Kim Jong-Un has his ex-girlfriend — a North Korean pop star — executed by firing squad.

Hyon Song-wol was one of a dozen pop singers who were machine gunned for (supposedly) violating anti-pornography laws.

One source told [South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo] that some of the victims were clutching Bibles as they were killed in front of their loved ones — who were then ordered to live in the country’s notorious prison camps after they were found guilty by association.

Here's video of Hyon Song-wol singing "A Girl in the Saddle of a Steed":



According to Wikipedia, that was her greatest hit:

Our factory comrades say in jest,
Why, they tell me I am a virgin on a stallion,
After a full day's work I still have energy left...
They say I am a virgin on a stallion,
Mounting a stallion my Dear Leader gave me.
All my life I will live to uphold his name!

What Eric Holder said about drugs.

I held up on blogging the advance publicity on the speech because I wanted to see the text, which is now available here.

We will start [to recalibrate America’s federal criminal justice system] by fundamentally rethinking the notion of mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes....

This is why I have today mandated a modification of the Justice Department’s charging policies so that certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs, or cartels will no longer be charged with offenses that impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences...

Secondly, the Department has now updated its framework for considering compassionate release for inmates facing extraordinary or compelling circumstances – and who pose no threat to the public...

Finally, my colleagues and I are taking steps to identify and share best practices for enhancing the use of diversion programs – such as drug treatment and community service initiatives – that can serve as effective alternatives to incarceration.

We the Peepers.

As used in the previous post — the last word of — I see how "peepers" could be a new coinage for "people" within the our newly understood world of pervasive surveillance. One might say:

We the Peepers of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity...

And:

... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the peepers, by the peepers, for the peepers, shall not perish from the earth.

"Peeper" — "A person who peeps or peers; esp. one who pries or looks furtively, or in a voyeuristic way" — is an old word, I see, peeping into the (unlinkable) OED:

1607   T. Dekker & J. Webster West-ward Hoe ii. ii. sig. D2v,   Whose there? Peepers: Intelligencers: Euesdroppers.
1652   J. Gaule Πυς-μαντια 375   He..had his eyes put out; an apt punishment for all peepers, and Star-gazers.
1711   R. Steele Spectator No. 53. ⁋8,   I doubt not but you will think a Peeper as much more pernicious than a Starer....
2003   Gay Times Feb. 61/3   If you view others, without their knowledge or consent..then peepers can expect up to two years in the slammers.

"Ramos was tied up at the woman's funeral. Mourners threw him into the open grave..."

"...  placed the woman's coffin in it and filled the grave with earth."

Judge cuts sentence from 11 years to 4 months because the sex offender suffers from "hypersexuality."

Does that make sense?

"You say rivers of wine flow in heaven, is heaven a tavern to you?"

"You say two houris await each believer there, is heaven a brothel to you?"

"'I felt bound by those mandatory guidelines and I hated them,' Judge Lagueux said from the bench..."

"... as [Denise] Dallaire sobbed quietly and the room froze with amazement. 'I’m sorry I sent you away for 15 years.' He urged her to get home quickly to her ill mother but not to run down the court steps as people do in the movies. 'Those steps are dangerous,' he told her."

... Like many petty criminals snared by sentencing rules aimed at drug kingpins, Ms. Dallaire had virtually no hope of an early release, even after the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision and subsequent Congressional action reducing prison terms in crack cocaine cases. She got there through an exquisitely rare constellation — her exemplary prison record, Judge Lagueux’s nagging conscience and the interest of another judge who persuaded a top lawyer to volunteer his time to work for her release. Without those, Ms. Dallaire would still be working three jobs at the Danbury federal prison.

“There are a lot of people like Denise doing bone-crushing time under the old sentencing regime, and we need to try to find ways to help them,” said Judge John Gleeson....

"With Aaron's death, we can wait no longer."

"This time there will be change or there will be chaos."