Good post!

According to Young’s office, there was no clerk or court reporter present during the Calixtos’ hearing and there is no transcript, recording or documentation of what was said.
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RE Knox County, “It would almost never happen here,” Sewell said. “If there’s no actual court reporter, we almost always have a clerk in the courtroom taking notes. That would be very unusual for us — our clerks almost always have documentation of what happens in the courtroom.”

This whole situation appears outrageous.

Interesting choice of colors on the poll results bar graph.

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The idea that some people should be deprived of justice based on anything other than what the law says is at the heart of way too many important decisions made here by The People In Charge. I especially love it when the law'n order crowd ignores the law in giving, or not giving, its orders.

The poll is obviously stacked, but I wonder if there would be any difference if the the paper had separated the comments about the wife from the comments about the husband?

(I polled in opposition to the statement, in case your wondering)

Gee, I wonder if this will get a mention in the blurb advising everyone to move to Maryville, TN, on the next A&E List. If the realtors were worried before, they should all be having strokes about now. This story is everywhere:

• AOL News: ((link...))
• Local Channel 8 TV News: ((link...)

And then there are a whole lot of crackpot sites where people can't seem to hear "immigrant" without assuming the "illegal" part:

Check out the comments people have posted here:

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Kudos to Rick Laney and Larry Aldridge (sic?) for the courage to investigate and print this story. There were a few inaccurate statements in the article, due to translation problems, I assume.
Ana Calixto was not accompanied by anyone in the court. Ms. Blevins is a friend and co-worker of Ana's and spoke with her soon after she left the court.
Ana was not seeking an order of protection because of physical abuse by her estranged husband, but because he would yell, scream and insult her when he would come to pick up the childen or to return them. She has never tried to stop her husband from seeing the children even though he refused to pay her any support for them.
As stated above, Ms. Calixto was seeking an order of protection to prove to her husband that he could not do the things he was doing, must pay child support and also to provide for visitation for the children.
Mr. Calixto did not withdraw money from Ms. Calixto's bank account. Ana stated that Mr. Calixto gave her a debit card of some sort for $50.00 but she could use it because it was in his name. This was lost in translation.

If I were an attorney who had to work in Blount County and I had witnessed what happened, I would definitely want to keep my mouth shut about it. What would happen to the next case I had to take before Judge Young, if I didn't?

Having said that, I guess it would be a matter of public record which attorneys represent the two immigrants, as well as whether they were present or not.

• High school lock downs due to racial threats...
• Rebel flags...
• Vandalized Hispanic stores...

And now, a blatant refusal by a 'respected' judge to hear a case based not on legal argument but on simple assumptions born out of a terrible bias.

Racism is racism.

It angered me that the title over the letter to the editor said: "Illegal residents rights are limited." Mrs. Calixto has already said she was legal and happily showed her papers on tv, so to imply otherwise in the title is just irresponsible of the DT.

Here's the letter to the editor, itself: ((link...))

Somehow, the name of the writer sounded familiar to me. A brief google search turned up that she:

Is on the State Executive Committee for the Republican Party: (link...)

And, served as the Chairwoman of the Republican Primary Committee during the last election:
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I guess we can consider this the official Republican response in defense of Judge Young.

Gee. Thanks. I think.

Rest assured that if you are not interested in holding the county government accountable you won't ever have to mutter those words again.

Knowing the mood I am in WPR should be mighty glad that I am not in her district. The rest of you, go chat with Commissioner Reeves tonight!

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Court reporters are hired by the parties in civil litigation. If neither side has done so, no transcript of the proceeding would exist. Further, the order of protection statute protects against domestic violence and stalking. From the DT article, Ms. Calixto complained of acts that do not seem to fall within the protection of the statute.

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As you may have heard today the AP has picked up the story.

Today's KNS has a very interesting article on this.

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Calixto said Young asked about the parties’ legal status in the United States and then dismissed the case.

So, he ask the legal status before he dismissed the case......