There’s a broad gulf between what should happen and what does happen in the criminal justice system. – Ken White
As you know if you’ve been reading for the last two Sundays, Radley Balko is taking a sabbatical from his blog, The Agitator, to write a book entitled Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces. In the meantime he’s asked Ken and Patrick of Popehat, Baylen Linnekin of Keep Food Legal, Drew Johnson of the Chattanooga Free Press and a certain harlot to fill in for him, and every Sunday I’ll catch you up on what went on there during the week. This is not to say Radley doesn’t ever look up from his grindstone; he still takes breaks to check Twitter (thus supplying me with some of the links I post in my guest columns), to make short posts (such as this video clip in which Sheriff Andy Taylor explains the 4th amendment to Opie), or to appear on Stossel. One of those quickie posts was a comparison of two recruiting videos for two police departments which couldn’t be more different; the absurd video from Newport Beach, California (which made police work look like an action movie) went viral as a result of his posting it …and if he can do that with something he just slapped together in his spare time, just imagine what he can do when he tries (as with this post on how police fatalities have dropped while police murders of citizens have risen sharply).
Due to a few vacations and other prior commitments some of my fellow guest bloggers were a bit quieter this week than last; Ken posted “In Which You Discover Only What The State Thinks You Should”, explaining why the ACLU is suing the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office over a “special directive” ordering prosecutors to violate the United States Constitution by hiding exculpatory evidence from criminal defendants. Patrick posted a links column, several music videos, a mock obituary of the fictional detective Encyclopedia Brown (in observance of the death of his creator, Donald J. Sobol), and a wickedly Swiftian satire on the tendency of politicians and the media to blame senseless murders on elements of the shooter’s background that have absolutely nothing to do with his homicidal tendencies. Drew posted a links page, a story about rescuing a bunny, and a strong criticism of racists in Tennessee who are angry because their governor appointed a Muslim woman as director of the state’s export bureau.
My contributions for the week started with “Range of Experience”, an argument that there is no such thing as a “typical whore” (supported by links to all of my harlotographies). On Wednesday I cross-posted “Pull the String”, on Friday I featured a video of “Killer Queen” and today I shared pictures of my dog Lady. Finally, here are the links I posted this week:
- This week in Islam-related hoaxes. In the interest of fairness, here’s a non-Islam related one via Radley, who also pointed me to the next seven items and to this horrifying picture of a wet koala.
- CNN: “Iran already has a missile that could reach the US!” Sort of.
- There’s a vast dust cloud in the center of the Milky Way galaxy that smells like raspberries and rum.
- For a welcome change: a puppycide averted.
- Another isolated incident. Make that two.
- Headline and subhead of the day for Thursday, and headline of the day for yesterday.
- Six policies economists love and politicians hate.
- Today’s edition of “Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever”.
The next three came via Jesse Walker:
- Today is a red-letter day in alternate history.
- A brief catalog of slang terms of the types of clients who might visit an English brothel in 1795.
- Holy conflict of interest, Batman!
This one came from Grace:
The rest came from all sorts of places:
- Human evolution: what we can learn from stone tools and petrified stools, and a scientist (and regular reader) discusses why men love tits.
- Alaska town has had a cat as mayor for the last 15 years.
- Florida judges say, “Mens rea? What’s that?”
- The dumbest argument for censorship you’ll read today.
- The legislation whose penalties may end up killing more U.S. jobs than all the call centers in India combined.
- Georgia cops deactivate man’s Tourette’s Syndrome control device, then beat him for the resulting tics and verbal outbursts.
- Thor discovers text messaging.
- Washington judge rules it’s legal for cops to impersonate the owner of a seized cell phone in order to entrap people in the contact list.
- Two men detained for smuggling dangerous contraband candy across Canadian border.
- The Brady Campaign’s response to the Aurora, Colorado murders: guns are bad.
