Things are still kind of up in the air, but improving slowly. In the meantime, have a handful of random crap:
Your Jack LaLanne obit from the NYT. And from the LAT.
Just for Lawrence, a review of the New World Center, designed by Frank Gehry.
Happy belated birthday, John Moses Browning.
The Pack is back, baby! (Mostly, I’m linking this for the font: may not be valid after 1/24. Did they drag the “Japs Attack Pearl Harbor!” font out of the Linotype case?)
Remember the case of the clerk who shot the beer thief? The one who got eight years probation for his murder and evidence tampering conviction?
Yeah. Well, there’s a follow-up to that story. You see, it turns out that the jury couldn’t do that.
So the judge tossed the verdict, and everybody involved made a deal. Romero pled out to manslaughter instead of murder, and got the same eight year probated sentence.
I would have preferred to see a retrial, and a fight at the appellate level if Romero was convicted again. But I can’t blame Romero and his lawyers for taking the deal.
Someone who can claim credit in the comments (or send me an email if they want) suggested a T-shirt:
Front: “One down, 534 to go.”
Back: “Wearing this t-shirt is cause for revoking your civil rights. At least in Massachusetts.”
I don’t have time to work on the design (the personal situation I alluded to in an earlier post is not improving as rapidly as I would like) but if someone does want to take the ball and run with it…I would suggest that any proceeds go into TJIC’s legal fund.
We generally do not read the Huffington Post, although we do not react to it in the same way we react to that wretched hive of scum and stupidity known as Salon. However, we wanted to make note of this article, even though it has been thoroughly linked and blogged elsewhere:
We especially wanted to make note of this article in light of another recent event. Supporter and sometime commenter on this blog TJIC had his Massachusetts firearms license suspended over postings on his blog. Yes, you read that correctly: Jay G. has a more detailed account, which also preempts much of the commentary I would otherwise offer on this subject.
TJIC’s commentary may be disagreeable, even reprehensible to some. But if being disagreeable and running contrary to popular opinion was a reason to revoke someone’s civil rights, where would we be today? Jay says it better that we can:
Or how does it make you feel to know that Martin Luther King was denied the ability to defend himself and his family, because he was black and unpopular?
Can we get an “Amen!” for Brother Jay?
Don Kirshner, music mogul. Lawrence suggested I insert Paul Simon’s parody of Kirshner from SNL here, but sadly I can’t find that online.
R. Sargent Shriver, who was never a sergeant, and was perhaps most famous as a Kennedy in-law.
Is it possible to be a football atheist? Plus Easterbrookian ignorance about guns and stealing jokes from FARK. All in this week’s TMQ after the jump…
It is well known that I am an unabashed Smith and Wesson fanboy.
I will not be purchasing one of these, thank you very much.
I already have a S&W that shoots .45 LC, and while I’d like to add a .45 ACP revolver to the collection, it won’t be one that looks like it has been knighted with the ugly stick. I also don’t have a burning desire for a handgun that shoots .410 shells. (The Circuit Judge actually does have a small amount of appeal to me, but there are a lot of long guns higher on the list, like the Ruger Scout Rifle or something in .45-70. I think the reason the Circuit Judge appeals is that it doesn’t look as ugly as I originally expected it to be. Then again, the Uberti revolving rifles are also attractive.)
(Hattip: Tam.)
Since we have, in the past, noted cases where Austin Police Department (and Austin Fire Department) officers have won arbitrator’s rulings over disciplinary actions, simple fairness requires us to note this article in yesterday’s Statesman:
Certainly not the impression I had. However, if you read down a little more in the article…
So if the arbitrators have upheld 10 of 23, that implies they haven’t upheld the remaining 13, right? So is it fair to say “employees have lost that battle more frequently than not”?
In fairness to the author of the article, he goes on to state:
• Arbitrators have overturned only a single police disciplinary case.
• Arbitrators have agreed that officers erred in five cases but reduced their punishment.
My impression is that he’s grouping those as “wins” for the employees. That accounts for six out of 13. What of the other seven?
I think the author is counting the five settlements as “wins” for the city, where I would count a settlement as a “win” for the employee. Reasonable people can differ on this, and I’m not sure there’s enough evidence in the article to resolve that difference. Let’s be fair and count a settlement as a “tie”. By that count, I make it 11-6-5 (counting the withdrawn appeal as a “win” for the city).
Also interesting:
We are experiencing some issues both computational (our primary bombe had to visit the repair shop) and personal (a family member’s health issue, which we will not detail here) that are keeping us from running at 100% of our rated capacity.
Blogging will be catch as catch can for a bit.
Well, it is that season, or will be soon:
It just gets stranger from there. I am amused by the detail that he was also carrying a Mexican flag.
We previously blogged about the local store clerk who was charged with murder after shooting at a fleeing thief who’d stolen a 12-pack. The thief was found dead in an abandoned car a few hours later, and the clerk apparently tried to cover his tracks after the shooting.
The clerk was just convicted of murder and evidence tampering.
We repeat what we said at the time, “If you had a good reason for shooting, the evidence is only going to help you. Altering or destroying evidence only makes you look bad.” And it will probably get you convicted.
Edited to add: The jury that was deadlocked for several days does not appear to have had much trouble returning a sentence; eight years probation.
Following up on yesterday’s story, the Statesman has an interview with the (allegedly) drunk horse rider on 6th Street.
The guy on the mule was apparently not available for comment. And for the record, the Statesman is reporting that the DWI charges against both men have been dropped, but the police are planning to charge them with public intoxication.
…what Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, former city administrator for the city of Bell, now under indictment, was doing, the answer is:
He’s working as a parking lot attendant at the “International Surfing Museum” in Huntington Beach.
I think I speak for many of my readers when I say: there’s an “International Surfing Museum”?
Edited to add 1/14: Well, that was quick. Rizzo is no longer working at the International Surfing Museum.
By way of TJIC, I found this nifty little query page that lists the NYT bestsellers for your birth week (both fiction and non-fiction).
I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that I’ve only read one book on the list for my birth week. On the one hand, NYT bestseller lists seem to be dominated by a fair amount of transient crud; on the other hand, I’ve actually read more of the books on TJIC’s list (three total) than my own. (Believe it or not, I’ve read Boss
I am halfway tempted to start a project of blogging my way through the books for my birth week, just for grins.