This live-stream walkabout is, in a lot of ways, about the transition of media, all media, from print and broadcast TV, to Internet digital. It’s also about Huntsville events and landmarks past, present and future, and a man whose elevator didn’t quite reach the top.
This could be the most dangerous man in Huntsville. I’ve known Tommy Brown casually for many years, but only became overtly suspicious of his underworld dealings after Police Officer Ricky McCarver got into an altercation with John Lee Bullard at the Hsv Transportation Bus Station.
Loretta was in fact largely motivated by the extremist in the feminist movement. Most folks are familiar with the highly charged rhetoric in the abortion debate. Pro-choice women are often referred to as “femi-nazis” by pro-life advocates. While the rhetoric is sincere in it’s own context, few would expect that “femi-naziism” would extend beyond the abortion debate to actually include holocaust, genocide, eugenics, and ethnic cleansing – of people already born.
I’m surprised that Shipp’s attorney’s didn’t pursue a temporary insanity defense. Although we know that the standard of insanity defense in the State of Alabama is so high, that it is virtually never successful. In my opinion, while Kenneth Shipp might have acted irresponsibly in some ways, and it does seem obvious that he picked up his gun and pulled the trigger, the aggravating circumstances add up to manslaughter and twenty years – not life in prison.
That a jailer can’t see someone is dying because it’s too expensive to bother with, that a poorly trained police officer finds it more efficient to kill someone wielding a knife because it’s “in accordance with Departmental policies,” and he can get away with it, that gang violence in the jail can go totally unchecked allowing an innocent victim to be brutally murdered, that the promotion of Lewis Morris Jr. actually stands as an endorsement of child molestation and torture… are all the exemplary results of the attitude that Tommy Battle embraces.
The offense was strictly taboo, and as class president I immediately considered it my responsibility to correct the problem. I turned around and headed up three or four flights of bleachers and down the row, grabbing the flag pole and demanding that it be relinquished into my custody.
