Last week, Obama signed four more bills without first posting them on the web for five days, as he promised during his campaign.
D.C. Councilman Jim Graham wants to fight crime by . . . banning or restricting restaurants that sell pizza-by-the-slice.
A little heavy-handed, but the sentiment is accurate.
Put me firmly in the Freidersdorf camp, here. If the right is going to recover, it’s going to recover with ideas. And there aren’t many ideas coming from Levin/Hannity, reactionary wing of conservatism. Just invective. Levin’s response is lovely: “You can’t criticize me, I’m hugely popular on the radio, and I sell lots of books!”
Supreme Court loosens restrictions on when police can interrogate a suspect without his lawyer present.
Death at the ballpark!
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on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 8:45 am by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
Free Jumbo Slice.
Great set of links today, thanks. (Also I think the pizza link may be wrong)
So many people voted for Obama for change but the only thing that seems to have changed is Obama. Just goes to show that Washington is too corrupt to fix.
I love baseball!
I wouldn’t fret too much over the interrogation case. It’s not good, and it should have been decided the other way because of shady police tactics. But the facts are pretty wishy-washy. Ie this is not a case where the person ASKED for a lawyer and then was made to wait hours udner questioning for his lawyer to arrive.
There are many ways the facts of this case make this decision not all that significant in the grand scheme. Again, I don’t like it and disagree but it’s not the end of an important protection of liberty altogether.
The ruling isn’t the proverbial “camel’s nose under the tent”, largely because at this point in our corrupt legal system the camel’s nose is about the only thing left sticking out of the tent.
More:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/05/27/tuchman.tx.forfeiture.cash.cnn
Jim Wells County, TX – DA uses stolen, er, seized assets to give bonuses to secretaries. JWC has a history of highway robbery according to Google.
JS – Obama didn’t change. LOL – you really believed him?
Has anyone projected out how many new laws we’ll be living under in 10 years? Every year it seems like we get 1,000 new laws (each restricting our freedom and making it more likely we’ll end up in jail).
Of course, I cannot ever remember a law being repealed. And I’m finding it harder and harder to find a SCOTUS ruling against the government.
The business of government is good, especially in a depression.
The conservative talking heads aren’t the problem, their audience is the problem.
As much as we complain about conservative talking heads like Hannity, O’Rielly, Levin, Limbaugh…and so on and so on…these people exist because Americans listen and like them. The free market has shown what Republicans want, and unfortunately it’s a pretty awful product that they prefer over professionalism. As long as ratings stay high, they are encouraged to get worse. Changing people’s minds is the only way to change the tone of conservative pundits.
From the linked article on the Supreme Court item:
Jesus H. Murphy Fucking Christ! What kind of fantasy land does Scalia live in?
I agree, Scalia lives in another Dimension.
“little if any chance that a defendant will be badgered into waiving his right to have counsel present ”
Bet your bottom dollar cops will use this ruling to maximize their
power to interrogate. But maybe it’s only so important in the Grand Scheme, as the guy above says/
the pizza link is great.
“Even though it’s a legal business and everything, they have become a nuisance,” Graham said. “Behaving the way they do in terms of music, in terms of letting people hang out and also in terms of tolerating a certain level of violence.”
if i may paraphrase, “i know you’re complying with the law and all … but i still don’t like that whole freedom of assembly business .. and the music, that just goes to that icky free-speech thing …”
I suspect this won’t make me very popular today but I kind of agree with Nick here. It’s the third from last paragraph that’s so hazy. Did he decline the lawyer, or did he simply not answer that he wanted one? And who had the idea to search for the murder weapon with both the police and the defendent? What exactly precipitated his writing in the car? And the content of that letter was what exactly?
At one end of the spectrum, it’s a guilty man who had already decided both to confess and cooperate, and only had the realization later that he might get out on a technicality. At the other end, it’s a blatant attempt to extract a confession using intimidation and possibly violence, as quickly as possible before the lawyer could arrive, from a man who might not have even committed the crime.
RE: heavy handed toon
I don’t think it’s heavy handed at all, as a matter-of-fact I think it nails it right on the damn head.
The biggest problem is the people who vote. The second biggest problem is the people who don’t vote.
djm:
I thought that for a second too.
But you have to consider:
People who WANT to confess because they actually did it and now feel guilty aren’t going to be able to recant that later because of the new evidence their confession uncovers. The simple fact is… almost noone wants to confess. Almost any confession is a result of psychological manipulation on the part of the police. This is shown by the lack of new evidence resulting from the ‘confession’.
Look at Ryan Frederick’s treatment when he asks “Am I going to need a lawyer?” Since he did not specifically, with I’s dotted and T’s crossed, state that he wanted a lawyer right now, his comment was deflected by the interrogators.
What people really need while in police custody isn’t a lawyer.. what people really need while in police custody is to just shut up. Unfortunately, many people don’t do that, and put themselves in danger of being roped into whatever crimes are being ‘investigated’ at the moment.
Look at the case in question, that of Jesse Jay Montejo:
“In St. Tammany Parish, La., Jesse Jay Montejo was charged with first-degree murder in a burglary and the court appointed a lawyer. Later, police read him his Miranda rights, and he agreed to go along on a police search for the murder weapon. On the trip, Montejo wrote a letter to his victim’s wife in which he seemed to admit guilt. When the group returned, Montejo finally met his lawyer.”
That letter (and a confession written in his cell) would later go on to convict him in court. There was not a shred of actual evidence to the crime. (And NO, despite it’s use in courts, I do not consider a confession to be ‘actual evidence’).
Did they find the weapon? No. And why the FUCK would anyone decide to write a letter to the victim’s wife while doing that? Who even carries letter-writing paraphanalia on their person? OBVIOUSLY, he was being fucked over by the police.
What would I have considered acceptable evidence of guilt? How about finding the weapon, finding the clothes with GSR on them, tangible evidence placing him in the house. (Not just “Witnesses saw a van similar to his”) Were he ACTUALLY confessing, he would have been able to hook the police up with any of these things.
“Death at the Ballpark” just made me love baseball even more.
The entire horn of the infield killed by a single bolt of lightning, one of the most poetic images I’ve ever read — as if straight out of the The Natural.
There’s an easy way to avoid being hit by a foul line drive — pay attention to the game.
Not so much for the pitcher, though. The co-coach of my son’s LL team was pitching BP last night at practice and took a liner from a 9-year-old square in the chest. Left a welt the size of a dinner plate, probably would have killed him if it hit him in the head.
The coach reached for another ball and continued throwing. He’s a baller.
“The biggest problem is the people who vote. The second biggest problem is the people who don’t vote.”
If no one voted, the system would lose its fig leaf and be exposed for the totalitarian dictatorship it actually is.
Then, real change could be effected.
The ONLY problem is the people who vote.
#18
The problem with the people who vote is they want their government to protect them from everything that could possibly hurt them, hence global warming b.s., seat belt laws, drug testing EVERYONE, etc.
The problem with people that don’t vote is they’re probably part of the silent majority types who’d prefer to just be left the hell alone but since they don’t want to take the time to actually do anything…..
I guess I’m more cynical than thou, change your nick to “kinda, sorta, cynical in CA” (it’s obvious I’m jokin’, right?)
What a cretin Levin is.
1.) How terrible is he at arguing when he can pick and choose the quotes he wants, yet I’m still agreeing with the inset Rod Dreher quotations instead of him. It’s all a convoluted “Do you know who I am?” argument.
2.) How can he not know who a prominent National Review columnist is and consider himself a man of the right? It’s like being a fantasy football geek and not knowing who Brian Westbrook is.
I think we can safely say that that promise was a pandering lie. He has maken no attempt to keep it whatsoever.
Living in Motown I can testify that large cities have some councilcritters that are complete idiots.
J sub D # 21
That is a slur on idiots.
:)
No. Idiot is the very bottom of the scale.
Psychological Testing
A Guide to Psychological Testing and Assessment
by Jonathan Rich, Ph.D.,
IQ, Archaic Description, Description, Score, higher than:
10 Idiot Profound Mental Retardation Fewer than 1 out of 100,000
25 ” Severe Mental Retardation ”
40 Imbecile Moderate Mental Retardation 3 out of 100,000
55 Moron Mild Mental Retardation 13 out of 10,000
70 Borderline 2 out of 100
85 Dull Normal Low Average 16 out of 100
100 Average Half
#19 | Tokin42
“The problem with the people who vote is they want their government to protect them from everything that could possibly hurt them, hence global warming b.s., seat belt laws, drug testing EVERYONE, etc.”
Or as Mencken wrote, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
I’m a big-tent cynicism kind of guy, Tokin. Welcome, there’s room for us all.
I didn’t see anything heavy-handed with the cartoon, either.
“Justice Scalia, who read the opinion from the bench, said their decision will have a “minimal” effects on criminal defendants. “Because of the protections created by this court in Miranda and related cases, there is little if any chance that a defendant will be badgered into waiving his right to have counsel present during interrogation,” Justice Scalia said.”
I guess he’s never heard about the kids in the adult criminal justice system.
J sub D
The scale has been extended:
<-100 School Boards.
-100 to -50 Congressmen and Members of Parliament
-49 to -20 Regulators
-19 to -10 City councillors
-9 to +9 Levin, Hannity, Limbaugh, Obermann, etc
So city councillors are at least 2 steps below idiots.
Voting won’t change anything that matters. The system is broken, not merely the current kings or the current rules. The system is never up for re-election.
Not voting won’t change anything that matters either. If voter turnout looks like it might be embarrassingly low, they’ll just make voting mandatory.
So therefore, I prefer to not waste my time. I certainly don’t mind the people who do, though. They provide a valuable service in keeping voting voluntary for me.
Obama never changed, he’s just showing his true colors, which is to do what his masters tell him. Anyone that ever believes WORDS from anyone in their life, without carefully examining DEEDS, deserves all of the misery the association may bring. Just isolate it to yourself so others don’t get hurt.
No, first they’ll publish false voting numbers. There’s little to no way for one to get a list of people who voted, which should match the sum of all votes on a matter, then contact each person to determine if they truly voted. Even if you could get a comprehensive list, most people wouldn’t take the time to do this work, so the system will just publish numbers pulled from the air. Of course these numbers will mostly reflect passage of items on the government agenda.
Unrelated, but apparently when burglars enter someone else’s property and kill a dog it is a crime.
Glad to see there is no double standard.
On the baseball article…it sounds like the game is incredibly safe. 5.86 deaths per year over 150 years? “spanning professional, amateur, Little League, and even backyard pickup games”
Do you know how many games that is? How many innings? How many at bats? Amongst how many spectators?
How safe does something have to be? Shoot, since 1900 over seventeen-thousand people have died from swallowing toothpicks! That’s 156 a year. If they had been playing baseball instead eating hors d’oeuvres, they’d still be alive!
The stats obviously do not include those who died of boredom while watching a game.
On the baseball story: “The authors say their aim was to ‘raise awareness’ about baseball’s many dangers,…”
I had the inestimable benefit of my father’s instruction on this matter at an early age. This is a rule of life: when you go to the ballpark, you keep your eye on the game. I always bring a glove. It might not be necessary to go to that length, but anyone who is not watching the game every second is also seriously ignorant of what they’re involved with.
It’s not hard to figure out, and I don’t feel sorry for people who haven’t.
“A proposed crackdown on single-slice pizza sales…”
They actually used the word crackdown as if pizza slices were a dangerous gangland vice problem.
But, his heart is in the right place. He’s merely attempting to solve a problem, almost certainly covered by existing laws, by banning an activity that will most likely impose on the liberties of well-behaved people far more than on trouble makers, who will merely cause problems elsewhere. Nothing unusual about that. It’s precisely that style of mental acuity that qualifies people to become legislators.
Aresen:
<-100 School Boards.
I had to read the next entry before i realized there was a negative in there. The boards don’t get it, the teachers don’t get it, the parents don’t get it. So why would anybody expect students to ever get it? Unless they are allowed to be subverted by the internet. At which time the teachers, parents, and policies of the board come down hard on the student. And the students that succumb to the beatdown seem to go into politics or teaching or criminal justice, while having lots of children and wondering why they don’t listen.
And if you die of boredom at a baseball game, you picked poorly with the company you brought. And aren’t drinking enough beer and eating enough hotdogs. If you were a hotdog, would you eat yourself?
@ Kyle # 36
The stats also do not include
1) Those who die of food poisoning from the hot dogs.
2) Those killed in drunken brawls
;P