I wrote a long post last night in response to the almost-giddy response from the left to yesterday’s Holocaust Museum shooting, the gist of which is that this shows how foolish those of us who objected to that DHS report about “right-wing extremists” a few months ago really are.

I didn’t like how the post came out, and I wrote it while still seething from reading the nearly jubilant Twitter feeds of several prominent lefty bloggers. So I didn’t put it up. Fortunately, my colleague Jesse Walker today expressed exactly what I was thinking, only more eloquently.

I’d add that some of these media characterizations of the shooter as “anti-government” are gratuitous. He didn’t shoot up the Federal Reserve. He shot up the Holocaust Museum, because he hates Jews.

Jesse’s point about the right is true, too. Trying to string together three homicidal incidents out of hundreds from the last few months as evidence of some rising, violent, anti-government movement is just as absurd as Michelle Malkin’s attempts over the last few years to try find evidence of a mounting nationwide jihad every time someone with a Muslim name commits a crime.

French Quarter, New Orleans.

Jeff Winkler and I have a fun piece up at Reason this afternoon that pokes fun at Time magazine for its long history of ridiculously hysterical cover stories.

It’s done in the form of a “Top 10″ list, and includes all of your favorites, including crack babies, porno plagues, Pokemon addiction, and the rise of satanism!

It’s gut-check time for the left.

Vice President Joe Biden may have crossed the line when he assured national law enforcement groups Monday that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor “has your back.”

The remark quickly stirred criticism in the legal world, since Biden was making a pledge that a fair and objective justice would not necessarily be able to keep.

Biden made the remark at an assembly of eight law enforcement groups after he detailed Sotomayor’s tough-on-crime record in the courtroom.

“There’s a part of her record that seems to be, up to now, been flying under the radar a bit. And that’s her tough stance on criminals and her unyielding commitment to finding justice for the victims of crime,” Biden said.

He then repeatedly said, “She gets it,” and sought to assure the law enforcement groups that she would be on their side.

“So you all are on the front lines. But as you do your job, know that Judge Sotomayor has your back as well,” Biden said.

Biden is of course known to shoot his mouth off. But he wouldn’t have said this unless he had some reason to believe it. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone on the left speaks up on this, or they’ll give her criminal justice record a pass and fall in line with the party.

Police in Danville, Virginia shot and killed a family’s 12-pound miniature dachsund last night.

This is really getting ridiculous.

That’s a quote from Jeffrey Deskovic, who served 16 years for a rape and murder he didn’t commit. He was finally exonerated by DNA testing.

When Deskovic appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, Judge Sonia Sotomayor co-wrote a two-page opinion that refused to even consider the evidence of Deskovic’s innocence because his lawyer was four days late filing the petition. So Deskovic spent an extra six years in prison awaiting a DNA test.

The feds may not be able to arrest people for gambling online (technically, it isn’t illegal), but it looks like they plan to make life pretty difficult for them. From the Wall Street Journal:

In an apparent crackdown on Internet gambling, federal authorities in New York have frozen or seized bank accounts worth $34 million belonging to 27,000 online poker players, according to representatives for the players and account holders.

In an operation that began last week, the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York froze or issued seizure orders for bank accounts in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Arizona held at Wells Fargo, Citibank, Goldwater Bank and Alliance Bank of Arizona.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office had no comment.

The accounts are managed by Allied Systems Inc., and Account Services, which handle cash for popular online poker sites, including Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars, Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker. Though the money belongs to the poker players, it is held for them in accounts managed by the two service companies.

Account Services, which had an account worth $15 million frozen in its San Francisco bank, doesn’t accept deposits, but writes checks to players who are cashing out, said lawyer for the company, Jeff Ifrah. As a result, thousands of players receiving checks from the company won’t be able to cash them, he said.

In the last week, the major poker sites have also shut down some of the main mechanisms for U.S. players to make deposits.

(Via Sallie James)

Waterfront, Seward, Alaska.

Memphis cop takes aim at two loose pit bulls with a shot gun, wounds bystander instead.

Some great “camera trap” photos of rare animals deep in the Ecuadoran rain forest. More here.

I mentioned the other day that the emerging image of Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is not one of an “empathetic” or “activist” judge, but one of a left-leaning authoritarian, sort of a mirror image of Samuel Alito. She’ll be a reliable vote to uphold government power, be it for cops, prosecutors, regulatory agencies, or the executive.

It’s looking more and that way. From today’s L.A. Times

Though her critics portray the Supreme Court nominee as a liberal activist, her colleagues and legal opponents in the early 1980s draw a picture of her as a zealous prosecutor whose experiences combating crime have made her, according to experts who have studied her legal decisions, something of a law-and-order judge, especially when it comes to police searches and the use of evidence…

Gerald Lefcourt, a high- profile criminal defense lawyer in New York, appeared before Sotomayor while she was a federal district court judge. “She always seemed to be leaning toward the government — not outrageously so, but if you look at a lot of her criminal law cases you can see she’s pretty conservative,” he said.

Lefcourt wasn’t surprised. He had faced off against Sotomayor when she was an assistant district attorney.

Sotomayor was “very police-like,” he said. “Dismissive of what the defendant had to say about anything.”

Grain elevator, Rushville, Indiana.

The Washington Post has a fun piece on an entrepreneur who’s capitalizing on the D.C.-area’s proliferation of speed cameras:

The system, known as PhantomAlert, feeds the locations of speed cameras and red-light cameras into standard Global Positioning System devices and prompts the devices to warn drivers when they are near one. PhantomAlert has subscribers throughout the nation, including more than 2,000 in the Washington region, said the company’s owner, District resident Joseph Scott.

Scott said he expects that number to rise because of a new Maryland law that permits cameras, now allowed only in Montgomery, to be installed in work zones and near schools throughout the state. “It’s going to be very good for us,” he said.

Scott correctly points out that if government officials are serious when they say speed cameras are about safety, not revenue, they should have no objections to his business. It does after all get motorists to slow down in areas where officials say speed cameras are needed to slow motorists down in the interest of public safety.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens in Virginia, the only state where radar detectors are illegal. In fact, it’s illegal to even have one in your car. Scott’s system isn’t technically a radar detector, but it serves the same purpose.

San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina.

My brother’s staffie, Garth.

Thanks to a Boing Boing commenter, we now have an explanation for the vomiting monkey photo.

Turns out, it’s a sculpture by artist Tony Matelli.

Not nearly as interesting as I had hoped!

The Oklahoma state trooper caught on film choking a paramedic will not face charges.

Wonder what would happen if a regular person put a choke hold on an EMT as he was trying to get a sick person to the hospital?

Dixon Hartung, son of longtime reader Bronwyn Hartung, gets his agitation on.

Get your kid (or yourself!) an Agitator t-shirt, hat, thong, etc. here.

In our March print issue, I wrote:

In the early 1990s, Congress got the idea that America needed an underground facility where tourists could escape D.C.’s sticky Augusts and biting Februaries while lining up to tour the Capitol. Estimated cost: $70 million.

In the 15 years since, the project has morphed into a sprawling, $621 million, three-story, ostentatious shrine to “the legislative process.” In other words, Congress built a tribute to itself. The new building, which opened in December (three years late and $300 million over the revised budget), includes a TV studio (with make-up room) for members to record messages to their constituents, a 450-seat dining area, two orientation theaters, an auditorium, and an exhibition hall.

Part of the delay and added cost came after September 11, where a plan to vamp up the facility’s security turned into a second round of add-on bells and whistles.

But there is one thing Congress apparently forgot to factor into its massive monument to itself: The possibility of rain.