Reason awards their February Nanny of the Month award to a Kansas legislator for banning fake pot.

See update, below.  Timmy Dolan isn't taking the disgrace of his deparment lying down; he's issued a stern memo decrying . . .

. . . the criticism.  Sigh.

 

The Minnesota Metro Gang Strike Force scandal continues to unravel; hopefully some of the various coverups will, as well, sooner than later.  Among the latest developments:  Chief Tim Dolan of MPD announces that 

his department was informed by Luger and Campion that seven of his officers assigned to the Strike Force were involved in several allegations of misconduct. Dolan also said in an interview that some officers who were involved in allegations were supervisors.

Hmm... according to the Heimerl report, there were, at last report, three supervisor-grade (Sergeant or up) MPD cops on the MGSF. "Some" officers, according to Dolan, involved in "allegations" were supervisors.

But Dolan isn't going to take that sitting down.  He and his cops are fed up.  (I think he misspelled "lawyered up.")  Let's take a look at just some of the recent of their greatest hits:

Fresh upon being returned to the MPD after the dissolution of the Strike Force Gang, Heimerl is now, according to the MPD, a sector commander.  Ghu knows what the others of the supervisors from the MGSF are up to.  But if any of MPD's MGSF cops have been taken off the street and assigned counting the plastic spoons in the break room, it's been a closely-held secret.  But it isn't just the cops involved in the MGSF who have disgraced Dolan's department.

The Jenkins video of  at least one MPD cop mistaking a possibly drunk driver for a soccer ball? No prosecution of the kicker; the FBI is looking into it.

Then there was the $495,000 settlement after one of Dolan's badged boys punched an innocent bystander -- resulting in two brain surgeries.  That not enough? 

There's the "antics" at the end of last month, when a bunch of drunk MPD cops -- these guys apparently can't even play a game of softball without disgracing themselves after -- "picked a couple of fights and told patrons no one could stop them because they were all cops," according to witnesses.  (The gentle term, "antics" is that of the badgelickers at Fox9 -- I'd find a less gentle term.)  This after being too drunk to get into a strip club, and before the shooting started . . . which the MPD carefully didn't report.

And that's just the recent news. 

The opening paragraph of Rochelle Olson's story is chilling:

Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan said today that he and his 900 officers are "fed up" with bad publicity about the department when he says they are performing better than ever in crime fighting and officer behavior.

Yeah, the poor dears are just underappreciated by the public.  I guess they need to go get themselves a new public.

"I believe the Minneapolis Police Department is better than ever," Dolan said.

Shit, Timmy -- you mean it's always been worse than this?  Maybe it Olson quoted him wrong, or mistranslated; it probably sounded more credible in the original German.    

 

Update:

 

And this just in from Dolan, who is shocked, shocked at . . . the criticism of his department.

 

Let's take a read:

 

The recent cases that have come to light in the media make me and other employees of the Department mad. 

... at the cops who have stunk up their badges?  Nah.

The alleged actions of a few are being used to discredit all the great work that my 1100 employees do everyday.  In reality, I believe that, in this region and possibly the country, the Minneapolis PD does the most and expects the most from our officers - and holds them to the highest degree of professionalism.

Who are you going to believe?  Dolan or your lying eyes?

Let's talk about some realities of the MPD:
We have well over a million contacts per year with citizens.
A few less than 900 officers handle about 400,000 calls for service a year; that is about 1100 calls per day.
My officers make over 30,000 arrests a year; that comes to about a 100 arrests per day.
My officers conduct around 1,500 traffic stops in a busy week.

Although my officers have over a million contacts with citizens each year we still only see about 200 complaints a year against our officers.  And that number has decreased in each of the three years of my administration.  That percentage of complaints is actually lower than the percentage seen by the LAPD which is currently being praised for a low level of complaints.  Of the 200 cases that are filed about 90 result in open Internal Affairs cases.  Of those 90 cases we had about a dozen sustained excessive force cases last year.

There are, basically, only a few reasons why complaints might be low.

• There really isn't much to complain about.  That's Dolan's position, but him vouching for his department is kinda self-serving.  That doesn't mean he's lying or wrong, but it is the sort of thing where you'd want to count the change.
• People who have legitimate complaints think that filing one with the MPD is just a waste of time.  That's certainly my feeling -- and given how Dolan himself, in a previous job, waved away a minor complaint I had, some years ago (it was just an arrogance and stupid public relations thing -- a couple of his detectives decided to run my plates because they didn't like my "Criminals [heart] Unarmed Victims" bumper sticker.  I happened to be in the coffee shop while they were giggling over the possibility of having the car towed if there was some outstanding traffic ticket, which is the only reason I know that).
• People who have legitimate complaints fear retaliation.  By design, the complaint process makes an anonymous complaint impossible -- and, to be fair, the MPD warns erstwhile complainants on their website that their complaint will not be anonymous, and that's true.  (They also say that a complainant will be contacted by IA within five days; that's simply not true.)

I take investigations of complaints against my officers seriously.  In my last three years in office 16 officers have either resigned or been terminated due to our investigations of: theft, domestic assault, misuse of force, DUI, lying, and other misconduct.  And I am likely not done this year.

Ya think?

That number of terminations exceeds any previous administration.  Let me make it clear - I don't like firing police officers.  I wish I never had to fire an officer.  However, I must hold all my employees accountable for their conduct.

What we have also done is implemented internal technology and practices that make us the most transparent agency in the Midwest.  These are our videos being played on TV.   We take complaints against officers in many forms including on-line.  We publish our complaint statistics every year in our Annual Internal Affairs Unit report.

Yes, you do.  And you constantly aver that a low complaint rate means that you're doing a peachy-keen job, rather than that it's pointless.  Did the guy who got stopped for a DWB and arrested and booked into jail on a fictional crime (possession of hollowpoints) ever file a complaint?  Last time I heard, he hadn't -- and your sergeant apparently felt that "unarresting" him was all the apology he needed.  The guy who did get a gun pointed at him by one of your off-duty cops -- like many MPD cops, he was of the ignorant opinion that permit holders must conceal their carried handguns to the satisfaction of MPD cops -- had his complaint dismissed without any review at all.

So rest assured I take these recent allegations seriously. 

Gotta say, I'm not resting all that assured, Tim.

In looking at the recent allegations I can say that we were already aware of most of them and had already begun internal investigations before they became public.  The most recent video shown was sent to IAD for review the day after the incident.  At our request it was reviewed by an outside agency and declined for criminal prosecution, and it came back for our standard review process.  Our system worked for that incident.

Again, let's go to the video, with particular attention to events starting at around 4:05 into it -- on what planet is the kicking okay?

I view each incident as an opportunity to better our processes and review what we expect of our officers and how they are trained.  In light of recent incidents I have enhanced our force review process and I am changing our use of force training.

Sincerely,

Timothy J. Dolan
Chief of Police

I fail to see the sincerity.  The anger, sure.  Sincerity?  Nah.  You start encouraging complaints about bad service, figure out why that "Shots Fired" I mentioned some months ago never got a response, put an end to "arrest the gun" and treat rousting as a policy violation, and then let's talk.

I won't hold my breath.  

Let's go to the tape. Do watch the whole thing, from beginning to end, but after you do that, let's start watching it, again, starting at 3:40 into it.

3:50 MPD squad, lights and sirens on, screams to a stop, and two cops leap out and join the struggle. The one furthest from the camera brings his fist -- it's not clear if he's holding a small weapon in it -- up and down seven times, apparently striking Jenkins repeatedly.

4:05 a third and fourth squad car scream to a stop, and a cop in a wool cap runs over, and at 4:06 shoves one of the cops out of the way, and begins kicking Jenkins.  While Jenkins is being kicked and punched by several cops, one voice can be heard to shout, "Put your hands behind your fucking back."

4:25 One of the cops screams about "something sharp," and the cops take a break from the beating long enough for Jenkins to roll to a sitting position. He's then dragged out of view of the closest squad camera, and the beating continues, with one of the cops taking what appears to be a cigarette break, looking back from time to time to the camera, then for whatever reason, positioning himself so that he blocks the view of Jenkins.

Over on the forums at officer.com, Buck Eight and Squad51 sum it up thusly:

I watched the video and didn't really have a problem with it. Things always look worse on video. Now that Dolan has the FBI getting involved and the story is ALL over the news, the guy is in for a big payday. I hope nobody loses their job over this.

Tasing, spraying and joint locks/pain compliance all look a hell of a lot better to someone watching a video (ie: a jury) than punches and kicks raining down.

http://www.startribune.com/local/534...tml?page=3&c=y

...I doubt that any of the officers will be in serious trouble over this. Kicks our part of our use of force training when dealing with combative suspects. This will be ruled a policy failure and kicking will disappear. The reason that the other officers will not get into huge touble or worse is that they where responding to an officer need help call and when they arrived saw that one officer was fighting with one and they responded to that with force to take one that they had reason to believe had assaulted an officer and he was dealt with. we have a good relationship with the county prosecuters I doubt that they would get much milage out of this. Not only that but I bet you money that if he does sue it is settled out of court for basically lawyers fees....if you watch the video in its entireity..yeah this is a no brainer the cops are in the clear...

Happy to be here proud to serve.

Minneapolis is in Hennepin County; the County Attorney -- the guy whose office prosecutes felonies in HennCo -- is Mike Freeman.  squad51 and his friends have a "good relationship" with county prosecutors.

The quote?  That's from Officer Richard Walker, early on in the stop.  Tim Dolan, the Minneapolis Police Chief, has ordered all of his officers to watch the video. The kicking it seems, was too much even for him.  "Dolan said the actions of Officer Richard Walker, the initial officer involved, 'all appear to be very appropriate.'"  He just doesn't like the kicking. Walker not stopping the thumping?  Doesn't bother Dolan.  Nor does the thumping bother squad51 and his friends at officer.com.  After all, they have a "good relationship" with the county prosecutors.

What will they learn from this?  A skeptic might think that they'll learn to station cops in front of the cameras to block recordings of the kicking in the future.

Either that, or there'll be an in-service on the use of the erase button.

But I'm sure they'll all watch the tape. Hell, maybe they'll even use some CI money to buy doughnuts for Movie Night.  Been done before, after all.

Let's start off by reviewing the key paragraph in our last episode:

On April 16 of 2008, Sheriff Bob Fletcher and Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner filed a hundred-page petition (here's Part 1; here's Part 2) with District Judge Joanne Smith, requesting that the judge revoke what they called Wilson's "conceal and carry permit", and documenting, in great detail, each and every one of the incidents above. In detail. The petition had been written and researched by David Rossman -- then a deputy assigned to Sheriff Fletcher's gun permit unit.

Which, combined with all the other strangenesses, was more than strange enough.

This morning it got stranger.  The following was posted in the comments -- go look for yourself.

I represent Ms. Wilson. You are wrong on many of your facts.

In addition, the incidents of 2004 and 2007, did not involve Michelle Rae Wilson. Those incidents involved another "Michelle Wilson". Ms. Wilson has no son named Terrance. She was not the perpetrator in those situations. I guess you should print at retraction.

All of this is wrong:

"In 2004, two neighbors accused Wilson and another son of pouring sugar in their car's gas tank; according to police records, one said that, "Michelle Wilson threatened to blow up her house and kill her. She taunted her to go outside." She owed Wilson $60, and couldn't pay. Vandalism is a crime; terroristic threats are a felony.

"But Wilson was never prosecuted -- SPPD Officer Kong just left a card at the house -- and it all went away.

"In 2007, Nakeshia Britton, a high school classmate of Wilson's son Terrence, got another restraining order, claiming that Wilson, her son and others had followed Britton's school bus home, after which Wilson and her son Terrence, "came up on the porch with broken beer bottles and a bat trying to hit me... and told Edna, my foster mom, to let me come out so they can kick my retarded ass." She said that they tried to force their way in."

Michelle has a clean record. Her friends and neighbors love her. You wrote a very unfair and factually false piece as it pertains to her.

Thanks,

Gary Wolf
Attorney for Michelle Rae Wilson

I'm always up for correcting any facts, of course, and I have no particular reason to doubt Mr. Wolf's claims of this morning that the 2004 and 2007 incidents were another Michelle Wilson.

In fact, I think he's right. Hence:

Addendum and digression:

Let me put that more strongly:  Oops.  I missed something.  After getting Mr. Wolf's email this morning, and reading his comment, as reprinted above, I went back and looked again at the voluminous documentation that Sheriff Fletcher filed with the court, and went over it with my friend, David Gross, who had reviewed both the piece and the revocation petition before.

While it's clear that the 1996 incident is Mr. Wolf's client, Michelle Rae Wilson, it's also clear, upon review, that the 2004 and 2007 incidents are, as he says, another Michelle Wilson, who lived at another address.  We missed that, when reviewing Sheriff Fletcher's petition.

End of Addendum.

But, let's be clear:  they're not my facts.  The source for the story wasn't my imagination -- I'm just a fiction writer, by trade, and I couldn't have made this stuff up; it's far too weird for fiction. 

The 1996 incidents, which Mr. Wolf doesn't dispute was his client (and, to be fair, he doesn't admit it, either) is from sections #6 and #7 in Sheriff Fletcher's and County Attorney Susan Gaertner's revocation petition, and their Exhibit K and and Exhibit L, both of which were submitted to the court in support of that petition.

Somebody accused of hounding an ex for four years (and that's what the accusation is in Exhibit K and L; I don't know if the accusers were lying) being issued a carry permit in Ramsey County?  Let's not be silly.  That wouldn't happen unless the applicant was connected -- say, by being the aunt of a Saint Paul cop.

But let's turn to the two incidents that Mr. Wolf does [addendum:  accurately] dispute. 

The 2004 incident, which Mr. Wolf does say was some other Michelle Wilson (and why would he lie?  I can't imagine a reason, and don't think he is) is also from Sheriff Fletcher's revocation petition, in which he claims that Respondent -- that's Mr. Wolf's client -- was named as a criminal suspect, and which Sheriff Fletcher supports with his Exhibit J.

The 2007 incident, which Mr. Wolf also says was some other Michele Wilson, is, yet again, from Sheriff Fletcher's revocation petition, in which Sheriff Fletcher claims that Respondent -- that's still Mr. Wolf's client -- was hit by a restraining order, and which he supports by his Exhibit I.

Let's assume -- he does seem credible to me; you decide for yourself -- that Mr. Wolf is right.  Why -- when trying to revoke a carry permit of a woman who was sitting in jail, accused of murder -- did Sheriff Fletcher throw accusations about another Michelle Wilson into the mix?

I wish I knew.  I think it's a fascinating question.

There are others.  Why wasn't the 1996 restraining order enough reason for Sheriff Fletcher to deny Michelle Rae Wilson's permit application in the first place?  He's certainly denied other applicants for less.  Why, when she was sitting in jail, did he apparently throw every accusation he could find up against the wall and see what would stick?  Wasn't the murder charge enough?  And why, after years in the Ramsey County Sheriffs Office gun unit, was David Rossman transferred to patrol after researching and writing that petition?

Apparently, one of the possibilities I raised in the last episode has not panned out:  it was apparently not a reward for the accuracy and thoroughness of the research he did in the revocation petition.  What did happen with the bumbling Deputy Rossman, and why?  Is it possible that, after deciding that Rossman is too incompetent to properly shuffle paper around, Fletcher put him in a squad car with a handgun and a shotgun to do things requiring far better and sharper judgment than he'd already demonstrated was lacking during his time in the gun permit unit?

I'd love to know the answers to all of these questions.

And there's more. Me, I think it would also have been news to many of us, back in 2008, after the murder, that the accused murderer was a Saint Paul PD dog cop's aunt, using supposedly, the gun that that same cop had given her.  Doesn't that sound like news to you?

Ah, if only there were some enterprise locally, that hired people to look into interesting questions about public figures and public officials, then reviewed and edited their reports, and printed them daily upon some inexpensive medium for public distribution.

Instead, what we've got is the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune.

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." -- Winston Churchill

For those of you who didn't follow it, an amendment to a bill in the US Senate was defeated this week, on a 58-aye, 39 nay vote.  (Yeah, I know that sound strange; another time, okay?)  You'll find a remarkably typical MSM take on it here, and, honest, I'd love to discuss all the issues involved, but let's save that for another time; that's not this story. 

Part of the fight against passing this was the notoriously anti-gun advocacy group, the "Violence Policy Center," headed by Josh "Sugar Daddy" Sugarman*, and, as you'd expect, they were slaughtering trees, right and left, to turn out their agitprop, foremost among it, a "study" (actually, a collection of unreliable anecdotes, including at least one just plain lie) that purports to show that shouts that "Concealed Handgun Permit Holders Kill 7 Police, 44 Private Citizens Over Two-Year Period", which is, presumably, a bad thing and, putatively, some sort of reason that a law-abiding citizen who has been issued a carry permit in Minnesota can't be trusted to, say, carry a handgun in New York. 

(Pinky swear, since right about now I know that a bunch of you are reaching for your keyboards:  yes, there's a whole lot of other issues, around Federalism, states rights, carry permit laws, full faith and credit and all that stuff.  Not now, okay?)

Enter John Lott. Dr. Lott first came to public attention with the Lott/Mustard study that shows -- pretty clearly, I think; others disagree -- that among the effects of modern, mainstream, "shall issue" permit laws are to drive violent crime down slightly (when controlling for other factors), drive property crime up, also slightly.  By profession an economist, he's kind of been dragged, kicking and screaming only a little, into the national gun debate, and like anybody else who has been around for awhile, noticed that the antigun folks need to spend a whole lot of money on Nomex undies, what with their pants bursting into flame from lying a lot.

He noticed an unlikely anecdote on page 17:

Minnesota
# Concealed Handgun Permit Holder: Michael C. Iheme
Date: July 24, 2008
People Killed: 1
Circumstances: On July 24, 2008, Michael C. Iheme shot and killed his wife after she left
her job at an assisted living center. Court records show that she had an active harassment
restraining order against him and suggest a history of domestic abuse, including threats to kill her. After the shooting, Iheme called 911 and said, "I have killed the woman that mess my life up...." Iheme, who had a concealed handgun permit, was found guilty of second degree murder.

Source: "911 call: 'I have killed the woman that mess my life up," Minneapolis Star-Tribune, July 26, 2008;
"Man found guilty of killing estranged wife in St. Louis Park," Minneapolis Star-Tribune, February 6, 2009.

Yeah.  That does look strange, and unlikely, if you know anything about the subject.  The subject of a domestic OFP having a carry permit?  Unlikely.  Somebody with a history of domestic abuse being issued one?  It's not impossible, but it's not the way to bet.  Know a bit more, and it gets more unlikely -- Sheriff Stanek's office screwing up by issuing a permit to a domestic abuser with an OFP out on him?  Nah. 

But "nah" isn't a debunking.

Lott dropped an email to Andrew Rothman, a local Minnesota activist -- he's a friend of mine, and also the Executive Director of MADFI -- asking him to check it out, and Andrew got busy, sending one flunky off to see if there was some wisdom on the subject (check, but the flunky knew that) and interest in helping out on the part of David Gross (one of the few essential people in Minnesota Second Amendment activism, David's also an attorney, who knows the laws around this stuff backwards and forwards, having been involved in the writing of some and the practice of a lot of them for decades), and dispatching another -- John Pierce, second year law student at Hamline -- to the courthouse to look for the documentation that would have existed if Iheme had been a carry permit holder arrested on suspicion of murder.

Gross struck paydirt -- Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek, who would have been the issuing sheriff, took a quick look at both the relevant laws, regulations, and facts, and went on the record that Iheme not only had not had a carry permit, but had never even applied for one.

Yup. Stanek didn't say it -- I am -- but the VPC was lying.  What they said just ain't so.

And Pierce, looking for the nonexistent orders around the carry permit, stumbled across the smoking gun:  the police report that showed that what had been seized was Iheme's purchase permit.  Iheme had a permit to purchase a firearm, not one to carry.  But that fact had been carefully left out of the Star Tribune's reporting with the Strib's reckless disregard for the truth, and picked up and repeated by the folks at the VPC, who -- having endlessly picked at all of the states' carry laws -- had every reason to believe that the Strib had gotten it wrong, but just passed off the lie to their easily-gulled audience.

How easy?  Well, the next morning, on the Senate floor, Robert Menendez of New Jersey quoted the VPC "study", as though it proved something -- only to be shot down (metaphorically, honest) by the sponsor of the amendment, John Thune, who had been informed that there were provable lies in it, this among them.

What can we learn from this?

Well, we can't learn, alas, that 58 yes votes is enough to get something through the Senate; it wasn't, the other day.  We can't learn that the Star Tribune, in knowing and reckless disregard for the truth, will carefully leave out the word "purchase", when talking about a "gun purchase permit" held by a murderer -- we already knew that.  That's just how they roll.

We can't learn that the anti-gun folks like the VPC simply don't care about truth -- we already knew that, too.

We can learn, though, that networked grassroots activism can do things that the highly-paid lobbyists -- from the VPC or anywhere else -- just plain can't do.

That's worth learning, again.

____
* Okay, okay:  I don't have the slightest idea if Josh Sugarman has a nickname, and, if so, what it is. 

I can hear the Maury Povitch show from here. Woman says her man is cheating on her. He denies it. She got three sexually transmitted diseases while they were together. Maury's going to put him on a lie detector. Gosh, I wonder what it will say.

Update: Liar.

Via Nobody's Business comes the news that our British cousins have made it illegal to take pictures of cops:

From today, anyone taking a photograph of a police officer could be deemed to have committed a criminal offence.

That is because of a new law - Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act - which has come into force.

It permits the arrest of anyone found "eliciting, publishing or communicating information" relating to members of the armed forces, intelligence services and police officers, which is "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism".

You might think that last part about terrorism is a safeguard against abuse, but it's not. It won't prevent the cops from arresting you. The only place it does any good is at your trial, and by then it's too late. Even if the charges are dropped and you are released later the same day, the cops will already have confiscated your camera and had a chance to delete your photos.

Why would they do that?

Check out this story Simple Justice found about how one Schenectady cop spends his shift:

Dwayne Johnson, who was the city's highest paid officer last year with earnings of $168,921, spends most Tuesday early mornings in an apartment at the corner of Queen Philomena Boulevard and Sir Benjamin Way, near Kings Road. Although Johnson is typically scheduled to patrol the city until 8 a.m., he parks his marked police car on Sir Benjamin Way just before 4 a.m. and remains indoors for several hours.

The eight-year veteran of the department was observed by a Daily Gazette reporter and other witnesses as he entered and stayed in the apartment on five Tuesdays in a row this year.

The reporter has photographs.

If British cops are anything like Schenectady cops, it's no wonder they don't want their picture taken.

Megan McArdle puts it in perspective:

Most of my friends are libertarians, and hence tend to assume that this sort of quid pro quo is in fact how people get appointments.  But we thought it was done with some subtlety, a nudge and a wink, not full frontal demands for payola... There's something really sad about having gone so far that your indelicacy actually amazes the folks who want to legalize prostitution and open air drug markets.

(Source)

Jon Stewart opened his show with a few meaningless pleasantries and then started the news with

The word "jagoff"...gets thrown around a lot in today's society...

and I just knew we were the story.

The U.S. Attorney here in Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald, has generally been considered pretty good at uncovering political corruption, and today he was promoted to awesome: His office just charged Governor Rod Blagojevich on some amazing charges---none of that "misusing the postal meter"-style corruption for our boy Blago. The feds actually arrested him at his home.

I haven't even checked the Illinois Review site for fear of a fatal dose of glee.

The first part of this AP wire story is classic Chicago politics (yes, he's the state governor, but he started here in Chicago, where he was my Congressman):

A 76-page FBI affidavit said the 51-year-old Democratic governor was intercepted on court-authorized wiretaps over the last month conspiring to sell or trade the vacant Senate seat for personal benefits for himself and his wife, Patti.

Otherwise, Blagojevich considered appointing himself. The affidavit said that as late as Nov. 3, he told his deputy governor that if "they're not going to offer me anything of value I might as well take it."

"I'm going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain," Blagojevich allegedly said later that day, according to the affidavit, which also quoted him as saying in a remark punctuated by profanity that the seat was "a valuable thing -- you just don't give it away for nothing."

I'm always appalled by the raw opportunism in our politicians. It's pretty obvious that he never considered what would be good for the state, let alone the country.

What's really amazing is just how much of a loony-tune our governor was:

He also allegedly discussed getting campaign funds for himself or possibly a post in the president's cabinet or an ambassadorship once he left the governor's office. He noted becoming a U.S. senator might remake his image for a possible presidential run in 2016, according to the affidavit.

Oh my God! The fool thought he could run for president? Everyone else in Illinois has just been waiting for the indictments to come down.

Update: Apparently, Blagojevich has not officially been indicted yet, merely arrested and charged. The distinction isn't entirely clear to me, but this post has been modified to reflect the lack of indictment.

There's not much more I can say:

VPILF.com

By now you have probably heard that police in Colorado have uncovered an apparent plot by white supremacists to assassinate Barack Obama.

I was just now skimming through the blog feeds I read when I noticed that Illinois Reason had a post up entitled "Obama assassination plot foiled in Colorado." The main guy at that blog, Rob Nesvacil, is a rabid anti-conservative who really has it in for the right-wing blogosphere, so as I clicked through to his post, I thought "Wouldn't it be funny if he was crazy enought to try to blame right-wing pundits for the assassination attempt?"

It turns out he does.

What happens when the one side constantly smears the other as unpatriotic, treacherous and disloyal simply because they disagree with that side's ideas, no matter how valid they may be...

when they constantly promote six degrees of separation to anyone even remotely considered "bad" (no matter how thin the connection) even though the candidate was never involved in any wrongdoing and has routinely repudiated those others' despicable acts...

when lie after lie after lie is promulgated to falsely insinuate a candidate either sympathizes with terrorists or is one himself...

when the elitist billionaires of one political side use their money not to do charitable good for society but to tear down any with whom they disagree as if such acidic poison were what our Founding Fathers had always hoped for when fighting a war to launch our independent democracy...

when the most vile of heretical and blasphemous rhetoric is used to lie about a candidate and portray him as not just evil, but perhaps even the Anti-Christ and harbinger of the End Times...

...What happens when one side of the political spectrum, through fetid ranting over the course of a great many years, foments rage and anger and promotes and even glorifies violence in order to 'pump up their base of voters'?

Idiots try to assassinate a presidential candidate, that's what happens.

It doesn't matter if they are alleged white supremacists or hopped up on meth. Something clearly pushed these people over the edge to think murder was somehow acceptable. Rational and sane folks do not simply load up a high-powered rifle and work on an assassination plot; something or someone prods them toward that disastrous destination.

This is the same sort of dubious "reasoning" that caused some liberal pundits to blame conservative pundits for the bombing in Oklahoma City because conservatives were against big government and, you know, the bombers blew up a government building.

Oh my.

According to the New York Times, New York Governor Elliot Spitzer has just been---as they say---"linked" to a prostitution ring...which I assume means he was fucking a bunch of hookers.

Normally, I wouldn't care at all. I don't normally give a damn care what consenting adults do with their time and money.

However, Elliot Spitzer does care what consenting adults do. As New York Attorney General, he prosecuted a couple of prostitution rings. He's also gone on a number of grandstanding crusades, often stretching the interpretation of New York law to prosecute people for business practices that had been considered legal for decades. He's also threatened to go after people who criticize him. Even by politician standards, he's kind of a scumbag.

So I'm torn. I don't believe hiring prostitutes makes him a bad guy, but I don't like him, but the reasons I don't like him aren't illegal, but hiring prostitutes is. So I'd like to see him take a big hit for this. But I'll feel guilty for enjoying it.

Update: And I feel really guilty for mentioning that according to court files, Client-9 (the FBI code for Spitzer in the affidavit) was described by the Emperors Club booker as someone who "would ask you to do things that, like, you might not think were safe..." I gotta admit, I'm hoping for embarassing details. Let's just say I'm kind of hoping to see Elliot Spitzer's name in the same sentence with words like "scat", "golden shower," and "she-male."

Some former DEA agents are annoyed by the movie American Gangster:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three former Drug Enforcement Administration agents filed a $55 million defamation lawsuit against the movie studio that made "American Gangster" on Wednesday, claiming it tarnished hundreds of reputations.

...

The movie hurt the agents' reputations by falsely claiming in text at the end that a collaboration between Lucas and Roberts "led to the convictions of three-quarters of New York City's Drug Enforcement Agency" agents between 1973 and 1985, according to the suit, which seeks class action status.

...

The lawsuit said the public believed the film's text referred to federal DEA agents, not police officers, and regardless, no New York police officers were convicted as a result of Lucas' cooperation.

The DEA agents' demands are about what you'd expect from drug warriors who confiscate people's cars when they find drug residue in the ash tray:

The suit seeks to stop the film's distribution or change the text at the end of the film and turn over all of its profits to a fund for federal DEA agents.

Once a legal gangster, always a legal gangster.

About 8 or 9 years ago, I started working on a Ph.D. in computer science. I already had the Bachelor's and Master's degrees in computer science, so this seemed like the next logical step. At the time, I was working as a software developer for the research arm of the Illinois Institute of Technology and they offered me a pretty good deal to get my Ph.D. with the IIT Computer Science department. My field of research was going to be Information Retrieval, which is the name for the science behind full-text search engines like Google, Yahoo, and AOL.

I didn't start out by doing research. First I had to take some classes. A lot of classes. In the meantime, I helped out a bit around the Information Retrieval lab, managing servers and other non-research stuff. One of the Ph.D. students using the lab was a fellow named Abdur, who was much farther along in his research.

Abdur and I, well, we didn't exactly get along. He clearly didn't have a lot of respect for my skills or my intellect. I figure he thought I didn't have what it takes to do science research.

He was probably right about that, because I eventually drifted out of the Ph.D. program before ever doing any actual research or even completing all my classes. I had lost interest in the subject of Information Retrieval and the idea of doing scientific research. Software development is fun and rewarding. Software research just seemed like a lot of hard work that would bore me to death.

Abdur finished his degree and did a lot of research. According to his online CV he has over 20 patents, 8 publications in refereed journals, and over a hundred contributions to conferences. He's been on various conference committees and is on the editorial board for a major journal in the field.

I guess if I had finished my Ph.D., I could have done all that too. In every way, Abdur was and no doubt still is a far better computer science researcher than I ever was or will be.

Then again, Abdur Chowdhury has quite recently made search engine history in a way that I would not want to share. He was the AOL Chief Architect for Research who published the search queries of over half a million AOL users, setting off a firestorm of controversy over the release of private search data.

Update: Samples of the leaked data here and here. No pictures, but might not be seriously not safe for work.

I haven't read a lot of Hunter S. Thompson's work, but I enjoyed reading what I did. I'm not sure there was a point to it all, but it was fun along the way.

So now he's gone and killed himself. Self-inflicted gunshot wound, right in the head. Anybody shocked by this turn of events?

Well, I guess his son must have been pretty shocked. He's the one who had the misfortune of finding the body. Way to go, Hunter.

What a jackass.