How to kill a federal appointment.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21104505/?gt1=10450

JAS

I assume that spanking is no longer included in the punishment range for an Alabama crime. Nice quote from the ACLU, suggesting the conspiracy by law enforcement to get inmates to falsely accuse the judge of spanking them. Right, there is a large, right-wing conspiracy to embarrass a judge with allegations of spanking. You know, sometimes a spanking is just a spanking.

[This message was edited by JB on 10-03-07 at .]

The spanking judge of Galveston County

By Laura Elder
Galveston County Daily News, March 30, 2003

SANTA FE Parents here know that if their children won't go to school or otherwise misbehave, they can call Judge Mike W. Nelson. He makes house calls.

Nelson will grab a wooden paddle that he proudly refers to as "the board of education" and drive to the home of a disobedient child.

"This paddle will travel," said Nelson, a retired Marine with a slow drawl and a habit of wearing cowboy boots, bright Western shirts and jeans under his judicial robe.

While Nelson, 53, has swung the paddle himself a few times, the Precinct 4 justice of peace prefers that parents to do the whipping. He'd rather supervise at their homes or in his courtroom, where at least 200 unruly juveniles have felt his brand of justice through the years.

In a town of 10,000 with a reputation for embracing old-fashioned values, Nelson's assertion that sparing the rod spoils the child makes him a revered man and one who handily has kept his elected seat for 17 years.

Along Came Robbins

That's just the way it has been. No one seemed to have anything bad to say, at least publicly, about Nelson's stance on corporal punishment. And it's unlikely that many outside his jurisdiction knew about the practice until last year when Ronnie Eugene Robbins took Nelson's parenting advice a step too far.

Last week, Robbins, 33, was indicted on charges of injury to a child and child endangerment. He was arrested Oct. 31 at a gas station for shackling his 12-year-old daughter, Heaven, with chains and padlocks to stop her from skipping school and running away from home.

The Santa Fe resident was arrested after a woman called police to report seeing a girl whose ankles were chained together at the gas station in the 15700 block of state Highway 6. The story caused an international media blitz and public debate about how far a parent should go to discipline a child.

Heaven And Jail

All along, Robbins has contended he was forced to do something after his daughter's truancy threatened to land him and his wife, Paula, both whom struggle to scratch out a living, behind bars.

On at least two occasions when Heaven was brought before Nelson for truancy last year, the judge warned Robbins that he and his wife would be fined and faced jail time if they couldn't keep their daughter in school.

State law makes parents responsible for keeping their underage children in school. More than once, Nelson asked the Robbins if they had considered corporal punishment in solving Heaven's truancy problem, Robbins claims.

On the advice of his attorney, Robbins, who faces a possible prison term of two to 10 years for the injury charge and 180 days to two years in jail for child endangerment, declined last week to talk about his case. The charges each carry a possible fine of up to $10,000.

In previous interviews, Robbins, who mows lawns for a living, said he was opposed to spanking his daughter, but had to do something to stay out of jail.

"I wasn't going to take a piece of lumber to my child," Robbins said. So, after his own research on corporal punishment and going by his own interpretation of Nelson's message, Robbins shackled Heaven twice, once to a bed after she attempted to sneak out of their mobile home.

Robbins has insisted he padded Heaven's leg with socks to keep the chains from biting into her flesh and he never injured her. He claims he thought using shackles was a form corporal punishment. Heaven has said the shackles caused her no injury.

Robbins has said he wants to use Nelson's statements as a legal defense. Whether they will be is unclear. Robbins' attorney, Tad Nelson, no relations to the judge, could not be reached for comment.

"That's what the man told me to do," Robbins has said. "He kept suggesting it, and I saw paddles laying all over the place."

...

Supervised Swats

A recent U.S. trend has been to abandon spanking, with corporal punishment opponents saying it teaches children that violence is an acceptable resolution to a problem.

But some Santa Fe residents see it differently. "Honey, I think it's the best idea God ever created," said Bridget Louvier, 73. Louvier's four sons already were grown before Nelson took office. Still, she has supported the judge during elections.

"My mother always told me that all that padding on the rear end, that's for you to spank them. There's no better place to pop them than on their little heinies to get their attention. And guess what? No more problems."

By supervising corporal punishment, Nelson said he prevents it from getting out of control. ?I can?t think of a more anger-free, controlled environment,? he said.

William J. Obermiller, 77, 'Spanking Judge' of 1960s

By James Janega
Tribune Staff Writer

Retired Whiting City Court Judge William J. Obermiller, 77, known nationwide as the "Spanking Judge" after he ordered a teen defendant's hide tanned by a courtroom bailiff in 1962, died Monday, Aug. 14, in St. Margaret Mercy Healthcare Center in Hammond after a stroke.

Judge Obermiller's 36-year judicial tenure reflects much about changes in the American justice system -- and in American society at large -- over the last four decades. While his 1962 punishment now seems outlandish, at the time it was widely praised; he was one of several judges who meted out similar sentences nationwide.

He ordered courtroom spankings for teens who were unruly in court; long-haired ruffians were taken to a nearby barbershop for compulsory haircuts; and a high school dropout picked up for reckless driving was sentenced to 6 months' labor in the city garage.

Those punishments earned him frequent invitations to speak to homeowners, school assemblies and parents clubs, and Judge Obermiller was a guest on numerous television talk shows. But recently, he acknowledged that such punishments -- especially the spankings -- would no longer work, his daughter Alice said.

"He said nowadays this would not be the way you would treat kids," she said. She said her father was a peaceful man who feared people would think of him as violent for the spankings he once ordered.

Obermiller said her father greatly lamented that the simpler times in which those punishments were ordered seemed to have passed away forever. Whereas early defendants in his courtroom received even more severe punishment when their parents got them home, he noted that in recent years parents seldom even accompanied their children to court.

"That made him very sad, because he sensed how alone those kids were," his daughter said.

Born and raised in Whiting, Judge Obermiller graduated from Whiting High School in 1941 and from the University of Notre Dame in 1947. He served in the Navy during World War II and attended Notre Dame's law school after the war to earn his law degree. From 1953 until 1982, he worked as an attorney for the Amoco oil refinery in Whiting. Elected to the city bench in 1958, he generally handled juvenile cases, public intoxication, petty theft and domestic crimes; he was re-elected nine times and once turned down an invitation to run for mayor.

"There's no question about it: He was an institution," said Whiting City Judge William W. Ciesar, who called Judge Obermiller "a very, very good judge."

"He tried to make every effort to understand the circumstances behind the case but also to understand the individual person as a whole," Ciesar said.

"I think it was demonstrated by the uniqueness of some of his punishments."

Judge Obermiller was also distinctly softhearted. He studiously avoided sending defendants to jail. He often gave reading and essay-writing assignments as terms of probation and once suspended his sentence for a candy store employee caught gambling at work and offered to help the man find another job.

In 1962 Judge Obermiller's public profile hit its height outside of Whiting. The summer had been a hard one for police. Gangs and "clubs" drank and fought on the city's beach, graffiti plagued its buildings and juveniles often openly challenged their parents' and the city's authority in court.

Judge Obermiller gave that first spanking sentence to a young man who called his mother an idiot during a court session.

"All I know is, physical punishment seems to work," he told the Tribune in 1963. "Last year we had 50 arrests over the 4th of July weekend; this year we had one. Apparently the word got around."

Aren't There Any Crimes Punishable By Public Spanking?
By Chuck Coombes
March 24, 1999

Like most Americans, I was raised to believe two things: that I am a very, very bad boy, and that I must be properly punished for my transgressions. But in recent years, I've become deeply disillusioned with the American justice system. After an overview of federal sentencing guidelines and meticulous study of the Departments of Corrections of all 50 states, I have found that our nation's criminal courts routinely resort to fines, imprisonment and community service as restitution for wrongdoing?punishments I, for one, find less than satisfactory. Aren't there any crimes punishable by public spanking?

Take one recent case from my own neighborhood. Last fall, a city policeman observed a 1995 Mercury Sable station wagon moving at 35 mph in a school zone. This is not only speeding, but reckless endangerment. You might think that such dangerous driving would warrant a good, hard spanking on the part of the stern and neatly uniformed arresting officer, and so did I. But, no! Instead of the 10 to 15 crisp, flat-handed smacks to the bottom the offense would seem to call for, I was given a ticket for $50 and instructed to appear in traffic court. This is justice?

At my court appearance, things got even worse. I soon learned the hard way that our city's calcified court system would not be forthcoming with the spanking I so clearly deserved. In fact, the judge actually seemed to resent my bringing it up. Though I was as meek and contrite as possible when suggesting I receive a stout, trousers-down paddling at the callused hands of the magistrate?my particular crime did not seem to call for the sterner measures of the judicial belt?the judge coldly explained that he would not be spanking me that day. Nor, I soon learned, would the bailiff, though from the looks of him, he certainly seemed capable. The judge threatened to hold me in contempt of court (yet another non-spankable offense!) for even broaching the idea. Instead, my fine was doubled. A mere slap on the wrist when the place I clearly needed that slap was on my little behind!

To be honest, my first choice for spanker was not the judge. Had I wanted to be spanked by a judge, I would have contrived to be arrested in Britain, where there are several judges per trial and all of them wear those lovely powdered wigs. No, like most American men, I wanted to be spanked by a steely-eyed, authoritarian traffic policeman. What sort of message were these lolly-coddling "enforcement" figures trying to send? That I could just commit a moving violation and not expect to receive a disciplinary hand-to-buttocks spanking from a uniformed officer of the law? I'll never learn right from wrong that way!

Through repeated experimentation, I have learned that petty theft is punishable by a fine or short prison stay, but not spanking. The same seems to hold true for vandalism, grand theft auto, indecent exposure, loitering and mail fraud. At every turn, I have been thwarted in my attempt to receive any sort of buttocks-based punishment. My lawyer has tried to stop me from requesting bottom-pinkening spankings in each of my 33 court appearances to date, and my court-appointed therapist has tried to tell me that spankings are not an effective deterrent to criminal behavior. I respectfully disagree.

Where is the sense of justice and retribution in this society? As bad as I've been, teachers, school-bus drivers, airline pilots, UPS delivery men and even certain clergymen have refused to take me across their knees for my misdeeds and swat me until my little face knots up and my buttocks redden and throb. Now I am told that not even committing murder will get me spanked in the eyes of the law. What will it take? Must I resort to terrorism, political assassination or high treason?

If I must, I must.

And finally, a training video.

JB,

Do you catalogue all these goings-on? How about a book on collected stories from around the nation?

JAS

I think all of JB's posts on this topic are a cry for help.

Either that or a fetish.

So much jealousy out there.

And whose presentation at the update in Corpus had the infamous clip from Animal House: "Thank you sir, may I have another!"