does so by picking cases with facts so extreme that only one outcome seems possible. Then it uses those same reasonable-seeming decisions to push the law in conservative directions.

Just about all that most Americans learn of the Supreme Court’s work is who won or lost—the outcomes of the cases. But the reason the court is so powerful is that its written opinions form the legal roadmap by which the rest of us must navigate our lives. So, while most of the public is fixated on the often gripping facts of the cases, and who won or lost, the court is writing legal tracts to govern our future.

Here’s an example. The conservative justices hate Miranda v. Arizona, a case familiar to any American who has ever watched a cop show on TV (“You have the right to remain silent,” etc.). The justices’ problem is they can’t quite overrule the decision. Why not? Because polls show about 80 percent of the country approves of the rule. Even Roberts’ predecessor—the very conservative William Rehnquist, a confirmed lifelong Miranda loather—choked in 2003 when he had the chance to get rid of it. Miranda, he wrote Replica Missoni Dresses, “has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture.”

So, what’s a conservative justice to do? Whittle and chip away at the rule any way he can, all the while denying that the rule itself is in jeopardy. But to do their whittling without getting caught, the Roberts Court has been brilliant at stacking the deck—choosing to hear only Miranda cases in which what the police did is so sympathetic, or what the suspect did so awful, it’s impossible to side with the suspect. Then, while you’re rooting against the suspect, they’re getting rid of the rule that you thought you liked.

Take last term’s Maryland v. Shatzer: Shatzer was accused of molesting his 3-year-old son by forcing him to perform fellatio and by masturbating in front of him. (You already hate the guy, right?) When the cops come to question Shatzer, he asks for a lawyer. The way Miranda works is that as soon as a suspect asks for a lawyer, all questioning must end, until he sees a lawyer. But in this case, the police get new evidence and come back and question Shatzer again, and he says something incriminating. Ordinarily his statement would be inadmissible: Miranda was violated. But—and here’s where the court’s genius at choosing cases shines through—it turns out Shatzer is already in prison for another crime when police question him the first time, and they don’t come back to question him again for almost three years. They read him his rights again, and this time he blabs.

Can the Miranda rule possibly prevent police from questioning a suspect three years later? On these crazy facts, basically the entire court—all nine justices, conservatives and liberals alike—disagree with Shatzer’s claim. You might say, who cares: Shatzer deserves what he gets and worse. But that’s the point: It isn’t just Shatzer who gets it. All of us do. Shatzer gets more time, and the rest of us get the magic disappearing Miranda rule. Many experts who follow the court closely on this issue will tell you that Miranda is today a façade. It looks nice from the street, but there is virtually nothing behind it.

Here’s another example: Roe v. Wade. The conservative justices don’t like it Replica Bandage dresses, but they can’t simply overrule it because … well, there’s that public opinion to consider, and this pesky legal issue known as “precedent.” This time they whittled by taking a 2005 case, Gonzales v. Carhart, involving what in media parlance is called “partial birth abortion.” The law bans late-term abortions in which the fetus is partially delivered before its brains are sucked out and skull collapsed. If you find it hard even to read that, you’ve caught the point: That’s deck-stacking.

Having stacked the deck with these gruesome facts, no one noticed the major inroads the case makes on women’s rights more generally. For example, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion is weirdly rooted in the notion that women share a “bond of love” with the fetus and many come to “regret” their decision. That’s based on junk science; the evidence shows many women also regret being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. It’s also naked paternalism: Those poor, confused women can’t decide what is good for them, so the fatherly justices will. Post-Carhart, states have passed laws mandating that pregnant women be shown sonograms of the fetus before an abortion, or told they are aborting a human being, or informed they can’t be coerced into aborting. Further, based on Carhart’s seeming approval of junk science, Nebraska passed a law banning abortions after the 20th week, based on questionable medical evidence concerning fetal pain. See? Supreme Court decisions based on highly dramatic facts also affect those of us who live in a world with just ordinary facts.

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Lending further credence to earlier rumors of platform sharing between Chrysler and Nissan Where find Replica Titoni Watches, The Wall Street Journal reports that Chrysler is in talks to base its next mid-size sedan on the next-gen Altima platform. Chrysler’s “Project D” focuses on finding or designing a suitable replacement for the current Sebring and Dodge Avenger Replica Raymond Weil Watches, models which have fallen on their faces with consumers. Other rumors point to Fiat being the chosen platform-supplier. After all is said and done Replica Jacob & Co Watches for sale, Chrysler could have a line-up which consists of a small car from Chinese automaker Chery Replica Casio Watches for sale, another small car from Nissan Replica Blancpain Watches, a mid-size sedan from Nissan and a line of full-size sedans, pickups and SUVs of its own design. While Chrysler’s main goal is to become profitable once again, there is certainly some danger in becoming a re-brander of cars from other companies Replica Swiss Movement Watches for sale, especially in the hotly-contested mid-size sedan market.

[Source: The Wall Street Journal]