The essence of government is power, and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. – James Madison
Every week has a large number of police brutality stories, but this week had an unusually large number of offenses which are especially odious both for their incredible savagery and the triviality of the excuses under which they were inflicted. For example, two Los Angeles cops handcuffed a 5’4″ (163 cm) nurse and slammed her head into the pavement for the heinous crime of talking on her cell phone, and five others in the same city left a morbidly obese woman to suffocate to death in the back seat of a police car after hobbling her and literally cramming her into the car with a kick to the genitals. In Alabama, another brave hero assaulted a 90# (41 kg) brain-damaged woman who walks with a cane for the monstrous offense of taking pictures at a high-school football game. And then there were the wanton murders of three dogs: a South Carolina cop trespassed in a yard he had no business in and shot a tethered dog who could not even reach him; Buffalo, New York thugs broke into a woman’s house with a false warrant and murdered her dog while she was away, leaving her to discover the carnage when she returned; and a Denver-area sadist just shot his victim at random while harassing a “drug suspect” in the street.
All three examples of what Radley Balko calls “puppycide” are from his Twitter feed; a depressingly-large number of similarly-nauseating cases can be found on his blog, The Agitator. He also provided the first two links after the first video, and the next two after that (plus the second video) are courtesy of Jesse Walker. But first: if you’re a “moon landing hoax” crackpot, it probably isn’t a good idea to trick Buzz Aldrin into an interview and then insult him.
- 11-year-old arrested, charged with “child pornography” for sexting.
- Man playing part of Bigfoot gets new role as roadkill.
- Missing woman searches for herself.
- “Many scientists don’t like to talk about shark sex.”
- A common skin condition is caused by microscopic, poop-filled, exploding spiders who like to have sex on your face. You’re welcome.
- Florida deputy uses Spidey-sense to establish probable cause.
- Glenn Greenwald on blind obedience to authority.
- Violet Blue on why you should worry about face-recognition technology.
- Heroic cops protect the public decency from bachelor-party style performance nobody complained about.
- I agree that this is horrible. But it’s not life-in-prison, $250,000 fine, harsher-sentence-than-most-murders horrible.
- This excellent William Anderson article explains how the “progressive” philosophy led inevitably to horrible prosecutorial abuses in the United States, such as federal prosecutors using an 88-year-old communist law from Mongolia as an excuse to steal a man’s property.
Speaking of relics from the 1920s, here’s a Dutch ethnographic film from that time, in Pathécolor.
- FBI gives free face-recognition software to all police departments while insisting it will only ever be used to search mugshots.
- Judge calls $675,000 fine for downloading 30 songs “fair”.
- So, is this “human trafficking” too?
- Well, you know, “family values” and “best interests of the child” and all.
- Inspector Javert would be proud: Government forces bank to fire man for trying to steal 10¢ in 1963.
- Ignoramuses describe reproductions of paintings by Magritte, Munch and Goya as “bizarre…sexual…violent [and] very disturbing“, and declare they “may not be suitable for all ages.”
(Thanks to Grace for the first two links after the video, Cthulhuchick for the third, Wendy Lyon for the fourth, Mike Siegel for the fifth and reader MTflyboy for the last.)
