I come up with a figure of 0.055 percent.
Is it possible that Criminal Mayors Against Guns and other parties are starting to realize that we have plenty of gun regulation already, and one of the problems is that people who violate the laws frequently aren’t prosecuted?
(Remember the WP series “The Hidden Life of Guns“? Remember the WP pointing out that “straw purchasers” and other people who lie to purchase guns are rarely prosecuted? More to the point, does the WP remember?)
Steven Utley, Texas SF writer.
Tributes from Lawrence here and here. Tribute from Rick Klaw here.
Even though it has one strike against it (being written by A.G. “a vegetarian at Arthur Bryant’s” Sulzberger), and even though FARK linked it, I still wanted to tag this article:
Two Men, One Sky: A Flight to the Finish.
Or, the true story of two guys who took off from Zapata, Texas one morning last July in an attempt to set the world record for flying the longest distance…in a hang glider. One of them flew 472 miles in 11 hours (the previous longest flight was 438 miles). And the other one? I’m not going to spoil it for you.
A couple of things I want to bookmark here, even though they’ve been all over the web, for two reasons:
These are mostly bookmarks for myself, so the rest of you can ignore this post if you’d like.
So:
“Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie“, the absolutely crazy account of what happens when Paul Schrader, Lindsay Lohan, Bret Easton Ellis, and a porn star try to make a low-budget, funded on Kickstarter, movie. Hilarity ensues.
Also: “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek“. This is supposed to be an amazing use of interactive media to tell a story, and it is the kind of story that’s right up my alley; I just have not gotten around to going through it yet.
This isn’t really an “article of the year” candidate, but I wanted to point it out and bookmark it for future reference: “The Minimum Viable Kitchen“, or how to cook great food for an investment of under $1,000 in tools. I wouldn’t take this as gospel: while my two favorite kitchen knives are both Victorinox (and I should probably add that paring knife to the battery), I’ve heard some pretty negative things about the accessories for the Kitchenaid mixers. So take this with a grain of salt and do some hands-on work before making a major purchase (or even a minor one: Blood Bath and Beyond should let you fondle that Oxo whisk for a while before you buy it).
Another update: I have previously written about Carolyn Barnes, who was accused of shooting at a census worker, ruled incompetent to stand trial, sent to the state hospital, and continued to practice law while maintaining that she was sane.
Well, she found a judge who agrees with her. Yesterday, she was ruled competent to stand trial. The judge ordered her release from the state hospital to the county jail, and set an early April trial date. He also set a bail of $30,000 and:
The “no remaining assets” part is also worth a little focus here. You see, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the people who run the state hospitals, tries to
According to the Statesman, Ms. Barnes was being charged $509 a day, and has been invoiced for “more than $100,000”.
If I were to fly out to New York City next Tuesday and stay for a week, I could get what seems like a pretty nice hotel room for around $350 a night – possibly less than $300. Subtracting that from the $509 a day Ms. Barnes was being billed leaves me with $150 to $200 a day for food, which even by NYC standards sounds fair: get a couple of bagels with lox spread for breakfast, maybe grab a dog from a street vendor for lunch, and you’ve still got enough money to eat someplace decent to fairly nice for dinner. Of course, I’m not including the cost of medication in my calculations, but there’s also no mention in the articles I’ve seen that Ms. Barnes was getting medication, or that medication was included in her bill.
However, the paper is also reporting that at least two of the commissioners are “backing away” from supporting the measure:
Before we give props to Eckhart and Daugherty, they are also quoted as supporting “background checks for anyone buying a gun at a gun show”. Oddly enough, so is Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson. I suspect that Daugherty and Patterson are just misinformed, not malicious; I’m not sure about Eckhardt.
In any case, now is not the time to back off. Keep those cards, letters, and faxes coming in, people. Contact information for all of the commissioners is right here.
The whole Yassine Enterprises case is starting to feel like kind of a bust. Yes, they lost their liquor licenses and yes there have been convictions. But those convictions seem mostly mild: money laundering, a single drug charge, and a charge of “transferring a firearm used in a violent crime”. Where are the murders? Where are the “sending money to terrorists” charges? This just isn’t shaping up to be entertaining at all.
Another member of the group has pled out. He was accused of “..conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute over 500 grams of cocaine; possession with intent to distribute over 500 grams of cocaine; and conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute over five kilos of cocaine, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.”
He pled guilty to…one charge of “misprison of a felony”. All of the other charges against him have been dropped.
What is “misprison of a felony”? The Statesman describes it as “he was aware a crime had been committed and that he failed to report it to authorities”. That kind of fits in with the actual wording of the US Code:
From what I’m seeing elsewhere, it isn’t just “he didn’t report the felony”, but misprison also requires an active attempt to conceal the felony.
The gentleman in question also fled the jurisdiction after failing a drug test, but was arrested in Honduras and returned to the United States. I don’t see any indication that he’s been charged with, or pled guilty, to any crime relating to that.
I thought it was worth noting: how often do you hear about “misprison of a felony”?
Not often enough, as I completely missed this unrelated story (until Google turned it up): Karen Parker lived in Jefferson Parish in Louisiana. Ms. Parker had a boyfriend (eventually fiancee, eventually husband, now divorced), Aaron Broussard, who was the Jefferson Parish president. Mr. Broussard wanted to get his girlfriend a good job. But, “once he took over the position of Parish President he could not hire Parker and there would be increased scrutiny as a result of the romantic relationship between Broussard and Parker”.
What to do, what to do? Well, if you’re the Jefferson Parrish president, you call your people together and you say “I want someone to hire my woman”. If you’re the Parrish attorney, Thomas G. Wilkinson, you’re also apparently an idiot. Because Wilkinson hired Parker as a “paralegal supervisor” in his office:
Ms. Parker pled guilty to misprison. Apparently, Mr. Wilkinson did as well, and Mr. Broussard pled to “one count of conspiracy to commit bribery and one count of theft”. I can’t find any evidence that they’ve been sentenced yet, as it looks like their cases are also part of the whole Letten/NOLA.com mess.
A little more than a year ago, I noted the saga of the Turner-Roberts Recreation Center in east Austin: built in 2008, developed structural problems in 2009, closed in 2011 while the city considered how to fix those problems.
Estimates at the time were $2.7 million and seven months to repair, or 10 months and $4.1 million for a tear-down and rebuild.
Today’s Statesman updates the story:
The city is going to pay $3 million of that cost. The rest will be picked up by the three companies that designed and built the center.
All told, the city will have spent $8.6 million on the building.
The city has also spent another $3.1 million to open a “9,100-square-foot ‘multi-purpose facility; next door that contains a gathering space, restrooms and a kitchen — similar to a rec center.”
I noted above that the three firms involved in design and construction are paying $3.4 million of the cost. That’s based on a settlement between those firms and the city, which didn’t require that the firms admit fault:
And where’s the city’s share of the money coming from?
Those bonds were also used to pay for the new multi-purpose facility.
Something stinks here, and I don’t think it is the trash I need to take out. (Just to be safe, though, I’m going to do that anyway.)
Edited to add: Well, that’s settled. It wasn’t the trash.
Not much going on, but I rarely get a chance to use the “Snakes” and “Reptiles” tags. So:
Obit watch: Evan S. Connell, Jr., noted novelist and historian. (Son of the Morning Star: Custer and The Little Bighorn
The Chicago Sun-Times is celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Mirage Tavern stories by rerunning the entire series, one story a day, as they originally appeared in the paper (they also promise extras from their archives and those of the Better Government Association).
For the young and those who don’t remember, the paper and the BGA teamed up, bought a bar (which they named the “Mirage Tavern”), outfitted it with hidden cameras and recording devices, and then proceeded to record a parade of city employees and officials coming in and demanding payoffs. (Wikipedia summary here.)
I particularly like this quote from the Wikipedia entry:
This is backed up by the paper’s reporting: for example, it took $10 to pass a fire inspection, even though there was exposed electrical wiring and other issues in the building’s basement.
The HouChron at the time ran Mike Rokyo’s work a couple of days out of the week, so I kind of knew Chicago was corrupt, but hearing second-hand about the Mirage Tavern investigation was the first time that I realized just how crooked the city was.
(Interestingly, the series was nominated and recommended for a Pulitzer Prize for “Local Investigative Specialized Reporting”. However, the Pulitzer board rejected the jury’s recommendation of the Sun-Times series, apparently because Ben Bradlee and other folks were butthurt over the Sun-Times methods.)
(Hattip: His Jim-ness.)
The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in the case of Missouri v. NcNeely.
Tyler McNeely was stopped on suspicion of drunk driving, and had blood drawn from him against his will and without a warrant. The Missouri Supreme Court suppressed the blood evidence. The state is appealing to the Supreme Court, arguing that they shouldn’t need a warrant.
Stop laughing. I’m not kidding. The state of Missouri believes that sticking a needle in someone’s arm and drawing blood is something that doesn’t need a warrant;”exigent circumstances” and all that happy horseshit.
Obit watch: Sol Yurick, novelist. His best known work was based on Xenophon’s “Anabasis”, and was turned into a Walter Hill directed movie.
James M. Buchanan, Nobel-prize winning economist.
I feel like I should make some comment about the Oscar nominations. Well, here it is: I’m glad “Argo” got nominated, as I think that improves the chances it will come back to the Alamo Drafthouse so I can watch it. Lawrence and I plan to see “Django Unchained”, but haven’t been able to coordinate that yet. I’m also interested in seeing “Zero Dark Thirty”. And “Silver Linings Playbook” got a best picture nomination? I’ll admit I haven’t seen anything but the trailer and commercials for it, but those were enough to turn me off: it seems like yet another “magical pixie girl/gee, isn’t mental illness fun?” movie. No thanks. I’ll pass. For now.
I’m also disappointed that “The Master” didn’t pick up a best picture nod, but it does seem to be well represented in the acting categories. Maybe that will make a comeback as well?
In Austin nightclub news, the liquor licenses for all nine of the bars operated by Yassine Enterprises have been yanked. Apparently, licenses are tied to the building, and there’s a one license per building limit; this meant that nobody else could get a license until the Yassine licenses were revoked. Now that that is out of the way, various enterprises are planning to open new bars in the old Yassine locations. I have to be honest: most of these sound like horrible places. Especially Chicago House, which will be run by the people who run Bikini’s Sports Bar and Grill (a place you go to when Hooter’s is too classy for you), and Bourbon Girl, “a ‘country cool, cowboy chic’ bar that will be operated by Carmack Concepts, owner of Chuggin’ Monkey, Dizzy Rooster, the Dogwood and Molotov”.
(Previous entries about Yassine Enterprises and their legal problems here.)
The first question I had when I heard this was: are they going to even have a ceremony, if nobody was elected? Answer:
The Toronto Maple Leafs have fired their general manager, Brian Burke. The Maple Leafs, as I understand it, play an obscure sport known as “hockey” which is popular in Canada.
The recipe came from Brody and Apter’s Bread Machine Baking
Slight modifications:
End result? Well, the photo of the loaf I took before cutting it turned out crappy. I’m mostly happy with the way the top crust turned out, but there’s a weird indentation on the bottom at one side of the loaf; almost as if it didn’t rise and expand around the bread paddle. I’m not sure what happened there.
As for the inside:
It has a slightly coarse, but not unpleasant, mouth feel (probably due to the cornmeal). In terms of taste, this is a really assertive bread. It isn’t overwhelmingly hot, but there’s a slight and lingering spice burn to it. I wouldn’t recommend this as a morning breakfast bread, but it tastes pretty good for lunch with some leftover fresh cheddar on top, or just with some butter and perhaps a little honey. I think it’d go well with chili or perhaps something Cajun.
I think I’m going to give this a B, mostly because of the bottom crust problem. I’d make it again, especially as an accompaniment to something that would stand up to the flavor. Next time, I’d take the two teaspoons of salt the recipe calls for and substitute a small amount of ghost pepper salt for part of that. (Trust me: a little ghost pepper salt goes a long way.)
Next up, I was considering making a sourdough goat cheese bread, but the recipe calls for “powdered goat’s milk”. I can actually get that at Sprouts, but they want $13 for a large can that I won’t use all of in eight weeks. I’ll have to see if I can find a smaller size.
Comments and criticisms welcome below.
Film director David R. Ellis. (NYT. A/V Club for all your “Snakes on a Plane” needs.)
Reporter and Pulitzer winner Richard Ben Cramer. Cramer may have been most famous for one of the greatest Esquire stories, “What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?“
Yeah, we know. We got caught up in a bunch of stuff around January 1st, and last week’s TMQ totally slipped away from us. We figure we’ll do this week’s TMQ tonight, loop back and catch up with last week’s TMQ tomorrow (we’re doing them out of order because there’s some stuff we want to address in last week’s column), and then we should be in good shape all the way through to the end of the season.
At least, we hope so.
After the jump…
Austin Rifle Club sent out an email late last night stating that the Travis County Commissioners Court was considering the gun show ban today. I didn’t see that email until this morning, otherwise I would have considered going down to report.
According to the Statesman, the commissioners “discussed” the proposal, and heard testimony from residents, but did not take a vote. So you still have time to contact them.
So Judge Biscoe thinks gun shows are a threat to public safety, but not one that we need to act on immediately? One that can wait “three or four months”? Option two is that Judge Biscoe is a political hack who wants to be seen as “doing something” when he’s really doing nothing. But that can’t be true: political hackery on the commissioners court? Why, that’s unheard of! (Option three is that Judge Biscoe figures things will blow over in “three or four months”, we can return to the current status quo, and voters will forget his actions. My message to Judge Biscoe: “He’d seen how ‘civilized’ men behaved. He never forgot and he never forgave.”)
And, again, I’ll make the points that:
The Statesman does not give a breakdown of how many people spoke at the meeting, nor does it give any indication how many supported or opposed the measure.
And, once again, I’ll mention that Judge Biscoe is wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong! Here’s some legal precedent from the 5th Circuit for you, Judge Biscoe. The tl;dr version: the city of Houston tried something similar and ended up paying $50,000+ in legal fees to a gun show operator.
Keep that in mind. The opposition managed to get 200 people to support their illegal proposal. I think we can do much better.
Edited to add: Forgot something else I was going to mention: I updated the .CSV files of the county commissioners and the city council members with fax numbers, just in case anyone finds that useful. Someone yesterday (and I forget who it was) made the comment that they can ignore emails, but they have to answer the phone and they have to put paper in the fax machine. I am slightly dubious about the latter, what with modern technology and all, but the fax numbers are there if you can use them.
Edited to add 2: Updated story from the Statesman:
You don’t say?
And edited to add again: by way of Lawrence over at Battleswarm, ““If Austin or Travis Co. try to ban gun shows they better be ready for a double-barreled lawsuit.” Click through to find out who said that. Hint: it wasn’t someone who runs gun shows. Hint 2: it was someone who can unleash hell on the city and county.
Those of you who have been following Radley Balko and The Agitator know that Balko’s been on the story of Mississippi forensic pathologist Dr. Steven T. Hayne like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst exhibition.
For those of you who don’t follow Balko (I don’t click through as regularly since he moved to the Huffington Post), the NYT summarizes the story:
More:
Worth noting for the record: the Innocence Project has also been involved with Dr. Hayne. Dr. Hayne and the project settled a lawsuit out of court last year, and the project paid him $100,000. The NYT article touches on this some: one key point is that, in the process of preparing their defense, the project claims to have discovered new evidence that contradicts Dr. Hayne’s sworn testimony in various cases.
Bob Dylan: The Copyright Extension Collection, Vol. 1. No, that’s the real title.
Just finished calling all the Austin City Council members (none were available to talk to me, so I left messages with their staff), and sending emails through the forms on the city website.
My message was short and simple:
I can be a real mean SOB if I want to be. (“Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great.”)
I plan to back this up with physical letters, which will probably go out tomorrow (assuming I can get my printer working).
Here’s something that folks might find useful: a MSWord merge file of all the council members, with addresses and office phone numbers. The email addresses come off the copies of the emails I sent through the contact forms; the “PO Box 1088” physical address is the one they all list on their contact pages. The phone numbers come from their contact pages as well.
(I could add fax numbers, I guess. If anyone uses fax machines these days.)
Edited to add: At Lawrence’s instigation, here’s a CSV version of the Austin City Council members. And here’s a CSV version of the Travis County Commissioners Court, both commissioners and their executive assistants, including phone numbers and email addresses.
Battery life on my Android phone has always been an issue.
Not too long ago (I think slightly more than a year) I bought a 1750 mAh hour battery from Best Buy. That worked okay for a while, but over the past few days, it has become clear that battery is dying.
“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll get another one from Best Buy.”
Went to Best Buy. Looked for batteries. Couldn’t find any. Got a clerk’s attention.
Best Buy no longer carries any cell phone batteries. At all. They’ve got car chargers. They’ve got cases out the wazoo. But no batteries for any cell phones, even the ones they currently sell.
The clerk told me “go to Batteries Plus”.
(Batteries Plus wanted $43 for a standard capacity Evo 4G battery, and didn’t have any 1750 mAh batteries. Screw that. I can get two 2000 mAh batteries from Newegg for $11.29. And I still have my original Evo 4G battery, plus a 3500 mAh battery that I paid $4.99 for a while back. I haven’t been using the 3500 mAh one because it is a physically larger battery that requires putting a custom back on the phone (included with the original purchase), which would in turn require removing the case I have on the phone. But it is there if I need it while I wait for the Newegg ones to come in.)
(Yes, I know it was CompUSA, not Best Buy, but this is still obligatory.)
Back in March of 2011, I noted the arrest of Timothy Durham, the CEO of National Lampoon Inc., on fraud charges. Specifically, he was accused of running a giant Ponzi scheme.
I missed the followup on this; it doesn’t seem to have gotten a lot of play in the press, plus it took place shortly after things went south for the winter for me. Anyway, Durham was tried, convicted, and sentenced at the end of November:
Durham was sentenced to 50 years in prison. The prosecution was asking for up to 225 years.
Durham’s co-conspirators, James Cochran and Rick Snow, were also convicted. Cochran got 25 years (against 145 years requested by the prosecution) and Snow got 10 years (the prosecution was asking for 85).
But, apparently, nobody did. Including “representatives of the organization that was most closely connected to the Austin Police Department and had the easiest access to criminal records: Blue Santa.”
Way to go, APD.
Also interesting: the “board” (or the former board, depending on how you look at it) is remaining silent. One former president, and the guy who set up the organization’s PayPal account, “declined through his lawyer to comment due to the ongoing investigation.” A second former president, who allegedly brought Shon Washington into the organization, also declined to comment.
“Like a dolphin into a tuna net.” I cannot lie: I live for analogies like that.
(Previously. Previously.)
What we do instead of doing something:
…
And:
Time to make some phone calls Monday morning.
Edited to add: Giving this some more thought, Charles Harris of Storied Firearms (who is quoted in the article) deserves some praise. He could easily have thrown the gun shows under the bus. After all, that’d drive business to his place. But no.
If you live in the greater Austin area, why not stop by Storied Firearms and pick up a little something? I visit there fairly regularly and find it to be a very nice shop. If you’re not in the Austin area, but support gun rights, there’s a contact form on their website that you could use to send a “thank you” to Mr. Harris.
Picked this up from Insta, but I don’t care that he already linked it; this is one of those stories.
People who have been reading this blog regularly know that I’m fascinated by magic and the history of magic. You know that my admiration for Penn and Teller is like the universe itself; finite but unbounded.
Penn and Teller are only in this story as sort of peripheral figures, but I commend it to your attention: a New Yorker profile of Apollo Robins, the world’s greatest pickpocket.
Part of what makes this story so interesting to me, other than the magic angle, is that Robbins’ work, and the techniques he’s developed, reveal really interesting things about the mind and human perception.
This is the best thing I’ve read so far in 2013. It may be the best magazine article of the year; I expect it to be in contention if we’re all still here in December.