Kwame 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.
Sorry, 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.
This one’s a quickie: if you’re going to steal a car, you probably shouldn’t steal an art car.
The 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.
Looking at site stats this morning, I noticed that my ThinkPenguin endorsement seems to be getting some traffic. I thought I’d bop over to their site and check: yes, they have the new dual-band wireless N USB adapters available. And to tell the truth, I like the design of this adapter better than the one I have.
Earlier this week, I commented on the death of Mack Wolford. Lauren Pond, a photojournalist, had been working with Rev. Wolford for the past year as part of a documentary project on the Pentecostal snake-handling religion. Ms. Pond was at the service where Rev. Wolford was bitten, and sat with him and his family as he died. Some of her photos, and her thoughts about what happened and her obligations, are in the WP.
Around this time last year, we noted the police officer in Franklin County, VA, who shot his ex-wife and engaged in a wild police chase that screwed up traffic for miles.
Well, the former sheriff – the one who allegedly ignored warnings that his deputy was hunting his ex-wife – the one who allegedly told dispatchers not to put out a BOLO – has been charged with “misconduct by an elected official”. This is a “class 1” misdemeanor charge, so it isn’t like he’s going to do hard time, but..
…he’s also being sued by the dead woman’s family. And by two former deputies who were fired after an investigation in 2009 that led to charges against the sheriff of “failure to maintain adequate records”. (Those charges were dismissed.) And by another woman who claims the sheriff didn’t act on threats to kill her son until it was too late.
(This comes by way of the Cato Institute’s new “National Police Misconduct Reporting Project” which in turn is an outgrowth of work done by David Packman.)
On February 9th of this year, Officer Daniel Harmon–Wright of the Culpeper, VA police department shot and killed Patricia Cook in the parking lot of a church preschool.
Officer Harmon–Wright was responding to a call about a woman “acting suspiciously”, and claimed that Ms. Cook attempted to flee, rolling up the window in her Jeep and trapping his arm as she did so.
There are questions about Officer Harmon-Wright’s account of events. For example, Ms. Cook’s Jeep did not have power windows, which raises obvious questions about the whole “rolling up her window and trapping his arm” thing. Reason’s “Hit and Run” blog has some good coverage of the case here.
One point noted by Reason and other reporters is that Officer Harmon-Wright has several names: he’s also gone by “Daniel Wayne Sullivan” and “Dan Wayne”.
This is interesting enough, but there’s another aspect to the story that I think is worth noting: Officer Harmon-Wright’s mother, who was “an administrative secretary to the chief of police” when he was hired as a police officer, has been charged with three counts of “uttering” and three counts of “forgery of public documents”. Apparently, the grand jury turned up evidence that she had altered public records to remove “negative information” from Officer Harmon-Wright’s personnel file.
Some folks go “wow” at $320 million dollar incinerators, and I can’t blame them for that. Other folks go “wow” when they’re faced with how deep the corruption seems to run sometimes.
(Hattip: Commendante Balko.)
Sol LeWitt was a conceptual artist. (He passed away in 2007.)
One of his works was “Wall Drawing #448″. This work has two parts. Part one is a list of instructions on how to create a wall drawing. Part two is an example of what that drawing would look like.
In 2008, the owner of the work consigned it to a gallery in Chicago.
The gallery lost the instructions. The owner is suing, claiming that the instructions are basically a certificate of authenticity:
The gallery says their insurance won’t cover the loss (I’d really like to know why) and apparently tried to settle with the owner. The owner is asking for a minimum of $350,000.
You gotta fight…for your right…to declare bankruptcy.
The strange story of David Webb, fake DEA agent. Doug Swanson
At least 90% of the time (if not more), when someone tells me “you shouldn’t burn bridges”, that person has just finished pouring gasoline all over the structure in question, and is now standing in the middle of the bridge flicking their Zippo.
I don’t want to mock the death of Mack Wolford. I was not raised in the Pentecostal snake-handling tradition, nor does it fit in with my personal religious beliefs. (As I recall, there is a Bible verse that says something to the effect of “Don’t test God.”) But I do respect folks who have those beliefs and act on them; I don’t think they are crazy, but are trying to relate to God in their own way, and more power to them.
However, I do think his death is worth noting, not just for the odd factor, but also because it gives me a chance to talk about Jeremy Seal’s The Snakebite Survivors’ Club: Travels Among Serpents
This had the potential to be an interesting book, and about half of it is. The chapters on snake hunting and snake bite survivor hunting in Africa and Australia are quite good. Unfortunately, his chapters set in India seem oddly disengaged from the rest of the book; I’m not sure why, but they don’t seem to fit.
And while he has an interesting story to tell as his through line through the chapters in America (backsliding snake-handling minister decides to end his marriage through rattlesnake; unfortunately, his wife survived her bites, and he’s doing time), he has a typically British condescending attitude towards America (and especially the American South) that I found annoying.
If you find a copy of this for $3 or less, I think you might get that much entertainment out of it. Otherwise, I’d suggest skipping it. I haven’t read it, but this Whit Gibbons
Edited to add: Added a link to a review of Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia
Leo Dillon. Leo and his wife Diane won two Caldecott medals back to back for their work as illustrators. They also worked on many SF books during the “New Wave” era, including doing illustrations for many of Harlan Ellison’s works.
I thought I’d start a thread covering results of last night’s primaries. Specifically, the ones that amuse me.
To start (hattip Lawrence) Harris County DA Pat Lykos, who you may remember from such hits as the BAT vans and the grand jury investigation, lost the primary election to Mike Anderson.
(If you don’t remember Ms. Lykos and her antics, the “HCDA” tag will provide you with a summary.)
I am getting a slow start to the morning, so watch this space for possible updates as I wade through the coverage.
Edited to add: I did not know this, but the winner of the Democratic primary election for HCDA was “once indicted for illegal lawyering”. To which I say: Huh?
ETA2: “In 2010, he ran as a Democrat while under indictment for barratry, a charge that later was dropped.” Ah, barratry.
…
The 6-year-old was “severely stomped on the arm and had hoof marks on her back,” Parker said.
The 6-year-old’s sister was also slightly injured when the moose knocked over a piece of “playground equipment”.
Grandy at Popehat observed a week or so ago, in response to an observation of mine about Southern Living‘s “Top Ten Pitmasters” piece, “Because people like BBQ.”
In that vein, I wanted to point out the lengthy Statesman profile of John Mueller, grandson of the legendary Louie Mueller. This is pretty much your standard “scion leaves the family business, strikes out on his own, struggles for a while, and starts making a comeback” story. Also, a considerable amount of this story was already covered in Texas Monthly’s “Of Meat and Men” (which also covers the story of Aaron Franklin of Franklin’s Barbecue), but I think both articles are worth reading. Ideally, with about a pound of good brisket and maybe some sausage and beef ribs.
(I checked BugMeNot: the “tx@bugmenot.com”, “texas” user ID/password combo works fine.)