Scruit

At best a penny auction is a gamble. At worst it's an outright scam. The overwhelming majority of people will pay for stuff they don't get. How's that not a scam?

There used to be a penny auction company downstairs from my previous employer. They moved in during the darkest depths of the corporate real estate economy in the city, ran for 6 months and disappeared in the middle of the night when creditors came knocking. Question: is their physical address or phone number listed on the site? If it is email/800#/po box only the RUN AWAY.

Just because the PD has deep pockets (well, the taxpayer, that is) doesn't mean they deserve to be defendants on this lawsuit. Considering the officer's behavior was so egregiously outside any training he would have ever received, I woudl argue that the PD is not liable unless plaintiffs can *prove* the PD *knew* he was prone this kind of behavior. Vicarious liability of employers does not extend to criminal acts that occur outside the scope of the person's duties. If a cop rapes someone in uniform the PD is not responsible unless they knew, for example, that he had displayed violent sexual behavior patterns in the past. They are suing the PD for negligent hiring/supervision. Show me the negligence! If he has prior complaints if acting the fool with his duty weapons then sure, the PD has likely shown supervison failures. If this guy has no complaint history and has been a model police officer up until that point the what did the PD do wrong?

Is that one of those New Orleans-style carnival funerals? That's the way I wanna be laid to rest - every have a party and live it up some.

Whatever happens to the cop is independent of the lawsuit. He should be fired. I'm sure it will be a slamdunk lawsuit - but it's like "whiplash" lawsuits - there is no was to accurately account for the injuries - we only have their word on the extent of the impact on the child. So how many millions of dollars do we give the parents for this? Read the wording; "He has woken up clutching his chest" How many times? Is this a regular thing or did it happen once? What is the dollar figure per bad dream? When you sue the police the money come from everyone in the city, the tax base - the people cutting that check (or the people funding the liability insurance payments) did nothing wrong. You wanna stop this kind of crap? Any time an officer acts outside of his training you sue HIM, not the city.

I'm raising the possibility that they are milking it. Can you prove to me that his injuries are exactly as stated?

That's the next question. Ok so the kid got tazed - and if it was my kid I'd be out for blood. But removing emotion from the case for a minute: WE know the cop was a knobhead for putting himself in a position to taze the kid. But what recoverable damage did the kid suffer? PTSD? Really? Waking up at night clutching his chest? I start to wonder if the parents saw dollar-signs in their eyes and start making crap up to get a settlement. (The same parents that will complain that their taxes are too high to pay for the police dept, without figuring out that the police spend too much money on liability insurance because people like them tell a made-up sob story when they think their ship has come in) I'd like to see an independent assessment of the kid's "injuries". How many people get tazed? Voluntarily and involuntarily. How many of those get PTSD? How many tens of thousands of cops have been tazed as part of training?? How many of those quit the force with PTSD after that? I call bullshit on the extent of the kid's injuries. Yeah, sucked to be him, but this whole thing seems like this is their meal ticket so they're they're making crap up.

Did the taser go through a full shock cycle? Or just fire the darts? I could believe static firing the darts.

Although the discharge of the taser was (taken at face value) an accident, the officer had no reason at all to remove it from him holster, and especially not to point it at a child. It demonstrates a serious and fundamental lack of judgement that I don't think the department can, or should forgive. Weapons discipline, muzzle discipline, trigger discipline - 3 strikes, he's out. I'm from a cop family so I tend to work harder to see the officer's perspective before forming an opinion. In this case I think the officer was 100% wrong.

Balloon Boy's younger brother? Looks like a clear plastic tube full of helium/hydrogen. Kinda like the ones Mythbusters used for helium escape slide.

I love how his fuel tank fell off. Nice, solid, roadworthy bike there, Bubba.

Should have just kept turning. Braking stood him up. Panic braking is a difficult habit to shake, though.

You'd feel even worse if you saw her death on the news the next day.

Scream for help = call the cops. Why else would she scream for help?

Don't tell me I shouldn't chime in because I don't race... I don't care if the TRACK wants to see a title or not - the law of the state says of you buy titled property and you don't get it titled in your name then it is not yours. You just paid for a bike and that bike still belongs to someone else. Racing regulations don't trump the law. If you are willing to take the risk that the legal owner can come back and claim it at any time then go for it.

That's fine. Enjoy riding HIS bike.

The bike has a title. It is just in someone else's name. The legal owner of titled property is the person on the title.

I would never buy a bike unless the title is clear and available to be transferred to my name as part of the sale. Too much risk. I was about to buy an old Festiva for $250 that was going to be a test bed for a new semi-automatic clutch I was trying to develop and the guy said; "The title is in my ex-wife's name and we don't talk much..." Bye!!

Bikers go to lawyers who are bikers when the case involves bikes. You know they can empathize and are not going to be put off by the bike thing.

The way I see it there are two legal purposes for a birth certificate: 1) Record of genetic lineage 2) Establishing who has parental rights It used to be that that those two purposes were served by a single pair of names, for the most part. Nowadays things are different. I'm all for keeping the birth certificate as genetic lineage and using adoption papers to establish parental rights IF the adoption process is streamlined under these circumstances. The adoption process can cost anywhere from $5k to $40k typically - parents who use donated eggs/sperm etc families should not have to shell out up to $40k more to just have their parent rights documented. Without this legal documentation the parent who is not on the BC cannot get a passport for the while, travel internationally with the child, be next-of-kin at a hospital or make surgery decisions without a power-of-attorney. I'd support a blended BC form that serves both purposes. As Magley says - technology has progressed beyond the point that the BC form can handle in a lot fo cases. Any change in parental responsibilities AFTER the BC is issued would fall under adoption.

We need to define and understand what a birth certificate is supposed to do. If it is a record of genetic lineage then the father column should be left blank if the genetic father is unknown. Same with the mother - if a surrogate and the egg donor is not known. Maybe the answer is to add columns for "Parent 1 (If not mother)" and "Parent 2 (if not father) This would allow non-traditional families to establish parental rights to children that are not genetically theirs - e.g. surrogates, adopted at birth, sperm donors, egg donors, same-sex parents, family members who take in a child born to a mother who died during childbirth, or any other situation in which the people who are committing to raise the child are not the genetic mother/father. The genetic lineage is an important record, but so also is establishing who is legally responsible to raise the child.

Nice!

Those paintings retain that value. She only has one virginity - and by putting a dollar figure on it she's just become a prostitute.