Thursday, July 27, 2006

sex, sex, and sex

Okay don't get too excited. What is the verdict on the new Federal Sex Registration law? Any one who has info please let me know a link. My state passed a law about year ago when all of the hoopla started about the rampant sex offenders. The effect of the law is that the city that I live in (pop. 550,000 approx.) has absolutley no areas that sex offenders can live in. How is this right? Now I know what your asking, Janet do you want to have a person who is a predator living next door? No but thats also why i live next to an elemenatry school and park.
I'm currently helping one of my clients to try to live within the system and i'm failing miserably.
janet

Monday, July 24, 2006

new ABA ethics opinion

http://www.abanews.org/releases/news072006.html

The ABA has come up with its new opinion on the amount of cases that public defenders should handle. 150 felonies; 400 misdemeanor; 200 juvenile; 200 mental health; and 25 appeals. So how is the running with everyone elses dockets?
janet

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Aww, thanks, Moms.

Some of the staff in the office are planning on getting some "Have You Hugged Your Public Defender" T-Shirts from public defense's Cafe Press shop Public Defender Wear. (The blog is on sabbatical)
The ladies who run the office take good care of the attorneys, especially the absent-minded professor types. And they're going to be supporting us some more with the shirts.

A couple (or so) years ago, the staff were mom-aged, but they seem to have been getting younger over the last few years. I've noticed this trend everywhere I've practiced. Now they're all young - just about my age...

Jack

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

New Meth Recipe - a/k/a Easter Bunny Meth

I've had a couple of clients independently tell me about a new kind of methamphetamine. I'd never heard of it before, and it didn't make sense.

Its effects are supposed to be physiologically identical to meth, but the substance will not test as meth, either in a Narcopouch test or in a GC/MS.

It's made by mixing 1) household ammonia (more accurately, ammonium hydroxide (aq)) 2) crumbled charcoal (carbon) and 3) gun bluing (Selenious Acid, Cupric Nitrate, Nitric Acid, Phosphoric Acid and water [MSDS here]) in equal parts. Then the mixture is buried in a sealed fish tank or cooler. Some recipes call to suspend strings from the top of the container into the mixture. (hence the occasional name "string dope") Then wait a month. By then crystals will have formed; the crystals are [meth] ice.

However, this is not really meth; it's alive. It is a fungus that keeps growing inside your body long after you ingest it (by shooting or smoking) That's why addicts scratch and get open sores; it's the ice forming new crystals in a person's skin. These are called "meth bites." (locally, "ice bites" - assonance is important to addicts, too) On top of all that, it has a "half-life" of only a few days after removal from the ground; within two weeks, it will be pharmacologically inert.

The problem is, this recipe is all a bunch of crap; even the DEA knows it. (at 11)
On a more basic level, you just can't get there chemically. Period. There is no organic compound in the recipe, so you're not going to get anything remotely similar to the organic compound methamphetamine. You need an organic compound like an amine - as in meth-amphet-amine. Pseudoephedrine is an amine, and is used in both the red phosphorus/Hydrogen Iodide and Lithium/anhydrous ammonia cooking methods.

The base (ammonium hydroxide) and any of the acids (from the bluing) will react, and form a salt, which may form crystals, but it's not going to be chemically or pharmacologically anything like meth.

Another thing that had me skeptical was that none of my searches were getting hits on any of the drug information clearing houses; Erowid, Rhodium (now defunct), or Lycaeum.

But Erowid eventually came through; the recipe is "complete bunk" - the idea was dreamed up in the 1970's by a guy named Scott French and published in a book, the "Complete Guide to the Street Drug Game."
as explained by the erowid article's author,

As with the Net in general, there is a paucity of accurate information available on the subject of illicit drugs. Even the fact of publication is not necessarily a guarantee of any sort of technical legitimacy, particularly, though not limited to, "counter-culture" efforts.

There are many reasons why people write books, but making money is one of the biggest. When the subject is of an illegal nature, the likelihood of inadequate, incomplete, or blatantly wrong information is even higher than usual.

Companies like Paladin, Delta Press, and Loompanics are typical purveyors of such trashy misinformation under cover of the U.S. First Amendment. Ever seen the list of "underground" books by Ragnar Benson & Duncan Long? How many things can these guys be "expert" in? Not bloody likely. What's that maxim? If you can't do, teach.


I'm amazed that people will believe this crap; a living crystalline fungus that will continue to grow new crystals underneath the skin, even after being smoked. (but see gout; crystalline, yes, but not organic, not fungal, and not alive) I'm even more amazed that, armed with this erroneous but alarming information, people still use the stuff!

Jack

Tuesday FarmBlog

Mrs. Tipper and the Tripperlets are gone this week to the A&M college for competition and classes. Guess who gets all the chores?

That's right, Jack of the too-big hands.

But think of all the chevre and blue cheese and feta... oh my!
unfortunately, no joy. The baby cows get the milk.


This is the girl Tripperlet feeding Klungo early one morning as Venus was rising and the sky was pure Maxfield Parrish.

Jack

Monday, July 17, 2006

Satire, Though Difficult, Still Exists

The current state of the Union makes satire rather difficult, because whatever the most cynical and over-the-top commentator can dream up will be announced as policy (or at least as a fait accomplit) by the Administration soon thereafter.
Enter Fafblog. Giblets, Fafnir and the Medium Lobster, through a secret process, condense the political miasma into a sweet and intoxicating liquor. (though they produce precious little of it)
Here's a sample:
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Now They Hate Us With Our Freedom!
Giblets takes a few weeks away from the blog and the whole world goes insane! After four years of justly convicting Guantanamo prisoners of classified crimes before a fair and impartial kangaroo court of their peers, a power-mad Supreme Court has ruled that the military tribunals at Gitmo are "illegal" and that the president has to "obey the law." Well this is just the kind of dangerous radicalism that leads to fascism and human rights! What are we going to do with these people, try them in actual courtrooms with lawyers, juries and "evidence"? That way lies madness - or worse, democracy! If we give our enemies actual rights they'll turn the deadly power of our justice system against us, smuggling weaponized due process into American cities, crashing the Fifth Amendment into skyscrapers, setting off radiological writs of habeas corpus in Times Square!

It may not be the cure for what ails us, but it makes it go down better.

Jack

weekend

I hope everyone has recovered from the weekend. We live in on of the areas that has been experiencing the 95+ degree weather with the heat index of being 100 to 110 degrees. Needless to say the yard didn't get cut until Sunday night at 8 pm. I got the kitchen floors layed down and i must say pretty impressed with my jigsaw abilities. The best complement I got was after the ballroom party the other night. I've been asked to compete in next months competition. I'm not going to be able to compete but it was nice to think I"m getting better
janet

Friday, July 14, 2006

another reversal

The witch of Pungo after 300 years has finally been exonerated!
janet

Everything I Needed to Learn About Trials I Learned from Deliverance

Some days you're Burt Reynolds;


Some days you're Ned Beatty.












This week I'll be Ned.

Jack





UPDATE:
I'll count this as a (defense) victory.

Solid search warrant
+no knock and announce, but see Hudson.
+Solid Miranda
+Meth weighing more than a dozen times over the trafficking minimum
+Many pounds of marijuana
+Rock solid constructive possession
+Solid confession, admitting knowledge, possession, and sales per week well in excess of what was found
=15 years, assuming the meth and marijuana are multiplicious for sentencing purposes.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Renaissance woman

Okay, I'm walking funny and don't know how I'm going to dance tonight but damn 2/3 of my kitchen looks good. I decided to to redo the floors this week. I bought the material on Sunday let it acclimate to the room and last night after waiting for the prescribed 48 hours I started to install the laminate wood flooring. The lied when they said it was a one person job. Its a two person job you need someone else there to laugh at you when you cut the wrong side off only to find out your have fun out of the planks because you didn't buy enough. Needless to say I went back to Home Depot this morning for the two additional boxes and will have to wait another 48 hours before I can finish. BUT, it does look really nice.

janet

Friday, July 07, 2006

Chicken Catcher

Last year, a couple of half-geniuses came up with a brilliant plan to get rid of the 2 pounds of meth they were carrying in their car: A four-foot long rocket to be raised from the trunk by a series of ropes and pulleys and fired using the cigarette lighter as the ignition source. Since you're reading this, you can be sure the plan didn't work, but I can't tell from the news accounts where the plan failed; whether there was an ignition failure or moving-into-firing-position failure or decision making failure "dude, he's just going to give us a speeding ticket, no sense in shooting El Diablo's $145,000 in meth into the woods."

Our heroes pled out recently, and some more facts came to light.
One of the defendants was employed as a "chicken catcher" and claimed that the $12,000 in cash found in the car was savings from his job.
So how much does a chicken catcher get paid in a year?

$40,000.

Almost as much as a starting PD gets here, and more than a starting DA gets. And chicken catchers don't have student loans, and don't forego 7 years of salary to join the chicken catchers guild.

Jack