It couldn’t happen here?

Published 7:28 am Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Police in Fort Lee, N.J., busted a party around 1:30 a.m. recently and nabbed several teens for underage drinking. They locked them in a police van and drove them back to the jail, where they promptly forgot about them. The teens were found only after a passerby heard them shouting and pounding on the van. They had spent 14 hours in temperatures that never got above freezing with no food, no water and no bathroom.

Eight years ago, officials in Pico Rivera, Calif., decided that a bookstore would boost economic development and make the city more attractive to families. So they made a deal with the Borders chain and spent $1.6 million to bring a store to town and help pay its rent. Of course, Borders has gone bankrupt and that store is about to close. But the landlord says the city is still liable for the remaining 72 months on the lease, some $33,932 a month. The city says it is only responsible for the subsidy it had been paying to Borders, about $10,833 a month.

So what are our new allies in Libya up to now that they have the support of American aircraft? Human Rights Watch and the Los Angeles Times report they are engaging in a little ethnic cleansing. The rebels have driven thousands of black Libyans and immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa out of the areas they control.

Job performance is supposed to play a part in whether federal employees get a raise each year. But just 737 of the nation’s more than 1.2 million federal workers, or 0.06 percent, were denied a raise because of poor performance in 2009, the latest year for which data are available.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled you don’t have to be a sex offender to be placed on the state’s sex offender registry. The ruling came in the case of a 17-year-old boy who forced another 17-year-old boy to go with him to help collect a debt. That got the first 17-year-old convicted of false imprisonment of a minor, and the court said even though there was nothing sexual about the crime he could still be placed on the sex offender registry.

Oh, wait a minute, that one could happen here. The Georgia Supreme Court has also ruled that you don’t have to be a sex offender to be placed on the sex offender registry. Never mind.

Several states are considering laws that would require a prescription to buy medicines containing pseudoephedrine that are currently sold over the counter. Lawmakers say the laws are needed to help stop the spread of methamphetamine. But allergy sufferers and some pharmacists oppose the laws. “We can’t change lives just to stop these weirdo people,” said Joy Krieger, executive director of the St. Louis chapter of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Krieger obviously will never hold elected office.

Upshur County, Texas, Judge Dean Fowler, Sheriff Anthony Betterton and Precinct 3 Commissioner Lloyd Crabtree have been indicted for official repression and abuse of official capacity for their roles in removing a silent protester from a meeting of the county’s commissioners court. The commissioners had voted to not allow public comments in their meetings. In response, resident Jimmy Caughron started showing up at meetings with duct tape across his mouth. He was soon joined by several others. Fowler finally had Caughron removed from a meeting by a deputy.

Charles Oliver is a staff writer for The Daily Citizen. Got a suggestion for It Couldn’t Happen Here? Email it to him at charlesoliver@daltoncitizen.com.