Joel isn’t the only one who sometimes wakes up with “interesting” songs looping through his head. This morning there’s this one: (Lyrics & backstory) But! The good news is I got rid of it! The bad news is I got rid of “Daddy Wouldn’t Buy me a Bow Wow” by filling my brain with “I Love a Cop.” You’re in luck, though. The only available YouTube performances of that one are too screechingly awful to link to, so the link is lyrics only. Song’s actually kinda cute. It’s just the idea of the thing … All in all, I’m beginning…
Category: Official thuggery, bad prosecutions, and bad law
Security Theater of the Absurd: petitioners want to have CopBlock declared a terrorist group. Why “everybody” is moving to Texas. The reasons given are as facile as the assumption in the title, so apply grains of salt. But other state governments could learn some lessons from Texas — not that they would. So, John Tamny, how do you propose to make that last paragraph of yours a reality? In falling empires, and overripe civilizations everything becomes political. Who (or what) killed adulthood? This article is mostly by and for young women, but the phenomenon it describes is too real for…
More non-nooz, well mostly non-nooz … “Why Liberals Love the Disease Theory of Addiction by a Liberal Who Hates It.” First great reason I’ve seen to consider a smart phone: The iPhone 6 locks out the NSA. And look how upset it’s got some lawbreaking authoritarians! The FBI director seems to think that, historically, it’s been okay for the feds to snoop randomly on everybody and verboten for us to have secrets from them. Apparently that’s what it means to be a “country of laws.” While this article asks the irrelevant-to-most-of-us question of why billionaires get depressed, the solution it…
I’m deadlining this week and also dealing with the aftermath of my crushed roof, so posting may (or maybe not; we’ll see how it goes) be light. But here’s some good reading. This summer (and now, this fall) Vin Suprynowicz has been running a long series on what happened (and may yet happen) at the Bundy ranch. His first episode (1 of 6) is here. His latest (5 of 6) is here. I don’t see a good chain of links between them, but you can find them by searching one of the archive categories they appear in, like private property.…
“What I did after police killed my son.” The food insecurity lie. 12 graphs showing why people get fat. Oh, Canada. What you’ve reduced your people to. Airhorns? Seriously? Airhorns against thug barbarians? (H/T L.A.) Couple of weeks ago I linked to Ryochiji’s farewell to his Serenity Valley cabin as he prepared it as best he could against approaching fires. Good news; his cabin survived. Barely, but it made it. Yep, that would be about par for the course for U.S. surveillance priorities. Um … I’m really not sure why various news media keep presenting this as amusing. I know…
“Work’s for Squares.” The (unsurprising?) decline of labor-force participation. But on the good side of that subject … Wally Conger reviews my How to Kill the Job Culture despite the fact that it’s been out of print for several years. Hm. If I can find those old files or get somebody to OCR the book for me, maybe a Kindle edition is in order? Ken at Popehat says yes, there is more to that incident of the teacher arrested over his SF novels. Ken also opens with the best description of media-cop relations I’ve ever read. (H/T jed in comments)…
Tam? Tam, where have you gone? Your blog was one of the stones on which the gunblogosphere was built. Doctors getting fed up with their profession. No surprise. Not really news. But an interesting perspective from a physician. “Who owns your children?” Bayou Renaissance Man asks after last week’s case of a family subjected to an international manhunt for disagreeing with their son’s doctors. What do you know about MaidSafe? Is this the future of communications privacy? (H/T PB in comments) Teacher arrested over school shootings — that he wrote about in novels. David Codrea notes that we don’t know…
What? Eric Holder a hypocrite? Nooooo. Why, that would be as unthinkable as saying cops are lying thugs or that they get away with things that would send the rest of us to prison. Why, that would even be like saying that feds and local cops are conspiring to keep information out of the hands of judges. Couldn’t happen. This is Murrica! Isn’t that cute? The NSA has its own search engine just for sharing information about us. Sigh. Another hopeful libertarian project collapses into a rubble heap of fraud and scandal. Oh well. Here’s something useful (and maybe even…
New phone app Five-O: A new phone application invented by some crafty teenagers will help citizens to keep track of incidents of police violence. The app called “Five-O” allowed users to record and document interactions with police, submit ratings of law enforcement, and allow people to see how their departments compare to others. Users can also rate specific officer’s behavior and ratings are public for everyone to view. Inventor Ima Christian spoke to Business Insider about her invention: “We’ve been hearing about the negative instances in the news, for instance most recently the Michael Brown case, and we always talk…
Eric Holder, peacemaker patron saint of violent cops. Failed rescue of Foley. Seems Obama is even more like Carter than it appeared. An Ayn Rand dollar? Smart homes are stupid. Maybe it’s only because the tech is new and just developing. Maybe … some of it’s actually stupid. (Not to mention intrusive and insanely insecure.) I have no idea whether the cop in the Ferguson shooting was justified or not. This cop in Ferguson should be busted below the level of janitor. UPDATE: He has at least been taken off duty. It’s a start. This authoritarian creepazoid judge in Maryland,…