A Tucson man who volunteers as a humanitarian worker is facing 25 days in jail for leaving jugs of water for undocumented immigrants crossing the desert. A jury convicted him of littering in a Federal refuge.
After being hit with 300 hours of community service and a year of probation, Walt Stanton appealed the sentence. Because he challenged the judge's punishment, that magistrate is now threatening him with those 25 days in jail or doubling the community service to 600 hours. 300 hours is a long time and 600 hundred is ridiculous, but 25 days in jail??? Draconian.
"What you do unto the least of you, you do unto me" - allegedly said by that person Christians believe is the son of god, aka Jesus.
Yes, plastic bottles aren't good for wildlife and the CNN article below mentions plans to provide water in a manner not involving plastic, but having people die from thirst is cruel and inhumane and not very Christian.
25 days in jail has the potential to ruin most Americans. They could lose their jobs and enter a debt default spiral they probably couldn't recover from. All for trying to keep people alive.
You have to wonder how so called Christians resolve these conflicts as they do.
But then again, we are the country that bombs weddings.
CNN article from original sentencing in August 2009
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Peter Breschard
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Insane. Just insane.
R~~
The aid group wrote good luck in Spanish on the bottles, so the prosecutors asked for a $5000 fine and five years of probation because the message on the bottle showed they were not being humanitarian, but were in fact protesting US immigration policy.
And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance."
Some things never change.
Grrr...
(thumbified because you can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant.)
That said - I'd like to see a whole bunch of chuches in the border areas lay off the Gay Agenda for a while and go out in force and put out water...
Good connection with Arlo there, Kasten.
Even more bullshit is the guy has a hearing for violating probation this month.
I'm sure the Pope is just happy that the guy didn't leave them condoms!
First Amendment? What First Amendment?
rated...
If we let this deadbeat get away with it, others will think THEY can! The next thing you know we have absolute litter anarchy! Mountains of trash everywhere, people running the streets screaming, cats and dogs getting along....total anarchy.
If he hadn't been so damned determined to help criminals stage an invasion of our country to begin with, none of this would have happened.
I'm glad they put the screws to this littering, bleeding heart madman before it was too late.
Oh, and Rated.
Well, we don't live in a Christian country. There's no indication of how many members of the jury are Christians, nor whether the judge is a Christian. Most of the people involved in providing water in the desert are either Christians or members of other religions. I believe the fellow in question is a Unitarian.
The irony is that most of these "water in the desert" groups also pick up trash when they leave water bottles.
I guess the judge would rather see bodies in the desert rather than water bottles, which seems like a strange priority to me.
Rated for massive "WTF" factor.
Let the congress deal with immigration, and local jurisdictions, but let the humanitarians serve those in need regardless of personal circumstances. One can draw parallels to the parable of the Good Samaritan, as that has much to do with prejudice as well. The Samaritan offered help above and beyond at personal expense and risk, so this story can indeed be viewed within a Christian framework, as the parable--words from Christ--indicate what ought to be done for the least in our society regardless of circumstances.
"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (said) that leaving the full plastic jugs on the refuge is detrimental to the health of the animals that live there."
==========
. . . as opposed to humans dying of thirst, I suppose.
On the other hand:
"We have sympathy for what they have to do," Mike Hawkes of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge said. But "they have do to do it without putting plastic bottles out there. ... You can't go anywhere in the refuge without seeing plastic bottles through the countryside."
Hawkes said refuge officials and members of No More Deaths had met and were trying to come up with methods that don't involve plastic bottles.
========
Apparently, there are ways to work things out. Still, this overreach of the Federal government is a bit daunting. So -- what do we do about it?
thumbed
My consolation as a Texan, though, is always to say, "Hey, at least we aren't Arizona, the most sadistic state in the union!"
Like you said ----sure don't walk the walk,
I think what's going on in the border states is that undocumented folks are ahead of gays on the hit parade right now, is all, and pedos are even worse than undocumented folk.
Even pariahs are a matter of fashion.
Do you see what liberal environmentalists have done? It ain't the Christians who caused this mess.
Environmentalists don't give a shit about humans and they sure as hell don't care enough about Mexicans to give them water.
Watch this. LINK
How does all that Hope and Change taste now?
I think we need to begin remembering their names.
If ONLY the guy brought photos to court of the littering we are doing (with plastic water bottles!) in Iraq and Af/Pak. When they burn the huMONGous garbage dumps over there it creates health hazards for our troops.
And poorsinner, please. Ack! Rated.
Water? Puleeze. WTF, indeed?
A U.S. magistrate in Tucson has ruled that federal agents can lie under oath and it won’t be viewed by her court as an act of bad faith.
And if they manage to forget details relevant to a case, like, say, discovering pieces of evidence that they lose first, well, that’s okay too.
I’ll give you Judge Jennifer Guerin’s words pulled from her review of a defendant’s motion to dismiss and then the back story on the drug trafficking case.
“Whether Agent Gonzalez was untruthful or absent-minded in his response to questioning at the October hearing about the whereabouts of the bolt seal is not determinative of the issue of bad faith.”
p.s. I'll take this chance to edit my previous comment (haha). It was, of course, supposed to say "the Bible has...", and the other thing I screwed up was "It's a truly mysterious..."