[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

I don’t know if you have been following this story, but it’s pretty awful.  A pair of judges were accused of getting kickbacks from privately run detention facilities—that is, if they sent kids to juvenile detention facilities, in exchange for money.  And while I don’t have very good quotes here, but following the story I have seen examples where the kids in question were very likely innocent, or committed such a minor offense they didn’t deserve any time in detention, but they got it anyway.

Fortunately those kids have gotten a little justice.

Former Luzerne County Common Pleas Court Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. has been found guilty of 12 of 39 counts of corruption filed against him, a federal jury in Scranton announced today.

The 12 men and women, who deliberated for an estimated 12.5 hours, returned to U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania Edwin M. Kosik’s courtroom to announce their findings, which included decisions that Ciavarella was guilty of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, honest services mail fraud, money laundering conspiracy and a host of tax fraud charges. Ciavarella was cleared of extortion, bribery and honest services wire fraud charges, however.

U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania Peter Smith had praise for the verdict, saying it “puts the lie” to the claim that corruption in Northeast Pennsylvania is the status quo.

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[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

My personal position on the Lara Logan assault has been, simply put, we have a right to know the full details of what happened to her.  A serious crime took place on a public street, in a important Middle Eastern capital, on a night of celebration.

By comparison, here is what was happening in America when we defeated tyranny at the end of WWII:

And while the photo looks, well, aggressive in retrospect, apparently she was in the spirit, too:

“Someone grabbed me and kissed me, and I let him because he fought for his country,” Ms. Shain later said. “I closed my eyes when I kissed him. I never saw him.”

(Source.)  But something was broken in Egyptian culture that night and things got uglier—a lot uglier—for Ms. Logan, although how bad things got is a mystery.  And that’s the problem throughout this entire post.

For starters, Big Journalism has revealed that al Jazeera has been lacking in its coverage of the story.  And the reason why?  Oh, because of the privacy of Ms. Logan.  So they aren’t covering it, at all.  Not even to the anemic levels that CBS has informed us.  Heather Allan, head of news gathering for Al Jazeera English, explains:
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[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

“Keith Richards?  You have really let yourself go…”

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Events are moving fast but this Daily Mail account is promising:

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is believed to have fled the capital Tripoli after anti-government demonstrators breached the state television building and set government property alight.

Protesters appear to have gained a foothold in Tripoli as banks and government buildings were looted while demonstrators have claimed they have taken control of the second city Benghazi.

It is thought up to 400 people may have died in the unrest with dozens more reported killed in Tripoli overnight as protests reached the capital for the first time and army units were said to have defected to the opposition.

Read the whole thing.  And of course Hot Air has all over this in this post, too.  And we have this report of the Libyan military bombing protesters?

And I will note something to our special forces community.  Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber who was released to Libya because he had cancer and was only expected to live another 3 months, but who failed to live up to his obligation to die on time, is still alive over there.

This is a picture of him.

Just thought maybe you should pay him a visit…

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Update: Althouse has a retrospective of highlights from the protests.

I got a few requests over the weekend to talk about the doctors handing out fake doctor’s notes on the street.  Here, for instance, is Breitbart proving that he really didn’t need O’Keefe or to hide cameras; apparently he could walk up to them with his semi-famous face, cameras pointed at them, and they would still engage in lawless activity:

Via Big Government, of course.  Ann Althouse made her own video where she asked a “street doctor” whether this was dishonest or not.  It’s always fun to watch a person trying to rationalize their behavior in real time.

And Instapundit has a few links to stories about things like street “clinics” created to hand out notes (here and here).  I am willing to bet we will see even more of this today, as well as at Althouse’s blog.

So how many ways can these doctors get in trouble?  Let me count the ways.

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