DOWNLOADS: (1575)

PLAYS: (2390)

Embed

Of course, the local cops are calling it a "rookie mistake":

A Dallas rookie police officer erred when he cited a woman earlier this month for being a non-English speaking driver, police said.

Officer Gary Bromley issued a citation Oct. 2 to 48-year-old Ernestina Mondragon after stopping her for making an illegal U-turn in the 500 block of Easton Road, near East Northwest Highway, according to a copy of the citation.

"That's a charge that does not exist here in the city of Dallas," said department spokesman Sgt. Warren Mitchell. "Although we believe it was a sincere mistake ... there's no excuse for it."

He said that charge and a charge of failure to present a driver's license were dropped.

Bromley, 33, is a trainee officer in the Northeast Patrol division. His trainer on the date the ticket was issued was Senior Cpl. Daniel Larkin, 53, said Deputy Chief Tom Lawrence, Northeast Patrol commander.

Under the Dallas City Code, taxi drivers must be able to communicate in English. Mitchell said there is also a federal statute that says commercial drivers must speak English, but it would not have applied in this case.

Seems to me the problem is not merely with Officer Bromley's assumptions about Driving While Mexican, but those of his training officer, who presumably oversaw the citations as Bromley was writing them up.

Of course, if Officer Bromley winds up washing out in Dallas because of this, he needn't worry. He would probably be welcomed at the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department with open arms.

UPDATE: Now the Dallas police chief is admitting that there have been dozens of such tickets:

Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle said this afternoon that his officers have written at least 39 citations to people over the past three years for not speaking English.

Apologizing publicly to the city's Spanish-speaking community, the chief said all officers and supervisors involved will be investigated for dereliction of duty. All pending citations will be dismissed, and people who paid fines will be reimbursed.

I can't believe I had to make that statement. I thought it was a pain to have to remove your shoes and dump your baby's bottle to get through the security checkpoint. Now this?

A Texas woman who said she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane called Thursday for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation. [..]

Hamlin, 37, said she was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas on Feb. 24 when she was scanned by a Transportation Security Administration agent after passing through a larger metal detector without problems.

The female TSA agent used a handheld detector that beeped when it passed in front of Hamlin's chest, the Dallas-area resident said.

Hamlin said she told the woman she was wearing nipple piercings. The agent then called over her male colleagues, one of whom said she would have to remove the jewelry, Hamlin said.

Hamlin said she could not remove them and asked whether she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the jewelry was out, she said.
She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring.

"Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her," said Hamlin's attorney, Gloria Allred, reading from a letter she sent Thursday to the director of the TSA's Office of Civil Rights and Liberties. [..]

She said she heard male TSA agents snickering as she took out the ring. She was scanned again and was allowed to board even though she still was wearing a belly button ring.

Okay, this is just stupid. The belly button ring stays, but the nipple piercings have to go? Does anyone feel safer knowing the skies are free of some body piercings? What is the fear? That she'll rub up against the plane with her chest and scratch the fuselage? Alan Colmes has the pictures of the confiscated hardware. (h/t Tim in Japan)

Somewhere over the heartland of this country, there are porcine aviators fluttering in the sky. The state that has more state executions than the rest now thinks it might be a bad idea? Maybe Texas really is moving towards disavowing George Bush.

Off The Kuff:

Wow. The Dallas Morning News looks at some high profile death penalty cases in Texas and realizes that the system is irrevocably broken.

And that uncomfortable truth has led this editorial board to re-examine its century-old stance on the death penalty. This board has lost confidence that the state of Texas can guarantee that every inmate it executes is truly guilty of murder. We do not believe that any legal system devised by inherently flawed human beings can determine with moral certainty the guilt of every defendant convicted of murder.
That is why we believe the state of Texas should abandon the death penalty - because we cannot reconcile the fact that it is both imperfect and irreversible.[..]

Powerful stuff, especially considering the source. As you know, I am not philosophically opposed to the death penalty. I have always believed that for some crimes, and for some criminals, it's the only appropriate response. But it's also been clear for a long time that the system has many cracks in it, and that too many people have fallen through them. From prosecutorial misconduct to bad eyewitness identifications to incompetent defense attorneys to an impenetrable appeals process that is completely indifferent to questions of innocence, we have lost any right to say that the death penalty is applied in a fair and impartial manner, assuming we were ever able to say that.

Ms.:

Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) on Friday issued an executive order that made Texas the first state to require girls entering the sixth grade to receive the HPV vaccine, beginning in September 2008. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Gardasil, a vaccine that prevents several strands of the sexually transmitted disease human papillomavirus (HPV), in June 2006. Gardasil is approved for women ages nine-26 to prevent cervical cancer and genital warts caused by HPV types 6, 11, 16, and 18.

Though Governor Perry is known as a social conservative, his press secretary, Robert Black, told The Dallas Morning News, "He came to the conclusion it was the right thing to do. You don't have opportunities like this where you can certainly prevent a cancer. It's never happened before, so it would be irresponsible to walk away from it."

Seriously, this is such a no-brainer that I'm surprised other states haven't jumped on the bandwagon. The whole wingnut argument that this encourages girls to have sex is a bit bizarre to me. As a mom, I truly hope that my daughter will have a fulfilling sex life when she's an adult. I don't see how a shot in the sixth grade will make her more likely to have sex at a younger age. But if I can do something to prevent her from getting cancer in her 40s, what's the problem with that?

There are literally dozens of snarky remarks floating through my head over this. Like will they include Camus and three Shakespeares in his library? However, for a president so preternaturally concerned over his "legacy", this has gotta hurt.

Raw Story:

Southern Methodist University is one of the three schools that may play host to the presidential library of George W. Bush, along with the University of Dallas and Baylor University.

The blog of Paul Burka, the senior executive editor of the magazine Texas Monthly, includes excerpts of a letter written to SMU's president by faculty, administrators, and staff of the university's Perkins School of Theology, worrying about siting the library at the university. In it, they say they would:

...regret to see SMU enshrine attitudes and actions widely deemed as ethically egregious: degradation of habeas corpus, outright denial of global warming, flagrant disregard for international treaties, alienation of long-term U.S. allies, environmental predation, shameful disrespect for gay persons and their rights, a pre-emptive war based on false and misleading premises, and a host of other erosions of respect for the global human community and for this good Earth on which our flourishing depends.

Read on...