News

This makes me absolutely sick:

City police have charged a 15-year-old girl as an accomplice to the gang rape of her 7-year-old sister.

Police said they believe the older sibling was paid for having sex with multiple partners Sunday night during a party at the troubled Rowan Towers apartment complex, and that she then sold her sister to others at the party.

Police said they believe the younger girl was raped by five to seven individuals, who held the girl against her will and threatened to kill her if she screamed or if she later told anyone about what happened.

Sick, sick, sick.
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The Yale student who leaped to his death from the Empire State Building has been identified:

The NYPD and Yale University identified Cameron Dabaghi, a 21-year-old junior from Austin, Texas, as the man who jumped to his death Tuesday night from the Empire State Building's 86th floor observation deck.

Dabaghi left a suicide note in his dorm room in New Haven, Conn., a police source said Wednesday.

He apologized for turning to suicide and wrote he planned to jump from either the George Washington Bridge or the Empire State.

There were seven people on the landmark building's observation deck when Dabaghi climbed the safety barrier, police said. One person tried to talk to him down but Dabaghi would not listen, cops said.

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Not Dead Yet's Stephen Drake remembers the Schiavo killing five years later.

Both sides used the case as a political football while disabled people were ignored.

Here is the C-SPAN video of the move to give Schiavo the right to a federal review of the case:

Campaign Follies.

Once again, the junior senator from Illinois sure knows how to pick 'em.
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I have to laugh at the media trying to claim the Wright controversy didn't hurt Obama at all.

Sure, it didn't. Just wait if he gets the nomination.
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And if this isn't bad enough, columnist Nat Hentoff nails Obama's butt over his ignorant comments about the Schiavo case.

After all, all Congress did was grant Terri Schiavo the right to due process, just as in death penalty cases. The problem in a nutshell was the Florida probate judge, who absolutely refused to hear any arguments to the contrary once he bought into the late Dr. Ronald Cranford's nonsense Schiavo was "PVS." Cranford had an ax to grind, for he ALWAYS "diagnosed" people in such cases as "PVS." Once Judge Greer ruled the way he did, Terri's parents, the Schindlers, tried to appeal, but higher courts simply couldn't overturn a lower court ruling regarding "findings of fact." They could only overrule on procedural matters. Congress's action was to remedy this and basically have the case start over from scratch. In short, Greer screwed up, and he was too stubborn to change his mind and acknowledge he screwed up.

Why the court system failed so miserably in this case to protect the 14th amendment rights of somebody who was profoundly disabled is a mystery to me. But the media lied about the case from the get-go.

The O. Carter Snead article Hentoff mentions can be found here and can be uploaded for free.

I may have linked this piece in the past, I can't remember, but this guy has a great piece about autonomy and how Terri Schiavo's rights to autonomy were violated.
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I Had

to turn the sound down the other night when Obama gave his ignorant comments about the Terri Schiavo case.

Not Dead Yet gives a good criticism of his stupid remarks.

It appears likely disabled voters will be less and less likely to vote Democratic this fall with crap rhetoric like Obama's.

He doesn't like baby boomers, he allows anti-gay people to be featured at his rallies, and now he makes stupid comments about the Schiavo case to piss off the disabled community.

What other traditional Democratic group will he piss off?

The Jesse Ramirez

and Haleigh Poutre cases should give pause to those who advocate killing off patients diagnosed "PVS." We are now finding more and more cases where "PVS" has been misdiagnosed.

As the World Turns.

Now ALL of the west will soon look like Incline Village.

It makes me sick.
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Marion Jones will be remembered for nothing else but somebody who was willing to cheat to win.
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Why do we give a shit about Ann Coulter?
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The other day Georgetown University Law School had a panel discussion of the Schiavo case, obviously from the point of view of those who supported her right to live. Even though one of the attorneys for the Schindlers, David Gibbs, is noted in right-wing circles, the case really wasn't a left-right matter. It was a disability rights case which unfortunately got twisted by the media.

The panel, which included Terri Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler, admitted there were mistakes that were made, particularly in the early part of the case, which made the parents side of the case almost impossible to prevail.

The court-ordered killing was a horrible injustice and set a terrible precedent.
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As the World Turns.

If kooks like Peter Singer have their way, we will never have to worry about what happens to Down syndrome people when their relatives die. There won't be any of them left to drain rivers of money away from the health care system.
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All too often, the "end of life" mantra doesn't apply to people who are actually dying of some terminal disease but instead is being used as a way to justify the killing of the disabled, elderly, and sick who are NOT dying.

The classic case, of course, was Terri Schiavo, and I don't know how many articles I read which claimed her case was about "end of life" wishes. Jesus H. Christ. She would still be alive today if it weren't for the incompetent Judge George Greer who was hellbent on having her murdered because her "husband" wanted to move on and collect whatever cash was left in her settlement. Nobody EVER knew what her "wishes" were; all we had were some utterly ridiculous claims by the husband's relatives about off-handed statements she allegedly made, but these statements were never mentioned by the husband or his relatives until right before the good judge ordered her killed and at the behest of the husband's lawyer, kook extrordinaire George Felos.

What a goddamned travesty that was, but most people know little about the case.

It is a perfect example of why the "end of life" argument in justifying medical killing needs to be thrown in the garbage can.
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Speaking of the loving husband, he closed his political action committee, TerriPac, and he and his partners in this endeavor are possibly in trouble with the Federal Election Commission.

It was another cash cow for the husband, just as his late wife was when she was alive, but this one didn't pan out too well for him.
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The Media

have tried too hard to distinguish recent cases where so-called "PVS" patients have actually come to consciousness from the Terri Schiavo case.

The media will never admit it fucked up big time in their attempt to repeat crackpot attorney George Felos' talking points.

I still can't believe so-called liberals think "choice" and "freedom" includes greedy guardians' "right" to kill their disabled wards.

Unbelievable.