Month: March 2006

This is kind of what the fire scene I saw earlier looked like had it not been somewhere completely different.

Another exciting afternoon walk in my Old Town neighborhood of Beaumont, Texas. This afternoon my walking route became invaded by the Beaumont Fire Department as a house burned very impressively near the intersection of Evalon Avenue and North Sixth Street.

I walked up near the house just as the first fire engine pulled up. Fire was shooting from the rear roof of the house and black smoke came from just about every crack in the structure.

Speaking of crack, Homes, the dude across the street, told me about 10 homeless guys who had been living there and that the place was a crack house. Another guy, whom is the guy I see quite frequently drinking beer when I pass by, was across the street drinking beer and watching the house burn. The guy drinking beer said the people who lived in the house died about three years ago and the house had been vacant since. He said the police had been called to keep the homeless people out but the squatters kept coming back.

That’s all I know. So now, you know.

Re: Karma

I just lost all the research that I did today for my tech project — about five hours of work. It was gone in the blink of an eye due to my own stupidity by not saving my work. Okay, so I’m stupid. But I think Karma just gave me an ass-whupping too. Like Johnny Cash said: “I don’t like it but I guess things happen that way.”

It is often edifying to check out “This Day in History” Web sites such as that of The History Channel. This is certainly the case on rainy days when nothing else comes to mind that I might write about. Of course, the blog is strictly voluntary on my part. I don’t have to write if I so choose. But writing helps me keep in touch with my inner haftpflichtversicherung, or as they used to say in Germany: “Personal liability insurance.”

Among the items that I found the most interesting which happened on this day were relative to the Vietnam War. To be more specific: On March 29, 1971, Lt. William Calley was found guilty at a a court martial of premeditated murder in the My Lai massacre. The total number of those slaughtered by U.S. soldiers that day is not certain but is believed to be between 340 and 500 Vietnamese civilians. Also on this day — two years later in 1973 — the last combat troops left Vietnam. The U.S. involvement there would not officially end until April 1975 when U.S. forces helped to evacuate those fleeing from Saigon when South Vietnam fell to the communists.

These two historical items that happened on this day are of significance to me. Part of the reason is that the Vietnam War was a watershed period in my young life and was thus an intensely personal event even though I never served in the war.

Hearing about the My Lai massacre and the subsequent news surrounding Calley’s involvement was the first time that I totally wondered what the hell was wrong with people from our country. With the massacre it was a bit more complex to get at the answer. This is especially so because I know many who served in Vietnam who said you couldn’t tell who was enemy and who wasn’t. But murder is murder is murder. Calley was paroled in 1974 after serving about a third of his 10-year sentence.

If I felt shamed because of what our troops did in My Lai, I felt pride in meeting and interviewing retired Army Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr. Thompson, pictured above, died Jan. 6, 2006, in Lafayette, La. I was fortunate to have talked with him by phone for a newspaper column and later met him at a speech he gave in February 2005. Thompson was the helicopter pilot who saw the massacre taking place on the ground at My Lai, and upon landing with his two crew members covering him, he confronted Calley. Thompson is credited with saving about a dozen villagers. After being threatened by Army officials and members of Congress for telling what happened that day, Thompson was finally awarded the Soldier’s Medal for his heroism almost 30 years to the day after My Lai.

As for this day in 1973, I recall being ecstatic. I was a high school junior then and up until that time I had gone all through high school wondering if I would eventually be drafted and sent to Vietnam. Of course, I also wondered about my options if that happened as well. As it turned out, I would enlist in the Navy some 16 months later. But not until I burned my draft card.

Yep, I was being processed into the Navy in Houston and this guy asked me for my draft card. I asked him what he was going to do with it and was told that he would tear it up and throw it away. I asked him: “Can I burn it?” He agreed. So I torched my draft card and watched it smolder in an ash tray. There might be symbolism there but I’m just too brain dead from tech writing today to figure out what it is.

Oh yeah, also on this day in 1990, record companies agreed to place warning labels on music products that contain potentially offensive lyrics. It might seem funny but I don’t think I have ever even noticed those labels. I wonder why that is?

If you do the crime and are still doing the time, then you might just be a registered voter.

Something has been nagging at me for a couple of weeks. It was called to my attention that one of my neighbors, who is a convicted child molester and on parole for at least the next eight years or so, is a registered voter here in Jefferson County, Texas. I looked up the voter registration list online and sure enough, my child-molesting neighbor on parole is a registered voter.

I didn’t think people who were on parole could vote. The Texas Election Code states that a qualified voter is someone who:

(1) is 18 years of age or older;
(2) is a United States citizen;
(3) has not been determined mentally incompetent by a
final judgment of a court;
(4) has not been finally convicted of a felony or, if
so convicted, has:
(A) fully discharged the person’s sentence,
including any term of incarceration, parole, or supervision, or
completed a period of probation ordered by any court; or
(B) been pardoned or otherwise released from the
resulting disability to vote;
(5) is a resident of this state; and
(6) is a registered voter.

A week or so ago I called the local state parole office and asked if they knew why someone on parole could be registered to vote. The parole officer they gave me said she really didn’t know but thought after being on parole for a certain time that a parolee could vote. But she wasn’t sure.

Today I called the local voter registration office here in Beaumont. The person I talked with told me that, sure enough, if someone has yet to be discharged from parole then they can’t register to vote.

“But I can’t remove him from the rolls just on your word,” this person added.

Well, that’s fine with me because I was not the one who allowed him to register in the first place.

I don’t know how you feel about voting rights for convicted felons. If we really believe that these people “pay their debt to society” in prison and subsequently on parole then perhaps the right to vote is something society is should allow for the supposed redemption of the offender. But I do have problems with those felons who are on parole being registered to vote.

First of all, they are technically still serving their sentence. And, along with a driver license, the voter registration rolls are used for jury lists in the county. Perhaps the state has some failsafe method to keep paroled felons off juries such as doing a criminal records check on each potential juror. I don’t know if they do that or not. It would be interesting to find out. If a parolee landed on a jury by lying, let’s say for child molestation, that really would in the sickest sense of the word mean the defendant had a jury of his peers. At least one juror. And you’ve all seen enough “Perry Mason” and “Law and Order” to know one juror is all you need for reasonable doubt. It’s something to think about.

If only I had the solution to all of our border and security problems — and given that someone would listen to me if I had a solution — I’d be feeling a lot better about things. But I don’t have the solution or solutions or a magic wand or magic beans or even Magic Johnson so that means we have to leave it in the hands of the U.S. Congress and the president. And, that can’t be good.

I’m beginning to think that maybe Congress should meet every other year like our Texas Legislature. If they met even every five years it would be even better. It would be nice if we could pay congressional members what we pay our legislators as well, which is about $7,200 a year.

Oh well, if you’re going to dream you need to dream big. As far as the immigration issue, I haven’t a clue as to what should be done. We need workers. People need to work. We need to keep terrorists out but I don’t think a fence is going to stop them. I have the feeling something should have been done long ago. But it wasn’t. And I can’t help. Sorry.