law

It's amazing to me that it was two years ago that I was sitting on the edge of my seat following real-time updates from the Supreme Court Of The United States waiting for the ruling in Heller V District of Columbia. That was a pretty good day. The Constitution won and the court struck down the D.C. law banning hand guns as being unconstitutional. And that should have been the end of it, but it wasn't. You see, since the Supreme Court had never actually ruled on the 2nd Amendment before, and Heller was the first direct 2nd Amendment ruling, the anti-gun crowd took a new tactic.  read more »

Update:

I've had a bit of time to think about this now, and I am still in a sort of shock over this. I'm usually, almost always, an excellent judge of character. In this case, I was horribly, horribly wrong. This was a guy that was part of my circle of friends back in my early 20s. I met him because one of my friends was a friend of his sister, and as things went, we all hung out together for a number of years. But still, in my mind, I'm still stuck in a state of WTF regarding this.

I think I would be less shocked about it had he been involved in dealing drugs or even murder. I mean, this guy was around to see my god daughters growing. Hell, he even stayed at my apartment in Durham a few times, alone with my wife, while I was at work. It just goes to show that sometimes you never really know someone. Also, I could even be, while disgusted, at least less shocked, if this was a first time thing, but apparently, this has happened 4 times now.

Doing some research, I see that he's pretty much skated incarceration or any "real" punishment until now. The third time got him registered as a sex offender, but why did it take until now to get him held without bail. Sadly, I think this is another example of the system failing to protect the people it's supposed to. It happens, but it's still not terribly palatable when it does.

We lost touch shortly after I moved to North Carolina, and to be honest, I stopped talking to him because I grew tired of the constant fighting with his ex-wife, and just certain other things that rubbed me the wrong way. But still, to think that I was THAT wrong in my impressions of someone is somewhat disturbing.

But that's all I'm going to say about it at this point. For now, he's behind bars where he should be, and without bail, and hopefully this time, the system will work, and he won't be able to do things like this again. As someone who has no kids, but has tried to have them for years, the fact that people out there DO do these things to children remains as one of the few things that really frightens me. Read the rest for the original post and the news article.  read more »

Sometimes you just have to cock your head to the side, raise one eyebrow and say "What?"

Such was the feeling I experienced just a little while ago. I need to renew my fishing license. This year, I'm also going to have to buy a costal license as well, so I can surf fish this summer now that my parents have moved to the beach.

So there I was, on the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission website when I noticed this gem among the lifetime license definitions:  read more »