It's Not the End, It's Not the Beginning of the End, But It Might Be the End of the Beginning

So after the ticket for the Stop Sign (it is probably better not to run a stop sign if there is a cop sitting watching the intersection) and having CSB taking the four hour old kid we finally got a break.

Children Services pushed, I think, a little too far. We had an emergency hearing and a neighbor came to court and was pretty impressive. CSB was to go to her house and check it for safety issues to determine if they were able to care for the baby, with the understanding that the Mother would be there to assist, under supervision, to care for the kid. The house was safe as CSB admitted in their subsequent filing, but they had several other (new) reasons to deny these people temporary custody and delay so that they could put the kid where they wanted to. I got the GAL and the father's attorney to file, with me, objections to this determination by CSB. Further stuff was filed this morning by CSB and I suspect that is where they went too far. Essentially, they basically said fuck you judge we are going to do what we want.

Guess what? The judge said: Oh yeah, I'm the judge you do what I tell you not the other way around. We left the court room on Tuesday with everybody understanding that this kid would go to these people if they could show that their place was fit and they would protect him if necessary from the mother. They are fit and they will protect him.

UPDATE, FRIDAY: Well it couldn't last. Last night the neighbor went to get the kid and CSB lied to her telling her that the mother couldn't be around the child at all and that the father (of whom there were never any allegation concerning his mental health) could only be around the kid for brief periods with intense supervison. I had given my cell number to the parents and apparently the mother had written it down and then refused to give it to anyone. So I didn't find out about it today and it is now too late to correct it. The neighbors are now unsure of whom to believe. They heard the mother screaming in the back ground and are unsure if she might be violent.

So the end result is the kid goes where CSB wanted in the first place.

Is This Week Over Yet?

This has not been the most pleasant of weeks so far and yes I realize it is just Tuesday.

Monday I was set to have a hearing in Juvenile Court with my client who was almost 9 months pregnant with her eighth child. The other seven kids had been removed and placed about two hours away. My client is a paranoid delusional person who does not think that she has any problems. The hearing was a 9:00 a.m. at 8:30 the husband calls me to tell me that they have just had their eighth child.

I go to court and continue the case and see that Children Services are on their way to get an order to take the kid. I call my client who insists that the court has not authority to do this and will not do anything I suggest. By 1:30 the kid is in the custody of CSB and my client is again telling me how it is illegal to remove a nursing child from its mother.

One of my OVI guys comes in to tell me that the cops have been by his house and taken his license. In Ohio if one tests over a certain level then the driver's license is taken at that time "administratively" by the cops. In this case the guy gave a urine sample and it was sent away. When the cops got the sample they immediately went to his house and took the license, something that they have the legal right to do, but that I've never heard of being done before. It is worse because my guy is on Suboxon and apparently that is what put him over the limit, although he was never told not to drive while using it.

Meet with my accused felon who is probably moderately retarded, but who probably knows what he helped another guy do was wrong, so I try to figure out how to keep him out of jail.
Out to another two pre-trials, of course I go to the wrong court first and so am about 30 minutes late to the second court.

Back to my office where the mother of a client is weeping in the waiting room while being yelled at by a probation officer. Apparently because her son (the client's not the probation officer's) cut off his ankle bracelet and is on the run because the prosecutor was mean to him and (I know learn) possibly because he has traumatic brain injury from being beat up a year ago (no reason to let me know too early in the game, I guess). You have to understand that no body ever runs permanently away from this hick town. I once had a guy who committed a brutal assault and robbery on an older woman who ran all the way to Mexico and was back here in five (yes five) days.

Tuesday, started out with my meeting with the husband of my delusional client who is actually pretty normal from what I can tell (although a little weird religiously) and trying to talk to my client again. Luckily she didn't feel up to coming in to the hearing, so that was good. Talking to her is very strange, she is tangentially talking about the issue at hand but in a kind of parallel conversation. An hour trying to get something set up and then a two and a half hour hearing. It went as well as could be expected, perhaps we were able to get the baby to a neighbor's who would let the mom and dad stay there while this case drags on. The custodians of the other seven kids say that the mother would be allowed to visit the baby once a month if they had her.

Then over to muni court and a change of plea on a 21 year old 5 month pregnant woman who had been driving while well over two times the legal limit and had a wreck Her second OVI, in addition she had gotten out of prison for drugs in May.

Back to the office and a 45 minute phone conversation with a client I'll meet for the first time tomorrow on yet another Children Services case. These first meetings or conversations are very difficult because the client feels like they have to tell you everything about the case from their point of view and in no particular order. It is almost painful, but I haven't figured out a way to avoid it. After the initial interview I have a little background and I can start to figure out where to go from there.

Well, that's been my week so far. Came home to a nice dinner and then watched a Rumpole of the Bailey, a kind of bus mans holiday, I guess.

Hummm?

So Obama makes a speech about how we are all Americans and all have First Amendment Rights and therefore we should be cool about those folks building Cordoba House (who just happen to be Muslims) you know. It starts me wondering why it is that both Obama and Bush II seem to have the same position on our relationship with the Muslim world in general and also have similar positions on immigrants. to this country. Both of them seem (or at least seemed) to have a pretty good position on both those issues. Of course, Obama had to, within less than 24 hours, walk back his statement on Cordoba House. To clarify and to make clear that he thinks they have the right, but it is still kind of icky for them to build it in Manhattan. (Calling Henry Lewis Gates.)

I figure that right now I'm not up to, once again, trying to figure out why Obama is such a worthless piece of chicken shit when it comes to backing any position he takes that is even remotely liberal (such as supporting the First Amendment a position which doesn't seem to me to be particularly liberal). The guy is an empty suit (which isn't exactly true, since he seems to be willing to go to bat for large corporations and corrupt and reactionary politicians, but it's all I've got time for right now).

But what I want to try to understand is why these two guys who we will have had the unfortunate experience of having as our presidents for at least twelve years and who support nothing that doesn't put money in the pockets of the wealthiest 1% or maybe all of the wealthiest 5% of our (or is it the world's) population, while screwing the poor and what is left of the middle class. Why these two guys take what appear to be progressive or liberal positions concerning illegal immigrants and our relationship with the Muslim world (that is: Muslims aren't our enemies, certain people who are terrorists and who just happen to be fringe Muslims are our enemies).

So I thought, is it possible that on these two issues these two guys could have independently come to thee right and most just conclusion independently and simultaneously because it is the right thing, kind of like Darwin and Wallace or Leibniz and Newton.

Nah.

Money.

Look there are millions of immigrants in this country working their behinds off for significantly less than citizens, they are essentially non people. They get on a track to become citizens they will have to continue to keep a job and they will have to continue to do what their bosses want at a lower wage then all most all citizens are willing to work for. Who do they work for and who makes major profits off them? The richest 1% or maybe the richest 5%. Who are these wealthy people friends of? Oh come on.

Muslims control vast amounts of wealth and sit on huge amounts of oil that we want and need and our friends who run the great corporations that get this oil to us need the friendship of these Muslims. Well really the friendship of the Muslim rulers (don't forget that the Bush family is really very close personal friends with several Saudi oil chieftains), but you can't really tell the great unwashed that we should be friendly with only the wealthiest 1%, even Americans would eventually catch on to what is going on if you tried that.

So maybe it is like Darwin and Wallace or Newton and Leibniz, after all.

The Mask Slips (Some More)

Gibbs. Went over and read some stuff on Pandagon where most of the commentators are angry, but will still vote. The difference is I won't vote.

Gibbs won't walk back what he said and clearly if it mattered to his boss, he would be fired or apologizing left and right. Democrats are in a position they do not find particularly comfortable. The people at Pandagon seem to think that if they simply reason with the prez. and his people and the elected democrats they will eventually listen, or that for some reason they want to listen. I see it all the time when commentators complain that the democrats or Obama have caved on some issue. That point of view implies that the politician[s] in question had some sort of desire, no matter how small, to do something different than they ended up doing. One sees it in the discussion of HCR, the stimulus, and now Financial Reform among other things.

For whatever reason the people who are elected democrats do not want to do democratic things, or at least things that were considered to be democratic by the likes of FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ (with the exception of colonial and neo-colonial wars or opportunity). But the people who (still) vote democratic expect them to do democratic things. So they have to say that they will do these democratic things to get elected. To get people to vote for them.

Once in power they feel free to simply ignore us. When we irritate them a little too much they get pissy, they simply consider themselves the rulers of this country, in much the same way Louie XIV was (one can hope it is more like Louie XVI, but don't bet on it). Why when they believe these things they run as democrats instead of republicans is something I'm not sure I completely understand. But there you have it.

The other part of this strange situation are the people who think of themselves a liberal who will continue to vote for them and support them even after getting screwed over again and again. Because the other guy would be worse, maybe sooner rather than later, is all I can figure. I guess at my age I should be hoping to see someone not quite as crazy as say Palin as prez. so that we can drag out the final death throws of this empire until I have naturally shuffled off this mortal coil. But I really would like to see this mess blow up in my contemporaries faces, unfortunately at the best in that situation, I would be collateral damage.
UPDATE: Well this is even more interesting now isn't it, more bullshit to confuse the easily bamboozled.

All Dressed Up And No Place To Go

So the trial didn't happen today. All dressed up and no where to go as the judge told the jury. The prosecution made an offer to my guy he couldn't refuse. They offered him two weekends instead of fifteen days straight.

I thought that we might win this case and I told the guy that, what he heard, of course was the "might." All judges charge rent on the court room and I would expect that if we lost then my guy would have gone for thirty to forty-five days at least. I understand his thinking. I could see myself sitting next to him and saying: "Well, I really did think we'd win, sorry about that." I suspect that he could too.

The case was an OVI (that's DUI in the other 49 states) along with several different charges of driving under suspension. This was my guys first in six years and he blew the "super level" above .17. On the other hand they did not catch him driving.

He was at home and had had about ten beers between noon and 8:00 p.m. and then he ate. At about midnight one son called from where ever and was clearly wasted. The family told him not to drive home and then they called back and realized he was on the way. After a wait, and long after the son should have been home client and other son drove off to look for him. The son driving. A small town they knew which way he was going. They drove by a wreck and recognized it as the first son. The son who was driving was so freaked that he became really unable to drive and they stopped and client took the wheel. They drove back and dropped the second son off at the wreck and client went on home.

At home client says that he grabbed a whiskey bottle and took a serious swig, then he took a mixed drink his wife said was her's and had at least a couple of shots in it and chugged it. Then daughter him back to the wreck and the cops recognized him as the guy who had driven by about 10 minutes before and arrested him. I think that everyone agreed that he had the defense of necessity for his driving, which does let him out of the driving under suspension charges, but who would believe that he would have downed 3 or 4 shots in ten minutes? On the other hand I have done just that.

At any rate it was his call.

Early on in the video the cop was having a very hard time pulling the guy up on his computer. He kept putting in the guy's social security number and nothing would come up. Finally, my guy said: "I've never had this much trouble getting arrested before." Well maybe you had to be there.

How I Spent My Summer

Well OK, not the entire summer, just the last two weeks, which should be culminating in a Jury Trial this week, unless they come up with a much better offer.

One thing most people don't understand is that almost no cases go to trial any more, certainly almost none go to jury trial. Too expensive and they take up too much time. On the other hand the Judge is pretty excited since they have just opened the new municipal court building with the new trial areas so it should be interesting for all of us.

In the mean time I'm still slogging away on the various custody cases from hell and last weekend I was working as a co-chair at an Arts Festival here in Y-Bridge City. Well, really the whole thing ended in working for the entire time the festival was open, but to be honest the work before the festival was almost entirely my co-chair, otherwise known as my suffering better half.

In the mean time I'm looking at the disaster that is the ongoing economy and the liberal/progressives (should there be " " around that?) willingness to continue to back the slime ball in the White House and congress. I shall return later. I think maybe.