Mark Wahlberg wants a pardon
In April of 1988, Mark Wahlberg was a sixteen year old youth when he assaulted two Vietnamese-Americans. He knocked one of the men unconscious with a stick and hit the other with a punch to the head with so much force, the man was blinded in one eye. Now, more than a quarter-century later, he is seeking a pardon from the state of Massachusetts.
He has carried the burden of a felony conviction for assault on his record ever since he was found guilty of the above crime. He spent only 45 days in jail. Is his age at the time a mitigating factor? Perhaps. But there's a little-known fact buried in all of the rhetoric about his convictions that warrants a closer look at his request.
Mr. Wahlberg was also convicted of contempt of court. Why? He used racial epithets without provocation, referring to his victims as "slant-eyed g**ks" and worse. It turns out that a couple of years earlier he committed a series of attacks on African-American children. He threw rocks at them. He chased them. He hurled racial epithets at them. As a result he was ordered not to assault, intimidate or threaten anyone because of their national origin and/or their race. While he denies that race was involved in the 1988 incident, apparently the court didn't agree. The contempt conviction demonstrates that.
In 2006 while promoting the film "The Departed" Mr. Wahlberg was asked by ABC News if finding his victims, apologizing and making amends would be the right thing to do, he admitted it would but made it clear he hadn't done so. He said, "I did a lot of things that I regretted and I certainly paid for my mistakes. You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn't until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don't have a problem going to sleep at night. I feel good when I wake up in the morning."
Well, unless and until he takes the time to locate his victims and personally apologize, as well as properly compensating them for their injuries, he is NOT deserving of a pardon. It isn't enough to do good works. We all need to do good works. To earn a pardon for a violent crime, the first step must be an act of contrition. The fact that Mr. Wahlberg wants to work with at-risk youth doesn't absolve him of the need to first seek forgiveness.
Apologize to your victims, Mr. Wahlberg. We might not just give you a pardon, but forgive you for the Funky Bunch as well.
* * *
The idea of a civilian oversight committee to monitor the actions of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is a good one. It can't be like the group that oversees the Los Angeles Police Department for one simple reason. That body formally evaluates the performance of the Chief of Police while the County Sheriff's position is an elective office. The voters of the county are the people charged with evaluating the job the sheriff does.
Perhaps the problems that occurred during the tenure of former Sheriff Lee Baca could have been avoided or lessened had civilian oversight been in place during his tenure in office. Considering that the LASD is the fourth largest law enforcement agency in the U. S., one man who is responsible only to the voters is not a good thing. An oversight committee can't fire the new sheriff, who has an excellent record. But they could work with him to ensure that LASD carries out its duties without showing celebrity favoritism or violating the civil rights of inmates in the county's jails.
* * *
The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) correctly interpreted existing law in the case of Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v Busk, but it's a bad decision because the law is in dire need of changing.
The case involves employees of Amazon.com warehouses where orders are fulfilled by workers walking miles and miles each day. These employees must pass through a security screening, to prevent theft of products. Considering the turnover among the employees, this is a wise precaution being taken by Amazon and the staffing agency they use to get these tasks done. The issue is that these employees cannot leave without being screened and are sometimes forced to stand in line for nearly half-an-hour before being able to leave their workplace.
The Portal-to-Portal Act was passed by Congress to stop lawsuits under the Fair Labor Standards Act involving employees not being paid for walking to and from their workplace. That's fair. The workday begins and ends when you leave the place where you work, and you don't get paid to walk from the warehouse to the parking lot. However, when you're not able to leave because of something benefiting the employer rather than the employee, the employee should be compensated for being unable to depart.
Congress needs to change this law.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
I'm going to have to set some time aside to read the Senate's report on CIA torture. It's over six thousand pages. Seems fair, they reviewed six million CIA documents, give or take.
On a related note, torture usually yields nothing but unreliable information. People will start to say anything to relieve the pain. The Gestapo tortured prisoners in the basement of Prinz-Albrecht-Palais and some say that the wall behind where they were subjected to certain horrific torture methods looked unfinished because of the damage done by their fingers.
On another related note, former Vice-President Cheney says the Senate report is "full of shit" and considering that he's an expert on being full of shit, perhaps we should take his opinion with a gross of toilet paper rolls.
I wonder if Taylor Swift is disappointed she isn't in the Forbes list of Top Ten Paid Musicians for the most recent year. She finished #11 with "only" $64 million in earnings.
The video below defies description. Enjoy it.
Now that the date for David Letterman's finale on "The Late Show" has been announced, I wonder who will be the guests for that last episode.
Harvard Business School Associate Professor Ben Edelman may have trashed any chance he ever had of becoming a full professor, over a four dollar discrepancy on a restaurant bill. Will he admit in retrospect, this was a bad choice from a business standpoint?
I am in total agreement with Magic Johnson's sentiment that he hopes the Lakers don't win another game this season. Let's get the best chance at a lottery pick.
Why isn't there a single nomination for "Selma" from the SAG awards?
Sony screwed the pooch by not requiring stars in their films to promote them on social media in the contract with the actors. Kevin Hart's agent tried to exploit this and earn his client some extra money. Now that the emails calling Mr. Hart a whore have been leaked, he should pimp the film in social media. It's a win-win for him. He proves the studio execs to be assholes and if the film is more successful, it will only increase his asking price.
It is idiotic for Congress to allow derivative trading by banks, essentially gutting Dodd-Frank. It's asinine for them to cut funding for the IRS by over $300 million because Lois Lerner is a moron.
Being hit in the head by a dumbwaiter is a horrible way to die, but why was her head in the shaft of the thing to begin with?
Some things mix well. The film franchises "21 Jump Street" and "Men in Black" will probably not mix well.
I'm guessing Angelina Jolie doesn't give a damn about Scott Rudin's opinion of her.
There is something really wrong with the New Jersey law that doesn't require parents still married to foot the bill for their children to attend college, but mandates divorced parents must do so.
Why has the Associated Press been waiting for more than four years for data from the State Department about Hillary Clinton that it requested and is entitled to under the Freedom of Information Act?
* * *
December 9th in History:
480 – Odoacer, first King of Italy, occupies Dalmatia. He later establishes his political power with the co-operation of the Roman Senate.
536 – Gothic War: The Byzantine general Belisarius enters Rome unopposed; the Gothic garrison flee the capital.
730 – Battle of Marj Ardabil: The Khazars annihilate an Umayyad army and kill its commander, Al-Jarrah Ibn Abdallah Al-Hakami.
1425 – The Catholic University of Leuven is founded.
1531 – The Virgin of Guadalupe first appears to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, Mexico City.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: British troops lose the Battle of Great Bridge, and leave Virginia soon afterward.
1793 – New York City's first daily newspaper, the American Minerva, is established by Noah Webster.
1824 – Patriot forces led by General Antonio José de Sucre defeat a Royalist army in the Battle of Ayacucho, putting an end to the Peruvian War of Independence.
1835 – Texas Revolution: The Texian Army captures San Antonio, Texas.
1851 – The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal.
1856 – The Iranian city of Bushehr surrenders to occupying British forces.
1861 – American Civil War: The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War is established by the U.S. Congress.
1872 – In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first serving African-American governor of a U.S. state.
1875 – The Massachusetts Rifle Association, "America's Oldest Active Gun Club", is founded.
1888 – Statistician Herman Hollerith installs his computing device at the United States War Department.
1897 – Activist Marguerite Durand founds the feminist daily newspaper La Fronde in Paris.
1905 – In France, the law separating church and state is passed.
1911 – A mine explosion near Briceville, Tennessee, kills 84 miners despite rescue efforts led by the United States Bureau of Mines.
1917 – World War I: Field Marshal Allenby captures Jerusalem, Palestine.
1922 – Gabriel Narutowicz is elected the first president of Poland.
1931 – The Constituent Cortes approves a constitution which establishes the Second Spanish Republic.
1935 – Walter Liggett, American newspaper editor and muckraker, is killed in a gangland murder.
1935 – The Downtown Athletic Club Trophy, later renamed the Heisman Trophy, is awarded for the first time. The winner is halfback Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago.
1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanking – Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Asaka Yasuhiko launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanjing (Nanking).
1940 – World War II: Operation Compass – British and Indian troops under the command of Major-General Richard O'Connor attack Italian forces near Sidi Barrani in Egypt.
1941 – World War II: The Republic of China, Cuba, Guatemala, and the Philippine Commonwealth, declare war on Germany and Japan.
1941 – World War II: The American 19th Bombardment Group attacks Japanese ships off the coast of Vigan, Luzon.
1946 – The "Subsequent Nuremberg trials" begin with the "Doctors' trial", prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.
1946 – The Constituent Assembly of India meets for the first time to write the Constitution of India.
1950 – Cold War: Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
1953 – Red Scare: General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company.
1956 – Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 810, a Canadair North Star, crashes near Hope, British Columbia, Canada, killing all 62 people on board.
1958 – The John Birch Society is founded in the United States.
1960 – The first episode of Coronation Street, the world's longest-running television soap opera, is broadcast in the United Kingdom.
1961 – Tanganyika becomes independent from Britain.
1962 – The Petrified Forest National Park is established in Arizona.
1965 – Kecksburg UFO incident: A fireball is seen from Michigan to Pennsylvania; witnesses report something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh. In 2005 NASA admits that it examined the object.
1965 – A Charlie Brown Christmas, first in a series of Peanuts television specials, debuts on CBS.
1966 – Barbados joins the United Nations.
1968 – Douglas Engelbart gave what became known as "The Mother of All Demos", publicly debuting the computer mouse, hypertext, and the bit-mapped graphical user interface using the oN-Line System (NLS).
1969 – U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers proposes his plan for a ceasefire in the War of Attrition; Egypt and Jordan accept it over the objections of the PLO, which leads to civil war in Jordan in September 1970.
1971 – The United Arab Emirates join the United Nations.
1971 – Indo-Pakistani War: The Indian Air Force executes an airdrop of Indian Army units, bypassing Pakistani defences.
1973 – British and Irish authorities sign the Sunningdale Agreement in an attempt to establish a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive and a cross-border Council of Ireland.
1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first and to date only human disease driven to extinction.
1987 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: The First Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
1988 – The Michael Hughes Bridge in Sligo, Ireland, is officially opened.
2003 – A blast in the center of Moscow kills six people and wounds several more.
2008 – The Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is arrested by federal officials for crimes including attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama's election to the Presidency.
2013 – At least seven are dead and 63 are injured following a train accident near Bintaro, Indonesia.
Famous Folk Born on December 9th:
John Milton
Fritz Haber
Harry Miller
Clarence Birdseye
Joseph Pilates
Hermoine Gingold
Emmett Kelly
Dalton Trumbo
Admiral Grace Hopper
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Broderick Crawford
Tip O'Neill
Kirk Douglas
William Lipscomb
Redd Foxx
Dina Merrill
Lorenzo C. Wright
Dick Van Patten
John Cassavettes
Buck Henry
Morton Downey, Jr.
Judi Dench
Deacon Jones
Beau Bridges
Dick Butkus
Neil Innes
Michael Nouri
Tom Daschle
Joan Armatrading
Michael Dorn
World B. Free
John Malkovich
Otis Birdsong
Donny Osmond
Juan Samuel
Felicity Huffman
Shane Scott
Kurt Angle
Allison Smith
Kara DioGuardi
Jesse Metcalfe
Simon Helberg
He has carried the burden of a felony conviction for assault on his record ever since he was found guilty of the above crime. He spent only 45 days in jail. Is his age at the time a mitigating factor? Perhaps. But there's a little-known fact buried in all of the rhetoric about his convictions that warrants a closer look at his request.
Mr. Wahlberg was also convicted of contempt of court. Why? He used racial epithets without provocation, referring to his victims as "slant-eyed g**ks" and worse. It turns out that a couple of years earlier he committed a series of attacks on African-American children. He threw rocks at them. He chased them. He hurled racial epithets at them. As a result he was ordered not to assault, intimidate or threaten anyone because of their national origin and/or their race. While he denies that race was involved in the 1988 incident, apparently the court didn't agree. The contempt conviction demonstrates that.
In 2006 while promoting the film "The Departed" Mr. Wahlberg was asked by ABC News if finding his victims, apologizing and making amends would be the right thing to do, he admitted it would but made it clear he hadn't done so. He said, "I did a lot of things that I regretted and I certainly paid for my mistakes. You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn't until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don't have a problem going to sleep at night. I feel good when I wake up in the morning."
Well, unless and until he takes the time to locate his victims and personally apologize, as well as properly compensating them for their injuries, he is NOT deserving of a pardon. It isn't enough to do good works. We all need to do good works. To earn a pardon for a violent crime, the first step must be an act of contrition. The fact that Mr. Wahlberg wants to work with at-risk youth doesn't absolve him of the need to first seek forgiveness.
Apologize to your victims, Mr. Wahlberg. We might not just give you a pardon, but forgive you for the Funky Bunch as well.
* * *
The idea of a civilian oversight committee to monitor the actions of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is a good one. It can't be like the group that oversees the Los Angeles Police Department for one simple reason. That body formally evaluates the performance of the Chief of Police while the County Sheriff's position is an elective office. The voters of the county are the people charged with evaluating the job the sheriff does.
Perhaps the problems that occurred during the tenure of former Sheriff Lee Baca could have been avoided or lessened had civilian oversight been in place during his tenure in office. Considering that the LASD is the fourth largest law enforcement agency in the U. S., one man who is responsible only to the voters is not a good thing. An oversight committee can't fire the new sheriff, who has an excellent record. But they could work with him to ensure that LASD carries out its duties without showing celebrity favoritism or violating the civil rights of inmates in the county's jails.
* * *
The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) correctly interpreted existing law in the case of Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v Busk, but it's a bad decision because the law is in dire need of changing.
The case involves employees of Amazon.com warehouses where orders are fulfilled by workers walking miles and miles each day. These employees must pass through a security screening, to prevent theft of products. Considering the turnover among the employees, this is a wise precaution being taken by Amazon and the staffing agency they use to get these tasks done. The issue is that these employees cannot leave without being screened and are sometimes forced to stand in line for nearly half-an-hour before being able to leave their workplace.
The Portal-to-Portal Act was passed by Congress to stop lawsuits under the Fair Labor Standards Act involving employees not being paid for walking to and from their workplace. That's fair. The workday begins and ends when you leave the place where you work, and you don't get paid to walk from the warehouse to the parking lot. However, when you're not able to leave because of something benefiting the employer rather than the employee, the employee should be compensated for being unable to depart.
Congress needs to change this law.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
I'm going to have to set some time aside to read the Senate's report on CIA torture. It's over six thousand pages. Seems fair, they reviewed six million CIA documents, give or take.
On a related note, torture usually yields nothing but unreliable information. People will start to say anything to relieve the pain. The Gestapo tortured prisoners in the basement of Prinz-Albrecht-Palais and some say that the wall behind where they were subjected to certain horrific torture methods looked unfinished because of the damage done by their fingers.
On another related note, former Vice-President Cheney says the Senate report is "full of shit" and considering that he's an expert on being full of shit, perhaps we should take his opinion with a gross of toilet paper rolls.
I wonder if Taylor Swift is disappointed she isn't in the Forbes list of Top Ten Paid Musicians for the most recent year. She finished #11 with "only" $64 million in earnings.
The video below defies description. Enjoy it.
Now that the date for David Letterman's finale on "The Late Show" has been announced, I wonder who will be the guests for that last episode.
Harvard Business School Associate Professor Ben Edelman may have trashed any chance he ever had of becoming a full professor, over a four dollar discrepancy on a restaurant bill. Will he admit in retrospect, this was a bad choice from a business standpoint?
I am in total agreement with Magic Johnson's sentiment that he hopes the Lakers don't win another game this season. Let's get the best chance at a lottery pick.
Why isn't there a single nomination for "Selma" from the SAG awards?
Sony screwed the pooch by not requiring stars in their films to promote them on social media in the contract with the actors. Kevin Hart's agent tried to exploit this and earn his client some extra money. Now that the emails calling Mr. Hart a whore have been leaked, he should pimp the film in social media. It's a win-win for him. He proves the studio execs to be assholes and if the film is more successful, it will only increase his asking price.
It is idiotic for Congress to allow derivative trading by banks, essentially gutting Dodd-Frank. It's asinine for them to cut funding for the IRS by over $300 million because Lois Lerner is a moron.
Being hit in the head by a dumbwaiter is a horrible way to die, but why was her head in the shaft of the thing to begin with?
Some things mix well. The film franchises "21 Jump Street" and "Men in Black" will probably not mix well.
I'm guessing Angelina Jolie doesn't give a damn about Scott Rudin's opinion of her.
There is something really wrong with the New Jersey law that doesn't require parents still married to foot the bill for their children to attend college, but mandates divorced parents must do so.
Why has the Associated Press been waiting for more than four years for data from the State Department about Hillary Clinton that it requested and is entitled to under the Freedom of Information Act?
* * *
December 9th in History:
480 – Odoacer, first King of Italy, occupies Dalmatia. He later establishes his political power with the co-operation of the Roman Senate.
536 – Gothic War: The Byzantine general Belisarius enters Rome unopposed; the Gothic garrison flee the capital.
730 – Battle of Marj Ardabil: The Khazars annihilate an Umayyad army and kill its commander, Al-Jarrah Ibn Abdallah Al-Hakami.
1425 – The Catholic University of Leuven is founded.
1531 – The Virgin of Guadalupe first appears to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, Mexico City.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: British troops lose the Battle of Great Bridge, and leave Virginia soon afterward.
1793 – New York City's first daily newspaper, the American Minerva, is established by Noah Webster.
1824 – Patriot forces led by General Antonio José de Sucre defeat a Royalist army in the Battle of Ayacucho, putting an end to the Peruvian War of Independence.
1835 – Texas Revolution: The Texian Army captures San Antonio, Texas.
1851 – The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal.
1856 – The Iranian city of Bushehr surrenders to occupying British forces.
1861 – American Civil War: The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War is established by the U.S. Congress.
1872 – In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first serving African-American governor of a U.S. state.
1875 – The Massachusetts Rifle Association, "America's Oldest Active Gun Club", is founded.
1888 – Statistician Herman Hollerith installs his computing device at the United States War Department.
1897 – Activist Marguerite Durand founds the feminist daily newspaper La Fronde in Paris.
1905 – In France, the law separating church and state is passed.
1911 – A mine explosion near Briceville, Tennessee, kills 84 miners despite rescue efforts led by the United States Bureau of Mines.
1917 – World War I: Field Marshal Allenby captures Jerusalem, Palestine.
1922 – Gabriel Narutowicz is elected the first president of Poland.
1931 – The Constituent Cortes approves a constitution which establishes the Second Spanish Republic.
1935 – Walter Liggett, American newspaper editor and muckraker, is killed in a gangland murder.
1935 – The Downtown Athletic Club Trophy, later renamed the Heisman Trophy, is awarded for the first time. The winner is halfback Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago.
1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanking – Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Asaka Yasuhiko launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanjing (Nanking).
1940 – World War II: Operation Compass – British and Indian troops under the command of Major-General Richard O'Connor attack Italian forces near Sidi Barrani in Egypt.
1941 – World War II: The Republic of China, Cuba, Guatemala, and the Philippine Commonwealth, declare war on Germany and Japan.
1941 – World War II: The American 19th Bombardment Group attacks Japanese ships off the coast of Vigan, Luzon.
1946 – The "Subsequent Nuremberg trials" begin with the "Doctors' trial", prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.
1946 – The Constituent Assembly of India meets for the first time to write the Constitution of India.
1950 – Cold War: Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
1953 – Red Scare: General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company.
1956 – Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 810, a Canadair North Star, crashes near Hope, British Columbia, Canada, killing all 62 people on board.
1958 – The John Birch Society is founded in the United States.
1960 – The first episode of Coronation Street, the world's longest-running television soap opera, is broadcast in the United Kingdom.
1961 – Tanganyika becomes independent from Britain.
1962 – The Petrified Forest National Park is established in Arizona.
1965 – Kecksburg UFO incident: A fireball is seen from Michigan to Pennsylvania; witnesses report something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh. In 2005 NASA admits that it examined the object.
1965 – A Charlie Brown Christmas, first in a series of Peanuts television specials, debuts on CBS.
1966 – Barbados joins the United Nations.
1968 – Douglas Engelbart gave what became known as "The Mother of All Demos", publicly debuting the computer mouse, hypertext, and the bit-mapped graphical user interface using the oN-Line System (NLS).
1969 – U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers proposes his plan for a ceasefire in the War of Attrition; Egypt and Jordan accept it over the objections of the PLO, which leads to civil war in Jordan in September 1970.
1971 – The United Arab Emirates join the United Nations.
1971 – Indo-Pakistani War: The Indian Air Force executes an airdrop of Indian Army units, bypassing Pakistani defences.
1973 – British and Irish authorities sign the Sunningdale Agreement in an attempt to establish a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive and a cross-border Council of Ireland.
1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first and to date only human disease driven to extinction.
1987 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: The First Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
1988 – The Michael Hughes Bridge in Sligo, Ireland, is officially opened.
2003 – A blast in the center of Moscow kills six people and wounds several more.
2008 – The Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is arrested by federal officials for crimes including attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama's election to the Presidency.
2013 – At least seven are dead and 63 are injured following a train accident near Bintaro, Indonesia.
Famous Folk Born on December 9th:
John Milton
Fritz Haber
Harry Miller
Clarence Birdseye
Joseph Pilates
Hermoine Gingold
Emmett Kelly
Dalton Trumbo
Admiral Grace Hopper
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Broderick Crawford
Tip O'Neill
Kirk Douglas
William Lipscomb
Redd Foxx
Dina Merrill
Lorenzo C. Wright
Dick Van Patten
John Cassavettes
Buck Henry
Morton Downey, Jr.
Judi Dench
Deacon Jones
Beau Bridges
Dick Butkus
Neil Innes
Michael Nouri
Tom Daschle
Joan Armatrading
Michael Dorn
World B. Free
John Malkovich
Otis Birdsong
Donny Osmond
Juan Samuel
Felicity Huffman
Shane Scott
Kurt Angle
Allison Smith
Kara DioGuardi
Jesse Metcalfe
Simon Helberg
posted by me at 3:26 PM
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