Vengeance is not justice. You would think career prosecutors would know this, since Justice Robert Jackson famously admonished them to seek the latter. Unfortunately, prosecutors in my backyard are currently pursuing a case of nothing less than full-blown country vengeance, ripping open a twelve-year-old community wound in the process.

Eric Boyd’s murder trial started this week. Boyd is accused of horrifically raping, torturing, and murdering two UT College students, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, twelve years ago. Three other defendants accused of participating in the nightmarish crime are currently serving sentences amounting to life plus cancer. One is on death row.

Boyd, however, is currently on year ten of an eighteen year federal bit for harboring the alleged ringleader of this crime, Lemaricus Davidson. Continue reading →

Kamala Harris’s Presidential campaign is dead. Tulsi Gabbard struck the fatal blow at a recent CNN debate. Please feel free to watch Ms. Harris’s campaign sputter out and die.

When Kamala Harris announced her run for the Presidency, I was honestly shocked. After all, when you run for the nation’s highest office, you’re practically begging people to dig up every particle of dirt they can on your past. It’s one reason why I’m afraid good, honest people don’t seek political office these days. Continue reading →

The silliness of this week almost meant no new Friday Funny. From a human rights tribunal musing over whether waxing a transgender woman’s testicles was a fundament right to the Bob Muller Comedy Hour, your humble writer felt the world maxed out on pure silliness. Then Erica Thomas’s story fell into my lap, and immediately I thanked the comedy gods.

Erica Thomas** is a Georgia representative, woman of color, mother, and a shopper at Publix. Now I’m by nature suspicious of people who shop at Publix, because despite their excellent customer service and the local store being the one place in town I can get a certain kind of spaetzle my better half prefers, Publix’s prices are rather inflated. So by nature, anyone who frequents a Publix has more money than sense.

Apparently on July 19, Representative Thomas had a bad day at the local Publix. In a video posted to Facebook, Thomas claimed tearfully that she’d been in the express checkout lane with fifteen items when an “angry white man” told her she was over the ten item express checkout limit. Continue reading →

The presumption of innocence died this week in America when the unduly passionate masses collectively agreed that while some people might have been wrongfully accused of crimes they didn’t commit, That Rat Bastard is Totally Guilty.

Though the familial relationship is not explicitly known, the presumption is preceded in death by the Third, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

Known surviving relatives are the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments, though the health status of each is questionable. Continue reading →

This week I want to share with you an opinion I find fascinating and stupid. The case is Massey v. Jim Crockett Promotions, Inc.,  400 S.E.2d 876 (1990).

The case is fascinating because it is a court case involving pro wrestling that actually made its way to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.* One can only imagine the rumblings in the heads of the justices about career paths when the record in this case hit their desks.

It’s stupid because the case never should have gone to trial. This is the kind of situation promoters feared, because one question they’d inevitably get asked under oath was certainly, “Are the outcomes of the matches at your events pre-determined?”** It all could’ve been avoided if Crockett Promotions paid Roy Massey’s hospital bills after Lane knocked a disabled coal miner out. Continue reading →

The intended Friday Funny was originally written last week, and I may still bring it to you in the future, if my mean-ass editor allows. However, a recent news story prompted me at the last minute to write something from scratch for this week. I wish I could say this wasn’t a true story. It is, unfortunately, and it’s the real life tale of how a group of potential Darwin Award nominees might get pro wrestling banned in Indiana outright.

About twenty years ago, a guy going by the name of “Ian Rotten” ran a promotion in Kentucky and Indiana called “IWA Mid-south.” Rotten, a former “deathmatch” competitor, ran extremely bloody spectacles that essentially amounted to consensual assault with deadly weapons. Wrestlers would bloody each other with items ranging from staple guns and barbed wire to thumbtacks and fluorescent light tubes.

Police actually investigated whether the violence at IWA Mid-south shows was “scripted” or if people were being severely beaten against their will. Though Rotten would blame “petty local politics” and claim participants were “acting,” Kentucky’s legislature would introduce new laws so restrictive even World Wrestling Entertainment wouldn’t consider running in Kentucky until lawmakers repealed a few regulations in 2016. All this was due to Rotten’s antics in Kentucky, whether he’ll take the blame or not. Continue reading →

Judges are people just like us. Sure, they wear robes and have incredible power over our lives, liberties, and property. We still need to cut them some slack from time to time because underneath that black robe is a person, who when tested can make unsound judgments.

Three years ago, Georgia Superior Court Judge Bryant Durham Junior met Denver Fenton Allen for an advisory hearing that arguably turned into the worst day of Judge Durham’s life. Allen was charged with murdering his cellmate. Allen also didn’t care too much for his court-appointed public defender.

It’s worth pausing here to note a later judge handling Allen’s case found him mentally incapable to stand trial. This bit of information may help explain what happened next. Continue reading →

Harvard’s admissions committee ended the week standing beside Massachusetts Governor Gerald “McNutty” Wanker as he advocated for a new law strengthening penalties against cyberbullying.

The move was another eye-raising one by the Ivy League institution, which started the week by rescinding the admission of an incoming freshman for making stupid remarks at age sixteen in a private Google document.

“We’re certainly not criminalizing speech,” remarked Governor Wanker, as cameras flashed on his Botox-enhanced grin.

That would run foul of the First Amendment, or so the ACLU and a boatload of lawyers tell me. What we’re doing here is criminalizing conduct! Kids have to know telling their peers to eat shit and die on Facebook is not okay, and when we lock someone away for fifty years because of a hateful tweet, it’ll be a wakeup call.

Continue reading →

Sheriff Roy Templeton of Mud Lick, Alabama was not having a good week.

“Of all the stunts he’d try to pull during Pride month,” the Sheriff grumbled at a video playing on his computer screen. Templeton’s surly attitude was interrupted by a voice coming from his phone.

“Sheriff? Deputy Pitts is here like you wanted,” his secretary said through the speaker.

Templeton punched a button on his handset and barked, “Tell Deputy Pitts to get his ass in here.” Continue reading →

Lance Sonorus, who self-identifies as “a guy who knows everything,” left a courtroom in shock and shackles this week after a jury found him guilty of assaulting an elderly man with a milkshake.

“I don’t get it,” Sonorus muttered, contemplating his sentencing from a local jail cell.

I researched my case on the internet for months. I posted several pressing questions to Reddit. I even pirated a copy of the Federal Rules of Evidence so I would know how to introduce stuff. And I’m still guilty? What went wrong?

Continue reading →