Sadly, this is a true story. The Smoking Gun reports “A 13-year-old boy was arrested Friday for using a permanent marker while in class at his Oklahoma City middle school, a violation of an obscure city ordinance.” The boy’s teacher signed the police complaint that caused the cops to arrest the boy and take him to the station and impound the marker.
Wall St. Journal: “The Federal Communications Commission’s new ‘net neutrality’ rules, passed on a partisan 3-2 vote . . . represent a huge win for a slick lobbying campaign run by liberal activist groups and foundations. The losers are likely to be consumers who will see innovation and investment chilled by regulations that treat the Internet like a public utility. There’s little evidence the public is demanding these rules . . . . Over 300 House and Senate members have signed a letter opposing FCC Internet regulation, and there will undoubtedly be even less support in the next Congress.”
The Root: “This 18-year-old special education student has been sitting behind bars since May 10 for something witnesses and videotape alleges he did not do. . . . Marks, who was not physically or verbally involved in the altercation, has been charged with obstructing an officer, resisting arrest, criminal threats and ‘attempted lynching.’ Initially the Los Angeles County District Attorney offered him seven years in prison and then another plea deal of 32 months. Marks, 18, has been sitting in Peter Pitchess Detention Center, a tough adult jail, since May 10. Bail was set at $155,000, which his working-class parents can’t pay to free their son for Christmas.”
See the Los Angeles Times story called “Jeremy Marks “Attempted Lynching” Case.”
“On Dec. 2, Jeremy Marks, a Verdugo Hills High School special education student, was offered a new plea offer by the L.A. County District Attorney: If he pled guilty to charges of obstructing an officer, resisting arrest, criminal threats and “attempted lynching,” he’d serve only 32 months in prison. That actually was an improvement from the previous offer made to the young, black high schooler — seven years in prison. . . .The first thing to understand is that Jeremy Marks touched no one during his “attempted lynching” of LAUSD campus police officer Erin Robles. The second is that Marks’ weapon was the camera in his cell phone.”
For another story see “Jeremy Marks “Attempted Lynching” Case,” which starts “Black teen who filmed an LAUSD campus cop hitting a student faces bizarre charges and years in prison.”
If you want the best example ever of how the United States has gone from a country of freedom and limited government to a country that is a nanny state and government control of everything, here it is. The federal Highway Administration issued a regulation that requires every street sign in the United States to contain upper and lower case letters. The bureaucrats say it will make it easier for people to read street signs while driving. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a problem reading street signs because the letters were in all capital letters. Whenever a street sign is hard to read it is because the sign is too small, not because of the lack of lowercase letters.
All the street signs in Phoenix, Arizona, are entirely in all capital letters. Big brother says no, no, no. The signs must have upper and lower case letters. For example, CAMELBACK RD is now a violation of federal law. The street sign must read Camelback Rd. The cost to replace all the street signs in Phoenix – over $11.5 million the city does not have to replace 320,000 signs. The cost for all the cities in the U.S. to comply must be in the mega billions. As my beloved cartoon character Pogo said many years ago, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Reason.com: “It has never been easier—or more dangerous—to record the police. Michael Allison, a 41-year-old backyard mechanic from southeastern Illinois, faces up to 75 years in prison for an act most people don’t realize is a crime: recording public officials. . . . As citizens increase their scrutiny of law enforcement officials through technologies such as cell phones, miniature cameras, and devices that wirelessly connect to video-sharing sites such as YouTube and LiveLeak, the cops are increasingly fighting back with force and even jail time—and not just in Illinois. Police across the country are using decades-old wiretapping statutes that did not anticipate iPhones or Droids, combined with broadly written laws against obstructing or interfering with law enforcement, to arrest people who point microphones or video cameras at them.”