Murder News

McClatchy's Mike Doyle digs up Farrell v. Burke, a case from 2006 involving a sex offender who had violated his parole by purchasing porn. The salacious details, including Sotomayor reading excerpts from Scum: True Homosexual Experiences, are here. (Unfortunately for the culture warriors, she ultimately sided with the state.) Doyle also highlights this classic exchange between the sex offender's attorney and parole officer:

MR. NATHANSON: Are you saying, for example, that that condition of parole would prohibit Mr. Farrell from possessing, say, Playboy magazine?

P.O. BURKE: Yes.

MR. NATHANSON: Are you saying that that condition of parole would prohibit Mr. Farrell from possessing a photograph of Michelangelo['s] David?

P.O. BURKE: What is that?

MR. NATHANSON: Are you familiar with that sculpture?

P.O. BURKE: No.

MR. NATHANSON: If I tell you it's a large sculpture of a nude youth with his genitals exposed and visible, does that help to refresh your memory of what that is?

P.O. BURKE: If he possessed that, yes, he would be locked up for that.

McClatchy's Mike Doyle digs up Farrell v. Burke, a case from 2006 involving a sex offender who had violated his parole by purchasing porn. The salacious details, including Sotomayor reading excerpts from Scum: True Homosexual Experiences, are here. (Unfortunately for the culture warriors, she ultimately sided with the state.) Doyle also highlights this classic exchange between the sex offender's attorney and parole officer:

MR. NATHANSON: Are you saying, for example, that that condition of parole would prohibit Mr. Farrell from possessing, say, Playboy magazine?

P.O. BURKE: Yes.

MR. NATHANSON: Are you saying that that condition of parole would prohibit Mr. Farrell from possessing a photograph of Michelangelo['s] David?

P.O. BURKE: What is that?

MR. NATHANSON: Are you familiar with that sculpture?

P.O. BURKE: No.

MR. NATHANSON: If I tell you it's a large sculpture of a nude youth with his genitals exposed and visible, does that help to refresh your memory of what that is?

P.O. BURKE: If he possessed that, yes, he would be locked up for that.

As president of General Motors when Eisenhower tapped him to become Secretary of Defense in 1953, ?SEngine Charlie? Wilson voiced at his Senate confirmation hearing what was then the conventional view. When asked whether he could make a decision in the interest of the U.S. that was adverse to the interest of GM, he said he could.

Then he reassured them that such a conflict would never arise. ?SI cannot conceive of one because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country.?

Wilson was only slightly exaggerating. At the time, the fate of GM was inextricably linked to that of the nation. In 1953, GM was the world?"s biggest manufacturer, the symbol of U.S. economic might. It generated 3 percent of U.S. gross national product. GM?"s expansion in the 1950s was credited with stalling a business slump. It was also America?"s largest employer, with over 460,000 employees. Its blue-collar workers received (in today's dollars) $60 an hour that year in wages and benefits.

Today, Wal-Mart is America?"s largest employer, the majority of whose employees receive just over $10 an hour. And General Motors is filing for bankruptcy. Wilson?"s reassuring words in 1953 now have an ironic twist. There will be little difference between what is good for America and for GM because it is soon to be owned by U.S. taxpayers who have forked out more than $60 billion to buy it.

But why would U.S. taxpayers want to own today?"s GM?

The answer, after the jump.

--Robert Reich

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President Obama will be traveling across the Atlantic again, and as judging by the pictures below in Germany, there?"s already a lot of enthusiasm about his trip:

Obama begins his trip June 3 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he?"ll meet with King Abdullah. He travels June 4 to Cairo for meetings with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his long-anticipated speech at Cairo University.

On June 5 Obama heads to Dresden, Germany, for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, a visit with wounded U.S. troops at a military hospital and a tour of the former Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald. He closes his trip June 6 with a trip to France to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day.

For more, see ?SObama Seeks Enhanced Engagement with the Middle East, Europe.?