Random notes: January 24, 2013.

January 24th, 2013

Obit watch: Linda Riss Pugach. You may not have heard of her, but she was at the center of one of the most sensational crimes of the 1950s. Miss Riss was 22 years old and was dating a married lawyer, Burton Pugach. He kept promising to get a divorce, she kept pressing him, he got fed up and hired people to throw lye in her face. Miss Riss was blinded. Mr. Pugach was charged, convicted and spent 14 years in prison.

But wait, there’s more! Mr. Pugach’s wife divorced him while he was in prison. After he got out in 1974, he married Miss Riss, and they remained married until she died. There was a documentary about the case in 2007, “Crazy Love“, that featured interviews with both Mr. and Mrs. Pugach; I have not seen it, but it is apparently available from Amazon for instant viewing.

Oh, look! The lying sack of shit Joe Manchin is starting to feel the heat!

As a hunter with an A rating from the National Rifle Association, Mr. Manchin gave advocates for new weapons laws reason for optimism after he said last month that gun firepower and magazine capacity might need to be limited.
But now, Mr. Manchin, who affirmed his support for gun rights by running a campaign commercial in 2010 showing him firing a rifle into an environmental bill, says he is not so sure. One of his local offices has been picketed, and even some of his most thoughtful supporters are cautioning him that stronger background checks are about all the gun control they can stomach.

More:

After talking with the group for nearly two hours, Mr. Manchin left the meeting saying he was not at all comfortable with supporting the assault weapons ban favored by many of his colleagues in Congress.

And it isn’t just Manchin:

Of far greater concern are Democrats who are up for re-election in 2014. Those include senators like Max Baucus of Montana, who was awarded an A+ rating from the N.R.A. Mr. Baucus has worded his comments on the subject carefully, bracketing them with gun rights-friendly language, like saying the “culture of violence” needs to be seriously examined along with any changes to the law.
There is Senator Mark Begich of Alaska, who has said flatly that he would not support a new assault weapons ban, and Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, who initially came out in support of the ban but has been more circumspect recently, saying in an interview last week that he would want to see the language of any such legislation first.

Keep those cards and letters coming, folks. If you need help finding your senators and representatives, you’re welcome to email me.

Back in August, I noted the reversal of the murder convictions in the case of Baithe Diop. The other shoe in that case has dropped: three of the men, who had been convicted of murdering Denise Raymond and spent 17 years in prison, were released last night. Ms. Raymond was an executive with Federal Express: the prosecution’s original theory of the crime was that her murder and Mr. Diop’s were tied together. (The other two men in the case were convicted of Mr. Diop’s murder, and had their convictions overturned in August, but were not convicted in the Raymond murder.)

The N.C.A.A. said it uncovered evidence that its investigators contracted with a criminal defense lawyer for the booster at the center of the Miami case to obtain information they should not have been able to access. The N.C.A.A. had been examining allegations that the booster, Nevin Shapiro, gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, as well as other benefits, to dozens of Miami athletes.

Wow. When the NCAA president is calling the conduct of his own people “shocking” and “stunning”, yeah, there’s a problem.

As I have stated before, I Am Not A Lawyer. So perhaps there is a gap in my understanding. Let me see if someone can clarify it for me: on what authority does a judge order someone to stay out of an entire city?

[State Rep. Matt] Krause, one of the chamber’s more conservative freshmen, filed House Bill 627 to prevent federal gun regulations — such as expanded background checks and limits on magazine sizes, now under debate in Washington — from being enforced in Texas when a firearm is manufactured, sold and used within the state’s boundaries. If a gun never leaves Texas, it cannot be subject to federal interstate commerce laws, the bill says.

The Statesman suggests this bill may be unconstitutional. To which I say:

  1. Tenth Amendment, mofos!
  2. Oh, when we’re talking about guns, it’s unconstitutional and bad law. But when we’re talking about marijuana, all of the sudden, it’s okay for the states to have “medical marijuana” and “legalized marijuana”.

Can’t have it both ways, people.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Obits, Sports | 1 Comment »

Banana republicans watch: January 24, 2013.

January 24th, 2013

We haven’t had one of these in a while. Truth be told, things were moving slowly over the holidays.

But they are heating up: the trial of six former members of the Bell city council begins today. (Robert “Ratso” Rizzo and his assistant, Angela Spaccia, will be tried later this year.)

And how is the city of Bell doing?

The city’s general fund has been slashed to $12 million from $16 million, largely because a handful of highly paid employees are now gone, and the budget is balanced. Council meetings are streamed online in a city where the workings of government were once opaque. The city has cut fees for trash pickup, building permits and business licenses that had ballooned under Rizzo.

On the other hand, Bell also faces protracted litigation, on which it is spending an estimated $1.5 million a year.

“If all the litigation stuff were solved today, I’d tell you Bell has a bright future, and we can pay our bills,” said [Doug] Willmore [the new city manager – DB], who estimates he spends a third of his time on lawsuits. “There are all these things that could happen that could bankrupt the city.”
Among the worries, he said, is that Bell will be made to pay the legal fees of the former city leaders, who claim the city should foot the bill because their alleged misdeeds occurred as part of their official duties.
“That’s probably $5 million easily,” Willmore said.

More:

Willmore said that when he arrived, the city hadn’t reconciled a bank statement in two years. “Under Rizzo, the lack of accounting was just staggering,” he said. “I’ve inherited scandals before, but certainly nothing like this.

Also:

Bell still has the second-highest property tax in Los Angeles County, after only Beverly Hills, and a 10% utility tax, about twice that of most cities.

In spite of that, business owners say conditions in Bell have improved vastly: “…a new restaurant was recently able to obtain a license just two days after an inspection from the county health department — a process that could have taken three months in the Rizzo era”

If they keep this up, and can get past the legal issues, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bell turn into one of the few bright spots in California.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Your gun show loophole in action.

January 24th, 2013

Back in December, a man walked into an Austin gun show.

He was with three other guys, was carrying a rifle and a shotgun, and

A police officer working security at the show said in the affidavit that the man carrying the shotgun “acted nervous” and did not know much about the shotgun.

The man sold the shotgun to a dealer for $575. Apparently, after the sale took place, the dealer asked the APD officers running security to run “a serial check that showed that the gun did not belong to Benitez or any of the accompanying men, the affidavit stated“.

So that’s kind of interesting: it doesn’t say explicitly that the gun was stolen and showed up on a hot sheet, but that they were somehow able to check the serial number and determine ownership. Texas does not have any kind of registration or licensing for simple possession of a shotgun or rifle, so I’m not clear on what “a serial check” would have done unless the gun was on the hot sheet.

(I’m also wondering what kind of shotgun this was, if a dealer at the gun show paid $575 for it.)

The gentleman’s stories changed several times: his grandfather owned it, his father owned it, he bought it from someone in the neighborhood for $130.

One of the men that was with Benitez at Saxet said that he found the rifle at a Marble Falls house he was working on and took it, according to the affidavit.

The police confiscated both the rifle and shotgun, and made the gentleman give the dealer back his money.

He is currently charged with “unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon” but not, apparently, theft, and is being held on $20,000 bail.

Sure seems to me like the current system worked. So much for that “gun show loophole”.

Posted in Clippings, Guns | 1 Comment »

When seconds count…

January 23rd, 2013

,,,the police are 25 minutes away.

Even if you’re a police sergeant whose car has been egged.

(Previously.)

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Cahiers du Cinéma: Django Unchained.

January 23rd, 2013

I want to throw Lawrence some linky-love for his review of Django Unchained. If I don’t, I’ll hear from him.

And, more to the point, he says a lot of what I wanted to say. My comments are more in the form of notes on his review than an actual review.

The script is clever and fairly taut for it’s 165 minute running time, and it doesn’t have the dead spots of (for example) Inglorious Basterds.

I disagree with Lawrence on this. Specifically, I found what I’ll refer to as “the third act” (people who have seen the movie should understand what I’m talking about) to be kind of draggy. I think that entire sequence could have been tightened up considerably; I was ready for the movie to be over long before it was over.

Dear Quentin Tarantino:
You’re a good director. Really. Please stop trying to act as well. Thank you.

I was glad to see Zoë Bell in the credits, though I honestly missed her in the movie itself. Maybe one of these days Tarantino will give her the role she deserves.

There is a scene where Django and Schultz have hunted down a wanted man; Django balks at shooting the man in front of his child until Schultz has him read the wanted poster. I thought this was a very clever scene, more clever than I actually expected from Tarantino, for two reasons:

  1. Django has trouble reading the wanted poster. Of course he does; he’s a slave, he probably wasn’t taught to read very well to begin with. There are a lot of hack directors who wouldn’t have thought of developing Django’s character in that way.
  2. That scene also sets up a key plot point much later in the movie, which I won’t spoil here.

Generally: yeah, I liked it, but I would have liked it a little more at 2:15 or possibly 2:30, not 2:45.

Edited to add: For some reason, Lawrence’s comments about this film self-selecting its audience, and comments I expect to get from certain other people, remind me of ham. Don’t know why.

Posted in Movies | 3 Comments »

Final judgement.

January 23rd, 2013

Both Lawrence and I have written about Amado Pardo, restaurateur, Democratic activist, convicted murderer, and alleged heroin dealer. As Lawrence noted in his last update, Mr. Pardo was in declining health and had been released to hospice care.

According to the Statesman and his attorney, Mr. Pardo passed away yesterday. His trial on the drug charges was scheduled for February 11th. I’m not clear how Mr. Pardo’s death is going to affect the charges against the other people who were indicted with him.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: January 23, 2013.

January 23rd, 2013

Taiho.

Who?

Taiho, “widely considered the greatest sumo wrestler of postwar Japan despite the fact that he weighed scarcely more than 300 pounds”.

Taiho, who made his debut in the mid-1950s, dominated his sport until the early ’70s. Standing about 6 feet 1 and weighing about 220 pounds at the start of his career, he was a sylph of sumo, relying on skill more than heft to win matches.

His career record was 746-144-136, and he won the Emperor’s Cup (“an immense silver trophy awarded to the champion of sumo’s top division”) 32 times.

And one more gratuitous note: Taiho was born on Sakhalin Island during World War II. After the war ended and the Soviet Union took control of Sakhalin, Taiho and his mother were sent to Hokkaido.

His father, an anti-Communist who had fled his homeland for Sakhalin after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, was apparently arrested. The family never learned his fate; years later, touring the Soviet Union as a sumo star, Taiho reportedly sought his father’s whereabouts to no avail.

Remember, folks: Commies aren’t cool.

Posted in Clippings, Obits, Sports, Sumo | Comments Closed

TMQ watch: January 22, 2013.

January 22nd, 2013

We were busy most of the morning, all afternoon, and on into the evening. But hey! Today is still Tuesday, and we all know what that means! Girl Scout cookies!

(munches another Caramel deLite)

Damn, these are good.

(has another)

(puts up the rest of the box before we eat our way through it)

Oh, yeah, we also have this week’s TMQ to deal with after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Clippings, Movies, NFL, Sarcasm, TMQ watch, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 21, 2013.

January 21st, 2013

Lawrence sent me a heads-up that Michael Winner had died, but I wasn’t able to find independent confirmation until now. Here’s the A/V Club obit.

His filmography is interesting: he directed Death Wish, Death Wish 2, Death Wish 3, and the original version of The Mechanic. (I kind of liked both Death Wish and The Mechanic, though I haven’t seen either one in ages.)

He also directed Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood, a version of The Big Sleep with Robert Mitchum as Marlowe and set in England instead of L.A., and (the reason Lawrence brought him up), The Sentinal.

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Strange definitions.

January 21st, 2013

New York state has very strict gun laws.

One of those laws imposes a mandatory prison sentence of three and a half years on anyone caught carrying a loaded illegal gun.

How’s that working for them?

In 2011, the latest year for which sentencing statistics are available, fewer than half the defendants who had been arrested for illegal possession of a loaded gun in New York City received a state prison sentence, according to an analysis of criminal justice statistics by the mayor’s office.

You don’t say. Tell us more.

In the Bronx, as few as 31 percent were imprisoned. In Brooklyn the rate was 41 percent; in Staten Island it was 47 percent; in Manhattan it was 68 percent; and in Queens it was 76 percent.

Now, let’s be fair about this:

…the law can sometimes trap travelers who bring licensed guns into the state. Critics of strict mandatory sentencing caution that allowances must be made for unwitting violations.

The NYT gives two specific examples of cases in which Bronx prosecutors did not seek the mandatory sentence: “a state prison guard who was not authorized to carry a firearm only because he had failed to submit the required paperwork” (only ones syndrome, anyone?) and “a Pennsylvania school bus driver who was traveling to his sister-in-law’s wake in New York”.

I’m all for prosecutorial discretion, but in more than 50% of cases? This is obviously some strange definition of the word “mandatory” I was previously unaware of.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

Random notes: January 21, 2013.

January 21st, 2013

I’ve written previously about the pot growers of Mendocino County. Today’s LAT reports on a new development.

Mendocino County set up a program to register medical marijuana growers:

Those who registered with the sheriff had to install security fencing and cameras, pay permitting fees up to $6,450 a year and undergo inspections four times a year. Every plant was given a zip-tie with a sheriff’s serial number on it.

The DEA raided the first person who registered.

Still, 91 growers signed up the next year.
Agents then targeted Matt Cohen, the grower most vocal in advocating for the program and getting it set up.

In spite of this, the county intended to continue registering growers:

But county officials stopped the permitting and inspections in March after the U.S. attorney threatened them with legal action. The federal subpoena landed in October, demanding records of inspections, applications, internal county emails, notes, memos and bank account numbers.

The county is now fighting the subpoenas. Three things about this:

Meanwhile, in local news: Austin has a moderately successful chains of bars known as “Little Woodrow’s”. The owners want to put a new location at 5425 Burnet, but they need a zoning change first. Here’s 5425 Burnet on Google Maps:


View Larger Map

This is a stretch of road I’m fairly familiar with; there’s not much along there except strip centers and stand-alone businesses. As the Statesman notes, there’s a mixed-use apartment/shopping development (with a parking garage) right across the street, which Little Woodrow’s hopes to cater to. There’s two bars close by that I can think of: Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon, mentioned in the article, which is also famous for chicken (stuff) bingo, and Billy’s on Burnet (which does very good hamburgers and has limited parking).

Anyway, the point is: the usual suspects – the Brentwood and Allandale neighborhood associations – are all butthurt over this, claiming there won’t be enough parking, the bar would be too noisy, yadda yadda. In spite of their opposition, “the opponents are short by roughly half the number of signatures needed on a petition that would require six of seven council members to approve the rezoning”. They had two votes against in a preliminary vote: Laura Morrison and Kathie Tovo.

(On a completely unrelated note: anyone got any experience organizing recall elections?)

Posted in Austin, Books, Clippings, Guns, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Bread blogging: Sourdough Beer Bread.

January 20th, 2013

I thought I’d go back and revisit a recipe I’d made recently, but didn’t document here: sourdough beer bread from Brody and Apter, pages 141-143.

I kind of screwed this one up. Instinctively I put in an entire tablespoon of yeast, which is standard for most Brody and Apter recipes. But I forgot this was a starter-based bread until after I added the yeast; I really only needed half that much (one and a half teaspoons). The end result was a bread that I think was over-yeasted and over risen, making the top kind of ugly.

(This time I used a better camera than the spectacular cell phone CrapCam.) Here’s a top view:

So, yeah, kind of lumpy and mis-shaped, at least as far as the top crust goes. But I blame the over-yeasting/over-rising for that. How does it look inside?

Not too bad, actually. It has a nice texture and a slight, but not overwhelming, sourdough tang to it. It toasts up well; I’ve been eating it for breakfast with some butter and honey. I also made a big pot of French Onion Soup, and this bread was a nice compliment to it just placed in the bowl with some grated Cheddar cheese (not traditional, but I was trying to use it up before it went bad). This would be a good sandwich bread, too; perhaps a nice patè, or some good meat and cheese.

I think I’d like a little bit more sourdough tang to it, but that may just be my starter. The nice thing about this bread is that you don’t need much beyond starter to make it; flour, yeast, salt, sugar, and some beer, all of which I generally have on hand. This is probably a B; maybe an A if I make it again with the correct amount of yeast.

I’ve got everything lined up now to make Brody’s Sourdough Chèvre Bread (have you ever tried to find powdered goat’s milk?), but I want to take a break from Brody. The next bread in the queue is Laurence Simon’s French Onion Bread. (Sorry, Mom.)

Posted in Bread, Food | Comments Closed

The Baseball Gods Must Be Angry.

January 20th, 2013

Stan Musial died yesterday. NYT. St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

“There is only one way to pitch to Musial — under the plate,” Leo Durocher, the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants teams that Musial often victimized, once said.

There are some other things I like from the various obits:

A gentlemanly and sunny figure — he loved to play “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” on his harmonica — he was never ejected from a game.

Take that, Earl Weaver.

The Dodgers’ Don Newcombe, major league baseball’s first black pitching star, recalled hearing taunts from some Cardinals players, but never from Musial or Schoendienst, Musial’s longtime roommate.
“We’d watch ’em in the dugout,” Newcombe told George Vecsey in “Stan Musial: An American Life.” “Wisecracks, call names. I could see from the mound when I got there in ’49. You never saw guys like Musial or Schoendienst. They never showed you up. The man went about his job and did it damn well and never had the need to sit in the dugout and call a black guy a bunch of names, because he was trying to change the game and make it what it should have been in the first place, a game for all people.”

And:

“A lot of times we would go visit kids in hospitals whenever we were on the road,” [Red] Schoendienst [Musial’s former teammate and roommate – DB] once said. “He didn’t want publicity for it, and he didn’t do it to seek recognition or humanitarian awards. He just did it because he thought it was the right thing to do. He enjoyed making other people happy and maybe give them a small ray of sunshine to brighten up their lives.”

The Post-Dispatch website says that today’s physical paper will include a “14-page special section” devoted to Stan The Man. I’m trying to think of a single Houston sports figure who would get the same treatment on their passing, and I can’t.

Posted in Clippings, Obits, Sports | 3 Comments »

Obit watch part II.

January 19th, 2013

ESPN is reporting the death of Earl Weaver, the colorful former manager of the Baltimore Orioles.

He was ejected 91 times, including once in both games of a doubleheader.

Posted in Clippings, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 19, 2013.

January 19th, 2013

Both Lawrence and my mother (of all people: I mean, I love my mom, and she knows I’m a “Wire” fan, but I’m not sure she’s ever watched an episode) sent me obits for Robert F. Chew, aka “Proposition Joe”. (Baltimore Sun. A/V Club.)

Don’t have much more to add to those: David Simon has a blog entry with no comments, and the A/V Club already links to the best videos of Proposition Joe. Apparently, he died of natural causes, and not from wearing a suit when it was 85  f’ing degrees out.

Posted in Clippings, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

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