Archive for 2015

GUN RIGHTS LAWS TEND TO BENEFIT POOR AND MINORITY PEOPLE: Attorney: Self-defense law negates gun charge in fatal shooting.

The man who shot and killed an armed robbery suspect at a Knoxville convenience store may avoid charges under Tennessee law — despite the fact he was a felon with a gun.

Issac Jamal Scruggs, 42, of Knoxville, was at a Breadbox convenience store early Monday on Asheville Highway when 18-year-old Tamon Stapleton held the clerk at gunpoint.

Scruggs, a friend of the clerk’s, shot and killed Stapleton. A previous felony conviction would ban Scruggs from carrying the gun he used, but Tennessee law says the fact he protected someone else means the gun charge doesn’t matter.

“It trumps any other firearms charges that might exist per statute. Now, the only thing that could come in play is it doesn’t preclude the federal government,” said Knoxville attorney Don Bosch, who is not directly connected to the case.

Scruggs is a felon, with past convictions for aggravated assault and possession of weapons more than 10 years ago. So far, no charges have been filed against him, and Knoxville Police say they consider the case closed.

This seems entirely just.

TWEET OF THE DAY: Terrorists.

Screen Shot 2015-06-21 at 9.29.18 AM

Totally different. They’re Democrats, and needed votes from those dumb flyover rubes, and any trick that can convince those low-sloping-forehead types to vote right is admirable.

YEP:

Screen Shot 2015-04-25 at 9.59.38 PM

FATHER’S DAY 2010, with my dad and my brother Brad, at Dead End Barbecue.

fathersday2010

NEWS YOU CAN USE: If You’re Going To Fake A Rape, Remember To Take Off Your Fitbit. “Technology can be a useful tool for the rape hoaxer, but inevitably it leads to the hoaxer’s downfall. Social media can catapult a mattress-carrying liar all the way to the State of the Union Address, but then her text-message record can show her for the fraud she is. (And if she subsequently decides to post amateur porn online, well…) A once-respected magazine can put a rape hoaxer in the headlines, but then a handful of bloggers questioning the story can bring it all crashing down.”

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY TO EVERYONE: The virtue of fathers.

According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 1 of 3 kids live in a home without their biological father. In the Journal of Family Psychology, “researchers found that father-child contact was associated with better socio-emotional and academic functioning. The results indicated that children with more involved fathers experienced fewer behavioral problems and scored higher on reading achievement.” The U.S. Census Bureau found kids without dads are four times more likely to be poor. The Journal of Research on Adolescence found “youths in father-absent households still had significantly higher odds of incarceration than those in mother-father families. Youths who never had a father in the household experienced the highest odds.”

It’s clear dads are needed. The natural bond between them and their biological children is difficult to replace or replicate.

To say that dads are needed is an understatement. Dads bring a gentle strength and sense of security to a family. My dad died back in 2004, and I still miss him every day. He taught me how to look people in the eye, shake hands firmly, fix things, swing a golf club, and throw a baseball. He was a constant, quiet, ever-supportive, loving presence in my life. Happiest of Father’s Days to all the great dads out there.

MY GRANDFATHER AND GRANDMOTHER, on the Warrior River in Alabama, sometime around 1950. Happy Father’s Day!

gdadgmom

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO ASSAULT: Law student laughs as she walks free from court for hitting aspiring male model over the head with a bottle of champagne cutting his forehead to the SKULL. “Sarah McKenzie-Ayres was pictured laughing as she walked free from court after being handed a suspended sentence for striking the man in a Manchester nightclub last September. The 19-year-old victim, who has not been named, has been left with permanent scarring that has forced him to abandon his dreams of becoming a professional model. McKenzie-Ayres, 19, was spared jail for GBH after telling Manchester Crown Court that she believed the victim was ‘making unwelcome advances’.”

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: A Space Lawyer Explains How We’ll Forge a Civil Society Off Earth. “So far, the only humans in space are sent by governments and working on their behalf. That legal landscape could change quickly as commercial interests are developing the capacity to not only enter space, but also do business there. Because money is where things get tricky, even in space.”

Rob Merges and I had a section on this in our space law book. Glad to see it’s becoming more real.

CRUZ PUNCHES BACK ON IMMIGRATION: Ted Cruz introduces bill to drain amnesty slush fund subsidized by legal immigrants.

The Immigration Slush Fund Elimination Act would stop the executive branch from using fees collected from legal immigrants who obeyed U.S. immigration law to pay for the ongoing illegal alien naturalization surge. Thanks to the million or so legal aliens flocking to America every year, that’s a lot of cash. Cruz notes that USCIS Chief Financial Officer Joseph Moore can lay claim to nearly $1 billion in application fees. Cruz’s bill would return the pursestrings back into Congress’s hands — and perhaps most importantly, stop the White House from ramping up legal immigration and issuing more and more fees in order to grant more illegal aliens amnesty.

Legal immigrants can wait up to ten years to become legalized and pay thousands of dollars in fees. Once Obama enacted his DACA executive amnesty order in 2012, wait times for legal immigrants tripled.

It’s a travesty that the Obama Administration has gotten away with taking money from legal immigrants and using it to subsidize the President’s unconstitutional, unilateral lawmaking executive action on immigration. In typical Obama upside-down fashion, this fund-shifting rewards the lawbreakers and punishes the law abiders.  Obama will of course veto Cruz’s bill if it ever clears Congress, but the important question to me is the preliminary one: Does the GOP-controlled Congress have the guts to defend its power of the purse and pass the bill in the first place?