law

Chris Knight's avatar

A few weeks ago I arrived at a sobering conclusion, that no doubt better minds than my own have long ago already come to: that the United States government and the political processes associated with it have become a by-product of the lack of enlightenment on the part of collective America. The ability to self-govern was something that only a mature and more noble mind could take responsibility for, the Founders recognized. And for awhile, it worked pretty well… before Joe and Jane Six-Pack decided that voting for American Idol was of more pressing concern than having to worry about whether their elected officials deserved to be in office to begin with.

Anyhoo, President Obama has nominated Sonia Sotomayor to replace the outgoing Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. I ain’t crazy about her one bit, ‘cuz she’s already said that the courts are “where policy is ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Those annoying “There are ## days left until digital television” bumpers that run during your favorite TV shows have suddenly vanished, and for good reason: instead of having until February 17th to make sure your television is compatible, you now have until June 12th. Both the U.S. House and Senate approved the DTV Delay Act, and President Obama has vowed to sign it once it reaches his desk.

Anyhoo, you now have four more months to buy that shiny new HDTV that you’ve been lusting for. Maybe by then there’ll be some more “stimulus checks” coming our way that’ll help you get it 😛

(DISCLAIMER: The Knight Shift blog and its author are against so-called “stimulus” programs)...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Even though he has pledged to end outright torture (no matter what its supporters have tried to brand it as), is closing the CIA secret prisons and has vowed to empty the camp at Guantanamo Bay, President Barack Obama is going to continue the policy of “foreign renditions” started by his predecessor George W. Bush.

Rendition means that the United States can secretly abduct a “suspect”, and have him or her covertly transferred to another country that doesn’t have the same official policies against torture. But it’s not the United States that will be doing the torture or whatever, see? Officially, our government gets to keep its hands clean.

Some will call that “plausible deniability”. I call it “using the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law” at its most grandiose.

Still waiting for that “change” that I was hearing so much about…...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Yesterday this blog conveyed the news about famed moonshiner Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton (shown at right along with public defender Tim Moore) getting sentenced to 18 months in prison during a federal court hearing in Greeneville, Tennessee.

In the past 24 hours I have seen some positively unbridled fury from supporters of Popcorn Sutton, including on sites like Facebook (home to no less than three groups for people who believe the government should have left him alone to ply his trade in peace). The general consensus is that Popcorn wasn’t harming anyone, and that the federal government has set out to “make an example” out of him, lest anyone else think that they should assert some liberty on their own. There are even some individuals who are publicly suggesting that perhaps a “storming the Bastille” is in order. I’m not gonna endorse or condemn such thoughts… but I am gonna pass ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton, the legendary moonshiner and genuinely unique American character, was sentenced today in federal court in Tennessee to a prison term of 18 months, after earlier pleading guilty to the charges stemming from the raid on his still last year.

And adding insult to injury, Sutton “agreed to allow his moonshining photos and videos and criminal history to be used to further the education and deterrence goals of Project Safe Neighborhoods.”

In other words, rather than praising Popcorn Sutton as the living cultural resource that he is, the sons of bastitches from the government are going to force Popcorn to go fully against his unique sense of identity. The lesson here could not be more obvious: “Conform to the state or we will hurt you.”

No, I don’t have any sympathy for those assholes. If you want to see what is destroying America, look at the ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

President Obama plans to uphold the power that George W. Bush asserted in regards to spying on Americans without a warrant.

So much for not sacrificing our ideals for safety that Obama kept talking about this past week after he got sworn into office.

I hate to say “I told you so” but… many people, including myself, were screaming as loud as we could during the past several years that the horrible precedents that Bush was setting, would likely come back to haunt us. For almost eight years, Bush got away with violating the Constitution – in both rule and spirit – and his cheerleaders kept assuring us that Bush “had no choice” but to do these things to keep us secure.

Now those same powers have gone to a man that many of these same people have not been able to hide their sheer hatred toward. And however it ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

On his last full day as President of the United States (thank God), George W. Bush commuted the prison sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.

And even with this, the worst President in American history managed to completely screw it up.

The sentences of Ramos and Compean have been commuted: the two former Border Patrol agents have not received full pardon. And it is nothing less than a pardon which Ramos and Compean deserve for doing their jobs as best they could. The fact remains that each of the two has a conviction on his record that will follow them after release from prison. And speaking of which, their release isn’t immediate anyway: Bush made it so they couldn’t see freedom until March 20th.

And they wouldn’t have received a commutation of their sentences anyway had it been left to the “conscience” of Bush. Millions of people and ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

O.J. Simpson has been transferred to Lovelock Correctional Center in Nevada, where he will begin serving his 9-33 year sentence for kidnapping and armed robbery.

I well remember October 3rd, 1995: the day that the verdict in his murder trial was read. You could literally hear the gasps of disbelief all across the Elon campus. “I can’t believe he got away with it!!” is what most people were saying.

“He didn’t get away with it,” I told one friend. “One day, and it may not be in a way that we will ever see, but eventually Simpson will be punished somehow, if he did it.”

Does anyone today doubt that he did do it? Or that his personal character has, at last, come back to haunt him in a way that this time, he could not escape?

O.J. Simpson has been a festering keloid on the face of American ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Yeah you read that right: eHarmony, the relationship-matching website that’s found especially strong popularity with Christians, is “going gay”.

From the story in The Wall Street Journal…

A settlement Wednesday between eHarmony Inc. and the New Jersey attorney general requires the online heterosexual dating service to also cater to homosexuals, raising questions about whether other services that target a niche clientele could be forced to expand their business models.

The settlement stemmed from a complaint, filed with the New Jersey attorney general’s office by a gay match seeker in 2005, that eHarmony had violated his rights under the state’s discrimination law by not offering a same-sex dating service. In 2007, the attorney general found probable cause that eHarmony had violated the state’s Law Against Discrimination.

As part of the agreement, the Pasadena, Calif.-based company will develop and market Compatible Partners, a Web dating service for same-sex couples, and will

...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

A few weeks ago Apple hired Mark Papermaster to be its new head of development over the iPod and iPhone lines. All well and good… except that Papermaster was also previously the vice-president of the microprocessor and chip technology at IBM, and there was a “no-compete” clause in his contract with his former employer. Papermaster has countered that he’s going to be involved in entertainment devices: something that IBM has never pursued and thus, the clause is invalid in his case. It’s now wound up in the courts, where IBM is suing to keep Papermaster from working at Apple.

Now we know why IBM is really interested in locking Papermaster out of the Jobs Mob…

IBM has been developing something called “racetrack” memory and it’s afraid that the technology it developed will wind up in the iPod and iPhone. And it’s easy to see why Apple could conceivably be interested ...

Read more