It ain’t the religion, Sis. That’s a pretext. There’d be another reason people killed each other or treated each other badly. The problem isn’t religion so much. In a world of finite resources, it boils down to survival. If you believe in God, He/She doesn’t love any group of people, as a group, more than any other group. If you don’t–no group of people, as a group, is inherently more virtuous than the next. Religion and pedantry are the last refuge of weak minds.

“I have seen the enemy…and it is US!” -Pogo-

Click THE ABYSS 

(Thoughts Of A Dead Athiest)     Dante got it all wrong. Hell is a state of mind…the deteriorating climate notwithstanding. The feathered boa smacks a little too much of Thurston County’s Detective Roland Weiss, if a little brighter and more creative. Still…

Increasingly violent young Anarchist dilettantes are advocating attacking journalists while vandalizing property during street demonstrations. Their screeds can be found on numerous local area blogs dedicated to promoting destruction of property, threats, intimidation, and assault. The following article was posted on pugetsoundanarchists.org, a blog whose participants insist on speaking only to themselves…anonymously…preferring to ban/block opposing viewpoints. It’s a toss up as to whether journalists today are at greater risk from street elements (including the homeless), police ignorant of the laws they’re sworn to uphold, selective law enforcement, or those engaging in the politics of destruction–i.e. Anarchists. Comments will be interlaced as the particular blog site would otherwise censor such critical remarks.

Seattle Anarchists 5-1-12

Wed, 05/09/2012 – 9:49pm — Anonymous (of course)

By Fred Grimm, The Miami Herald, May. 16, 2006

Our Judiciary Has Divided Mental Disorders into Two Stark Categories: Ours and Theirs.

Judge John Sloop Clearly Suffers from a Mental Defect under the Heading of Ours.

Sloop has described a kind of self-diagnostic epiphany one night last year while watching a TV bit on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Good thing he was paying attention. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has become the bulwark of his argument that the Florida Supreme Court ought to let him keep his $131,000-a-year job.

The famously mean Seminole County judge told the Judicial Qualifications Commission that his latest fit of nastiness — tossing 11 people in jail after they had been directed to the wrong court — was due to his newfound mental disorder.

Sloop, 16 years on the bench, has previously been rebuked for waving a pistol around his courtroom, verbally abusing defendants and charging defendants $50 for each night they spend in jail. He had promised the Judicial Qualifications Commission in 2002 that he would cause no more problems.

A burst of ill temper on Dec. 3, 2004, got him in trouble again. He ordered the arrests of 11 defendants, all facing minor misdemeanor traffic charges, who missed their court dates. Sloop was told by deputies and two other judges that, in fact, the 11 had been directed to the wrong courtroom that morning. Sloop signed the arrest warrants anyway.

The 11 were led away in chains, strip-searched and tossed in jail for eight hours. Judge Sloop explained to the qualifications panel that he now knows it was that damned ADHD causing him to misbehave. ”I was struggling with an undiagnosed disorder,” he said at a hearing in March.

His deposition is laden with enough language of self-realization to land him a guest appearance on Oprah.

He now speaks as an ADHD survivor. He explains his long history of bad behavior as ”coping skill,” albeit one unappreciated by the 11 folks he tossed in jail.

Suffering from ADHD, said the judge (who has been transferred to civil court until the Supreme Court decides), has been “like living in a fog where you don’t feel quite in sync or connected.”

Poor Judge Sloop. Though one wonders how many of the 10,800 mentally ill inmates languishing in Florida’s jails might argue that they, too, have been living in a fog and not quite in sync. Except, of course, the judiciary files those disorders under theirs.

Sloop’s fellow Florida judges are notoriously unsympathetic to defendants whose mental disorders contribute to criminal transgressions.

Eddie Cryczan, known as Crazy Eddie, suffered a long history of mental illness. He was suicidal, and he told doctors about a fantasy to kill his mother.

Right after he was released from a mental hospital, he did just that. But when he was tried on first-degree murder charges in Broward County 10 years ago, his craziness was not crazy enough to sustain an insanity defense. He was convicted of first-degree murder (though the jury rejected his demand for a death sentence.)

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of Eric Michael Clark, a paranoid schizophrenic who believed his parents to be space aliens. His long history of mental illness didn’t matter at his murder trial.

Florida judges in particular pack prisons and jails with pathetic, lost, delusional, raving mad inmates, until county jails house three times more mentally ill inmates than the state’s psychiatric institutions.

Like Dana Clyde Jones, 44, who has been in a coma since he was beaten up in the Broward County Jail on Dec. 16.

The plight of Jones, whose mental illness became tantamount to a death sentence, and so many other truly disturbed prisoners makes a jarring contrast to the psychological defense offered by Judge John Sloop.

The Florida Supreme Court will decide whether a TV-inspired diagnosis of ADHD excuses a judge of downright meanness.

A new exhibit featuring Washington’s NW Tribes has just been completed in the Secretary of State’s office in the Legislative building of Olympia’s Capitol Campus. A ceremony conducted by members of local tribes celebrating the exhibit will begin @ 5:00pm on 4-24-12 under the rotunda and last about 45 minutes. Billy Frank is unable to attend, but his son will.

A recent visit to the Capitol Campus revealed spring was well under way; budget shortfalls had eliminated the traditional blooms of daffodils and tulips on the grounds. The view of Capitol Lake remains magnificent and there was ample parking now that the legislature had completed its business.

A reception will follow the opening ceremony. Visitors will be permitted to enter the exhibit area. Many native artifacts, artwork, and historical photos are on display. It has been expertly and tastefully executed. A biography documenting Billy Frank’s life is expected to be available in June from the Capitol gift shop.

Jacob Kyle Fisher was a young unwed father of a 2 year old boy in 2010 involved in a bitter dispute over custody/visitation with his even younger ex-gf. Both parties acted pro se in the evidentiary hearing that ensued after the young woman filed a Domestic Violence (DV) petition in a transparent bid to gain complete dominion over the father’s visitation/relationship with his son. (Thurston Family Court #10-2-30118-3)

The 2+ hour audio can be heard through the link below as an example of how Commissioner Indu Thomas conducts such hearings (often prompting and leading witnesses from the bench) along with such pro se errors as inadequate preparation, poor cross-examination techniques combined with a poorly articulated theory of the case, and obtuse closing arguments. A series of lectures on proper cross-examination techniques presented by one of the country’s leading public defense attorneys can be found by clicking HERE.

In the following video, Commissioner Indu Thomas ignores all the tells of a manipulative young mother set on dominating the unwed father’s relationship with his young son during this Custody Dispute masquerading as a Domestic Violence Hearing in Thurston #10-2-30118-3:

The mother can be heard (near the end) objecting in the audio to the following pictures.

A being of vast ability and unlimited potential–with a brain capable of complex and soaring self reflection…legs made to dance and run…fingers nimble enough to weave a basket, play a violin, caress a face–if nature teaches us anything, it is that life is meant to work…and that like every living thing, our purpose is to thrive. And yet, for the majority of people on the planet, life is not about thriving. It’s about surviving…just trying to hang on. Is this really the best we can do? Did the universe labor for nearly 14 billion years only to bring forth a species that would end up as an enemy to life itself…and its own home?

THRIVE is a stunning, lyrically composed video addressing this issue:

ps: Within memory, there was a time when the sky seen in the background would have been blue. The haze you see is a direct result of industrial and vehicular pollution.

Has it been that Long? When did I grow old? It seems like only yesterday when this primeval lullaby rocked me to sleep in my youth…a condition, I might add, wasted on the young.

Much older than man, these sounds may not survive him. Mason County is among the least healthy in the State–and the frogs have noticed. Nature’s aquatic canaries are displaying birth defects and skin abnormalities given they breathe through it. Treasure this chorus of bells and amphibians because when they’re gone, we’ll have only our recordings to remember them by. Rachael Carson was right–our sins will echo in a silent spring.

Click HERE and HERE to hear the 2012 Skokomish Spring amphitheater.

It’s been said a man who represents himself has a fool for a client. Attorneys are understandably fond of this sentiment. But statistics reveal a higher percentage of success by pro se litigants than those represented by attorneys. Why? The answer or what to make of it isn’t clear, but the questions this raises are many and disturbing when considered in the context of due process or a ‘fair trial’.

Sure…It’s frightening to stand before a judge alone with only your own wits to protect you. It’s like being told you have cancer. But if the diagnosing doctor offered you a pill–a very expensive one with NO guarantees–to ‘cure’ your condition AND after a bit of research you found a LOWER survival rate in those who took it–WOULD YOU BUY THE PILL?? That’s right! As terrifying as cancer may be, having a lawyer (at least statistically) looks to be worse than having NO lawyer at all.

STAMFORD — Cristy Cacciotti-Fortunato doesn’t like to bring her 2-month-old son, Jason, to the courthouse. This past Wednesday, however, the 33-year-old mother bundled her infant son in a stroller and took him to what has become almost a full-time job — representing herself in a three-year-long divorce case.

She balanced a stack of documents on the stroller, the top sheets marked up with red ink. A civil courthouse clerk had found several errors on the forms and Cacciotti-Fortunato had to print out blank documents to make the corrections before trying to file them again. Cacciotti-Fortunato mostly uses the Internet to navigate the legal system and identify the next steps in her case. The work takes time. It forces her to make weekly trips to the courthouse, either to wait for a hearing or use the courthouse’s law library.

“Anything on the Internet is easy — it’s just how to fill forms out,” Cacciotti-Fortunato said. “As you can tell, they’re not really that user-friendly.”

She tried to hire a lawyer at first. Most asked for $5,000 to $10,000 retainers to handle her divorce, and more than twice as much to take the case to trial, Cacciotti-Fortunato said. That made the decision to go it alone easier.

Cacciotti-Fortunato, though, is not alone. She is among tens of thousands of self-represented litigants flooding the state’s civil courts as they try to resolve their own divorce or fight to keep their homes from bank foreclosures. According to statistics provided by the state Judicial Branch, about 29,650 self-represented litigants filed legal actions in family court during the 2010-11 fiscal year. That amounted to 84.9 percent of the total number of family cases filed that year, or more than four of every five cases in family court.

In property cases, such as foreclosures and evictions, 38 percent of all cases featured at least one self-represented party during the 2011 fiscal year. The national housing crisis factored into the sharp rise of self-represented litigants in property cases, which peaked during the 2010 fiscal year at 41-percent of the 27,486 property cases statewide.

“The numbers really do tell a story, and not a good one,” said Krista Hess, the manager of the Judicial Branch’s Court Service Centers.

A question of access

This past April, the state Judicial Branch formed the Access to Justice Commission to study ways to deal with the recession’s effects on the state’s court system. The chairman of the commission, Judge Raymond R. Norko, said the boom in self-representation applies pressures on the court system. It slows down dockets. It forces judges to sometimes hear cases where one side has an experienced trial attorney and the other a self-represented party. It becomes difficult to deal with those cases fairly, Norko said.

The courts have always seen self-represented parties, but the recent increase is overwhelming, he said.

“Those stressors get multiplied through the whole system,” Norko said. “You can see the effect without having to sit in a courtroom.”

Norko said the situation requires the judicial system to educate the public and increase the amount of information available for self-represented litigants. That includes proposed measures to increase access and transparency, such as supplying hearing aids and handicap accessible-software in courthouses, as one example. Some measures as simple as creating updated brochures for self-represented litigants.

The Access to Justice Commission is also discussing a wide-reaching method to alleviate the burden of self-representation on both the courts and the parties themselves. Proponents of “limited scope-representation,” which allows an attorney to handle only certain portions of a civil case the same way a criminal lawyer can only argue for bond reduction, say the practice better prepares pro se parties and allows attorneys to handle the more complicated tasks, such as arguing before a judge during a hearing. It allows low-income parties to hire attorneys at a lower rate than having them oversee an entire case.

In order to allow attorneys to handle limited portions of civil cases, the Judicial Branch would amend a section of the Practice Book that dictates rules and regulations for the state’s lawyers. Norko said more than 40 states allow attorneys to practice some type of limited scope representation.

“We’re not exactly in the vanguard,” Norko said.

Stephen Conover, a Stamford attorney who chairs a task force studying limited scope representation for the Connecticut Bar Association, said he hasn’t formed an opinion about the practice yet. He said the proponents of adopting limited scope representation seem to have embraced the favorable parts of other state’s programs while casting aside potentially concerning ones. The legal community has mixed feelings about the practice, Conover said.

“There are some lawyers who don’t even like the concept, and some lawyers who think the concept is well overdue,” Conover said.

Limited scope representation, however, cuts down on the cost of legal representation, and most educated litigants can handle simple legal tasks on their own. Skeptics, however, compare the practice to a doctor receiving instructions to only inspect one organ while ignoring others, he said.

“Some say it demeans the profession,” Conover said.

Pro bono work jeopardized

To make matters worse for state residents mounting their own defense in foreclosure cases or trying to escape an abusive relationship, the funding that went to legal aid organizations began to dry up just as the numbers of self-represented litigants peaked.

The housing crisis also affected the ability of the state’s legal community to offer volunteer work for low-income parties. According to the Access for Justice Commission, more than two-thirds of the funds that supported lawyers in pro bono civil cases came from revenue generated by Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts, which collect interest revenue from special escrow accounts. The housing crisis caused an 80-percent decrease in those funds, and the state responded by increasing court fees in order to raise $9 million for legal aid service providers in 2010.

The funding gap left organizations such as Connecticut Legal Services, a non-profit that provides legal counseling and assistance to low-income parties in civil cases throughout the state, scrambling to keep up with the influx of do-it-yourself litigants.

“We’re swamped with people who want a lawyer and people who want advice on their case,” said Steve Eppler-Epstein, the executive director of Connecticut Legal Services. “It’s a crisis.”

The state branched out on its own to assist self-represented parties. Hess, who also serves on the state’s Access to Justice Commission, helped form a volunteer attorney program in 2010 for self-represented litigants in Waterbury and Hartford, eventually expanding it to Bridgeport and New Haven. In 2008, the state created the foreclosure mediation program and appointed neutral officers to eventually resolve more than 8,300 mortgage disputes between cash-strapped homeowners and their banks.

“The mediation program has helped to level the playing field a bit, but I think you’re always better having representation,” Hess said. “You’re emotional. You’re losing your house. Other than losing your kids, I don’t see anything more emotional than that.”

According to Judicial Branch statistics, the volume of new property cases decreased by more than 10,000 cases in the past year, a good sign that the worst of the foreclosure crisis may be ending. Norko said the numbers of self-represented clients should rise and fall along with economic measures.

“If the economy gets better it will lessen,” Norko said. “It’s easier for percentages to go up than for them to go down based on the economy.”

For every number, a personal struggle

For Cacciotti-Fortunato, the date of April 26 looms large. A judge set a hearing in a contempt motion against her on that date, which means Cacciotti-Fortunato must appear before the court. Her ex-husband is also representing himself.

Their divorce became final this past April. Now Cacciotti-Fortunato is fighting for joint custody of her 8-year-old son, who was taken from her earlier this month after her ex-husband filed a post-judgment motion accusing Cacciotti-Fortunato of being in contempt of their divorce agreement. Her fiance has a past felony conviction, and her divorce agreement prohibited her son from living with convicted felons. A judge ordered that Cacciotti-Fortunato’s son live with his father until she stopped living with a convicted felon.

This convicted felon is also the father of Cacciotti-Fortunato’s infant son. In addition to handling post-judgment issues within her own divorce case, Cacciotti-Fortunato is working with her 34-year-old fiance, Anthony Russo, to help get his criminal record expunged of a years-old conviction for violating a protective order.

“She’s actually been doing everything,” Russo said.

The ongoing legal drama has been draining, Cacciotti-Fortunato said.

“I know I am not a perfect mother, however, I do my best,” Cacciotti-Fortunato said in an e-mail. “But when you are always being bad-mouthed or belittled in many other situations … it takes a toll out on anyone.”

Whoever said ‘drama queens’ come in only one sex. Here’s a story about a ‘drama king’ to rival Sara Dotson’s ill-fated attempt to invoke histrionics in a bid to punish a good Samaritan in Thurston County for remonstrating over her denial of accommodation to a disabled young mother: (Senator Roach–don’t feel like the odd one out. The soap opera doesn’t end at the Capitol steps–it’s alive and well in the Thurston County Courthouse cesspool and its prosecutor’s office.)

HOOVER’S HOAX

A Senate Republican senior attorney is seeking a $1.75 million settlement from the state, saying a hostile work environment has been created by allowing a controversial senator back into the GOP caucus and restoring her access to staff in exchange for a vital budget vote.

In a document obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, an attorney for Republican Senate Counsel Mike Hoover says that Hoover felt pressured to quit so that the caucus “could more easily make a trade with” Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn.

“Mr. Hoover understandably has no faith that the caucus can or will take any steps to protect him or other staff from Senator Roach’s behavior in the future,” attorney Daniel Johnson writes.

Hoover has not yet filed a lawsuit, and Johnson wrote that the purpose of the demand letter was to start negotiations “to settle those claims as amicably as possible.”

While the claims are under review, Johnson wrote, Hoover would like to go on leave from his job “to avoid any awkwardness or tension during this time.”

Hoover, who was in the Senate chamber Wednesday afternoon, declined comment, saying he wanted to consult with his attorney and officials in the Legislature.

“I honestly don’t know what to do here,” he said.

Roach was banned from the Republican caucus two years ago after an investigation concluded that she had mistreated staff. GOP leaders wrote in a letter to her that they had concluded that she should be physically separated from other members and staff.

They implemented policies barring Roach from the caucus room and deemed her ineligible to participate in caucus votes. The letter did say the policies could be re-evaluated in one year with the mutual agreement of the caucus and Roach.

While Roach had received prior reprimands for her interactions with staff, the January 2010 punishment followed numerous incidents with Hoover, culminating with an “unusually vicious attack” in 2009, according to the 15-page document sent Monday to Tom Hoemann, the secretary of the Senate. In that incident, the document says, Roach yelled at Hoover during a meeting with the rest of the caucus.

“Some fled the room or put their hands over their ears to muffle the screaming; others felt helpless, embarrassed and physically ill from watching,” the document said. “One person said it was like watching a car that “kept backing up over the victim again and again.”

The document says that Roach has targeted Hoover since 2003, and that during that first year she “regularly yelled at him, demanded that he swear loyalty to her, and threatened to have him fired if he crossed her.”

Roach wouldn’t comment Wednesday, saying she was not aware of the letter. However, she insisted that her budget vote wasn’t part of the deal for her to return to caucus and regain access to staff.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “No one ever asked for my vote.”

Johnson, Hoover’s attorney, writes that all of the restrictions on her were lifted “solely for political reasons.”

Democrats hold majorities in both the House and the Senate, but last month, Republicans established a philosophical majority in the Senate on March 2 after three Democrats stood with them on a GOP-crafted budget plan that then passed the Senate but stalled in the House. Roach also voted with them. The House passed an alternate plan agreed to by majority Democrats in the House and Senate. Lawmakers are nearing the end of a 30-day special session as they continue to try to negotiate a deal on the budget.

Republican Senate leadership declined to comment on the details of the Hoover dispute, calling it a personnel matter.

Roach was allowed back into the caucus with limited privileges to join in the budget vote, said Sen. Linda Evans Parlette, R-Wenatchee, who said she is filling in as minority leader while Sen. Mike Hewitt recovers from recent surgery.

Since Roach was reinstated back to the caucus, Johnson writes, “several” caucus members have asked Hoover to agree with what they had done.

“Mr. Hoover feels pressured to make reassuring statements that are false and not at all representative of his true feelings,” the letter states.

Senate secretary Hoemann said Wednesday that the sanctions against Roach interacting with staff, as set by the Senate Facilities and Operations Committee, had not, in fact, been lifted.

However, in the demand letter, Hoover’s attorney wrote that Roach “clearly understood that all sanctions against her have been lifted and staff restored” and noted that she wanted a public information officer assigned to her.

Johnson writes that Hoover’s physical and emotional health has been impacted by the decision to restore Roach to the caucus, saying that he has suffered headaches, stomach and heart problems, sleep disturbances and stress nightmares.

After hearing of the Senate Republican’s decision on Roach on March 2, he believed he was having a heart attack and was taken to the hospital by Senate security.

“The caucus’ lifting of all sanctions against Senator Roach, without requiring her to meet the express conditions the Senate had placed on lifting them, dispelled Mr. Hoover’s illusions that the abuse and harassment he has endured would ever really stop,” Johnson wrote.

The letter sent Monday includes two documents, including an invitation that was sent for Roach to return to the caucus Feb. 29, and a March 2 document saying that the caucus had voted to remove all sanctions against her.

Parlette said Wednesday that the second letter was not meant to imply that Roach had regained staff privileges and that it was only sent at Roach’s request.