lawmummy

No, not mine. Don’t freak out. But I can totally see how this could happen…

In case you didn’t see it earlier on TV this morning, here you go:

Did you see this?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080415/sc_afp/spaceastronomygermany_080415214429
It’s crazy!

From CNN:

President Bush signs a federal disaster declaration, freeing up federal funds for families affected by the wildfires.

See?  Nothing to worry about… If you’re mostly rich and white and live in a key state with a Republican governor.

Just saying.

From the Bloomington Herald Times:

Indiana University law student Jesse Sneed may have been aiming his assault rifle at his Real Estate Transfer Finance and Development textbook when he fired shots from his westside apartment balcony early Tuesday morning, police say. The book was found later in the parking lot, shot clean through by two rounds, according to investigators. Sneed, 27, was charged Thursday with criminal recklessness in connection with the incident, which closed down businesses and schools for several hours after neighbors reported hearing gunshots on the city’s west side Tuesday. No one was injured.

Oh c’mon, what law student hasn’t taken out their frustrations with an assault weapon?

According to NBC10:

Frank Cossey tried to buy his son a rifle in 2005, but was not allowed to because he was a felon, prosecutors said. Frank Cossey was sent to prison after pleading guilty in 1981 to manslaughter in a drunken driving death in Oklahoma.

Yes, if you’re doing the math, that means he tried to buy his 12 year old son a rifle.  Niiiiice.

No wonder the poor boy had issues.

The AP is now reporting that the mother of the child planning an attack on a local school bought her child more than one assault weapon:

Michele Cossey bought her son a .22-caliber handgun, a .22-caliber rifle and a 9 mm semiautomatic rifle, authorities said.

She has been charged with a crime.  She should go to jail.  She should lose custody of her child.

There is zero excuse for this.  Zero.

Oh yeah.  You think I’m being inappropriate?  Just reporting the news.

I ran across a fabulous story out of Seattle about their new transit system.  A new streetcar line was initially touted as South Lake Union Trolley until someone pointed out that the acronym was SLUT.  Of course, they then changed it to the South Lake Union Streetcar (SLUS) but it was too late:  all over the neighborhood, they’re calling it the SLUT.  They’re even selling T-shirts that read “Ride the SLUT.”

Tsk, tsk.  Gotta love that government attention to detail.

This is Andrew Speaker’s defense to the NINE lawsuits that have already been filed against him for possibly exposing them to tuberculosis on a commercial flight from Prague to Montreal.

Hmm. I wonder what his reaction to such a statement would be when he was a personal injury lawyer. Probably “I don’t care.”

The plaintiffs are suing for the distress that the exposure has caused. Only one of the plaintiffs has tested positive for the disease, though it is not clear whether that individual had contracted the disease from exposure to Speaker.  One plaintiff summed it up this way: “At the very first moment that I found out, I was obviously very stressed, very shocked. I’m still very stressed out about it. He deliberately got on this plane, endangered our lives and this is very selfish and reckless behavior that deserves to be punished.”

Speaker has not yet hired an attorney to defend him - maybe he’s waiting for his wife to pass the bar?

I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg. Speaker can probably start clearing his post-dismissal calendar for a whole lot of court appearances.

It’s been an interesting week with respect to race relations in America.

First, there was Isaiah Washington’s rant about his firing from “Grey’s Anatomy” being racially motivated. He claims he was fired not for his use of a slur against fellow cast mate T. R. Knight but because “someone heard the booming voice of a black man and got really scared and that was the beginning of the end for me.” I have to wonder how much of it is actually true and how much of it is posturing by a man who can clearly not control himself. He did, after all, use the slur not once but twice. I don’t understand how he can not find it offensive - or how he would have reacted to a racial slur against him.

Then, the Supreme Court voted this week that race cannot be a factor in the assignment of children to public schools. It was a deeply divisive ruling (5-4) with Roberts writing “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” This, of course, seems like a good idea but the overriding concern is that eliminating the school district’s ability to use race as a means to populate schools may lead to increased segregation of races. Remember Brown v. Board of Education? I have to wonder what this means for districts like Philly which I believe are suffering because of bussing - which may be interpreted as racially driven.

But none of this affected me nearly this week as a piece in the Inquirer about Melvin Figueroa. Melvin is the father of La’Toyia Figueroa who went missing around the same time as Laci Peterson. She, too, was pregnant when she went missing. She was found dead in a vacant lot. Her boyfriend has been charged with her murder. You might not remember it because it received very little press. There were some grumblings when it first happened, claiming that she was being overlooked because she was Latina. I didn’t pay it a lot of mind at the time. Mea culpa. You see, in the wake of the constant coverage of Jessie Davis (the OH woman who was reportedly killed by the father of her baby), I have to wonder if I was wrong. Why did the stories of Peterson and Davis get so much press while mention of Figueroa barely made it in to the local press? It is really because Davis and Paterson are both young, pretty and white? Have we decided that there lives make better stories because they were taken from their nice middle class neighborhoods?

I tried to put myself in Melvin’s place and I couldn’t make any sense of it. If my child went missing, would I have to beg for coverage? Would it make a good story because my daughters are white and pretty? Because we live in a good neighborhood in the City where these things don’t happen? Because my husband and I are lawyers? Would I have to search for her myself or would I have legions of volunteers who showed up? Would I have her picture plastered on every news outlet - just in case someone knew something - or would I have to go door to door because the news folks didn’t think it was news worthy? Would I have to hound police to investigate the case?

I think you and I know the answers.

My heart goes out to Melvin - and to the nine year old daughter that La’Toyia left behind (her new baby was killed in utero). We live in a confusing world sometimes.