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De 27-jarige S. Robinson uit Ede is veroordeeld tot twee jaar cel. Robinson deed zich voor als modellenscout en kreeg minderjarige meisjes zo ver om “ontuchtige handelingen” te verrichten voor de webcam. Ook heeft hij seks gehad met enkele van hen gehad.

Diezelfde dag, voor dezelfde rechtbank:

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De rechtbank in Arnhem heeft een 45-jarige ex-politieagent uit Bennekom vrijdag een werkstraf van 200 uur opgelegd voor verkrachting van een 14-jarig meisje in de zomer van 2006. De straf is gelijk aan de eis van de officier van justitie.

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Brussels bureaucrats have stopped a grocer from selling a batch of kiwi fruits – because EU rules say they are a millimetre too small.

Market trader Tim Down must now pay £100 to dump the 5,000 perfectly edible fruits which have failed size and weight standards brought in under European regulations.

Government inspectors also warned Mr Down, 53, from Bristol, that he faces a £5,000 fine if he tries to give them away.

[..]

UKIP’s Nigel Farage said: “This is the sort of insane regulation that does the EU immense harm.”

No shit, sherlock. How about we take a cucumber, and shove it up these eurocrats’ ass?

But we’ll have to make sure it’s a proper cucumber first, right?

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EU regulations just for cucumbers are bizarrely complete. They can be studied on the EU’s website which warns, “This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.”

Class I fruit must be nigh on perfect, but the good news about Class II is that “straight and slightly crooked cucumbers” may have minor blemishes (as listed), but the bad news is that “crooked cucumbers are allowed only if they have no more than slight defects in colouring and have no defects or deformation other than crookedness. Slightly crooked cucumbers may have a maximum height of the arc of 20 mm per 10 cm of length of the cucumber. Crooked cucumbers may have a greater arc and must be packed separately.”

So the next time you see a cucumber that is both crooked AND has an unsightly blemish, you may want to call the police, or as I suspect, you will decide for yourself whether or not to buy it.

And the politicians wonder why we’re skeptical about the so-called European Constitution….

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Three out of four Americans, including large numbers of Republicans, blame President Bush’s economic policies for making the country worse off during the last eight years, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released Wednesday, reflecting a sharp increase in public pessimism during the last year.

Nine percent of respondents said the country’s economic condition had improved since Bush became president, compared with 75% who said conditions had worsened. Among Republicans, 42% said the country was worse off, while 26% said it was about the same, and 22% thought economic conditions had improved.

And yet between 45 and 50% will vote for McCain, for a continuation of these policies. With minimum overlap, that would mean that 25-30% of the voters think continuing the economic decline is a great idea.

Who are these fucking morons?

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But the increase in child protection measures is so great it is “poisoning” relationships between the generations, according to respected sociologist Professor Frank Furedi.

In a report for think tank Civitas, he said the use of criminal records bureau checks to ensure the safety of children and vulnerable adults has created an atmosphere of suspicion.

[..]

Professor Furedi said most adults now think twice before telling off children who were misbehaving, or helping children in distress for fear of the consequences.

He said that the need for the checks had transformed parents “in the regulatory and public imagination into potential child abusers, barred from any contact with children until the database gives them the green light”.

[..]

He said: “When parents feel in need of official reassurance that other parents have passed the paedophile test before they even start on the pleasantries, something has gone badly wrong in our communities.

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CONYERS: Could the President order a suspect buried alive?

YOO: Uh, Mr. Chairman, I don’t think I’ve ever given advice that the President could order someone buried alive…

CONYERS: I didn’t ask you if you ever gave him advice. I asked if you thought the President could order a suspect buried alive.

YOO: Well Chairman, my view right now is that I don’t think a President — no American President would ever have to order that or feel it necessary to order that.

CONYERS: I think we understand the games that are being played.

Indeed. Deny, avoid, stall, delay.

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Five years after the hit film that endeared the clownfish to audiences the world over, Nemo is becoming increasingly difficult to find.

The lovable tropical species, immortalized in the smash Pixar movie Finding Nemo, is facing extinction in many parts of the world because of soaring demand from the pet trade, according to marine biologists.

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When the Supreme Court issued its recent Guantanamo ruling, hysteria overcame some administration supporters. “One of the worst decisions in the history of the country,” declared Senator John McCain. Americans will “almost certainly” die as prisoners “return to the kill,” wrote a furious Justice Antonin Scalia.

[..]

Frightened they surely are, for they have redeployed the “weapons-of-mass-destruction” marketing team. This time we are told that 30 former Guantanamo prisoners have “returned to the fight.” (If that is true, why did President Bush release them? No judge released them. But let that pass.)

It is a serious allegation, so the lawyers looked into it. It turns out that clients of our firm, who were sent to Albania in 2006, were two of the 30. What fight had they returned to? Abu Bakker Qassim had published an op-ed in The New York Times. Adel Abdul Hakim had given an interview. These press statements were deemed hostile by the Department of Defense.

Surely the Pentagon was joking? They weren’t.

So I can’t speak for the other 28, if indeed there are another 28, but for the two men I do know about, giving hostile interviews constituted “returning to the fight.”

DEREK STOFFEL, CBC HOST: Mr. Willett, what’s your client’s reaction to this ruling? (the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that detainees held at Guantánamo Bay have the right to habeas corpus and can thus challenge their detention in civilian courts.)

SABIN WILLETT (PARHAT’S LAWYER): Boy what a great question that is because my client doesn’t know about this ruling because I’m not allowed to tell him. He’s sitting in solitary confinement today. He has no idea what’s happened as far as I know.

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I used to think of us Americans, Mr. Chairman, as broad-shouldered, able to admit mistakes and put them right, but my government thinks we are a small people, so panicked by real enemies that we lock up imaginary ones. Forever.

When did we become such a small people?

Testimony of Sabin Willett about his client, a Uighur prisoner in his 7th year at Guantanamo who has never been charged with anything, never will be and, in fact, has been cleared for release for years.

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”Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States,”

– Dick Cheney, October 1986.