Still crazy after all these years

… Shocking allegations by Cohen Prediction:  The criminal charges against former Athletic Director  Tim Curley and former VP Gary Shultz in the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State are going to be tossed out because of serious legal problems about their misrepresentation by Cynthia Baldwin, the former general counsel for Penn State.  Curley, Shultz, and former president Graham Spanier had charges of obstruction of justice, endangering the welfare of children and conspiracy continued to court today after a hearing in front of a district magistrate in Harrisburg. That was not a surprise.  However, former Pa. assistant attorney general Walter Cohen, who was covering the trial for PennLive in Harrisburg, made some blunt and perhaps shocking statements about the tenuousness of the prosecution's case against them, all because of Baldwin.  Cohen said that the "heavy lifting" for the prosecution will begin now with pretrial hearings. "A...

                                                                               Daniels is on the hot seat early On a fall day in 1970, I sat in a political science class on the University Park campus at Penn State. The professor's name was Larry Spence, who had just been hired at Penn State after earning his Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkley earlier in the year. Imagine that! A Berkley man, center of radical activity in the U.S. During the Sixties, was hired in the Poli Sci department at staid, button-down collar conservative Penn State. That was a major sea-change -- and he was a fabulous professor. What I will never forget is a lecture that he gave early in the semester. He told of a visit earlier that year to Monticello in Charlottesville, Va., which was the h...

Now! My memory of the cancellation of America in the 1980 Olympics games in Moscow still rankles me 33 years later. President Jimmy Carter announced the boycott to the games as a protest to the Soviet Union activities in Afghanistan.  Why should a country ever allow its Olympic athletes to become embroiled in political decisions? These athletes train for most of their lives for an opportunity to participate in the games under the flag of the United States of America.  Carter made a horrible decision then, and it remains one today. He tried to say that the situation in 1980 was worse than in 1936. President Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed the Olympians to participate in Berlin despite the American opposition to German dictator Adolph Hitler and his Nazi views.  In a meeting at the White House in March 1980, Carter said, " The highest commitment that I have in my official capacity as President is to preserve the security of the United States of America and to ...

                                                  and her name is Juror B37 (7/17/13 I have an update at the bottom) Yes, I did not follow the Trayvon Martin trial. However, I did follow the jury during and after the verdict was announced. I was somewhat surprised that a jury would convict an unarmed boy who was minding his own business until being accosted by an armed white guy.  For further evidence about this analysis, I refer you to a great legal mind: John Oliver <http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/16/john-oliver-highlights-blatant-racial-double-standard-in-floridas-self-defense-laws-2/>. Still, that is the way the system works, and if this had been two white guys or two black guys, the live one would be preparing some serious time in the penal system of Florida. Enter juror B37.  First, I really believe that members of juries ...

Hello again Vladimir, I just took a look at who is reading this blog and where those fans live. I wrote about this about four weeks ago, and the numbers from your area are increasing. These number of pageviews are interesting. The United States again leads the list with 58 percent, which is to be expected. However, Russia is second with 40. What I am wondering is whether this is truly your KGB guys who are reading 40 percent of my blogs. Really, what would a Russian want to look at on this blog? These topics are not exactly those of an international nature. I talk about the Zimmerman trial, which I did not watch, but many did. Then our boring buffoon Gov. Corbett is next, then the crazy soccer fans in Brazil, and a little about global warming. Then I write about the U.S. Civil War.  Finally, I write about whether the Washington Redskins football team should change its name.  Honestly, I find little that your KGB guys would like. Not exactly a fascinating life here ...

if you watched the Zimmerman trial The innocent often go to prison I confess that I never pay attention to these sensational trials in America. For instance, I never watched a second of the O.J. Simpson trial that fascinated America in 1995, nor have I watched a second on this Zimmerman trial. My brother, a well-educated man, watched every possible second of that O.J.  coverage. He could tell me every one of Marcia Clark's mistakes as prosecutor.  I would just laugh and tell him that I already knew that O.J. was guilty. How? "Once O.J. started running away from police in his white Bronco, I knew. Would an innocent man go through such a stunt?" Of course, even though I knew that O.J. was guilty, he was acquitted by a jury. Part of that had to do with his superb legal team, and part of it had to do with the jury being all-black. Race does matter on juries, which is why the lawyers attempt to be selective in picking one for a capital murder case. ...

An egregious waste of taxpayer money When Tom Corbett was in his first year as governor in 2011, his first budget called for $1.2 in cuts in public-school funding. He said that the state did not have the money to continue funding at the same levels that were provided in previous years.  Everyone must share the pain, he said. Three years later, Corbett is running scared. He has taken a look at his approval ratings, and while they are not yet in George W. Bush territory, his re-election is looking iffy. A June poll by a Republican firm showed that 65 percent of voters do not believe that he deserves another term. He trails Rep. Allyson Schwartz, who is basically unknown outside of the  Philadelphia area, by 12 points (46-34). <http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/06/internal_poll_prompts_national.html>. He has also been hammered by his inaction regarding the prosecution of Jerry Sandusky in the Penn State child abuse scandal.  Repu...

Brazilian fans behead referee, stake his head in the field I think that we talk sports entirely too seriously here in the U.S. However, beheading a referee?  Well, it is a little more complicated than that in Brazil. The referee stabbed a player to death, leading to the beheading.  I guess that it all depends on the facts. This was the one that frightened me from the Brazil situation: " Local news media say the spectators also decapitated Silva and stuck his head on a stake in the middle of the field." They definitely take soccer more seriously than we do the Super Bowl. Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/soccer/news/20130706/brazil-soccer-beheading-decapitation.ap/#ixzz2YVa0QYXS

Where will New York City be 50 years from now? America like a swan with its head in the sand I am not a scientist, but I know a problem when I see evidence of it. A few years ago, "60 Minutes," one of the few mainstream TV shows that I trust, showed a scary scenario. They took a location in the Arctic and showed what it looked like ten years before the show aired, and then they showed what it looked like on that day.  The difference was frightening. It was frozen ten years ago, but one decade later, it was just water rushing into the Atlantic Ocean.  The ice was gone. In that script, they mentioned that New York City will be submerged sometime in this century.  Some current stories are focusing on this. Here is a story and headline from last Nov. in "The Guardian," a British paper. "Major storms could submerge New York City in next decade." <http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/16/climate-change-report-new-york-city> ...

A timely piece for the sesquicentennial Why does the Lincoln Memorial present such an imposing presence in Washington, D.C.? Novelist Robert Hicks tackles the story of why the Civil War that was directed by President Abraham Lincoln should remain important for 21st Century America. Hicks wrote an op-ed piece, "Why the Civil War Still Matters," in the July 2 edition of the New York Times. He looks at a number of aspects of the war.  <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/03/opinion/why-the-civil-war-still-matters.html>. Essentially, Lincoln's major goal was to keep the union together, and that was in doubt until the Battle of Gettysburg.  Hicks argues that everything that our nation has accomplished since 1865 is tied to the war. The Civil War is something that should resonate with those of us who live in Pa. We should be visiting Gettysburg this year for the sesquicentennial of that bloody battle. (This week would not be the best ti...