“It don’t Gitmo better.”
Family values GOPer who sponsored legislation to strengthen sex crimes law will now be prosecuted by them.
Just so I have this straight: The governor of Illinois wants to install speed cameras all over the the state’s interstates so he can fund an “elite tactical team” that will scour Chicago for guns and drugs? I think my head might a’splode.
More on that “unlawful photography” of a police officer arrest in Tennessee.
How to set up your laptop to track its whereabouts in case it gets stolen. Pretty cool. Or at least until your average laptop thief learns of the software, and figures out how to disable it. The snapshot option on Macs could be fun should customs agents ever seize your computer at the border.
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TheAgitator.com
From the unlawful photography article:
“They beat the shit out of him,” he said. “The guy’s lawyer came back and took witness statements. When the statements made it back to the sheriff’s department, they came by and asked me why I was getting involved.”
No witness intimidation there.
I suppose the thing that irritates me the most about the speeding cameras is that they won’t work in the long run because people are constantly adjusting their risk/reward valuations. Sure, they’ll make a bunch of money in the first few months, and perhaps even in the first full year. But those hefty fines will start to change individuals’ valuations of the costs and benefits of driving faster.
So, what you’ll have it people spending more time on the road, and pissed off for having to do it. You get the opportunity losses from lost productive time spent driving slower. And, to top it all off, the state of IL imposes a new tax to make up for the shortfalls from their underproducing cameras.
Joy. I can’t wait to go visit my friends in Chicago.
Thomas Blair–exactly. Living in Chicago just gets better every day.
I predict that within 2 years of the installation of traffic cams the state of Illinois starts lowering speed limits on high traffic stretches of road.
Not sure if I can post a link, but there’s an article at cnn about the Berwyn Heights mayor. The article focuses more on the mayor, but includes this tidbit:
“After the raid, arrests were made in the package interception scheme.”
In other words, they now know that the mayor and his family were innocent victims. Um, guys, next time might want to do that investigation *before* you try to destroy someone’s life.
The actions of the sheriff’s department are shameful, as is usual in this case. It also turns out that there are no “no-knock” warrants in MD, so the law was broken by the serving of the warrant. They also didn’t produce a warrant until a few days later. Incredible stuff, it’ll be interesting to see if anyone is prosecuted.
Link:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/07/mayor.warrant/index.html
Michael - I just came here to link to that same story. Does anybody think that now that a public official has been hit by a raid like this, somebody will pay attention? I’m not holding my breath.
Great on the politician who sponsered the legislation. It’s hard to convince me that a lot of pols who pick-up this mantle to layer in yet more laws on sex crimes (haven’t they been illegal for 200 years?) don’t have more skeletons in their closet. Ask Rep Foley or Sen Vitter. Philip Giordano, Mayor Jim West… oh I’m running out of room. Be skeptical of these guys who just want to moralize cuz “it’s for the children”. Spend less time passing laws and more time enforcing the ones we have. Oh wait, that’s not good politics…
Nobody likes Illinois Governor Blagojevich — not even his own party. The best news about this horrid idea is that his name is linked to it. Makes it less likely to happen.
The speed cameras won’t happen, at least not while Blagojevich is in office. It’s just the latest in a series of political miscalculations by a fairly dim politician.
The offer of state police and national guard that Blago made a few weeks back was a reactionary move meant to embarrass Chicago’s mayor for allying with state House Speaker Madigan to oppose Blagojevich’s proposal for a casino in Chicago that would help fund a $34 Billion state construction plan. Blago desperately needs the plan if he wants to reverse his extraordinarily dismal reputation before he’s indicted on what will likely be a wide range of corruption charges.
Not that embarassing your opponent is the best way to come to a compromise, but like I said, the guy isn’t very slick.
But then Chicago’s police superintendent decided to accept the offer. The problem is that Illinois is already facing budget problems, Blago had no way of backing up his offer of state police, so he had to come up with something quick. What’s a bigger cash cow than speeding and red light cameras? Unfortunately for Blagojevich, there’s a state law banning speed cameras on interstates.
The good news is that Madigan can and will block pretty much any idea that originates with the current governor, and there isn’t much that either Blago or his lap dog in the senate, Emil Jones, can do about it. So the state law against speed cameras will stand … for now.
Did I mention that every last one of these guys is a Democrat. LOFL
. . . because the militarization of our police forces is JUST what we need more of. Why don’t we just install the military as our peace-keepers - then we can just let all these nice cops go home to become school teachers, nursing home volunteers, and vet technicians like they really want to be.
Regarding the “illegal photography” bit.
The watchmen don’t like being watched.
Oh definitely. Lake Shore Drive is an eight-lane highway with a 40 mph speed limit for most of the way but it’s always determined to be “too dangerous” to raise it. Too dangerous to the budget, maybe—I’ve never driven down it without seeing at least one speed trap/person pulled over.
Hah, on that photography case the arresting officer was “Starling McCloud”. Maybe thats a source of his anger/stupidity.
Dammit McCloud!
On the how to track your stolen laptop, after the video ends, it suggests a potentially not safe for work video. “How to have sex with a bad back,” with a possibly not safe for work thumbnail.
I guess it would depend on the sensitivity of your work place.
I like idea for the stolen laptop tracker, but I’m not sure how useful it will be to take a list of dates, times, and IP addresses to the police station. You’d probably have better luck taking that info to Best Buy.
Unlawful Photography; Carlos Miller is one hella writer!
Somebody needs to start a site with daily pics of our “new professionals” in action. Exhibiting all behaviors, the good, the bad, the ugly.
It would seem that if one wants security when traveling with a laptop, (1) make a copy of the drive on a secure server; (2) replace the drive with a new blank one and store the original in a place away from the server; (3) go overseas; (4) copy the data from the server to the new drive; (5) use the drive while overseas; (6) copy any changed data back to the server, and have someone at home make an off-site backup; (7) either destroy the drive or leave it with a trusted person overseas.
Rather hard for the TSA to extract information from a computer that simply isn’t there.