From AP:

Woman jailed because of record mixup

YORK, Pa. — A mistake in court records led to a two-night jail stay for a woman being investigated by police for playing music too loud.

Andrea Conn, of Windsor, was jailed Saturday night after an officer looking into the noise complaint discovered she was wanted for failing to appear in court in 2003.

But the warrant should not have been in the county’s system because it was taken care of that year, York County Prothonotary Pamela Lee said Wednesday.

That kind of screw up is bad enough, but it happens. But just like in a black & white Mob crime drama, it appears that in PA if you want safety from abuse and harassment you have to pay for it. That warrant that landed Ms. Conn in jail was for failure to pay the court costs involved in seeking a protection-from-abuse order.

This is the second time she has been tossed in jail for failing to turn over the money. She served time four years ago because she didn’t have it - she only was released when someone paid it for her.

From the Chester Co. PA website:

IS THERE A COST FOR FILING FOR A PROTECTION FROM ABUSE ORDER?

Yes.

There are costs that must be eventually paid when you file a protection from abuse order with the court. You will not have to pay any fees at the time of filing. However, at the time of the hearing the court will order either the alleged assailant to pay the costs, you pay the costs, the costs to be split by both parties. If you are successful and the court grants you the protection from abuse order, the costs are usually placed upon the alleged assailant. The court costs must be paid even if you choose to withdraw your petition and decide not to proceed with the case. If you do not appear at your scheduled hearing your case will be dismissed and the court will hold you responsible for all costs.

Just how much are those fees? $123.50. That’s over 22 hours at minimum wage, better than half a week’s pay.

Whether the one seeking protection is the one to pay the fees is at the discretion of the judge. Should the petitioner decide not to pursue it, as many women do for a variety of reasons, including fear or intimidation, having no money to support herself or having nowhere to go, she always has to pay it. She’s penalized for making a failed attempt, money she may not have.

Sounds like a deterrent against filing to me. We wouldn’t want the state to get stuck protecting a vulnerable citizen from abuse without getting paid for it.

So far, all Ms Conner is asking for is an apology for the warrant not being cleared. I think she deserves much more than that. Much of that she should have received four years ago.

From my favorite musical. The style is very 80s, but the song is a classic.

The Streetsboro, Ohio area has had it’s problems with corruption. Earlier this year, residents called on the City Council to investigate a zoning dispute and allegations that city leaders had illicitly pandered to developers. Paul H. Jones, former mayor of Ravenna, the county seat, pleaded guilty to mail fraud and income tax charges and was sentenced to serve a total of 30 months in federal and state prisons. And former Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., a Democrat whose district included Streetsboro, is serving time in prison for racketeering, taking bribes and forcing his aides to work on his Ohio farm. So 19-year-old Brett McClafferty decided to challenge the system. To everyone’s surprise, he did well.

Perhaps too well.

From the LA Times:

A few months after a teenager outpolled three middle-aged City Council members in the race for mayor — but still missed a slot in the Nov. 6 runoff by a single vote — the city fathers of Streetsboro, Ohio, have decided that enough is enough.

Eighteen might be old enough to vote, they say, or enlist in the military and fight in Iraq.

But in this middle-class Rust Belt town where factories churn out steel pails and tubes of lipstick, it may not be old enough to hold office: Next month, voters will consider whether to modify the town charter to require that future candidates be at least 23.

The minimum-age requirement was added to a ballot measure that, among other things, would also require candidates to disclose their criminal records.

Wait a minute. To turn down the proposal to raise the legal age to run for office, a voter must also reject a requirement for candidates to ‘fess up about convictions? That’s a proposal to do Congress proud.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio is looking into the constitutionality of this measure, but legal and political experts say Ohio’s “home-rule” provision allows towns and cities to have a significant amount of control over how they structure their local governments.

But that doesn’t intimidate McClafferty, now a student at Cleveland State University. He has already assembled a campaign team to back his 2008 bid for a seat on the county Board of Commissioners.

From the LA Times:

All over Hollywood, people are bracing for a strike.

Writers could walk out as early as Thursday if their union can’t hammer out a new three-year employment contract with the studios to replace one that expires at midnight on Wednesday.

If only this included Washington speech writers ….

Just in time for Halloween. When it comes to the paranormal, how do you stack up against the general public? To find out where the country stands, from Oct. 16th to 18th, AP and Ipsos did telephone interviews with 1,013 adults about supernatural beliefs and superstitions. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

The results:

• 23% say they’ve actually seen a ghost or felt its presence
• 19% say they accept the existence of spells or witchcraft.
• 31% of liberals report seeing a ghost.
• 18% of conservatives say the same.
• 33% have awakened sensing a strange presence in the room
• 48% believe in extrasensory perception, or ESP.
• 14% say they have seen a UFO
• 20% say they are at least somewhat superstitious
• The most admitted-to superstition, by 17 percent, was finding a four-leaf clover

Put me down for a belief in ESP, and I’m not too sure about demons, in or out of the White House. Nix on the rest.

Via the Seattle PI

This one was started by PZ Myers at Pharyngula as a means of demonstrating evolution in cyberspace. I’m going to tap Ahistoricality, ***Dave, Sherry, Burrow, and Lynn for the next round.

First, the rules:

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

• You can leave them exactly as is.
• You can delete any one question.
• You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is…”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”.
• You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.
• You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

The lineage:

• My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
• My great-great-great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
• Mygreat-great-great-grandparent is Primate Diaries.

My great-great-grandparent is Thus Spake Zuska.

• My great-grandparent is Kate.
• My grandparent is Finally Maturing.
• My parent is Parts-n-Pieces

The Questions and Answers:

• The best adult novel in SF/Fantasy is: Dune by Frank Herbert
• The best scary movie in modern pop culture is: The Omen (The original - saw it at the drive-in when I was 16.)
• The best sexy song in classic rock music is: Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing by Aerosmith
• The best cult novel in romance fiction is: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
• The best high-carb food in American cooking is: fried cornmeal mush

Liz Spikol reports that a generic version of Lamictal may be available in the US as early as next year. In Canada, where it’s already available, the generic is half the price of the brand name.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that someone picks it up here quickly.

There’s something wrong with this picture, and it’s not the photography.

From the front page of the Target website. In the header, girls get a pony for with a mane and tail for brushing. Boys get Monopoly, to play with real estate and money. Girls get dolls and arts & crafts. Boys get riding toys like tricycles. Girls get learning games, boys get sports & outdoor play, technology, and electronics. Games and puzzles are the only shared toys.

Boys get to be active and technologically adventurous. Girls get to be passive and quiet.

In the words of Ms. Magazine, Click.