Alex Massie on the wonderful mess that is Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The photo is perfect.
This is incredible. She’s portraying the German invasion of Ukraine in WWII.
Puppycide.
“Holy crap” ruling from federal judge orders Google to suspend a user account because a bank inadvertently sent its owner private customer data. Does this mean you could go to federal court to suspend the recipient accounts next time you have one of those embarrassing “reply to all” moments?
Some beautiful astrophotography.
I’ve been paged. False police report. Sad state of affairs when your initial reaction is, “Oh. Another one of those.”
The Stepford president.
Yes, the accompanying video was critical to the newspaper’s efforts to accurately report this story. Why do you ask?
This entry was posted
on Saturday, September 26th, 2009 at 8:23 am by Radley Balko
and is filed under Police Professionalism.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
TheAgitator.com
Wouldn’t ordering google just to delete the email be easier?
A little comic relief for you Caturday:
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/weird/Wild_Turkeys_Terrorize_Jersey_Neighborhood_Philadelphia.html
I’m wondering what’s so difficult about picking up the kid’s bike and clubbing some turkeys.
OT-Radley are you going to blog at all about the H1N1 mandates that Hospitals are trying to do, by which they will require all employees to be vaccinated and if they refuse, they can be dismessed?
Radley, no comment on the video of the schoolchildren singing an ode to the president?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aqMTD5UFmU&feature=related
That was indeed incredible.
Why the hell was an employee at Rocky Mountain Bank in Wilson, Wyoming sending the personal information of 1300 people to a GMail account in the first place?
If you have an account at the Rocky Mountain Bank in Wilson, Wyoming… CLOSE IT! It’s run by morons.
It isn’t really puppycide if the dog survived, even though the disturbing trend by police to just shoot a dog rather than deal with it humanely continues unabated. A very sad trend.
The bank-gmail story is definitely in the holy-crap-they-did-what!?! category.
At the bank I worked at, sending customer info to ANY gmail account would be a firing offense. I used email to communicate with customers, but it always had to be very carefully written so that a) it was clear that it wasn’t a phishing attempt and b) didn’t put even THAT customer’s banking information into a potentially insecure channel (however unlikely it is that anyone is going to hack Joe Schmoe’s gmail account…).
I could see ordering Gmail to delete the email, depending on Wyoming’s privacy laws, but any liability should definitely belong to the bank.
Since its an open thread, I wanted to pass along something from the nanny state past:
This extraordinary film dares to do something no other safety short has ever dreamed of: killing its 9-year-old title character and sending him to hell; a hell run by two doughy, charisma-free demons wearing sensible jackets. Yes, Tommy Tucker, our protagonist, is a whiny, friendless little twerp who devotes himself to the petty hectoring of his fellow citizen. His dream of transforming his local institutions into an all powerful nanny state is cut short, however, when one fed-up individual decides to polish his bumper on Tommy’s midsection. And so Tommy goes to hell (which would have been a fine and fitting end to the matter, but alas, it’s not to be), and instead of reacting with horror and regret at his eternal separation from God, Tommy sizes the place up and finds it not half bad, but all things considered, he’d rather be home bothering folks.
Kevin, Bill and Mike try their best to find a reason, just one reason, that Tommy shouldn’t, in fact, spend a nice long eternity in hell.
http://www.rifftrax.com/shorts/case-tommy-tucker-part-1
http://www.rifftrax.com/shorts/case-tommy-tucker-part-2
That “Stepford President” montage is impressive indeed. He really does look animatronic. I imagine that’s a good skill to have if you are a politician, so everyone can have a photo that is suitable for framing.
I’m sure you could make a similar montage with Reagan.
Well if it’s an open thread (Don’t blame me, Radley. Johnny Longtorso said so) I have some good news* relating to the 2nd.
Woman kills purse snatcher
* Good news that the woman defended herself. Should I feel guilty that the punk dying brought a smile to my face?
I’ve got different take on the bank/email story… why would a bank indeed go to such expensive legal lengths to have a court shut down a person’s gmail account?
Because now that they have, they’ve shown that the end user – the unintended mail recipient – had partial liability in this breach of privacy. All that remains in the future is to successfully argue that the end user has *more* liability than the bank, and now they’ve fairly-well insulated themselves against civil lawsuits.
Just pondering.
I’m surprised about the porn convention having difficulty find a venue, although I haven’t been in the hospitality industry in decades. Perhaps the industry has become infested with a bunch of sleaze-balls, they used to be a quiet group that paid well and were excellent tippers. Not at like politicians or newspeople who used to be the worst conventions – at least the trekkies tipped.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/sep/25/on-duty-or-cops-not-immune-red-light-camera-tix/
saw this on instapundit. nice to see cops getting speeding tickets and actually paying the fines.
Max – oddly enough the campaign to keep the convention out of Secaucus was spearheaded by the recently indicted former mayor Dennis Elwell.
That Puppycide article has a comment by “JOEJOEJOE” that is so pertinent, and hilarious, I copied it for the record:
“Remember, folks: police officers are nature’s perfect miracle. Rainbows shoot from their hindquarters after a baked bean banquet. Their every action, without exception, is an example of judicious, sanctified transcendence so pure in its beauty that the angels themselves are overcome with emotion and weep torrential tears of ecstatic joy.
They should never be questioned. Just as you – not being a trained gourmet chef – are unable to tell rotten eggs from fresh ones, so too are you, the civilian, simply incapable of determining whether a police officer’s actions are justified or not.
Nay! We must ensure that police officers are always held apart from the common riff-raff. They should not be burdened by our silly laws or troublesome regulations, nor by our primitive notions of ethics and civility. They are truly the master race, and it is our duty to bow down to their infallibility.”
Thanks #17 Rick for bringing that over here.
haha at 17 thanks
#12 J Sub D,
Just think, a couple of years ago and she wouldn’t have been allowed to have the weapon she needed to defend herself.
Attempted puppycide, the security guard instead shoots the mayor’s wife’s car. http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/dpp/news/tennessee/092409_Car_of_Mayors_Wife_Shot_by_School_Guard
““Holy crap” ruling from federal judge orders Google to suspend a user account because a bank inadvertently sent its owner private customer data. ”
One thing that came to mind: Google must have scads of dormant accounts, throw-aways, forgotten temporary accounts, etc. They are free, after all.
It would be interesting to know whether the account in question has been in active use.
I’m not sure I’d object if Google deleted a dormant account with an unreachable owner, especially if the only contents of the account were the email in question.
#7 | Ride Fast | September 26th, 2009 at 10:47 am
It isn’t really puppycide if the dog survived,
Yes, attempted puppycide it is. This is so, because we all know that police officers shoot to kill when shooting at dogs.
You know, this whole police officers being allowed to shoot at dogs on a whim is getting so dangerous, after all the guns are outlawed, I wouldn’t be surprised to see all dogs outlawed. Then the State can move on to knives, bats, sticks, rocks and bare hands. Then the world will truly be safe.
You forgot swords :P
Unfortunately, a rapidly decreasing number of police departments allow their officers to fire a warning shot anymore for any reason. So you either shoot something or you do not discharge the weapon at all.
Of course, they could just use OC spray (if they are issued it and carrying it), but there is a very small possibility that it will prove to be ineffective. I suspect many LEOs use that small possibility as an excuse to not even reach for OC when a dangerous (or perceived dangerous) canine is involved.
We need to maintain some objectivity about these incidents, however. Every time that a cop shoots a dog, there is always going to be some owner or person from the neighborhood that is more than happy to tell the local media what an “angel” the dog was, blah-blah-blah, and the local media will be more than happy to publish those comments. That doesn’t make it true.
So next time the mailman puts my neighbor’s mail in my box, will the courts have my house demolished and my address purged from existence?
@ #27 -
No, they will apparently issue a court order directing the USPS to halt delivery and collection of your mail.