The question of whether DNA evidence should change the way we look at innocent until proven guilty has been heavily on my mind. We’ve always been taught that a person deserves a fair trial among a jury of their peers to face the charges they are accused of…a fair justice system.

The introduction of DNA evidence over 20 years ago has changed the playing field when it comes to convicting or exonerating a person of a crime. Since DNA is unique to each person it’s hard to dispute the results of the test.

Although there can be a defense to DNA evidence such as mishandling or performing the test wrong it’s hard to refute the test results. If the justice system put in place a structured, secured method of testing and handling DNA evidence it could save taxpayers millions by shortening the trial process.

DNA Evidence = Guilty

How can you dispute that fact when a prosecutor holds off on an arrest for a murder until they received the test results? This is exactly what happened in a local case involving a police office that was on duty when he strangled a young woman who was due to have his baby within weeks.

Saginaw County Prosecutor, Mike Thomas tells a local reporter as soon as they received a positive match on the DNA test results they immediately acted by arresting Buena Vista Police Officer Kevin Bluew. Bluew who is married, is accused of killing his girlfriend who was 37 weeks pregnant with his baby at a local police gun range while on duty. The beautiful life of Jenny Webb and her unborn baby boy was cut short and the evidence obviously shows Officer Bluew was involved.

Why should the family of Jenny be put through the rigors of a trial? Why should Michigan taxpayers fit the bill for this guy to have a “fair” trial? If the DNA evidence proves positive, let a judge review it, approve it and lock the guy up!

DNA Evidence = Innocent

DNA evidence is a solid way to get a conviction but it’s also a solid way to reverse or eliminate a conviction. The Innocence Project is proof of that. They state:

There have been 273 post-conviction DNA exonerations in United States history.

The facts presented on the website showing innocent people being exonerated with DNA evidence are staggering. If this evidence is solid, then the question is raised again…why are we still holding jury trials when there is undisputed DNA evidence?

Consider the conviction of Cornelius Dupree which was overturned in Texas and Dupree was exonerated of a rape and robbery he did not commit. Cornelius served 30 years in prison before the evidence set him free again proofing how powerful this evidence is. This man spent 30 years of his life behind bars for a crime he did not commit not to mention the hoards of wasted money housing and prosecuting an innocent man.

This leaves us with one question….

Should DNA Evidence Change Innocent Until Proven Guilty?

I started my service with TXU Energy in Jan of 2011 when I moved to the Houston TX area. I was not even in the house for 6 days of the billing cycle. We didn’t have the air, heat or any unusual amount of appliances going etc. They charged me over $300 for my first bill and said that I used almost 3000 kwh of electricity. This is NOT possible. I called to find out what was going on and got the run around and was advised that they would call me back to have someone look at the meter but that there wouldn’t be much they could do until I had more bills to compare it to.

I paid my bill and continue to pay them. I NEVER got that call. Well now that I have had more bills for them to compare the first to, I have had the ac running 24/7 for the last 2 months, and my electric bill hasn’t even come close to that first reading. For the month of March it was 1300 kwh, April was 1500 kwh, and my most current bill is just under 200 kwh. So I called again over a week ago was transferred a bunch of times and was promised a call back to get this resolved after threatening to do what I am doing now along with contacting the BBB and the local news.

Again, I never got that call back. So, I called today spent almost an hour on the phone and was again transferred a few times and finally got to Ruth 79223 in the office of the CEO (a fancy title to hopefully shut me up and think they are going to help me) and she tried to tell me that it was very cold in Jan and that is probably why my bill was so high. I then explained to her that I didn’t even move into the house until Jan 27th. She then said she was going to contact the people who read the meter and have them advise her what to do and call me back.

She has since called me back (a first!) and advised that there is nothing they can do and it has to be due to the cold weather that Houston had for a week in Jan. I am horrified by this. I guess they think I am just some dumb consumer who is just going to pay the bill no matter what the amount well they are WRONG I read my bills and pay attention. They have ripped me off and aren’t willing to do the right thing and admit their mistake and I can’t understand this. It is infuriating. I am also going to file on the BBB website and contact the local news. Thank goodness I didn’t sign a contract with them because I will also be getting my electric service thru another provider.

On March 4th I received an email from my mother-in-law stating that Boiled Over was a blank white page. I thought to my self what could be wrong I was just on there a couple days ago.

I entered the site to see….a blank page! I again though to myself, what could be wrong, maybe I should have upgraded WordPress as my host suggested…

Nope! After a little investigating I realized that Boiled Over had been deleted in it’s entirety. That right…everything was gone except for my design folder and all the images I uploaded over the past 4 years.

After crying the day away and thinking how could a project I have no monetary value in and only did as a tribute to my son be gone…entirely gone, four years worth of work that has earned us a great place with Google.

A few emails to BlueHost and I still had no answers.

“Wordpress was deleted from your account on February 24th for the domain BoiledOver.com.”

Are you kidding me…The site was deleted from my account, I would never do that! The only conclusion I can come to is that we were HACKED! Someone out there in the great World Wide Web does not like us…BUT we don’t care!

After hours and hours of scraping Google for cache pages (thank goodness they had them) and a site backup from 2009 (yes, I should have a more recent one) we were back up and running.

I WILL NEVER LET THIS SITE DIE! It is a tribute to the one thing we lost that we loved so very much, Our Son Dustin! I created this site as a place for people to vent, a place that people could complain about anything that bothered them without reaping the repercussions that come with everyday life.

With all that’s going on in today’s world, we all need a place like Boiled Over…a place to vent and move on with our lives. Whether you’re pissed about work, politics or the people you are around every day…have your say on Boiled Over!

Waking up to read the morning news, the first headline on our local news website is a hit-and-run accident that involved two children in the Mount Morris, MI area.

Thankfully the two children involved will be fine, they sustained only minor injuries. The article made my blood boil and really ticked me off when I found out not only were the kids hit walking to school BUT the driver left the scene, driving off as the two children lay in the road.

If you’re a regular reader of our blog you will know that any child hit by a car breaks our hearts, as this is the way we lost our son almost five years ago.

This driver, if ever found should face the maximum penalty and lose their license forever. My heart sank as I read:

“All I saw was the car headlights,” Austin said. “I closed my eyes and kept running.”

This coming from an 11 year old boy that feared for his life, no child should have to ever endure that.

So the REAL question is…who is responsible for the children’s medical bills? What will the family do if they occur problems in the future do to the kids being injured in the accident?

In a perfect world the drivers car insurance would pay those related costs BUT the driver is no where to be found. To be honest even if they did find the driver the odds that they actually had auto insurance and that the insurance company would do the right thing and PAY is very nil.

We know this from first hand experience. We consulted a few personal injury and wrongful death attorneys when our son was killed by a careless driver…will little results.

The insurance company gave us pennies and the lawyers didn’t have time for us since it stated in the police report that our son was at fault. This of course was not true and the investigation was botched due to a small town cover up.

The point is… DRIVERS head caution and drive slow when entering any area that you know children will be traveling to school! These kids are innocent and if you do have an accident for goodness sake DON’T drive away!

If you live in the Mount Morris, MI area and you’ve seen a a white sedan that might have been involved in an accident contact the Mount Morris Police or 911 immediately. This person needs to be brought to justice!

I’m sick of hearing how unions are hurting this country because here in Michigan the unions are what made middle class families. I’m not defending the “Big Wigs” in any union, in my eyes they are just as bad as the corporate CEOs BUT it’s the union workers that are taking the brunt of the non-union movement.

The unions are not as powerful as they used to be for the guys and gals that join them but they do make sure that you receive the benefits you need in order to sustain a life above the poverty level. The health insurance alone, that we are guaranteed as long as my husband puts in the hours outweighs the benefits of any non-union job.

People and politicians complain that union wages are too high and that the workers aren’t worth the pay. That’s simply NOT TRUE. For one, not all union workers are lazy and make spectacles of themselves like the Chrysler workers recently fired for their bad behavior. For two, most of these people work their tail off doing jobs that deserve the pay they receive. As a matter of fact, my husband, a Michigan Union Ironworker, recently had his wages and vacation pay cut. Not to mention that because of a few bad decisions on the part of financial advisers for the union during the stock market crash these guys have no pension to speak of.

When you think that union wages are too high think about this….

The Day in the Life of a Michigan Union Ironworker

For the last 14 years being the wife of an ironworker has brought its toll with the early mornings, long hours and the constant worrying. You see, Ironwork in Michigan is usually done in the metropolitan cities (Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing, ect.) meaning that if you want to work as an ironworker you better be prepared to travel.

My husband Chad starts his day between 3 – 4 am depending on the location of the job he’s working. Due to the area we live in he has to travel on average of 1 ½ to 2 hours in the morning to work and at night after work. That’s over 15 hours a week on the road which is more dangerous than the actual ironwork that he does. Spending 13 – 14 hours a day away from home for a 40 hour paycheck hardly seems worth it. Not to mention what he spends on gas and car maintenance.

Once he finally arrives at the job site its 7 am “grind time” until the end of the day. We’re not talking sitting in a shop pushing a button we’re talking many feet in the air lifting, placing and securing hundreds of pounds of steel.

The union ironworkers also have to deal with a ton of new regulations that are changed almost daily on the job site. They now mostly work from lifts (which in my opinion is sometimes more dangerous than being on the steel). OSHA is making the standards harder on these guys every day and it seems they put more of the responsibility on the worker than they do the company. The ever changing regulations have these ironworkers taking a multitude of training classes just to keep caught up and legal to work. Did I mention the classes are not “paid on the job”, they are after work and in Novi (1 ½ hours away).

At the end of the day, Chad’s body has been maxed out and he’s exhausted (remember, he still has almost two hours of drive time before he reaches home.) He gets to spend a few hours with the family before going to bed to get up early again.

So when you gripe that union workers don’t deserve the high wages they are making think of it this way…

• 55 hours away from home for 40 hours worth of pay
• The increase of being seriously injured in a car accident driving almost 4 hours a day
• The cost of gas to make that drive and the miles that rack up on your car
• The cost of the equipment, tools, clothing and any thing needed for the job (the companies pay for NOTHING!)
• The danger that many union workers are placed in every day and the ridicule they get from many in the country that stereotype them with the UAW

When you take the good and the bad I believe the union worker wins overall. You have a diplomatic means to making sure your worker rights are being taken care of. Benefits that are commonly unavailable in the normal workplace are there for you. You are part of a “Brotherhood/Sisterhood” that looks out for each other…like an extended family.