A man who was held in solitary confinement for two years and was forced to pull his own tooth because he was denied dental health, has been awarded $22 million for violation of his constitutional rights.

Stephen Slevin, 58, from New Mexico, was awarded the sum of money – one of the largest federal civil rights settlements in history involving an inmate – after accusing Dona Ana County jail of essentially forgetting about him while he was in custody, not giving him the healthcare he needed and treating him inhumanely…

The 58-year-old was arrested in August 2005 and charged with driving while intoxicated and receiving a stolen vehicle near Las Cruces. His lawyer said that, due to his history of mental illness, he was placed into solitary confinement. Civil rights attorney Matthew Coyte revealed it was here that his client started to deteriorate.

He said: ‘They threw him in solitary and then ignored him. He disappeared into delirium, and his mental illness was made worse by being isolated from human contact and a lack of medical care…’

While Slevin was in solitary confinement, his toenails grew so long they began to curl around his feet, he developed bedsores, fungus and dental problems and lost a lot of weight, according to the lawsuit…

Mr Slevin was eventually released after 22 months as a pre-trial detainee and the charges against him were dismissed…

The county had recently offered to settle the case for $2 million…despite previously denying there was a lack of medical care and that, as government employees, county officials deserved immunity from liability.

“…as government employees, county officials deserved immunity from liability” – who do they think they are? Congress?

Read about it all here.

Found by Brother Uncle Don

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will step down from Congress this week to continue her recovery from a gunshot wound inflicted a year ago this month.

“I have more work to do on my recovery, so to do what is best for Arizona, I will step down this week,” the congresswoman said in a video message released today to her constituents.

Giffords, a third-generation Arizonan who served five years in the state Legislature before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2006, will not seek re-election this fall. But Giffords vowed that her career in public service has not come to an end.

“I will return and we will work together for Arizona and this great country,” she said…

Giffords will submit her letter of resignation later this week to House Speaker John Boehner and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. The governor will set the date for special primary and general elections to determine who will serve the remainder of Giffords’ term.

Before she leaves office, Giffords will finish her Congress On Your Corner event that was interrupted by a gunman on Jan. 8, 2011. In a private gathering in Tucson, Giffords will meet with some of the people who were at that event.

Brave person. Legitimate politician. A rare breed in our Congress.

From the you-can’t-make-this-up file:

Two years ago, fugitive murder suspect Jesse Dimmick kidnapped newlyweds Jared and Lindsay Rowley after bursting into their home on a Saturday morning.

Now, he’s suing them for $235,000.

Dimmick contends in the breach of contract suit that after he entered the couple’s home in September 2009, they reached a legally binding, oral contract that they would hide him for an unspecified amount of money.

“Later, the Rowleys reneged on said oral contract, resulting in my being shot in the back by authorities.”

A study published Friday in a British medical journal may have finally uncovered the secret behind Australia’s laid-back lifestyle, and it turns out to be more than just sun and surf: The denizens Down Under, it turns out, consume more marijuana than any other people on the planet…

The study’s co-authors…reported that as much as 15 percent of the populations of Australia and New Zealand between the ages of 15 and 64 had used some form of marijuana in 2009…

The Americas, by comparison, clocked in at 7 percent, although North America batted above the neighborhood average with nearly 11 percent of its population partaking. Asia demonstrated the lowest global marijuana use patterns at no more than 2.5 percent, the study said, although difficulties in obtaining accurate data in less developed countries were cited as one possible reason for the low figures.

Wayne Hall blamed both the ubiquity of the drug — Australia and New Zealand have no shortage of remote rural areas where policing is difficult and the plant grows like, well, a weed — and cultural mores that place the consumption of intoxicants at the center of social life…“Just look at the way we take alcohol as an integral part of everyday life. I think a lot of young people see cannabis in the same way that we see alcohol: as no big deal, as a drug just to use to have a good time,” he said.

Stepping back for a global perspective, the study found that marijuana was the world’s most widely consumed illicit drug, with anywhere from 125 million to 203 million people partaking annually…

Still, despite marijuana’s significantly outpacing other illicit drugs in terms of the volume of use, the study found that it was the least likely of all illicit drugs to cause death. Additionally, barely 1 percent of deaths in Australia annually can be attributed to illegal drugs, the report said, compared with almost 12 percent from tobacco use.

Way too reasonable – and advocates for science, reason and just plain horse-sense don’t have a lobbying army to match the beer barons and morality pimps who don’t want competition from something you could grow next to your living-room aspidistra.

TAMPA – No doubt you’ve heard the adage: a picture is worth a thousand words. A picture of 62-year-old Nick Christie could be worth thousands of dollars when a jury sees it.

The photo shows the Ohio man restrained inside the Lee County Jail with his body covered in pepper spray.

“This photo is a picture of a man who is strapped to a chair naked inside a jail for hours with a hood over his face. That evokes thoughts of being tortured,” says Cleveland-based lawyer Nick DiCello who represents the Christie family.

The photo, which was obtained by FOX 13′s investigative unit, was taken in the final hours of Christie’s life.

The District 21 Medical Examiner ruled his death was a homicide because he had been restrained and sprayed with pepper sprayed by law enforcement officers. But to this day, nobody has ever been charged with a crime, and the Lee County State Attorney cleared the sheriff’s office of any wrong doing.

The attacker charges at the victim and begins punching. If the victim goes down, the group usually scatters. If not, others join in, punching and kicking the person, often until he or she is unconscious or at least badly hurt. Sometimes the attacks are captured on cellphone video that is posted on websites.

“These individuals have absolutely no respect for human life,” St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay said…

Earlier this year in Chicago, a group of teens followed an elderly homeless man at a train station. One of the teens walked up to him and punched him in the face, knocking him out as the teen’s friends laughed and mocked the man. The exchange was captured on video and posted on a hip-hop site, where it got about a quarter of a million views within two days. The teen was not arrested because police couldn’t locate the homeless man to see if he wanted to press charges.

No jobs. Boredom. Dumfux. Racial motivation. This all equals race riots ahead.

found by Michael Hom

Mexican Marine on guard outside a Veracruz police station
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

An entire municipal police force in Mexico has been disbanded as part of a campaign to root out corruption and improve security in the face of drug-related violence.

More than 900 officers in Veracruz-Boca del Rio are losing their jobs. The Mexican navy is taking over responsibility for law enforcement.

The move comes three months after 35 bodies were found dumped on a main road in the municipality, which includes part of the city of Veracruz…

Veracruz state governor Javier Duarte de Ochoa said the decision to disband the force was part of a national programme to reform the police.

“All those who belong to the now defunct Veracruz-Boca del Rio force can join the police again once they have past the tests of trustworthiness demanded by the national system of public security,” he said.

He did not say how long the navy would be in charge of policing the municipality, which is home to around 600,000 people and includes wealthy residential districts and popular tourist areas…

Corruption and infiltration of the police by criminals are among the biggest challenges Mexico faces in its fight against the cartels, says the BBC’s Ignacio de los Reyes in Mexico City.

As well as using troops to confront the gangs militarily, President Felipe Calderon has stressed the need to reform the police and judiciary as part of his strategy to restore public security.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when Mr Calderon began deploying the military to fight the gangs.

So, uh, anyone plan on spending the holidays in Mexico.

Seized terrorist weapon

Corporations are people, the courts have decided. So apparently investigating (ie, attacking via exposing) a corporation is the same as car bombing, in our new America.

The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force has kept files on activists who expose animal welfare abuses on factory farms and recommended prosecuting them as terrorists, according to a new document uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act.

This new information comes as the Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a lawsuit challenging the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) as unconstitutional because its vague wording has had a chilling effect on political activism. This document adds to the evidence demonstrating that the AETA goes far beyond property destruction, as its supporters claim.

In a broader sense, soon it will be a terrorist activity to do anything outside the norm since it has a disruptive effect.

Police in Oklahoma arrested a woman on charges of attempting to manufacture methamphetamine inside a Tulsa Walmart on Thursday. Shopper Alisha Halfmoon, 45, allegedly grabbed ingredients from the shelves and mixed chemicals inside the store, KJRH reports.

“While speaking with some of the firefighters on the scene she made statements that that’s what she was doing; that she was attempting to obtain these chemicals and was in the process of trying to manufacture methamphetamine,” police officer David Shelby told the station. “However, she said that she was not very good at it.”
[...]
When an officer confronted Halfmoon at around 6 p.m., the suspect had allegedly just finished mixing a bottle of sulfuric acid with starter fluid, Shelby told Fox 23.

Walmart is known for its low, low prices, but Shelby said she couldn’t afford to buy the drug ingredients.