Woman Almost Became Felon For Buying Bottled Water

I'm all for cracking down on underage drinking but if this story is true, some alcohol enforcement agents in Virginia ought to get a hobby.

According to The Daily Progress in Charlottesville, Virginia, a student named Elizabeth Daly, 20, walked out of a store with two friends. Daly was carrying what looked like a 12-pack of beer. It was really a package of bottled water.

Yes, crack down on underage drinking. But
do you need a SWAT team to do it?  

Then Virgiina Alcoholic Beverage Control agents swooped in, one with a gun drawn and surrounded her car, according to The Daily Progress. They were in plain clothes, and Daly said she could identify the badges.

Daly panicked. "I  couldn't put my windows down unless I started the car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were terrified," she was quoted as saying.

She was  thinking she was being attacked by thugs and tried to drive away. In that effort, she supposedly grazed a couple of the agents as she fled. Daly was also calling 911 at the time, and wanted to drive to a police station.  She stopped when she saw the flashing police lights on one of the agents' cars, and realized they were law enforcement.

The agents charged Daly with two counts of assaulting a police officer and attempting to elude. She faced up to five years in prison.

She spend the night and a good part of the next day in jail, but common sense eventually prevailed, according to the Charlottesville Newsplex.

The   local prosecutor dropped the charges, saying Daly's account of what happened was consistent with the facts.

According to the prosecutor:

"The male agent who approached that side of the vehicle could see that she was misperceiving the events in terms of who the agents were and their intentions. This agent could also see that the passenger was calling 911. Before the vehicle sped off, the agent saw the front passenger jump into the rear seat and yell toward the driver words to the effect of 'go, go, go, get out of here'"

The Alcohol Beverage Control Agency had a far different take on the events.

"The agents were acting upon reasonable suspicion and this whole unfortunate incident could have been avoided had the occupants complied with law enforcement requests. We take all citizen complaints seriously and the matter is currently under review by the ABC Bureau of Law Enforcement."

Yeah, and this whole unfortunate incident could have been avoided if the alcohol control agents weren't pretending they were an assault team capturing a mass murderer.

If they thought Daly was buying booze, why didn't they walk up to her as she left the store, check out what she was buying, and make sure it was really a 12 pack of water, not a 12 pack of Old Milwaukee Light.

The Alcohol Beverage Control agents must be bored and frustrated to turn into a SWAT team just to crack down on underage drinking. I could understand the guns drawn, the leaping up onto the car if they thought she just robbed the store, but GAWD!


Daly's defesne attorney, and an analyst of said this:

John Whitehead of of the Rutherford Institute is shocked and says it's unfortunately part of a trend he's seen in the past several years, according to the Charlotte Newsplex:

"I mean these weren't criminals with guns it was total over reaction," Whitehead said. "It's all part of the same kind of paradigm we're seeing. A very aggressive police investigating minor incidents and drawing their guns."

If Whitehead is right and more law enforcement is reaching for their guns, what is the reason? Is it just more dangerous for cops nowadays and they have to be hypervigilant? Or do they have better equipment and want an excuse to use it? Something else?

 I hope there is a good reason behind it. 

I 

Vermont's Weather Is Horrible, But The Clouds Are Interesting

It's been a terribly stormy week in Vermont. Amid high humidity, thunderstorms have erupted and rain has poured down  every day.

Dramatic thundestorm clouds up the
road from my St. Albans, Vermont home
this week.  

There's been flash floods, high water, lightning, wind, hail, and not much sun.  Summertime in Vermont!

This Friday morning, we're all grateful that it's only raining kind of hard. You take what you can get. They'd forecasted an epic flood for us today but we only got minor bits of high water.  So I suppose we're lucky.

They're telling us this wet weather will last several more days. Each day, somebody, some town in Vermont will get a flash flood from a heavy thunderstorm, we're told. We don't know where. It's the luck of the draw.

Houses on some unlucky street in Vermont will have water pouring into their basements, while their neighbors a couple miles away will be taking items off the clothesline because it is starting to sprinkle. Just random.

At least some of the clouds have been interesting. Monday night, a thunderstorm rapidly approached my house in St. Albans. Vermont. Judging from the clouds, it looked like my luck would run out. Would there be a tornado? Hurricane force winds? A flood?

Nah. Just some dramatic clouds, a few grumbles of thunder, a cooling breeze and a brief downpour. I got lucky again. And I got some good cloud photos, as you can see in the post.

Another view of dramatic storm clouds near
my St. Albans, Vt. home this week.

Also, here at the bottom of this blog post thingy, is a video I took of those clouds coming over my house Monday night. I was really glad I was able to watch them.

DOMA Demise Is Personal For Me

Being married to an awesome guy, yesterday's Supreme Court decision striking down the so called Defense of Marriage Act made the day very sweet.

Our accountant is going to be pissed, though. Our tax situation might get a lot less complicated, which means less work for him, and maybe less income.

The great Edith Windsor, plaintiff in
the Supreme Court ruling that overturned DOMA. 

Well, there's winners and losers everywhere, aren't there?

Speaking of winners and losers, it's been fun watching the reaction to news of the court decision.

Tweets are always fun:

Two of my favorite: "Free gay wedding idea: Dress all the servers like Paula Deen." (look up the whole Paula Deen controversy if you need an explanation)

Justice Antonio Scalia, a big guy, really hated the majority opinion. Humorist Mo Rocca Tweeted that it is apparent Scalia wont' be going to Bear Week this year.

Like most major civil rights cases that end up at the Supreme Court, a plaintiff is taken from relatively obscurity to become the face of the cause. Think Rosa Parks, for instance.

In the DOMA case, it was the smart, brave, personable Edith Windsor who was the centerpiece.  As journalist Glenn Greenwald Tweeted: "Edith Windsor joins the pantheon of great Supreme Court litigants who secured the rights of everyone."

The more strident opponents of gay marriage were hysterically funny in my mind. Talk about over the top fears and statements. Here's some:

Bryan Fischer: The DOMA ruling has now made the normalization of polygamy, pedophilia, incest and bestiality inevitable. Matter of time.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: "Today is a tragic day for marriage and our nation. The Supreme Court has dealt a profound injustice to the American people....

This one from something called Freedom Outpost is particularly unhinged: 

 "The America that our Founding Fathers fought and bled for is now gone my friends.  It is high time to do something about it.  When you get to Heaven and stand before Almighty God, and you are asked to account for all your deeds, or lack of them, and The Lord asks you, “why did you stand by and allow my children in the womb to be murdered in the most horrific ways, WHY did you allow perverts that I have deemed an abomination to over run the country I gave you, WHY did you sit in your home at your computer bellyaching about these things but did nothing…”, WHAT WILL YOU SAY?"

Um, I said "I do."

As I said on Facebook yesterday, I never thought I would feel MORE married to my husband than I already did, but the death of DOMA really did make me feel even more married.

It's hard to explain exactly what that means. Obviously, I've always felt my marriage is every bit as legitimate as it is for heterosexual couples. But with the court decision, I hold my head a little higher, and I'm prouder yet of my marriage. It might be my crowning achievement.

I buy the argument that marriage, overall, is good for society, at least if done right. I want my marriage to Jeff to be an example of how to do marriage right.

I sure have the incentive: How could I possibility treat Jeff in any way other than with love and respect?  He deserves the best.

Complaining About Water: Why We Must Be Vigilant About Those Being Vigilant About Terrorism

I'm not one of those wacko conspiracy enthusiasts, who think every move the government makes is specifically designed to take all our rights and all our guns away, put any dissenters in concentration camps or turn America into North Korea without the charm.

Still, there's been some things in the news lately that demonstrate why we need to pay attention to those who would misuse anti-terrorism laws and regulations.  Apparently, a few people are too tempted to mess around with those.

One Tennessee idiot says complaining about
the quality of a water supply is an act of terrorism
 

Here's one:

There's a federal law that in part says that anyone who poisons a public water supply, or even just says they did so, is committing a terrorist offense.

That's reasonable enough. You don't want everyone going into a panic because they think some yahoo put arsenic in the water supply or something.

But here's how such a law can be taken to an extreme in a terrible un-American way.

In Maury County, Tennessee, residents have been complaining about the water quality in the drinking supply. I don't know if they're right that there is a problem, but that's besides the point.

What happened at a meeting was creepy, uttered by creepy Tennessee Department of Conservation Deputy Director Sherwin Smith.

According to the Tennessean, via The Consumerist, Smith said the following:

"We take water quality very seriously. Very, very seriously......but you need to make sure that when you make water quality complains you have a basis, because federally, if there's no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security to be an act of terrorism."

So Smith says merely expressing an opinion about water quality, and expressing their concerns about it to a government officials, is an act of terrorism. So much for the First Amendment, guaranteeing free speech.

If the reporting on what Smith said is accurate, he is using a reasonable enough terrorism law to quash legitimate debate, and scare people into not petitioning or confronting the government. If he said this, Smith is un-American, un-patriotic, a moron, abusive and wrong, morally and legally.

The Tennessean said people at the meeting were at least as annoyed with Smith as I am:

"The comment shocked and outraged attendees, who saw it as an attempt to silence complains, said Brad Wright, organizer for SOCM in Middle Tennessee, (referring to a citizens' group worried about the water. )

"I think it's just to quash us complicating life for them," he said. 

Smith's bosses said they are looking into his comments, saying he later clarified his comments. Let's hope so.

There was a detail in an article by Marissa Taylor and Jonathan Landlay for McClatchy about how the Obama administration is really intent on squelching leaks, particularly from the Defense Department. 

In it, there's a reported detail of how people within the DOD should look for others among them that might be dissatisfied or prone to leaking information to the press or public that they don't want leaked.

Among the signs of a suspicious person is if they read salon.com or theonion.com

Salon is a news commentary site that is often skeptical of the Powers That Be. The Onion is a humorous satire site that often skewers what the government is doing.

So, you're suspect depending on what you read?  You'd be driven out of the Defense Department if you read the wrong stuff? As the McClatchy article points out, this would tend to lead to the type of groupthink where people miss stuff. You do need a variety of thinkers.

The Tennessee water controvery and the weirdness at the defense department are probably odd aberations that we can all hope will be dealt with.

But this type of thinking, of ostracizing people for what they think, read, see and do, is something that we need to be hypervigilant about. Yes, investigate people thought to be involved in wrongdoing. But must we all conform to what some "expert" says makes us innocent?

The scary thing about this is, could someone extend this hypervigilance on what people read and do and say to the greater world?

What if corporations take the cue from the government and also start analyzing us on what we criticize, what we read, what we say to whom?

In many ways, corporations have more power than the government.   Could there be spying, legal or not, where companies will end up making (often false) conclusions about us, so we're not hired, not given loans, not allowed into places,  not allowed to buy certain things, all because we were laughing at some silly article in The Onion?

There's got to be a better way to control terrorism and crime than to make criminals of all of us who dare to criticize, or dare to read something that someone in power doesn't like.

“ 

More Flower Bounty From My Garden

The summer flower season continues along in my gardens in St. Albans, Vermont as these photos I took show:

Today's Darwin Nominee: Let's Run On Top Of A Hot Lava Flow!

There's a video going around of a guy near a volcano running up and on top of a steep, and very hot fresh lava flow. He somehow made it through unscathed.

The surprising thing is that while this was an incredibly dumb thing to do, it wasn't the dumbest possible. With a little bit of luck, you won't fall through and burn yourself to a crisp of you run along hot lava, like the guy in the video did, says Erik Klemetti at the Weird Science blog

Still, notes Klemetti, if there's a thin spot on the crust on top of the lava flow, in you go, burning your leg off, practically. And if you trip and fall and hand falls through into the lava, that's got to hurt.

Anyway, here's the video. Don't try this at home. Or anywhere near your favorite neighborhood volcano.

Employer Would Pay Workers Via Debit Card With Lots of Fees To Eat Up Workers' Earnings

A woman in Pennsylvania, Natalie Gunshannon, was just about to start working at a local McDonald's.  She was going to earn just $7.44 an hour, not much more than the $7.25 minimum wage in her area.

In other words, she'd need every penny she took home from her job.

No thanks, says a woman whose employer
wanted to pay her with a fee-laden debit card

Not so fast, said her employer. The boss said she'd only be paid via a Chase Bank debit card.  That maybe would be a good deal for Chase, and probably for the employer,  but not for Natalie, according to Philly.com

There's tons of fees with that debit card. $1.50 for each ATM withdrawal. $5.00 for each over the counter cash withdrawal. It'll cost $1.00 for every balance inquiry, and 75 cents for every online bill payment. And if she lost the card or it got stolen, that would set Natalie back $15.00.

You can see why she objected. By the time she pays all the fees, there's nothing left for frivolous luxuries like food, rent and utilities.

She went to a lawyer, naturally, trying to get this state of affairs overturned.

I hope she's successful. I'd hate to see a trend take root in which we're paid through expensive debit cards that make us pay all these expensive fees just to access what is and should be our money.

I can see all kinds of problems for employees who get paid through debit cards. If the card isn't at the bank or credit union they normally do business with, they'd have to pay fees to transfer to their accounts, or move their banking business to an outfit they might not want to go to.

And you'd probably have to keep a minimum balance in the account through which the debit card is issued. That unnecessarily ties up money in a bank account that is not used. And you'd have to constantly monitor it so you don't pay huge overdrafts.

Of course, if an employee wants to be paid via a debit card and the employee offers it, why not? Some people are willing to pay a few fees for the convenience of holding a debit card. More power to them.

The trick here is to make the debit card an option, but NOT a requirement.

Let's stop nickel and diming low wage employees so the banks can make more money, OK?

I'm all for banks making money, as long as the money they take in is given to them voluntarily.