Before we get into this week’s TMQ…well, we were going to snark on Women’s Professional Soccer, but that’s kind of kicking a person when they’re down. (“…average attendance 2,714 before the World Cup final”, “…season’s final average was 3,518, slightly below the 2010 average of 3,601”)
Other than that…well, this is the slowest week in sports. Why don’t we just jump in now and avoid the Super Bowl rush?
The 185th Grand Jury – that would be the one investigating the Harris County DA’s office – ended their term today. (Previously: here, here, here, here, and here.)
And?
No indictments. But the grand jury is not pleased with the DA’s office:
The current Chron article is a bit short; I expect a longer version later today. Murray Newman had a good piece up this morning with his predictions; I would expect commentary from him once he’s had a chance to read and digest the grand jury report.
Edited to add: The Hon. Mr. Newman has the statement, and his thoughts, up over at his blog.
Edited to add 2/1: Longer story from the HouChron. Note the fine copy editing (which I hope will be fixed when you see it):
Master Sergeant John Franklin Baker Jr. (United States Army -ret.)
In November of 1966, then Private Baker’s company was tasked with rescuing another company that was pinned down by Viet Cong troops.
Baker was promoted to sergeant, and received the Medal of Honor for his actions.
…but I propose that, next year and every subsequent year, January 20th be celebrated as “National Buy an AK Day“. (The connection between this date and presidential inaugurations is purely coincidental. I am sure Mr. Cube did not plan things this way.)
If you already have an AK, I propose you observe the day by purchasing at least 50 rounds of 7.62 x 39 ammo. Or whatever it takes to feed your AK if you have a variant caliber.
(Hattip: Kottke.)
Today’s NYT has the most entertaining obit I’ve read in a while, for the late Jonathan Idema.
Idema was sentenced to ten years in an Afghan prison for allegedly imprisoning and torturing eight men.
And perhaps my favorite part:
“If I’m the G-dd–n Batman, why am I on top of a cake with this amazonian bimbo?”
I commend to the attention of future brides everywhere the strategy that this one used to encourage participation by both genders in the bouquet toss: attach a Fry’s gift card to the bouquet. (However, brides should consider carefully the value of the card they’re going to attach. For $10, yeah, I’ll participate. For $250, I’ll kill a snitch. I’m not saying I have, I’m not saying I haven’t…)
People you normally don’t see this dressed up, part 1.
And two. Finally, here’s what seems like a fitting song for the happy couple.
…I was not aware of the existence of “The Infosphere“, aka “The Futurama Wiki”.
Here’s the link to “A Head In The Polls“.
And I still think “All hail the happy couple. May death come quickly to their enemies” would be an awesome wedding toast.
How stupid do you have to be to test positive for five banned substances?
Obit watch: Robert Hegyes, best known as Juan Epstein on “Welcome Back, Kotter”. (FARK already did the “Epstein’s Mother” joke so I don’t have to.)
…comes to us by way of our great and good friend Earl Cooley III on Google+.
It starts with the arrest of Mitchell Gross on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. According to the indictment, Gross defrauded a woman he met online of $3 million.
Okay, so? Mitchell Gross is also known as “Mitchell Graham”; he published fantasy books with HarperCollins and mysteries with Tor and Forge.
And then this is where it really starts to get weird. Gross claims to be a championship fencer (there are some questions about that claim; it seems clear, at the very least, that he was not on the US Olympic fencing teams in 1984 and 1988). Gross also claimed to have been a practicing lawyer for twenty years, and that he quit practicing in order to go back to school and earn a doctorate in neuropsychology. (Gross was actually disbarred in 1990, and convicted of practicing law without a license in 1992.)
And then it gets weirder. Gross may have set up his own fake writing contest, complete with judging by Ben Bova, and used that to get published. (“Mr. Bova told us that he had indeed been hired as a contest judge–the only one, so far as he was aware. He was a bit surprised to discover that there was also only one finalist, but went ahead and did as he was asked–to read the manuscript and judge if it was fit to win.“)
The best roundup of this is at the Writer Beware blog. Be sure to read the comments, as people seem to be digging up more information on Mr. Gross. There’s also a lot of good stuff in the linked AJC article.
Battleswarm was doing a better job of covering the red-light camera issue in Houston than I was. However, I ran across an item (by way of Overlawyered) that I thought was worth sharing.
When the referendum outlawing the red light cameras was being litigated before District Court Judge Lynn N. Hughes, Judge Hughes blocked Francis and Randy Kubosh, the people behind the referendum, from participating in Houston’s lawsuit against American Traffic Solutions (ATS). The Kuboshs (and other people) were concerned that Houston was going to go into the tank for ATS, “especially after ATS and Houston’s lawyers sat together at the same table during oral arguments.”
Yeah. Well. The Fifth Circuit ruled on Tuesday that, no, Judge Hughes, you can’t do that.
Meanwhile, the city settled with ATS for $4.8 million. Noted:
Legendary actor Nicol Williamson passed away on December 16. However, his death was apparently not reported until yesterday.
And:
(In addition to playing Hamlet and Macbeth, he was also Sherlock Holmes in “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution”.)
The city of Galveston has placed all twelve members of the city’s traffic division on “paid administrative leave”. Apparently, there’s some sort of investigation going on.
Note: these are not Galveston PD officers, and don’t issue traffic tickets. These are the folks who maintain the city traffic lights and suchlike. Which kind of makes this a full on “WTF?!” moment. (As the HouChron notes, there is a budget for the division, but they don’t collect money from the public, so you’d figure the chances for skimming and embezzlement are slim.)
…for James Farentino.
I really wish someone would put “The Bold Ones” (or even the individual “wheels” within the series, such as Farentino and Ives’s “The Lawyers”) out on DVD. From what I saw back when I could get RTN, that was actually a pretty good series.
My opinion of baseball is well established.
My opinion of the New York Yankees is perhaps less well established; in brief, I consider them as an organization to be the representatives of Satan on Earth.
That being said…
Lot of cedar pollen in the air today. That must be why my eyes are watering.
(Hattip: His Grubes.)
I’m particularly fond of this one. (Yes, that is a real status code, although it is technically HTCPCP, not HTTP. See RFC 2324. Yes, there are documented implementations of this.)
The Onion A/V Club is reporting the death of Dick Tufeld, noted television announcer and voice actor, perhaps most famous as the voice of “Lost in Space”‘s Robot.
Before we jump into this week’s TMQ, we thought we’d mention D.J. Gallo’s list of the worst college basketball blowouts in Division I history. “Long Island 179, Medgar Evers 62”. It took all of Long Island to defeat one guy? And “Texas 102, San Marcos Baptist 1”. “San Marcos Baptist Academy was — and is — a boarding school for teenagers.”
After the jump…
…so go the Washington Wizards.
Flip Saunders out as coach. 51-130 over three seasons, but the Wizards started 2-15 this season.
(Thanks to Lawrence for the tip.)
Today is “Bad Website Day” over at Lawrence’s.
We’re talking really bad. Awesomely bad. Eyeballs bleeding bad.
So bad that I’m linking to his posts, rather than the websites themselves, just for your protection.
See how kind and caring I am?
LAT headline: “Gene Simmons look-alike robs stores in Sacramento“.
(First comment: “That’s Paul Stanley you morons.” How can you tell from that photo?)
The Supreme Court has handed down their decision in the case of United States v. Jones, the case involving attaching GPS tracking devices to vehicles.
The court held that, yes, attaching a GPS tracking device to someone’s vehicle is a search under the Fourth Amendment, and yes, this does require a search warrant. The decision is here.
Even better: it was a 9-0 ruling. (Five of the justices signed on to the majority opinion; the other four wrote a separate concurring opinion.)
Here’s preliminary coverage from Wired‘s “Threat Level” blog. I haven’t had a chance to review the full ruling yet; I may have additional links or commentary later.
Edited to add: Correction. According to the WP, there were two concurring opinions; I missed one in my quick skim of the ruling. Alito, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan signed on to one concurrence; Sotomayor wrote a second concurrence, and also signed on to the majority opinion.
Edited to add 2: Discussion at the Volokh Conspiracy. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Still wading through this, but part 2 makes a good point; the Court did not actually rule per se that GPS tracking requires a warrant, but that it is a search under the Fourth Amendment. Not all searches require a warrant (see Terry v. Ohio or Chimel v. California) but, in general, the types of searches that the Court has held do not require a warrant involve “exigent circumstances” and are highly limited in scope. I find it hard to see the Court applying an “exigent circumstances” exception to GPS tracking in just about any case.
ETA3: And one of Volokh’s commenters makes a good point: the police apparently had a warrant, but botched the execution of it (“The warrant authorized installation in the District of Columbia and within 10 days, but agents installed the device on the 11th day and in Maryland.”) and then tried to argue that they didn’t need no stinking warrant anyway.
One might go so far as to say “Damn Interesting”.
Many of my friends and some bloggers seem to be regular followers of this site:
, which is not easy to find.)As opposed to last night, when he was apparently declared dead but actually wasn’t. (Good on Devon Edwards for standing up and taking responsibility, but I still feel sorry for him; especially since it sounds like they were taken in by a forged email and a dishonest source.)
Also among the dead: Philip Vannatter, LAPD detective. I know, you probably never heard of him. He led the Ron Goldman/Nicole Brown Simpson investigation and the Roman Polanski investigation, two of the LAPD’s biggest cases.
Following up on the previous post:
Scary Yankee Chick was kind enough to leave a comment pointing back to her blog post on the same subject. (Thank you, SYC, and again I apologize for not following you more diligently.)
It looks like Stuff from Hsoi (who I also should be following more diligently) has done some research into this; not only has he not turned up much supporting this rumor, but he’s found a response from the NSCA pretty much debunking it.
I’m still open to discussion and additional information on this. I also still think being conscious about how you store your guns when traveling and what signals you’re sending to potential thieves is a good idea. But right now, I’m not seeing a whole lot supporting that particular rumor.
(Thanks again, and apologies, to Scary Yankee Chick and Hsoi.)
The German Sport Guns folks are putting out some interesting stuff. I’ve been tempted for a while to pick up one of their .22LR MP-5 clones (Mike the Musicologist has been pushing me to do so as well); they’re nice looking guns, I think they’d be a lot of fun to shoot, and I often see them at the gun show for reasonable prices. But I can’t find any practical use for them (other than “they’d be fun to shoot”) and I’ve got enough .22LR guns already, thankyouverymuch.
I do also kind of like the idea of an AK-47 clone in .22LR, but it has less appeal to me than the MP-5 clones. I’d rather have a full-on AK-47. (And that is on my list, just haven’t gotten around to it yet.)
New at the SHOT show, we’ve got the Mexican drug dealer line of guns from GSG: gold-plated AK and MP-5 clones. Yeah. Not on the list, but lord love GSG for trying.
On the other hand, American Tactical Imports (GSG’s US importer) is also going to be importing GSG’s .22LR version of the StG 44. This could be interesting; .22LR is a lot easier to find than 7.92×33mm Kurz, and I do have a certain interest in the StG 44 after reading Pale Horse Coming (in which the Audie Murphy clone uses one to great effect against a guard tower).
Also, if I’m going to be honest with myself, the wooden crate “handmade by a Amish community in New York state” pushes a button, too.
(Hattip: The Firearm Blog on both of these.)
Edited to add: Something occurs to me. You know what ATI/GSG could probably rake in the cash with? A Thompson clone in .22LR, complete with drum magazine. Especially if they sold it (and the drum) at a price that doesn’t make you think it is made out of compressed unicorn tears and ambergris.
However, I’d be willing to bet that the current owners of Auto-Ordnance might not take too kindly to that without some sort of licensing deal. Which I think actually raises an interesting legal question; to what extent is the physical look and design of a firearm protected by law? GSG was, after all, sued by H&K (“you suck and we hate you”) for trade dress infringement, but how long does trade dress protection last? Forever? The Thompson is, after all, an 84 year old gun…