NOT ACTUAL PIC

Chief Magistrate Joanne Walsh ordered the deportation on Monday after the primary school student appeared before her and pleaded guilty to two counts of larceny.

The Antigua Observer reported that the boy’s parents said they were unable to control him.

It’s reported that this was the child’s second appearance before a magistrate for stealing.

On February 15, the complainant reportedly placed two phones, a Nokia and a Blu on her dressing table in her bedroom. The Nokia is valued at $400 and the other phone costs $30.

It is reported that the 11-year-old, who is a regular visitor to the home, went to the house, saw the phones, picked them up and left.

The complainant reportedly discovered that the phones were missing and a report was made to the police.

The Jamaican youth was taken into custody and he admitted to taking the phones and told the police where to find them. Both cellphones were recovered. The child was arrested and charged.

The court was also told that the boy’s mother and father were fed up with him and that his parents consented for the boy to receive 12 lashes from a police officer.

Chief Magistrate Walsh reportedly said that it was already too late to curb the child’s thievery, since he started at age seven.

“He is already broken into being a thief. If his own parents can’t cope with him, why should the state cope with him? It is obvious that he does not listen to them (his parents),” she said.

Walsh said, “I am not going to send him to prison for taxpayers to feed him. I am seriously contemplating on sending him back to Jamaica and he can steal there.”

It is reported that the prosecutor informed the court that the 11-year-old, who has resided in Antigua for the past four years, has been out of time since August 31, 2010.

Walsh inquired how the Jamaican youth, who was dressed in his school uniform, was allowed in school without legal status. She then made the order for his deportation.

Texas Judge Tonya Parker is sparking controversy with her refusal to marry straight couples until the LGBT community has equal rights under the law, reports the NY Daily News.
Parker explained her decision at a monthly meeting for the Stonewall Democrats of Dallas:
“I do not perform them because it is not an equal application of the law. Period,” she said.
According the Daily News, Parker, the first openly lesbian African-American elected official in the history of the state according to NBC News, is honest with the couples that she turns away, refusing to let them leave unclear about her decision:
“I use it as my opportunity to give them a lesson about marriage equality in the state because I feel like I have to tell them why I’m turning them away,” said Parker. “So I usually will offer them something along the lines of, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t perform marriage ceremonies because we are in a state that does not have marriage equality, and until it does, I am not going to partially apply the law to one group of people that doesn’t apply to another group of people.”
Though the Dallas Voice reports that there have been critics who claim that Parker is willfully neglecting her judicial duties by not marrying hetero couples, her response makes it clear that they do not have a clear understanding of the law:
I faithfully and fully perform all of my duties as the Presiding Judge of the 116th Civil District Court, where it is my honor to serve the citizens of Dallas County and the parties who have matters before the Court.
“Performing marriage ceremonies is not a duty that I have as the Presiding Judge of a civil district court. It is a right and privilege invested in me under the Family Code. I choose not to exercise it, as many other Judges do not exercise it. Because it is not part of our duties, some Judges even charge a fee to perform the ceremonies.
According to GayMarriage.ProCon.com, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Washington, and the District of Columbia have all legalized same-sex marriage. Governor Martin O’Malley (D-Maryland), signed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in his state on February 24, reports ABC News. Thirty states have constitutional amendments banning gay marriage — Texas is one of them.
That brand of legal revisionism and inequality lives at the root of Parker’s refusal to join heterosexual couples in matrimony:
“…It’s kind of oxymoronic for me to perform ceremonies that can’t be performed for me, so I’m not going to do it,” she said.

The Strange Lessons of Whitney Houston’s Addiction
FEB 14 2012, 4:13 PM ET 18
Drugs turned a superstar into a joke. Only in death did she become a superstar again.

AP Images
Weird. I added that single-word sentence to a text I sent alerting someone about Whitney Houston’s death Saturday night. I’m not sure why I thought it was weird. Drug addicts die for any reason or no reason at all, fairly frequently. And after Miss Houston had spoken of herself in the royal first-plural to Diane Sawyer in 2002—”We don’t do crack”—and made it clear that she was either still using or just loony, it should have been plain that she was too far gone to ever be normal again. And still, her death was weird. Coming so many years after the height of her spectacle of crazy, Whitney Houston’s demise felt like a weird afterthought to all the other weird.

Obituaries have referred to Houston as a “cautionary tale.” For Jennifer Hudson or Beyoncé maybe—though Jay-Z is nothing like Bobby B. But are the rest of us in any position to profit from Houston’s example? It’s not like her life or lifestyle represents anything like what even most drug abusers experience: fortune and fame amplify everything. (I know the Twelve Step cant insists that all addicts are the same, but back in reality, that just isn’t so.)

Think of Whitney in the moments before she died, having no idea she would be remembered so gloriously. Kind words about her have hardly been spoken publicly in years. There is something both lopsided and inevitable in that the media and the entertainment industry that has been (understandably) ridiculing Houston’s behavior for at least a decade—with an extra bright gold star to Maya Rudolph and Saturday Night Live—is now mourning her unapologetically. In fact, they are mourning her competitively, everyone trying to out-sad the commentator in the next swivel chair. But what else can anyone do? Mourn her ironically? Or not at all? Laugh at Being Bobby Brown and the fact that she forgot to pay the bill on her storage space for so long that finally the contents were auctioned off? Addicts are simultaneously tragic and hilarious. That’s just how it is.
As the high-octave Mariah Carey and the high-drama Adele prove, big female voices, while relatively rare, do in fact come along every few years in the recording industry. We even ooh and aah over Christina Aguilera’s ability to hit the notes. I have lost count of the number in my lifetime of young and pretty singers that have been excessively and insanely described as operatically trained or as if they were coloratura sopranos. Yes, Houston’s gospel-choir background gave style and soul to The Voice. But Houston was unique for another reason: Her singing was brilliantly adult, but her mien was so young and just so lovely. She was a Seventeen cover girl—and it mattered that it wasn’t Vogue, that she was dewy instead of drop-dead gorgeous, that she was beautiful in a pretty way that made you love her more. Houston’s guileless perfection wasn’t just part of her image; it was the whole thing. She was an American sweetheart, perfect for the “Star Spangled Banner,” and it’s true, no one has ever done it better.

The trouble for the public with Houston’s drug addiction and all that occasioned it was that the thing that made her special—the beauty that seemed to run deep, that seemed to bespeak a genuine sweetness and innocence—turned into a crackhead ugly knowingness. Yes, it ruined her voice, but the real problem was that it ruined her.

MORE ON MUSIC

The Imperial Whitney Houston
The Reverent, Ridiculous Grammys
Michael Jackson’s Misunderstood Power
Where’s the Next Great, New Musical Instrument? Which is what drugs do.
When I was in the rehabilitative treatment center—what the AA Big Book calls the hopper and what’s commonly known as rehab—the statistic that was thrown around was that one in 35 addicts will get and stay clean and sober. Since I haven’t used for nearly 14 years, I shudder thinking about the other 34 people. But I’ve always been told that if you are careful and can get a consistent supply of heroin, like many old blues musicians, you can live to be a very old junkie. Alcohol is mean and ugly and leads to a lot of sleeping at the wheel, but with an accommodating family and an enabler or two, people find all kinds of ways to booze around for a lifetime of drunken hijinks and lowliness. Cocaine is too exhausting, so you either quit altogether or switch to something quieter. And, of course, there are the vast majority of drug addicts who in one way or another—in car accidents or not-accidents, by accidental and non-accidental overdose, or simply because they live badly—are killed by addiction. Often it’s later rather than sooner. Houston is not weird at all.

And maybe this is a cautionary tale. But not in the way the eulogizers mean. It’s a warning of how very alone we all are. That’s not really news, but what is easy to forget is how close to the brink some of us are. Think of Houston by herself in a room at the Beverly Hilton in the moments before she died, having no idea she would be remembered so gloriously, because kind words about her have hardly been spoken publicly in years. As for the people close to her, maybe they were irresponsible, maybe they were sick of listening, maybe they were busy, maybe they didn’t hear the phone ring, maybe they gave up long ago—and really, who could blame them? It’s a terrible tragedy of life that a person only gets her due in death—and we all know that you can’t be a guest at your own funeral.

Gay woman wants priest relieved of duties after communion

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters) – A lesbian woman from the nation’s capital wants a Catholic priest relieved of his duties after he denied her communion at her mother’s Maryland funeral because she lives with another woman, she said on Wednesday.

The local archdiocese has apologized for the actions of Father Marcel Guarnizo, but Barbara Johnson, who is gay and lives with her lesbian partner, said that was not enough.

Guarnizo officiated at a funeral mass for Loetta Johnson on Saturday at Saint John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, about 25 miles northwest of Washington. He told attendees that only church members in a “state of grace” would be allowed to receive communion, Johnson said.

Johnson said that when she approached, the priest covered the communion chalice with his hand, “looked me in the eye and said ‘I cannot give you communion because you live with a woman.'”

The priest told her “in the eyes of the church, that is a sin,” she said. She and her family told the Archdiocese of Washington, which has issued an apology.

Catholic church teachings condemn homosexuality, and the church considers homosexual acts to be sinful. But the Archdiocese said in a statement that questions about a person’s right to receive communion should be addressed privately and it was not policy to “publicly reprimand” worshipers.

The Archdiocese would not comment on Guarnizo’s status, citing the matter as a personnel issue. Johnson said she does not want to focus on the incident as a gay-rights issue but wants the priest to stop doing pastoral work for the way he handled her mother’s service.

“We’re urging the church to make that decision, so that this doesn’t happen to anyone else, to any other families,” Johnson said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“I think everyone has their gifts, and my family believes performing the responsibilities of a parish priest does not fall under his list of gifts,” she added.

(Editing By Ellen Wulfhorst and Cynthia Johnston)

Copyright © 2012, Reuters