A known criminal steals a car, drives erratically, law enforcement gives chase. One minute later three innocents are dead.

One minute after a Minnesota State Patrol trooper began to chase an erratic driver early Sunday, the suspect’s car slammed into two others in north Minneapolis, killing a mother and her two young children.

Two thoughts come to mind in light of this tragedy. First, are police chases and the risks they pose to the public worth it? I’ll pass on that for now (but feel free to run with it in the comments section).

Second, can law enforcement equate a criminal failing to stop with the same individual pulling a gun in a robbery?

In fact, if someone, anyone, were to brandish a handgun and start waving it around in a public place would law enforcement be faulted if deadly force were employed to neutralize the situation with due warning?

What’s the difference? Both are wielding deadly weapons and threatening the public.

How many times have you heard a police chase, sometimes for the most minor of offenses, result in the injury or death of bystanders?

Innocent bystanders account for one-third of those who are killed in high-speed police chases, a USA TODAY review has found. The deaths have several communities around the USA wrestling with whether to restrict pursuits only to suspects in violent crimes.

About 360 people are killed each year in police chases, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

So here’s where I’m going with this: if a perpetrator runs, why aren’t the good guys given the authority to stop the chase by putting a bullet through the back of the f*cker’s head? (I recognize by the way that in this particular case, there was not enough time for anyone to alter the outcome)

Discuss.

I was a little leery of tackling the Tom Hackbarth story last week.   

Not because I didn’t think I had the story right; Hackbarth’s behavior was unseemly, as was that of those who piled on to add detail to the story based purely on innuendo and supposition.  

No, I was leery mostly because whenever the topic of Planned Parenthood or any sort of offense against women is concerned, there are not a few people out there who would toss rationality to the wind, if they ever had it in the first place.  

I don’t know Rachel Nygaard, and she damned sure doesn’t know me.  Can she approach this, or any, issue rationally?  Well, she writes for Minnesota Progressive Project, which isn’t a good sign.  But that’d be a smear by association, and judgment by innuendo, and that’s the sort of stuff I condemned in my original piece on the subject.  

Of which more later.  

For better or worse, Nygaard does capably summarize the core of the local Sorosphere’s meme on the subject:  

“I understand why the police and the security guard thought what they might have thought, but it really was insignificant to me.” – Representative Hackbarth  

Tracking down a woman you met once while carrying a gun is an insignificant act? Even if you remove the fact that he was carrying a gun, a man that felt the need to track a woman down when he felt she wasn’t being completely honest with him is stalking behavior  

And if you leave aside the facts that Hackbarth was accused of no crimes, that there is no evidence that the target of his misplaced interest ever knew Hackbarth was looking for her, and that  the gun is irrelevant (Hackbarth has a permit, and permit-holders are two orders of magnitude less likely to commit any kind of crime than non-permittees like, well, Rachel Nygaard, among others), she’s right.  Hackbarth, by his own admission, was at the very least exceptionally clingy; at worst…  

…well, we don’t know, because there was no “at worst”.   Hackbarth parked his car – near Planned Parenthood.  He got out and changed jackets; a security guard saw Hackbarth’s legal, holstered gun, and called the cops.  But for that chance encounter with a closed-circuit camera, we’d have likely have known nothing of the story…  

…and, Rachel Nygaard will no doubt remind you, Hackbarth could have gone on to shoot the woman in a fit of rage.   

Which is, really, all she has.  Could-haves.  

Could-haves and dogma, of course:  

The ‘boys will be boys’ dismissal of his actions by the conservative bloggers astounds me.  When is this type of behavior ever okay?    

This is the GOP blogger Mitch Berg commenting on the Hackbarth issue.

Remember – in the world of domestic law, including “abuse”, “domestic violence”, “stalking” and the like, men are considered guilty until proven innocent.  

Going on to say that

Everything Is Stalking

He later qualifies his more offending statements (not those listed above) but the misogynistic attitude seethes from his post. 

Go ahead and read the article.  It’s nonsense, of course; there is no “misogynistic attitude” – not in the sense that a rational person would understand.  The only “offense” would be to those who find any questioning of The Narrative offensive.  

I won’t say “Nygaard is lying”, because “lying” implies knowing that she’s spreading a falsehood; I think that to Nygaard’s perspective, which (I’m going to go out on a short limb and guess) comes from marinading in Big Feminist dogma for an entire adult lifetime, men are guilty of misogynism, stalking, abuse, or whatever until proven innocent – and furthermore they can never be proven innocent! 

Of course, to Big Feminism (and I think it’s fair to say Nygaard is acting as an agent of Big Feminism), defending a man against even the most facile, unsupported innuendo, by introducing fact into the discussion (or, in this case, pointing out the lack of facts behind the innuendo thrown at Hackbarth), is itself “anti-woman”.   

Clearly, Mitch Berg and Rep Hackbarth have a different moral compass than the rest of us. 

Clearly. 

I believe that the guilty should be punished – and that people are innocent until proven guilty, and that “proof” means a lot more than innuendo, narrartive, and ideology-based assumptions.  I believe in empirical, observable fact, not dogma.  I believe that people are individuals with their own motivations and backstories and strengths and weaknesses and the dignity (and degradation) that comes from the exercise of their own free will  – not facile cartoons that follow pre-written narratives.

 And it’d seem that Nygaard believes that I’m a cartoon.  She puts it in as many words:

I truly hope that they educate themselves about domestic abuse and difficulties protecting women, men and children from domestic assault. 

Dear Rachel Nygaard; keep your prejudices, your narratives, your bigotry off my body.  You don’t know me.  You have no idea where I’ve been and what I’ve done in my life (and I’m not going to tell you any of it here, anyway).  Just as your idiot friends rushed to judge Tom Hackbarth based (as I showed) entirely on narrative, screed and innuendo, so you’re doing with me.  

That’s OK – I can take care of myself just fine, and it’d seem to be all you are equipped to do anyway, and we should expect no more.  

As I said in my original post; stalking is wrong.  Clinginess is a bad idea.  Separation and divorce are a bitch, psychologically as well as every other way.  

All clear?

I just have to ask…why?

The Minnesota School Board Association is advising school districts across the state to expand their harassment and violence policy to specify several more groups, including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) students.

What does it matter for what a student is being “bullied?”

Shouldn’t they add even more groups then?

Short. Tall. Fat. Skinny. Bespectacled.

I was teased for being a “carrot top” in elementary school. Shouldn’t “Individuals with Red or Auburn Hair” be added in case teasing escalates to bullying?

The other day, we ran the video of Joel Rosenberg’s encounter with Minneapolis Police sergeant Bill Palmer, along with some derisive catcalls at the City Pages’ “coverage” of the incident.

Joel is, I should add for those who don’t follow science fiction literature or Second Amendment law, both a science fiction writer and the author of the definitive concealed carry bibles for both Minnesota and Missouri (?). 

Among many other things.

The following is Part I of Joel’s account of his encounter with Sergeant Palmer.

———-
The Palmer Fiasco:  Part One:  Why Joel Isn’t A Criminal

By Joel Rosenberg

A few preparatory matters…

The Palmer Fiasco is only a small part of what’s going on. I could get into the malicious, false arrest of my wife the dismissal of the charges, once she and her lawyer made it clear that they weren’t interested in a plea, but her complete and total exoneration; and, last weekend, the reinstatement of the charges against her. I could get into the data practices requests I’ve been making, and Bill Palmer’s unlawful demand for money before he started to do his job. I could get into the connection to http://gangstrikefarce.com, and how I told Jesse Garcia of the Minneapolis Police Department that I had been working on a book on that, before I ran into a much, much bigger story.

But I’ll save that for another time, and just point whoever’s interested to http://familymatterii.com. There’s a lot going on. Leave it at that, for now.

In order to understand the crimes that Bill Palmer committed—that’s crimes, plural—you have to know a little law, both in statute, and in practice.

[Continued after the jump]

(more…)

…then Al Quaeda is really redundent.  The Ohio Democrat Party, with the full apparent connivance of the public school system, is doing the job for them:

Three van loads of Hughes High students were taken last week – during school hours – to vote and given sample ballots only for Democratic candidates and then taken for ice cream, a Monday lawsuit alleges.

As Hugh Hewitt says, if it’s not close, they can’t cheat.

I think he was too sanguine, frankly.

Laws against texting and driving – including Minnesota’s – perversely increase text-driving accidents:

HLDI studied collision claims before and after four states (California, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Washington) banned texting, and compared the data with crashes in nearby states where texting laws did not change. Thirty states, the District of Columbia, and Guam prohibit texting while driving, while eight states, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands prohibit the handheld use of mobile phones behind the wheel.

“Texting bans haven’t reduced crashes at all. In a perverse twist, crashes increased in 3 of the 4 states we studied after bans were enacted. It’s an indication that texting bans might even increase the risk of texting for drivers who continue to do so despite the laws,” said Adrian Lund, president of HLDI and IIHS. “The point of texting bans is to reduce crashes, and by this essential measure the laws are ineffective.”

The crash increases seen in the states ranged from 1% in Washington state to 9% in Minnesota. However, young drivers are more likely to get into crashes – accidents went up in each of the four states among those drivers after the texting laws took effect. The largest hike was 12% in California.

On the one hand, it might mean that there are 9% more texters.  Or that 9% of texters didn’t hear about the law.

Or that text-messagers are taking such absurd measures to hide their texting from cops and other drivers that they are  making themselves more dangerous than they’d have been otherwise.

They are, in short, not Happy To Stop Texting For A Better Minnesota.

Now if people won’t stop text messaging to avoid crashes, lawsuits and death, because they see it in their best interest (rightly or wrongly) to evade the spirit and letter of the law, how does the DFL figure they won’t work even harder to avoid being seen as making over $150K a year come tax time under a Mark Dayton regime?

I’m waiting for this story…:

Two undercover federal agents infiltrated the violent Pagans biker gang and smashed a plot to kill rival Hells Angels members with homemade grenades, authorities said Wednesday.

Nineteen Pagan members — including a 70-year-old man — and associates were rounded up in coordinated, early-morning raids in Long Island, New Jersey and Delaware. An explosive device packed with nails and 34 guns was seized.

…to be plugged as “right-wing tea party terrorism”.

It’s not often that I praise the Twin Cities’ mainstream media.  Especially the two dailies, whom I would not trust to cover Republican electoral campaigns fairly and honestly (as institutions, not necessarily in terms of each and every reporter) if offered them a billion dollars.

But when they’re right – when they actual do the gumshoe reporting on issues that their institutional biases allow them to be fair and honest about – sometimes they truly do God’s work.

As in the Koua Fong Lee case, as recapped by columnist Ruben Rosario (via  Bob Johnson’s ADemocracy).

Rosario:

Justice prevails, no thanks to ineffective defense counsel and obstinate county prosecutors.

A defense attorney’s mission is to advocate as best he or she can for the client. A prosecutor’s ultimate mission is to seek justice. Both failed miserably in this sad case.

Lee was the driver of a Toyota involved in a horrendous crash in the summer of 2006, in Saint Paul.  I remember driving by the crash scene, on Snelling at I94, as I ran errands that evening; it was one of the worst accident scenes I’ve ever seen.

In hindsight, the first big mistake was to prosecute this case as a felony…there was no evidence at all that this man, returning from church services with his pregnant wife and their 4-year-old daughter, intended to crash at high speed into another vehicle. He was not drunk or high or text-messaging or dozing off or otherwise distracted.

Yet, for argument’s sake, even if we grant that he wrongly stepped on the accelerator pedal instead of the brake, it is still not a felony. No matter. He was charged with multiple counts of criminal vehicular homicide, gross negligence. He was prosecuted and convicted as a criminal and sentenced to an eight-year state prison term.

The problem, as Rosario – recapping a story that was covered in Pulitzer-worthy depth (and by that I mean Pulitzers as they once were, rather than as they are today) by PiPress reporter Jackie Gurnon – was the lawyers; Lee’s “defense” attorney…:

That conviction was secured in no small part with the head-scratching support of a defense lawyer who contradicted his client’s testimony that he stepped and kept his foot on the brake right through the fatal impact.

In fact, this lawyer embraced a key prosecution witness’s gas-pedal theory during closing arguments and never aggressively pursued alternative theories that may have supported what his client was saying about what happened. Who needs prosecutors with a lawyer like that?

…and, most chillingly, the Ramsey County Attorney’s office; even as reports of unintended uncontrollable accellerations in Toyotas multiplied:

…Gaertner and her office not only opposed a new trial, but also brought in “experts” who pooh-poohed new findings that seemed quite obvious. One of the most glaring prosecutorial missteps in all of this was pushing the theory that Lee did not step on the brake because there was a lack of long skid marks at the accident scene.

Of course, the new evidence underlined that Lee’s car had anti-lock brakes, which don’t leave skid marks when applied.

That’s something that should have easily been checked, regardless of the subsequent Toyota recall. But neither the defense nor the prosecution bothered to check this most momentous fact during the trial.

Read the whole thing – and no, I haven’t excerpted anywhere near the whole fascinating story.

It’s good to know there are still reporters that can still do some good in this world.

It’s chilling to realize that Susan Gaertner – the Ramco attorney – has higher political aspirations.

Make no mistake about it – killing a human being, even in self-defense, is a tragedy.

In the case of homicide justified in self-defense, it’s the second-worst tragedy there is.

The Hennepin County Attorney has h declined to prosecute Christopher Lamotte – a bouncer at Grumpy’s Bar, in Northeast Minneapolis – for the shooting of Tirso Gomez.  Gomez allegedly attacked the bouncer with a knife after a closing-time altercation outside the bar:

Minneapolis police asked that no charges be filed, as investigators thought it was a justified killing. Prosecutors agreed, telling FOX 9’s Paul Blume on Friday it was “a valid claim of self defense.”

The Hennepin County attorney’s office said bouncers are not afforded any special privileges in their role as security enforcers at bars and clubs. The right to have a weapon on site is up to individual management and ownership. There was no sign on the door at Grumpy’s banning guns.

I wonder if a bouncer in Saint Paul could expect the same sort of justice.

The only surprising thing about this story…:

…is that it didn’t happen in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Anoka or Edina first.

In fact, I’m not sure that it didn’t; stories like this pop up every few years somewhere in the US.

What is new is the promise by “lemonade stand activists” to launch a lemonade-stand-in at a street fair coming up soon.

I’m liking this whole “fallout from the Tea Party” thing, myself…

Are ACORN employees  dropping the dime?:

The radical activist group ACORN “works” for the Democratic Party and deliberately promotes election fraud, ACORN employees told FBI investigators, according to an FBI document dump Wednesday.

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a watchdog group, are FBI investigators’ reports related to the 2007 investigation and arrest of eight St. Louis, Mo., workers from ACORN’s Project Vote affiliate for violation of election laws. All eight employees involved in the scandal later pleaded guilty to voter registration fraud…The handwritten reports by FBI agents show that ACORN employees reported numerous irregularities in the nonprofit group’s business practices.

“But it’s only voter registration fraud”

Why pay for registrations alone?

According to one report, an ACORN employee said the purpose of “[f]raudulent cards” was “[t]o cause confusion on election day to keep polls open longer,” “[t]o allow people who can’t vote to vote,” and “[t]o allow to vote multiple times.”

Another report quotes an employee saying, “Project Vote will pay them whether cards fake or not – whatever they had to do to get the cards was attitude.” Project Vote pays based on the number of cards and “that’s why they were so reckless,” the report says.

Innocent until proven guilty (or until swept under the table), naturally.

I read this…:

A WOMAN “affixed” herself to a fence on the grounds of the White House today and then doused herself with an “oily substance”.

…and thought “good thing it’s not an un-pluggable sewage break”.

The leftyblog community is turning cartwheels because James O’Keefe pled guilty to his phone shenanigans in Mary Landrieu’s office.

But as with pretty  much everything you read on leftyblogs, the facts are wrong:

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana has filed a court document admitting that James O’Keefe did not intend to tamper with the phones at Mary Landrieu’s office, or commit any other felony.

Oh — and the good folks at the Department of Justice don’t particularly want you to know that. This post reveals that, at O’Keefe’s hearing, the Assistant U.S. Attorney tried not to read that part of the document in court. What’s more, the U.S. Attorney pointedly omitted this critical information from their press release.

And the part that the press carries is, of course, the only reality the lefty smear machine cares about.

his Twitter feed.

Columbia Missouri police SWAT team charges into a house, kills two dogs as the children in the room look on, act like Nazis…

…and find enough pot for a misdemeanor charge.

Two dogs dead, a guy’s house torn apart, and kids traumatized as their watch their pets killed and their parents hauled off in Black Marias cop cars in the middle of the night…

…and for what?   Are “the streets” safer?  No – in fact, I guarantee you the Columbia PD just created two kids who will hate and distrust law enforcement for the rest of their lives.

Are the drug cartels going away?  No – they kill each other off as part of their marketing drives.  A misdemeanor arrest in Missouri isnt’ even background noise.

Our police are becoming more militarized every day – largely to fight a “war” where the fact we can never win is the least of the problems, compared to civil liberties that our idiots overlords are destroying every day to fight it.

Over marijuana.

Billions for fighting real wars.  Not one more penny for this bullshit.

Never more than a degree behind the liberal fashion curve, Saint Paul mayor Chris Coleman ordered a boycott of city-funded travel to Arizona:

[Arizona’s new immigrtion law], “rooted in hate and fear,” sets a dangerous example, Coleman said.

“It will create a culture where racial profiling is acceptable and will create a dangerous wedge between police officers and the communities they serve,” Coleman said. “I can’t imagine what it would have been like for my grandmother had they passed a similar anti-Irish law.

But we can, Mayor Coleman – because your grandmother came here legally.  Just like my great-grandparents.

“Today I choose to stand with the millions of immigrants in our city and across the country who should have access to the same level of safety and opportunity as everyone else.”

Illegal immigrants?

Coleman said he would write to the Democratic and Republican national committees, urging them not to choose Phoenix as a site for national conventions in 2012.

If you care to help out Arizona companies who facing getting hit with financial losses because of the anti-sovereignty bigotry of a few well-heeled lefty governments, here’s a list of companies from Arizona.

Someone sent me an email about my post from Friday re the Seifert/Emmer DUI flap.  The writer noted that she believed the current laws are hunky-dory, because:

• Alcohol affects people differently; one person might be fine driving with a .08 Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) while another might act, in theory, like Foster Brooks.
• Prudence says that the suspicion of due process we’ve come to accept with DUI arrests – immediate loss of license – is OK.
• The fact that they were arrested is sufficient grounds to know there’s a problem.
• Driving is a privilege, not a right.

The writer had a point about the alcohol imits.  Alcohol affects people differently.  And “laws” require objective measures.  And while we’re being objective, we should note that there is virtually no evidence that BACs below .1 contribute to fatal accidents (other than the fact that the government calls every accident  in which a participant registers a BAC as a “drunk driving accident.  Every one.  If a meteor fell out of the sky on a car driven by someone who’d had three beers in two hours, it’d be called a “drunk driving accident”.  This is done at the behest of groups like MADD, who have become quite unhinged over the years; it’s dishonest at best).

So it’s correct that a BAC level doesn’t tell us everything.  Is the person measuring a .08 after having been a .16 six hours earlier, but is sobering up fast? Is it someone who had four shots in thirty  minutes, and is on her way up to a .18?   Is it a high school kid and inexperience drinker and new driver who had three beers in two hours and is speeding around like Mario Andretti with all sorts of liquid driving skill, or is it a 35 year old experienced driver who is driving just fine but has a broken taillight and runs afoul of a cop who needs to fill his quota?

The question you have to ask yourself is “is the law’s intent to curb drunk driving deaths, or is it to create criminals by criminalizing a fairly common behavior?”   Since there is no objective evidence that casual drinkers with ’08s cause deaths on the highway (that’s all people well north of .1), and the serious problems are most normally caused by repeat offenders who routinely driver well above .1, it’s most likely the latter – especiallly when you consider that the law distinguishes not one iota for the circumstances behind ones’ mild intoxication.  When the sheriffs put up a roadblock and start breathalizying people wholesale and corralling everyone who blows a .08, they’re not asking themselves “is this person on the up or down swing, do they have a history, can they rationally be expected to be a problem”.

No, they’re just racking up the fines.  DUI is  HUGE moneymaker, in fines, whiskeyplate fees, forfeited vehicles, court workloads (requiring more court staff, which feeds bureaucratic empires) and so on.  It’s in the state’s interest to make sure there are more arrests.  Cynically, it means they control more people (which Emmer’s second proposal would have partially rectified); without the cynicsim, it is an amazing amount of money coming in to government and government’s friends, the State Bar.

I was shocked when I wrote about this a few months ago that something close to 10% of Minnesotans have had some kind of drunk driving arrest.   10%?  That’s astounding.  Are 10% of the drivers on the road a danger?  If that were true, none of us should be on the street.

It’s absurd, of course.  Absent any kind of objective data linking .08 BAC with statistically significant numbers of fatalities (to say nothing of being *responsible* for them, which is another whole thing), it’s about nothing more than criminalizing behavior.

The letter from Sandra Berg cast aspersions about Rep. Emmer’s support for two bills in the legislature  last year (18 years after his most recent DUI arrest); one that would allow those accused of drunk driving to keep their licenses under certain circumstances, and another that’d take DUI arrests off the public record after 10 years of good behavior.

Here’s the deal principles are hard.  The thing about a principal is that it can hurt you as well as help you.  Due process and “innocent until proven guilty” are principles,  which most of us agree are good ideas.  But sometimes those principles mean an alleged murderer goes free due to a hung jury.  Ouch.

So when the letter writer writes “I think the arrest is sufficient prima facie grounds for [seizing licenses on arrest rather than conviction]  to be a prudent thing”  – well, isn’t that true for EVERY crime?  Think of what we could do for street crime if we just locked up everyone accused of any crime at all!  Or if we gave cops portable “Field Lethal Injection Kits” to use on accused murderers!

Saying “Driving is a privilege” doesn’t cut it; it’s a privilege that is a vital part of being able to earn a living for most people.  The fact is, in every other crime judges have (per the Fifth Amendment) the right to consider extenuating circumstances in assessing the accused’s circumstances between arraignment and trial; someone accused of five murders who has a twenty year criminal record and a speedboat waiting to take him to Venezuela might not get bail; someone in jail for the first time for having 15 unpaid parking tickets might get sprung for $100 and no other consequences.   Why is drunk driving any different?  Why can someone who got a .08 and has no record at all get the incredible burden of being without a drivers license, the same as someone with a .2 who’s already had several accidents and arrests?

Because a well-heeled, emotionally manipulative pressure group has made due process an unfashionable principle, that’s why.

So here’s the question; do you believe in the principles of due process and innocence until proven guilty by court and jury?  Or do you only believe in it for crimes where there is no  emotional baggage attached?

Walter Scott Hudson writes on the subject.

I’m going to the State GOP convention next weekend. 

As I’ve said elsewhere – I don’t do endorsements, myself.   I told the people at my district who I’d be voting for as a delegate; I suspect the campaigns both know. 

For the record, either Marty Seifert or Tom Emmer would be a better governor than any DFLer, living, dead or yet-unborn, as the leader of this state.  I’ll work myself to exhaustion for whomever wins the nomination.

Now, over the past few days there’s been a roiling froth about the campaign; the Seifert campaign sent delegates a letter from a Republican activist, Sandra Berg (no relation that I know of) regarding a couple of DWI-related charges, that his competitor, Tom Emmer, got 19 and 29 years ago – questioning not only his character due to the arrests, but some legislation he backed that’d have had the effect of treating drunk drivers as innocent until proven guilty and making DUIs private information after ten years of good behavior – in other words, allowing people who’d made  a dumb mistake to function and get their lives back. 

Drunk driving is an emotional issue – made all the more so by groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the rest of the drunk driving lobby.  It’s understandable; anyone who’s lost a loved one to a drunk driver is justifiably motivated to seek change.   But the .08 blood alcohol level limit is a ludicrious waste of resources, and the resources spent on hammering on first-time, only-time offenders with low levels of intoxication are largely a complete waste.

Question:  Does saying the above mean I “support” or am “soft on” drunk drivers and drunk driving?

But it’s ludicrous to treat attempts to make the system fairer and more rational as “sympathy for drunk drivers”.  Almost as ludicrous as assuming two mistakes made a generation ago are defining traits about a late-fortysomething guys’ judgment.

The Minnesota GOP needs to do a lot better than this.

This isn’t affecting my choice at the convention – whoever he is – one iota.

I’ve long been ambivalent about the “war on drugs”, to the point where I’ve come to favor ending it.  Combining the American appetite for drugs  with prohibition means that the market favors the more desperate, ruthless criminals – which is why Mexico is more dangerous than Iraq right now; more Americans have died of non-overdose-related causes – gang crimes and robbery-murders, mostly – directly attributable to the “War” than died in Vietnam.

So yeah, I favor decriminalizing at least pot.

But on the other hand, as the US passes yet another April 20 “National weed day”…:

Those who weren’t within whiffing distance of a college campus or a reggae concert may not have realised that Tuesday was ‘4/20’, the celebration-cum-mass civil disobedience derived from ‘420’ – insider shorthand for cannabis consumption.

…I’m reminded of the the simple fact that pot smokers are the most irritating people in the entire world.

Worse than Rosie O’Donnell talking in a Fran Drescher voice.

Worse than Crispin Glover and Al Gore doing a rap duet.

Worse than whatever you’re imagining.

So I think we should legalize pot.  I also think we should legalize hitting cheeba monkeys with bats.

Fair enough?

With the government’s sudden fixation with violence and terrorism (as defined by Janet Napolitano, at any rate), it’s worth going over what “security” is.

The big picture, of course, is important; government has a constitutional duty to defend the country.  It’s one of a very, very short list of duties actually spelled out for a legitimate government in the Constitution; it’s one of the few legitimate reasons any government exists. 

Secure the borders?  Absolutely.  There is not a nation in the world worth the title that doesn’t protect its own sovereignty.  There’s a reason for this; we formed a nation for a reason.  We intend it to be disctinct from other nations.  If tomorrow all of the world’s other nations upheld freedom, the rule of law, the value of the individual, and (after November, 2012, God willing) the free market.  Of course, the United States is a nation of immigrants, and indeed we need immigrants to keep rejuvenating this nation; nations with unchanging cultures become ossified and stagnant.  But the key is that immigrants must come to the United States, rather than bringing Ireland or Finland or Greece here. 

But that’s fodder for the upcoming “Culture” installment.

Protecting us from criminals?  Yep.  That too.  The law-abiding citizen should be secure on his/her property, with his/her possessions, and his/her rights.  The law should

Which is where government keeps screwing up.  It’s not just governments run by crime bosses and warlords – Russia and Tadjikistan and the Congo – that break this rule.   In the UK, a law-abiding citizen who defends his home, property or self from a burglar, robber or attacker with any kind of force frequently faces stiffer punishment than the criminal involved.  In Chicago – a city prowled by gangs armed barely a degree behind the Fedayin Saddam fashion curve – the full weight of the city’s legal system waits to fall upon the citizen who dares resist the thugs with a .22 handgun.

Any dictator can make you “secure”; the streets of Rome were safe enough under Mussolini.  But that’s not security, any more that a dictator (or university dean) giving you a few minutes to say what you want within a bunch of carefully set-up guidelines is “freedom of speech”.  “Security” that exists only at the pleasure and to the purposes of ones’ leaders – masters, really – isn’t security at all.  It’s the kind of “Security” that a flock of sheep get when escorted by a pack of wolves; it exists only for the needs of the wolves, not the flock.

“No problem, Mitch.  America’s not like that!”

Gun control laws that burden the law-abiding more than criminals – that’s almost all of them – don’t enhance “security”. 

Property forfeiture laws that penalize the innocent (which one is supposed to be, until proven guilty) do not make us more “secure”.

Federal “watch lists” that stimatize mainstream (if temporarily out-of-power) dissent make us less secure.

A government policy that is more accomodating to those that would kill us than to those who have defended us doesn’t make us more secure.

That’s what I want; that’s what this nation needs; a government that knows “Security” protects the nation while upholding the citizen.

Wow.  I am an extremist!

Margaret Martin’s Minneapolis Crime Watch has always (since 2006) been one of those blogs that showed what blogging was supposed to be.

At a time when the Minneapolis media was whitewashing Minneapolis’ crime record, Margaret and her other writers (“Chunkstyle” and “Nordeaster”) prowled the crime reports and provided in many cases, the kind of analysis that the big media couldn’t.  I’m still not aware of anyone that covers North Minneapolis crime like MCW.

Posting has gotten a bit more sparse lately, as life’s pressures, little and big, catch up with the staff.  But MCW still catalogues the thrum of daily life in Minneapolis like nobody else.

Here’s a typical blotter, skimmed from the Minneapolis Police site:

ASSLT2 w/Dangerous Weapon; ASLT5

44th Ave N & Lyndale Ave N Sunday 3/14/10 0425 hrs 10-069671

Officers were flagged down by V2/BF, 30 yrs, who relayed that she & V1/BF, 23 yrs, were assaulted & kicked out of a car.

V1 & V2 were leaving a friend’s house when a pit bull chased them onto a parked car. S1/BM, 20-50 yrs, 6’2”, heavy set, & S2/BM, 40-50 yrs, 5’6”, light build, w/goatee, wearing blue jeans & white t-shirt, pulled up in an older white, 4 door car. Suspects picked up the victims, but wouldn’t drive them back to their hotel. S1 stopped the vehicle, pulled V1 out of the car & began beating her. V1 was struck an unknown number of times in the face & torso, causing a cut above her eye. S1 also shoved V1 to the ground, kicked her in the torso, & pulled out a wooden stick/club, striking V1 in the back several times. V2 was punched once in her right ear by S1, causing it to ring. Suspects were GOA. The officers transported the victims to the hospital.

Margaret’s looking for contribs.  If you have an interest in following and/or analyzing Minneapolis crime (ideally both), drop her a line!

(Steny Hoyer has reportedly asked House Republicans to apologize for the crime listed above).

New Jersey McDonald’s customer slaps cashier, crawls through drive-through window to get his Filet-o-Fish ™ sandwich:

“His Filet-O-Fish was taking too long at 4:30 in the morning,” said South Brunswick Police Detective Sergeant James Ryan to NBCNewYork.

According to Ryan, the customer yelled at the employee and pushed him against the counter.

“After he slaps him, he takes his food,” said Ryan.

Steny Hoyer has apparently asked House Republicans to condemn the action.

I’m not sure what’s dumber; that besieged Danish “Mohammed” cartoonist Lars Vilks told a Swedish newspaper how he planned on dealing with killers who – according to some reports – American “Jihad Jane” was recruiting to try to assassinate him…:

The latest threat to Lars Vilks emerged yesterday when seven people were arrested in Ireland accused of plotting to kill the 63-year-old artist.

Mr Vilks responded by saying that he was ready for them. “If something happens, I know exactly what to do,” he said.

His home in southern Sweden now contains a barbed-wire sculpture that could electrocute potential intruders, a secure space to hide in and an axe which will allow him “to chop down” anyone breaking in through his windows.

…or that the press printed it.

Dear terrorist/stalkers/burglars; no boobytraps in my house.  Pinky swear.

Bill Sparkman was murdered by anti-government zealots spurred to a homicidal rage by Michele Bachmann and the Northern Alliance.  Er, wait.  Nope.  My bad.

Then the guy who crashed a plane into the IRS office in Texas was a tea-bagging mouth-breathing conservative.  Oops.

Then the guy who shot the Pentagon cops ended up being a Glenn-Beck-listening dittohead.  D’oh. This isn’t going well at all.

OK  – any guesses how this “story” turns out?

A woman talking on a cell phone during a movie didn’t take kindly to being “shushed” by another moviegoer. Or at least her boyfriend didn’t.

In a drama that turned more lively than the one on screen — “Shutter Island” — the boyfriend allegedly attacked and stabbed the “shusher” in the neck with a meat thermometer. Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said the stabbing occured Saturday during a screening of the Martin Scorsese film.

Remember – if we ban kitchen accessories, only criminals will have them:

The victim was attacked by the woman’s boyfriend and another man. Deputies say he was stabbed in the neck with a meat thermometer.

Anyone checked Kos lately?

There is evidence that John Bedell, yesterday’s Pentagon shooter, was there to P get the “truth” about 9/11:

Signs emerged that Bedell harbored ill feelings toward the government and the armed forces, and had questioned the circumstances behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In an Internet posting, a user by the name JPatrickBedell wrote that he was “determined to see that justice is served” in the death of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in the backyard of his California home in 1991. The death was ruled a suicide but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover up…The user named JPatrickBedell wrote the Sabow case was “a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Dusty Trice, the City Pages and the Southern Poverty Law Center, it’s that even the most tenuous intellectual synchronicity is evidence of a shadowy undercurrent of hatred.

So – I believe the inflammatory remarks of Jesse Ventura and Minnesota “Progressive” Project’s Grace Kelly led to this shooting, and wonder when they’ll accept responsibility.

(Ever since I learned the technique of holding people responsible for things people who seem tangentially like them also happen to say, I find that I’m relieved of the usual burden of being responsible and accountable).

UPDATE:  Of course the leftyblog hamsters tried to tie Bedell to the Tea Parties. 

But no, he isn’t.  Or wasn’t:

It has become pretty clear pretty quickly that Bedell sufferred from Bush Derangement Syndrome, and was a 9/11 Truther, just like 35% of Democrats as of May 2007.

So we’ve got Bill Sparkmann, Major Hasan, John Bedell, the guy who crashed his plane into the IRS office – all of them who were seemingly driven to horrendous (and/or self-immolating) acts by the rhetoric of the left…

Why, if I were a leftyblogger and the parties were reversed, I might be tempted to call it a “climate of hatred…”

Domestic violence activist caps her hubby of five days:

A 45-year-old woman, charged with ending a domestic dispute by killing her 26-year-old husband of five days, is a registered lobbyist for a group fighting domestic violence.

Arelisha Bridges was ordered held without bond in the Fulton County Jail. She is scheduled for a preliminary hearing later this month on charges of felony murder, murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

Officials said Bridges claimed she was unemployed. But records show she is a lobbyist for an organization called the National Declaration for Domestic Violence Order; its Web site says the group is pushing legislation to create a database of those convicted of sex crimes or domestic abuse.

Usually an accused felon will appear at a preliminary hearing a day later, but Bridges’ hearing was within hours of the shooting death of Anthony Rankins. Officials said the court appearance was moved up because of the unusual circumstances around the crime.

Witnesses told police that Bridges was wearing a nightgown and a shower cap as she argued with Rankins on the sidewalk on North Avenue near West Peachtree Street around 10:45 p.m. Monday.

And moments later, witnesses said, they heard shots. They said she then “calmly walked away.”

A MARTA police officer stopped her as she was getting into her car, perhaps to return to her home nearby on Centennial Olympic Park Drive.

According to Atlanta police, Bridges told investigators that she and Rankins had been dating for a few months and were just married on Feb. 24.

I’m trying to figure out of this killing was Bush’s fault, or a result of Michele Bachmann’s rhetoric…