TheAgitator.com
Morning Links
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010- Senator gets high in the D.C. suburbs, urinates in public, has to be taken in for medical care.
- Dem group attacks Rand Paul for being “soft on crime.”
- Great photoset of Washington, D.C. from the 1980s.
- Think twice before calling the police.
- This is the part where she comes to life, dons a cape, then goes about restoring constitutionally-limited government.
- L.A. Weekly blogger manages to show off ethnic bigotry and economic ignorance in a single post about Prop 19. Here’s a good explanation of how he can’t even get his stereotypes correct.
Interesting DC photos back at the end
of the crack epidemic. Now in DC’s there’s more stucco, cell phones,
and a cop on every corner.
“China Doll” restaurant? Gotta be a front, just gotta.
Hmmm… the “soft on crime” card has been unfairly played against democrats for decades, yet nary a peep on this blog. So why the sudden indignation when the same tactic is used against a republican?
“Soft on crime” works as a tactic. If the democrats are going to keep the ahistorical nuts like paul out of office they are going to have to adopt the kind of hardball tactics the republicans have. Turnabout is fair play.
Hmmm… the “soft on crime” card has been unfairly played against democrats for decades, yet nary a peep on this blog.
Keep trolling, and I’m going to ban you.
You’re either intentionally lying, or you’re spouting off without even a preemptory search to be sure you know what the hell you’re talking about.
Senator gets high in the D.C. suburbs, urinates in public, has to be taken in for medical care.
A friend of mine once took her dog to a vet E.R. and found there was another dog there that had eaten an entire pan of pot brownies. I can’t recall what was more of a danger to the dog… the pot or the chocolate. Guess we’ll just have to ban both!
I’m game- provide a few links to posts where you have complained about democrats being unfairly accused during a campaign of being “soft on crime” and I’ll retract.
That first link was some kind of cruel joke. You had me all excited.
Re: Rand Paul. Good to see American Prospect calling the Dems on this BS. By linking Rand Paul to less drug laws, the Dems just handed him the election
I’m game- provide a few links to posts where you have complained about democrats being unfairly accused during a campaign of being “soft on crime” and I’ll retract.
Find them yourself. I have better things to do.
But you’ve been warned.
If there were a candidate who was admittedly “soft on crime”, I would drop everything to work for his/her campaign, since “soft on crime” translates roughly as “correct on drug laws”. As per a straightforward reading of the constitution, a true “tough on crime” politician would end up imprisoning most of his coworkers and subordinates for treason, which would be excellent.
@2 bobzbob
The attacks on Paul stem from a speech he gave 2 years ago where he said “things that are nonviolent shouldn’t be against the law,” which was taken so wildly out of context that everyone could have a problem with it. Was he saying that thieves and fraudsters weren’t doing anything wrong? Of course not, he was talking about bike helmets and fatty foods and casino gambling.
Still, I had a big problem with Paul’s explanation:
“It really isn’t our job to tell people whether they should smoke or not,” Paul said. “It’s not our job to tell people whether they should eat too much or not. We’re a free society where individuals can decide what they want to decide.” So far, so good.
Followed by:
“And I’m not proposing any changes in the drug laws or laws against prostitution.”
Why not, Mr. Paul? Is there some constitutional difference between a bottle of vodka and a joint? Or is this simply the pragmatist coming through.
I wonder if Radley the Republican Shill will back me up on this one.
Re The Senator pissing in public:
I know it has been said many times before, but if one of us ordinary peasants were caught doing that, we wouldn’t be taken in for medical care.
Of course they did not disclose what party Senator belonged to, so he must have been a Democrat!
But if grid lock in Congress is good, perhaps lots of dope would be even better. I suspect nothing would happen and they would get along a lot better.
Maybe Senator has a pretty good idea there….
“Radley the Republican Shill”
I LOL’d… ;)
You don’t have even the foggiest clue about netiquette, do you? The accuser needs to provide the proof. You are the accuser. Find the proof.
“they are going to have to adopt the kind of hardball tactics that republicans have”
You say this like Democrats just discovered the “soft on crime” tactic yesterday. Newsflash: they’ve been using it for years. I’ve also been reading this blog for years, and Radley (and in general, the blog’s readers) have always been critical of the tactic, regardless of who is employing it. I guess that isn’t enough for you though because you’re just too wrapped up in your silly red team vs. blue team mindset. Searching back through the blog I couldn’t find a tit-for-tat equivalent post criticizing a Republican for using the tactic on a Democrat, but I did find:
http://www.theagitator.com/2008/12/30/prison-reform-on-senate-agenda/
(A post in which Radley praises Jim Webb for raising the issue of prison reform despite leaving him vulnerable to [Republican] soft on crime attacks)
http://www.theagitator.com/2008/10/28/john-mccain-we-must-stop-coddling-criminals/
(A post in which Radley criticizes John McCain for a blustering “Get tough on crime” speech)
Yeah…Radley’s a real Republican shill alright…
Bingo! After murdering a man…
I’m with Kristen: Bobzob, you need to provide the proof, especially since your position is at odds not only with the blogmeister, but with the positions he has espoused over the many years.
“Senator gets high in the D.C. suburbs, urinates in public, has to be taken in for medical care.”
It’s not easy being a pimp.
KristenS,
That’s not even netiquette, it’s elementary argumentation.
Can’t fault him though – incorrectly placing the burden of proof is how institutions perpetuate. Arguments about god suffer from this problem. “You claim one? You prove it!”
You don’t have even the foggiest clue about netiquette, do you? The accuser needs to provide the proof. You are the accuser. Find the proof.
In fairness to bobzbob, it’s kind of hard for him to provide links to Radley NOT calling out Republicans for accusing Dems of being soft on crime.
That being said, I think it’s a strawman argument. Technically, he’s kind of right… Radley doesn’t often explicitly call out Republican accusing Democrats of being soft on crime. Of course, there’s a good reason for that: it’s status quo. To use the old “dog bites man” trope, a Republican calling a Democrat soft on crime is “dog bites man” while a Democrat calling a Republican soft on crime is “man bites dog.” It’s inaccuracy compounded by hypocrisy.
To me, the real question isn’t whether Radley calls out Republicans when they act like Republicans; it’s whether Radley calls out Republicans when they hypocritically act like Democrats. Radley’s incessant dogging of the Obama administration when it comes to civil rights should make the answer to that question perfectly clear.
(Also, I would add that the very nature of this blog repudiates Republicans for clinging to the “soft on crime” myth even if he doesn’t pick a specific Republican to lambaste each day.)
Amazing how much DC has changed in 25 years. It just doesn’t look like the same place. Kinda glad too, because most of those pics make DC look like crap.
What’s killing me is the super poor looking stuff on K St NW.
Why was DC so different back then. It’s not like the way the Fedgov worked was so different, or was it?
“You don’t have even the foggiest clue about netiquette, do you? The accuser needs to provide the proof. You are the accuser. Find the proof.”
THink for just a minute about your statement. My accusation is that Radley doesn’t defend democrats accused of being “soft on crime”, the proof would be an absence of such defenses. How can I find something that doesn’t exist? Illogical.
I find that the “find it yourself” response universally means “I can’t find it either”.
P.S. I DID google combinations related to Balko +democrat +”soft on crime” before my post. I came up with nothing relevant.
P.S. the mccain link does indicate radley’s disagreement with the “soft on crime” argument but we don’t find any defenses of democrats who might agree with him.
The author of the LA weekly piece is Latino himself. Not sure what to make of that.
Also, Republicans have been making soft on crime accusations on Democrats for decades. If Radley Balko hasn’t noted them much, it might be because they’re much less interesting them Democrats accusing Republicans.
Goodbye, bobzbob.
RE: LA Blegger
damn format error.
“Think twice before calling the police.”
Twice?
Better yet, don’t even think about calling the police.
That is, unless you’re 5-0.
“This is the part where she comes to life, dons a cape, then goes about restoring constitutionally-limited government.”
Now that last item would truly prove her super-powers! Especially because there never was “constitutionally-limited government” in the first place!
The Rand Paul is just another example of Democrats not really being the “liberals” that their voter blocks want them to be. Something tells me that if Kentucky had a larger black population, this Democrat would be singing a different tune about drug laws.
I’m not sure what stereotypes of Hispanics you’re talking about being false. We know a lot about marijuana and its harmful effects. There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.
There’s more. An entire family was murdered by a youthful addict in Florida. When officers arrived at the home, they found the youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an axe he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He seemed to be in a daze… He had no recollection of having committed the multiple crime. The officers knew him ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man; now he was pitifully crazed. They sought the reason. The boy said that he had been in the habit of smoking something which youthful friends called “muggles,” a childish name for marijuana.
Clearly, dangerous stuff.
[...] Mark Thompson on October 13, 2010 It’s stories like this (via Balko)- in which a Dem-affiliated PAC attacks Rand Paul for being “soft on crime” – [...]
Here’s another Rand-bashing Conway ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN492C6aEP4
In this one, a man explains how he recently lost his son to drug addiction. “Drugs are a crisis. I can’t believe that Rand Paul said that drugs aren’t a pressing issue in Kentucky and that he would end federal drug enforcement.”
So you’re son has a drug problem, you do nothing to help and expect that the DEA is the answer? Here is a man who is out of touch with reality. I suppose he would have preferred his son’s demise to be more honorable, like say being shot in a drug raid. Or perhaps, on the luckier side, locked-up for a few years.
“There’s more. An entire family was murdered by a [pot-crazed] youthful addict in “Florida. When officers arrived at the home, they found the youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an axe he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. ”
—
Used figuratively, the term hashish connoted meanings such as “outcast” or “rabble”.[Daftary 1] Taken literally, however, various orientalist scholars came to view the Nizaris as having consumed hashish before carrying out political assassinations.
Interestingly, US Military kooks returned to the region a thousand yeras later, smoked hashish and went on berserk killing rampages of civilians.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-afghan_28int.ART.State.Edition1.4ce3650.html
Stranger than fiction.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve told clients not to call police unless they want to risk getting arrested, tazed, beaten, or shot. I’ve had many cases where people called 911 due to a domestic disturbance, complaint about neighbors, etc and the cops start poking around and find a bong or whatever in partial view and BINGO another arrest to go towards the quota.
This is precisely what unions do. They take care of their own. They have no mission to advance officer integrity, reduce crime, promote service to the community, ensure justice, etc, etc, etc. They exist only for the benefit of their members (and management) to the exclusion and often at the expense of the public.
Remember that next time you see some TV talk show host or news anchor suggesting that the teachers’ unions have something significant to offer in the way of improving education in the U.S. The unions are the fox and the school system is the hen house. Children are only important to the extent that they are useful for lining the pockets of the union.
Negative four! Ouchy.
It is a joke. I thought it was funny.
our kids don’t know how to call 911. we told them we don’t have the special phone here… our phones don’t have elevens on them…
911 is a sledge hammer- unless you are in a life or death situation that you cannot handle, I don’t advise calling. it can be a great tool if you need a sledgehammer, but it’s not good for most problems.
#38 Marty,
Every time it’s appropriate to a conversation I use your 9-1-1/sledgehammer analogy. Often I add “if you call ‘em there’s a really good chance that someone, at a minimum, is going to jail and that ‘someone’ just might be you.”
#37 Dave,
Which is why we (the public) must make all LEOs pay for the rotten ones. Until the math says “Bad cops hurt all cops” the unions will “Blindly support bad cops.” Right now, their strategy pays off handsomely.
Same for Teacher Union. There has always been only one solution supported by the Teachers Union: throw money at the problem.
#37 Dave,
Which is why we (the public) must make all LEOs pay for the rotten ones. Until the math says “Bad cops hurt all cops” the unions will “Blindly support bad cops.” Right now, their strategy pays off handsomely.
Same for Teacher Union. There has always been only one solution supported by the Teachers Union: throw money at the problem.
This is precisely what unions do. They take care of their own. They have no mission to advance officer integrity, reduce crime, promote service to the community, ensure justice, etc, etc, etc. They exist only for the benefit of their members (and management) to the exclusion and often at the expense of the public.
Why do we even use the term union, rather than the proper term, cartel.
Off topic:
Is anyone else getting the Pro-War on Drug Ad on this site right now?
[I think the advertiser is not reaching their target audience.]
I hate to see Radley plonk anyone. His blog, though.
Aresen, the ads on this site often suggest I join various law enforcement professions. Must be a keyword thing, but it’s still funny.
The idea that anyone should just be “tough on crime” is one of the most terrifying, damaging, stupid ideas of recent years. It’s cheap fear mongering and it works. And somehow, nobody ever suggests being smart on crime. Or that the crime in question is not a real crime.
This is one of the many reasons Republicans/many conservatives have no small government credibility. The government could never handle (attempting to supposedly) helping people, but ever single person in jail deserves all they get. Hell, if you were picked up and questioned or arrested, they must have known something bad that you did.
Insane faith in law and order and the justice system is not small government. Nice to see the Democrats are being as blatantly pathetic as to use “soft on crime” as an insult.
Pegr: While a vigorous comments section, including heretics, is good for the health of a blog, uninformed trolling is not. Its like going to a public meeting: everyone should have their voice heard, but if someone keeps going on and disrupting things, at some point they get ejected.
#38 Marty,
“Every time it’s appropriate to a conversation I use your 9-1-1/sledgehammer analogy. Often I add “if you call ‘em there’s a really good chance that someone, at a minimum, is going to jail and that ’someone’ just might be you.”
This is not really different from the stop snitching campaign in black neighborhoods that got so much hate from the media a couple of years ago.
#40 | MacGregory and JS
I agree 100% with both of your spins on this. I forgot about the ‘stop snitching’ campaign- what a great piece of civil disobedience to the drug warriors!
[...] via The Agitator (who wrote the headline) | Photo: Katherine Frey/the Washington [...]
Not that I consider Rand Paul much of a libertarian but I’m not very surprised about the accusations. Democrats for the most part have as much actual interest in individual liberty as Republicans do in fiscal responsibility. They play lip service to it when it’s politically expedient but the overriding goal is getting into office at all cost, not standing on any sort of principle (much less advocating a policy for no other reason that it makes sense).
Keep in mind we’re talking about Kentucky. While there are some actual liberal Democrats in Louisville, the rest of the state’s Democrats aren’t typical of Democrats nationally. The bulk of Kentucky Democrats just consider themselves Democrats because their great-grandfather was a huge fan of Andrew Jackson or James K. Polk. They never actually vote for Democrats or participate in the primaries or anything.
Too bad about bob, he used to add flavor…dunno what got up his skirt today.
L.A. Weekly blogger manages to show off ethnic bigotry and economic ignorance in a single post about Prop 19. Here’s a good explanation of how he can’t even get his stereotypes correct.
On the plus side the commenters tore him a new asshole.
Damnit Boyd @ 17
You stole my thunder!!!
Part of the problem with cops in America is the prevalence of unions.
#48 JS:
“This is not really different from the stop snitching campaign in black neighborhoods that got so much hate from the media a couple of years ago”
Actually, I never thought Marty’s “sledgehammer” idea was that similar to “stop snitching.” And Marty, I think calling “stop snitching” an example of “great civil disobedience” is inaccurate and potentially dangerous. Let me explain.
If the “stop snitching” movement limited itself to saying, “hey, don’t call the police on drug users, corner dealers, prostitutes, or other people participating in ‘victimless crimes’, ” then I would agree with you. But that is not the reality in black neighborhoods.
“Stop snitching” has come to be an all encompassing “don’t call the police, and don’t cooperate no matter what” philosophy. The people who benefit most from this ideology are drug dealers, burglars, thieves and sociopaths, who are allowed to plunder and kill without fear of being held accountable. This leads to situations where countless homicides go unsolved. Where people only call the police on a deceased person when they get tired of the odor of putrefication. And then the neighbors have the gall to say, “The POleece don’t care about us! They don’t do nothin’ for us!” How is that fair?
As I have said before on The Agitator, “stop snitching” = more dead black people. So don’t turn in your pot smoking neighbors. Don’t call the cops because your teenage son won’t get out of bed and go to school. Learn about your rights as a juror. But for god’s sake, don’t buy into the “stop snitching” hype.
[...] via The Agitator (who wrote the headline) | Photo: Katherine Frey/the Washington [...]
“Hmmm… the “soft on crime” card has been unfairly played against democrats for decades, yet nary a peep on this blog. So why the sudden indignation when the same tactic is used against a republican?”
What the fuck, seriously. I doubt Radley much cares about Rand Paul or Republicans; I took the tone of his comment on the link to be the absurdity of “soft on crime” accusations if they can even be used against standard-issue Republican politicians.
““Soft on crime” works as a tactic. If the democrats are going to keep the ahistorical nuts like paul out of office they are going to have to adopt the kind of hardball tactics the republicans have. Turnabout is fair play.”
I just can’t get my head around why anyone would think this sort of argument is relevant even to the complaints they think people are making. I mean, if someone complained about how violent the Mafia or Yakuza or Crips or Bloods or cops are, I could just up and say “Well, they have to be ruthless and amoral scumbags to successfully ply their trades” but that’d be missing the point, which is that they shouldn’t fucking trying to be gangsters in the first fucking place.
Yea I never thought it like that Helmut. I don’t know, I guess it may be an overreaction but if bad things didn’t happen almost every time people interact with the police then I don’t think there would ever have been a “stop snitching.”
#59 JS:
“I guess it may be an overreaction but if bad things didn’t happen almost every time people interact with the police then I don’t think there would ever have been a ‘stop snitching’.”
I agree with you on that, JS. And I think if we did away with the war on drugs and vice, and curtailed the militarization of domestic policing in the U.S., you would see this philosophy dissipate rather quickly.
I am cognizant of the fact that “ghetto policing” played a big role in creating “stop snitching,” but that stuff has to stop when you have bodies dropping all over the place and decent people are afraid to let their kids walk to school.
#60 Helmut O’ Hooligan
But in those same black neighborhoods that you speak of, which is worse:
fear/mistrust of police or fear of retailiation by gang members for snitching?
Helmut-
‘I am cognizant of the fact that “ghetto policing” played a big role in creating “stop snitching,” but that stuff has to stop when you have bodies dropping all over the place and decent people are afraid to let their kids walk to school.’
so… they’re supposed to call cops who aren’t empathetic (and who’ll likely bust them for some bullshit code/vehicle/etc violation) and tell these cops that their drug dealing/gang-involved kid was shot and another drug dealing gangster did it?
we need to minimize govt regulations and allow these people to be free. there are lots of issues in the ghettos- a guy will warehouse 4 hoes in one apt and sublet the section 8 apts the hoes had and make a little money. food stamp fencing. all the little scams that go with welfare. drugs. ‘respect’ and ‘fear’ are synonymous. I worked the ghettos for many years and I didn’t see the cops ever put a dent in crime. these people are getting fucked by the cops and the hoods. legalize drugs and the hoods go away.
your points are well-taken, but I’d still advise people not to deal with the police. the cop’s main strategy is that everyone in the hood is guilty.
Soft on Crime
Article quote: “Kentucky has had one of the fastest-growing prison populations in the country, having grown 45 percent since 2000, from 3,723 inmates to about 20,200 today.”
Are those numbers correct? If so, my math says that is almost 445% increase in inmates. All I can say is WOW!!
Even if Rand somehow managed to reduce the current annual incarceration rate by half, the total prison population will still have increased to 25,150 by the end of his 6 year term in the senate. Like I said before, WOW!!
You mean “throw money at the teachers.”
Dave Krueger:
Yep. The thing is, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s good for policemen and teachers to have someone representing their interests. But we need to be clear (and journalists should, too) about the difference between being a representative of the teachers’ union, and a representative of improving education.
#64 – BoogaFrito
“You mean “throw money at the teachers.”
Too bad none of it ever actually makes it to the teachers. Police forces siphon off seizure funds. State legislatures play budgetary three-card monte with state lottery profits. And by the time each layer of school bureaucracy takes its cut and the school board wastes money on new football stadiums and spy cameras, there isn’t much left left for teacher salaries or for classroom supplies.
banned?
Interesting, I tried to post several times on this yesterday, but none were accepted.
Anyway, Radley, I myself spent quite some time searching Google and this site and could not find any mention of you defending Democrats when they are accused on “soft on crime.” The only things I found were in reference to your police militarization and the John McCain thing. However, I did not find anything with you really defending Republicans.
Unfortunately, neither party really wants to clamp down on some of the most dangerous criminals. I’d like to see some prosecutions of the robbers who attacked Ryan Frederick’s house and were responsible for the death of Det. Shivers (such death being a foreseeable and actual direct consequence of the robbery). I’m not holding my breath, though.
There seems to be a lot of missing the point going on in this thread (in the interest of full disclosure, I love when trolls get banned because it improves the content of the comments).
The “Soft on Crime” item is about the irony of it, not the substance. Everyone knows that no politician is “soft on crime” in the U.S. today, because that’s a good way to not get elected. So they are all pro drug war, pro criminalizing prostitution, pro locking people up for piddly shit.
Throughout the recent political past, however (e.g., the 80′s) Republicans called Democrats soft on crime (the Democrats learned their lesson: they’re now just as irrational on crime issues as Republicans because this issue resonated. Fear works.). So, it’s ironic that Democrats are trying to pull that shit on Republicans. Again, it’s the irony over the substance.
I sincerely doubt that there is a single post in Radley’s archive where he explicitly criticizes a Republican for calling a Democrat soft on crime, because Democrats changed their tune on the issue a long time ago, and it lost its usefulness as a political tool (see, e.g., AEDPA).
Nonetheless, a common thread through virtually all of Radley’s writing is that a great deal of what we criminalize shouldn’t necessarily be criminal at all and that the tactics we use in pursuing criminals are excessive, and result in a grave loss of freedom to everyone, not just real criminals. These were solid Democratic values a generation ago, but the siren’s call of power led Democrats to abandon the values because of the effective political attacks (e.g., Michael Dukakis). Overcriminalization is a serious problem that Radley has dealt with extensively, and the inability of some people to look at issues more broadly than D/R is not his fault.
The “Soft on Crime” slur is just that — a slur. Total bollocks coming from either a Democrat or a Republican. I personally dislike the term because it is a scare tactic that is — more importantly — imprecise. Being soft on weed in Kentucky or West Virginia is right minded. Being soft on meth or oxycontin, which are both ravaging the state, is not so much. With the exception of dealing with international trafficking, drug laws should be made at the local level to reflect the needs of the community.