No shortage of bastards this month

Jail time should be the least of what this turd gets. He should have to spend a couple of weeks as the pivot boy in a circlejerk. Asshole. Also, gotta give a big thumbs up to the judge for rejecting the appeal.

Judge rejects appeal in ex-coach’s conviction for offering boy $25 to bean autistic teammate

Eds: Restores dropped word penultimate graf, want. Moving on general news and sports services.

UNIONTOWN, Pa. — A judge refused to reduce the sentence of a former youth baseball coach convicted of offering a player money to bean a 9-year-old autistic teammate.

Mark Downs Jr., 29, had argued in his appeal that his former attorney wasn’t effective. But Fayette County Judge Ralph Warman ruled Monday that Downs’ arguments were without merit. He let stand Downs’ one- to six-year prison sentence imposed last year.

Downs was convicted of corruption of minors and simple assault for offering $25 to an 8-year-old boy to hit his mildly autistic teammate with a ball while warming up before a June 2005 playoff game. The younger boy testified at trial that, on Downs’ instructions, he purposely threw a ball that hit his teammate in the groin, then threw another that hit him in the ear.

Prosecutors said Downs didn’t want the autistic boy in the game because he didn’t play as well as his teammates. League rules require each player to play at least three innings.

Downs remains free on bond while he continues an appeal to the Pennsylvania Superior Court.

School officials to stupid to be school officials

Props to this teacher for standing behind her student who wrote a controversial editorial in a student publication.

Too bad the fascists at the school board seem to have forgotten the First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press. The courts in THIS country generally have extended that to student media. I home someone sues the bastards for violating the teacher’s civil rights — something she cannot legally sign away in an agreement with the school board.

Those folks need to move to a country where suppression of free speech and the press is encouraged, like, say, Iran or maybe China.