A proposed crackdown on single-slice pizza sales in Adams Morgan has many patrons of the nightlife hot spot perplexed, especially considering the area's other issues, including violent crime. 

But Ward 1 D.C. Councilman Jim Graham, who represents Adams Morgan, says the pizza parlors selling single slices along 18th Street, some of which are open until 4:30 a.m., are part of the problem when it comes a recent rash of street fights, stabbings, muggings and even a shootout involving two plainclothes police officers.

"Even though it's a legal business and everything, they have become a nuisance," Graham said. "Behaving the way they do in terms of music, in terms of letting people hang out and also in terms of tolerating a certain level of violence."

A hidden ABC 7 camera captured an example of what Graham is talking about a couple weeks ago. Two girls began arguing in front of one of the jumbo slice businesses, the altercation turned physical when punches were thrown and people wrestled to the ground. The melee went on for 10 minutes before police arrived.

But Graham's proposal has many opponents. For many, a slice after a night out has been a part of the tradition of visiting Adams Morgan for decades.

"It's big pizza, it's cheap and it's good after a night of bar hopping in Adams Morgan," said Nicole Harrison, a Silver Spring resident.

Adams Morgan resident John Sawyko agrees the late night congregating is at times overwhelming and down right scary, but he says blaming pizza is absurd.

"The crowd out here in general is the problem," Sawyko said. "The pizza places are a small part of the issue."

Abdul Souada is the manager of one of the three jumbo slice restaurants on 18th Street. He says he is unfairly being picked on just for being to "popular"

"We are taxpayers also," he said. "Our business is the same as bar business, as the club business, as the other restaurants next door..."

While most people who spoke with ABC 7 in Adams Morgan thought the proposal was a joke, Councilman Graham said he is very serious. He says he's already talked to the mayor about the issue and is drafting legislation.

This leaves me wondering whether Councilman Graham thinks the problems would disappear if all the pizza vendors switched to, say, burritos or falafel.

CAIRO (AP), March 11 - A 75-year-old widow in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 40 lashes and four months in jail for mingling with two young men who are not close relatives, drawing new criticism for the kingdom's ultraconservative religious police and judiciary.

The woman's lawyer...said the verdict  also demands that she be deported after serving her sentence.

...The newspaper Al-Watan said the woman met with the two 24-year-old men last April after she asked them to bring her five loaves of bread at her home in al-Chamil, a city north of the capital, Riyadh.

The newspaper identified one man as the nephew of Sawadi's late husband, and the other as his friend and business partner. It said they were arrested by the religious police after delivering the bread. The men also were convicted and sentenced to lashes and prison. ... Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islam prohibits men and women who are not immediate relatives from mingling. It also bars women from driving.

...Sawadi told the court she considered the nephew as her son, because she breast-fed him when he was a baby. But the court denied her claim, saying she didn't provide evidence. In Islamic tradition, breast-feeding establishes a degree of maternal relation, even if a woman nurses a child who is not biologically hers.

...The woman's conviction came a few weeks after King Abdullah fired the chief of the religious police and a cleric who condoned killing owners of TV networks that broadcast "immoral content."

OK, Mr. President Obama, it's quiz time:

Saudi Arabia is one of the Middle Eastern countries that is still considered a "friend" of the USA. You have claimed that you will talk with the leaders of nations who have declared themselves our enemies, without any preconditions. So, will you have the spine, the decency to speak out against this particular injustice (or in the lexicon of liberals, "human rights violation.")?

For five bonus points: is whipping a septuagenarian woman who was apparently just obtaining food morally better or worse than the treatment we have given prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Grahib?

For that matter, where are Jimmy Carter and Jesse Jackson, who love to interfere intervene in less serious international affairs?

This is a temper tantrum worthy of any two-year-old, and I would imagine that the woman's family must be embarrassed to find it posted on the Web, accompanied by more than a thousand comments, most of which are snotty and sarcastic.

But I think there's an important point to be observed here: If this had occurred at a US or Canadian airport, the woman would most likely be dead by now. A flock of "security" people would have descended on her, she'd probably have been restrained and/or tasered, and would have ended up dead from that mysterious ailment called "excited delirium." Now, if you've checked the DSM-IV, you won't find a condition called "excited delirium." The psychiatric trade, in its rush to find more billable illnesses, has recognized nearly every behavioral quirk imaginable. For all we know, they have a diagnostic/billing code for someone who picks his nose and eats the boogers. But excited delirium is a fatal condition that has been recorded only after the victim has had some physical encounter with, um, law-enforcement officers. Like the Polish fellow who died in the Vancouver airport. Damn if the video of that event didn't look like he was repeatedly tasered, and killed by positional asphyxia. (Not to mention that no attempt was made to revive him.) But no, the police investigation found excited delirium, just as they ruled that as the cause of death of a woman at another airport who was handcuffed and left alone in a room after becoming agitated.

Back to the Hong Kong incident: think about what did not happen here, at least not in the nearly four minutes of this video. The airport people in this clip had the good judgment to let her rant without over-reacting to it, even though at the beginning of the clip, she can be seen shoving a couple of uniformed people. They barely attempted to engage her. This is always the best policy with irrationally angry people, who will soon enough exhaust themselves. All that was necessary was to prevent her hurting someone else.

We will probably never learn the aftermath of this incident, because it won't be sufficiently interesting or lurid to be posted. My guess is that, at worst, the woman was eventually arrested and perhaps will be held accountable for battery on the uniformed folks, or any damage she did to equipment. (Post script: a wire service article said that she caught a later flight that same day.)

Police in the USA need to realize that sometimes it's best to walk away; that they need not always "win," and that not achieving total control is not a sign of weakness.

The regional director of Homeland Security, Customs, and Border Protection was charged today with repeatedly hiring illegal immigrants to clean her Salem home after one cleaner wore a wire during an undercover investigation.

Lorraine Henderson is the director of the Port of Boston, overseeing 190 armed federal officers who patrol major airports and shipping terminals in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

"She’s supposed to be deporting aliens, not hiring them," said Assistant US Attorney Brian T. Kelly, chief of the public corruption unit.

Agents arrested Henderson at her Salem home at 8 a.m. Standing this afternoon in US District Court in Boston, she wore jeans and a gray sweatshirt and did not enter a plea to a charge of encouraging an illegal immigrant to remain in the country. If convicted, she faces as much as 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The initial appearance lasted 15 minutes and Henderson said little, responding to questions from Magistrate Judge Robert B. Collings about whether she understood her legal rights with one-word answers. Collings released her on a $25,000 unsecured bond and ordered her to surrender her passport. Henderson has been placed on paid administrative leave, a US Attorney's spokeswoman said.

$25,000 unsecured bond means, if I am not mistaken, that Henderson didn't have to put up a goddamn dime to get out of jail. I have seen higher bail amounts applied to minor traffic violations.

And "paid administrative leave?" Why not put her salary in escrow during the interval between now and her trial/sentencing? If she's convicted and sent to prison, what's the probability that the state will get that pay back? If I were in Henderson's shoes, I'd be spending that money as soon as I got it, if not sooner.

A couple have been arrested for allegedly having sex in a crowded train carriage.

Other passengers en route from Liverpool to London appear to have sat in embarrassed silence as the 41-year-old woman allegedly committed a sex act on her male partner.

The pair were arrested by police on arrival at Euston station. Officers are believed to have been called after a guard on the Virgin intercity train spotted the couple on CCTV.

Businessman Gregory Sim, 49, has been charged with unacceptable behaviour while the unnamed woman, from Essex, has been bailed while inquiries continue.

A spokesman for British Transport Police said the session took place on Wednesday, October 22, at 2.45pm.

'The man, Gregory Sim, from Richmond, Surrey, has been charged with unacceptable behaviour on a train and is due to appear at City of Westminster magistrates on November 16,' he added.

Quizzed by reporters last night, Mr Sim confirmed his arrest but refused to give any more details.

  A recent rash of home invasion/burglaries on Melvin Avenue has brought to light a serious issue that needs to be corrected.

     Law abiding residents/citizens are being delivered by our politicians into the merciless hands of violent criminals.  As a result of three forced entries I sought to purchase a taser for my wife to have at her side when I am not at home.  I believe a taser is preferable to a fire arm in these circumstances because it permits escape in the event of a burglar discovering that a resident is at home when he/she may have assumed the residence to be temporarily unoccupied and prevents serious bodily harm - particularly in the event of emotionally driven mistaken identity.

     I was amazed to discover that tasers are illegal to possess in most of Maryland – more specifically in Baltimore County and Baltimore City. 

     Why in the name of heaven are we disarmed in the face of a threat that the police will tell you they are virtually unable to thwart and are restricted to taking action after the crime has been committed.

     If one of us dies at the hands of some startled and frightened thug, will the politicians who foisted this nonsense on us suffer or will it be just you and me.

     What lapse of logic convinces anyone that denying non-lethal self defense to taxpaying, law abiding citizens will deny such devices to persons already committed to violently breaking laws? And what lapse of logic convinces citizens to vote for those responsible for such disarmament?

      I urge repeal of Baltimore County Code § 17-2-104.  STUN GUNS.

---

Straight from the horse's orifice, here's the bill that Mr. Korrell has mentioned (my emphasis and notes added):

*1 - As I read "nonprojectible electric current," this law means that a Taser^TM would not be prohibited under this law.

*2 - Considering the variety of non-traditional medical treatment available, this seems wide open to interpretation. Whether or not a TENS unit could deliver an incapacitating shock might be an interesting experiment. The product literature that comes with these devices cautions users that there are several locations where TENS electrodes ought not be attached, as the current could result in seizure or cardiac arrhythmia. Whether this information is usable remains to be demonstrated.

*3 - Since our county police are largely involved in showing up after a crime is reported, and taking a report from witnesses, a person might well ask whether the average policeman or policewoman is a "law enforcement officer," under this definition.

*4 - This clause would lead a person to think that even someone falling under the more strict definition of "law enforcement personnel" in footnote 3 would be required to store his stun gun at the police station when going off duty, or otherwise keep it secured and rendered inoperable, as many local firearms laws require citizens to do.

-30-

SEYMOUR, Tenn. - A woman who lives near the Smoky Mountains used a musical instrument to scare away two men who broke into her home. The Knoxville News Sentinel quoted a Sevier County Sheriff's Office report that stated the victim awoke to find two men in her home in Seymour on Saturday morning. Her child was asleep in the home.

Deputies said the woman used part of a brass musical instrument to hit one of the men and both intruders fled. It couldn't immediately be determined what kind of instrument she used.

She got a license number, though, and police later charged two men with aggravated burglary.

But Berry may just find herself an unwitting hero, in the same sense that Rosa Parks did the day she had her fill of being sent to the back of the bus.

Ironically, it was the Monday after the attack on Berry that Mayor Dixon and her yes-man, Police Commissioner Bealfeld, held a press conference to boast about the reduction in the murder rate for the first quarter of the year. Only 50 people were murdered, a reduction of "thirty percent" over the first quarter of last year. But that reduction amounts to only 21 fewer murders, a number that Baltimore's thug element has demonstrated that it can rack up on its scoreboard in no more than a weekend or two.

A change in the number of murders over as short a period as three months is too statistically insignificant to be a bragging point. Moreover, if the mayor wants to credit Bealfeld's tough new policies and new efficiencies in Prosecutor Jessamy's office, she had better be prepared to demonstrate a direct correlation between the policy changes and the number of murders.

Outrageously, this announcement came scarcely twelve days after the death of Zach Sowers, who had been in a coma since a beating he took last summer. In its zeal to close the case, the city cut deals with the four perpetrators that closed out the case in November, and precluded the possibility that any of them will be tried for the murder of Sowers. They will likely be out of jail before they are 30, and it's a sucker bet to say none of them will commit more violent crimes.

That's where the attack on Berry becomes important. Dixon will have to face the fact that irrespective of the number of people who actually died, the number of violent crimes has not been reduced. Nor, I suspect, has Jessamy's dismal record of obtaining convictions. Dixon can stamp her foot all day and utter platitudes such as "This might sound harsh, but I believe we have to come up with some very stern discipline action. Young people now feel, some feel, that it's acceptable, and it's not acceptable." But she cannot escape the statistics, provided ALL the statistics are revealed. And in the aftermath of Berry's attack, it will probably turn out that violent crime is being grossly under-reported. The president of the city teachers' union has said that administrators (read: principals and superintendents) routinely avoid reporting student assaults on teachers, out of a fear that more city schools will be declared "persistently dangerous" under the federal No Child Left Behind law. We can only hope that the union president has kept careful records of her own, and will reveal them.

The city will sooner or later have to face the fact that its main source of violence is black children of school age. Unlike the beat-down of Sarah Kreager, nobody will have the luxury of claiming that Berry used a racial slur against her attacker. Because Ms. Berry herself is black, and by all appearances is not one of that stiff-necked sort that black thugs like to characterize as "Oreos," traitors to the race.

Bealfeld told the press conference that citizens should play a greater role in reporting crimes. Perhaps now he will amend that statement to include school administrators. Notably, neither he nor Dixon have made any measurable progress against the witness intimidation and jury nullification that plague the city; that might be a motivator. 

The Baltimore Sun provides a useful database for tracking murders in the city. You can see a map showing the locations where murder victims have been found, and can filter the victim population by age, gender, race, and cause of death, going back as far as January 1, 2007. One thing you quickly discover is that among the hundreds murdered last year, only thirteen were white. That's provided you don't count Sowers, who was murdered last year but didn't die until this year; or the two white would-be witnesses who were tracked into the county and killed. 

The conclusion is inescapable that it's far more dangerous to be a black person in Baltimore City than to be a white, Asian or Latino, and few, if any, black Baltimoreans have recently been murdered by people of another race. Unfortunately, none of the local rabble-rousers (such as "Doc" Cheatham, Larnell Custis Butler, Dwight Pettit and his cohort of black defense lawyers,  or the myriad "reverends" around the city, not to mention those fierce-looking Nation of Islam guys selling bean pies on the street corners) have enough spine to point this out. They are too busy trying to blame some outside influence, primarily white people.

• The Dr. Spock philosophy. Parents are forbidden any kind of physical discipline beyond sending the kid to his "naughty spot." The argument is that spanking a child is violent. And the result of that has been that the children themselves have grown exponentially more violent.
• This is probably the third generation of children raised in day care. At home, a child is under constant supervision of Mom, and has contact with other children only as she permits it. In day care, there are fewer adults than children, and thus no close supervision. The children learn from each other rather than from the adults, and apparently what they learn is the baser part of human instinct. Certainly nothing polite, noble or altruistic. I don't think many of us are born with those characteristics. 
• Black people seem to lack the will to take the next step beyond complaining these days. Most of the murders in the city are black people killing other black people. But when someone like Bill Cosby shows up and reminds people that they have only themselves to blame, for not having disciplined their offspring, he is viewed as having sold out his race. Yes, the audience will nod and applaud in agreement. Then they will go back home to the status quo.

“’There is (a) class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. … There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.’"

A spokeswoman for the county prosecutor says the charge was dropped because Snowden had no knowledge of a presence of a firearm in the vehicle.

Snowden had plead guilty in December to possession and intent to distribute marijuana and is awaiting sentencing on those charges. Nonetheless, he is a convicted felon, making it a crime under both state and federal laws for him to be in possession of a firearm. His defense was that the gun belonged to the other guy who was riding in the car, and he did not know it was there. Now, if ever there was an issue that cried out to be heard by a judge and jury, this would be one. Young Snowden should have been placed under oath and grilled along the now-classic  lines of what did he know and when did he know it. For the matter to have simply been dropped by administrative decision smacks of favoritism and unequal treatment under the law. It would be interesting if someone in the MSM took the time to look up statistics and outcomes on past arrests of this kind, because it immediately raised several questions in my mind:

Question #1: Suppose this had been some convicted felon other than the son of someone politically well-connected?

Suffice it to say that Lovell "Artie" Wheeler was not treated so generously a few years ago in Baltimore, and the crime he was accused of was a mere misdemeanor. It just happened that Wheeler is an impolitic old whiteguy, and Kojo Snowden is the son of a "prominent civil rights activist." I have no patience with white supremacists like Wheeler, but I think professional racists on both sides of the issue deserve equal treatment.

You might remember that another "prominenent civil rights" type, Carl T. Rowan, drew a "walk" some years ago when he shot an teenager found swimming in the pool in his Washington DC backyard. That incident occurred in 1988, long after the District had enacted (in 1975) the gun control law that almost completely banned firearms possession. (N.B. this is the law that is being challeneged in the Heller case.)

Question #2: Did Kojo get a "walk" due to some intervention from O'Malley? Those of you who know of Frank Weathersbee, the Anne Arundel County State's Attorney, know that he is a pretty hard-nosed prosecutor, especially compared to some of his cohorts in other Maryland counties. It seems pretty unlikely to me that Weathersbee would have backed away from this case without coercion.

Question #3: [Irrelevant, but interesting nonetheless] What sort of person would name a child "Kojo," which sounds more like the name you would hang on a zoo animal or household pet? Unless perhaps the name is intended to have been a blend of "Kojak" and "Tojo." That's possible, but unlikely...

As reported in the Washington Post, [comments added]

...the Safe Homes Initiative, [is] aimed at parents and guardians who know or suspect that their children or other relatives have guns. Under the deal, police target areas hit by violence* and seek adults who let them search their homes for guns, with no risk of arrest. The offer also applies to drugs that turn up during the searches, police said.

*i.e., low-income black and Latino neighborhoods --ed.

Of course, the police chief says it will be a no-fault/no-foul operation, aimed at "getting guns and drugs off the streets."

 "If we come across illegal contraband*, we will confiscate it," Lanier said. "But amnesty means amnesty. We're trying to get guns and drugs off the street."

*Anyone with the slightest clue what might constitute legal contraband is urged to send me the details, a.s.a.p.

Fenty (D) and Lanier announced the plan as part of a new strategy to deal with the prevalence of firearms in a city that has one of the strictest gun control laws in the nation*. The Supreme Court will hear arguments next week in a case challenging the constitutionality of the D.C. law.

*Eureka! Might this be a clue that those strict gun control laws are not enforceable and do not work?

Counting on the reader's being so brain-dead as to have forgotten what was written a mere two paragraphs earlier, Post reporter Allison Klein adds,

Residents who agree to the searches will be asked to sign consent forms. If guns are found, they will be tested to determine whether they were used in crimes. If the results are positive, police will launch investigations, which could lead to charges.

So, according to Lanier, "amnesty means amnesty," except when it doesn't. Apparently the Post has conditioned its reporters not to ask embarrassing follow-up questions.

Meanwhile, over at the Washington Times (you know: that mouthpiece of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy) reporter David Lipscomb attended the same press conference, and came away with a slightly different version of the story. As Lipscomb reports it, the police department spokesperson appears not to have been Chief Lanier, but "police spokeswoman Traci Hughes."  Hughes, not Lanier, is quoted directly in the Times piece. You don't suppose the police department held two parallel press conferences, or sent out two different sets of press releases, do you? Me either.

Lipscomb adds a fact omitted in the Post story, which is that the program will begin March 24 to coincide with D.C. Public Schools' spring break and will run indefinitely...

If Lanier really meant "amnesty means amnesty," why wait until children--who are apparently the prime targets here--are home from school, especially if the program is meant to help parents/guardians who are actually afraid of the children in their homes (as the police spokesperson has asserted)?

I have not found any hard data, but a quick check on the web suggests that NATIONALLY around 14 percent of the children between the ages of 5 and 12 are so-called "latchkey kids,"  home alone after school. Nothing I could easily find estimates the percentage of children under 18 who are at home alone after school, and presumbly will also be home alone during spring break.

Presumably, a person under the age of 18 cannot legally give consent to a search, and the potential pandemonium caused by police officers stomping into houses where no adults are home should not be underestimated.

Under the best of circumstances--that the door is answered by a person over the age of majority--what's likely to be the police response if the request to search the place is denied, especially if the refusal is delivered with hostility and profanity? Can we expect that the police will simply apologize for the intrusion and go on to the next house? Or will this be considered a motivation to seek a formal (i.e., legal) search warrant? Or, will the cop on the doorstep simply take two steps back and unholster his Taser, figuring that a convienient cover-your-ass lie can be dreamed up later?

Apparently the only person not 100 per cent on board with this program is the head of the police union, as Lipscomb reports:

Officer Kristopher Baumann, head of the union that represents the city's police, said the group "supports any well thought out plan to reduce violence*."

However, he hopes the department has considered potential problems with advertising amnesty while checking for guns connection to crimes.

*But evidently with no regard to whether or not such a plan is Constitutional. Just as a little refresher, that dusty, outmoded old document (or "living" document, depending which flavor of liberalism you espouse) says the following:

ARTICLE IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmations, and particularly describing the place to be searched, andd the persons or things to be seized.

Alan Gottlieb, of the Second Amendment Foundation quickly responded to Fenty's announcement thus:

Calling this project the ‘Safe Homes Initiative’ is an insult to our intelligence... If District residents allow this to happen, no home will be safe from warrantless fishing expeditions by police, because that’s exactly what this thinly-disguised program is really all about. We think Congress should step in immediately and stop this from happening.

The entire Gottlieb commentary comprises only a few paragraphs, and is well worth reading. Find it here.

Arguably the Super Bowl story might be the most popular piece in the latest edition, but the most interesting one is Alan's observation that the mainstream media failed entirely to cover the annual SHOT (Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade) show in Las Vegas. Apparently the rationale is that to say anything about the show would reveal the paucity of all their stereotypes about the firearms industry, gun dealers and gun owners. Alan writes thus (emphasis added):

The lamestream media told you:

Nothing.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

Seven hundred thousand square feet of space, tens of thousands of attendees from all over the world, nearly two thousand exhibitors in five halls so big you can't see one end from the other, indoor exhibits built two stories high, mountains of weapons and arsenals of every description -- high powered, rapid fire, extended capacity -- assembled once again at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas, and no controversy of any kind was evident.

No lamestream media was evident either, though trade press was abundant. Lamestream media could not cover the event, because it would show the shooting, hunting and outdoor trade (SHOT) industry as a regular business just like any other, which would violate news-media policy.

It's a little smaller than the Consumer Electronics Show, and few items are as big ticket as the Barrett Jackson car auction, but it's a multibillion dollar business with multimillion dollar deals on the floor, and no news coverage, unlike other big-time annual shows.

The most expensive item seen, aside from armored vehicles, helicopters, 18-wheeler self-contained ranges and stores, military miniguns and some of the women, were a set of four matched Perrazi shotguns for $440,000. The Uninvited Ombudsman actually held one in his hands. Carefully. Very carefully. Hey, it's just a shotgun, I'd rather buy a house with that kind of money.

The most unusual exhibit was samples from a find in a Nepal arsenal, remnants of the British East India Trading Company, with 55,000 firearms. They're now all in the U.S. after several years of effort, including piles of original U.S. colonial-era Brown Bess muskets, all available for sale.
http://www.ima-usa.com

Among the most clever new products was Shock Knife, a combat-training tool shaped like a knife with a zapper for an edge. Blackwater Int'l., reviled in the "news" media but saving lives in Iraq and around the world, had a huge booth and recruitment videos on big screens, which switched over to the big game just in time when the beer kegs arrived. Artist Wayne McLoughlin offered to paint your name onto a poster for "America's Cheapest Ammunition -- It Usually Works." In the background, a bear is chewing on the remnants of a hunter's clothes.

Here was American enterprise at its finest, new products of incredibly clever design and advancement, entrepreneurship in unbridled fine array, the buzz and hustle of free markets unlike anywhere else on Earth, and no news media.

All these guns and there's no crime, no death, no controversy. It's just good healthy business, and after incessant media pounding, that was just plain weird.

The picture painted by the media is so perverse, so negative, so deadly and crime ridden, that to see this show with so many fine upstanding people, from business suits to gilley suits, casual dress to corporate uniforms, babes bursting from show costumes to your basic bubbas shopping for their businesses, the disjoint between the publicly promoted image of guns and the reality was hard to reconcile. The bias and distortion of the media shined from a brightly lit pedestal.

The show themes are familiar and pervasive -- law enforcement, personal safety, hunting for food, military protection, convenience in the outdoors, high performance for competitors, gear for everyone, every manufacturer's entire handgun and long gun line out in the open for touchy feely examination, and no media.

That's probably a good thing. Because knowing their sorry ways, they would use this show as a way to make everything look bad. Despite the obvious reality to the contrary, they would immorally make us seem evil instead of righteous, ignoring the fact that guns are why America is still free.
http://www.shotshow.com

Korwin's dispatch neglected to mention that 58,769 people attended this year's show, which is open to the trade (manufacturers, wholesalers, firearms dealers, journalists) only. 

I highly recommend Alan's blog, which is available as a RSS feed: http://www.pagenine.org

You will find several interesting articles about the Super Bowl, if that's what floats your boat, and a recent piece in which Korwin coins the word "muzzling" to describe the nasty retaliations against some of us who refuse to limit ourselves to the politically-correct lexicon.

-30-

 A Baltimore police officer shown on a YouTube video berating and roughly handling a skateboarder at the Inner Harbor has been suspended.

Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department and the mayor's office, says the incident involving Officer Salvatore Rivieri, a 17-year-old veteran, is the subject of an internal affairs investigation.

The video, apparently shot last summer, shows Rivieri putting the youth, 14-year-old Eric Bush, into a headlock and pushing him to the ground.

Rivieri told The Sun on Sunday that he did not know that the incident had been recorded or posted on the Internet. He acknowledged having encounters with skateboarders at the Inner Harbor, where skateboarding is banned, last summer, and told a reporter that he would watch the video on YouTube.

After he was suspended yesterday Rivieri said he had no comment.

Paul Blair, head of the police union, had not seen the video but he warns that videos show only part of a story.

Mr. Blair is right, of course. What we see in the video is a policeman whose anger is disproportionate to the situation. He's dealing with a handful of pubsecent skateboarders, not a dangerous felon. So, why all the anger? You will note the Rivieri carefully avoids using profanity, so it is difficult to determine whether we are dealing with a man who is as out-of-control as he appears, or a carefully crafted act of bullying.

As a fairly conventional (albeit outspoken) 60-year-old, I am more than a bit frightened by armed people running around with this level of anger inside them. Even (or perhaps especially) if they are sworn peace officers.

Having a number of friends who are police, active and retired, I understand the difficulties of the job. This guy's anger seems far out of proportion to anything that might have preceded it in this incident, or anything muttered by the kids that was not picked up by the microphone.

Irrespective of this particular story, the city and counties need to do something about skaters. They are NOT going away, especially now that skateboarding has become an Olympic sport. It does absolutely no good to marginalize and verbally abuse young skating enthusiasts, simply because nobody will provide a place for them to pursue this athletic endeavor.

We have, on the one hand, public health mavens who complain about the so-called epidemic of obesity in the USA, especially among children. And on the other hand, we have people--property owners, politicians and others who complain about the children who are physically active. Watch these skaters, next time you see them somewhere. They display a great deal of focus, dedication and athletic (if not acrobatic) skill, beneath their often carefully-crafted offputting appearance.

Rarely do these (mostly) guys get any encouragement from adults. Is it any wonder they feel alienated and disaffected? I grant you, even I have found the skaters frustrating at times, but as adults, do we not bear some responsibility to guide and encourage the young, rather than simply condemn them?

 

KIRKWOOD, Mo. (AP) - A gunman with a history of acrimony against civic leaders stormed City Hall during a council meeting Thursday night, killing two police officers and three city officials before law enforcers fatally shot him, authorities said. The mayor was critically injured in the rampage.

The victims at the meeting in suburban St. Louis were killed after the gunman rushed the council chambers and began firing as he yelled "Shoot the mayor!" according to St. Louis County Police spokeswoman Tracy Panus. Two people were wounded before Kirkwood police fatally shot him, she said.

... the wounded included Mayor Mike Swoboda, who was in critical condition late Thursday in the intensive- care unit of St. John's Mercy Hospital in Creve Coeur...

...[A city hall reporter identified the shooter] as Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton, whom she knows from covering the council. Thornton had previously disrupted meetings, she told the Post-Dispatch.

Thornton was well-known at City Hall, often making outrageous comments at public meetings, according to a 2006 article in the weekly Webster- Kirkwood Times.

The newspaper quoted Swoboda as saying in June 2006 that Thornton's contentious remarks over the years created "one of the most embarrassing situations that I have experienced in my many years of public service."

Swoboda's comments came during a council meeting attended by Thornton two weeks after the man was forcibly removed from the chambers. The mayor said at the time that the council considered banning Thornton from future meetings but decided against it.

"The city council has decided that they will not lower themselves to Mr. Thornton's level," Swoboda said at the meeting. "We will act with integrity and continue to deal with him at these council proceedings. However, we will not allow Mr. Thornton, or any other person, to disrupt these proceedings."

Thornton said during the meeting that he had been issued more than 150 tickets.

He was arrested twice and later convicted for disorderly conduct for outbursts at two council meetings in 2006, convinced the city was persecuting him. When allowed to speak during one meeting, he approached the podium with a posterboard with a picture of a donkey and began making harassing remarks about Swoboda.

In a federal lawsuit stemming from those meetings, Thornton, representing himself, insisted that Kirkwood officials violated his constitutional rights to free speech by barring him from speaking at the meetings. But a judge in St. Louis tossed out the suit Jan. 28, writing that "any restrictions on Thornton's speech were reasonable, viewpoint neutral, and served important governmental interests."

Kirkwood is about 20 miles southwest of downtown St. Louis. ...Despite its reputation locally for serenity, Kirkwood has grappled in recent years with crimes that have brought it unwanted attention.

Just down the street from City Hall is the Imo's pizzeria once managed by Michael Devlin, the man who kidnapped Shawn Hornbeck when the boy was just 11 in 2002 and held him for four years before authorities rescued him from the home in January last year. Also rescued was Ben Ownby, another teenager Devlin abducted just days before Devlin's arrest.

... City Hall also is about a block from a park now named for former Kirkwood police Sgt. William McEntee, who was a 43-year-old father of three when he was slain in 2005 by a man who witnesses said blamed police for the death of his 12-year-old half-brother two hours earlier.

 

You can check the last year’s worth of Kirkwood City Council minutes on the web at http://www.ci.kirkwood.mo.us/meetings/COUNCIL.htm

Have a look, and see how many times public comments from other residents, however petty they may be, are recorded in excruciating detail. And compare that to the number of entries that simply note there were comments made by Charles Thornton, with no details whatsoever. I'm certain it's also no coincidence that whenever Thornton made public comments, he was liste dead-last among the public participants.

It's also noteworthy that the city council enacted a detailed set of rules for public comments last August. By all appearances, the rules were specifically aimed at squelching Thornton. In particular, one rule says that "The Mayor has the right to stop any speaker from making comments on any subject that is not presently pending before the City Council after that speaker has made the comments more than 10 (ten) times cumulatively on the same general topic at prior council meetings." In plain language, this means that they can ignore someone trying to bring up an embarrassing subject until they gain the right to bar him outright from making comments on that matter. Representative government at its best...

There are those among us who can only tolerate being ignored by the governments for so long before committing some violent act that finally gets someone’s attention, and almost always results in multiple deaths.

This is hardly the first time such a thing has happened, and it will surely not be the last, no matter what citizen disarmament laws are enacted.

Whether it is justifiable or forgivable, I will not attempt to argue. But when people feel they are left out of the governing process, or mistreated by government, this can be one of the consequences.

In Thornton’s case, you have to wonder why 150 “tickets” (presumably traffic/parking citations) did not lead to some sort of hearing in which he was afforded the opportunity to air his grievances, and in which some permanent solution to this obviously ongoing problem could have been reached. Even if that solution meant jailing Thornton. One hundred fifty citations, in the absence of any further action by the government, constitutes harrassment.

You ignore someone, or categorize him as a crackpot at your own peril. This has been shown time and again, as Vin Suprynowicz has noted in his books The Ballad of Carl Drega and Send in the Waco Kilers, yet governments never seem to learn anything useful from these violent outbursts.

Three years ago, Mary Jo Pletz of Walnutport, Pennsylvania — about 70 miles north of Philadelphia — learned her 6-month-old daughter had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. To care for her child, Mrs. Pletz, 33, had to give up her job as a dental hygienist and look for some kind of home-based employment that would help her husband pay the bills.

She started selling stuff over eBay. When she ran out of her own stuff, she offered to sell other people’s items, for a commission. [n.b.: this is a common operation on eBay, which refers to the practice of being an eBay Trading Assistant. You have to qualify for this status, and there is some oversight.] She ran the operation out of her garage.

Then, right after Christmas, 2006, the state regulators came calling. In what many view as a test case designed to put the fear of God — of the state, at least — into other such entrepreneurs, the state agents contended Mrs. Pletz was running an auction house without proper licensing. They proceeded to shut down her business, forcing her to spend thousands of dollars in lawyers’ fees as she fights their efforts to fine her, well … thousands of dollars.

Who’s behind the crackdown? Greedy politicians hoping for a new stream of tax revenue aren’t too far in the wings. Eight states have considered new regulations for Online sellers, though The AP reports all have backed down in the face of opposition, mainly from eBay.

But other online sellers think the pressure to crack down on such electronic sellers comes from the established auction houses, whose proprietors may believe they’re losing market share

“We feel it’s important that they be regulated, so consumers have peace of mind,” says Chris Longley, a spokesman for the National Auctioneers Association, based in Overland Park, Kansas. “Public trust is being lost because of the fraud involved in Internet auctions.”*

Oh, please. Pennsylvania auction licensing rules require anyone entering the auction-house business to either work as an apprentice for two years or to take 20 credit hours’ worth of auctioneering courses at the college level. Think that’ll help an online seller determine whether a piece of carnival glass they’re handling really dates from 1912 (if it’s light blue, it’s probably new), or whether that Hardy Boys mystery was really printed in 1933? (Copies printed 20 years later still retain their original copyright dates — look for a glossy frontispiece.)

Has state regulation ended fraudulent practices in “brick-and-mortar” auction houses? Of course not. National headlines periodically reveal bid rigging, fixed appraisals, collusion, and other manipulations even in the largest auction firms. Regular attendees at small local auctions know the many operators who want to “play it straight” do so despite the absence of any visible state regulatory presence, while auctioneers who want to accept “shill” bids, or to drive up bidding by accepting phantom bids “off the wall,” still do so with impunity. They can also go out of business without notice just like anyone else, leaving owners of consigned merchandise struggling to regain their property regardless of any state “license” hanging on the wall of that locked office.

Most such regulatory schemes have a lot more to do with limiting competition and producing registration and licensing fees for state bureaucrats than with any effective effort to “eliminate fraud.”

Are Internet auctions subject to chicanery? Of course. Sellers can ask their friends to place phantom bids in order to drive up a price. They can also send merchandise not as described, or simply fail to deliver — for a short time.

But ironically — given these claims — independent firms like eBay have set up electronic buyer complaint and rating services light years ahead of the horse-and-buggy complaint offices of state regulators.

Many believe the nation is entering hard economic times. They certainly know THEY are entering harder economic times.

The porkmasters in Washington have been warned they can’t support both expansive foreign wars and booming domestic “entitlement” programs, forever. They merely respond “Print more money!”

With the money supply growing at an annualized rate of about 15 percent — and even more inflation now promised in the name of an “economic stimulus” to bail out those who made bad real estate loans — there’s little doubt the carefully massaged “official” 6 percent rate of inflation considerably understates the rate at which a typical paycheck’s buying power is being eroded.

But Americans are a hardy and resourceful lot. Yes, some go whining down to the government “relief” office for a hand-out, claiming to have some newfangled “disability.” But most simply tighten their belts and look for a second source of income to help keep food on the table.

In this electronic age, selling things over the Internet is a peaceful entrepreneurial activity that beats setting up a lemonade stand on the sidewalk, or hawking newspapers downtown. (I note in passing another story in Monday’s newspaper, reporting police in Seattle are threatening $1,000 fines and 90 days in jail under their “panhandling” ordinance for homeless men selling copies of the weekly activist newspaper “Real Change” for 65 cents a copy.)

And what is the politicians’ answer as these tax-strapped citizens struggle to find a second source of income to keep their families fed? Do they praise that “can do” attitude?

No. Tipped off by already ineffectively regulated businessmen jealous of the new competition, they crack down on Mary Jo Pletz, in an attempt to frighten us out of trying to make a few bucks selling our old Flintstones lunch box over the Internet.

I hope they’re proud.

* A personal observation: I have worked for several auctioneers, and been both a consignor and buyer at many other "bricks and mortar" auction houses. Most of these guys would cheat their own mothers if there was a dollar to be made. One guy in particular sold counterfeit Roseville pottery pieces without warning the bidders, and often made wild assertions about other unmarked pottery pieces. ("Could have been made by George Ohr.") Others, I have seen cook the books to cheat a consignor who was not present for the sale, blatantly ignore bidders and close the selling when the high bidder was some regular customer, fail to list valuable items when compiling an inventory of an estate. The list goes on.

In the City of Baltimore, to get an auctioneering license you must make application to the Board of Auction Supervisors. As it happens, the board is made up from among the existing licensed auctioneers in the city.

This is "rent-seeking" behavior at its most blatant, and unfortunately it is the normal mode of operating for most state and local governments.

Matters have hardly changed in the 150 years that have ensued. We have, on the one hand, the case of Robert Fassbender, a chronic problem-child in the eyes of the law in California, facing life imprisonment under the "three strikes" law, over the theft of a pack of donuts. A fifty-cent pack of Hostess stuff, no less. Not even a Krispy Kreme or Dunkin donut.

Today, The Smoking Gun reports the arrest of one Christopher Holder on charges of disorderly conduct and breach of the peace. It seems that Holder, a 19 year old whiteboy, was standing on the street amusing himself by shouting the lyrics of some rap tune. Which lyrics included that compound noun referring to incest, which appears so frequently in the Ebonics language/dialect. A woman walking past with two young children complained about the foul language.

Here's where it gets weird, according to the police report. Amy Churchill, the offendee, complains to the police. The police apparently asked to report to the police station, and did so. When confronted about Churchill's having been offended, he first argued that he was merely quoting the lyrics of a published tune. When Churchill reiterated that she and her children should not have to be exposed to such language while walking around minding their own business, Holder agreed.

In a reasonable world, Holder would have apologized to Churchill and her children, and that would have been then end of the matter. Whether he actually proffered an apology, or simply agreed with her assertion is not in the public record. But where a mere apology, and perhaps a scolding, would have sufficed, he was locked up and presumably will have to make bail, stand trial, and the whole nine yards.

The charge is a misdemeanor, and probably will not be the factor that prevents this young man's acceptance into Harvard or Princeton, but as they say here on the Worldwide Web, WTF? Which is to say, what purpose will have been served by the expenditure of time and money involved in making this little peccadillo an "official" matter? Don't we have more important missions on which to deploy the forces of the law?

He was busted for not paying for a small package of donuts, and now he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Friday in court, Robert Fassbender’s attorney, Michael Webb, tried to get the charges dropped before having to go to trial.

But the District Attorney’s Office plans to prosecute the case to the hilt, even if it means life in prison for Fassbender under California’s controversial three strikes law.

"I just hate to think that he's going to have to do the rest of his life in prison, but then that means he'll die in there and I don't want that,” said his mother, Marceline Fassbender.

The family said Fassbender is a reformed convict leading a Christian life, and is sometimes tortured by drug use.

"It's just hard and he's going to do life over donuts,” said Fassbender’s Brother, Eric. “It's just that my brother did so good for years and years and he took people from prison into his Christian home"

But Kern County District Attorney Ed Jagels said Fassbender has earned his third strike, with two previous felonies dating back to 1977 and 1999 for robbery.

Fassbender is scheduled for another hearing on Feb. 11.

This is the same state that finds illegal "immigration" to be conscionable, and lets murderers and rapists go free after serving only a few years.

Perhaps as offensive as the story itself is the jackass comment left by someone on the web site where it appeared:

What a dumbass. Instead of 25 to life, which could be costly, he should do at least 2 yrs. That way he has to explain to his peers behind the wall what a dumbass he really is for stealing donuts. Furthermore; I think the 2 yr package should include therapy. Shock therapy that is. Find something valuable that can,t be found in prison, present it to him and when he looks at it give him a nearly lethal high voltage jolt. Repeat daily for the next 2 yrs. Upon his release and for the duration of his parole make him go to meetings with the DA in town, Donuts Anonymous that is, chances are that he will either never go back to prison or he will never eat a donut ever again. what a dumbass.

Outrageous as it may be, this is not the first such case within the past year. See this story, and then this other one.

The first three of these attacks have been black predators attacking white victims. Altogether too many words have already been said about that, none of them the right ones. In a city where blacks are in the majority, only a fool would be shocked at this information. Not only do these kids harbor a lot of unwarranted anger-even allowing for the ordinary hormonally surge-but they have somehow been conditioned to see impoverished whites (such as Sarah Kreager) and the elderly as attractive prey.

Dixon and the others act as though this is a recent phenomenon, and peculiar to the MTA's buses. Refusing to believe there is such a thing as black prejudice towards non-blacks, the Powers That Be see no connection between the attack on Kreager and-for example--the attack earlier this year on Zach Sowers. In the name of expedience, the state's attorney has done a grave disservice to Sowers (who remains comatose) by bargaining away the right to charge this monster with murder, should Sowers eventually die. This, despite the willingness of the co-attackers to testify on the prosecution's behalf.

MTA officials appear in deep denial over the long history of nasty behavior aboard their vehicles, at their bus stops, and in other public places. A few years ago on the SunSpot news forum, a woman reported having witnessed a young (black) man openly masturbating aboard a subway. Others followed in close order, saying they'd seen similar stuff. My own wife rode MTA buses to work for more than a decade, and every day I waited breathlessly until she'd gotten safely home, wondering whether the assault du jour would be merely a groping or verbal insult, a purse snatching, or something unimaginably worse. And that was more than fifteen years ago.

The city's self-anointed black authority figures have addressed their remarks not to the young generation responsible for the violence, but to their shocked parents and grandparents. They know from whose pockets their money flows, at it's from the elders who feel ashamed and powerless about the kids.

It has been at least two generations since any city has seen an activist with the courage and "street cred" to go out amongst the youngsters and work directly with them. The result is a generation of children who know that adults fear them, and use that fear to great effect. Nobody has managed to teach them that this same fear, from which they derive a transitory thrill today, will tomorrow deter someone from hiring them, for example. They have, by their own efforts, de-humanized themselves.

Meanwhile, the Deep Thinkers in the city and state government will grasp at any cockamamie notion, knowing that it will fail, but praying that it won't fail until someone else is at the helm. Kurt Schmoke, as mayor, attempted placating the thug element with silliness such as midnight basketball. Martin O'Malley attempted, during the brief period he was paying attention, to have the city arrest its way out of the problem. That bit of folly only clogged the court system so badly that many serious crimes went unprosecuted because of speedy-trial rules, or were plea-bargained away to nothing. Sheila Dixon has proven herself worse than incapable of ameliorating the violence; she's actually made herself a laughing stock. And from his new seat of power, O'Malley is about to make matters exponentially worse by abolishing officially the death penalty in this state, thus removing any genuine negative consequences for predatory violence.

This problem will not be solved by any number of people safely ensconced behind bulletproof glass watching the violence unfold on video screens, by any amount of political oratory, however sincere, or by any number of "gun buy-backs."  In this city, countless firearms have been "bought back," nearly always in violation of federal laws. Pellet guns, most knives, knuckle dusters, pepper spray, stun guns and nearly every category of improvised defensive weapon has been declared verboten. The violence grows more frequent and random, and the Deep Thinkers continue along the same course that has steadily proven itself counterproductive.

There is a reason that jackals prey upon antelopes, rather than tigers and elephants. The simple fact is that thugs, punks and other miscreants are less likely to attack victims if there is any certainty that one of their potential targets may be armed.

It is past time that governments admit they can seldom protect anyone, but only pick up the broken pieces after a tragedy has occurred. People will remain at risk until they demand that the governments quit condemning them for defending themselves.

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) - A jury on Monday convicted a millionaire couple of enslaving two Indonesian women they brought to their mansion to work as housekeepers.

Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, and his wife, Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 45, were each convicted of all charges in a 12-count federal indictment that included forced labor, conspiracy, involuntary servitude, and harboring aliens.

Prosecutors said the women were subjected to repeated psychological and physical abuse and were forced to work 18 hours or more a day.

The Sabhnanis, who have four children and who operate a worldwide perfume business out of their Muttontown home on Long Island's Gold Coast, could face up to 40 years in prison, although attorneys predicted the punishment would be considerably less.

Isn’t this always the case in the USA? The wealthier the perpetrator, the more odious the crime, the more likely it becomes that some bargain will be struck.

On the other hand, the governments will want to take that sandwich-shop operator in PA who put up a “speak English” sign, and nail him to a tree.

Any bets on whether Sharpton and Jackson will show up to protest this modern case of slavery? Or will it be outside their purview because there’s no way for them to extort money out of it.?