- The strange birth of New York’s gun laws.
- Oooh, now this is cynical. And fraught with … well, just fraught. (Tip o’ hat to JB.)
- Darn. They’re ruining it for me! (Tip o’ hat to MJR.)
- At least Twitter is is trying to mitigate its consent to censorship.
- “Why Conservatives Should Be Libertarians.”
- The Barefoot Bandit will probably serve just under five years. Federal and state sentences to be concurrent. Seems a reasonable mercy — and with luck a chance for that bright but screwed-up boy to get his head together. (HT to PT.)
- A troop of gorillas visits a human camp. (First couple of minutes are boring; stay with it.)
- The halo effect. And its impact in politics. (HT Beth and Dave Gross.)
- A free privacy tool for you Windows users. And another. Both look useful and — better yet! — easy to use. (Courtesy of JB.)
Yikes! It’s a good thing Ralls is thought of as a mainstream liberal Dem otherwise some people might see him as an extremist. Just sayin’.
RE: Barefoot Punk I need this explained to me; I’m slow. He broke into people’s homes. He stole. He vandalized. He destroyed 100s of thousands of dollars of private property. He showed no remorse until he got caught. He wasn’t sending a political message about the privileged vs. the deprived. He wasn’t stealing from the rich to support the poor. His lawyers say he had a tough childhood, but he still _chose_ to do what he did.
He’s a thug.
So why the adulation and cheering as he committed his crimes? Why the sympathy for getting caught and sentenced? When and how is he going to pay restitution?
Like I said, I’m slow.
The “Why Conservatives Should be Libertarians” thing had interesting timing for me. I just got an email this morning concerning my newspaper column:
“I used to think I was a Republican and then I decided I was a conservative but after reading your articles I’ve decided Libertarian fits me the best.
I look forward to your column every Friday. Keep up the good work!!!!”
And, Claire, the Halo Effect doesn’t affect me at all- I’m positive you are a genius in every area, and it has nothing to do with my first impression of you. 😉
@carl-bear
Colton Harris-Moore really did get off easy for the damage he did. One the other hand he was just a kid then and he never hurt anybody (AFAIK) so there’s that.
Dunno about adulation and cheering, Carl-Bear. How about sympathy and mercy?
As to restitution, I believe pretty huge sums of that are in fact going to be paid to the victims via a movie deal, and Colt has expressed a desire to pay everything back, though he may not be able to.
Thug? I dunno. I wouldn’t put him in the league with men who know they can get away with kicking down doors, shooting dogs, and terrorizing humans. Now those are thugs. Colt at least knew he had only his wits — his very considerable wits. We can judge him from afar, but virtually everyone in the justice system who’s come in contact with him seems to see a young man who did great wrong — but not a thug.
And whatever you call him, he has panache — like Frank Abignale of “Catch Me if You Can” fame.
Ken K — yup. You said it.
“he never hurt anybody”: Except for that little $1.3 million dollar hole he left in people’s lives. And it’s not like anyone was ever bothered by something as harmless as having their home invaded.
Panache, Claire? Are we talking about the same guy, the one who got caught because he clumsily left evidence pointing at himself at multiple crime scenes? Who clumsily stole various vehicles and crashed them because he didn’t know how to operate them? Brazen and bold, I’ll give you; about like “Pizza Hut”, the felony doing time for robbing the restaurant where the workers knew him to get money for the guy who owed him, so that guy could pay him back. But panache?
As to ‘Halos’
http://www.thenationalpatriot.com/?p=4138#more-4138
or the lack thereof…
RE: Twitter
This caught my eye “Prosecutors have subpoenaed the Twitter records of an Occupy Wall Street protester who was arrested in October during a mass protest on the Brooklyn Bridge.” from here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46212535#.Tyi9DflTdQM
Haven’t got online time to hunt down a better link, sorry…..
“expat” hosed my registry….worked like a champ, but made my system crash/dump….bummer