The dumbing down of the right continues apace. Levin’s radio show is really unbearable.
Mancow subjects himself to waterboarding to show it isn’t torture. Like Christopher Hitchens, the experience changed his mind. Wasn’t Sean Hannity supposed to do something like this?
I haven’t yet blogged on the Alabama police beating that’s all over the news. But it looks like we now know the cops edited the dash cam footage after the fact. Which makes it awfully hard to believe they actually think what they did was justified.
In my post on early 2012 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Wayne Allyn Root the other day, I had forgotten about this Reason interview with Root from the 2008 campaign. Honestly folks, the last thing the LP, and libertarianism in general, needs right now is a spokesman with Angry White Guy Syndrome.
Preventative, indefinite detention without trial. Lovely. I will say that the left seems to be doing a much better job of calling Obama out when they disagree with him than the right was able to do with Bush.
It seems that an equity firm that includes the pension funds of Los Angeles police officers owns a stake in the San Diego Union-Tribune. So the police union is demanding the paper’s editorial staff be fired, because they don’t like the positions the paper has taken over the years. They’re not even pretending not to be bullies, are they?
Oklahoma horse floaters win their economic freedom, thanks to help from the Institute for Justice.
Another call for drug legalization from an unlikely source, this time former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo.
Man calls state highway department to report a road defect that gave him a flat tire. Bureaucratic hell ensues, culminating with the state of Ohio threatening to seize the man’s home.
British Muslims say government agents told them to either become spies or they would be considered possible terrorists.
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on Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 at 10:06 am by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
Back in the 60′s and 70′s, my second cousin was the senior editor at the San Diego Union Tribune. She must be turning over in her grave now.
The comments on the Birmingham tape reveal the sad truth of American reasoning skills: everything is black/white, either/or, good/bad.
“The driver was a menace and endangered everyone, therefore he deserved a beating and We Have To Support Our Police because who else would do this thankless job?”
Or sometimes, the opposite:
“The police beat that man without cause, therefore he deserves to go free and sue them for their houses and pension funds.”
Uh, no. To both of those. The driver was guilty, and deserving of the sentence he is currently serving. The the police were also guilty, and deserving of termination and prosecution.
Just because a suspect is really bad, doesn’t give police carte blanche deliver abuse. Conversely, just because police are really bad, doesn’t make the criminal less guilty. Deal with each issue separately.
May I paraphrase Obama? “Indefinite preventive detention is perfectly okay as long as Congress passes a law allowing it and judges enforce it.”
If you don’t want to be really depressed throughout the 3-day Memorial Day weekend, be sure you absolutely do NOT read the comments at the end of the Alabama cop story (of which there are actually several separate articles — links follow the story before the comments).
I watched the entire chase and I don’t think the cops should have kept it up once it clearly became a serious risk of injury or death to the public (which, by any estimate, it was from the very beginning). Other people’s lives don’t suddenly become expendable because someone the cops want to talk to drives off (no matter how badly the cop’s ego is bruised).
Secondly, I don’t think the beating can be excused. The guy was thrown out of the vehicle and motionless on the ground. If you can justify beating someone under those circumstance, then I can’t imagine circumstances where beating couldn’t be justified.
Finally, the beating was edited out of the video and I don’t believe for a minute that was a coincidence. It was a cover-up for which the cops should be charged.
If you want to find out the truth when a crime happens, you can’t trust the word of person who did it. I’m finally learning you can’t trust the cops, either. That makes me skeptical of any true crime story I’ve ever read about. Lying is something that gets easier the more you do it and I don’t think someone can lose their credibility in some things and still be considered reliably truthful in others.
Mark Levin is a walking colostomy bag. He reminds me of the proverbial snotty little playground punk with a big, strong friend who — assuming his buddy will beat up anybody who complains — insults and abuses harmless kids.
The blog entry Radley linked to was prompted by someone hearing a typical exchange between Levin and a “liberal” caller. That blogger’s reaction was similar to one I had to a somewhat similar exchange about three years ago.
The reaction I published on my blog apparently cost me my job at The New American, whose management was frantically sucking up to the most bigoted fringe of the petit-nationalist/proto-fascist Right, and wanted to avoid offending the kind of people who think that the feculence that dribbles down Levin’s double-chin is distilled wisdom.
FWIW, here’s the link to my career-killing essay:
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2006/09/i-cant-stand-bullies.html
the ease with which the cops beat the unconscious man is chilling. these are regular street cops and, for all they knew at the time, they just killed this guy and walked away from him. the guy got 20 years on top of the beating. the cops got fired after the cover-up was exposed.
I’m not sure why the guy was running, and I’m not condoning car chases, but with the frequency of traffic stops and the amount of the fines and insurance premiums being extracted, I can’t help but think there’s going to be a lot more people taking their chances with running and getting no fines.
I used to think it was a rather empty criticism, but I’m now more convinced than ever that the words on Obama’s teleprompter do not pass anywhere near his brain on the way to his lips.
I’m really glad to see some good things in today’s link. Another person agrees water boarding is torture, another former drug warrior sees the light, and IJ wins another battle.
I haven’t been a fan of Wayne Allen Root at all and was fairly upset when Barr picked him for VP. If anything, it has to do with the way he talks, like he is billy Mays, he yells at the audience. I can tell you for the next 4 years I’ll doing my best to make other Libertarians in the party to ignore his actions for our candidacy on 2012.
Running from the cops was inexcusable, the beating was inexcusable. But the biggest crime that was committed here was carrying on with a pursuit that was Clearly endangering the public simply because the cops wanted to talk to this guy.
Every cop involved should be fired. None of them have the judgement to be officers.
I can believe a union would use coercive tactics. Especially one tat represents such a passive profession.
Muahahahaha! I’m so full o’ shit one o’ these days I’m just gonna float away.
Which makes it awfully hard to believe they actually think what they did was justified.
The officers that gave the beating do believe it was justified, and many of their “brothers in blue” believe it was too. Perp had it coming, and all that.
The tape wasn’t edited because they don’t believe they were right; it was edited because they know it wasn’t legal.
I learned something new and interesting about equine dentistry today. That is a good thing.
Obviously the law was enacted due to veterinarian groups lobbying the legislature to pass a law that protects their financial interests at the expense of horse owners. That’s not really much of a surprise as the American Dental Association consistently does the same thing. Many (most?) dental procedures would be safely and more economically performed by a technician but for the successful rent seeking of dentist organizations.
I hate to defend cop unions.* That said, the equity firm owns some portion of the company so their views on how the company is run are a legitimate consideration. The cops union apparently has enough money in the equity firm to get them to accede to their wishes. That’s the way corporations work. C’est la vie.
* I can make a case against all public employee unions. I can make a passionate one against cop unions. That’s not the issue at hand though.
It sure would be nice to see some more politicians get religion on the drug war before they leave office…
Penn/Teller 2012!
Ugh, not Root for ’12. I guess the LP is going to make me vote “None of the Above” in ’12, as well. People didn’t like Badnarik, but he seemed more ideologically sound, and less scary (besides his possible pro-death penalty stance) than Barr or Root.
Or I could always vote major party!
Hahaha. Priceless.
Seems the right isn’t too impressed by this stunt. And yet, they won’t try it themselves.
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/politics-religion-and-controversy/2335201-lets-get-waterboarded.html
I rarely listen to any talk radio. It seems like they all use the same strategy of shouting down anyone who disagrees with them for which they don’t have a logical rebuttal. THen before the caller has a chance to react, they cut him off. It’s rude, of course, but it also shows that they are really nothing more than purveyors of propaganda rather than a forum for debate and discussion. I wouldn’t mind as much if they reserved that kind of treatment for people who just call to harass them, but they don’t. Harassment calls are usually screened out. They use this attack dog mode against polite intelligent callers who have legitimate arguments.
The last radio talk show I used to listen to was Neil Boortz. I was so pleased to find a radio show with a libertarian perspective. But he’s just as bad as the others. Power may corrupt, but popularity turns people into assholes.
Seriously, J sub D is correct… don’t vote him down just because you don’t like the fact he’s right. His post wasn’t an opinion – he’s pointing out reality.
It’s simply how business works. If you don’t want a police union potentially calling shots at your paper, don’t offer them a ton of equity shares.
Similarly to the Govt/Detroit situation – if you don’t want the Pres telling you what cars to make, what jets you can buy, and how to pay your employees – don’t take the bailout.
Like I said in the comments of the Reason article on Root, I changed my party affiliation from Libertarian to Independent because of him. It may be that the only reason Obama got into Princeton was because of his race (as root stated in the Reason article), but it just comes across as petty and irrelevant. I mean there are real policy issues that the LP can use to attack Obama, but Root defaults to unsupportable allegations of affirmative action run amok? He is just a horrible spokesperson for the LP.
When you get to it Radley,
It’d be nice to know why he was being pursued, there’s no mention anywhere and there didn’t seem to be any charges filed other than ones connected to the chase. A run though an urban area like that is crazy.
Pizza, it’s more dangerous than we thought:
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=596&sid=1681850
From another article:
“The incident happened Jan. 23, 2008, when a police officer tried to question Warren, now 38, about possible drug activity. A 22-minute chase followed, during which Warren struck a Hoover police officer and then was thrown from his own van after he crashed.”
#20: The Pale Scott:
An undercover officer approached him and tried to question him because he was in a high drug area. He wasn’t under arrest or anything. He claimed that he panicked when some guy started chasing him and tried to flee in his van.
Wait… I posted this the other day… I’ll find it…
From http://cbs5.com/national/unconscious.man.beaten.2.1015492.html
So… it’s not like they were chasing down Public Enemy number 1. There was no reason to execute such a dangerous chase. These cops were totally out of control and placed dozens of innocent civilians at mortal peril.
I don’t defend what the police officers did in beating the suspect in this case in the least. And I’m not crazy about them even chasing him to start with (especially for the potential infraction they allege), especially since I live in suburban Birmingham and drive on the same streets every day. However, it seems to me that the comments I’ve seen here about the editing of the tape are misleading, and that might be based on a misunderstanding that there were at least two different police departments involved in the story.
It seems pretty clear that the Birmingham Police Department deleted footage of the incident and covered it up. (And before anybody starts thinking Bull Connor and racist white boys, remember that the core city of Birmingham — shrinking and dying — is completely controlled by black politicians, including the police department.) Hoover is a suburban city to the south of Birmingham, and its officers became involved in the chase, too. The Hoover Police Department had a car that the suspect his during the incident, so it was required to give the DA a report that dealt with that aspect of the matter. Hoover PD got a copy of the tape from Birmingham PD (since one of its cars recorded the wreck with the Hoover car), and they properly cut the tape to just show what they were supposed to show. There isn’t any reason to think that Hoover PD knew that Birmingham PD was deleting the beating from what anybody else was seeing, so we don’t have any reason to hold Hoover PD responsible for what it did.
It MAY be that the people at Hoover PD knew what Birmingham PD was doing and that they were editing the tape in order to help cover it up for Birmingham, but there’s no evidence of that. It’s MORE likely that Hoover PD was just doing what it would normally do (edit something to show the part relevant to its own report). Editing the tape would have never been an issue if Birmingham PD had not done its coverup.
So the issue is the Birmingham Police Department’s coverup, not the editing that was (properly) done for the portion relevant to the Hoover Police Department. When you just refer to the fact that “cops edited the dash cam footage after the fact,” you’re oversimplifying the facts.
Regarding dumbing down of the right: Yeah, Levin is a shouter. What annoys me is that 1) he isn’t a moron (he can put together a very strong case in favor of liberty and against the erosion of it) but 2) he really can’t seem to see that government affronts to liberty when “his side” is in charge are no less unconstitutional than when the other side does it.
Both sides think they are doing something worthwhile and that something justifies taking a less strict stand on what’s constitutional. Neither side seems to understand that the other side thinks like they do and that their good intentions are irrelevant to whether or not something is constitutional. The right authoritarians need to see that “because the President wants to keep us safe” does not in any way change the powers the Constitution has given to the government to keep us safe. The left authoritarians need to see that “because these people need it” does not in anyway change what the Constitution allows the government to transfer among the people.
BTW, I think that Limbaugh is at the top of the heap because he does less angry yelling than the others and less hanging up on callers who disagree. From what I hear, he is far more likely to spend some time with an opposing caller and try and explain his position, instead of shouting down the caller as some sort of moral degenerate and hanging up on him. This isn’t a defense of Limbaugh; I can’t listen to him for any length of time before thinking, “Yeah, good point, except that you don’t seem to care when your side does it.” I’m just saying he isn’t as rude as some of the others. And, of course, anyone who thinks the lefty talkers are better is delusional, IMO.
Regarding the Mancow waterboarding: I wonder how many “legitimate” law enforcement policies would fall by the wayside if the legislators had to undergo them before they could vote to allow them? I’m not saying that should necessarily be the system, but the reactions that Mancow and Hitchens have had do give one pause. We’ll see what Hannity thinks if he goes through with it.
Also, I though it was interesting that the article had a nice example of media group-think when it referred to Hitchens as a “conservative writer”. Hitchens is clearly left-leaning on a wide variety of issues and is probably more accurately described in U.S. terms as a liberal, but since he took Bush’s side on Iraq, then the media conclusion is that he must be a conservative. It’s typical of the bipolar fallacy to assume that there are two sides to the world and any data point putting someone in favor of (or against) one side is sufficient to determine where they stand on everything, who their allies are, etc.
#27, Great points freedomfan! I was shocked to read Hitchens described as a conservative too. As far as Hannity goes though IF he ever goes through with it I wouldn’t be surprised to see him still support waterboarding. Even a little thing like reality won’t change his mind. If the republican party said there was no such thing as gravity he’d jump off the empire state building to prove it.
#9 | Bob-
after all the posts on here about police abuse, I certainly don’t think that ‘running from the cops was inexcusable…’ Any more, I think it’s self-preservation.
I wouldn’t call the deletion of footage of the suspect being beaten almost immediately after he hit the HPD cop “proper” editing on the part of HPD. I would say that it’s up to a judge to determine what is admissible in a trial and I think it’s fair to say that the beating could very well have influenced the outcome of a trial and the threat of it going public could have influenced the DA’s willingness to bargain. In any case, denying it to the prosecution was the same as denying it to the defense.
Had the department been acting with integrity, they would have provided the video of the beating to the DA because the beating itself was evidence of potentially prosecutable offense (or at least would be if done by anyone other than a brother cop).
So, to say that “the cops edited the dash cam footage after the fact” is exactly correct and cuts directly to the core of the matter. Cops don’t get to pick and choose what evidence they provide to the DA or defense.
Hi Radley, can you recommend a firing range in the Alexandria area?
Dave Krueger, do you understand that the part of the incident that the Hoover PD was dealing with was unrelated to the beating? Hoover was ONLY providing something related to its car that was damaged by the suspect. It was not that department’s responsibility or business to provide the DA with evidence of what Birmingham PD did, especially since Birmingham PD had its own responsibility to deal with that portion of the incident. For that reason, to say that “cops edited the dash cam footage” makes it appear that the editing in question (by Hoover) was trying to cover something up. There is no evidence of that. It’s misleading. If Birmingham PD had edited the footage, it would be different, but it’s oversimplifying things to say what’s said here.
Forgive me if this is a stupid question but isn’t editing (by anybody) tampering with evidence?
I notice that the “official” 22 minute video still deletes the officer sprinting back to his car to shut off the camera.
Do you understand that all the video tape of events ultimately leading to the arrest are relevant? Supposing the guy had shot the HPD cop. Would it be acceptable to only provide the video of the guy actually pulling the trigger and nothing else?
No, it was providing evidence “that pertained only to a Hoover officer being hit by the suspect’s van”. Presumably that’s the officer for which he was originally charged with attempted murder and who appears in the image headlining the article.
Nor was it their responsibility to edit out something that would be at best embarrassing to the BPD and at worst a crime committed by the BPD.
Which is precisely what they did. Cops take care of their own.
It’s one thing when they edit out material unrelated to the events involving the suspect, but this was video evidence of a suspect charged with attempted murder for which they were specifically supplying the footage that would condemn him. They need to supply all the tape they have of the entire event from start to finish.
#6 According to one of the other reports I read, the cops started asking harsh questions about drugs and the drive panicked. Considering what has happened in other “drug” cases (Katherine Johnson) that may have been a rational response.
“It sure would be nice to see some more politicians get religion on the drug war before they leave office…”
It seems like people only “get religion” after they leave public office or go to prison. Curious.
Considering what has happened in other “drug” cases (Katherine Johnson) that may have been a rational response.
Was it also a rational response for Warren – while being pursued by several marked police cars – to try to run over the officer who was throwing stop sticks?
The officers needed to get fired, and stay fired. Each one of them should be facing criminal charges as well. But all parties involved are in the wrong.
Yep. I think the guy should have stopped the moment he saw the marked squad cars behind him. His claim that the cop who first approached him didn’t identify himself, was in plain clothes, and an unmarked car only legitimizes his attempt to escape from that specific situation. It doesn’t justify a 20 minute high speed race.
Francine, a local host on AM 840, spent a good deal of time several weeks ago, discussing the 183 times that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been waterboarded. She insisted that if he didn’t spill the beans after all those waterboardings, then waterboarding must not be all that bad.
I wanted to call in to say, “shut the fuck up, Francine, until you try it for yourself.” But I knew I’d never get past her producer.
On some things, she gets it right, but on this particular day, she sounded like a complete idiot.
Also, if Sean Hannity wants to demonstrate the fallacy of gravity, I’ll happily show him to the elevator.
Commence down-voting for my violent thoughts… now
Why the neg? I specifically waited to post in an “open thread”
Why wait for Hannity to consent to go through waterboarding? Wouldn’t it be more “authentic” if he didn’t think he could call it off?