CommenTerry

Overreaction to "Balloon Boy" Hoax

Local officials, including the sheriff, in Fort Collins, CO are now discussing the possibility of bringing multiple felony charges against Richard Heene and his wife, Mayumi. This is in response to the apparent hoax a couple of weeks ago in which they claimed that their youngest son, Falcon, had boarded a hot-air balloon that had later taken flight and drifted away for miles.

When balloon landed, however, no one was found in it. Subsequently, it was discovered that the boy had been hiding in an attic all along. After several ensuing police and TV interviews with the family, it became clear that it was all a hoax – part of an elaborate scheme by Mr. and Mrs. Heene to get their own TV reality show. In fact, it was recently reported that Mrs. Heene has now admitted as much in an affidavit.

But should the Heene’s face felony charges and possibly years in prison, if convicted? Should they lose custody of their three sons (which would be one obvious consequence of such criminal convictions)? Should a family be broken up because the parents did something really stupid? I say such an outcome would be unjust.

I believe it is an overreaction to even consider felony charges against these people. Sure, if they indeed pulled off the hoax they are accused of, it was wrong, and they should have to face the consequences for it. But, in my opinion, their actions would constitute only misdemeanors, although very serious ones. They should be required to fully compensate local, state, and federal officials for the time and money that was wasted in pursuit of an empty balloon.

In addition, they should face some very stiff fines and probation for endangering the lives and health of others by pulling emergency workers away from their real duty for hours. And, to top it off, a lien should be placed against any income the Heenes receive from a resulting TV show. However, I hope cooler heads will prevail and everyone will cease and desist from seeking a pound of flesh here.

Let's Get Real about Jaycee Dugard

We were all delighted and astonished to hear of the rescue of 29-year-old Jaycee Dugard after being held by her captor for more than 18 years. She was kidnapped in 1991 at age 11 by Philip Garrido, who had held her until August. Her safe return, along with that of her two daughters that were fathered by Garrido during her captivity, was nothing short of miraculous.

However, I find part of the media’s reaction to this stirring event a little disturbing. In the weeks since Jaycee’s rescue, they have trotted out one set of parents after the other to talk about their hopes for seeing their own long-missing son or daughter returned as well. They seem to think that Jaycee’s return is a reason to believe that this is possible. I fear that these people – egged on by the media – are holding out false hopes and lying to themselves.

Now, is it possible that another child who has been missing for a number of years can also return? Well … yeah … it’s possible. But it’s also possible that any one of us could win the lotto. Actually, there’s probably a better chance that any of these grieving parents will win the Mega Millions or Powerball jackpot than that they will ever see their missing child again. In others words, the chances are infinitesimal.

Despite what they might want to believe and the media might want us to think, Jaycee’s return did not change those odds one iota. Her rescue was an isolated incident. It was a one-in-a-billion event that will ultimately have no impact on the status of anyone else’s missing child. I’m sorry if I seem a bit negative or cynical here, but that’s just the reality of the situation. Someone has to play the part of the little boy who points out to the emperor that he’s walking around buck naked.

Think about it for a minute. Off the top of your head, can you name another child who returned safely after being taken by a stranger more than five years earlier? Go ahead, think real hard. Think until steam comes out of your ears if you would like. There may be cases like this, but most of us would have to do some research to uncover them. My point is that events like this are extremely rare and will remain that way. To believe otherwise is to have false hope. Of course, some people would say that false hope is better than no hope at all. I say it ain’t.

Why Just Pick on Letterman?

Late night TV comedian David Letterman recently got himself in hot water by making a tasteless joke about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s 14-year-old daughter. To paraphrase his joke, he said the girl got “knocked up” by baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez during the seventh inning of a New York Yankees baseball game that she and her mother attended last month.

The Palin family was not amused by the joke and the Alaska governor made their sentiments quite clear during ensuing media interviews. Letterman subsequently issued several apologies, the last of which was accepted by the Palins.

However, there are those who are still so indignant about Letterman’s joke that they are now calling on CBS to fire him. Pardon me, but this smacks of selective outrage. Yes, Letterman should have used better judgment. He obviously should not have made such a remark, even if he was, as he claimed, referring to Palin’s older daughter. I personally don’t see why that should have made any difference – I don’t care she was 40 years old.

However, if people are going to be so intent on penalizing Letterman for this indiscretion, why do they remain silent in the wake of equally offensive material spouted by other comedians? I challenge them be a little more consistent and also go after comedians who:

1) Joke about prison rape, as if it is something to wink at or laugh about.

2) Make fun of Christians and Christianity.

3) Seem to think immoral behavior is funny.

4) Imply that adult, white, protestant, heterosexual males are the stupidest of the stupid.

5) Make a living off profanity-laced jokes.

6) Glorify drunkenness and recreational drug use.

7) Use sexually explicit material as a crutch and as a cover for their complete lack of creativity.

8) Display a nonchalant attitude toward violence.

If the “dump Letterman” zealots are going to hold their peace when it comes to comedians who fit any of the above descriptions, then they should just shut up and leave the man alone.

Powerball Winner Should Be Set for Life

Neal Wanless, the winner of a recent $232 million Powerball jackpot should now be set for life, even if he doesn’t make a penny of interest or other gains on his winnings. This young South Dakota cowboy, who previously had trouble paying his taxes, will never have trouble paying for anything else nor will he ever have to work again. That is, assuming he plays his cards right and doesn’t go insane with his new-found fortune. 

Wanless is still in his twenties but received more than $80 million in a lump-sum payout – after taxes! He would still have money left, even after spending a million dollars a year beginning right now. All he has to worry about is keeping the rest his money safe while spending his $1 million annually.

He doesn’t have to take any risks or be concerned about the “performance” of his investments. Therefore, he should steer clear of anyone purporting to be letting him in on a “great ground-floor investment opportunity.” For him, financial planning at this point should be no-brainer. If it were me, I would put the money into government money funds that pay little interest but are completely backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government.

Now I’m not suggesting that he spend the whole million each year on himself and his family and friends. I’m sure he would – as well he should – donate a large portion of it to the needy and other worthy causes.  He could give away three-quarters of his annual outlay and still live like a king, or least better than 99.9% of the world’s population.

Others Should Learn from Journalists’ Dilemma

Young American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee have now been sentenced by a North Korean court to 12 years in a prison labor camp. Hopefully, though, these young ladies will soon be released so that they can return to their families in the United States. However, there is no guarantee of such a positive development. There is a chance they could be doing hard time in North Korea indefinitely.

At any rate, they should never have put themselves in a situation in which they could be captured by that isolated Communist country and accused of crossing its border illegally. They should have been more careful and not gotten anywhere close to it. It’s not like they were on any kind of official business in that area.

They are not soldiers, members of the CIA, diplomats, and any of the like. Yes, they were working for a news organization, but their employer should have understood that freedom of the press is not held in such high esteem in that part of the world. People should not put themselves in unnecessary danger and then expect people to come rushing to their rescue when something goes awry. Others should learn from their dilemma.

There other day I became aware of a reality program on Animal Planet in which a group of people patrol the oceans, trying to stop illegal whaling. These people are not law enforcement officers nor have they been officially commissioned to do what they do. They have taken it upon themselves to try to save as many whales as possible.

Considering the fine mess that Ling and Lee have gotten themselves into, I couldn’t help but think these self-appointed do-gooders of the high seas might be in danger of suffering an equally (or perhaps more) terrifying fate. If they are captured or otherwise harmed by some angry whale hunters who see these people as an obstacle to their making an “honest” living, then they and/or their families shouldn’t come crying to the rest of us.

Will Tiller's Murder Be Used to Undermine Free Speech?

The recent murder of Dr. George Tiller by pro-life wacko Scott Roeder was a great tragedy. Obviously, Tiller was murdered because he was one of the few doctors in this country who performed late-term abortions. However, this did not give Reoder or anyone else the right to take his life.

Reoder should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. He is a murderer, plain and simple – with no legitimate excuse for the heinous crime he committed. Roeder's murderous act should be strongly condemned by pro-lifers everywhere. Shame on anyone who even implicitly excuses it!

With that being said, I hope the extreme pro-choice lobby will not be so brazen as to attempt use this tragedy for political purposes. If they do, they will have created a whole new tragedy from it. But I fear that many of them will use it as clarion call to begin eroding the First Amendment.

These people will claim that the routine rhetoric of pro-life activists – including the assertion that abortion is tantamount to murder – drove Reoder to kill Dr. Tiller. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reoder is solely responsible for Dr. Tiller’s death. If anything drove him to it, it was nothing more than his own twisted fanaticism.

However, some in the pro-choice camp have responded in typical knee-jerk form, claiming that pro-lifers were essentially accessories to Roeder’s crime. For years, many have wanted to silence dissent on the abortion issue and now they see this as a golden opportunity to do so. If they had their way, it would soon be against the law to speak out against abortion.

Hopefully, though, cooler heads will prevail. Otherwise, free speech may ultimately turn out to be the second casualty of this crime.

How to Stamp Out School Violence

Due to the recent rash of school violence, lawmakers and other government officials have turned their attention to school safety and will soon be holding summits to find new ways of making schools safer. Therefore, I will offer a few suggestions of my own for them to consider. My suggestions are unique in that I guarantee that they will stamp out any and all school violence, if implemented as I prescribe. So, without further ado, here are my three simple suggestions:

1) Don't allow anyone who has ever been charged with any crime, even a misdemeanor like speeding, to live within ten miles of any school. We must only allow the pure and the best of the best to live near our schools.

2) Install maximum security features at every school. That means putting prison-like bars in all school windows and building twenty-foot-high, three-foot-thick cement walls around every school. On top of each wall, there should be barbed wire extending two feet high. There would be no "door'" openings in the walls for people to go in and out (see item 3).

3) Guards should be placed outside the walls that surround each school to prevent anyone from ever getting in. Those permanently kept out would include teachers, students, school board members, elected officials, etc.  

The Fallacious Gitmo Argument

Many of those who oppose President Obama’s decision to shut down our detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and relocate its inmates to prisons inside the U.S. are using the wrong argument. In fact, it doesn’t make any sense. They claim that U.S. citizens would be endangered by such a move, due to the fact that these prisoners might escape and commit acts of terrorism.

So their argument rests on the idea that federal maximum security prisons wouldn’t be secure enough to hold these guys? When’s the last time someone escaped from one of these prisons? I can’t think of when it was. Keep in mind that state and federal prisons in the U.S. house the likes of serial killers, mob bosses, gang leaders, armed robbers, rapists, and child molesters.

Even if some of the accused terrorists were to escape, are we supposed to believe that they would be more dangerous than those hardened criminals? Funny, I don’t hear any of the “save our Gitmo” crowd warning of the danger that people like Charles Manson, David Berkowitz, Terry Nichols, Ted Kaczynski, and Dennis Rader might pose at their present penal venues and demanding that they be sent to offshore prisons. How come? Because they are making a fallacious argument and they know it.

It is nothing more than a red herring, a distraction until they can think of a legitimate case to make for their point of view. They just know that shutting down Gitmo is bad, so they have to say something. For now, they are stuck with having to say, “Well, …, um, …, a, …, the terrorist suspects might escape!” Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Is Iraq a Real Democracy?

I have a hard time buying into the notion that Iraq is a true democracy. Yes, since the U.S. forced Saddam Hussein from power, Iraq has conducted free and open elections and has selected its own leaders. However, there’s more to a democracy than just elections, and I see Iraq as lacking in some of the other things that make a democracy a democracy. Two of them specifically lead me to question that country’s status as such.

First, Iraq’s government does not seem capable of standing on its own without the help of the U.S. It appears so fragile that it would likely crumble shortly after a U.S. pullout, even if that doesn’t occur for another 20 years. I don’t see it being able to prevent its various factions from turning on each other. In addition, its military’s ability to protect it from invading forces seems questionable at best.

Second, Iraq doesn’t appear to be completely autonomous. I’m not sure that, at this point (or any time soon), it would be allowed to determine its own direction in every matter. For example, what if Iraq decided to split itself into three separate nations, one for the Shiites, one for the Sunnis, one for the Kurds? Or suppose it wanted to do something a little less drastic like placing a high tariff on goods imported from North America?

Would the U.S. allow either of these things to happen? I think not, even though these are things that any genuine democracy would have the freedom to do. What is a democracy without self-determination? It isn’t.

Charitable Immunity Should Not Be Abridged

Charitable immunity statutes in many states protect doctors and hospitals from liability when treating patients who cannot pay for their services. However, there is a least one lawsuit pending in Virginia in which the plaintiffs are arguing that the doctor they are suing should not have this kind of legal immunity. I believe a victory by these plaintiffs would disastrous.

There are so many individuals and families today who are not insured and cannot afford the services of doctors and/or hospitals. Without the benefit of charitable immunity, many of these doctors and hospitals would no longer be willing to risk treating those who cannot pay, although some of them could easily afford to take that risk. There is already a dearth of healthcare options for those in rural and poor areas. Dare the court system make it worse?