SWAT team responds to second-grader with a cap gun.
Guy’s wife cries at the end of every movie. Naturally, he videotapes her and makes a website.
Great photo. Takes a master photographer to squeeze so much ego into one frame.
Stories like this one are enough to make me embrace my inner William Bennett. Who thought this was a good idea?
Cheetahs vs. baby antelope. No blood, just nuzzling.
AC/DC’s Brian Johnson tells Bono to get over himself.
Fourth-grader reprimanded, nearly suspended for bringing two-inch Lego gun to school. Looks like they did at least manage to avoid calling the SWAT team.
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on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 2:15 pm by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
Not the first time I’ve seen footage of big cats playing nice with young animals. It always amazes me how predators like them can turn around from killing machines to be gentle nurturers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpfvkeo0KBc
Re: cheetahs and antelope. I got taken in by that one, too. The photo essay stops short of the inevitable bloody ending; the entire set of photos may be viewed here: http://www.biosphoto.com/ (search “cheetahs” + “impala”).
If the antelope hadn’t bolted at then end, all might have been well, but there’s no gainsaying prey drive.
+1000000000 for Brian Johnson
Seriously? Lingerie for pre-teens? Nothing like teaching them to be slutty early in life, eh?
I love both The Agitator and FreeRangeKids. Glad to see them linked.
I learned very young not to call women sluts just for being openly sexy. It scares them away.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10446503-38.html
Radley, you gotta have a chat with this guy…
“Jim Harper, a policy analyst at the free-market Cato Institute, says that he welcomes the idea of a police-only Web interface as long as it’s designed carefully. “A system like this should have strong logins, should require that the request be documented fully, and should produce statistical information so there can be strong oversight,” he says. “I think that’s a good thing to have.”"
I have a proposal: when officials make decisions like these, after the first time, they get an electrical devise attached to their genitals. From then on out, every time they make a stupid decision or overreact to a situation like this, they receive an electric shock.
I know it sounds harsh, but honestly it’s for their own good. It’s the only way they’ll ever learn.
This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
Luckily, I’m the kind of guy who isn’t easily pissed off or I might start a long rant about how the government has no legitimate power to prevent public use of an image created with their money of an institution that they govern (by the people, for the people, etc, etc, etc). I might further protest that denying the use of an image like that tramples on First Amendment protections since it prohibits the use of a publicly owned image for political expression. But since I’m so easy-going, stuff like this just runs right off me like water off a ducks back. In fact, I’m actually smiling right now. Smiling a big ol’ grin. Just sittin’ here smilin’. Jus’ bein’ happy and shit. Tryin’ to be happy. Tryin’ not to care….
Maybe they’re putting the ‘no endorsements and advertisements’ stuff in there to stop those horrible 2 minute commercials about ‘get out of debt’ where they show some old Obama speech about the state of the economy.
They should have called the fire department about the kid with a gun. Past experience shows that, when there’s shooting going on, cops tend to wait outside until the perps shoot up all their ammo and then kill themselves before actually going in. Firemen, on the other hand, will go rushing right into a burning building without a thought for their own safety.
I’m guessing the kid with the Lego gun didn’t get suspended because the gun in question went along with the Lego cop rather than someone realizing that the zero-tolerance rule was idiotic. If it had been a non-uniformed minifig, the kid would have felt the full force of the zero-tolerance, zero-thought rule.
Embrace Bill Bennitt indeed. The good news is that even this bubble-gum celebrity website had “Weep for the future” as the last line of the stroy.
The amount of ego in that photo isn’t so impressive. After all, they beat it in the very next pic:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/4311872762/in/photostream/
Regarding the Noah Cyrus pre-teen lingerie line: This all could have been avoided if the world had listened to my pleas to have Billy Ray Cyrus gelded for “Achey Breaky Heart.” Hate to say I told you so.
So the second grader with a cap gun – the school’s response was to call the cops. Clearly no one at the school investigated to any degree (who shot at you, where, were you hit, are you ok). If they did, they dind’t care for the answer and called the cops anyway.
@14: the comments on that pic are priceless
That was my reaction at first, too. But then I thought, if they had decided to wait until they had more info and it turned out the kid had a real gun and someone was shot, they would be blamed for not calling the cops immediately. I think a case can be made that a report of a gun warrants an investigation by those who are prepared (supposedly) to deal with that kind of potential threat.
What I did find irritating is this:
District spokeswoman Kris Sork says school officials met with the boy and his parents to determine possible punishment.
It’s as if someone has to be charged with something rather than everyone just saying, “Phew! Thank god it turned out to be nothing.”
@#17 | Johnny Clamboat |
The comments improve once the token Republican shows up with his copy/paste liberalsbad/conservativesgood chain letter and the flame war kicks in.
Don’t break my heart,
my achy breaky heart,
but leer at my pre-teen daughter all you want
“District spokeswoman Kris Sork says school officials met with the boy and his parents to determine possible punishment.”
They don’t mention who’s in line for punishment. I suspect it’s not the folks who showed the worst judgment, and who are paid (and trained) to have good judgment.
@11 –
In cases of a burning building you’re certainly correct. OTOH, when it’s a combined agency call such as a domestic violence call with injuries, or a report of someone with a weapon where an ambulance is required, in all jurisdictions I know of the FD will always stage away from the scene until the PD reports the scene is secure.
SWAT team responds to second-grader with a cap gun.
Not sayin’ it was appropriate, but some of those eight year olds are mean little bastards.
““District spokeswoman Kris Sork says school officials met with the boy and his parents to determine possible punishment.
It’s as if someone has to be charged with something rather than everyone just saying, “Phew! Thank god it turned out to be nothing.””
It’s the school, not the police. I just hope the punishment is something less than expulsion, the usual knee-jerk response. As for calling the SWAT team, my initial thought was what Dave eventually concluded up there in comment #18. You can’t criticize schools and the police for not responding fast enough to shootings one time, and then give them grief for responding quickly the next time just because it turned out to be a false alarm. Well, you can. But that just makes you a hypocrite.
Regarding the thing about the Cyrus kid, all I can think is “Really???!!?” Hell, how are some of those pictures not on the verge of child porn? And what kind of father lets his 9-year old daughter wear stuff like some of that, much less let someone photograph it?
If Billy Ray Cyrus wasn’t Billy Ray Cyrus, he’d be in jail now for child endangerment and porn. Truly a sick son of a bitch.
We’ll all bitch about the Cyrus daughter and her lingerie, until the FED’s accuse her of child porn distribution and put her on the sex offenders list. Then we’ll defend her from the culture crusaders. Honestly, I’m more afraid for her safety than I’m angry at her dad. Some prosecutor somewhere has a hard on of excitment ready to make an example out of her.
#9 Dave,
I’m not a lawyer, but the photo is a US Government Work, and I’m pretty sure that that disclaimer isn’t worth the electrons used to transmit it. It is free from copyright and can be manipulated and republished as you see fit, with few limitations.
It’s as if someone has to be charged with something rather than everyone just saying, “Phew! Thank god it turned out to be nothing.”
That’s exactly the way it is, Dave. There are no such things as innocent mistakes or misunderstandings in our policy driven world.
Mattocracy, I agree with you, and it really points out the difference between people hectoring morality and the government trying to legislate or enforce morality. Everything’s worse when you get the government involved.
At that point we wouldn’t be defending her from the ‘culture crusaders’. We’d be defending her from the statist jackholes that want the government to enforce morality.
Looks like someone’s stealing Radley’s links for Fark headlines again…
http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4999138
unless, of course, Radley’s the submitter…
You hit the nail on the head with your first sentence. In his recent Reason piece called “Ruining Kids in Order to Save Them” Radley cited a case of Alabama photographer, Jeff Pierson, who was prosecuted for taking pictures of children none of which were nude, but were posed in ways that were “illegally provocative”.
I don’t think Noah Cyrus has much to worry about from prosecutors, though. Prosecutors like to pursue questionable cases of child exploitation because the accusation alone is enough to almost guarantee conviction, but that doesn’t always go so smoothly when rich celebrities are involved.
In any case, my feeling goes like this:
1. Kids like to dress like adults. Big deal.
2. I doubt that any kid is likely to suffer any quantifiable adverse effect from sexy lingerie. This just can’t be any worse than playing doctor.
4. My reaction is more like an attaboy for challenging paranoid attitudes about sex on the part of the public and those who claim to “care about children”.
5. I think that in context of the glitz and glamor of their celebrity life style, they may have attitudes about sex that differ from that of most people.
6. I don’t think parents have any obligation to seek public approval of their parenting methods.
7. I think the world would be a better place if people were to challenge the status quo more often, even knowing that they will sometimes be wrong and people will be hurt. Progress doesn’t come from conformity.
To summarize, if one were to prioritize where government should be focusing their attention if their goal is to really help children (which, of course, it isn’t), this would be pretty far down on the list (as would be the case of the Alabama photographer).
Child porn prosecutions are becoming less and less about protecting children and more and more about punishing people for having fantasies (ie: thoughts) that the government and society doesn’t approve of.
With regard to the White House Flickr photo:
1.) The newspaper industry as well as other media outlets are experiencing tough times (yeah, just like the rest of us.)
2.) To cut costs, many editors are using these free images rather than paying their photojournalists to cover necessary news events. (My source here is Brooks Craft of the White House News Photographers Association.)
3.) Nothing wrong with trying to save money, but by doing this, editors allow the White House to decide what images are released to the press, rather than the editor choosing which photos make the cut.
4.) Therefore, free speech/freedom of the press takes a hit. The administration would never dream of releasing an image, regardless of its journalistic/artistic impact, showing the president in an unfavorable light. For example, the Pulitzer awarded image by Scott Applewhite of President Clinton exiting the White House after learning that he would face impeachment – had it not been produced by an independent agency – would never have been released. (http://www.press.org/wire/article.cfm?id=458)
Or perhaps more appropriate, this image of Obama ogling the Women’s Movement: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2009/07/10/obama-checking-out-girls-booty-obama-looking-at-mayara-tavares-assets/.
(Apologies – I haven’t taken the time to learn how to include hyperlinks in my comments – just cut and paste.)
OMG PUBLIC OUTRAGE!!!!1111eleven
Did you even read the article? What she’s modeling is way more Shirley Temple than it is Victoria’s Secret. Read before you speak.
If she were selling a line of scrubs, on the other hand…