Doug Hester of The Northern Muckraker has been following the case of Woodbury cop Jeffrey Gort. Gort has been involved in the criminal justice system since his service pistol accidentially discharged in a Saint Cloud hotel room – a crime called “negligent discharge” [*]. Hester’s been following the denouement of the case. Or trying to.

But we might be getting a bit closer:

Officer Jeffrey Gort, the cop from the Woodbury, Minnesota Police Department who experienced a negligent discharge in a St. Cloud, Minnesota hotel room on August 2, 2006, has been scheduled for a pretrial hearing on November 26, 2007 at 2:30 p.m. in Stearns County Court.

Since he had previously been scheduled for a settlement conference, it seems likely that any suspected backroom games-playing is now off the table, and Gort will now have to appear in public to answer for his screwup, just like any other peasant would have to do.

We plan on being there to document what happens, in the assumption that this case will finally be resolved sometime this decade.

Stay tuned.

[*] All jokes involving the phrase “negligent discharge” are hereby pre-empted. Sorry, Angryclown. Move along. Nothing to see here.

Michael Yon writes a fascinating account of the British side of the Iraq war.

You oughtta read the whole thing, as with everything Yon writes. But I was struck by this bit here:

On both trips with the British, I made a point of asking British soldiers how they were treated back in the United Kingdom. They said they are mostly ignored; occasionally expressing a muted desire to get the treatment they imagine American soldiers get. British soldiers seem to imagine our soldiers get big parades and so forth, and hugs from strangers at the airport. And to be sure, many do, especially in Texas, they say.

American soldiers get care packages from people they do not even know, and those packages are morale boosters. American soldiers get cards from kindergartens from sea to sea, and the soldiers paste the cards all over the walls of their headquarters and hospitals. I don’t know what it is about those homemade cards, with their squiggly letters, stick figures and smiley-faced suns, but whenever I am in hospitals in Iraq, those cards from the kids greatly lift my spirits. I’ve seen the British get cards and packages like this, but nothing like the quantity, variety and frequency of what American soldiers get.

So here’s my question.

The Brits have covered our backs in war after war – both Gulf Wars, Bosnia, and so on. They are on the front line of the war on terror – London and Glasgow have both suffered attacks (albeit Glasga and the second London attempt were both “fails”).

I wonder – would groups like Soldiers’ Angels think about expanding their efforts to cover troops from some of our allies? I’d imagine some Brit or Canadian or German or Polish or Danish or Norwegian soldier would go home with a whole lot better view of America than they might already have with the help of a little American generosity.

Maybe that’s stretching the available resources too thin – all I know is what I hear from the local SA people.

Just wondering.

…if, given all the trouble in this world and all the people that are in genuine trouble, it’s even appropriate to wonder, much less ask this.

But those of us who believe are urged to “bring everything to God in prayer” – so this probably qualifies (and for those who don’t – well, what can it hurt you, right?). 

Soooooo…

 …if anyone could spare a prayer, karmic imprecation or best wish that my attempt at a mortgage refinance to get out of my really miserable ARM might go through, in and among all the serious prayers for people who really, really do need divine assistance, an infusion of chi, or whatever it is you believe in (or don’t), I’d much appreciate it.

(That, and/or if you’re a mortgage lender who appreciates a bit of a challenge, drop me a line.  I’d love to do business with ya).

Westover on Mark Ritchie’s magical floating mailing lists:

Despite the hullabaloo raised by us on the conservative side, there’s little important to say about the Ritchie affair. He either “made a mistake,” showed a “lack of judgment” or blatantly made use of government property for campaign purposes. In any case, he screwed up and then failed the character test of admitting he screwed up. Ok, we have a weak-willed politician in office and dog bites man. The only persons significantly hurt by Ritchie’s actions are Ritchie and those who really believed in and trusted him. Slap his wrist, but let’s not waste cycles on the political equivalent of a “john” sweep.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that when we had a real scandal with real consequences to deal with, we threw in the towel. Former senate majority leader Dean Johnson, under oath, told one story to the Senate Ethics Committee about Defense of Marriage Act conversations with Supreme Court justices and another to the Judicial Review Board denying such conversations took place. He then revised that account after his testimony, saying there were conversations and he had witnesses. In other words, we still don’t know whether Johnson or the Supreme Court Justices are telling the truth.

Not sure whether I agree with Westover that this is is just a matter of trust (as if that’s a trifling thing with the administrator of the state’s elections), but he’s right; politics ain’t beanbag, but the GOP did wind up playing croquet with Johnson. 

I am a fourth-rate bar-band and karaoke singer. But I admire great singers, from Pavarotti to Allison Krause. I can’t do what they do (especially Krause, since I’m, like, a guy), but that doesn’t stop me from admiring it.

I’m a decent but not specacular guitar player. But I can watch a great guitarist – Richard Thompson, Steve Vai, Mark Knopfler, Eddie Van Halen, Chet Atkins – and be awestruck. I can’t play much of anything they do – my greatest achievement, so far, on the instrument is a pretty ham-fisted “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” – but I most definitely can admire what they do.

Now, I stank at math – I eked out a “C” as a Christimas gift in college pre-calc. And all of my artistic talent is either musical or literary; I am a less capable visual artist than anyone I know except perhaps Ken “Avidor” Weiner.

And it’s the area where math – science, really, and especially applied science in the form of “engineering” – meets applied art in the form of “architecture”, that’s been fascinating me lately.

I’m the only non-visual-artist in my family; my mom, my father’s parents, my brother and sister, and both of my kids are very talented at sketching, sculpture, painting, photography, what have you. It fascinates me. I admire it. I can’t even do it.

And while working at an awful temp job as a document coder at a “Litigation Support” company, I worked on a big lawuit involving a nuclear power plant. In reading and coding thousands of pages from among seven semi-trailers full of paperwork – four months of marinading my brain in the detritus of a huge engineering project – I got fascinated with the science and technique of making things that are physically improbable exist.

And for a while now it’s been bridges – the science and technique of moving people through the air over rivers, gorges, roads, and other things that are otherwise impassible, and the art of turning them into statements about the people who demanded, paid for, designed and built them – that’s fascinated me most. And that was even before the bridge collapsed.

So I’m going to drink a little of the Lileks Koolaid, and spend a couple of days writing about the bridges of Saint Paul, and what I think they have to say about their time and city.

Don’t like it? Scroll on.

———-

We’ll start upstream, at Saint Paul’s first bridge, the span connecting Marshall Avenue with Lake Street in Minneapolis.

It’s the new bridge, of course – it’s been in place for about fifteen years, and came at a fairly awkward time in bridge development, when architects were just starting to come out of the nightmare of the Interstate System years – when bridges were supposed to be simple, unobtrusive, functional, almost not exist from the traveller’s point of view. And, indeed, if you don’t look out your side window you might not notice you’re crossing one of America’s great rivers, but for the fact that the paving is a whole lot nicer than on either Marshall or Lake.

It replaced the classic old Marshall/Lake Bridge, the one that still stood when I moved to the Twin Cities and, occasionally, used it to get to my first decent job:

Crossing the old Marshall/Lake bridge, you most assuredly did know you were suspended in the air high over a major river, trusting to the science and workmanship of engineers and ironworkers who had probably all died off by the time i was born. Biking up River Road (east or west), it was fascinating to look at that spider web of girders, transferring all of that weight to…

…that little, sunken man-made island in the middle of the river.

From this excellent guide to historic bridges:

Claim to fame: the old Lake Street-Marshall Avenue Bridge was one of the busiest two lane bridges in the US. The new bridge has the longest clear span of any bridge in St. Paul at 550 feet.

The Lake Street Bridge connects Lake Street in Minneapolis to Marshall Avenue in St. Paul. This was once a key river crossing in that it carried US-212, the main road between the twin cities. Even though I-94 is now the main highway connection between the two cities, the Lake Street Bridge still sees a large amount of traffic.

The old Lake Street bridge needed to be replaced because it was obsolete…after the new bridge was completed, the old bridge needed to be removed. Crews set up explosives. After pushing the button, and the dust cleared off, the old bridge was still standing. It took a second effort with more explosives to bring the old bridge down a few weeks later.

I still miss that old bridge.

Next time – the Ford Bridge.

(more…)

So I read Lori Sturdevant’s column yesterday, about  AFSCME endorsing a Democrat yadda yadda.

Sturdevant – the DFL’s unofficial PR flak masquerading as a Strib columnist, and whose writing style verges on Socialist Realism when writing about DFLers – was in full flak mode:

But brave faces — many of them battle-scarred…”AFSCME doesn’t always pick a winner,” said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, a former gubernatorial candidate, with a touch of defiance…But the Tuesday-morning crowd knows something else — several, from first-hand experience. They know what a big-bucks, take-no-prisoners statewide campaign looks and feels like. They can envision what Coleman and his allies will be throwing at Franken next fall…A DFL recapture of the late Paul Wellstone’s seat…

[Note to the DFL Flak:  It’s “the people of Minnesota’s” seat.  It’s not “Wellstone’s seat” any more than it was “Rudy Boschwitz’ seat”, or “the seat of…” any of the 20-odd other people who’ve sat in it.  Wellstone was just elected to it.  Please quit making this mistake.  Thanks – Ed.]

Brave, deviant, scarred faces; plucky underdogs in the face of the Coleman onslaught.  Reminds you of a Russian documentary on Stalingrad, no? 

So what’s missing?

An impassioned defense of Mark Ritchie.

It’s possible I’m reading too much into this.  But normally, when a DFLer is under fire (and Ritchie most certainly is), the Strib’s columnists circle the wagons and cover their guy’s six.  And it could certainly still happen; this scandal is a young one, and since Sturdevant delivers one whole column a week, it could very well be that her deadline fell before Ritchie’s scandal broke.

Let me be clear on this; not saying something is no admission of guilt or complicity, especially on someone else’s part, and I’d be a cheap hack yellowblogger if I said or implied any such thing.  I’m remarking on the absence, not drawing inferences.

I never thought I’d say this – but I’m looking forward to the next Lori Sturdevant column.

If you wander around the Twin Cities, you can find about a quarter of a million people who were in the Metrodome (capacity: 50-odd-thousand) for Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.

Likewise, in a few years I suspect you’ll be able to find tens of thousands of people who were on the 35W Bridge during the collapse.

The Strib has identified and gotten the stories from most of them.

They want that Pulitzer so bad you can almost taste it.

WSJ editorial on the Heller case – the striking down of the DC gun ban.  There’s some background…:

The phrase “the right of the people” or some variation of it appears repeatedly in the Bill of Rights, and nowhere does it actually mean “the right of the government.” When the Bill of Rights was written and adopted, the rights that mattered politically were of one sort–an individual’s, or a minority’s, right to be free from interference from the state. Today, rights are most often thought of as an entitlement to receive something from the state, as opposed to a freedom from interference by the state. The Second Amendment is, in our view, clearly a right of the latter sort.

…and the potential clinker…:

As a practical matter on the Court, the outcome in D.C. v. Heller might well be decided by one man: Anthony Kennedy, the most protean of Justices. However, in recent years he has also been one of the most aggressive Justices in asserting any number of other rights to justify his opinions on various social issues. It would seriously harm the Court’s credibility if Justice Kennedy and the Court’s liberal wing now turned around and declared the right “to keep and bear arms” a dead letter because it didn’t comport with their current policy views on gun control. This potential contradiction may explain why no less a liberal legal theorist than Harvard’s Laurence Tribe has come around to an “individual rights” understanding of the Second Amendment.

And for the closet autocrats nervous nellies:

By the way, a victory for gun rights in Heller would not ban all gun regulation, any more than the Court’s support for the First Amendment bars every restraint on free speech. The Supreme Court has allowed limits on speech inciting violence or disrupting civil order. In the same way, a judgment that the Second Amendment is an individual right could allow reasonable limits on gun use, such as to protect public safety.

While the Second Amendment movement can’t let down its guard even if the good guys win Heller – the price of liberty is eternal vigilance – I think it’s reasonable to think that regulations made with the assumption that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right are likely to be less onerous than otherwise.

It’d be a great start.

The NYTimes notes that the Dems are busily trying to figure out how to be for the war, after they were against it, after they were for it:

Advisers to Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama say that the candidates have watched security conditions improve after the troop escalation in Iraq and concluded that it would be folly not to acknowledge those gains. At the same time, they are arguing that American casualties are still too high, that a quick withdrawal is the only way to end the war and that the so-called surge in additional troops has not paid off in political progress in Iraq.

I’ve noticed this in the media’s coverage – and even in callers on the NARN show; suddenly, now that fewer people are dying and the threat of civil war seems to be waning, a functional parliament and government is the gold standard for determining success in Iraq.

But the changing situation suggests for the first time that the politics of the war could shift in the general election next year, particularly if the gains continue. While the Democratic candidates are continuing to assail the war — a popular position with many of the party’s primary voters — they run the risk that Republicans will use those critiques to attack the party’s nominee in the election as defeatist and lacking faith in the American military.

Um, yeah.  With bells on.

“The politics of Iraq are going to change dramatically in the general election, assuming Iraq continues to show some hopefulness,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is a supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s and a proponent of the military buildup. “If Iraq looks at least partly salvageable, it will be important to explain as a candidate how you would salvage it — how you would get our troops out and not lose the war. The Democrats need to be very careful with what they say and not hem themselves in.”

I think for most Democrats – those that are in any way beholden to the nutroots – it’s too late.

Not that it’ll harm the likes of Keith Ellison and Betty “Rubble” McCollum, but yes, it is a club that needs to be used with gusto.

Convince the lefties that reproduction is bad for the planet.

We’ve got a start right here:

At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to “protect the planet”.

Incredibly, instead of mourning the loss of a family that never was, her boyfriend (now husband) presented her with a congratulations card.

While some might think it strange to celebrate the reversal of nature and denial of motherhood, Toni relishes her decision with an almost religious zeal.

“Having children is selfish. It’s all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet,” says Toni, 35.

“Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population.”

While most parents view their children as the ultimate miracle of nature, Toni seems to see them as a sinister threat to the future.

Ah, but hostility to children is an aberration.

Right?

Well – it depends, says this Bay Area mom…:

I often am seen in the company of three children who call me “Mom.” These traits have led people to freely let me know that they think I’m overpopulating the world. Probably the strangest experience I’ve had is being pregnant in the Bay Area. During my other pregnancies, I lived in Sacramento and was used to people smiling when they saw a pregnant woman. Here, no smiles — mostly scowls.

My favorite story is this one: When I was getting physical therapy when I was six months pregnant (after falling and breaking my wrist), the therapist asked me whether I was pregnant with my first child (she had already told me that she had one child and planned to have only one). When I said, no, this was actually my third child, she immediately asked me whether I was going to have my tubes tied after the birth.

After my baby was born, the hostile looks and mutterings continued. While I was waiting in line for coffee one day with the kids in tow, one woman offered to me that she thought three children constituted a big family. When I told her it really isn’t considered a large family in many other parts of the country, including the Midwest town I had recently moved from, she asked me with disdain, “Where was that, a religious community?” Then there was the woman who said to me as she pushed by my stroller, “Three? Don’t you think you have enough?” It’s not like I was asking her to contribute to their college fund! I was just taking my kids to the bathroom.

I’ve noticed a thin film of “child-free” people on the periphery of my circle of acquaintances, in the past few years.  Not “don’t have kids yet”, not “don’t really want a family”, not “I’d rather have all my own money and free time for myself”  or “I think I’d bew a lousy parent, and I haven’t been to Nepal yet” – although I know all of them. No, I mean “child-free”, in the sense of “Smoke-Free” or “Chemical-free” – as if one is ridding ones’ life and the world of some noxious pollutant.

Which is bad news for the future of liberalism, presuming they don’t get into power before the last one dies off and enforce a nationwide spay/neuter law…

From Michael Yon’s Thanksgiving report from Baqubah, a call for sober appreciation of significant progress – one that takes an ironic turn:

Bottom line is that progress is clear and real, but there are tough days ahead and al Qaeda, for instance, is far from dead. The mood is of cautious optimism, with a concern that some of the very positive media lately might set expectations too high. (That’s right: many military leaders are concerned that the media lately might be too positive.)

Call for Charles Krauthammer.

Bottom line is that I am more optimistic than ever before, but I share that caution. It’s obvious, too, that the tough fighting is not over.

It’s too early for anyone to be chanting the “V” word.  Just as it’s too late to be crowing that Iraq is a lost cause (while mentally tallying up electoral votes).

But I came across something today that might make veterans of the fighting in Baqubah proud. Back in May, just before operation Arrowhead Ripper, there were about 60 violent acts per day. Now there are about 6. The markets are opening and the streets are again filled with people. I thought the veterans of Baqubah might like to know that their efforts have made a tremendous difference for the people here. You fought hard. This writer saw it. Your sacrifices truly meant something.

There’s nothing I could possibly add.

While NFL foobaw generally bores me stiff (unless the Bears are in contention, and, uh, well, never mind), I do like stories like this from the world of high school grid:

Totino-Grace fullback Pierce Lubinski called it The New Immaculate Reception. Said Mahtomedi coach Dave Muetzel: “That’s the game of football.”Totino-Grace, stunned by a last-minute touchdown and a two-point conversion that gave Mahtomedi an 8-7 lead, scored on a desperation 50-yard touchdown pass as time expired for a 13-8 victory in the Class 4A championship game.

Jordan Marshall’s pass tipped off the hands of Mahtomedi defender Nick Cedergren, off the hands of intended receiver Jake King and into the hands of Totino-Grace receiver Micah Koehn. Breaking one tackle and tip-toeing down the right sideline, Koehn reached the end zone and then was mobbed by teammates.

Hope the video pops up out there somewhere.

JB Doubtless over at Fraters is sounding off about punk rock with his characteristic subtlety:

People like to pretend that punk is about rebellion and challenging authority. It reality, it’s just a nihilistic ethos premised on self-destruction, emptiness, and most of all failure. The worst thing you can do in the world of punk is succeed. In that way it shares an affinity with gangsta rap culture which derides success in school as “acting white,” while punk derides success in anything as “selling out.” How dare you do well!

To be fair, “Against Me!” is, by all indications, your typical post-Henry-Rollins American punk band (yaaawwwwwn). Still, when JB quotes the Strib reviewer Chris Riemenschneider…:

Gabel became the Angry Young Man of future Against Me! fame around age 12, when he moved to Naples, Fla. A coastal town where many wealthy retirees go to soak up the sun and tax breaks (including many Minnesotans), Naples “is absolutely oppressive to youth,” he said.

…and replies…:

It also tells me a lot about Gabel that he would describe spending his formative years in an “oppressive” environment. Part of being punk (and a big part of its appeal) means never having to grow up.

I can see JB standing with a shotgun on his porch, telling those damn kids to get off his lawn.

UPDATE: My bad – I see the piece was written by Chad the Elder. The tone and approach seemed so…JBish. My bad.

On the one hand, I’ll chalk it up to Chad having had, perhaps, one of his brother’s patented hangover-bomb holiday cocktails.

On the other – Chris Riemenschneider is not a good music critic. I see lines like this:

At once bleeding-hearted but mostly apolitical, and apathetic but hopeful…

…and I’m drawn back to this bit of work:

The dialectic of Christo’s “Gates” is a reflection of the post-9/11 zeitgeist, absent the schadenfreude qua nervousness that has gripped the American populace in this world of “now-more-than-ever.” The semiotics of the saffron (en)robes serves an ontological function in re-animating and re-introducing the humanity of New New York to their perceptions of the orange joy of being – the being you felt as a child, vis a vis a pinata. The Gestalt bespeaks a Foucauldian Weltschmerz, a sumptuous feast of post-Derridian brio-cum-angst. It’s in this context that “The Gates” covers, even metastasizes, over Central Park like a vast dollop of neo-maternalistic, neo-Marxian mayonnaise.

The panels, a touchstone of familiarity to the bourgeoisie (nursing at the paps of American Idol), emanate as immense labia beckoning, even taunting the onlooker to become, to be the phallus penetrating into Mother Nature – the maternal yin imprisoned in the mechanistic yang of the city and yet floating above the concept of restraint – the “Gates” welcome yet repel; they silently ululate like a shtetl of schmatte-clad yentas and yet remain silent with the deafening-yet-voiceless torment of the ur-mensch; metaphysical yet material (or rather neo-material), smug in its tangibility yet internally, silently, futilely screaming in horror at its immateriality. The “Gates” are, in short, of a piece with and yet utterly discontiguous from the fundamental leitmotifs of our age.

Which one is parody? Does it matter anymore?

On Against Me!, I must remain apathetically, albeit not angrily, ignorant.

We’ll have “encore presentations” of our favorite Northern Alliance broadcasts today. Tune in and relive the magic!

(This picture of the Vincent R. Casciano Memorial Bridge on the Jersey Turnpike between Newark and Bayonne, NJ is presented for no real reason, other than it subconsciously fitting the theme of the song from which I lifted this post’s title. )

(Although one might see it as foreshadowing.  “Foreshadowing what, Blogger Berg?”  Well, I’m nothing if not a man of mystery – but, like most big surprises I try to engineer, you may expect a big letdown on the off-chance that you imbue this hint with more significance than it deserves.) 

(Move along).

On behalf of John, Brian, Chad, Ed, King, Michael, Matt, Irina and Anna, I’d like to wish all of you a happy Thanksgiving weekend!

Attorney Remi Tunde
Principal Partner/Owner,
REMI TUNDE & Associates
plot 278 Emmanuel Avenue
Victory Island

Dear Friend,

In re: your email letter of November 22, you wrote:

“We are Attorneys, Solicitors and Advocates. We have been privileged to know Mrs. Jamila Ahmed and her predicaments. Having listened to her and her wishes, we are happy to be associated with the processes being taken to fulfill them.

Jamila has briefed us of your desire and intention to be part of the fulfillment of her dreams by agreeingto take delivery of the sum of $25,500,000.00 (twentyfive Million, five hundred thousand US Dollars only) and invest in humanitarian and charitable ventures.

Out of pure curiosity, does anyone actually fall for this anymore? Other than her, I mean? I’m just agog at the notion that not only do people fall for this, but other people on your end take it so very seriously:

The Secret Service claims that “in June of 1995, an American was murdered in Lagos, Nigeria, while pursuing a 419 scam, and numerous other foreign nationals have been reported as missing.”

Anyway – feel free to send me, via certified check, the sum of $10,000 – a pittance, really compared with the millions you and your client Ms. Ahmed need to smuggle out of wherever you are, that I may commence in my solicitude. You (obviously) have my contact information.

Remain blessed and best regards,

Yours faithfully,

 Mitch Berg

As the Parker case – on the DC gun ban – wends its way to the Supreme Court, it’s worthwhile to note some Jhistorical and social context, via John Lott:

It is one of the benefits of being a politician. While handguns are banned for citizens in Washington, D.C., congressmen are allowed to have a gun for self-protection on the Capitol grounds. Well-known liberal politicians such as Senators Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy have armed bodyguards. The wives of politicians, such as Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle’s wife, Linda, also have bodyguards. Undoubtedly, these politicians and their families have extremely good reasons for this protection, but many other Americans, especially those living with the high crime rates in D.C., also feel the same way…While these politicians have protection both in their homes and as they travel around in public, since September 24, 1976, other D.C. residents have lived under the nation’s most restrictive gun laws. Police enforce a citywide handgun ban, and local statutes require residents to keep long guns disassembled, unloaded, and locked up. Yet, with a murder rate of 46 per 100,000 people in 2002, the District easily holds the title of the U.S. murder capital among cities with over 500,000 people.

But I’m sure the ban solved an even worse problem – right?

This was not even close to being the case prior to the ban.

Crime rose significantly after the gun ban went into effect. In the five years before Washington’s ban in 1976, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 per 100,000. In the five years after it went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. During this same time, robberies fell from 1,514 to 1,003 per 100,000 and then rose by over 63 percent, up to 1,635. The five-year trends are not some aberration. In fact, while murder rates have varied over time, during the almost 30 years since the ban, the murder rate has only once fallen below what it was in 1976.

One of the bromides the left likes to throw out about the carnage in DC is that it’s all about the availability of guns in Virginia.  But then, wouldn’t one think Virginia would have a gun death rate bordering on Stalingrad’s, too?

These pre-law drops and subsequent increases were much larger than any changes in neighboring Maryland and Virginia. For example, the District’s murder rate fell during the same five-year period from 3.5 to 3 times more than in the neighboring states and rose back up after the ban to 3.8 times more…

How does one explain this?

Surely the ban cannot be blamed for all the District’s crime problems. The police department has had severe problems over hiring standards and there have been management and morale issues.

Is it just DC? Of course not:

But even cities with far better police agencies have seen crime soar in the wake of handgun bans. Chicago, whose ban on new handguns started in 1982, has police computer systems that are the envy of the nation, a bevy of shiny new police facilities and a productive working relationship with community groups. Indeed, the city has achieved impressive reductions in property crime in recent years. But the gun ban didn’t work at all when it came to reducing violence.

Chicago’s murder rate fell from 27 to 22 per 100,000 in the five years before the law and then rose slightly to 23. The change is even more dramatic when compared to five neighboring Illinois counties: Chicago’s murder rate fell from being 8.1 times greater than its neighbors in 1977 to 5.5 times in 1982, and then went way up to 12 times greater in 1987. While robbery data isn’t available for the years immediately after the ban, since 1985 (the first year for which the FBI has data) robbery rates soared.

…Proponents of the bans claim that the laws failed because guns leaked into the District and Chicago from neighboring areas, but there was not even the smallest reduction in crime.

And the conclusion?  Same as the old conclusion:

We all want to take guns from criminals. The problem is that gun bans appear to have disarmed only law-abiding citizens while leaving criminals free to prey on the populace.

Of course, with cops like these running the show in the nation’s capital (via KB)…:

Speaking on why it would be a terrible mistake to overturn Washington DC’s 31-year old ban on handguns, Assistant police chief Alfred Durham said today:

The ban on handguns is a matter of life and death because 80% of the murders in DC are caused by handguns.

Is it possible for a non-sequitur to be so non that it becomes an anti-sequitur?

Tim Montgomerie of the London Times on how very traditionalist, European and “conservative” the Bush Foreign Policy has been.

And it’s not really a good thing:

The foreign offices of Europe all hope for more multilateralism. More realpolitik. Less sabre-rattling.The critics have a problem, however. In reality, Team Bush has largely been following European approaches to foreign policy for most of the world’s troublespot nations.

Take Pakistan. The “realist school” couldn’t honestly disapprove of any aspect of Bush’s dealings with Islamabad. American taxpayers have financed a military dictator in the hope that Musharraf will suppress the fundamentalists and provide logistical support for Nato operations in Afghanistan. Has this worked? No. Islamic militancy is mushrooming.

Musharraf has often bargained with the political patrons of the madrassas in order to stymie his democratic opponents. If he falls, the Pakistan people may see America as the nation that propped up the regime that introduced martial law and warped the constitution.

Which isn’t exactly “Neocon”.

It’s all too reminiscent of its relationship with the Shah of Iran in the 1970s. When it comes to present-day Iran, Team Bush has been patiently multilateralist. Washington allowed the years to pass as Europe promised to negotiate an end to Tehran’s nuclear plans. As it became obvious that the talks were failing, the Americans turned to the United Nations. Russia and China have vetoed any significant action.

Ditto.

Indeed…:

Something akin to neoconservatism has only really been pursued in Iraq. Even the keenest supporters of the war readily agree that dreadful mistakes have been made. Nonetheless, the tide is now turning. Violence has halved. The progress of the “surge” is increasingly apparent…The bungled road to a democratic Iraq has been far too bloody but it’s now perfectly sensible to believe that Bush’s pre-emptive war may have sown the seeds for what could be the least troubled nation of the region in a decade’s time. The multilateral approach to Iran may leave us with a nuclear-armed Tehran terrorising Israel and holding the world to ransom over oil supplies.

Lessons to learn?  Especially for the next president?

When it comes to foreign policy the next US president has to remember that America is most effective when the world’s only policeman is seen as strong, as in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq invasion. Libya disarmed. The Khan nuclear exchange programme was exposed. Syria withdrew from Lebanon. Problems multiplied when America looked unwilling to commit necessary troops to finish the first battles of the War on Terror. A weak America, tied down by do-nothing multilateralists, is the last thing our dangerous world needs.

Uh-oh.

I’m going to go write a check to a Republican.  Hell, every Republican except Ron Paul.

…but this was something I hadn’t seen…

Peruse at your leisure.

There’s hardly a “no-go” on the whole page.

From the Speculist – more stuff to be thankful for:

The gift of gab could boost brainpower, new research suggests.A U.S. team found that talking to another person for 10 minutes a day improves memory and test scores.

They found that “socializing was just as effective as more traditional kinds of mental exercise in boosting memory and intellectual performance,” lead author Oscar Ybarra, a psychologist at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, said in a prepared statement.

In one investigation, they analyzed data on 3,610 people, ages 24 to 96.

They found that the higher their level of social interaction, the better their cognitive functioning. Social interaction included getting together or having phone chats with relatives, friends and neighbors.

I’m here to testify.

About this time fifteen years ago, after four years of working in bars and awful temp jobs, I got my first job around smart people that talked to each other. I could …

1. …sense how atrophied my brain had gotten
2. …feel it starting to stretch as I talked more with my co-workers.

More:

The good news:

We shouldn’t be surprised to learn that interacting with others makes us smarter. As pleasant as having a chat with a friend or co-worker may be, there is serious mental heavy lifting taking place every time we do it. Assuming we have a standard set of social skills in place, we are constantly checking in to see if the other party is still paying attention, is following what we’re saying, is not offended by what we’re saying, etc. Just sitting around and thinking — even thinking about some very challenging subject — could be relatively easy by comparison.

So we no longer have to worry that enjoying a chat is somehow a waste of time. It is mental time well spent.

I have to assume that blogging, and reading blogs is the same.

You’re welcome!

Moreover:

These findings have profound implications for office life. Now when the boss catches you and your buddies standing around the coffee machine chewing the fat and orders you to get back to work, you have the perfect response: “Ease up, there, Chief — we’re just sharpening our wits for the rest of the day’s work!”

It doesn’t work. Move along.

The good news? The article has much more to be thankful for. So go read it.

Back to cooking.

I don’t know that I’ll ever write a better “Happy Thanksgiving” post than the one I did five years ago, on this blog’s first Thanksgiving:

I moved from North Dakota to Minneapolis in October of 1985. It was a spur of the moment thing – in fact, it started with a drunken statement to a bunch of classmates at a college homecoming party two weeks earlier. It was five months after graduation, and they’d all come back to Jamestown (my hometown and college) with stories of their fun careers, fun cities, fun lives……Six weeks later, it was Thanksgiving. I still had no job, I was broke and hungry and cold. I’d had a few interviews, but no bites. I had dinner at a friend’s place. And on the way home, I drove downtown, and walked out onto the Central Avenue bridge, and looked out over the city in the dark. If you’ve never seen it, looking at downtown Minneapolis in the dark, when everything’s all lit up, is stunning; for someone just in off the prairie, it was like looking at Manhattan. I was cold, and scared out of my shorts about my short-term prospects – and for the first time, I felt strangely at home in this new city.

And every since then, Thanksgiving has seemed like the turning of the new year for me – the time when I reflect on the past year’s agonies and flubs and successes, and look forward to the next year. Much more so – for me anyway – than New Years’ Eve, which is more decompression from Christmas than anything.

I remember each Thanksgiving in the last 17 years – the giddiness of feeling like I was on the edge of something big in 1986, confident in my ability to pull it all together in ’87, shell-shocked and depressed and contemplating the implosion of my radio career in ’88, crazy in love in ’89, a harried but happy but broke newlywed in ’90, a new dad digging out of deep snowdrifts in ’91, broke and on the brink of eviction with two kids and another on the way in ’92, in a new house in ’93…wondering how long my marriage would last in ’98, being able to answer the question “not long at all” in ’99…

…and today. I sat for a while by the Cathedral of St. Paul, looking down Summit over downtown Saint Paul. The giddy, heady uncertainty of the thanksgivings of my first years as an adult, the throat-clutching terror of my divorce-era holidays, and the weary relief of my first thanksgivings as a divorced dad…well, little bits of all of them are still there. But there’s the emerging sense that my life really is mine, and that I’d better get on with it.

There’ve been so many good lists of things to be thankful for, from people as diverse as Michelle Malkin and Ted Nugent and Andrew Sullivan – and my own for that matter.

But I forgot one. I’m thankful to be here. Now. Doing what I’m doing, and with the chance to be doing the same thing – or better – next year.

Since then, things have gotten worse (not six weeks after I wrote that piece, I started an epic run of unemployment) and much, much better (my career came back by Thanksgiving of ’03 much the better for wear) and – on the balance, good.  My kids are both teenagers with the full, awful gravity that term brings.  But they’re alive and doing…not so bad.

And Thanksgiving is still when the new year really begins for me.

So – I’m thankful for my kids, my family, my friends (personal and electronic), my job, my home, the blog, the show.  And above all, I’m thankful for the same things the Pilgrims were; salvation, sure, but also being in this place, with the blessings and chances and responsibilities God gave us, here and now.

God bless all of you this Thanksgiving.

More tomorrow.

Oh, I had to respond to this.  King Banaian – a college professor – wrote this:

Have you checked his Blog Readability? Go ahead, put the Berg blog in there and see what you get? Yes, Elementary School. Centrisity scores Junior High by comparison. All that pontification, all those twenty-years-ago-today piffle, and for what?

Yeah, what the hey, let’s go ahead and check that out:

Get a Cash Advance

  Hm.  OK.  And SCSU Scholars?

Cash Advance Loans

  Well, there’s a big jump!  Just for kicks, let’s try Powerline, Cap’n Ed and, say, Sheila O’Malley:

Powerline:

Ed:

Sheila:

Get a Cash Advance

So let’s get this straight:  Ed and I – the only two members of the NARN who’ve ever I written for non-academic, non-professional audiences (I as a reporter and writing instructor, both of us as technical writers) for a living, who are both trained in writing clearly and precisely (read: simply), along with Sheila, who’s a just-plain-great writer, scored “elementary school” level (i.e., simple and clear enough for pretty much any audience).  King – a capable writer, but mainly an academic – scored “junior high”, meaning more complex, ergo less clear.  In the meantime Powerline – who are lawyers, ergo trained in writing to obfuscate – scored “Post-Grad”. 

There are those who those – along with King – have tried to pass this off as a negative, or even an insult. 

Baloney.  Self-indulgent, gassy, bloated writing – the stuff my high school writing teacher used to call “EngFish”, because it stank like a rotting fish – is the easiest thing in the world (vide  a whole generation of business writers in this country).  Self-disciplined, simple, clear writing, on the other hand, is a goal to be sought out – among those who pay attention.

Which clearly leaves out economics professors and trial lawyers.

And how about Minnesota Monitor, City Pages and Norwegianity?

 The Mon

CP?

The Wege?

This is getting fun. How about the Mole?

Good lord, how impenetrable must that be? How about The Dump?

Huh. 

 Those of us who have the talent and self-discipline to write simply, clearly and directly should be are dang proud of it. 

When even the Twin Cities’ left-leaning alt-media notice:

Brodkorb/MDE wins a round: Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has reversed himself and admitted that he gave his campaign an email list from the SOS’s office that was not supposed to be used for campaign purposes.

Hey, if you can’t trust a “Secretary of State” whose only notable political experience was running the pressure group whose sole accomplishment was plastering those annoying “November 2″ bumper stickers on the backs of rusty Subarus and gaunt Volvos nationwide but who pinky-swore to “depoliticize” the Secretary of State’s office, who can you trust?

Let’s see what kinda damage control the Strib rolls out over the long weekend.

The Pioneer Press is apparently a tool of Tim Pawlenty; evidence apparently suggests that metal fatigue isn’t the culprit for the Bridge collapse (emphasis added):

In the days after the collapse, reports drawing on past inspections immediately singled out seemingly alarming cracks in the bridge’s steel. The Minnesota Department of Transportation came under fire for what appeared to be shoddy bridge oversight.

But a closer look at the record throws into question the idea MnDOT could have prevented the collapse by reinforcing the Minneapolis bridge, as an outside consultant recommended. The record also casts doubt on the theory that fatigue cracks made the bridge fall.

Here’s why:

— The cracks were repaired in the 1990s. And they were never found in the main I-35W river span, which appeared to fall first on video of the collapsing bridge captured by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers surveillance camera.

— The cracks were on the approach spans, which were not “fracture critical.” That designation signals a risk of total collapse if one key part of the bridge fails. The fracture critical area of the bridge was in the main span.

— A proposal to strengthen the steel beams in the bridge’s main span by adding steel plates dealt with a speculative problem – potential cracks. The reinforcement also would not have guaranteed against a total collapse.

— Fatigue cracks are more likely to occur and spread in cold weather, when steel is less flexible. The I-35W bridge collapse came after several days of 90-degree-plus weather.

Unlike certain commentators, I would never replace science with my opinion.  I’ll await actual conclusions by real engineers. 

But if I may wax fantastic for a moment – that moment when some people are gonna have to apologize for accusing the Governor and David Strom of complicity in murder might seem to be creeping closer.

Back in 2004, there was a flood of new center-right blogs in the region.  I called it the “Class of ’04“.  Some amazing talent came out onto the blogging market back then.  It was a great time to be a blogger. 

But blogging – especially blogging by yourself – can be a pretty lonely, trying thing.  Some of us – Ed would be a great example – do it because they can earn something of a living at it.  Others – the local left’s lonesome voice of reason Flash, and the great Leo the Psycmeister, who is perhaps the most criminally-undertrafficked blog in the MOB – keep their work load in check by keeping the blog in careful perspective.  Others – me – do it because we’re crazy and/or we love doing it. 

But it’s not for everyone.  The mortality rate among the “Class of ’04” bloggers – while much lower than among the blogosphere in general (where about 99.5% of blogs expire after about three posts) has been high. 

Or has it?

One of the phenomena I’m happiest about lately is the amalgamation of so many of the smaller center-right bloggers into some of my favorite group-blogs. 

• Kool-Aid Report has added The Analog Kid and the Iron Matron (both of whom are well-known and exceptional bloggers, whose real identies are as closely held as Joe Tucci’s, er, was). 
• Anti-Strib up to 17 writers, now. 
• True North – my other blog – has a deep, deep roster.
• Freedom Dogs has absorbed quite a few – Diamond Dog, Lassie, Mannske, Guy – great local bloggers.
• And now, word comes that Truth v. The Machine has added Ricard from Lazy Gopher Pachyderm (in addition to Pat Shortridge).

So it looks like it’s going to be a fun year!