When a woman reports a rape, her body is a crime scene. She is typically asked to undress over a large sheet of white paper to collect hairs or fibers, and then her body is examined with an ultraviolet light, photographed and thoroughly swabbed for the rapist’s DNA.

It’s a grueling and invasive process that can last four to six hours and produces a “rape kit” — which, it turns out, often sits around for months or years, unopened and untested.

...

“If you’ve got stacks of physical evidence of a crime, and you’re not doing everything you can with the evidence, then you must be making a decision that this isn’t a very serious crime,” notes Polly Poskin, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

It’s what we might expect in Afghanistan, not in the United States.

Op-Ed Columnist - Is Rape Serious? - NYTimes.com

WEBB CITY, Mo. -- A man angry about the shut-off of his cable-television service and subsequent inability to convert his analog TV to pick up DTV signals shot his television set Wednesday afternoon, scaring his wife out of the house and holding off a SWAT team in a two-hour standoff.

That's nice, here's the video. Now the video is nice, and you'll want to take note of the flags flying from the front of the house. Why? Because this bonehead is his state Rep. That's right, Mr. "War of Northern Aggression."

It all makes so much sense now. Sometimes comedy is easy, sometimes all it takes is one extra connection...

DTV Transition Failure Leads Man to Shoot TV | dtv, television, service - Local News -

All you need to know is that the Republican/Sara/Palin base of evangelical support is rooting for war, death and killing as a longed for -- even prayed for -- conclusion to human existence. No kidding! Understand what I'm going to tell you here, and you'll understand what went so wrong with America with W. Bush and why we are the most dangerous country on earth. Shorthand: we have nukes and risk being run by kooks. And, until the election of 2008, an evangelical born-again kook was running our country.

Disclosure: I'm the son of one of the evangelical's foremost thinkers, the late Francis Schaeffer. And until I left the fold in the mid 1980s I was intimately involved with the Religious Right and have been (until quite recently) a life-long Republican. I knew Jerry Jenkins' and Tim LaHaye personally and both are followers of my father.

Is this when LaHaye calls for a fatwa to strike down the heretic?

Frank Schaeffer: Why Obama Must Not Work With Republicans

Elonka wrote:

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits may have hit a 26-year high, but there are still lots of jobs open, because no matter how grim the economic forecast, at least some workers will change jobs voluntarily or retire. "Companies may not be making expansionary or discretionary hires," says Marc Cenedella, founder of TheLadders.com a subscription service that lists only jobs that pay $100,000 and up. "But even in a downturn, there's still 20% to 25% natural turnover per year." In the six-figure category, he estimates that will mean 3.2 million hires a year instead of 4 million in a normal market.

Interesting statistics to put the current layoffs in perspective.

Actually no, all this does is cloud the issue. What it says in a very quiet roundabout way is 800,000 jobs in the $100K category are toast, but makes it look like "well gee, if you did a better job prettying up your resume..."

From talking to the people I know around St. Louis who have been laid off, in manufacturing, there are zero replacement jobs. From my IT friends there were 50 applicants for 2 jobs at Citi. They also said when the position starts in March not to worry about the parking situation there (currently a very full lot), the building is going from full customer support, money managers, financial planners, etc, to JUST supporting the computer hub. Virtually everyone else is out.

Turnover is one thing and happens most places. Cenedella is expecting 20% of the openings of the past to not exist. That is the one number in there worth something. The current economy is a completely different ballgame from anything I will wager just about any of us have seen in our lifetimes. Thinking this article adds to the picture, without a LOT more data, is this kind of perspective.

For Decius's response, I am very worried that this downturn will be just as bad if not worse than the dot bomb in IT. The vast majority of IT work is done to support other people using computer resources to do whatever work they do, from finance to scheduling garbage collection routes. Without them, what do the companies need the IT guys for?

RE: The Six-Figure-Job Hunt - TIME

All in all, the centrists’ insistence on comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted will, if reflected in the final bill, lead to substantially lower employment and substantially more suffering.

Nobel prize winning economist says, "Hey, you're screwing this up." You think it might, maybe, be a good idea to pay attention.

Op-Ed Columnist - The Destructive Center - NYTimes.com

It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.

As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."

Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.

As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galveston police officers who had been called to the area regarding three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black drug dealer.

Let's see, miss the target area by two blocks. Check. Go after a twelve year old black girl, not a 20 year old white one. Check. Go in with plainclothes guys who don't say who they are instead of uniform guys. Check. Arrest said twelve year old girl FROM HER GRADE SCHOOL three weeks later for "assaulting an officer." Check.

Way to go guys. The only way this could be worse is if someone had caught it all on video. Rodney King + a true version of Tawana Brawley = Holy Sheep Dip!

Houston - Hair Balls - Police Get The Wrong House In Galveston, Allegedly Assault 12-Year-Old Girl

The Los Angeles federal court jury rejected felony charges of accessing a computer without authorization to inflict emotional distress on young Megan Meier.

However, the jury found defendant Lori Drew guilty of three counts of the lesser offense of accessing a computer without authorization. Each count is punishable by up to one year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

She did it, she knew she did it, knew what she was doing, and a 13 year old is dead. I hope the judge sends her to prison.

Jury convicts mom of lesser charges in online hoax

Asked if her business made more than $250,000 a year, the cap under which Obama has proposed cutting taxes, she said it did. Told about Obama’s proposal, she answered, “I don’t give a shit. I will never vote for a black man.”

And this would be why the Democratic party went with the Civil Rights Act of 1965. It was the right thing to do and told bigots like this, they weren't welcome anymore.

Damn the Polls: McCain's Irreducibles Beg to Differ | The New York Observer

The ongoing financial meltdown is just the latest example of a disturbing trend that, to this adoptive American, threatens to put the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave on a par with Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Equatorial Guinea.

Ouch. No sparing the rod in this piece.

America the Banana Republic: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com

The Army claims the 5’1” African-American soldier from North County died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound with a rifle on July 19, 2005.

...

He said the pictures and documents from the incident proved that his daughter had been brutalized - raped, beaten, shot and set on fire.

That doesn't sound like suicide. Not even close.

Army murder cover-up