Freeze! I just had my nails done!
Last week when I heard about the tragic court house shootings in Atlanta I was greatly troubled. Saddened, of course. Disturbed would even be appropriate. How viscious and gruesome of an attack, and, no less, in the very place where justice is to be administered. My mind raced with thoughts and questions. The loudest question of all ringing over and over - "How did this happen?".
I read the news reports. I checked out the annoying cable news channel scroll bars. I was asking people if they had heard anything. How could this have happened? I debated this question with my dad. He found it hard to understand how this criminal could have accomplished this with handcuffs on. My mom shot in "What about foot shackles? Wouldn't a viscious rapist and murderer have had shackles on too?". We considered the likelihood of a handcuffed man being able to steal a gun and fire it effectively.
All this came to a screeching halt when I finally came across two facts. The first I have heard mentioned almost nowhere. At the time of writing this I cannot recall where I read it, but it was fact confirmed by the author. I believe it appeared on The American Thinker website. I never knew this but apparently when criminals are brought in for court hearings, some states have laws that allow the criminal to be de-cuffed, shackled, etc and change into nice clothes for court hearings. These laws were passed so the poor guy wouldn't "look guilty" to a jury. Lovely. So Brian Nichols who had imprisoned and repeatedly sodomized a girl for three days gets to look pretty for his jury.
A couple days later though I finally came across an article that actually referenced the sex of the court security guard that was overpowered. The guard was female. The guard for a 200 pound, former linebacker, sodomizing scumbag was a female. All the other articles had not mentioned this "minor" fact. Even the articles that did mention that the court officer was a woman made no mention of her age (old), height (short) or weight (let's just say "over"). I was disgusted upon discovering this. How utterly foolish. I had the answer to my question now and I felt no better.
I was initially going to dissect this one a little bit more, but I found that Ann Coulter addressed this with her latest article, "Freeze! I Just Had My Nails Done!", posted today at www.anncoulter.org. Besides, she is always far more entertaining than me. As well, she has done some additional research into the issue (or non-issue as the lack of studies would have you believe) of female police officers. There are some very interesting statistics presented. Granted, they won't make you any more comfortable about the state of political correctness in our country. But it's the weekend, so I digress...
I read the news reports. I checked out the annoying cable news channel scroll bars. I was asking people if they had heard anything. How could this have happened? I debated this question with my dad. He found it hard to understand how this criminal could have accomplished this with handcuffs on. My mom shot in "What about foot shackles? Wouldn't a viscious rapist and murderer have had shackles on too?". We considered the likelihood of a handcuffed man being able to steal a gun and fire it effectively.
All this came to a screeching halt when I finally came across two facts. The first I have heard mentioned almost nowhere. At the time of writing this I cannot recall where I read it, but it was fact confirmed by the author. I believe it appeared on The American Thinker website. I never knew this but apparently when criminals are brought in for court hearings, some states have laws that allow the criminal to be de-cuffed, shackled, etc and change into nice clothes for court hearings. These laws were passed so the poor guy wouldn't "look guilty" to a jury. Lovely. So Brian Nichols who had imprisoned and repeatedly sodomized a girl for three days gets to look pretty for his jury.
A couple days later though I finally came across an article that actually referenced the sex of the court security guard that was overpowered. The guard was female. The guard for a 200 pound, former linebacker, sodomizing scumbag was a female. All the other articles had not mentioned this "minor" fact. Even the articles that did mention that the court officer was a woman made no mention of her age (old), height (short) or weight (let's just say "over"). I was disgusted upon discovering this. How utterly foolish. I had the answer to my question now and I felt no better.
I was initially going to dissect this one a little bit more, but I found that Ann Coulter addressed this with her latest article, "Freeze! I Just Had My Nails Done!", posted today at www.anncoulter.org. Besides, she is always far more entertaining than me. As well, she has done some additional research into the issue (or non-issue as the lack of studies would have you believe) of female police officers. There are some very interesting statistics presented. Granted, they won't make you any more comfortable about the state of political correctness in our country. But it's the weekend, so I digress...