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Because this may be the first year since 1999 that this movie isn’t on TV today.

Here’s the video of the hit and run that has CT in an uproar. Warning: It’s pretty disturbing.

I don’t know what’s worse: That people saw terrorist undertones in this picture or that Dunkin Donuts yanked it.

Image: Dunkin Donuts/L.A. Times

I’ve long wondered why states permit cars to have tinted windows. Here, in CT, a minimum of only 35% of light must filter through the tint. Some states set the bar even lower (FL and TX, for example).

Is there any real value to tinted windows in cars other than privacy? Is that enough of a concern to permit such dark tints? More often than not, I will drive by a car with tinted windows and I will be unable to see a damn thing inside.

I also ponder this from a law enforcement perspective. Traffic stops, after all, are what cops do the most. Is there a safety concern here?

Also, practically speaking, can you see anything out those windows, especially the side windows? Are the side mirrors visible?

The Penguins are going to the Stanley Cup finals!

At least in fair Norwich, CT, as this story leads me to believe. I can only imagine how this scene unfolded. Cops arrive at the scene of a fire. A building is destroyed, 14 people (including 7 children) are now homeless.

They arrest and charge the offender….who happens to be eight years old. That’s right. They arrested an 8-year old for recklessly starting a fire.

Not only that, they charged her with a felony. Now, this kid is either the devil incarnate or the whole damn thing was an accident.

The charge is Arson in the third degree, which states:

(a) A person is guilty of arson in the third degree when he recklessly causes destruction or damage to a building, as defined in section 53a-100, of his own or of another by intentionally starting a fire or causing an explosion.

Did the child’s acts fit the statute? Perhaps. Is it a crime? I really, really, really doubt it. However, since “accident” seems to have disappeared from the dictionary, this poor girl has been arrested at the age of eight, charged with a felony and will probably have some trauma from this.

Do we always have to assign blame for loss or damage? Have we become so focused on criminalization that we cannot see we are compounding these people’s misery? What is the point of this arrest? You’re going to send an eight-year old to jail? You’re going to ask her to complete probation or community service?

Reckless or not, I doubt she knows what the hell she’s doing or did.

It’s not like the Norwich police don’t have anything to do. Note that this is a Class C felony, which carries a maximum term of 10 years.

This led me to wonder: What sort of movie would The Problem Child be today? Then I realized it wouldn’t be a movie. It would be a Law and Order episode.

(Side note: Who is Law and who is Order in L A& O?)

From the Fail Blog

Apparently, Oregon is trying. The story goes thusly: Oregon sent a cease and desist letter to Justia and Public.Resource.Org. They claimed a copyright in the “arrangement and subject matter compilation of Oregon statutory law…” Thus, Oregon is asking these sites to take down the Oregon statutes they make available for free.

Most of the correspondence is available for view here. As Justia and P.R.O point out in this letter, the Oregon website is horribly W3C non-compliant (there are over 503,000 HTML errors!), is not “section 508” compliant, doesn’t use CSS (!!!) and even has a robots.txt file that blocks search engines!

How is that “accessible to the public”? The site lacks functionality and may not be accessible by all browsers and all operating systems.

So, what if a State decides to either charge for access to its statutes or makes it publicly available on a crappy website where not all can view the pages. Do we have a legitimate notice problem? I know we are all presumed to know the law, but if the State is charging for access to the actual text of the Statutes, or makes them difficult to access, what are the chances of successfully defending a prosecution on due process grounds?

Also, what the hell is wrong with Oregon? Why, in this day and age, would you be so stubborn and so stupid? What is really the point of “protecting” the Code? I don’t understand what they’re trying to accomplish, other than look foolish.

Anyway, anyone see a potential notice problem here?

H/T: HaveOpinionWillTravel

This is some of the oddest “testimony” before a legislative committee. From CT News Junkie:

“From liquor and smoking in a state facility, from sex in actual offices to kickbacks from lobbyists…” [Michael] Marsulo said.

More than one legislator joked that they would like to know where the sex is happening so they could get some and many were asking each other if they were part of the 80 percent or the 20 percent.

Former Lt. Gov. Kevin Sullivan of West Hartford told the intern Tuesday that in 1970 he started his internship at the Capitol and it lead him to want to run for public office. He said the bulk of the people here are good people. “There are some bums, but there aren’t very many,” Sullivan said.

“This is what you get from politicians,” Marsulo responded.

Earlier during the exchange Marsulo said, “I can’t reveal a lot of where my sources are right now. I will in the future.”

Heh. The video is here and fast-forward to 1:15 to see it.

Update: Video below

Some interesting CT stories from today that I’m really just too lazy to make into full-fledged posts.

First, New Haven public defender Tom Ullmann gives the New Haven police department a piece of his mind and takes a few swings at the State’s Attorney’s office too:

Defense attorney Thomas Ullmann has charged that some members of the New Haven Police Department’s Detective Bureau are “incompetent, unprofessional and untruthful” in handling witnesses and investigating crimes. Ullmann, said the detectives’ performance is “at its lowest level in the 30 years I’ve been here.”

Ullmann accused the detectives of “a rush to judgment, not being thorough, not following up on obvious leads.” He said there was “a shocking lapse of asking witnesses investigative questions, such as who had been drinking or doing drugs.” Ullmann added, “Their attitude was ‘the less we know, the better.’ This feeds into their tunnel vision on the case.”

He alleged the Detective Bureau has “a history of suggesting information and providing facts to witnesses and failing to investigate facts pointing in a different direction.” He said in some cases witnesses have been “harassed.”

Moreover, Ullmann charged, “This culture doesn’t exist without some enabling by the state’s attorney’s office. This doesn’t happen without the prosecutors winking and nodding and looking the other way.” He added, “There are some really good prosecutors here, but sometimes people close their eyes to this stuff.”

Yowza!

Second, the Appellate and Supreme Courts might be in danger of losing heating and cooling May 1st onwards. The Supreme Court recently rejected emergency appeals filed by the State to compel the service provider to continue providing past the expiration of the contract on May 1.

On March 27, Hartford Superior Court Judge John J. Langenbach ruled that TEN Company has no obligation to supply the state buildings with heat, or the chilled water that runs air-conditioning systems, after its contract expires.

Langenbach said he could find no legal authority to “force TEN to continue a business relationship with the State that it wishes to end because the State may suffer harm as a result of its failure to plan for the expiration of that relationship.”

The State apparently figured that there’s no way TEN wouldn’t provide heat and a/c, so they have done absolutely nothing to prepare for this.

TEN offered to sell the piping system to the state, but officials didn’t make an offer. Wrote Langenbach: “The State has not taken a single step to begin the process of procuring an alternative source of heating and cooling for the eight buildings.”

Actually, it’s not entirely true that the state has failed to act. “Well, we filed an injunction. We also sought some legislative relief. So those are the things we’ve done,” one state official told Langenbach.

Public Works officials contend that a permanent system would take six years to install, and even a temporary solution would take two years to implement. But Langenbach gave credence to TEN’s general manager, Derek Rudd, who testified that temporary heating and cooling could be put in place “fairly quickly.”

Luckily, the current term of the Courts ends on April 30 (although the next one starts mid-May!). This should get interesting.