Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

This blog will pay for itself.

Everybody saw this coming.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Not all heroes wear capes.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

This is all too absurd to be reality, right?

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Good luck with your asparagus.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

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Shitty Cops

It Comes Straight From the Top

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Radley Balko interviewed three law enforcement officials about why it is ok to charge people for videotaping the police, and the results are pretty horrifying. One prosecutor, who charged someone with 5 felony counts of taping cops that could net the man 75 years in prison basically shrugged his shoulders and said “the law is a bitch,” while another said the following:

But what about cases where video clearly contradicts police reports, such as the McKenna case in College Park?

“You have 960,000 police officers in this country, and millions of contacts between those officers and citizens. I’ll bet you can’t name 10 incidents where a citizen video has shown a police officer to have lied on a police report,” Pasco says. “Letting people record police officers is an extreme and intrusive response to a problem that’s so rare it might as well not exist. It would be like saying we should do away with DNA evidence because there’s a one in a billion chance that it could be wrong. At some point, we have to put some faith and trust in our authority figures.”

Pasco is the head of the Fraternal Order of Police. No wonder you have so many shootings and so many bad cops out there when the fascist mindset comes directly from the top and is passed down the ranks.

The new normal in America is that it is your patriotic duty to film ACORN workers in order to smear them, but out of bounds to film cops breaking the law or abusing their authority.

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They Hate Us For Our Freedom

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Janet Lovett’s 7 year-old autistic son splashed her at a Florida water park, getting her t-shirt wet and causing her padded bra to show. As she was walking from the park to get changed, she was confronted by a policeman and arrested because she “did not give her name fast enough”. She was held in jail for 5 hours and was told that her name had to be entered in a database.

Janet’s from Peru and recently got her US citizenship, but her English is “not perfect”.

I don’t even know why I’m posting this, since it’s so commonplace and we all know that cops won’t profile when encouraged to arrest illegal immigrants.

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Lawn Ardour, Justice Thomas!

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It may still be possible for a poor, non-white American citizen mistreated by The Proper Authorities to get justice — or at least some media attention — under the most difficult circumstances. As long as said citizen is related to every Heartland Authoritarian(tm)’s second-favorite non-white Supreme Court Justice:

Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and family are “outraged” after his nephew was allegedly punched, pulled and tased at a New Orleans hospital, after a possible suicide attempt. The taser put him into a “massive epileptic seizure.”…
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Clarence Thomas is headed to New Orleans to check in on his nephew. This sounds miserable:
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“Derek Thomas was admitted to West Jefferson Hospital in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, Thursday, after a possible suicide attempt, reports ABC affiliate WGNO.
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When the Supreme Court justice’s nephew refused to put on a hospital gown and said he wanted to leave the hospital, doctors ordered security to restrain him.
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Security guards “punched him in his lip, pulled out more than a fistful of his dreadlocks and tasered him to restrain him,” a statement from Thomas’ family said…”

Since Justice Thomas has not always been on the best of terms with his family (during his confirmation hearings, he famously described one of his sisters as a parasite for living on welfare while caring for their elderly aunt) we can only hope that his newborn “outrage” might translate into a wider sensitivity towards those less fortunate, at least those within his immediate genetic kindred. That’s the problem with giving small-people authoritarians a free hand with the lash, Justice — sooner or later, they’re going to let that awesome power loose on someone whose fate you have to care about, and the cops in Jefferson Parish just don’t have the same training in deference as those handling DUIs in Kennebunkport or cocaine arrests in West Palm Beach. Let us hope, she said piously, that this incident doesn’t cause an awkward rift between Justice Thomas and his mentor Scalia.

Gawker commentor Plmyshkin had the best comment, I believe:

You know what this country needs? Some kind of panel or committee of highly educated judicial scholars to make this sort of thing illegal no matter what backwards state you live in. Why didn’t the founding fathers ever think of that?

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This Will Be Bad

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Young nigga got it bad cuz I’m brown
And not the other color so police think
They have the authority to kill a minority

This is not going to end well:

A former police officer who is white was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter Thursday in the killing of an unarmed black man in Oakland, California.

Johannes Mehserle, who was a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer at the time of the incident, was convicted in the shooting of 22-year-old Oscar Grant on a California train platform on January 1, 2009. Mehserle, who was on duty at the time, said at the trial that he intended to draw and fire his Taser rather than his gun, CNN affiliate KTVU reported.

Mehserle got four years, maximum. Did the jury watched the damned video:

Four years for casually pulling your gun and murdering someone. It’s good to be a gangsta.

*** Update ***

Pretty much:

Mehserle will do less time for shooting & killing Oscar Grant than Plaxico Burress is doing for shooting himself in the leg…

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Solo Americanos, Por Favor

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Just a guess, but could this hick Sherlock be up for re-election?

A sheriff in suburban New Orleans has asked federal authorities to investigate reports that illegal immigrants are working on the Gulf oil spill cleanup effort. […]

Stephens says he wants to protect the community from “criminal elements” and not “people who want to earn an honest buck.”

Right, because the “criminal elements” always gravitate towards dirty, difficult, manual labor.

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You Have To Break Some Eggs

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Assholes:

Preliminary information indicates that members of the Detroit Police Special Response Team approached the house and announced themselves as police, Godbee said, citing the officers and at least one independent witness.

“As is common in these types of situations, the officers deployed a distractionary device commonly known as a flash bang,” he said in the statement. “The purpose of the device is to temporarily disorient occupants of the house to make it easier for officers to safely gain control of anyone inside and secure the premise.”

Upon entering the home, the officer encountered a 46-year-old female inside the front room, Godbee said. “Exactly what happened next is a matter still under investigation, but it appears the officer and the woman had some level of physical contact.

“At about this time, the officer’s weapon discharged one round which, tragically, struck 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones in the neck/head area.”

Yes, this was a murder investigation, but why is it COMMON for police to be throwing god damned grenades into people’s houses? You think that might be the problem? Did they have somewhere else to be? Couldn’t they wait until the morning? Are stake-outs just in the movies these days?

I’m surprised they didn’t charge the family with child endangerment like they did in Missouri.

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NWA Was Right

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I can’t get over those assholes that shot that man’s pets over a miniscule amount of pot (and more than likely based on faulty information from an informant with whom they cut a deal). I’ve only had Lily 11 months (today!), but I would be out for blood if someone shot her, cop or otherwise. I’d be a helluva lot less rational than that guy was. At the very least there would have been a tasing on that video or another shooting (of me) as I lost my shit all over the place.

And why don’t we get to see pictures of these brave servants to the community? Why aren’t pictures of cops who do this in every newspaper and on every nightly show when it happens? They are obviously tough guys, of course they would want the press! Here’s Butch McCraskin, local member of the SWAT team. He likes football, Nascar, reads Soldier of Fortune, loves no-knock raids, and has tazed a teen-ager and bagged three corgi’s. He drives a big Dodge Ram truck with an NRA sticker to compensate for his tiny penis. Can’t you smell the macho? I wonder what he has cooking?

I’m wondering at what point Americans are finally going to have enough of this shit. They cut pensions slightly to keep the nation from going completely broke in Greece, and they are fire-bombing shit in protest. Here, unless you are a member of the elite you are a third class citizen, subject to any number of abuses to your life, property, and dignity, and no one seems to care or is too preoccupied.

Is Dancing with the Stars on tonight?

*** Update ***

The pit bull these tough guys shot and killed was crated. The corgi they shot survived was loose, but could hardly be considered a threat. This isn’t about law enforcement or safety to officers, this is about terrorizing people.

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