The Power of the Discretionary Veto & Why Rosemary Lehmberg Should Have Resigned

Has anyone ever heard of this? I have…I learned it in Government 101 class when I was in college. When a public official has veto power, whether it is the President of the United States or the Governor of any of the 50 states, it means that he or she can veto any bill before him/her, or any bill with funding in it at his/her discretion for any reason. Period.  That should be the end of the story but it is not.

Before I go any further, watch the entire video. It’s long but I feel it important to tell the story from start to finish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndYMqTqNeuE

This is the entire video surrounding the story of Rosemary Lehmberg. If you do not know WHO she is, you will soon enough. She is the District Attorney of Travis County, TX.  This is the same public official who would like to be trusted with taxpayer funding to run a “public integrity” unit. As you see in the video, she has no integrity.  Why would anyone trust her with taxpayer funding after the acts seen on this video?

This is why she indicted Rick Perry. He doesn’t trust her–and he shouldn’t.

Now back to the power of the governmental veto. As I have stated, I have always been taught that this is discretionary. The president (regardless of party) and countless governors have vetoed laws and funding for many reasons at their own discretion. This is true whether the item in question is attached to other items on a bill that the voters do not want passed into law, or (as in this case) there is a question as to the integrity of the official about how the funding is to be used when such funding is requested.  After watching the video of the arrest, I would strongly question her ability to run an “integrity unit”.

As a public official, she is responsible for the for prosecution DUI cases.  Her arrest will, without a doubt, cause many of the DUI cases prosecuted by this office to come under judicial review if it can be proven that she was too lenient  in her prosecution of them.  Family members of victims can have this investigated. This is especially true of a case where she failed to get an order to seize the passport of a young lady named Evelyn Mezzich. If you have Facebook, you can read about that case here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Justice-for-Lindsay-Brashier-Extradite-Evelyn-Mezzich-from-Peru/134878483190277

That entire debacle could have been prevented if she had simply gone to a judge and asked for an order to seize her passport since she was a flight risk and a death was involved. As a result, Ms. Mezzich escaped to Peru. She cannot be prosecuted because the current treaty with Peru was not in place until later. Ms. Lehmberg was grossly negligent in her prosecution of this particular case.  As a result, there has been no justice for Lindsay Brashier, who lost her life far too soon…

That being said, I wonder how many other cases were botched by this office?  The assistant DA was also busted for DUI…I’m wondering if any of those cases will be reviewed being that Ms. Lehmberg obviously feels that driving drunk is not that big of a deal. I know where I stand on it–she should not be in office. Too many people get killed by people, who like her, are stupid enough to get behind the wheel while they are drinking.

Now back to my point, which is this:  This woman made a mess of the office to which she was elected by her outrageous public behavior and she has misused her own office to attempt to rewrite the laws of the State of Texas. This indictment is not only outside of the realm of law, it is an abuse of her own power as a District Attorney–something for which she should have her license to practice law revoked.  The way she conducted herself at the time of her arrest should have least brought that issue up since she threatened the arresting authorities after being taken to jail.

Needless to say, Judge Jeanine Pirro  called this one right.  Here is what she had to say about it:

http://foxnewsinsider.com/2014/08/17/%E2%80%98pure-unadulterated-hogwash%E2%80%99-judge-jeanine-slams-indictment-rick-perry

It doesn’t matter if one likes or hates FOX news, this woman is right on the money when it comes to this issue.  Rick Perry was well within his rights on this matter, and therefore, I support him on the issue. Special thanks to those who shared the Pirro link with me. I was impressed!

At One Time She Was Blind

At one time she saw no color. She saw no male nor female. She was not concerned with popular opinion but with the administration for what was right, but something has happened to her in these later years of her life. She has become crippled and bent. She only moves via the strings are pulled by a force much greater than she is. That force is called division. 

Like the child in the middle of a divorce she is yanked one direction and then the other rather than allowed to have a voice for herself, that is applicable for all who go to her for guidance. They use law and personal philosophy to pit people against one another on each side of this tug-of-war. 

She weeps over the selective prosecution of one group, while others are allowed to escape through her grasp. She weeps that the mob mentality seems to prevail where there once resided two of her biggest allies, Law and Order.

She weeps that she, like a child, whose parents, who are “we the people” are now fighting among ourselves rather than realizing that there is a much larger problem looming within this chaos. The problem is those that are in power tend to abuse her and/or ignore her, creating more division among the masses. 

This will not be corrected until she is returned to her rightful role by men and women who refuse to be moved by contemporary thought rather than by the very document upon which our laws were founded. This will only happen when people unite together and refuse to see color, one’s sexual preference, religion, etc., as we are all Americans and should not be letting those in power divide us as we have allowed them to do. We should, in short, be ashamed of how we treated one another, and it would be the beginning of the return of justice if people stopped allowing this division to fester like a gigantic boil rather than work to heal the rift.

Elliot Rodger…All That’s Left is “Why”?

This is another one of my short rants. We’ve got a director blaming the NRA for the deaths of innocent people. Evidently he doesn’t know squat. Elliot Rodger was mentally ill. He needed help. His parents tried to get him that help. Had the Santa Monica Police Department seen the warning signs of trouble in his videos, MAYBE they could have gotten him committed to a psychiatric facility for at least 45 days. Had they done that, 8 people might be alive today. THAT is the bottom line of it. In my opinion, mental illness doesn’t excuse an action or make it right, but it does help explain the “why” of it to a degree.

Now I want to know what also figures into this “why”? Was this guy bullied all his life or something? THAT is the vibe I got off of watching some of the videos. He doesn’t really come out and say it, though. The reason I say this is that a lot of shooters seemed to have experienced school bullying. THIS is one thing I personally would like for the public to know. Hopefully one day all the families, including Rodger’s, will have the answer to that “Why?”

However the political “blame game” is not going to cut it this time. People need to quit using others’ tragedy to earn brownie points or to get people to take a look at their work and that is what the director that made the NRA comment is doing. That’s right. I’m calling him out.  He’s using a colleague’s tragedy to make a name for himself. They don’t need to use it to further politics either. People are sick of that tactic already, and before anyone starts complaining and moaning, I don’t own a gun myself. I never have. I probably never will because I don’t need one. However, I do support the right of law-abiding citizens to own one.

 

Why On Earth is This Tolerated?

I have written much about bullying, but feel compelled to address what is turning into a severe problem nation wide.  A growing number of elderly and disabled people are being attacked. Why? Because criminals view them as easy targets. I don’t want to hear about teenagers making mistakes when I’m reading about elderly people having to have plastic surgery because their facial injuries so severe.

I don’t want to hear about how people make mistakes. To deliberately target those who are least able to help themselves, to me, is a hate crime. I don’t care what race the perpetrator is. I don’t care what race the victim is. Our elderly and disabled deserve better treatment than what is being given by our justice system, so HERE is what I propose:

I propose that anyone found guilty of assaulting an elderly and/or person with a disability which results in serious bodily harm should have to serve a 25 year sentence, flat-time and no parole, in a federal correctional facility.

There. You have my Monday rant. I am so sick of reading these stories, and many of these victims get critically injured.  This is some serious stuff people.  I personally think that 25 years flat time in GP is plenty of time to rethink one’s actions in a case like this.

I have an aunt who was murdered–after being severely beaten. So if you think I’m over-reacting, just pray this doesn’t happen in your family. Why is this even tolerated in this country? That is all I’m saying about this crap.

When There is No Justice, There Are Tears Without End

Today I am charged with writing something about my best friend.  This is the hardest post I ever had to write. Why? Because she is dead. She has been dead for years, but in high school she was my best friend. She knew everything about me and never shared it with anyone.  To this day I  still wonder why her killers got off with only a 7 year sentence when it was clearly premeditated murder. Had I been able to attend the trial,  I would have raised hell to the media about how HER character was put on trial rather than the actions of the bitch that pumped the bullets into her body.  She was lured out to a desolate road, shot and left for dead. The last conversation I had with her, we talked about my boys and such. Then she said she had to go to meet someone. That was the last time we ever spoke.

So what ended up happening? To make a long story short, they didn’t find the deposit. I guess they were high on drugs or something because they tore the rest of the car apart looking for it from what I am told. So what is there to say? My memories were of good, clean juvenile fun we had and a few in-depth discussions. Ironically I never met her father until well after she died.  She and I would talk for hours on the phone just BS’ing.  He remembered that. I remember the pain in his eyes. I remember seeing his tears fall as he relayed to me his thoughts about losing his only daughter.  Losing a child is a pain I can relate to, only I lost mine due to troubled pregnancies.

And as my eyes are now welling up, I can say no more–except this and that hope she is at peace, even though she got NO justice. Here is part of a song I wrote for her…Her name is Leslie.

“Childhood Friend”

“..Childhood Friend…Why have you gone out to play in all the rain, again?

Leaving me alone, your memory to defend to the end.

God it hurts so bad but I miss my childhood friend…”

I cannot write anymore.  I still miss her after all these years. I guess you can tell just from what I wrote above where the 2nd line came from…But she is dead and cannot defend herself. The person I knew is not the one the defense lawyer for these murderers tried to portray. That I do know and will go to my grave knowing it. I can tell you this…Not once did she ever try to offer me drugs of any kind–which is what the defense for these ass clowns tried to say she was doing in her free time to make THEM look a little better, I guess.  Given my childhood, which most who know me personally are aware of–if she were offering anyone drugs I would have been a prime candidate for self-medication back then just to escape the bull crap that went on in my life.

RIP Leslie…I still miss you, kid…

I also have an aunt who was murdered…They never found who did that either…Either way, Leslie got no justice and my aunt’s killers are out there and it sucks.

I Simply Cannot Buy Rolling Stone Magazine…

Since this came out, I have not been able to even bring myself to buy that magazine.

Once upon a time, there was a wonderful magazine that gave us articles about music and the music world–along with artists that were engaging in worthwhile pursuits at times. Then one day, someone decided to throw the very things that those of us who came to that magazine wanted to get away from, which includes depressing news and politics, in our faces.  However a person in charge of this magazine decided it would be appropriate to put a young man’s face on the cover who was the epitome of everything that is wrong in this country.  

“But what could possibly be wrong in this country?” some would think aloud.

“Complacency.” was the word that came to mind of others.

As a society, we have become far to complacent when it comes to what the media wants to subject us as an audience to.  If it were NEWS that would be one thing.  However in recent years, the media likes to bombard us with editorials. It gets really old. If I want someone’s opinion of what is going on in the world, I’ll simply ask them.  HOWEVER, when I want to know what is going on in this world, I only want the facts–and not their opinions of how they think these things should be or should not be.  Evidently the media no longer believes that we can make up our own minds on any issue,  so they try to tell us “how to think”…

We have also become far too complacent as a nation as to our own security.  Why do  I say that? Simple. Look around.  We’ve got teenagers going around targeting elderly people–especially if not of their own race, and yet no one DARES call that a hate crime IF the victim is white. IF the person who does it is white and the victim is black,  you can bet there will be serious jail time involved. This seriously leads me to question what truly is a hate crime if one group of  people who attack ANYONE due to race is not prosecuted while one person manages to get the collar… It is time to change that, people.  One form of racism does not justify another and if hate crime laws are not going to be equally prosecuted, they shouldn’t even be on the books. Justice is supposed to be blind–not subject to the whim of the US Attorney General or his boss. If one is really concerned about these young people getting hurt and killed for pulling such antics, then maybe the parents should step up to the plate and start monitoring who their kids are hanging out with again. Now back to my original topic…

Maybe IF this guy’s parents had done THAT much and kept their sons away from other radicals, they might not have ended up killing 4 people and wounding/maiming plenty of others. However, the mother isn’t too concerned about it given the clip below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqiinOlrc3o

Did you notice where he told her, “Don’t say anything.”  Why would he say that? That statement is out-of-place unless one is hiding something…Nice try. Russia even knew about her fanaticism. I think we know where these two men went wrong and it lies within their own mother. Sorry. She raised them to be as they are/were. She is more upset that they actually got caught in their own game, and if they had not done it, they wouldn’t have hijacked that Chinese boy’s car afterward to get away.  He will get the best defense on American soil money can buy. What I want to know is, who will hear the victims’ cries for justice as the blood calls out from their graves?

And this magazine seems to want to paint an empathetic picture of what is wrong with this guy, or am I mistaken? Sorry…I don’t buy into it and will no longer read Rolling Stone.

This is a HUGE Problem in Today’s Society…

Can anyone take a guess at what one of our biggest problems in today’s society is? As a whole we have become complacent to the idea that it is okay not to keep one’s word. A person is only as good as their word is, and if their word fails, then they fail. Period. Americans will allow their intelligence to get insulted time and time again and not bat an eyelash when they get manipulated. Why is that? What has made us so accepting of people who will say anything we want to hear, only to find that they never had any single intention of honoring their word?

This takes place in many areas of our lives but the result is the same.  If someone we care deeply about does it, we are far to quick to forgive–especially if that person is our partner. Well–most of us anyway. I am not that way anymore. I got in touch with my inner bitch a long time ago, and I am here to tell you, when I get lied to and the person is caught, that trust can never be brought back at any price.  In fact, I tend to make a clean break now.

In fact, I’ve booted exes, former buddies and a few peers from my life that seem to take pride in such behavior. Yes, pride. They say things like, “Oh I was just BS’ing.”  Sorry but your BS’ing got people hurt.

Now I want to address another form of “lying”.  Remember this story?

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Gay-Server-Tip-Lifestyle-Receipt-Discrepancy-233040811.html

 

Don’t jump the gun yet! I don’t think the waitress lied.  I think she and the family were, in fact, victims.  HERE is what I think went down with this story.

I think the waitress turned the ticket into whoever was handling the cash register.  I believe a reprint was made and that was the ticket given to Ms. Morales.  The reason I am giving her the benefit of a doubt is that there are more ways to rip off a person than one can shake a stick at, and I think whoever did it pocketed her tip and gave her a bogus receipt. I feel the note on the receipt, which again does NOT match the customer’s handwriting, was written by whoever cashed out the original ticket. If this is the case, there are two victims here–the family AND Ms. Morales.

Now there are people who will get even more angry if this is the case because of all the donations sent to Ms. Morales as a result. Either way she was still a victim. She got angry and posted that receipt merely to make a point. She did not intend to expose the people by name, but was simply hurt by the note left. Sadly, if that note was left by a fellow employee, I hope that he or she is caught via video, fired and then made ineligible for rehire because this type of person will continue to perpetuate fraud upon his/her co-workers and upon other customers as well. IN fact it should become a police matter at that point–even if all he/she did pocket was the $18 tip.  There is no telling how many other tips got pocketed that should have went to the wait staff  if this is the case.

I would also like to add that cons who are into criminal theft are not going to be making donations to “Wounded Warriors” either. As far as Ms. Morales goes, people really need to reserve their judgment.  I find it highly disturbing that if my scenario is correct, that anyone would leave such a hateful, spite-filled note to any waiter or waitress.

Have we as a society not learned that all people deserve a fair shake? Evidently not given some of the heated rhetoric I see directed at  Ms. Morales as well as  the family. America it is time to be quiet and wait to see what happens on this one. I think that both the family and Ms. Morales deserve that much.

School Bullying Must Stop–A Proposal…

I have to phrase this in a way everyone will get it. School bullying and cyber-stalking are out of control. These web applications that generate fake phone numbers to enable a stalker to pull this MUST be shut down or tightly regulated. If ordered by a judge, they should have to surrender any information the requester for such numbers gave to the site in order to be able to access such programs. Any students caught using this for the purpose of bullying other students should be expelled and put on house arrest for the rest of the school year and forced to do their classwork at home. They should also be ordered to go into psychiatric counseling at the parents’ expense–not the states.

Schools should be required to report to the parents of the victim(s) any incidents (even if perceived) of bullying within two hours of becoming aware of the concurrence. ANY teacher or administrator taking it upon himself/herself who decides not to report the incident to the parents OR the police if severe, should face disciplinary action up to and including termination as well as fines up to $5000 and forfeiture of their certification(s). If the bullying is severe enough to call law enforcement, the police should immediately have to place the bully in restraints and arrest him/her/them. It should also be up to the parents of the VICTIM whether or not to file charges–not the police or the school district.

It is time to protect our children and to separate them from a culture that permits silence and the continued torment of other students. Many of the crimes (yes crimes!) they throw under the label of “bullying” include physical assault, psychological torment, and/or sexual assault or molestation. Often it also includes some sort of verbal sexual harassment and/or repeated incidents.  These are all things adults can either go to jail for and/or lose their jobs for.  When children commit these acts on other children they should be strictly dealt with. There should truly be “zero tolerance” for this behavior in the schools.

This is only part of what I’m proposing to stem the tide of this garbage. How many more students are going to kill themselves before the end of the school year? I am wondering because right now there is NOTHING firm and rigid in a legal approach that has been put  in place to protect them in most states at all.  What are your thoughts? Can you think of any ways to help stop this? I do realize that my proposal is modeled somewhat after the Prison Rape Elimination Act, but since most of what I have seen occur when working for the corrections industry tends to remind me of what I saw in public school yards, that is why I came up with this.

The PREA gave parents and family members of bullied and extorted offenders an avenue to seek remedy within the laws of the land should officers neglect to report possible rapes and take measures to prevent offender suicide. Since so many bullying victims either attempt suicide or actually do it, this must be addressed specifically also.  It is for that reason I strongly support sending bullying victims to a counselor to ensure their mental well-being.  This is especially true if the student is known to be homosexual. Many do get picked on for their sexual orientation and this must also be stopped. No child deserves this treatment.  As for measures like “lunch detention”, believe me, they are a joke. Those things do not work on a bully because a lot of the time to them, being in lunch detention or ISS is a “badge of honor” just like going to medium custody is an honor for an offender in prison when they bully others. In fact, a lot of the reason these measures do not work on many bullies is that some of them come from families that have family members which are incarcerated.

It is bad enough that many cannot even bring themselves to discuss this with their own parents out of fear, but school is the last place they should fear going to. We must make these institutions safer for ALL children and this is the only proposal I can think of to actually get the job done–or at least start the process of making a change for the better.

These suicides can be prevented if teachers and administrators are specifically trained in what to watch for, so I propose that training them to notice certain signs (unkempt appearance, giving away possessions, statements that could lead one to think they might harm themselves or others in retaliation, etc…).

Robin Hood Bores Me and I STILL Debate a Few Issues…

I’ll never understand it but the story of Robin Hood always bored the hell out of me. I am not sure why. However, although he was a thief who stole from the rich and gave to the poor, at the end of the day, he still took stuff that was not rightfully his and was still a thief.  If you stop and think long and hard about this, Bonnie and Clyde (yes the murdering outlaws) often did the same thing–and I think they were kept well hidden because of that fact by people in various towns until they were gunned down.

Now what’s the point? It’s this (and I’ll try to make it very simple).  For a while the people will love and admire such a person–until it begins to affect everyone and everything around them.  Then there is a demand for justice.

Now there are several versions of the Robin Hood tale–one most looked at says he was taking and giving back to the people what was “theirs”…Gee…Did whoever wrote Robin Hood create the concept of “redistributing wealth”?  If this is about perception, then different eras are going to read the story different ways.  In any reality, there is no way the number of poor were rightful owners of what he stole…How would he know what belonged to whom?  Seriously, if you want to get in a conversation starting a philosophical world of s**t, start with this!

The bottom line though is this–Robin Hood was STILL a thief himself.  There! I’m through being so bloody cranky today!

 

 

A Passionate Hater of Bullying…That Would Be Me…

I want to make something clear to my friends and to my family. I loathe bullying whether it be school bullying or workplace bullying. I believe that stronger discipline must be used in public schools to stop school bullying because allowing it and/or enabling it and many school administrators and fake experts tend to do this, I fully believe that it leads to more devious and often violent criminal behaviors in adults.

I do not believe bullies fully change with time if they end up in positions of power. I believe this overloads their ego and makes them even worse. That being said, I am going to do all in my power to put a stop to this trend. Bullying is not the same as it was when I was in school. It’s not just the occasional fight or being shoved. In many cases it is assaults by multiple people, sexual assault, emotional abuse and some other things adults can go to jail for, like sharing inappropriate photos of a teenager on the net, cyber-bullying, etc…However, in some locales it is left up to the school district as to whether or not to press charges. Many won’t because if the criminal-in-the-making goes to juvenile hall, they’ll lose money for the school.  A school usually gets X amount of dollars for each student enrolled there from the government and state funding coffers.

Guess who pays for all this crap and such? We do…Carry on…In fact, RAGE on!

If you want crime rates reduced in adults, start taking care of the problems with America‘s schoolchildren who often learn these behaviors from their older relatives and stop letting these fake counselors give the bullying victim “resilience training” which only reinforces the idea that they must have done something to bring this on and need to change something about themselves. We should NEVER be penalizing a bullying victim–EVER and that is what resilience training is. It’s not the victim that needs to be worked on via therapy and/or disciplined, it’s the bully and/or the family thereof…PERIOD!