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Darts & Laurels
Just when you thought Christopher Lee couldn’t get any more awesome, he did. The actor, best known these days for his roles as Saruman in “The Lord of the Rings” and Count Dooku in “Star Wars,” recently turned 91. What’s cool about that? He released a metal album on the same day. For that, we give a flaming LAUREL to the coolest grandpa you wish you had.
Officers of the Miami-Dade Police Department got their feelings hurt when 14-year old Tremaine McMillian gave them “dehumanizing stares.” Their response was to slam the teen to the ground, choke him and arrest him. McMillian said he was bottle feeding his 6-week-old puppy at the time of the arrest. Was the teen being as amicable as he could to cops before the arrest took place? Probably not, but does that justify the use of force? The puppy was also hurt. Miami-Dade Police Department gets a DART for supporting armed thugs.
The American Civil Liberties Union just released a report entitled “The War on Marijuana in Black and White.” The report found that in 2010, there was one marijuana arrest every 37 seconds. Altogether, the states spent more than $3.6 billion on enforcing marijuana possession laws the same year. The report, focusing on racial disparities, also found that on average a black person is “3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white person, even though Blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates.” For continuing to push against the madness that is the drug war, and specifically the war on marijuana, we give the ACLU a LAUREL in the shape of a liberty torch.
Unfortunately, not everyone holds the torch of liberty so high. When that happens, we have to make darts in the same shape. In this case, Judge Edith H. Jones of the Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals has been accused of violating the code of conduct for judges. According to the formal complaint, Jones said “racial groups like African-Americans and Hispanics are predisposed to crime.” The comments are alleged to have been made in a speech at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in February. She is also accused of saying “a killer is only likely to make peace with God and the victim’s family in that moment when the killer faces imminent execution, recognizing that he or she is about to face God’s judgment.” For saying all kinds of strange things, Justice Jones gets a not-in-my-America DART.
The up-and-coming asteroid mining company Planetary Resources launched a Kickstarter campaign called “ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone.” The telescope is a symbol of the public’s interest in funding the exploration of outer space. In addition to the telescope, Planetary Resources will be creating a public interface as well as funding an educational curriculum for students. The project is backed by Bill Nye the Science Guy, a couple of “Star Trek” actors and other big names. We give a our final LAUREL of the week to Planetary Resources for answering the call of a public that is hungry to learn more about the cosmos.
