Lou Dobbs testified before Congress last month about the supposed perils of free trade:

Since the beginning of this new century, the United States has lost more than three million manufacturing jobs. Three million more jobs have been lost to cheap overseas labor markets…

That's 6 million jobs. Donald Luskin points out that there are only 6.7 million unemployed people in the United States right now. So either free trade is the sole cause of nearly all unemployment, or else Lou Dobbs doesn't know what he's talking about.

If you don't feel like reading Luskin's article I'll save you from the suspense: Lou Dobbs doesn't know what he's talking about.

Chicago police officer Anthony Abbate is in more trouble:

Chicago Police Officer Anthony Abbate, accused of beating a female bartender in an attack caught on videotape, was charged in an indictment Friday with 14 new felonies...

My first thought when I about the 14 new charges was that this was just the department piling on to prove they're tough on bad cops. How do you get 14 felonies from one beating? It sounded excessive.

But then it started to make sense:

According to the indictment, a woman acting as an intermediary for Abbate told a man, whom Obrycka's attorney Terry Ekl identified as the bar manager, that Abbate or other police officers would plant illegal drugs on bar employees or customers and arrest them if the videotape of the beating was used against him.

Ekl said Friday that the bar manager made an audiotape of that conversation with the woman, whom he said was a bar employee and friend of Abbate. The day after the beating, Ekl said, Abbate told the bar employee that he already had run the license plates of the bar manager and Obrycka through police databases, and added that if they turned the tape over to authorities, police might find drugs in their cars or in the bar, or Abbate would harass patrons.

...

Abbate was charged with seven counts of official misconduct, one count of communicating with a witness, three counts of intimidation and three counts of conspiracy.

This is what I was talking about in my previous post. Beating up the bartender was a crime, but it had nothing to do with Abbate being a cop. He was just another drunken jerk. It was just a stupid crime, abetted by alcohol. It's the sort of thing where you think maybe he can clean up his act.

Intimidating witnesses is a whole different level of criminality. It's intentional, premeditated, and cold-hearted. When it involves threatening to falsely arrest innocent people on drug charges, it's also an abuse of police powers. When several officers are involved, it's a criminal conspiracy within the police department.

Maybe 15 felony counts is about right.

(Hat tip: gideon)

Connecticut criminal defense attorney Norm Pattis is ready to fight for YOU!

Here is the latest addition to our family, Joey. He is a min-pin (miniature pinscher) that we adopted from petfinder.com.

Larger ImageJoey

Here he is with our other dog, Vegas. They seem to be getting along, but she's still not quite sure what to make of him.

Larger ImageVegas and Joey

A few days ago Kip Esquire posted a terrific article about the likely responses to the Virginia Tech massacre from our politicians, and the dangers we face from that.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't? Sounds like job for — politicians!

Seriously, think back to September 11. The first knee-jerk reactions were "Never again!" and "We must do everything possible to prevent this!" You don't want another 9/11, do you?

The result was the Patriot Act — and much more — which eventually morphed into the current "Terror v. Civil Liberties" morass we now find ourselves in. To the Bush Administration and its apologists, no cost to privacy is too high, no restriction on liberty too extreme. You don't want another 9/11, do you?

Meanwhile, it is almost certain that, before long, calls of "Never again!" and "We must do everything possible to prevent this!" will bellow from the halls of Congress. You don't want another Blacksburg, do you?

Read the whole thing.

The Virginia Tech massacre has brought out the usual bunch of wackos looking to blame it on their favorite social ill, from video games to the teaching of evolution to Teh Gay. (Links via Kip) I haven't read of anybody blaming the Jews yet, but you know that's coming.

In my mind, the most reprehensible response is from those who are calling Virginia Tech students cowards. John Derbyshire seems to have started it:

As NRO's designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake—one of them reportedly a .22.

At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range...And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage—your chances aren't bad.

Where to start?

• In order to count the shots, you have to know how many shots the gun holds—could be six, could be sixteen.
• If the shooter has enough spare magazines, he can reload the gun before he's used all the ammo in it. In other words, instead of being forced to reload when the gun runs out, he can reload when it's safe to do so, when no one can jump him.
• Handguns are accurate enough at close range for effective personal combat, which is why police officers have handguns.
• A .22 pistol may not do much damage, but the killer also had a 9mm handgun, and that will do plenty of damage.
• Even if the first shot doesn't kill you, there's a good chance it will slow you down enough for a killing shot.
• Several victims were shot in the head, meaning either that the shooter was accurate or that he shot people in the head after a wounding shot.

Derbyshire continues:

Yes, yes, I know it's easy to say these things: but didn't the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes—and like most cliches. It's true—none of us knows what he'd do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy.

Me too.

But were they "going to die anyway"? For most of the hundreds of people in Norris Hall that morning, the answer was no. They were spread out over 70,000 feet of floor space, and the shooter didn't have nearly enough time to get to all of them. Running, hiding, and generally staying away from the shooting were all good tactics.

The comparison to Flight 93 is instructive, because there are many differences between that situation and the shooting at Virginia Tech:

• The bad guys on Flight 93 did not have guns.
• The passengers on Flight 93 had time to think about their situation, discuss tactics, make preparations, and attack only when they were ready. People at Virginia Tech didn't know anything was wrong until they were shot at, and it was all over in a few minutes.
• As soon as they knew what the terrorists were planning to do, the people on Flight 93 realized that personal escape was not an option. They had to fight together. The students and staff of Virginia Tech did not.

In general, people are more likely to behave heroically if they think it will make a big difference, which depends on several factors:

• How well they understand what's happening.
• How clear it is what needs to be done.
• The chances that it will work.
• The need for personal action.

All these things take time to figure out, especially the first two. Not coincidentally, the first two things are also the focus of much of the training for people expected to respond to emergencies.

Suppose you're on a subway platform and there's a small child who has fallen onto the tracks. It's pretty easy to understand the situation: The small child can't climb out, there's deadly voltage running real close, and if a train comes the child will be killed. But it's not hard to imagine that a visitor from a country too poor to have subways (or American action movies) might not grasp the danger.

It's a little less obvious what to do or if it will work. Do you lean over the edge and try to get the child to come over and grab your hand? Or do you jump down there with the child? If so, how do you avoid the high voltage? Can you climb back out, or do you need to run down the track to a better location? Do you have time for your plan? The less you know about subways, the longer it will take you to figure these things out.

The last factor on the list is the most insidious. If it's just you and the child, you'll almost certainly make a rescue attempt if you can figure out what to do before it's too late. If there are a hundred other people on the subway platform, there's a very good chance that you'll all stand around wondering "isn't anybody going to do something?"

At a previous employer, someone robbed the cashier's office at gunpoint. After it was over, everyone waited for the police to get there...for 45 minutes...until they realized that everyone thought someone else had called the police. It's a good thing they weren't waiting for paramedics. (For this reason, I always call 911, even if there are twenty other people at the scene.)

Many people have criticized John Derbyshire for daring to question the courage of the victims of the massacre, and they have a good point, but he also deserves criticism for his poor understanding of how people make decisions in a crisis. If the people at Virginia Tech didn't behave heroically, it's because they were confused, didn't have a plan, and expected someone else to have a better plan.

Nathanael Blake took it one step further:

College classrooms have scads of young men who are at their physical peak, and none of them seems to have done anything beyond ducking, running, and holding doors shut. Meanwhile, an old man hurled his body at the shooter to save others.

Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that.

First of all, maybe some of those people died trying to rush the shooter. We don't know yet and may never know, but some stories are starting to come out.

Second, maybe the shooter was smart enough to avoid getting rushed. He had a lot more time to plan his attack than anyone had to plan a response.

Third, "holding doors shut" is pretty dangerous when there's a killer on the other side who can shoot through the door. It's a lot more dangerous than hiding behind classroom furniture.

Fourth, holding classroom doors closed may not be as bold and daring as rushing the killer, but in point of fact it worked.

Fifth, that "old man" was Dr. Liviu Librescu, and he in fact died while holding the door shut to allow students to escape through the windows.

Which theory sounds better to you? That there's a problem with all the men in our culture? Or that the victims were overwhelmed by the speed and violence of the attack, and pundits like Derbyshire and Blake are clueless victim-blaming jackasses?

Me, I like the sound of that second theory.

Ron Coleman is criticizing NBC's decision to air parts of Cho Seung-Hui's video. Cho is the guy who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, and it appears that between the first shooting incident and the second he sent a package to NBC News in New York. That package contained an "often incoherent 23-page written statement, 28 video clips and 43 photos." In other words, it was the killer's media kit.

Coleman quotes from an ABC News interview with forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner:

"If anybody cares about the victims in Blacksburg and if anybody cares about their children, stop showing this video now. Take it off the Internet. Let it be relegated to YouTube," Welner said. "This is a social catastrophe. Showing the video is a social catastrophe."

To which Coleman adds:

The blood of the victims of the “next one” is on the hands of everyone in the decision-making chain at NBC for this utterly inexcusable decision. But this is merely Son of Frankenstein, for it was the 1995 publication by the New York Times and Washington Post of the Unabomber’s nutty, blood-soaked “manifesto” that established the recent precedent of media outlets providing the most highly-sought-after reward in today’s world — fame, and a “platform” for grievances — to killers.

I'm pretty sure Coleman is wrong about the decision to publish the Unabomber Manifesto. The papers probably would have published a few juicy excerpts, simply because it was newsworthy, but they only published the entire manifesto because the FBI asked them to.

The thinking was that someone might recognize certain ideas or turns of phrase, which would lead directly to the Unabomber's identity. And that's exactly what happened. David Kaczynski recognized it as the writing of his brother Ted and told the FBI where to find him.

Nobody accused the FBI or the media of contributing to the Unabomber's fame when they showed that famous sketch of him and asked people to identify him. When they published his manifesto, they were just doing the same thing with a 35,000-word writing sample.

The same logic would apply to Cho's video if he was still at large and still unidentified. Airing the video would greatly help in identifying and ultimately capturing him. Unfortunately for NBC, Cho is dead. Airing his video isn't going to help. It's pure sensationalism.

And according to Welner, it may have a cost:

"I promise you the disaffected will watch him the way they watched 'Natural Born Killers.' I know. I examine these people," he said. "I've examined mass shooters who have told me they've watched it 20 times. You cannot saturate the American public with this kind of message."

Welner maintained, however, that he was not blaming the media for airing the footage.

"It's not an issue of blame. It's an appeal. Please stop now. That's all," he said. "If you can take [talk show host Don] Imus off the air, you can certainly keep [Cho] from having his own morning show."

I generally distrust anyone who doesn't want the press to cover a story, but Welner is making a pretty good point. There is evidence that these kinds of mass murderers are interested in the stories of other mass murderers, and that they may even use these stories to encourage themselves to go through with it. I have no doubt that Cho's video will be viewed by others who will use it as inspiration for their own crimes.

(In fact, in the two days it took me to find the time to write this, there's already been a story about another shooting, this time at NASA.)

Nevertheless, I think Coleman makes too much of NBC's decision to air the video. First of all, even if NBC had turned the video over to the FBI without making a copy, it would have gotten out one way or another, probably through a Freedom of Information Act request, and would be all over the Internet anyway. NBC just decided to go first.

Second, people planning mass murder will seek out materials that excite them, and in our media-rich culture they can always find something that turns them on: movies, television shows, video games, novels, religious texts, rock lyrics.

Third, if they can't find stuff that excites them, they just make stuff up. Some of these killers have survived their killing sprees and been interviewed by forensic psychologists. They often mis-remember story details or song lyrics in ways that reinforce their own desires.

Still, I'm not planning to watch the video.

"[Cho] needs to create and produce his own picture in order to give himself a sense of power. Nobody saw him that way. He didn't see himself that way and that's why he set this up and he did this to achieve immortality. We have to stop giving him that and we can do it now."

...

"There's nothing to learn from this except giving it validation. If this rambling showed up in an emergency room, my colleagues and I would listen carefully and, when we reflected that it was delusional, would go see the next patient and start the medication," he said. "This makes it sound like he was tormented. He wasn't."

Most of us have nothing to learn from watching Cho's video. I haven't seen it, and I have no interest in seeing it, because whatever Cho has to say is not worth listening to. That's also why I've never watched interviews of Charles Manson or read the Unabomber Manifesto: The ravings of a madman are useful only to people who study madmen.

The murder of 32 people at Virginia Tech yesterday has reignited the gun control debate. I don't feel like writing about it now, so I'll just say one thing that keeps going through my mind:

I don't know anything about the killer, but I do know something about every one of his victims. I know it because it's been true of the victims of every mass shooting we've had in this country.

They were unarmed.

Update: Law Professor Glenn Reynolds echos my feelings in a New York Daily News editorial:

On Monday, as the news of the Virginia Tech shootings was unfolding, I went into my advanced constitutional law seminar to find one of my students upset. My student, Tara Wyllie, has a permit to carry a gun in Tennessee, but she isn't allowed to have a weapon on campus. That left her feeling unsafe. "Why couldn't we meet off campus today?" she asked.

Virginia Tech graduate student Bradford Wiles also has a permit to carry a gun, in Virginia. But on the day of the shootings, he would have been unarmed for the same reason: Like the University of Tennessee, where I teach, Virginia Tech bans guns on campus.

In The Roanoke Times last year - after another campus incident, when a dangerous escaped inmate was roaming the campus - Wiles wrote that, when his class was evacuated, "Of all of the emotions and thoughts that were running through my head that morning, the most overwhelming one was of helplessness. That feeling of helplessness has been difficult to reconcile because I knew I would have been safer with a proper means to defend myself."

Wiles reported that when he told a professor how he felt, the professor responded that she would have felt safer if he had had a gun, too.

What's more, she would have been safer. That's how I feel about my student (one of a few I know who have gun carry permits), as well. She's a responsible adult; I trust her not to use her gun improperly, and if something bad happened, I'd want her to be armed because I trust her to respond appropriately, making the rest of us safer.

Bad taste in morality.

I hate writing checks that end with

To the Order of      United States Treasury       

I just hate it.

Tinkerty Tonk posts a video of the always-amazing Wanda Sykes on the Imus affair.

Here are a few annoying PowerPoint tricks.

Larger ImageCat or Tribble?

Larger ImageCan't See Me!

Larger ImageMeditation

Update: The Friday Ark is up.

I can't decide if this is kind of cool or kind of sad. Check out Hollywood Is Calling:

Now for the first time ever you can have a real celebrity make a live phone call to someone you know for just $19.95. You can also purchase an email video greeting card with a message from your favorite star for just $5. Whether it's for a special occasion or just for the fun of it, there's no better way to impress a client, sweetheart or a friend.

THESE ARE NOT PRE-RECORDED MESSAGES OR VOICE IMPERSONATORS. ALL CALLS ARE MADE LIVE BY THE ACTUAL CELEBRITY.

The emailed videos are pre-recorded, so that's no big deal, but apparently the phone calls are the real thing from the real celebrity.

As you might guess, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are not on the list. It's really a collection of people whose celebrity has faded or whose celebrity never shined brightly to begin with.

The FAQ puts it a little differently:

The vast majority of our celebrities are not motivated by financial reasons when it comes to this project. Their extraordinary achievements have made them tremendously popular all across the globe and they believe that our patented new service is a great way for them to stay in touch with their growing fan base. It's also a lot of fun.

Uh, yeah, because Mary Badham (who played "Scout" in To Kill a Mockingbird) is such a rising star these days. Why, just last year she was in Our Very Own, her first movie credit since 1966. I don't want to be mean to Ms. Badham, but who are they trying to kid?

(Before someone else brings it up, yes, I know that every one of these people is more famous than I am, and yes, if people would pay $19.95 for a 30-second phone call from me, I'd sign up too.)

The service makes clear in the FAQ that each call is automatically terminated after 30 seconds. I assume this is to protect the celebrity in question from being accused of being impolite. It's not that Paige Brooks from Baywatch isn't willing to wait 10 minutes for your brother to get out of the shower so she can wish him Happy Birthday. She's love to spend her time that way for her share of the $19.95, but the evil computer is going to cut her off in 30 seconds, so she's sorry it didn't work out.

On the other hand, this company has broken new ground with this sort of retail-grade appearance management. For $300 you can get a 20-minute "telephone personal appearance" from Dwayne Hickman. That's Dobie Gillis for God's sake! You can also get calls from Butch Patrick (Eddie friggin' Munster) and Lou Ferrigno (the one true Hulk).

Here's a few of the other celebrities who are available:

• Alex Michel (The Bachelor)
• David Keith
• Larry Holmes (World Heavyweight Boxing Champion)
• Dennis Haskins (Mr. Belding on Saved By The Bell)
• Joseph Gannascoli (Vito Spatafore on The Sopranos)
• Dean Haglund (Langly, one of the Loan Gunmen, on X-Files)
• Leon Spinks (World Heavyweight Boxing Champion)
• Gary Jones (SGT Walter Harriman on Stargate SG-1)
• The Barbi Twins
• Russell Johnson (The Professor on Gilligan's Island)
• Richard Hatch (The original Apollo on the original Battlestar Gallactica)
• Ron Palillo (Arnold Horshack on Welcome Back Kotter)
• Jon Provost (Timmy on Lassie)
• Tony Todd (Candyman)
• Brandon Cruz (Eddie on The Courtship of Eddies Father)
• Rick Searfoss (Space Shuttle Pilot and Commander)
• John De Lancie (Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation)
• Marta Kristen (Judy Robinson on Lost In Space)
• David Naughton (the American Werewolf in London)
• Mitch Ryder (Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels)
• Doug Fieger (from The Knack)
• Linnea Quigley (queen of the B movies)
• Leonard A. Lies (the Machete Zombie from Dawn of the Dead)
• Lorenzo Lamas
• Dr Elmo ("Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer")
• Martha Reeves (Martha Reeves And The Vandellas)
• Lauren Chapin (from Father Knows Best)
• Sybil Danning
• Trina Parks (Thumper from Diamonds Are Forever)
• Virginia Hey (Zhaan from Farscape, also the warrior woman from Road Warrior)
• Olivier Gruner (actor and World Kickboxing Champion)
• Erin Murphy (Tabitha from Bewitched)
• Kato Kaelin [but of course!]
• Todd Bridges
• Andrea Thompson
• Erin Gray
• Sonny Landham (Billy in Predator)
• Stu Charno (The serial killer from "Clyde Bruckmans Final Repose" on X-Files)
• Gigi Edgley (Chiana from Farscape)
• Kathy Garver (Cissy on Family Affair)
• Larry Thomas (Seinfeld's Soup Nazi)

None of those people are huge stars these days, but some of them are still getting work, and shouldn't they have some money coming in from their old stuff?

I can't help but think that there's some kind of trick to this. I just can't decide if we're being tricked into buying this, or if these celebrities were tricked into signing up.

(Leave a comment if you've ever tried this and let me know if it's real.)

Ultimately, I don't get it.

It might be fun to have a huge star call me up—just to hear them say my name—but none of these people are that famous. I'm sure it would be fascinating to talk to some of these people about their work and their lives, but that would have to be a real conversation, perhaps over a nice dinner. A 30-second call does nothing for me.

Still, if Andrea Thompson is reading this, and you're ever in town and willing to pose for a few photos, dinner is on me. The same goes for Virginia Hey, Rick Searfoss, and Linnea Quigley. I hope you like pizza.

Happy Easter everyone.

A bunch of bloggers have chosen this weekend to host a Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm, with everyone posting articles opposing the mixing of church and government.

I'm against theocracy, but I just didn't have the energy to come up with anything to say about it. (Besides, scheduling it on the weekend of Christianity's most important holiday seemed a little rude. It makes it seem like people are being anti-Christian rather than anti-theocracy.)

So, while I have nothing, you might want to surf over to the Blog Against Theocracy website and read what they have to say. Kip Esquire has posted some classic Carl Sagan bits from Cosmos here, here, and here.

The Chicago Police have been having a bad time in the media.

You probably already know about the first incident: Officer Anthony Abbate attacked Karolina Obrycka, a 24-year old bartender at Jesse's Shortstop Inn, because she wouldn't serve him any more drinks. I should probably say "allegedly," but there's video of the incident so I feel pretty confident. Everyone in the world can watch a drunken off-duty Chicago cop beat down young woman in a bar.

To my mind, however, the worst part of the incident is getting very little press. It is rumored that some cops offered Obrycka a bribe if she would back off, and then threatened to plant drugs in the bar and in Obrycka's car if she didn't back off. I suppose this could be anti-police spin put out by someone with a political motivation, but if there's any truth to it, this a very bad thing.

When Abbate attacked Obrycka, he wasn't on duty, he wasn't doing police work, and he wasn't using police powers. He was just a drunk jerk that beat up a woman, and he happened to also be cop. With 13,000 cops in this city, there are always going to be a few troublemakers. To borrow a phrase from the Rodney King trials in California, it appears Abbate didn't commit any of his crimes under color of authority. In a sane world, his barroom brawling has nothing to do with Chicago police in general.

But if Abbate's buddies really are trying to bribe and intimidate witnesses, we're no longer talking about one guy with a bad attitude. We're talking about a criminal conspiracy within the police department: They'd have to steal the drugs from somewhere, plant them on innocent people, and then perjure themselves to explain how they found them, all of this under color of authority. (And if word of this gets out in a big way, every defense attorney in the city will be telling the jury that the police framed their client.)

The attempted cover-up, if it's real, is a much bigger story than the original beating, but there's no video so it won't be making the national news.

There's also the question of why it took so long—about a month—for Abbate to be charged. My first thought was that the officers who took the complaint from Obrycka were understandably reluctant to investigate and charge one of their own. But that can't be right, because these kinds of incidents are investigated by the Internal Affairs unit (or maybe it's the Office of Professional Standards) which exists only to investigate and charge other police officers.

So what took so long? Well, for Superintendent Phil Cline and the rest of the Chicago police brass, the incident at the Jesse's Shortstop Inn was not about an injured woman. It was about an embarrassment to the department.

I think they were waiting to see how embarrassing it would be. The more press it got, the more severely Abbate would have to be punished to prove the department was tough on bad cops. Given that there's video of the incident all over the Internet, I think officer Abbate is in for a world of hurt.

Shortly after the Shortstop Inn video hit airwaves, the charges against Abbate were upgraded from a misdemeanor to a felony. Is that because police were trying to soft-pedal his crimes but couldn't get away with it once the video came out? Or is it because once the video came out the police brass wanted to show how tough they were by smacking Abbate around a bit more?

(I might even feel sorry for the guy. If something stressful happened in his life—divorce, death in the family—and if this was an isolated incident in response to that stress, it's possible he could be rehabilitated and returned to duty after punishment, treatment, and restitution. Possible.)

Speaking of smacking Abbate around, when Superintendent Cline was on a local talk radio show a few days ago, he had this to say:

He's been charged criminally, and we're moving to fire him and if I could hit him with a baseball bat, I would. But I can't.

Oops. I think maybe it's poor public relations to talk about beating an officer under his command with a baseball bat while trying to reassure the public that he won't tolerate police brutality.

Tom Needham, Abbate's lawyer, could use Cline's comments to paint the department as the villain, but that's not where he went with his response:

Needham also says he admires Superintendent Phil Cline and understands the frustration that apparently led to the comments Cline made on WLS radio.

...

"When people make comments like that, I think it emboldens other people to make comments like that, but I don't think the superintendent meant that literally,” Needham said.

My, how gentlemanly of him. Of course, there's an inherent conflict of interest when it comes to investigating police misconduct: The more misbehavior they find, the worse the department looks. I think Needham was just reminding Cline that they have common interests.

There's still more confusion related to this case: When Abbate appeared in court, police ticketed press vehicles and blocked access to the parking lot. Superintendent Cline responded by relieving the commander, which makes it sound like he was running press interference for a bad cop. However, the courtroom is located at Area 5 police headquarters, and the commander there has a responsibility to keep order. So maybe he was just keeping the police lots clear for police business, and Cline scapegoated him when the press started complaining. Or maybe not. I don't know how I can tell.

Meanwhile, another bar fight has come to light, this time at the Jefferson Tap. Apparently, a bunch of cops beat up a bunch of businessmen. This has taken a lot of twists and turns. Some people are saying the businessmen were well-known for making trouble, and that they made fun an officer who was crying because his father had just died.

I don't know a lot about the social protocols of the barroom, but I think that's probably the equivalent of walking up to the cops and saying "Hey, let's fight!" It's kind of unsporting for the losers to complain about it afterwards.

To add to the confusion, another version of events has surfaced in which an employee at the bar asked the officers for help throwing out the unruly businessmen. This could completely exonerate the officers involved and maybe even stick the businessmen with a charge of aggravated battery, but I'm suspicious that this story took so long to emerge.

The story continues (if I'm getting this right) that someone at the bar called 911, but when the patrol units arrived, they found an off-duty supervisor at the scene who told them they weren't needed. Now, because they trusted the word of a fellow officer, they're being sucked into the investigation.

So, were the cops jerks? Were they provoked? Or were they doing their duty? And why did the responding police leave? Does it matter that their unit is rumored to have some heavy clout working for them? We may or may not get a good answer, but supposedly Internal Affairs has video tape of the incident.

It has taken me several days to write this post for various reasons, and events have been passing me by.

First, Mayor Daley returned from an out-of-town trip, and shortly thereafter Superintendent Phil Cline announced his resignation. Is Cline a political schemer who went to far? A scapegoat for the Daley administration? Or is he a loyal underling who just took one for the team? In this town, I can't begin to guess.

Second, the media is now reporting that officer Anthony Abbate's brother Terry Abbate beat up an out-of-town cop in O'Callaghans bar on Hubbard street. And yes, they say there's video of that too.

Third, in non-bar-fighting bad news for the Chicago Police, there are rumors of more indictments in the corruption scandal in Special Operations Section.

When the bartender at the Shortstop Inn told Anthony Abbate she was cutting him off, he is reported to have yelled "Nobody tells me what to do!" The joke here, the irony, is that Abbate is a police officer. He probably tells a lot of people what to do every day and expects to be treated with respect. Still, I know how he felt. I don't like people telling me what to do either. That's why I'm so wary of the police.

Law enforcement is one of the most important functions of government, second only to national security. We trust police officers with a lot of power, because it's necessary to keep our city safe and secure. Police officers who betray that trust—whether by corruption, police brutality, or outright criminality—betray us and betray their fellow officers, and it is right that they should be subject to prosecution and public ridicule.

If by any chance a Chicago Police officer reads this, I know you're not all like the the bad cops I've been writing about, and I know the resulting loss of respect for the police has hurt you all. I hope things get better soon. When I'm out and around in the city, I'm still glad to see you all out there.

My father has been in the hospital since February 22, almost six weeks now.

He's going home sometime this week, and things have been a little hectic. They've been sending home-care supplies to my parents' apartment for a few days now—adjustable bed, nebulizer kit, over-bed table—and I've been helping my mother deal with it all.

At this point, we're just waiting for the oxygen supply to be installed. Once that happens, I'll go get my dad and take him home.

Shortly thereafter, I expect to resume vigorous blogging. My father's in a VA hospital, and I'll probably have a thing or two to say about the quality of care there.

Why the world is going to be an exciting place in the new century:

Did You Know?

Thanks, Susan, for bringing this little presentation it to my attention.