If Only Every Convicted Felon Had A Governor For A Dad, Huh?

Via screen grab 

• Imagine you're in your early 20s, you live in Arkansas, and you get busted for possession of marijuana, with "intent to deliver." Maybe that means you're a dealer, or maybe it's just your turn to pick up a sack for your friends, and also a pizza while you're out, bro. Who knows? Now you're a felon, and that sure sucks, especially because it's a non-violent, victimless crime, and really, shouldn't we just decriminalize marijuana anyway because wow is this a waste of time and resources and what is the big damned deal about weed anyway? If your name is Kyle Beebe, that's probably what you've been thinking since 2003, when you got busted and had to pay fines and serve three years of supervised probation. But then, if your name is Kyle Beebe, you can also write a real nice letter to your dad the governor to make it go away.

  Gov. Mike Beebe says he will pardon his son, Kyle, for a felony crime from his past.

  "Mr. Governor, I am asking for a second chance at life. I am asking for a second chance to be the man that I know that I can be," Kyle Beebe wrote in his pardon application to his father. [...]

  At the time of the arrest, Gov. Beebe was quoted in a local newspaper saying, "If he broke the law, he needs to pay for it. He needs to be treated like everybody else-no better, worse."

  In an interview with Channel 7 News Wednesday, Gov. Beebe said he will pardon his son. [...]

  Beebe says his son has grown up a lot since that time.

  "Kids when they're young do stupid stuff. He was no different. Liked to have broken his mother's heart. His mother and I were stereotypical parents from the different end of the spectrum. She was the enabler that tried to fix everything. I was the nuclear bomb thrower that thought you ought to shoot him. Somewhere between those two extremes was probably the right thing to do," Beebe said.

  Beebe has pardoned 700 mostly non-violent felons during his time in office. And according to a spokesman for the Arkansas Parole Board, the younger Beebe received no special treatment. So maybe Mr. Governor really would have done the same even if the felon petitioning him was not his son. Guess we can't know for sure.

  But given that most people who end up with a record for these kinds of crimes don't have a close personal connection to a governor who can wave his magic pardoning pen to make it go away, the whole story is one of those Makes Ya Think moments, isn't it? Like, it Makes Ya Think about all those non-Beebes across America whose records will never be wiped clean. And it Makes Ya Think about how if Kyle Beebe deserves a second chance, maybe all those other convicted felons who did "stupid stuff" when they were young deserve a second chance too. And finally, it Makes Ya Think that the whole Beebe family should be working real hard, every day, to try to reform our criminal justice system and end our dumb, pointless war on drugs so that people just like Kyle Beebe, whose lives have also been forever altered and who have served much harsher sentences for the same so-called crime, can have the same opportunity to be the men, and women, they know they can be too.

• Do you sext? Of course you do. Because everyone does:  

  I think that everybody sexts. Not everyone sends nude photos, of course, for a variety of reasons. But many people I’ve talked to define a sext as anything sent with sexual intent, be it a suggestive Gchat exchange, a racy photo, a suggestive Snapchat, or even those aqua-blue droplets of sweat emoji.

  I asked people I knew — and many I didn’t — to talk to me about sexts and the stories behind them, the risks, perceived and real, and why they did it, knowing that they could be shared beyond their control. Lastly, I asked them to share a nude that they had sent to someone. And so many people did, without hesitation, or requiring anything in exchange.

  And yes, you pervs, there are pictures.

•  Assume Senate Judiciary Committee screwed:  

  Sen. Charles E. Grassley is fond of calling himself "a pig farmer from Iowa," but both friends and political opponents don't buy the country rube image.

  The 81-year-old Republican is expected Thursday to become the first nonlawyer to be elected chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in its 198-year history. [...]

  If there is a Supreme Court vacancy in the next two years, it will be this soybean farmer — he currently farms crops, not pigs, on his 750 acres — as much as anyone else who decides whether President Obama's nominee is confirmed.

  Whether Obama can continue to get his lower-court nominees confirmed to the federal bench will also be in Grassley's hands. [...]

  Drawing particular attention was his assertion that three longtime vacancies on the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals need not be filled because the court's workload was insufficient, even though he voted to give the same court a full complement of judges nominated by Republican President George W. Bush.

• Still not a witch. Not much of a great thinker either:  

  

• If you're looking to feel bleak, pessimistic, and even a tad uber-depressed about the next Obamacare case the Supreme Court has agreed to hear -- and heck, the Supreme Court in general -- this should definitely do the trick:

  Nearly a week has gone by since the Supreme Court’s unexpected decision to enlist in the latest effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act, and the shock remains unabated. “This is Bush v. Gore all over again,” one friend said as we struggled to absorb the news last Friday afternoon. “No,” I replied. “It’s worse.” [...]

  So no, this isn’t Bush v. Gore. This is a naked power grab by conservative justices who two years ago just missed killing the Affordable Care Act in its cradle, before it fully took effect. When the court agreed to hear the first case, there actually was a conflict in the circuits on the constitutionality of the individual insurance mandate. So the Supreme Court’s grant of review was not only unexceptional but necessary: a neutral act. The popular belief then that the court’s intervention indicated hostility to the law was, at the least, premature.

  Not so this time. There is simply no way to describe what the court did last Friday as a neutral act.

•  Best apology ever:  

  Sorry I murdered everyone at your party, but as an introvert, I prefer one-on-one interactions to group gatherings.

• Dayummmmm, Aretha Franklin can throw some shade:  

  She had nice things to say about Adele ("Young singer, good singer"), reasonable things to say about Alicia Keys ("Young performer, good writer"), and respectful things to say about Whitney Houston ("Whitney was a talent, definitely a talent, she had a gift... and Cissy's baby"). She had nothing to say about Nicki Minaj ("Nicki Minaj, hmmmm...I'm gonna pass on that one!") and, most hilariously, she had this to say about Taylor Swift: "OK, great gowns, beautiful gowns."

  That -- the complete and utter reduction of Swift to a walking hanger -- is shade, and it's just the most recent helping from a dish that Ree has been serving for decades.

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