The Republic of South Africa actually has three capital cities. Pretoria in Gauteng Province is the administrative capital, where the president and his cabinet reside. Cape Town in Western Cape Province is the legislative capital and the seat of Parliament. Bloemfontein is where the Supreme Court presides.

As far as I can tell, Nel is arguing for a finding of dolus eventualis. Defense counsel Barry Roux's counters that Nel's appeal is not a question of law, because the prosecution is instead disputing Judge Masipa's findings of fact. Therefore, because the Supreme Court can only consider questions of law, Roux argues that the appeal should be denied.

Roux says that Judge Masipa did not ignore the circumstantial evidence, as Nel has alleged. Roux is presently quoting Judge Masipa's findings of fact, which he says addresses the circumstantial evidence that Nel claims she ignored.

(Reeva Steenkamp's parents are sitting in the front row of the gallery.)

Justice L.E. Leach challenges Roux, stating that Judge Masipa defined dolus eventualis correctly, but she then failed to apply it to any possible situation other than Reeva Steenkamp being behind the bathroom door. Doesn't dolus eventualis also apply to anyone else Pistorious thought to be behind that door? Leach seems to be insisting that Pistorious could still be guilty of murder, even if he didn't realize that Steenkamp was not in the bedroom.

It's a movie that takes a buttoned-up couple from Denton, Ohio and drops them into a fantastic, dangerous, arousing world they didn't even know was within their reach. And if two kids from Denton can find it, then maybe anyone can.

I think with all the new delivery systems making all the overused standards accessible with a click TV channels are feeling a bit more free to go more esoteric with the programming.

When Gay told the judge "I did the things I did all because I was impulsive... I was just being young and dumb," she responded by saying that he was weak and that he would be quickly made into someone's "bitch."

The judge told him, "Do you know what would happen... to a young dumb person in prison? Do you have any idea what would happen to you? You would probably be raped every day, for one. And I hate to sound like that, you know -- rude, but that's exactly what would happen to you."

"Again, he's going to be somebody's --I hate to use the word `b!tch', but that's exactly what he's going to be... so I am willing to put him onprobation." she added.

Ms. Crundwell, who served -- mostly herself, apparently -- in that capacity for over 30 years, pled guilty to wire fraud in federal court back in November 2012, having misused her position as comptroller to loot the small city's treasury of $53.7 million over a 22-year period, part of which she used to amass a veritable empire of quarter horses.

So, while Rita's cooling her heels in prison for the next 20 years or so, the U.S. Marshals Service is auctioning off her ill-gotten assets as they find and seize them. To be sure, it's a rather laborious and involved process, given the recent revelation that she's still earning thousands of dollars a year in breeder royalties from show horses she no longer owns.

Meanwhile, Crundwell has also been responsible, albeit inadvertently, for the serious effort underway in Dixon to overhaul and reform its government operations in the wake of her massive fiscal transgressions, which ultimately cost the city over $100 million due to the neglect of its infrastructure and mismanagement of its resources. City residents recently voted to abolish its former commissioner-led government and replace it with a city manager-led system, in an effort to ensure greater accountability in the future.

But to offer a bad if entirely appropriate pun, Dixon residents are only now closing the barn door after all of Rita's quarter horses escaped. While Crundwell's position was an appointed one, the town's commissioners were elected by its citizens, and those commissioner resolutely failed in their oversight duties for over two decades.

It was the city clerk, serving as acting comptroller while Rita Crundwell was on vacation in the fall of 2011, who discovered the ongoing malfeasance. She went directly to the FBI with her concerns, effectively bypassing her own bosses, who were those same commissioners who had stood by Crundwell all these years and vouched for her integrity.

Democracy is meant to be a fully participatory process. This massive and very expensive failure in civic governance is what can happen when citizens don't perform their own due diligence regarding the people they're electing to lead and run the show.

"One could argue that [Ben Carson's] even more authentically African-American than Barack Obama, given that Obama's mother was white and he was raised in part by his white grandparents. In his autobiography, Obama writes at length about how he grew up outside the traditional African-American experience -- in Hawaii and Indonesia -- and how he consciously chose to adopt a black identity when he was in college."