A while back, I quoted a report from the “Recoil” website that BATFE had banned imports of non-lethal training ammunition, such as Simunition.
“Recoil” is now reporting that BATFE has reversed that ban, on ATF Ruling 2025-2, “effective immediately”.
As they point out, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the manufacturers will resume selling to non law enforcement and military customers, but at least the legal impediments are out of the way.
(Hattip: Greg Ellifritz’s “Weekend Knowledge Dump”.)
Bobby Sherman. NYT (archived). Other credits include “The F.B.I.”, “The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo”, and “Flying High”.
NYT obit for Blake Farenthold.
Aki Aleong, actor. He was “Colonel Quoc” in an episode of “Airwolf” and “General Quoc” in “Braddock: Missing in Action III”, so he must have gotten promoted a few times in four years. Other credits include “Mancuso, FBI”, “Jake and the Fatman”, “The Wackiest Ship in the Army”, and three episodes of “Babylon 5”.
The NYPost informs us that Tiffany Henyard, the former mayor of Dolton, Illinois, whose antics have provided us with much entertainment over the past few years, has a new venture.
She’s writing a book, Standing on Business.
$99?! I would certainly be willing to buy her book, probably as a Christmas/birthday present for Lawrence (who, as I’ve noted before, is a connoisseur of books by disgraced politicians) but not for no $99! $9.99 is about my limit.
And, no, that’s not a typo. Here’s a link to the book’s page on the “Big Cartel” website. Here’s a link to her Facebook post, for those of you who swing that way. However, I can’t get the link in her Facebook post to come up.
Former Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Brian K. Williams pleaded guilty Monday to a federal charge linked to a fake bomb threat he made to City Hall last year.
Williams entered a plea in downtown Los Angeles to a single federal count of threats regarding fire and explosives, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
LAPD officers responded to City Hall to investigate the threat Williams reported. Police searched the building and did not locate any suspicious packages or devices. Williams described to police the threatening call he claimed to have received, showed them the record of an incoming call that appeared as a blocked number on his city-issued cell phone and said it was the unknown man who conveyed the threat, court papers show.
In fact, that incoming call record was the call Williams had placed to himself from the Google Voice app on his personal cell phone, federal prosecutors said.
Hattip: Mike the Musicologist.
Marcos Lopez is the sheriff of Osceola County in Florida, though he is currently suspended.
Why is he suspended? Because he was indicted on racketeering and “conspiracy to commit racketeering” charges on Thursday.
NYT:
The charges stem from a joint investigation conducted in 2023 by Homeland Security Investigations and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The inquiry uncovered a criminal syndicate that prosecutors say operated an illegal gambling network that generated about $22 million across Central Florida, especially in Lake and Osceola Counties.
Prosecutors said that Sheriff Lopez’s ties to the casino, the Eclipse Social Club in Kissimmee, Fla., date to 2019, a year before his election. After becoming sheriff in 2020, prosecutors said, he continued to protect the gambling ring as it expanded in Florida while collecting a portion of proceeds.
Prosecutors said that Sheriff Lopez’s involvement in the gambling enterprise continued until as recently as August 2024, months before he was re-elected in November.
Switching back to the Tampa Bay Times:
Catching up from the three-day weekend:
Phil Robertson, noted beard guy and founder of Duck Commander. He was also on a TV show. NYT.
(I kid a little. I kind of liked what I saw of “Duck Dynasty”.)
Marcel Ophuls, French documentary film maker. He was pretty famous for “The Sorrow and the Pity”, but he first came to my attention when “Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie” was released. I haven’t seen either one, though I feel obligated to. THR.
Charles B. Rangel, former Congressman from New York City.
James McEachin. Other credits include…well, just about every damn thing. “The F.B.I”, “Play Misty for Me”, “The Bold Ones: The Senator”, “The Bold Ones: The Protectors”…and “Mannix” (“Pressure Point”, season 2, episode 3. He was “Benjy”, but went uncredited.)
Rick Derringer, musician.
Tiawana Brown is a councilwoman in Charlotte, North Carolina.
She was elected in 2023. According to the reports I’ve found, she was convicted of felony fraud in 1994 and served four years.
She was indicted today, along with her two daughters.
Charlotte City Councilwoman Tiawana Brown threw herself a $15,000 birthday party with a throne and a horse-drawn carriage using COVID pandemic relief funds wired to her nonprofit, federal prosecutors say.
She and one of her daughters also are accused of using relief money to purchase items from luxury brand Louis Vuitton.
…
From the US Attorney’s press release:
Charlotte Observer (archived). WBTV, which includes a Scribd version of the indictment.
Other credits that don’t involve him appearing as Norm include “Larry the Cable Guy’s Christmas Spectacular”, “Columbo: Strange Bedfellows”, and the 1986 “Twilight Zone” revival.
Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D – Virginia).
Vlastimil Hort, chess grandmaster. There’s a great story about Mr. Hort. Actually, there’s probably more than one, but this may be the one he’s most famous for.
In 1977, he was playing Boris Spassky in Reykjavik.
The match was a best-of-12 quarterfinal, whose winner would be one step closer to the top title in chess. After 12 games, they were tied, prompting a two-game playoff.
Then Mr. Spassky fell seriously ill. He was taken to the hospital, and his appendix was removed. According to the rules, he was entitled to three postponements of three days each. He took them all, but was still too unwell to play.
Mr. Spassky would have to forfeit, meaning Mr. Hort would advance to the semifinals.
Then Mr. Hort did something unexpected. To give Mr. Spassky a chance to continue to compete, Mr. Hort requested a three-day timeout, which was granted. It was a choice seen for decades as one of the greatest acts of sportsmanship in the history of the game, and it ended up costing Mr. Hort the match.
By the end of the timeout, Mr. Spassky could resume play, and after Games 13 and 14 were drawn, another two-game playoff was needed. In Game 15, Mr. Hort reached a winning position, but he froze. His time expired before he had made the required number of moves, thus forfeiting the game. After the next game ended in a tie, Mr. Spassky was declared the winner of the match.
Mr. Hort lost his chance to play for the world championship and never qualified again.
…
David Horowitz, noted conservative commentator. Twitter X. NYT. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Priscilla Pointer, actress. Other credits include “Blue Velvet”, “C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud”, “Quincy, M.E.”, “McCloud”, and “Mrs. Columbo”.
Andrew Gross, thriller writer. He may have been best known for the books he wrote with James Patterson.
I don’t know what to make of this story. I don’t feel like it qualifies for flaming hyena status yet, but I do feel like it is noteworthy.
Up until yesterday, Matthew Bruderman was the chairman of Nassau University Medical Center. A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Bruderman announced he was cooperating with the FBI and Department of Justice in an investigation. Specifically, Mr. Bruderman claims that New York state and Long Island have stolen at least $1 billion from the organization.
Wednesday night, Mr. Bruderman’s house was burglarized. However, the only thing allegedly taken was…documents tied to the investigation.
Bruderman wasn’t home at the time of the robbery and only found out after police called to inform him they had recovered a binder with his name on it in a car driven by an unidentified couple, he said.
“I was confused because that was the binder I had on my desk when I left,” he said.
Bruderman said he later found his backdoor pried wide open.
The binder, he said, contained “sensitive” materials related to the ongoing federal investigation, including documents and records tied to the financial misconduct he claims to have uncovered while reviewing hospital finances and state reimbursements.
Things that make you go “Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm”:
At the heart of the alleged scheme is a little-known federal program called the Disproportionate Share Hospital Fund — meant to help keep afloat struggling hospitals such as NUMC, which treat large numbers of low-income patients on Medicaid and Medicare.
Under the program, the federal government agrees to give hospitals tens of millions of dollars in funding as long as their state matches the investment.
…
According to [Bruderman’s] review of internal financial records, previous hospital leadership allegedly “borrowed” what was supposed to be the state’s matching share from an offshore account tied to a Cayman Islands trust, originally set up to cover the medical center’s legal bills.
That money would be temporarily transferred into the hospital’s general fund just long enough to fool the feds into thinking New York had paid its share — unlocking the federal portion of the funding, he claimed.
But once the federal funds cleared, the state’s contribution would allegedly be moved right back offshore.
That would mean those matching funds vanished into the shadows in a conspiracy that could’ve included top officials.
More things that make you go “Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm”: Mr. Bruderman was fired on Thursday.
Bruderman, who was unpaid in his position as chairman, told The Post he was shocked by his firing and is the victim of a political scandal.
“I was told if I didn’t resign today, like a coward, I would be removed. I was told [Gov.] Kathy Hochul wanted my head for exposing the corruption and previously supporting Lee Zeldin. I was told I don’t understand how powerful these people are and the lengths they would go to hurt me. I refused to resign and they had no choice but to remove me,” Bruderman told The Post.
Again, I don’t know what to make of this. A lot of the coverage seems to be from Mr. Bruderman’s point of view, and I won’t rule out the possibility that he’s trying to divert attention away from his own activities. On the other hand, I’m absolutely not going to rule out the idea that New York state and Nassau County officials are as crooked as a three-dollar bill, and have been doing exactly what Mr. Bruderman claims.
In other news, and I guess this qualifies as a flaming hyena: Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan has been arrested by the FBI.
Flores Ruiz, 30, had appeared before Dugan April 18 for a pre-trial conference on three misdemeanor battery charges.
ICE agents showed up outside the courtroom with a federal warrant for Flores Ruiz’s arrest but were asked by court officials to wait until the hearing had ended before cuffing him, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, citing law enforcement sources.
Before the agents could enter, Dugan allegedly directed Flores Ruiz and his lawyer out a side door and through a private hallway to avoid apprehension.
Judge Dugan is charged with “obstruction of justice and concealing a person from arrest”. The NYTimes has additional coverage, including a link to the charging document, but share links aren’t working for me right now. I’ll try to update later.
Looks like Tania Fernandes Anderson is going to take a plea. (Previously.)
Is that legal? Can you use campaign funds for a U-Haul to move stuff out of your office before you go to the big house?
…but I just can’t. I’m laughing too hard right now.
(You may remember Ms. James for her prolonged legal battle against the NRA.)
Also, she’s only been “referred” for possible prosecution, not actually indicted yet. When the indictment comes up, I’ll get out the marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate, so I can make S’Mores over the bonfire of Letitia James and her political ambitions.
Oh, New Jersey. Notable for the Joyce Kilmer Service Area…and corruption.
39 people were indicted today for their parts in what’s described as a “sweeping gambling case that was part of a two-year investigation that uncovered illegal operations in Woodland Park, Garfield, and Totowa that netted $3 million in illegal profits, the AG alleged.”
One of those people is George Zappola, who is allegedly a leader in the Lucchese Mafia family. Some other Lucchese captains and soldiers were also indicted.
Also indicted: a councilman from Prospect Park.
More:
On Wednesday, cops raided four illegal poker clubs connected to the Lucchese family, two of which were run out of the backrooms of restaurants. They also searched a business in Paterson that was storing gambling machines and the homes of seven people who were allegedly managing the gambling operation.
The raid led officials to discover more poker clubs and dozens of people who hosted poker games, worked at the clubs, or managed bettors on an illegal online sportsbook on sites outside the US, Platkin said.
…
The websites allowed the mobsters to use the internet and technology to carry out the same criminal activities La Cosa Nostra had been doing the old-fashioned way since the 19th century, Platkin said.
Shah is charged with racketeering, conspiracy to promote gambling and money laundering and other charges for which he could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted on the top charge.
This seems simultaneously small-time and stupid. How much money can there be in the “rake” from poker games? And with the existence of actual real sportsbooks that advertise constantly on television, who uses a Mob sportsbook? People who can’t get an account with a legal one? What percentage of the market is that?
Some people might say that Robert Farley, the police chief of North Bergen, New Jersey, has an unusual sense of humor.
Other people might say that he’s an a–hole. Including some of his own officers, who are planning to sue the department.
The chief’s sense of humor includes such hits as:
Michael F. Derin, who worked as a special captain in an administrative role, accused the chief of chasing him around the office before cornering him and poking him with a hypothermic needle through his jeans and into his penis in August 2024.
“When I told chief Farley I was unhappy with his actions, he told me that I didn’t know how to take a joke,” Derin wrote in a notice of claim – the precursor to a lawsuit.
And:
“Chief Farley has, on several occasions, pulled his pants down and defecated on the floor in front of his entire office staff,” Guzman wrote in his notice of claim.
One time he even pooped in the trash can of an office he was moving out of so the next police official moving into the space would find it, Guzman alleged.
And:
And:
And:
These are just allegations, of course. And there are more of them, but those are relatively minor: the usual retaliation and harassment.
Edited to add 3/28: The NYPost has a follow-up story. While these are still allegations, the story includes some photos that would tend to support the claims.
Warning: I don’t usually have to put a content warning on flaming hyenas. But these photos include a shirtless Chief Farley shaving himself (or pretending to shave himself) over a subordinate’s desk. These photos also include a pile of poop, allegedly from the chief, though it is unclear to me if any DNA testing was done to establish that.
She was the first woman to serve as mayor of Austin, served as state comptroller, and served on the Texas Railroad Commission. The obits right now seem kind of short, but I remember she was a big deal in Austin and Texas politics when I first moved to Austin.
Clive Revill. Other credits include “Babylon 5”, “Pinky and the Brain”, “Let Him Have It” (which I highly recommend), and a spinoff of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s.
Oleg Gordievsky. He was a Commie spy.
Except he actually wasn’t. He was a double agent for British Intelligence.
In 1985 he was recalled to Moscow, given drugs and interrogated. Someone, it seemed, had tipped off the K.G.B. to the presence of a high-ranking mole in London.
Lacking solid evidence, the Soviets placed him on leave. A few days later he appeared at 7 p.m. on a Moscow street corner, holding a shopping bag. A man soon passed, eating a candy bar. They locked eyes.
That was the signal to activate Operation Pimlico, an emergency extraction. Mr. Gordievsky shook his K.G.B. tail and then hurried to the Finnish border. Two British agents, a man and a woman, along with their baby, awaited him there in their Ford Sierra.
They placed him in the trunk, wrapped in a foil sheet to confuse heat detectors. When dogs at the border grew suspicious, the agents began to change the child’s diaper, filling the car with odors that threw the canines off Mr. Gordievsky’s scent.
When they were finally across, they played Jean Sibelius’s “Finlandia” symphony on the car’s sound system, a signal to Mr. Gordievsky that he was safe.
Back in Moscow, he was sentenced to death in absentia. That sentence has never been rescinded.
L.J. Smith, author. I probably would not have noted this, but she had an interesting career.
She published her first book (The Night of the Solstice, for young readers) in 1987. It wasn’t a bestseller, but it did attract the attention of Alloy Entertainment, “a book packaging and production company that has since been acquired by Warner Brothers”. They hired her to write “The Vampire Diaries” series, and she wrote four of those books between 1991 and 1992.
She also wrote other YA series books. In the late 1990s, though, she stopped writing for a time due to family health issues.
Yes, this is “The Vampire Diaries” that became the CW series. Which may have been part of the problem: Ms. Smith was fired as the writer in 2011. She stated that she thought the publisher wanted “wanted shorter books more closely associated with the TV series”.
But wait, there’s more! She started writing “The Vampire Diaries” fan fiction!
In 2013, Amazon created Kindle Worlds, an online service that gave writers of fan fiction permission to write about certain licensed properties, including Alloy’s “Vampire Diaries” series, and to earn money for their ventures.
In 2014, Ms. Smith became the rare celebrated author to produce fan fiction as a way to recoup characters and story arcs she had lost, publishing a novel and novella in an informal continuation of the “Vampire Diaries.” (Kindle Worlds was discontinued in 2018).
I had actually never heard of “Kindle Worlds”. But I don’t follow fan fiction.