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  And not a moment too soon : Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized in one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S. history. U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions.” In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Mark Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from the builder and co-owner of two for-profit lockups. Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of kids would be sent to PA Child Care and its sister facility...

Apparently some people in NYC aren't taking a liking to these anti-teen pregnancy ads . I say if the goal is to scare some 13-to-19-year olds from having unprotected sex, then keep it coming. If the goal is to "slut-shame" teen moms, then the tone needs to change. (Personally, I think the ads are speaking to the former group, and not the later.)

17-year-old with possible drug problem yells at grandmother, gets shot eight times .

Think Progress has a post about a bill from the Tennessee Senate that sees a link between holding hands and doing the naked pretzel . To which I say:

Well, don't expect them to do that again any time soon .

Can't let girls or women have any sense of empowerment, now can we ?

Annoying parents are driving teens towards Twitter (weren't they already there following celebrities?).

Seriously; WTF ? WEST PALM BEACH, Fla . (AP) — A 17-year-old boy is accused of bludgeoning his parents with a hammer, then hosting dozens of friends for a party while their bodies lay in the bedroom, police said Monday. Tyler Hadley of Port St. Lucie is charged with twin counts of first-degree murder in the deaths, which authorities say happened Saturday. He is being held without bond at a juvenile detention center in Fort Pierce and it's not immediately known whether he has an attorney. The parents — Blake and Mary-Jo Hadley — were believed to have been struck with the hammer in their heads and torsos sometime after their son posted on Facebook around 1:15 p.m. Saturday alerting friends to an evening party at his house, about 50 miles north of West Palm Beach .

Expect more stories like this if abortion is ever banned : A 17-year-old is in custody, after allegedly stabbing a girl repeatedly when she told him that she was pregnant. Cortae Diaz Kelly , a student at Ypsilanti High School in Michigan, is accused of stabbing the girl in a nearby wooded area. The girl is now in intensive care, after getting surgery at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital. County Assistant Prosecutor Arianne Slay is saying that Kelly stabbed the girl 12 times in her head, back and hands. She played dead to get him to stop the attack. She also says that Kelly confessed to trying to kill her. He is being charged with assault with intent to murder and being held on a $1 million bond. The girl was found on the trail by a passerby, who then called 911. Kelly allegedly told police that he not only intended to kill the girl, but that he thought she was dead. "I am extremely concerned about the danger to the community," Magistrate Thomas Truesdell said before ordering t...

Giving kids energy drink may not be the best idea , according to this story.

(Full-scale can be found here ) Put me in the " This Would Be Awesome " Camp, but only if they had done things like: Made Scarecrow older (him, Jim Gordon and Dr. Hugo Strange should be teachers) Replaced Barbara Gordon with Huntress or Vicky Vale (Ms. Gordon's closer to Dick Grayson's age, right? Even if she's not, she's too young to be in high school with Bruce Wayne). Bruce's rogues would had to have some kind of animosity towards him, but not outright hatred. Weren't afraid to dip into the fact that we're talking about one (relatively) sane-yet-driven teenager in a high school full of disturbed minds. Alas, this show was not meant to be. But the fucking potential is almost incalculable! In the meantime: I'm calling a T-shirt shop. (P.S.: The source of this awesomeness .)

Don't know if this is really a "yay" moment, but it is what it is.

Sigh . The Parents Television Council has released a statement criticizing the producers of "Glee" for allowing its stars Cory Monteith, 28 , and Dianna Agron and Lea Michele, both 24 , to participate in a "hyper-sexualized" photo shoot in the November issue of GQ. According to the statement from the PTC, "it is disturbing that GQ, which is explicitly written for adult men, is sexualizing the actresses who play high school-aged characters on 'Glee' in this way. It borders on pedophilia . Sadly, this is just the latest example of the overt sexualization of young girls in entertainment," said PTC's President Tim Winter. From the good ol' dictionary: pedophilia: sexual desire in an adult for a child . It's called Dawson casting, people . UPDATE: From the GQ Editor-in-Chief "The Parents Television Council must not be watching much TV these days and should learn to divide reality from fantasy. As often happens in Ho...

Seriously: WTF ?

Did I mention that they were robbing banks ?

Wowzers . ROME (Reuters) – An Italian woman who hired two assassins to murder her overbearing father was arrested after the second hitman changed his mind and confessed to the police, authorities said Tuesday. Nineteen-year-old Ilenia Moretti had asked her father Rodolfo for 5,000 euros ($6,756) for a trip to America before using the money to hire a hitman to kill him, apparently with her mother's consent, a police statement said. The teen-ager, from the small town of Luzzara near the northern Italian city of Milan, told authorities she could no longer bear her despotic father's ways. "She said she wanted to bring to an end years of intimidation suffered by both daughter and mother," an investigator said in the statement. The hitman, thought to be a young north African, pocketed the money before going to the police. His confession led police to re-examine details of a previous attack on Rodolfo Mo...

Here's a story of a high-school-student-soon-to-be-college-student who came this close to being a full-time stripper: Well, fortunately for Brianna, former Congresswoman Linda Smith got involved. Smith is a member of Shared Hope International , an organization that deals with fighting back against sex trafficking.

...The teacher was caught writing sick sexual notes to students , and was put on Adminstrative Leave.