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An interesting tactic, to say the least.  Instead of ticketing bicyclists who aren’t wearing helmets, the police pull them over, give them a hug and then a free helmet and send them on their way.  [via Boing Boing]

Wow.  Just wow.

At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.

Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.

She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.

“I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare,” said Hillary, 17, who was sentenced in 2007. “All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing.”

The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.

“In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” said Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim, who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003. Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention.

Omar Khadr was arrested in 2002 for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.� He was then shipped to Guantanamo Bay where he underwent interrogation by a Canadian Security Intelligence Services agent.

In this achey-breaky climate of political strife, anything having to do with the secretive nature of the U.S. no-holds-barred prison in Cuba immediately makes it to the front page of the paper.� And though the 10 minute video surely offers a glimpse into the inner workings of an evil place, this 10 minute video doesn’t show anything.

The most sensational news regarding Khadr’s video is that he was crying and pulling his hair.� He removes his orange prison shirt to show the interrogating officer the wounds he sustained during the grenade blast that nearly killed him and complains he did not receive proper medical care.

Obviously this is a serious matter, and if true, shows the underbelly of Guantanamo … but an underbelly we already knew to exist.

Otherwise nothing relevatory�no matter what news outlet you scour�is revealed.� The interrogation, according to the text I read, seems pretty standard.� He doesn’t cooperate.� He cries and wants to go home to Canada (natch).� He’s sent to solitary confinement.

Is he guilty of terrorism?� Maybe, maybe not.� If convincted, he faces life in prison�an apt judgment if the charges are correct.

This video was obtained and released by Khadr’s lawyers, Nathan Whitling and Dennis Edney.� Of the video’s content, Whitling says,

We hope that the Canadian government will finally come to recognize that the so-called legal process that has been put in place to deal with Omar Khadr’s situation is grossly unfair and abusive.� It’s not appropriate to simply allow this process to run its course.

In theory, I agree.� Guantanamo represents a gross misuse of government power and secrecy.� However, I find it hard to fathom Khadr’s video will open eyes any wider.