Periodically, I highlight – er, “lowlight” – dismal moments in my dating life (Parts I and II). 

But it could  certainly be worse:

The victim, 45, and [accused vampire wannabee Tiffany] Sutton, 23, were lying in bed naked at early Wednesday when Sutton asked if he wanted to be tied up and he consented, police said.

But that’s when Sutton reportedly pulled out a knife and cut the victim’s leg, police said.

Sutton reportedly told him that she “likes to drink blood” and made several cuts to his upper body, police said.

He also said Sutton drank a “little bit” of his blood, police said.

He was able to break free, run out of his home, but Sutton reportedly followed with a pickaxe, police said.

The victim passed out before his friend found him covered in blood called the police, police said.

You really have to read the fine print on Match.com…

Alfonso Rodriguez the death penalty for the 2003 kidnapping, rape and murder of Dru Sjodin.

“Today is the most difficult day of my life,” U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson said this morning in handing down the sentence.

He rejected a motion for a new trial.

Rodriguez abducted Sjodin in November 2003 from the parking lot of a mall in Grand Forks, N.D. Her body was found about six months later by a ravine near Crookston, Minn.

The case was tried in federal court because state lines were crossed when the crime was committed, which is why Rodriguez was eligible for the death penalty. Neither North Dakota nor Minnesota allow the death penalty in state prosecutions.

Rodriguez, 53, could be on death row for several years as appeals are made by his attorneys.

Sjodin was a native of Pequot Lakes, Minn.

While, as I’ve mentioned, I oppose the death penalty for one and only one reason – the systemic inevitability of eventually executing the wrong person – suffice to say I don’t think Rodriguez has any claim to be convicted in error. 

I won’t be celebrating his execution, but I won’t picket it, either.

Kermit from Anti-Strib reflects the rage so many of us have over the Kruger murder case in Waseca.

Michael Zabawa claimed to have shot three members of a Waseca family with a shotgun. By accident.

Kermit isn’t convinced:

Accidentally? You F’ing sub-human!!! Every shotgun I have ever seen has either an over-under or side by side barrel. You crack them to put more shells in, or you pump them to load more from the magazine.
The only accident was your mother carrying you to term you Piece. Of. Shit.

Lets all say his name again. Michael S. Zabawa.

Are there sub-humans living here, among us? Is it possible that we are not all equal in the sight of God and each other? Some people do not deserve to live. We will be keeping Michael in prison for twenty ot thirty years. Then he gets to go free.

Alec Kruger will still be dead. He was thirteen.

State pen inmates please note the name.

The good news:  There’s apparently no serial rapist in Saint Paul.

 The bad news:  It’s two different guys.

Margaret Martin’s Minneapolis St.Paul Crimewatch blog has the story:

Forensic DNA evidence from the two rapes that occurred early this month on Payne Avenue in St. Paul reveals that the rapes were committed by two different suspects…It sounds as though even the police are surprised to learn this. The method and manner of the attacks were very similar, as well as the suspect descriptions. Unfortunately, this means that there are not one, but two violent rapists on the loose on the East Side of St. Paul. You can read the St. Paul PD’s press release here.

It’d be such a shame if either of the perps were to run into a “victim” who was armed, wouldn’t it?

Power becomes Nick Coleman.

Free of the  horror of being out of power – of the imperative to sputter impotently about people in power he considers his inferiors – Coleman shows that he’s capable of doing some decent writing.
Like his latest, about Minneapolis’ latest, most ghoulish bit of good news/bad news:

Desperate to stem rising crime — or to appear to be doing something about it — cities from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles are putting ShotSpotter in their most violent neighborhoods.

So having ShotSpotter is a good news/bad news thing. The good news is ShotSpotter can help fight crime. The bad news is your town has reached the point where it needs a computer system to track all the gunplay.

On Tuesday, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and Police Chief Tim Dolan summoned the TV cameras to brag about the salubrious effects of a ShotSpotter system installed late last year in a high-crime area of south Minneapolis where the hoods have been resistant to a number of crackdowns. The mayor qualified his praise for ShotSpotter by acknowledging that “technology alone will not win this battle.”

But the casual citizen may be forgiven if he interpreted the horn blowing to mean that, at last, the law is a step ahead of the thugs.

That may be wishful thinking.

It is.  Like so many of the police’s tools, it helps crime victims only indirectly:

ShotSpotter will not keep you from getting shot. It will only direct the cops to the general vicinity of where your corpse lies on the sidewalk, cooling.

That’s how it worked Jan. 2, when ShotSpotter detected gunfire at 35th Street and Portland Av. S., where cops found Douglas McFarlane dead on the sidewalk. His killer has not been apprehended.

As one critic has said, ShotSpotter could be called “The Alarm That Tells Police When It’s Too Late.”

Of course, that’s true of everything that a victim can use (except a legal, permitted firearm in their own trained hand); they bring the cops to a crime scene, usually one where the perp is long gone.

Internet romance goes horribly awry:

 He was an 18-year-old Marine headed to war. She was an attractive young woman sending him off with pictures and lingerie.

Or so each one thought.

As we parents all know – it’s all fun, until someone gets hurt: 

In reality, they were two middle-aged people carrying on an Internet fantasy based on seemingly harmless lies.

When a truthful 22-year-old was drawn in, authorities say, their cyber escape turned deadly.

[Murder victim Brian] Barrett, 22, was an aspiring industrial arts teacher, an accomplished high school athlete who had coached Little League all summer and helped his father coach soccer. Those who knew the Buffalo State College student described him as quiet and unassuming.

He had clearly been targeted. Barrett was shot three times at close range in the neck and left arm after climbing into his truck about 10 p.m. at the end of a shift at Dynabrade Corp. in Clarence, 20 miles outside of Buffalo. His body was found two days later when a co-worker spotted his pickup in an isolated part of the company parking lot.

The problem is, except for the whole “one of the principals got murdered” bit, I can’t see a way to make it anything but a comedy.

 Posh NYC antique dealer sues the homeless for harshing his mellow:

A high-end antique dealer on the Upper East Side is suing four unnamed homeless people for $1 million on the grounds that they’ve driven away customers by loitering on the sidewalk in “old, warn, and unsanitary clothing and cardboard boxes and old blankets which they convert into sleeping accommodations.”

In addition to money, Karl Kemp & Associates Antiques, located near 69th Street at 833 Madison Ave. near Gucci, Chanel, and Prada, is asking a Manhattan Supreme Court judge to force the homeless defendants to stay at least 100 feet away from the store, according to legal papers filed yesterday.

For more than two years, the papers allege, the homeless have spent “significant amounts of time” obstructing Karl Kemp’s storefront window display, “consuming alcoholic beverages from open bottles, performing various bodily functions such as urinating or spitting on the sidewalk, and…verbally harassing or intimidating … prospective customers.”

A saleswoman at Karl Kemp, whose Web site says specializes in “rare Biedermeier and Art Deco” furniture, referred questions to its attorney, who didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

Now, if Mr. Kemp were only heavily involved with a political party that’s been flogging compassion for the less-fortunate, maybe he’d have a different outlook. 

On the other hand, maybe the Hennepin County Attorney’s office can learn something from Mr. Kemp; start hauling gang-bangers into civil court!

The “good” news – Minneapolis misses the “distinction” of adding two more deaths to what is shaping up to be a horrible year.

The bad news – the double homicide happened in neighboring Brooklyn Park.

The bodies of a man and a woman were found in a car in the parking lot.

The victims had been shot multiple times.

Names of the victims have not been released and no one has been arrested.

Brooklyn Park is a schizophrenic place; the northern part is an idyllic ‘burb; the south, an expansion franchise for North Minneapolis’ crime quagmire.  A Hennepin County city, it “benefitted” from eight years of Amy Klobuchar’s worthless legacy as County Attorney.

This part kills me.

A woman there said she believed it was her son who had been shot because other young people were calling her about it.

“All we can do now is pray for my son,” said the woman, who was then directed by an officer to go up the block to Brooklyn Park police headquarters.

Yeah.  And everyone else in the area, as well.

Two boys – one missing for nearly four years – found alive in Missouri:

A 13-year-old boy who vanished from the gravel road near his home five days ago was found alive about 60 miles away in a suburban St. Louis home, along with a 15-year-old boy missing since 2002, authorities said Friday.The boys were found in a Kirkwood home belonging to Michael Devlin, 41, who has been charged with one count of first-degree kidnapping, Sheriff Gary Toelke said.

I do love these stories, when they happen.

And I’m tempted to send a stack of newspapers to the Missouri State Penitentiary, just so everyone knows who to look for.

As long as they are cute old folks…

a 78-year-old woman with a variety of serious health problems.

…chasing an inept, harmless footpad…

A large young woman approached Brown’s booth and purchased two dolls and a blanket for $100… $59 worth of jewelry from her; $20 worth of jam at another booth; $15 worth of bath goods from still another booth…

As the woman continued her shopping spree, Brown started to have nagging doubts. She called the phone numbers on the check the woman had written. The numbers had been disconnected. She called the bank and left a message.

The woman left the mall. The bank returned Brown’s call.

“The account is closed,” Brown was told.

…and the action looks like something from Family Guy:

“That check you wrote is no good,” Brown said.

“Whaddya mean?” the woman said.

“Check’s no good, just like you,” Brown said.

The woman started to move away.

“I told everybody, ‘She’s back!”‘ said Brown.

While other booth operators sought help, Brown, who often gets about on a little scooter, caught up with the woman. Then she got off her scooter.

“I told her, ‘You’re not going away, I’m making a citizen’s arrest,’ ” Brown said, adding, “I saw that on ‘Judge Judy.’ “

Good job, Ms. Brown.

Maybe, now that Democrats are in charge in St. Paul and Washington, vigilantism citizens protecting themselves isn’t a symbol of a greater social ill after all…

I have a new parlor game.

Here’s what you do:  When reading a Strib editorial, try to guess which overwrought hamster is doing the writing.  Different editorial writers, like different species of deer, leave different clues where they’ve been grazing.  The key is to figure out which one dropped this pile…

…in this case, “supporting” the growing meme that Hussein’s execution was unjust because his trial was “unfair”.

Saddam Hussein has been executed. Friday evening, U.S. authorities transfered the fallen dictator to the custody of the Iraqi government, which then hung him. It is an ambiguous moment:

Self-righteous, morally-blind equivocating?  That smells like Boyd…

I’d urge the writer to ask the people of Dearborn, or Mosul, or the marshes of southern Iraq, exactly how “ambiguous” the trial was.

• While Saddams crimes against humanity cannot be denied, neither can his trials fundamental unfairness. Numerous international rights groups followed his journey through what passes for an Iraqi court system and found the proceedings deeply flawed. The verdict was just, but in legal affairs, how a verdict is reached matters a lot.

That’s dumb enough to be Kate Perry.

No, there’s a point hidden in there – along with a glob of reeking hypocrisy.  It is important for the Iraqis to have a valid court system to build a viable nation; it’s through such a system (and the means to enforce the laws), among other things, that Iraq will finally emerge from its current nightmare.

But the show and tell of an elaborate civil trial was more than Saddam deserved – and there is ample precedent, when dealing with tyrants, for skipping the entire charade.  Douglas MacArthur held courts-martial for Japan’s mass-murderers and war criminals – people with, individually, less blood on their hands than Saddam – and excecuted dozens, without harming Japanese society one iota.  Ditto Germany, although Nuremberg was slathered with civil-court decorations.

A military court-martial, or a summary court of Iraqis, could have tried and killed Hussein without ceremony, and the world – and Iraq – would have been better off for it.  And Iraq’s justice system would have suffered not one jot.

Its the difference between an assassination of a thug and the execution of a war criminal.

When Ed showed me the footage of the blow-dried anchorbot in Orlando calling the execution an “assassination” over the weekend, I thought it was an isolated instance of a dolt in a $1000 suit transposing words under the heat of the set lights.

But I’m wondering if this isnt’ the latest shrieking point issues from loony-left central – that we’re agents of tyranny, ourselves, because Hussein – a mass-murderer – didn’t have the same chance to get off on a technicality or perversion of justice that OJ Simpson did.

To that end, there are longstanding international norms for how charges of crimes against humanity are to be prosecuted.

[Crushing ignorance of history?  Could be Nick Coleman]

Yes, there are;  military tribunals and quick executions.

To claim otherwise is…

…well, the province of Strib editorial writers.

Saddams trial did not meet those norms. Amnesty Internationals Malcolm Smart had it about right

Perfect is the enemy of good enough.

And while the Strib didnt’ see fit to mention it to their readers (a Jim Boyd hallmark), Amnesty International tends to oppose capital punishment first, and worry about petty moral issues like guilt later.

Amnesty came down on the side of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a killer for whom there is really no defense.

Captain Ed’s advice on selecting an executioner…:

pick a Kurd, any Kurd.

…might might actually give lawyers an Eighth Amendment case against Hussein’s sentence. (*)

(more…)

Hussein’s death sentence has been upheld.

Hinderaker:

As I’ve written before, I think it was a mistake to “try” Saddam in a court, as though there were some doubt about the murderous nature of his regime, and that doubt could somehow be resolved by a judicial proceeding. I’ve also been critical of the manner in which the trial has been conducted. It has dragged on much too long and has far too often served as a platform for Saddam’s grandstanding.

It’s worth noting, at this time, that – ahem – it looks like my dead pool entry was, er, dead on, if all goes according to plan.

Someone notify Hewitt.

I support the death penalty in every possible way – except one . We’ve been through this before.  Ed and I talked about this a few weeks ago on the show, on the news that Missouri, California and Florida have enacted moritoria on the death penalty; we’re both unusual among conservatives in opposing the death penalty,  for reasons as different as we are.
One of those reasons is  not the welfare of the killers.  And it’s this misplaced soft-heartedness that animates this Strib editorial.

In California and Missouri, federal judges have ruled that the states’ procedures for putting inmates to death with lethal injections violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments. In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush has suspended executions after it took 34 apparently painful minutes for an inmate to die; the needle that was to feed a three-drug mix into his bloodstream missed his veins and instead pushed the drugs into soft tissue. Face it: Killing people humanely is all but impossible, and that’s a good reason to stop the practice entirely.

No, not really.  The Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment – the British colonists were as creative when it came to executing the condemned, burning and piling rocks on and drawing and quartering with the glee of little boys killing ripping the wings off moths; the founding fathers realized that a judicial system needed to remove gratuitous emotion from the legal system.

That executions get botched on occasion means that humans are fallible (and that the doctors that removed themselves from the death penalty system for hippocratic reasons are buying their peace of mind with the pain of the condemned prisoner whose injection is carried out by a less-qualified technician)k, not that the death penalty is wrong in and of itself.

…perhaps the American public is ready to accept that “humane executions” are a contradiction in terms and that the time has come finally to end this barbaric practice.

I really doubt it.  I think a lot of Americans would be happy to kill child killers Chinese-style, with a single bullet to the back of the head; humane, and emotionally gratifying.

Supporters of capital punishment ask why all the concern over the pain inmates feel when they are put to death. After all, they say, it’s less pain than the convicted murderers inflicted on their victims.

Indeed, but is that a justification anyone should take seriously? They inflicted great pain on their victims so we’re free to inflict pain on them? What does that make us?

Human.

Therein lies the central point, which death-penalty advocates frequently miss: At its heart, the capital punishment debate isn’t really about those put to death and whether they are comfortable. It’s about the American public and the values it desires to uphold, which play a large role in shaping society’s behavior. A society that kills people who kill people debases itself by cheapening life.

I must inevitably choke on the irony of a newspaper that supports abortion on demand making a statement like that.

No, there is one reason and one reason only that the death penalty is wrong – the inevitability of killing the innocent at some point or another, which would be vastly crueller than a botched injection; it kills an innocent person, and ensures the guilty will never pay for the crime.

I have no problem killing the right person.  The Eighth Amendment means we need to keep emotion and untrammelled vengeance out of the process.  That executions are botched is not a black mark on the death penalty, but a sign we need better executioners.

But since we can never guarantee with absolute 100% certitude that we’ve got the right person strapped to the gurney – and I do believe that the ethical case to accept nothing less than 100% is airtight – it should be a moot point.

Ryan Rhodes reports. You decide.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving is the most dangerous group in America today.

They’re not dangerous merely because of their ongoing effort to criminalize any drinking, any time, or even because of their massive assault against civil liberty.

No, the big problem is that MADD has convinced a lot of otherwise intelligent people that what they’re doing is an objectively good thing. The Strib editorial board opines in favor of MADD’s effort to force the law-abiding driver to prove his/her worthiness every time they step into a car:

MADD says you pull out all the tools we have — and work to develop some more. It has joined forces with insurance- and auto-industry groups to create the Blue Ribbon Panel for the Development of Advanced Alcohol Detection Technology. It will encourage the development of technologies that include and surpass today’s sometimes-used ignition interlocks — which test a driver’s breath for alcohol and, if the driver fails, prevent the car from starting. Minnesota and many other states already have provisions to require such equipment in some cases. New Mexico has had some success with a law requiring their installation after the first DWI conviction.

MADD wants these intrusive, not-always-reliable interlocks in every car. They want you, whether you’ve had a beer or are a complete teetotaller, to prove your innocence every time you get behind the wheel.

And they want you to cheer and say “please, ma’am, may I have another”.

It’s a promising line of inquiry. In the meantime, however, most of those who drink must make the same old choice: Stay put or find sober transport.

Simple facts: drunk driving fatalities are off by over 40% in the past decade. Very few accidents and fatalities trace to drivers with blood alcohol levels below .10 – indeed, the big spike starts at .14, and lowering the legal limit to .08 or even lower will have almost no further effect on the issue.

In response to success, MADD proposes…more and more onerous regulation. More punishment of the law-abiding. More power for them.

And if you dare criticize them? As they said when civil libertarians opposed random checkpoint dragnets:

Opponents of sobriety checkpoints tend to be those who drink and drive frequently and are concerned about being caught.

“If you criticize us and our ideas, it’s because you’re a criminal”.

The Strib – which sniffs and phumphers about the “Civil liberties implications” of surveilling phone calls from terrorists to their contacts in America – stands up and cheers at the fascist antics of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which in the long run are vastly more dangerous.

Yes.  I said “vastly more dangerous”.  If you want to create a nation with no civil liberties, you don’t go out and ban them.  You kill them with a thousand cuts – and get the people used to the idea that “civil liberty” is an obtuse, picayune concept meant for others.

Which, of course, has been the Strib’s point of view all along.  The Second Amendment refers to the National Guard, Freedom of Speech is for people with printing presses, and that whole Innocent Until Proven Guilty thing only counts if you’ve been arrested.

The Star/Tribune; our own printed Abu Ghraib

Store clerk repels machete-wielding robber with own machete.

In Amy Klobuchar’s Minneapolis, she’d have gotten a stiffer charge than the robber.

Note to legal bureaucrats; stupidity isn’t terrorism.

Not that what Rthese people did wasn’t gapingly, breathtakingly, invincibly stupid…:

According to their indictment, Carl Persing and Dawn Sewell were allegedly snuggling and kissing inappropriately, “making other passengers uncomfortable,” when a flight attendant asked them to stop.

“Persing was observed nuzzling or kissing Sewell on the neck, and … with his face pressed against Sewell’s vaginal area. During these actions, Sewell was observed smiling,” reads the indictment filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

So far, so good; a couple is getting frisky on the plane. Note to world; take it to the rest room.

But laws are all about more-or-less arbitrary thresholds:

On a second warning from the flight attendant, Persing snapped back threatening the flight attendant with “serious consequences” if he did not leave them alone.

The comment was enough to have the couple, both in their early 40s, arrested when the plane reached its destination in Raleigh, North Carolina, and charged with obstructing a flight attendant and with criminal association…Persing’s lawyer William Peregoy said his client was not feeling well when he placed his head on his companion’s lap, and that he only threatened the flight attendant with reporting him to his superiors on landing.

Note to the lawyers involved; we have an entire political party trying to trivialize the War On Terror. Please don’t contribute to it.

David Strom and Margaret Martin’s Our House blog is back in action, after a spamalanche gutted their old WordPress (oh, great) blog.

And David kicks things off with his predictions, which look fairly good (although I think he gives Hatch too much credit).

Check out Our House daily for all your politics, bird and gardening news.

(And don’t forget Margaret’s Minneapolis-St. Paul Crime Watch blog seems to be picking up steam. We all miss Rambix, but Margaret and her growing posse of informants and contributors seem to be starting to fill the space. And check this story out…).