$660K For Pigeon Shootings

A jury in New Jersey awarded William Lakes $660,000 from the city of Brigantine after Lakes says he was harassed for reporting worker safety violations at the Department of Public Works.

The violation Lakes reported? Oh, just a little matter of DPW employees shooting pigeons for sport on the grounds of the Department of Public Works.

The story goes like this: Lakes reported the pigeon shooting to OSHA, and then a radio station reported it. I’ll let the Press of Atlantic City’s Shawn Hardie explain what happened next:

The suit said that Lakes’ supervisors organized a meeting offering a one-hour amnesty window to any employee who could share information about the pigeon shootings, which would be turned over to police. When Lakes told supervisor John Doring what he knew after the meeting, he immediately became the subject of threats of physical violence, as well as being labeled as a “rat” and shunned by co-workers.

Since the pigeons are the rats of the avian world, I suppose it’s an apt comparison.

Brigantine told to pay $600G. in harassment [Press of AC]

Leftovers: All Katie, All The Time

• Pigeons have invaded Juniata and they won’t leave! This report is notable for the closing line: “While the pigeons are as free as a bird the people in the neighborhood are not.” Seriously, watch the video. [CBS 3]

• I’d be able to take this list of Katie Couric’s liberal bias more seriously if example number two wasn’t “Katie thinks gas prices are too high.” No, really. [Media Research Center]

• That New Jersey transgender sub has yet to be called in this year to teach. There’s actually a hotline parents can call to see who the subs are that day, so they can hold their kids out of school in case it’s the one who used to be a man. Hooray for progress! [Philadelphia Gay News]

• There’s a reality show at Drexel being filmed right now that has a parent living with a son or daughter during school. Oh, and at least one dad does kegstands. It’s like the creepy old guys at homecoming each and every day! [KYW 1060]

Pigeon droppings from the letters page

Last week, the Northeast Times — whose editorial writers are slightly to the right of the Wall Street Journal — wrote an editorial about Richard Miller, who was sentenced to probation in the death of Sarah McGinley.

Miller was a passenger in a car driven by his 15-year-old daughter, an unlicensed, unpermited driver who lost control of the car and hit McGinley, who threw her infant daughter to safety an instant before. Yes, there’s no real way to make this horrible story any more tragic. Anyway, Miller’s daughter got community service and Miller got probation, which might seem like a little light.

The Times took this stance. Unfortunately, the editorial writer(s) wrote a typical Times editorial: The introduction which has nothing to do with the rest of the editorial (in this case, a bashing of “bubbleheaded bleeding-heart liberals” who oppose the death penalty) and typical over-the-top nonsense (”Richard Miller says he’s not a bad person. Wrong, Mr. Miller. You are a bad man.”). I didn’t bash it on this site. Plus, uhh, it’s more fun to bash the wacky letters it prints.

This week, though, a Northeast Times letter writer bashes the paper better than I ever could. The letter is as follows (if you’re confused at the end, the Carrier Pigeon was a paper with nothing but ads distributed free):

From high aloft their ivory tower sit the grand inquisitors of the Northeast Times editorial staff. You could have chosen a million tactful ways to write the final epitaph of the tragic events that took place that April morning, but you chose to print a sensationalized, baseless, lowest common denominator editorial.

The majority of Mayfair residents who felt Rich Miller’s sentence was fair are the working-class, conservative, churchgoing people who, but for the grace of God, have made similar mistakes in their lives without the catastrophic results that befell both the victim and Mr. Miller.

Furthermore, to accuse Judge Lerner of lacking the objectivity to sentence Rich Miller because he has the audacity to believe everyone is entitled to a defense is libelous.

This editorial is sad and amateurish. You seem to base your whole argument on the line, “Laws, after all, are supposed to be obeyed, not ignored.” In the utopian world your editorial staff lives in, that may be true.

However, back here on planet Earth, things seldom happen in such a clear-cut manner. You could have taken the high road and written of the fact that this was a tragic accident with no winners, only varying degrees of loss.

Instead, you played to the lynch mob, and for that your paper has proven to be what I always suspected it was, a glorified Carrier Pigeon with an editorial staff out of touch with the pulse of the neighborhood it purports to serve.

At this point, I’d like to award Brian P. Tait of Mayfair the award for “Northeast Times Letters Page Smackdown of the Year.” (He doesn’t get any prize, though.) And kudos for the Times staff for printing it, too.

Justice Denied [Northeast Times]
The Pigeon Times? [Northeast Times, 2nd from bottom]
Photo by amagill