Bent Corner

Two local residents were arrested and charged with drug crimes on Tuesday after the Washington County Narcotics Task force executed a search warrant at their home.  They found two pounds of pot, along with nine marijuana plants.

On January 31, 2008, Washington County law enforcement officers executed a search warrant in the home of Robert A. McKee.  They seized two computers, 30 videotapes, and printed materials from his home that officers described as being child pornography.  At the time of the search warrant and the discovery of child porn, McKee was an elected delegate to the Maryland House of Delegates.  He was also the executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Washington County.

Robert McKee was not arrested.  Robert McKee has yet to be charged with any crimes.

I don’t understand how possessing marijuana causes you to be immediately arrested and charged with a crime, but possessing child pornography does not.  Which is worse, marijuana or child porn?

Robert McKee was forced to resign from the Maryland House of Delegates and from Big Brothers Big Sisters of Washington County.

A month later.

The city of Denver is rolling out all the stops for the upcoming Democratic National Convention including a secret jail for unruly protesters.  What exactly would get a protester arrested in Denver?  My guess that a lot of protesters will be arrested for “resisting arrest” or some other equally trumped up charge.

The old warehouse located on city owned property features make shift jail cells constructed from chain link fencing and barbed wire. It supposedly will be able to process 60 arrestees an hour.

If this doesn’t make you feel proud to be an American, nothing will.  Let freedom ring!

Link

Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, was convicted of supporting terrorism, but he was acquitted of conspiracy to murder. He was sentenced to only 66 months. Since he has already been held down in Guantanamo Bay for 51 months, he technically could go free in five months.

A jury of six US military officers, and not a judge, imposed the sentence.

After Hamdan completes the rest of his sentence, he will still be considered to be an enemy combatant.

Hamdan admitted to working for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan from 1997 to 2001 as his driver. He made around $200 a month.

Federal investigators from the Federal Drug Administration are trying to figure out how exactly Heath Ledger got his hands on the two drugs that killed him, Oxycodone (OxyContin) and hydrocodone (Vicodin). He didn’t have a prescription for ether of the two drugs. He either purchased them illegally or someone gave them to him.

My guess is that someone gave them to him. Something tells me that Heath Ledger wasn’t schlepping around the East Village buying pain pills.

Investigators want to question Mary-Kate Olsen. The creepy looking former child actor was a close friend of Heath Ledger. When a masseuse entered Ledger’s apartment and found him dead, she called Mary-Kate Olsen three times before even calling 911. The masseuse worked for Mary-Kate Olsen as well as Heath Ledger.

Mary-Kate Olsen is refusing to speak to investigators unless she is given immunity. I wonder what she has to hide? My guess is that she was the one that gave Heath Ledger the pills.

It looks as though the FCC isn’t waiting around for Congress to pass specific net neutrality laws.  From everyone’s favorite supermarket tabloid The Wallstreet Journal:

The Federal Communications Commission will rule that the cable giant violated federal policy by deliberately preventing some customers from sharing videos online via file-sharing services like BitTorrent, agency officials said. The company has acknowledged it slowed some traffic, but said it was necessary to prevent a few heavy users from overburdening its network.

I didn’t even know there was such a thing as violating federal policy.  I thought something was either a federal law or it wasn’t.  I do think it is a case of fraud when you sell someone something called unlimited broadband Internet and then proceed to limit it.

I’m not sure what took so long, but the FCC has finally agreed to allow Sirius and XM to merge into one satellite company.

I used to have XM, but I got rid of both my radios and switched to Sirius a few months ago.  I decided that I would rather listen to Howard Stern in the mornings then Opie & Anthony.  I felt like their show had gone down the tubes since they made the jump back to regular radio.  When they weren’t going to commercial, they were complaining about other radio shows getting better ratings then them.  It got boring.

Howard Stern on the other hand has been Howard Stern.  He’s as great as he has ever been.  In fact, he’s actually better then ever.

The music channels on Sirius are better then the music channels on XM.  I find myself listening to a lot of channel 22 First Wave.  They play a lot of classic alternative and new wave.  I also enjoy channel 29 Punk Rock.  They play nothing but new and vintage puck rock.

One of the things I don’t understand about this merger is one of the stipulations forced on Sirius and XM by the FCC.  The two companies had to agree that after they merge, they will not raise prices for three years. If the government can do that with satellite radio, why can’t they do that with gas?

It looks like conservative commentator Robert Novak has one more nugget to add to his legacy. First he was the guy known for dropping the S-bomb on CNN and storming off the set. He then outed a covert CIA agent and ignited a big mess resulting in the prosecution, conviction, and subsequent Presidential commutation of a prison sentence of a man named “Scooter”. Now he has struck a man in a crosswalk with his car in downtown Washington D.C.

Novak, who is 77-years “young”, claims that he didn’t know he had struck a pedestrian in a crosswalk.  After hitting the man, Novak continued driving. He had to be chased down by another man, David Bono, on a bicycle who had witnessed the accident.

Bono dismisses the claim from Novak that he didn’t know he had struck a pedestrian.  Bona told a reporter from WJLA TV that the vicim was “splayed on his windshield” and would have been impossible to miss.

Novak was slapped with a $50 ticket and allowed to go on his way.  That’s more then he got when he leaked the name of a covert CIA agent.

This has got to be one of the funniest mugshots I’ve seen in a good while.  Rapper DMX — real name Earl Simmons — was arrested in a Phoenix area shopping mall on felony charges of taking the identity of another. Last April he gave a false name and Social Security number to a hospital to get out of paying $7,500 for medical expenses.

The fake name he used?  Troy Jones.

This isn’t his first brush with the law, and unless he drops dead tomorrow, it surely wont be his last. If he’s got enough money to buy cocaine and fighting dogs, you would think he had enough money for health insurance.

I guess not.

From Albany, New York’s Channel 6 News:

A 38-year-old Queensbury man has been arrested on drug charges after police say he sold pills to an undercover officer.

Brad Ballard faces two counts of felony fourth-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance. The Warren County Sheriff’s Office said Ballard sold hydrocodone pills to an undercover police officer on more than one occasion in the town of Queensbury.

Ballard was arraigned in Queensbury Town Court where bail was set at $25,000 cash.

Even before reading that article, I knew he wasn’t selling diet pills.  His name may be Brad Ballard, but as pointed out on FARK, he bares an uncanny resemblance to Peter Griffin on The Family Guy.

From the AP (via Yahoo!)

A college student claimed it was all a joke when he put his vote in this fall’s presidential election up for sale on the Web auction site eBay. But prosecutors didn’t see the humor.

University of Minnesota student Max P. Sanders, 19, was charged with a felony Thursday in Hennepin County District Court after allegedly asking for a minimum of $10 in exchange for voting for the bidder’s preferred candidate.

“Good luck!” Sanders wrote under the eBay handle zepdrummer612. “You’re (sic) country depends on You!”

Sanders was charged with one count of bribery, treating and soliciting under an 1893 state law that makes it a crime to offer to buy or sell a vote.

I’m with the prosecutors on this one. I don’t see the humor either.

It never occurred to Max Sanders that buying and selling votes was maybe prohibited by law? I have about as much patience for this type of tomfoolery as I do with the people that get a credit card for their springer spaniel. The difference being that nobody died for the right to apply for a credit card. People actually suffered and died so that rest of us can have the right to vote.

One doesn’t have to go far in the annals of history to find examples of what I am talking about. Harold Ickes, former deputy White House Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton and campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton, only has one kidney. While working as a volunteer in Louisiana during the civil rights movement, he received such a severe beating from a gang of rednecks that he lost a kidney.

He lost a major organ so people could vote.

It’s bad enough that we rarely — if ever — have anyone on the ballot really worth voting for. People like Max Sanders should treat it with just a skosh bit more respect. They shouldn’t be listing it on eBay like its a potato that kind of looks like Jesus.