You Twitspire Me Not

I get it.

You want to woo new followers to your corner of twitter by making your tweets as re-tweetable as possible.  Your modus operandi: inspirational morning tweets.  The strategy is a good one.  It's almost like choosing a gospel song to sing at the Apollo -- people are less likely to boo 'inspirational content' right?  WRONG! More often than not, I run into twitspirations that leave me scratching my head, followed quickly by a personal vow to never follow said inspirer.  Here are just a few of my favorite inspirational #fails.

"Hope, so you can find what's beyond your hope."

I'm sorry.. what??  After you start hoping that something will happen.. then you'll start hoping something else happens? :-/

"Never trust anybody that makes you feel you need them.  You need nobody.  God gave us ourselves.  Never let nobody make you feel different"

The truth is people, we all need somebody.  We can't make it by ourselves.  No, someone shouldn't make you feel beholden to them, but learn to trust situations where you can safely depend on someone.  It's called maturity.

"If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else."

*smh*  How do you determine it's somewhere else if you don't know where the initial destination was? #imjustsayin

No shots to the authors of these quotations.  It's quite possible that these statements don't suck, and I'm just some sort of Grinch who can't be motivated by positivity.  But in my opinion, inspirational quotes should make some sort of sense; not just a string of inspirational words.

For example - the words Life, Decision, and Today could be used to form this tom foolery of a statement:

"Make the decision today that you are bigger than life.  Let's go!!!!!"

First of all, adding 'let's go' and a cluster of exclamation marks does not validate anything you said previously.  Secondly, elusive comments about being above and beyond are stupid.  You're the same dude from yesterday.  It's not about superceding anything life throws at you, it's about learning to adjust your attitude to whatever life throws your way.  Here's an example of the same words put to better use:

"Today is the first day of the rest of your life.  Make every decision based on that knowledge."

With all that being said, I'll wake up to a timeline of nonsensensical twispirational gems that will make me laugh, *smh* and unfollow, all in one breath.

Tammy

Prosecutors above the law?!?

For those of you who don't know, my husband is in law school. With all his fancy lawyer knowledge, he has been chipping away at my faith in the judicial system... slowly, but surely lol. Anyway, if you were listening to NPR this morning, they had a piece about a guy who was recently released from prison. He was wrongly convicted of murder, and spent 25 years in jail. Mr. McGhee is now suing the prosecutors who tried his case, and this case was heard before the Supreme Court today. The NPR piece was entitled: "Can Prosecutors be sued by people they framed?" You can listen to it here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120069519

Anyway, Dwayne worked on a case this summer with a gentleman who claims he was wrongly accused and convicted of a crime, and spent several years in jail. He also wanted to sue the prosecutors who put him behind bars. This is where we learned a bit about prosecutorial immunity, hence our interest in Mr. McGhee's suit.

To make a long story short, the Obama Administration submitted their position on prosecutorial immunity via an amicus brief that was presented to the Supreme Court. In this brief, the government asserts that prosecutors should enjoy absolute immunity, even when "the prosecutor allegedly procured
false testimony during the criminal investigation and then introduced that same testimony against the criminal defendant at trial to obtain a conviction." Since I am hard at work, and don't spend company hours doing non-work-related things, I haven't read through the entire brief. But, you can see it here:

http://www.abanet.org/publiced/preview/briefs/pdfs/07-08/08-1065_PetitionerAmCuUSA.pdf

I have to finish reading everything completely, but this scares me. I really believe prosecutors should have a healthy level of fear when trying to convict someone of a crime. Something should be there to encourage them to do their job honestly and fairly. If they are granted absolute immunity, what incentive do they have to treat the average accused criminal fairly? I supposed I can understand some level of immunity to mitigate all kinds of random litigation. But absolute?

Obama would prefer to see the judicial system (a system that I think should be protecting citizens) risk putting more innocent Americans in jail, than prosecutors. No recourse for Mr. McGhee? He should just go home and be happy to be out of jail? Definitely gives me pause.. you?

Maybe I'm wrong, and page 35 of the brief says: 'SIKE' in bold 56 size font... maybe.


*DISCLAIMER* I know nothing about the law.. so if you're an attorney and need to correct anything i said, feel free :)