Should you be planning to head out to Las Vegas for DEFCON, to get married, or any other reason, the Gun Store is offering $5 off any machine gun rental.
(Hattip: Lawrence.)
Travel note.
June 13th, 2012Annals of Law (part 6 of a series).
June 13th, 2012Cast your mind back, way back, to those halcyon days of June, 2011. Remember those times?
Disco was the rage. People were discovering that you could get food out of trailers. And in Liberty County, police were digging up someone’s house based on the claims of a self-proclaimed “psychic” that there were 30 or more bodies buried on the property.
Really. I’m not making this stuff up.
Why this flashback to the era of Herman Cain and Casey Anthony?
As we often say at WCD, “Quel fromage!”
Obit watch: June 13, 2012.
June 13th, 2012Henry Hill has passed away. In a hospital. Of what I guess could be called “natural causes”.
(You know, I still have not seen “Goodfellas”, though I do have it and want to sit down and watch it soon. I have read Wiseguy
Also worth noting: Ann Rutherford, Scarlett O’Hara’s sister.
Say it ain’t so, José.
June 12th, 2012Long and fascinating article in the NYT. Apparently, the Zeta cartel has been laundering drug profits by purchasing quarter horses in the United States.
Way to keep a low freaking profile there, guys.
Edited to add: More from the Statesman.
Administrative announcement.
June 12th, 2012WCD now has an official mascot.
No, not the drama llama: we are content to leave that for other bloggers.
The official mascot of WCD is the slow loris. How can you not like a venomous primate? If only they could be genetically engineered to fly and kill bureaucrats.
Meanwhile, back at Alcatraz…
June 12th, 2012Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the great Alcatraz escape.
Clarence and John Anglin and their friend Frank Lee Morris broke out of the prison and escaped into San Francisco Bay on a raft they made out of raincoats. They were never recaptured, and there is considerable debate to this day about whether they died during the escape or managed to elude capture. (All three would be over 80 today.) More background here.
Anyway, the LAT has coverage tied to a 50th anniversary gathering of various folks involved in the case, including the Anglins’ sisters, federal marshals who are still looking for the trio, and Jolene Babyak
Azaria.
June 12th, 2012I previously noted the fourth coroner’s inquest into the Azaria Chamberlain case.
The verdict is in: the coroner has ruled that Azaria was killed by a dingo.
NYT coverage. The Australian (may ask for a login, not sure). BBC. And by way of the BBC, the inquest findings from the coroner’s website.
Pull quotes:
Anything so he can measure up to men…
June 11th, 2012By way of Balko: sexual perversity among the penguins.
This gives me an excuse to note that Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World is available from Project Gutenberg.
(Hattip.)
Random notes: June 11, 2012.
June 11th, 2012Two stories by way of Lawrence:
This odd one about a scientist who works for the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas trying to stop approval of a $20 million dollar grant to Rice University and M.D. Anderson. Lawrence sent it to me and asked if I could make heads or tails out of it; I think I can, but it seems to me to be one of those HouChron stories that’s like a puzzle with half the pieces missing.
I’m not sure if this has been on FARK yet, but since Lawrence sent it to me, I’m linking to it anyway as part of the “Art, damn it! Art!” watch: a 200-foot-long knitted rabbit on the side of an Italian mountain.
The NYT has a story I find kind of odd about the NYPD Accident Investigations Squad. Basically, the AIS investigates traffic accidents: “But they do so only in cases of death or when a victim is deemed likely to die.”
The problem, according to the NYT, is that AIS sometimes doesn’t investigate accidents where the victim is not immediately dead; if the person dies days later, evidence may be “lost”.
I have two problems with this, both related to the incident the NYT cites:
- “That delay, Mr. Stevens said, meant that most of the evidence from the crash — skid marks and surveillance video, witness accounts, and alcohol in the driver’s bloodstream — had been lost.” How was it lost? The way I read that sentence, the AIS started to collect the data, then stopped because the victim was still alive (she died three days later). Did they throw away what they had already collected? That seems like an…odd choice, to say the least.
- Reinforcing point 1 is the fact that the NYT is able to report that the driver in the accident had a 0.07 BAC. So at least some evidence was preserved. “Felony charges were considered…” What felony charges? 0.07 is below the legal limit, as far as I know. And “those charges were dropped because the police testing equipment had not been properly calibrated”. Uh-huh. That’s certainly interesting, and I wish the NYT had gone into more detail on the calibration issue.
Edited to add: It occurs to me that some folks might be as confused as I was by the NYT references to the Highway Patrol and the NYPD. The state of New York does have a state police agency, the New York State Police (whose website is currently broken, it seems). There is also a group within the NYPD called the Highway Patrol “primarily responsible for patrolling and maintaining traffic safety on limited-access highways within New York City.” So it isn’t a statewide police agency in the Broderick Crawford sense, but a confusingly named NYPD division. Got it.
Boot to the head!
June 8th, 2012According to the NYT, one of the current hot button issues in the United Kingdom is: “Who will represent Britain in the under-80-kilogram weight class for men’s tae kwon do?”
Aaron Cook is ranked #1 in the world in this weight class. Aaron Cook is not on the team. Lutalo Muhammad, who is ranked #59, is on the team.
The British Olympic Association rejected Muhammad last week; his nomination has been resubmitted and the BOA is meeting today to consider it. And the World Taekwondo Federation is also investigating, though their ability to actually do anything is limited.
Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?
June 7th, 2012The same thing we’re going to do every night for the next eight and a half years, Pinky: hard time in Federal prison.
Random: June 7, 2012.
June 7th, 2012Kwame Brown, chairman of the Washington DC City Council, resigned his position yesterday.
Innocent until proven guilty, yadda yadda, but according to the WP‘s reporting, Brown and the prosecution have already made a plea deal.
Ray Bradbury obits: WP. LAT. NYT. NYT appreciation by Michiko Kakutani. Lawrence. A/V Club. Scalzi.
Recall.
June 6th, 2012Sorry, folks. I’m getting a slow start today; I had a doctor’s appointment this morning. (Nothing serious, just the 7,500 mile oil and filter change/lube/check the fluid levels.)
How about that successful recall election yesterday? No, not that one. It seems that the good people of Fullerton, California, voted overwhelmingly to throw out three city council members. What makes this interesting is that the recall started as a reaction to the council’s perceived indifference to the beating death of Kelly Thomas. (Warning: that last link contains a graphic and disturbing image.)
This is the first time I can recall that voter anger over police misconduct has become that much of a hot button issue. Let us hope it is not the last time.
I will probably wait until tomorrow to post a roundup of Bradbury obits.
Important safety tip. (#12 in a series)
June 5th, 2012This one’s a quickie: if you’re going to steal a car, you probably shouldn’t steal an art car.
Pop open the freezer.
June 5th, 2012The Austin Public Safety Commission passed, on a 5-0 vote, a resolution recommending that the Austin City Council provide funding and set up a process for review of “cold” cases outside of APD. (One member abstained from voting.)
This raises some questions:
1. Who is the “Austin Public Safety Commission”? Are they the people who do the gun buybacks?
Answer: No, the gun buybacks are the “Greater Austin Crime Commission”. The “Austin Public Safety Commission” is a city organization that serves as an “advisory body to the city council on all budgetary and policy matters concerning public safety”.
2. What “cold” cases are they looking to have re-examined?
If you said “the yogurt shop murders” to start with, take two gold stars and advance to the next blue square.
3. Why do they want an external review of these cases? Do they not trust the APD? If so, isn’t that a problem that should be addressed?
Interesting question. Kim Rossmo is the vice chairman of the commission.
4. Is this a good idea?
I’m not sure I can judge this. Having a fresh pair of eyes to look at complicated stuff always seems like a good idea. But the case is 20 years old now; how many people have looked at it? Not just within APD, but outside of the department? Is there really a lot of evidence for Rossmo’s theory of “groupthink”? On the other hand, did the APD really push a weak case because they were looking to close a red ball?
I’m inclined to think that the case probably can’t be solved at this point, and I’m not sure how much good another set of eyes would actually do. Color me both skeptical and happy if I’m proven wrong.
