Current Events: Week of 2/20–2/24

Greetings, blog-buddies! Get ready for your… Current Events!

In local news, we’ve got a ‘hero’ who prefers to go incognito! Noel Bottesch was driving on Vrooman Road when apparently she had some problems and drove off into Grand River nearby. She was able to get out of the car as it started to sink in the 12-feet deep, freezing-cold water. An unknown man, passing by, saw and dove into the water to help her out. He left before he could be identified. A very brave thing to do! Well, I don’t think anyone needs publicity, and it’s fine that he left. At least he’ll know himself that he did something good.

In Missouri, Alyssa Bustamante, 18, is getting a life sentence, with possible parole, for killing Elizabeth Olten, 9, in 2009. Well, not exactly a life sentence: 35 years, and then they’ll check on her and see if she’s good enough for parole. I disagree with life sentences. I believe in common law, where criminals have to do restitution. So, in the case of murder, depending on what the family of the victim decides, the murderer would either be killed, or work for life as the slave/servant of the family. But capital punishment is a no here, and so is slavery, so… Anyways, Bustamante killed Elizabeth for the thrill of it, wanting to know how it felt. Psychiatrists, of course, were quick to give excuses for her, saying that she “born to teenage, drug-abusing parents; her father was imprisoned and her mother abandoned her, leaving her in the legal custody of her grandmother”, and so she has a ‘troubled mind’. Also, she had been taking Prozac, an antidepressant, after a suicide attempt in 2007, and had increased the amount taken around the time of the murder, so “a defense psychiatrist testified that the medication could have made Bustamante moodier and more violent and contributed to the murder”. “Charlie Moreland, one of Bustamante's attorneys, described the sentence imposed Wednesday as ‘a harsh punishment.’ ‘This was a child who had been spiraling out of control, but has treatable conditions,’ Moreland said.”*

*The quotes are from Yahoo News. Read more there

So, presidential campaigns. I’m not real up-to-date on all of it, who’s going against who, but I ran across something interesting today: ‘The increasingly bitter primary battle between Democratic Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Marcy Kaptur ratcheted up another nasty notch today -- and took on all the drama of a high school student council race -- with accusations of stolen yard signs.’ Really? Yard signs? As Kaptur campaign manager Steve Fought said, "We don't do that. We don't steal yard signs. It's silly." Silly, indeed! But, anything to degrade the opponent, hmm?

And there you go!