tvc184

Brain washed? No. Ignorant? Probably not.   Rose colored glasses? You betcha. 

It "could" be the full sentence on the first offense but I have never seen jail accessed on a first timer. And like hippy said, probation is not a free ride (about $3,000 a year in fees in addition to the fine) and you have to attend some schools and comply with quite a few rules.

Do you nean DWI and in TX? If so, a regular DWI is a class B misdemeanor. That penalty range is up to a $2,000 fine and/or up to 180 days in jail with a 3 day minimum sentence. Typically probation is given on the first offense with maybe a $500 fine. Anything specific you need to know?

I am going....... to Kid Fest in Port Arthur. 

By the USA propping up the free market system with social programs. 

    So they were just waiting for the DA to come in and tell them not to have the meeting or go to jail..... but if the DA didn't say anything and give an uncharacteristic warning of arrest.... the board would have done what?    Your supposition that the board had all of this planned as a well thought out scheme seems as likely as me winning the lottery this week. 

  Shocking right? Standing by waiting for a known screw up to happen before it happens. 

Easily explained.   Bush knew that he was going to be elected almost 3 years into the future and compelled a complicit Bill Clinton to falsify his statements so that Bush could justify his actions 4 years later.    I don't know why anyone can't see this as fact. 

  Perhaps you are saying that the FBI and US Attorney falsified evidence in order to get a warrant in order to go on a witch hunt from a local school district? 

  At the wrong location means that they didn't do their homework and recon the correct house. If I go into a house undercover and buy drugs and get a warrant but the SWAT team goes back and hits the next door neighbor's house, that does not mean that my information and the fact that I bought drugs did not exist. It means they didn't read the correct address.    Not finding anything can mean that it never existed (very unlikely but possible) or that it has been moved or used. I have run many warrants on drugs but the thing about drugs is that..... (drum roll).... people use them or sell them and then they are gone. It doesn't mean that they were never there.    And honestly, out of the thousands of warrants served, how many do you actually hear about that went wrong.... and even if they went wrong, it doesn't mean that the information was false.    It is like contacts with the police. Some go badly and on occasion the officer(s) is completely wrong, even up to being a criminal act. What they don't say is that there are probably in the area of half a million public contacts per day. If 99.9% of them end up correctly, that 1/10th of 1% is still 500 bad incidents per day or 15,000 a month. With all the video cameras we have today, I think that if there are 15,000 misconducts per month by the police, many more will be popping up in the media. 

The only warrant that I have been a part of drawing up that involved computers was child pornography. I have no clue what direct evidence (facts) that the FBI or USA came up with for embezzlement but you can bet it is more than hearsay or innuendo. It might be something like an audit showed a large discrepancy (fact) and that opened an investigation. Then a subpoena for banking records showed that she opened a new account that had unexplained cash going into it (fact) considering her salary. I have heard that she had similar issues with the county government and if that is true, it is another fact. A subpoena of records might also show invoices that were tracked to an IP from her home computer (fact), etc. There could be sworn statements taken from coworkers that could implicate her (fact). Direct statements are not hearsay. Hearsay is like when a coworker might say, "Bob told me that he saw someone write a check". In that kind of situation it is the actual person (Bob) that saw the check written that has to give the sworn statement, making him guilty of a crime if it is proven to be a fabrication. All of that is making up a scenario but it is an example of how PC is built on a set of facts that by themselves may not be proof beyond a reasonable doubt but certainly reach a level that would make a reasonable person believe that it is more likely than not that evidence will be found (for a search warrant) or a person appears to have committed a crime (for an arrest warrant)..... also known as probable cause. Where you say that a search warrant can be based on hearsay, that is saying that a warrant can be issued on a hunch, intuition or innuendo. That simply is not true. Remember that any warrant can be appealed and if the warrant is insufficient by not having enough evidence or if any evidence is falsified, any evidence discovered will be thrown out of court rendering the entire process a waste of time. I am guessing that the FBI and the USA aren't twiddling their thumbs wasting time because they are bored.

    What you call corroboration are "facts".    Gates was about an anonymous tip. That is not allowed for PC unless backed up by articulable facts or facts that can be explained on paper.    Hearsay is generally, "Someone told me".    Like PNG/Bamakid saying, "I know that hippy is dealing dope because dove told me that he saw it".    Hearsay, like anonymous tips, are not PC for anything. They are hunches based on an unproven accusation. They might give you a clue on where to look but you still have to find what you are looking for..... or facts. 

  This is what the Constitution says about search and seizure. It is called the Fourth Amendment.   The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

PC is facts based, not hearsay. It is a set of facts that tends to show that guilt is more likely than not. It is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt but it is fact based. If PC only had to be based on hearsay, I could arrest almost anyone that I wanted to at any time by merely saying, "I heard..." .

Their raid was likely justified before they got the warrant. Just one of those little quirks in the law called probable cause affidavits......

Yep. Gives them an easy out for something that should have been done long ago.

I eat at Tony's about once a week on average (convenient at work) and about half the time I get chicken fried steak with baked potato and salad. It is one of the better ones in this area in my opinion. It is kind of a hidden gem as most people might not think of CFS there.

It is smple, we spend way too much.

The last time I ate links there they weren't very good. It was more like a sausage than a link. Edible but that is why I haven't been back. Maybe they have changed and I willl give them another try. The last time I passed that way it looked like they were closed.

  I'll bet the 16 year old boy did not walk out thinking he was raped. 

I saw nothing that he said was wrong. 

  It is an apples and oranges question. The Bergdahl case has been brewing for years. You can't come close to comparing that to an incident that happened within hours. There simply is no comparison.

I must have missed the part where the ADA said he struck the juror for being part of a hate group. 

  And if you can show me any legal precedent that says only people belonging to hate groups can be struck from juries and I will say that you are on to something.   I have sat on juries and testified in many trials. I have seen people struck and seen the defense attorney contest strikes based on race (Batson strike). In one jury pool the DA had three strikes that were contested. The DA countered that one had a spouse had been convicted of the same crime (I think it was DWI) so the potential juror might be prejudiced against the police (making for an unfair jury), one had been involved in a lawsuit based on the same crime from injuries and I don't remember the other reasoning but the judge ruled that all strikes were fair based on cause and not on race.    A jury is supposed to be fair for both sides and the people serving need to go in with as much of an open mind as possible. In this case a woman is posting material on how to survive while driving black (The Negro Motorist Green Book). To me that appears that she believes that she might be targeted based on race and is even posting survival tips on how to stay away from cops. It doesn't even matter if she is correct, it a preconceived perception (prejudice) that is the problem. Nothing in that article that hippy posted or the others that I have read said that she was struck due to being an NAACP member. He also never claimed she was some kind of supremacist.    I read several articles on this issue and found this as his statement... "It's not because of race. It's because in part she appeared to be an activist, and that's what we don't want. Just as if she was white, we wouldn't want a white activist or a white supremacist." The DA said that she appears to be an "activist", not a "supremacist" or "racist". Looking at her postings, she might very well be an activist for a cause.    I see nothing wrong with his statement.    So I will ask this, what if  the defendant was black as in this case and there was a prospective white juror that was not the member of any hate group. But maybe he had postings he had made on how to survive while being white in a minority neighborhood and had posted The Turner Diaries, just as this woman posted the book about black survival while traveling (published until the early 1960's)? The Turner Diaries was a novel written by a white separatist. Would you want this person sitting in judgment of a family member? Remember that he belongs to no group and just posts thoughts.    Remember that the DA is an elected official and wanted to quickly stop something that might cost votes. That makes his firing political. That might even be within the law as an at will employee but let's call it what it is. I suspect that if a black assistant DA that made the same or similar statements and was fired, we would be seeing an opposite response. 

  You are going pretty far out to try and rationalize you statement.   You cannot strike for any reason as you started out with because you then follow up on race. Race here is not the issue but mindset. How do you strike a member of the KKK without bringing up race? It isn't because he is white but because he is prejudiced and not likely to act fairly by the evidence presented.    An activist for a cause, valid or not, is still an activist.    As far as your claim of fighting an allegation between advocacy and hatred (both to me should be disqualifiers) is meaningless because that is for the opposing attorney to raise and a judge to rule. That happens every day in this country in courtrooms. This isn't an election or popularity contest. It is a plea based on legal grounds and happens any number of times in a trial or the motions leading up to it.    This ADA's termination seems political for various reasons.