Hasta La Gadget!

WASHINGTON — The residents of Latta, South Carolina, on Tuesday came through for their police chief, Crystal Moore, who was fired two months ago for reasons that many residents say had to do with her being a lesbian.

The town overwhelmingly voted to reinstate Moore to her job and to strip the mayor, Earl Bullard, of some his powers. As first reported by The Morning News in South Carolina, Latta residents passed a referendum changing the governing structure of the town from “mayor-strong” to “council-strong,” which gives the town council the ability to rehire Moore.

The ballots still must be certified on Friday, but the council plans to make its first order of business rehiring Moore.

“I’m ecstatic,” Moore told the newspaper. “Words can’t describe.”

Wil Brown, a friend of Moore’s who launched a campaign to help her get her job back, told The Huffington Post that the council is likely to meet Friday or Monday to formally vote to put Moore back on the beat.

Bullard, who has been mayor since December, sparked outrage in April when he fired Moore after giving her seven reprimands, alleging that she failed to maintain order and questioned authority. Moore maintained that she had done nothing wrong, and that the reprimands were the first she had received in 20 years with the department.

Bullard’s move also came as a council member released a recorded phone call in which Bullard went on a homophobic tirade about preferring to leave his children with a raging alcoholic over someone whose “lifestyle is questionable.”

The town only has about 1,400 residents, but hundreds of them have rallied for Moore’s reinstatement. An online fundraising site was set up to help Moore with living expenses and potential legal costs as she fought to get her job back.

Bullard denied that he fired Moore because of her sexual orientation, and there was no concrete proof that that was his motivation. A town grievance committee reviewed all the evidence and last week announced no conclusion either way, meaning it made no recommendations for further action. But many local residents believe Moore’s firing was personal.

A request for comment from Bullard’s office was not immediately returned.

Moore has been using her Facebook page for the last two months to send messages to supporters nationwide and to thank them for rooting for her. In recent weeks, she’s been reminding residents to vote in Tuesday’s referendum. She posted this message and photo just ahead of the vote:

“Please support the ‘yes’ vote. I am ready to get back to work for our town. I have not done anything wrong to be fired. I have been loyal, dedicated, legal and fair. I care and love our town.”

If the U.S. military conducted their war games in our world’s forests — setting the Appalachian Trail on fire or strafing bucks, bears, and bobcats in Yosemite with armed drones — it would seem like the end of the world. Watching in horror as thousands of ambushed animals stampeded through the woods, blood streaming from ears and eyes, we’d demand the military stop its scorched-earth carnage.

We’d set firm environmental laws and limits on where these lethal tests could occur on land; and we’d protect critical wildlife habitat. Why then do we still allow the U.S. Navy to declare worldwide war on our oceans? Why allow sonar tests that will, by the Navy’s own estimates, harm and kill 2.8 million more whales and dolphins?

(photo: Doug Thompson, DolphinWorks)

For twenty years, and in more than 50 documented strandings, whales and dolphins have piled up, dead and bloody, on the world’s shores — in Greece, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Italy, Spain, Washington state, and the United Kingdom. The dead whales we can see are only the tip of the iceberg of what cetacean scientist and Blackfish cinematographer, Ken Balcomb, calls “an acoustic holocaust.”

For years, environmental watch groups like The Humane Society, Earth Justice, and NRDC have continually sued the Navy to limit their war games in waters critical to marine life. But the Navy will not listen to public outcry. Last summer, they even rejected requests from the California Coastal Commission that the Navy stop sonar training when endangered blue whales are in their waters. Is their sonar so loud that the Navy, like whales and dolphins, is also deafened by it?

This spring, there was yet another terrible stranding of endangered deep-diving beaked whales after U.S., Greek, and Israeli navies tested their high-powered sonar in the Mediterranean. Like similar whale deaths in 1996 and 1997 along the Peloponnesian coast, in 2011, on Corfu, and across the Ionian Sea in Italy — these strandings off the shores of Crete occurred after military sonar testing.

Ample research studies implicate high-intensity sonar tests in cetacean deaths. For animals who see with sound, sonar is, at best, blinding. At worst, the lethal shock waves of sound are so unbearable that desperate whales surface too quickly; they strand alive on shores, dying of “the bends.” Necropsies of marine mammals reveal shattered eardrums, ruptured lungs, and massive brain hemorrhages — a hideous way to die for animals whose acoustic skills are far more advanced than those of humans.

(photo: C. Perry)

This Crete stranding was preventable had the military heeded scientists. A respected scientific committee (ACCOBAMS) had drawn a map of the Black and Mediterranean Seas in southeastern Crete — the highly sensitive marine area known as the Hellenic trench — where sonar should not be tested. Yet this is where the military unleashed its sonar, again decimating deep-diving whales, including a fetus that was close to term.

A Live Science article charges that these Crete military sonar exercises showed, “reckless indifference, like barreling a truck down a crowded city street.” Our oceans are not acceptable collateral damage in war games. Because the military mind sees our oceans as just a battlefield, we cannot trust them to protect the oceans they patrol. That job belongs to science and governments — and us. There is urgency now to the conservation and grassroots efforts to rein in the Navy’s relentless and arrogant attacks on our ocean’s life support system. The Navy may not be listening, but the people are.

In a riveting and groundbreaking new book, War of the Whales, Joshua Horwitz, chronicles the true story of the 20-year battle led by scientists and environmental activists against military sonar. It reads like the best investigative journalism, with cinematic scenes of strandings and dramatic David-and-Goliath courtroom dramas as activists diligently hold the Navy accountable.

A page-turning detective story, War of the Whales opens with a mysterious stranding of beaked whales off the Bahamas, on the same beach where Ken Balcomb, the Center for Whale Research’s principal investigator, has studied the rare Cuvier’s Whales for decades. Ironically, during the Vietnam era, Balcomb was a U.S. Navy pilot and oceanographic specialist. Over the years, as more whale strandings are consistently linked to Navy sonar exercises, Balcomb grows from reluctant whistle-blower to passionate protector. He teams up with Joel Reynolds of NRDC to fight the sonar battle in court — and sometimes wins. Only to see the Navy continue to break U.S. environmental law — but now in international waters.

War of the Whales chillingly tracks the U.S. Navy’s culture of secrecy as it collides with environmental groups and grassroots’ demand for transparency. A military source told author Horwitz after the recent Crete stranding, “I know those deep waters and undersea caverns. The Navy should never have been testing there — not again.”

We must hold the Navy accountable as it tests its sonar in international waters without any environmental review. Michael Jasny of NRDC says, “Our oceans are large enough to accommodate whales and military training, if our navies have the will to do the right thing.”

The right thing is to insist that the Navy abide by commonsense conservation standards: limit sonar in critical marine habitat and work more cooperatively with environmental groups to protect the oceans they patrol. What does it matter if we can destroy enemy submarines if our oceans are dead?

A military friend of mine confided in me, “Of all the armed forces, the Navy simply does whatever it wants — and usually in secret. They don’t ask permission.”

It’s time for the Navy to ask our permission before blasting away at already threatened oceans and sea creatures. When the Air Force proposed training runs over Big Sur, we said a sane and very sensible “No!” When the Marine’s Camp Pendleton plans its training exercises, they work with environmentalists to avoid harming endangered species. On land, we protect wilderness and species we value. We don’t set fire to our forests; we don’t test nukes on our own cities. We must apply the same humane and farsighted limits to our sonar and seismic testing — “from sea to shining sea.”

“Marine conservation always lags behind land ethics, because it’s not in our backyards,” explains Jasny. “The Navy sees the oceans as its domain, not ours.”

As many lawsuits make their way through courts and the Navy continues to operate unlawfully outside U.S. waters, we can ask our Commander-in-Chief to consider the bigger picture for oceans. Setting aside or expanding Marine Protected Areas while still allowing a military exemption for sonar testing is not farsighted conservation. To stop this sonar testing, especially in critical whale habitat, President Obama can simply sign an executive order.

Sign a MoveOn.Org petition to the president to stop sonar exercises from killing whales and dolphins.

Brenda Peterson is a National Geographic author who in 1998, was one of the first to write about military sonar in The Seattle Times and in her books SIGHTINGS: The Gray Whale’s Mysterious Journey and her Sierra Club novel, Animal Heart. For more: www.BrendaPetersonBooks.com

Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered states to stop sending youth offenders to prison for the the rest of their lives without the possibility of parole. Until then, the U.S. held the distinction of being the only country in the world where people were sentenced to die in prison for crimes committed before they were 18.

Not much has changed since then, according to a report published Tuesday by The Sentencing Project, a Washington group that advocates for sentencing reforms. The report takes a critical look at what it calls the country’s “decidedly mixed” record of complying with the Supreme Court ruling.

Of the 28 states ordered to change their policies for punishing juveniles, most have yet to do so. Others have passed new laws that are “nearly as narrow minded” as the old ones, the report contends. Florida, Pennsylvania and Louisiana have replaced old laws with statutes that require some young offenders to spend a minimum of 35 years in prison. In Nebraska, juvenile offenders can now serve 40-year mandatory minimum sentences for crimes that used to result in life without parole.

Ashley Nellis, senior research analyst at The Sentencing Project, noted that teenagers often mature as they reach early adulthood. “If legislators or the courts limit review until a 17-year-old is 52 years old, they violate both the spirit and the letter of the ruling,” she said.

The 2012 Supreme Court ruling stemmed from two cases, both centered on 14-year old boys. In one, three youths planned to rob a video store, and one shot the store clerk to death. In the other, two boys set fire to a trailer, where they had bought drugs from a neighbor. The neighbor died in the blaze.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing the majority opinion, argued that life without parole for minors violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.”

“Mandatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological age and its hallmark features — among them, immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences,” Kagan wrote. “It prevents taking into account the family and home environment that surrounds him — and from which he cannot usually extricate himself — no matter how brutal or dysfunctional.”

Of the 11 states that have passed new legislation, only three allow juveniles sentenced under the old laws to seek a revised sentence. Although the Supreme Court didn’t specify whether states had to apply the ruling retroactively, Nellis argued that the approximately 2,000 people sentenced to mandatory life without parole as minors before June 25, 2012 — the date of the Supreme Court ruling — as are as deserving of a second chance as those sentenced later.

Lawmakers in several states that have passed tough new statutes didn’t reply to emails requesting a response to criticisms in the report.

Since 2012, at least four states have reformed their juvenile sentencing practices, even though the Supreme Court didn’t require them to do so. California now offers parole review to juvenile offenders after 15 years. Utah and Wyoming offer parole review after 25 years. West Virginia banned life without parole altogether, and now permits parole after 15 years.

John Ellem, a West Virginia lawmaker who sponsored his state’s reform package, defended leniency for young people in an op-ed for the Times Leader newspaper, of Martins Ferry, Ohio.

“We all fall short at times, and as a person of faith, I believe we all can be redeemed, particularly our children,” Ellem wrote. “Young people, often exposed to violence, poverty and neglect in home environments they cannot escape, sometimes make tragic mistakes. We should and can still hold them accountable for the harm they have caused but in an age-appropriate way that motivates them to learn from their mistakes and work toward the possibility of release.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The cat. In the bathroom. On the officer’s shoulders?

Nope, not a game of “Clue.” But police say one orange tabby wanted to be closely involved when officers responding to a burglary report searched the cat’s home in southeast Portland. Sgt. Pete Simpson says police were called Monday afternoon when a woman returned home from work to find her house burglarized. When police entered the home to search for a suspect, Officer Sarah Kerwin noted broken glass on the floors of the basement and a bathroom.

Because the resident cat was walking around on the floor, the officer picked up the cat to make sure it didn’t step in the glass. The cat happily climbed onto Kerwin’s shoulders and stayed there as police finished searching the house.

No burglar was found.

This week the World Cup moves on from Group play to the Round of 16, and the USMNT can book a trip there with a win or draw against Germany on Thursday (or a loss, if other things happen — futbol is complicated). In other sportsball news, the NBA…