Some decent folks live in Texas but...

its reputation as an extreme right-wing, christian fundamentalist, patriarchal, xenophobic, misogynist, homophobic, violent hell-hole is mostly well-deserved.

When Louise (of _Thelma and Louise_) wanted to make a run for Mexico, she wanted to avoid Texas.  Except for the enlightened city of Austin and environs, that is the correct approach to this reactionary US state.

DJ! has many, many blogposts about the Texan political climate and its dominant anti-Choice practices.

This judgement was recently pronounced there:

On Christmas Eve 2009, Ezekiel Gilbert, 30, shot Lenora Ivie Frago, 23, in the neck. She was paralyzed; seven months later, she died due to complications from that injury. On June 6, 2013, Gilbert was acquitted of that crime. He was acquitted because he claims she accepted $150 for escort services but did not have sex with him, which means that he was just defending his property. This acquittal shows the dangerous use to which such common "self-defense" laws can be put.[...]

Gilbert claimed he believed that sex was included in the $150 fee he paid to Frago as an escort; thus, when Frago did not have sex with him, he considered her a thief. Gilbert was probably also concerned about his inability to recover the money, as it would have required admitting to attempting to solicit a prostitute. As such, his attorneys successfully argued, the Texas law permitted the murder.

Criminal prosecutors Matt Lovell and Jessica Schulze, on the other hand, disagreed. Even with the Texas law, they argued that Gilbert's behavior was not protected. The law, they said, only protects "law-abiding" citizens; it does not protect those attempting to force the commission of an illegal act, such as prostitution, as would have been required of Frago.

Obviously, prostitution is illegal in the majority of the United States, which means that these people — if Frago was a prostitute, as is claimed – were already committing a crime. Also, admittedly, punishing Gilbert will not bring back this poor young woman. However, those facts to not obviate the problems with a law that justifies murder by the supposed theft of $150.

There you have it. This is even more callous than "Stand Your Ground" laws, which, as Florida recently demonstrated, works exclusively for men and people of pallor.

Grand merci to @godelnoodle and @godammitkitty for the link.

It's an insult to pigs to call cops by their name.

News that Coquitlam RCMP Cpl. Jim Brown (aka the “Kilted Knight”) posted graphic photos of himself holding a knife to a woman’s throat on a website devoted to sadomachism has prompted significant public concern. Although this appears to be just another black eye for the nation’s police force, there is potentially a much bigger issue here.

Cpl. Jim Brown isn’t just a police officer who is a sexual deviant on his own time and who likes to connect with other like-minded individuals to share their twisted experiences. He is the RCMP member who produced informant Ross Caldwell in mid-July, 1999, almost three years before the RCMP accidentally discovered evidence that Robert Willy Pickton had been disposing of women’s bodies on the Port Coquitlam property he shared with his brother David. Caldwell was an acquaintance of the Picktons who reported that Willy Pickton had been seen skinning a woman in the barn, that he kept handcuffs under his bed and that he owned night-vision equipment, a semi-automatic rifle and wigs that he wore when he went trolling downtown.

From here.

Xtra and Dan Savage have weighed in on Twitter, claiming that CBC news coverage about RCMP Cpl. Brown is an invasion of his privacy and that his personal sexual preferences should not be a public concern.

Given his close connection to the Pickton investigation - and that someone in the fairly tightly-knit and protective BDSM community found his photo re-enactment of actual crime scenes where women were tortured, murdered, dismembered and fed to pigs, disturbing - Brown's professional deportment should be scrutinized.

During the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, a number of police officers who worked on the investigation that eventually led to the trial of Willy Pickton were exempted from examination.

Willy Pickton didn’t kill up to 49 women by himself, not according to the jury who convicted him of six counts of second degree murder. The women whose remains were found at the pig farm were likely the victims of a group of sexual sadists and torturers, who likely included convicted murderer Willy Pickton himself.

How did Cpl. Jim Brown meet informant Ross Caldwell? Was Cpl. Jim Brown one of the sexual sadists frequenting Piggy’s Palace? Why didn’t the RCMP act on the important information he brought forward? Were the RCMP monitoring the gang activities, including the Angels’ visits to Piggy’s Palace? Why did the RCMP seemingly ignore a ten year string of serial murders? Did they have bigger fish to fry? How many murderers remain at large?

All of these questions should have been answered by the just-concluded Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. We tried our best to pry the lid off and get the evidence out, but our attempts to have Cpl. Brown, Ross Caldwell, Bev Hyacinthe and David Pickton testify (among others) were rejected, as were our attempts to get access to the records of the Organized Crime Agency of BC that would reveal the nature and extent of police surveillance and gang infiltration activities involving Piggy’s Palace.

The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry is patently incomplete. Now it has been revealed that the Coquitlam RCMP had a sexual sadist in their ranks who was sufficiently connected to the Picktons to produce a key informant, someone who tipped the police what Willy Pickton was up to three years before he was arrested. The Commission hearings must be re-opened. If it does not re-open the hearings, it will be perpetuating a police cover-up of the circumstances surrounding Canada’s worst serial killing case.

Instead, the Commission targeted a number of minor players, including this police clerk. It was a travesty of justice miscarried in order to protect Pickton's buddies-in-crime.

The RCMP has become emblematic of the worst examples of male sexual entitlement and privilege.

Added: Rabble has a long screed regarding Brown: "Private fantasy, Public Reality". It's not that great. The author is clearly not familiar with the premise of 'safe, sane and consensual' activities that informs ethical practitioners of BDSM. As well, she misrepresents Terri-Jean Bedford who is a professional dominatrix - not someone who currently experiences abuse, exception made for the violence of a "justice" system that criminalizes sex trade workers to "protect" them.

Competent research, precise knowledge of legal questions, including the criticism directed at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry and a better understanding of boundary issues would have been highly helpful to Meghan Murphy and it would have made her rant referral-worthy.

Cops Gotta Prioritize

Now, this is a major crime.

A Vancouver man who was trying to buy tickets to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final was robbed of $4,400 this week by a supposed scalper he had connected with on Craigslist.

Police say the would-be ticket seller pulled a weapon on the Canucks fan after luring him to a mall parking lot in nearby Coquitlam, B.C., on Monday.

. . . A police helicopter, dogs and officers did not find the suspect, and an investigation is ongoing.

Be nice if cops would put this level of resources into, you know, actual violence against actual people.

But hey, it's a Canucks fan. Not some nameless, faceless, female sex-worker.