TheAgitator.com
Tuesday Links
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010Busy day today. Here’s a link dump to keep you occupied…
- Conservatives who cheerlead federal spying on citizen correspondence call for execution of whistleblower who exposed federal government correspondences.
- NYU New York Law School criminal law professor argues that the death penalty isn’t painful enough. That would be pretty far down my list of objections to capital punishment.
- L.A. slaps jaywalkers with $191 fine.
- Nearly four dozen Prince Georges County cops swept up in corruption probe.
- So . . . $27K in concert tickets?
- If it isn’t the worst, it’s in the top ten.
- Finally! Athlete who blew game-winning touchdown blames God for his mistake.
Godvernment how can you do me like that!
Conyers Caddy on Brush Street? Bob Seger had something to say about that.
What about the 15 year old shooter in Wisconsin. Will he be harvested like Thomas McIlvane? Organs for Obama Care?
“This is about more than reducing accidents during the holidays,” said LAPD Lt. Paul Vernon. “This is about preventing thefts and robberies. Jaywalking is often done by thieves, purse snatchers and robbery suspects to target their victims.”
Cleanup on aisle 5. My head exploded.
But if the death penalty were agonizingly painful and obviously so, more of would see it for what it is.
Not that I advocate any death penalty, but the false sanitization prevents me from arguing against taking the barbarism out of the process (such as replacing lethal injection with nitrogen asphyxiation).
wait a minute…Prince Georges county police can be held accountable? Since when?
I came here to call out the same quote, Mike Leatherwood. On the public safety side, they point to 2 pedestrian-fault accidents last December as the need to take an aggressive ($191) stand against jaywalking. As one of the commenters to the article pointed out, that’s 3 full days of pre-tax pay at CA’s minimum wage!
I would have more respect for these a-holes if they just said “we need money badly so we are jacking up every fine we can think of. Don’t jaywalk or we will take your money.”
I’m so glad Blecker is a criminal law professor, there to shape minds with his unsettling impression of “moral balance.”
Yes. Never mind legal murder, a horrible justice system, questioning why we should kill people for killing people. No, it’s not painful enough.
Asshole.
Finally! Athlete who blew game-winning touchdown blames God for his mistake.
Hooray.
I am always hoping that some tackle who has just sent an opposing player to the ICU would say “God really wanted me to bust that guy up bad.”
@ JS | November 30th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
wait a minute…Prince Georges county police can be held accountable? Since when?
Remember that 1) These are only charges and 2) The prosecutors still know whom they have to please.
If it isn’t the worst, it’s in the top ten.
I’ll grant it is bad, but I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus is infinitely worse.
Aresen, you mean this might result in…another paid vacation?
Correction — Robert Blecker is NOT an “NYU criminal law professor”. He is a “criminal law professor at New York Law School” (per article). This school is not related to NYU.
I can’t think of any Christmas song that can touch ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer’ for the ‘worst song’ crown.
Radley having a ‘busy day’ is worrisome- we’re locking up the dogs…
JS: That, and they might have to turn the proceeds over to the ‘asset forefeiture’ fund. (Christmas is just 3 weeks away, after all.)
I actually applaud the wikileak folks. as much as politicians like to talk and pay lip service to “transparency and accountability” they never seem to do it. And the painful truth is, this is what it looks like. Being held accountable for every embarrassing moment./statement/email.
What I find most appalling about this whole thing is press releases like hillary clintion’s that don’t actually show signs of embarrassment or remorse about the things they said or did but frustration about being exposed. And of course blaming wikileaks.
Exactly kant! Wikileaks is what a free press looks like, and it is clear that the US government hates the idea of a free press.
I work in Downtown L.A. and jaywalk regularly. Thanks for the tip.
re Conyers: he needs to be next after Maxine Waters for a slap by the House and preferably investigation by the Feds. Lets not forget, his wife is doing time for corruption and was featured in a famous YouTube where she is chewing out a high school student who asked an impertinent question. It seems that entitlement runs deep in the family.
re Conservatives and whistleblowers: the other thing that gets me is that a number of these people are arguing for less government. If you expose government communications, you get a good look into the workings of government, and can ask why the government needs to be doing such things, and keeping them secret. (Personally, I can see the need for confidentiality of State Dept correspondence).
re Bill Kristol: I wonder if Bill is also calling for the execution of Scooter Libby and Judith Miller for exposing government secrets.
“[Rep. John Conyers'] wife, Monica, is serving a 37-month federal prison sentence…”
First, the wife is in jail, now the kid is an unauthorized driver of a government vehicle! Where does it end?
I love how he covers his ass, with that “THX THO”…
‘Fuck you, God, to hell with you… I hate you, you don’t do nonthin’ for me. (praise Jesus)’
The concerts ticket thing sounds like an insurance scam to me. Like the old Ron White routine with his insurance adjuster… “Mr. White, I don’t think Rolex makes a car stereo…”
One of the reasons I oppose capital punishment by government is that it provides a means by which people who are into causing pain and suffering can get their jollies. Doing so under color of law, or cheering an officially sanctioned execution, simply gives such people power they ought not have. And, they presume to do so on our behalf.
Still, while I don’t trust the government with the power of capital punishment, due to all the negative incentives and the risk of killing innocents, I’m not opposed to executions, per se. There are monsters who deserve to die. And, while I don’t particularly care if they suffer, I wouldn’t trust the person who gets satisfaction out of inflicting pain.
Where’s Christopher Hitchens when you need him?
Is there any overlap between the corrupt Prince George County officers and the Cheye Calvo case?
The winner is and will forever remain “Christmas Shoes.”
Let’s reconsider what we do by embracing lethal injection as our goal. By definition “punishment” and “pain” have been inseparably connected. Those who advocate “painless punishment’’ call for contradiction. Punishment to be punishment must be painful.
These past few centuries, however, punishment morphed into something that denies its own nature. Electrocution and gas replaced hanging, by and large to avoid pain. Then lethal injection replaced them both.
The good professor is wrong and yet inadvertently right.
We latched onto lethal injection not because it’d be less painful to the prisoners- we don’t give a hoot about them- but because it would be less painful for US. Because by tying a guy to a gurney (and it is almost always a guy) and pretending that he is just falling asleep (even if he may be paralyzed in agonizing pain) WE can pretend that WE are being humane. WE have decided that the death penalty should be antiseptic, anticlimactic and aesthetically pleasing. This debases us and the death penalty. If we want the death penalty it’s because we want to take revenge on them. And we should. Instead of injection, lets have a governor sign the death warrant and then march up to the prisoner and shoot him between the eyes. That’s killing. That’s death. That’s real.
Gonzo i was going to say something about “Christmas Shoes”
For those who haven’t seen it, here is an animated version of Patton Oswalt’s hilarious send up of the song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq10bz3PxyY
So the terror of being held prisoner for months or years knowing that you will be killed at a certain time is not suffering enough? That the good professor does not take this into account says something about him and not something good.
And yes, I detest the sanitization of the death penalty involved in lethal injection more than the death penalty itself. If you are going to do it at all, have no ritual and make it quick, simple and obviously violent. A bullet to the back of the head is the obvious way. Instantaneous, simple and requires no skill. If it requires skill they can take pride in that skill. Not a good thing.
Speaking as a former resident of the D.C. area, I’m not at all surprised that PG county cops are corrupt. What I’m greatly surprised by, is the feds doing anything about it during a democratic administration.
-jcr
Elliot:
When you bust some guy up on God’s orders, I’m pretty sure the verb used is “to smite.”
RE: Conyers
Why the fuck does a congressman have a government Cadillac Escalade? If he for some reason must have a taxpayer funded automobile then why not a simple ford taurus or other fleet type vehicle?
RE: Death Penalty
I’ve always thought that if the state is going to kill someone under the authority of law it should be done by hanging or firing squad. It should also be conducted in a public place and be televised. If the public is going to have the state kill in their name then they damn well better watch the sentence being carried out. It shouldn’t be done privately and it shouldn’t be done antiseptically with a sleepy needle.
Way back when capital punishment WAS gruesome and obviously painful, nobody really objected. (I’m not sure that gas or electrocution is really less painful than a properly conducted hanging, though the PR for it at the time may have claimed so).
A culture willing to support extremely painful or public or gruesome methods of execution is not a culture that is going to abolish it for humanitarian reasons.
And for fuck’s sake, I’d think the idea of making an even more painful and horrifying experience for the victim of an official state-murder as a kind of reverse-psychology guilt trip for the masses would make an individualist retch. Fuck that. Seriously.
I think if God gets credit for your successes, he should absolutely get the blame for your failures.
Conyers should have done to prison for dereliction of duty for his read the bill remarks. This only buttresses the point that he has little regard for the rules and should be dismissed. The concert tickets appear to be a scalping operation. Want to bet nothing is done about any of this.
Dogs barking Jingle Bells is by far the worst.
“Conservatives who cheerlead federal spying on citizen correspondence call for execution of whistleblower who exposed federal government correspondences.”
In Iran they call this a Fatwa, right?
New York Law School is NOT part of NYU. It is an independent, fourth-tier, near-diploma-mill law school in New York City.
•So . . . $27K in concert tickets?
•If it isn’t the worst, it’s in the top ten.
Saw Roger Waters in concert last night at the Staples Center, The Wall start-to-finish. One of the most amazing, moving spectacles I’ve ever seen.
Fuck Bill Kristol.
Palin said the same as Kristol today: http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3251386/sarah-palin-says-target-wikileaks-julian-assange-like-the-taliban/
Still needs correction — No such thing as “NYU New York Law School”. New York Law School is NOT part of NYU. (See also #40).
The jaywalking sting has been going on for at least a couple of years now, and they don’t just do it at the holiday season. They set up at the 7th and Metro Red Line station, which is one of the major subway stations in LA, and it’s very busy with pedestrians and vehicles. It’s a couple of motorcycle cops – they hide the motorcycles behind newspaper stands or in the building arcades. They get people who step into the intersection after the red countdown starts flashing. They are ticketing commuters going to their offices, not pickpockets, thieves, or the mentally disturbed homeless people who sometimes wander into traffic.
Sometimes there are so many people waiting to cross the street that if you’re at the back of the crowd, you can’t make it to the curb before the red countdown begins. Sometimes it’s difficult to step into the street when you get the “Walk” light because vehicles are running the red light and may mow you down, or because the intersection is blocked with vehicles who proceeded through the intersection even though there was no room for them, and then got stranded when the light changed. Standard big-city stuff – but I expect most big cities don’t hand out jaywalking tickets for this sort of thing. I believe the tickets were $148 up until recently – inflation, baby!
Yeah, it’s just a money-grab by the city of LA. Raising taxes is political suicide in California, so they’re just raising everything else.
I also think that turning the police into revenue-collectors isn’t a good thing, and that’s a big part of my issue with traffic policing too — if you make it all about the fine revenue, then you focus police attention on easy revenue targets and away from real dangers. You also reduce public trust in the police — the more you do this, the more the populace sees the police not as someone who can help if things are ging badly, but as someone to avoid because they’re just looking for you to screw up so they can slap you with a fine.
As “delta” has repeatedly stated in the comments, NYU Law — although admittedly not in the same league as Manhattan’s premiere institution of legal education, located farter north — hardly deserves to be confused with New York Law School.