Some interesting things happened in the news.
I. A Republican legislator in Oregon is stating that there should be increased taxes on bicycles, because bike riders produce more global warming gases than cars. While I have my doubts that he even believes in global warming, I am pretty darn sure that the CO2 expelled from any bicyclist pales in comparison to a car.
II. An argument being used in the U.S. Supreme Court against marriage equality for gays and lesbians in the state of California is that gays don't need to have the same marriage rights as heterosexual couples, because they can't have an unwanted pregnancy.
That is technically correct, they can't. Also technically, that is a stupid argument made by people who are arguing a stupid cause of denying gays the ability to marry who they love. The test of the right to a marriage is a shotgun marriage situation? So couples who plan to have children and desire to raise them is a bad thing for marriage, but those pressured or forced into marriage is a good thing for marriage? Sheesh.
III. In Dona Ana County New Mexico, police really screwed up. I mean, screwed up really bad. The county jailers in this county put a man in solitary confinement after a DUI arrest and kept him in there for two years, without even bringing him before a judge! I don't think they even informed the local prosecutor. After such a screwup, which resulted in a $22 million judgement for the man jailed, Stephen Slevin, a local official stated that any disclipine of the officers involved was not something that they will discuss.
So in other words, they just gave a giant finger to the taxpayers and residents of their county in order to protect a number of lazy, idiot and incompetent jailers. Well, laws in many states withold disclipine on police no matter how wrongly they acted. Remember those cops in Los Angeles who shot up a truck last month with older asian women, thinking it was the truck of a large African American ex-cop in his 30s?
Remember how they didn't even bother to check who was in the truck? We still don't know their names, nor will we ever probably learn them, and we will never learn their punishment. This is because of laws in many states which withold this information, laws that cops and police member organizations got passed. Now, if some guy gets arrested for solicitation of a prostitute, he gets his name and face in the newspaper the next day.
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