Moonhowlings

Carlos Martinelly Sentenced to 20 Years in Car Crash That Killed Nun: MyFoxDC.com

Carlos Martinelly was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his drunk driving accident (August 1, 2010)  that injured 2 nuns and killed a third.  Martinelly was also charged with felony murder. 

Wikipedia defines ‘felony murder’ as follows:

The rule of felony murder is a legal doctrine in some common law jurisdictions that broadens the crime of murder in two ways. First, when an offender kills accidentally or without specific intent to kill in the course of an applicable felony, what might have been manslaughter is escalated to murder. Second, it makes any participant in such a felony criminally liable for any deaths that occur during or in furtherance of that felony. While there is some debate about the original scope of the rule, modern interpretations typically require that the felony be an inherently dangerous one, or one committed in an obviously dangerous manner. For this reason, the felony murder rule is often justified by its supporters as a means of deterring dangerous felonies.

I keep thinking about this case being Corey Stewart’s launch pad into state politics.  For over a year we have heard about this case, day after day.  This case has been all over Fox News time after time, as some sort of landmark illegal immigrant case rather than a drunk driving case.  Martinelly was brought here illegally  as a child.  He had a green card.  He just didn’t have legal status.  He became the ‘nun killer.’ 

Read more…

Someone sent me this ‘video’ thinking  it was funny.  It is too close to the truth for me and Elena to think its all that funny.  This guy isn’t joking.  He means every word of it.  Bet he wouldn’t let Elena and me take the class either (for multiple reasons).

Is this guy a redneck or what?

Richmond Timnes Dispatch:

Social conservatives emboldened by Republican gains in the General Assembly in November suffered a major setback Thursday when a Senate committee deadlocked on a bill to prohibit women from having an abortion beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy.

But today, the House of Delegates appears ready to pass a bill to defund state-paid abortions for low-income women expecting a child with “gross and totally incapacitating physical deformity or mental deficiency” after the chamber advanced the measure Thursday.

The vote was 7-7 on Senate Bill 637 sponsored by Sen. Mark D. Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg. Republicans hold an 8-7 majority on the committee, but Sen. Harry B. Blevins, R-Chesapeake, abstained, deadlocking the measure.

Read more…

Obviously the Virginia legislature is not always correct. HBO will air The Loving Story on February 14, Valentine Day. The Lovings were an interracial couple  from Caroline County, Virginia. They grew up, fell in love, and married in Washington, DC. They failed to realize that just living together as man and wife was also illegal.

Read more…

From Yahoo News:

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – One Million Moms — a project of the American Family Association — is very angry at JC Penney.

No, not because it sells sweater vests (heck, Rick Santorum is a fan of those), but because the Texas-based department store has hired Ellen DeGeneres as a spokeswoman.

And DeGeneres is — cue the scary music — gay, and open about it.

“Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families,” the million (or so) moms write on their website. “DeGeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store. The majority of JC Penney shoppers will be offended and choose to no longer shop there.”

Read more…

Yes, Big Brother is watching.   Next time you hear Republicans complaining about government being too big, too expensive and too intrusive, remind them of what happened in Virginia this week.

This is perhaps the most offensive law passed since Roe vs Wade was decided.
The government needs to stay out of women’s wombs.
This is intimidation of the worst sort.

SB 484 passed 21-19.

Here is how the senators voted. Notice the one Democrat over in the list. Ours. Shame on Senator Colgan.

YEAS–Black, Blevins, Carrico, Colgan, Garrett, Hanger, Martin, McDougle, McWaters, Newman, Norment, Obenshain, Puckett, Reeves, Ruff, Smith, Stanley, Stosch, Stuart, Vogel, Wagner–21.

NAYS–Barker, Deeds, Ebbin, Edwards, Favola, Herring, Howell, Locke, Marsden, Marsh, McEachin, Miller, J.C., Miller, Y.B., Northam, Petersen, Puller, Saslaw, Watkins–18.

RULE 36–0.

NOT VOTING–Lucas–1.

Senator Howell was featured on the Rachel Maddow Show tonight.

Virginia is for Probing

Thursday will be the day for this big guy.  Will he see his shadow?  We haven’t had that much winter yet so if he sees his shadow, do we have 6 more weeks of this spring weather? 

I can’t remember a winter this mild.  What is causing it?  Does anyone have daffodils blooming?  Mine have lots of buds.  If we get a hard freeze, will there just not be daffodils this spring?  How does that work?

Bob Beckel was adamant. I don’t see why he had to take a poll about whether to apologize or not.  I am not sure that someone in the military retains the right to demand that others call them by their title.  I am not sure we are under obligation to call any elected official by their elected title.  Let’s take this bit further.  Would Corey Stewart get in your face if you didn’t call him Supervisor Stewart?  How about Jackson Miller?  Would he demand you call him Delegate Miller?  Perhaps Allen West feels he is more important. 

West is a provocateur.  He speaks nastily of others and then very much plays the victim when reprimanded by his peers. 

Perhaps he needs to think before he speaks:

This is a battlefield that we must stand upon. And we need to let President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and my dear friend the Chairman of the Democrat National Committee, we need to let them know that Florida ain’t on the table. Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else! You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America!

I am not ever sure what he was blathering about.  For starters, I don’t think one’s military service excuses rude behavior.  He is apparently too consumed with his own self importance.  Military service might mean one is thanked for their service, most sincerely even.  However, that doesn’t excuse rude behavior or give him the right to say whatever pops into his head.  There are consequences. 

 People are pretty much divided over this dust up.  I haven’t gotten over what West said about Debbie Wasserman-Schults.  After those words, there is no where to go but up.  There is no down.  However, his recent remarks made him a bottom feeder.   Beckel actually ended up showing a littlel more humility than I thought he possessed as he polled others on what he should do.  I think it was a draw.

The Richmond Times Dispatch:

A bill that would require a woman seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound took another step toward passage in the Virginia Senate Monday — but not before outnumbered Democrats rose to express their opposition in clinical terms.

Sen. Janet D. Howell, D-Fairfax proposed an amendment — that any man seeking prescription medication for erectile dysfunction must first submit to a digital rectal exam and cardiac stress test.

Howell told colleagues on the Senate floor that she was proposing the amendment because Senate Bill 484 requires women “to have an unnecessary medical procedure, it’s adding to the cost and it’s opening them up for emotional blackmail.”

“I think we should just have a little gender equity here,” Howell added.

Read more…

From Roanoke.com:

When Virginians make purchases from Amazon.com they are not paying sales tax on that item (unless the consumer reports it on their taxes).

The Virginia General Assembly is considering a bill to change that.

The bill clarifies the current law, which says that any retailer with a physical presence in Virginia must collect and remit the 5 percent sales tax. Amazon, which has two facilities in Virginia,  hasn’t done that.

Apparently a 2007 ruling from the state tax department said that Amazon isn’t required to collect and remit sales tax because its facilities in Virginia don’t handle sales.

To add to the story, it was announced last month that Amazon would receive more than $4.3 million in financial aid and other incentives from the state to build two fulfillment centers outside of Richmond. Those centers would bring 1,350 jobs to the area. Amazon is investing $135 million in the buildings.

The retail community has voiced its displeasure with the loophole.

Read more…

Washington Post:

Speaking at a Baptist church in Winter Park on Saturday, the former speaker received a standing ovation when he declared that embryonic stem-cell research amounts to “the use of science to desensitize society over the killing of babies.”

And in a news conference Sunday, he said he would ban all embryonic stem-cell research, including that done on discarded embryos created by in vitro fertilization.

Gingrich added that he would also create a commission to study the ethics of in vitro fertilization, which has involved the creation of hundreds of thousands of excess embryos stored or discarded by fertility clinics.

“I believe life begins at conception, and the question I was raising was what happens to embryos in fertility clinics, and I would favor a commission to look seriously at the ethics of how we manage fertility clinics,” Gingrich said at a news conference outside another Baptist church here. “If you have in vitro fertilization, you are creating life; therefore, we should look seriously at what the rules should be for clinics that are doing that, because they are creating life.”

Read more…

Richmond Times Dispatch:

A bill that would require voters who show up at the polls without identification to cast provisional ballots is headed to the House floor after being lambasted by Democrats in a committee hearing Friday.

I have to disagree with the Democrats on this one.  I see absolutely nothing wrong with requiring voter ID.  There are very few rights that an American citizen has to start with.  Legal residents pretty much have the same rights we do other than voting in state and federal elections.  What happens if if a provisional vote is cast?  According to Delegate Albo:

“I’m trying to understand what the controversy of the bill is,” said Del. David B. Albo, R-Fairfax, noting that the provisional ballots are reviewed the day after the election by the local electoral board.

“If they are legit, they get counted,” Albo said. “If they’re not legit, they don’t get counted.”

On Friday afternoon, the ACLU decried the bill as a voter-suppression measure.

Anyone who lacks the proper ID should be able to get one without charge at DMV.  I am surprised that people can register to vote without some form of identification.   In this day and age, how does a person go anywhere or do anything without some form of ID?  Go Republicans!  This is one bill that makes sense in a sea of ones that don’t. 

‘

Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona apparently forgot her manners, again, and pointed her finger in the face of the President of the United States on the tarmac during President Obama’s latest trip to Arizona.  Governor Brewer later told the press that she felt threatened by the President.  A picture speaks  a thousand words.

I don’t know what Governor Brewer thought the President was going to do to her.  They were in plain view and the secret service security team was right there. 

Sadly, this encounter is just another example of the breakdown of protocol and manners in the country. Pointing or wagging one’s finger in the face of the President of the United States, regardless of who he is is simply not acceptable.  I feel certain that Brewer is now the darling of those Obama haters who feel she ‘told him off good.’ 

I think that protocol needs to be taught in every classroom across America.  Obviously much has been forgotten or in Brewer’s case, never learned.  There are just certain behaviors one upholds when speaking to the President of the United States.  We use terms like’ Mr. President’ when addressing him. We even do that if he is our best friend when in public.   (or her if that should ever come to pass) 

Brewer set a bad example for everyone who sees this picture and is an embarrassment to our country.  The eyes of the world are on us.  What must they be thinking?

The Roakoke Times has one of the best editorials I have read on the proposed bill to drug test recipients of Virginia’s Temporary Aid for Needy Families Program.  Perhaps soon those who get a VRS check will be expected to pass the pee test also.

The Roanoke Times Editorial:

Some legislators want jobless Virginians to prove they’re ‘clean.’ Maybe they should be tested, too.

The moment some poor worker’s company downsizes him out of a job, he is no longer Mr. Upstanding Citizen. In the eyes of some lawmakers, he’s a suspected drug abuser.

Indeed it’s a quick slippery slide from employed to addict. Or at least that’s what Virginians (employed Virginians anyway) could be led to believe given the flurry of bills some of their representatives are pushing in Richmond to drug test those seeking government aid.

Certain lawmakers are intoxicated with the notion that “if you are going to be supported by the people of the commonwealth, then you’re going to stay clean.” That’s how Sen. Dick Black, a Loudoun Republican, put it to the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star, which published an account of bills that tie state aid to drug tests.

Only it’s not all state aid. Just that given to those struggling the most.

Read more…

Lee Jackson Day in Lexington 

The City of Lexington was a colorful sight earlier in January on Lee-Jackson Day.  That town is shrouded in the history of both men.   The pictures in the link are beautiful, the characters realistic.

 ’