Monthly Archives: September 2009

Journalism at its best: “No One Knows if It Was a Cougar or a Moutain Lion”

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Or some horrible cross between the two! You don’t need to be a Backwoodsman reading 21st century Mountain Man like me to see how ignorant the above statement is (since Cougars and Mountain Lions are different names for the same animal) but the fact that a reporter couldn’t be bothered to know basic terminology in this story is the reason old media is collapsing. From KDKA:

NORTH UNION TOWNSHIP (KDKA) ― Someone spotted a large cat roaming a field in Fayette County and now a community is on edge.

At Laurel Highlands High School in North Union Township, girls’ soccer and midget football practice were cancelled after they learned of the sighting.

Someone called Fayette County 911 Tuesday night about the feline.

No one knows if it was a cougar or a mountain lion.

“Just over the hill here, it busted – there [were] animals – got the fence busted here and on the other hill there was … whatever this is was chasing cattle,” one man explained.

Some people were speculating the cat came from an animal orphanage opened 20 years ago in the area, but the doctor says all of his cats are accounted for.

There’s a video report at the link where the reporters also say the big cat seen could have been either a tiger or a lynx. You know, because they look exactly the same.

h/t Cryptomundo

Career Criminal Tries to Convince Judge He’s Crazy – By Eating his Own Feces

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James Orr is a career criminal looking down the barrel of what would probably be the 60-year-old’s last stay in prison after kidnapping and robbing a woman. Clever con artist that he is, he remembered a scene (around 7:44 in this clip) from dirty cop flick Training Day in which the main character is told about a man who beat a rap by sticking peanut butter down the back of his pants and waiting until he was in court to produce and eat it, shocking the judge who mistakes it for feces. The man gets remanded to an asylum instead of prison.

Orr thought this sounded like a great idea, but he simply didn’t have any peanut butter. He did however have a colostomy bag. Don’t read on if you just ate:

James Orr put an immediate halt to his criminal trial Wednesday when he squeezed the contents of his colostomy bag onto the table in front of him and ate it.

“There was what appeared to be feces on the table and on the floor,” assistant Hamilton County prosecutor David Prem said.

Prem was prosecuting Orr, 66, for robbery and kidnapping. The trial, without a jury before Common Pleas Court Judge Ethna Cooper, began last week but continued today.

A witness had just taken the stand in the case Wednesday when Norm Aubin, Orr’s attorney, said Orr leaned into him and asked if Aubin had anything to eat.

A shocked Aubin said he didn’t. Orr then said he was hungry and asked for food. Aubin ignored him.

That’s when Orr made a spectacle of taking his colostomy bag, worn on the outside of his body to collect his waste, and placing it on the table. He then squeezed it and looked to be eating it.

“It appeared he was eating his own (feces) at the table,” Aubin said.

The Sheriff’s deputy in the room shouted “What are you doing?” and then cuffed Orr and rushed him out of the courtroom.

The Sheriff’s office later reported there was feces on Orr’s lips, beard, hands and the defense table where he was sitting.

The judge suggested the courtroom had become a biohazard area and closed it for cleaning, continuing Orr’s trial until next week.

Prem admitted he almost vomited up while watching Orr’s antics but suspects they were done with a purpose.

“He’s a con man. He has over 50 aliases and has convictions in Ohio and New York for thefts and robberies,” Prem said.

“He’s done just about everything a person can do to avoid justice. He feigned (mental) incompetence” leading up to this trial, Prem said.

Orr was ordered to trial after court mental health workers deemed him mentally sound and a faker.

What kind of scumbag do you have to be to do that? Even after he has been exposed as a faker he escalates to this? And let’s not forget his crime:

Orr was being tried for robbery and kidnapping charges after officials said Orr and a partner tried to get money, in a ruse, from a woman buying food at a Silverton Chinese restaurant. When the woman wasn’t fooled, Orr is accused of pulling a gun on her – with her three children in the car outside – and taking her to a bank where she was forced to withdraw $1,000 and give it to Orr. He faces more than 60 years in prison on those charges.

Disgusting.

No, Birthers are Not the New Birchers and Boycotting WND is Not a Good Idea

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And I say this frankly as a man who doesn’t link to WND often because of their support for kookery (although I am always impressed with the work of Joseph Farrah) but Jon Henke’s recent call to shut down a business for daring to put forward ideas he finds unseemly (and much of the Jerome Corsi corpus is beyond unseemly) on The Next Right reeks of doctrinaire leftism. What’s worse is that that Henke is taking issue with what is, as far as conspiracy theories go, eyebrow raising boilerplate that is essentially harmless quackery that falls far short of the truly offensive theories the left has often thrown around like 9/11 being an inside job. Here’s Jon Henke’s outrage over WND promoting a theory no more outrageous than aliens building the pyramids:

In the 1960’s, William F. Buckley denounced the John Birch Society leadership for being “so far removed from common sense” and later said “We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner.”

The Birthers are the Birchers of our time, and WorldNetDaily is their pamphlet.  The Right has mostly ignored these embarrassing people and organizations, but some people and organizations inexplicably choose to support WND through advertising and email list rental or other collaboration.  For instance, I have been told that F.I.R.E (The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) – an otherwise respectable group that does important work – uses the WND email list.  They should stop.

No respectable organization should support the kind of fringe idiocy that WND peddles.  Those who do are not respectable.

I think it’s time to find out what conservative/libertarian organizations support WND through advertising, list rental or other commercial collaboration (email me if you know of any), and boycott any of those organizations that will not renounce any further support for WorldNetDaily.

The irony of Henke calling WND unseemly while advocating an Alinsky-esque attack on a private business is thick enough to be used as pancake syrup and sweet enough to induce diabetes. Birtherism is silly and deflates under its own internal logic. After all if Obama is the chosen candidate of a cabal of powerful people looking to hide the truth of his identity why wouldn’t they have worked out the pesky details of his birth certificate in advance? The sinister yet incompetent secret society that runs the world is a theory only subscribed to by people who have never been in the real world long enough to understand that such nonsense is impossible.

But is Bitherism more offensive than John Birch Society anti-Semitism? More disgusting than “truthers” claiming that the passengers and crew of flight 77 are really alive and well? More harmful than Geraldo promoting the Satanic Ritual Abuse hoax, which led to innocent people being jailed?

No, of course not. But Henke hasn’t gone after people who still peddle all of the above nonsense. Where is Henke’s boycott of the sites that claim Israelis are bombing “innocent” Muslims? Where’s Henke’s call for a boycott of advertisers on sites that are supporting a re-emergent S.R.A. movement? Where’s his anger at sites that cater to truthers? You know, DailyKos, Anti-War and The Examiner? I haven’t seen much from Henke on those unseemly sites.

I’ve also yet to hear him attack Jerome Corsi, apparently the fountain from which all of the sins of WND flow, for his more outrageous and evil attacks on decency. The man is, like Obama’s “Green Czar,” a truther, or at least he pretended to be one to sell books on the Alex Jones show (check the comments in this post on Infowars, where crestfallen suckers who supported him cry about being betrayed by truther Corsi when he publicly denounced them) which is much more embarrassing to the right than Birtherism.

For that matter Ron Paul has been chummy with Alex Jones for too long if you ask me, so why aren’t we attacking him?

The answer is so simple it may escape any Henkeites who think his boycott is a good idea. We aren’t fascists.

The Next Right partially claims to be working for a big tent, but Henke and his squishy compatriots are as purge happy as the Christian Falange wing of the party that thinks Nikki Haley can’t be governor of South Carolina because she was raised Sikh. I think Ron Paul is a kook on many issues, but I’m proud to say he is part of my Republican Party even while attacking many of his ideas.

Likewise I think most people who look at Jerome Corsi uncritically can see he is at best a huckster. His attacks on Bush, who kept this country safe with the deck stacked against him and liberated fifty million people from Baathist National Socialism, Talibanism and jihadism, were as despicable as they were untrue. But I have never claimed he should not be allowed to put those ideas out there. Henke is arguing that Corsi and anyone who has ever supported him should be put out of business.

The next right Henke seams to envision takes us far to the left, where we abhor the marketplace of ideas. He is advocating for a future where disagreeing with someone is good enough reason to bankrupt them and unseemliness is a crime that should be punished. Make no mistake, I am not a big WND fan and I won’t defend their sometime hysterical screeching, but I will defend WND’s right to screech from Henke’s “conservative” gestapo. To claim we should destroy the livelihoods of people because we don’t like their association with some crank is Castroism, not conservatism, and if The New Right wants to help chart a course for Conservatives, Republicans and Libertarians in this country I would hope they would steer us away from Marxist anti-freedom policies and toward a future where issues are debate on their merits, even within the party.

Here’s WND’s response. And Henke’s unhinged attack on the RNC for not bowing to the mighty Henke!

Victimless Crime Files: Gang Enforcement Unit Goes Native in Minneapolis

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I often argue with legalization proponents about the futility of legalization as a cure for gang related crime. I am of a mind that any large organization that makes money from criminal activity will not simply give up lucrative income streams when they become legal. Proponents of the “legalization will reduce crime” theory claim that once marijuana, for example, is legal that the gangs that make some of their a living selling pot will see the error of their ways, dissolve their membership and go on to lead productive lives. The mafia’s continued involvement with alcohol related industries (bars, nightclubs, liquor warehouses) well after prohibition was repealed seems to prove my point.

As does this case, where a gang enforcement unit with no clear chain of command was being funded partially through the confiscation of money and valuables from gang members. When their funding was drying up and gang members becoming more scarce, the inevitable happened:

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) ― A special review panel said Thursday that it found “appalling and outrageous” misconduct within the defunct Minnesota Gang Task Force, including officers who took televisions and jewelry for their own use or interrogated people with no gang ties.

It also couldn’t account for $11,000 in missing cash.

Former federal prosecutor Andy Luger, who co-chaired the panel along with retired FBI agent John Engelhof, said they never expected to find such “egregious” activity by Minnesota law enforcement officers. The team included more than 30 officers from 13 law enforcement agencies.

“Perhaps 10 or more lost their way and engaged in conduct that never would have been tolerated at their home agencies,” Luger said. He said some officers considered themselves “money police,” seizing cash and property they believed would help make up for funding cuts.

Officers also are accused of targeting people who weren’t connected to gangs and often minorities, Luger said. In one case, $4,500 in cash was taken from a Hispanic man who legally had the money as a construction crew foreman.

[…]

The report released Thursday said that hours after the audit’s release, some task force officers shredded documents and several storage bins were filled with paper that would have been shredded by a professional disposal company had they not been discovered.

The strike force was permanently shut down last month after authorities said its problems — including missing cash and evidence, and poor record keeping — were too severe to fix.

Luger said he believes some task force members committed felonies, though he and Engelhof were unable to determine whether any of the nearly $11,000 in cash still missing was stolen by officers. An FBI investigation is ongoing.

No criminal charges have been filed, and the names of officers included in the report weren’t released. Luger said several refused to cooperate. He also said he didn’t believe the panel’s findings would jeopardize any criminal cases because the task force had a dismal record of turning its work into prosecutions.

The report said some strike force employees — including police officers — repeatedly took seized property for their personal use such as expensive TVs, jewelry, computer and electronic equipment, personal watercraft and even an ice auger. Many of those items were stolen by criminal suspects and could have been returned to their rightful owners, the report said.

In one investigation, task force members seized 70 new watches. The case file said 20 were given to a jeweler to sell and return profits to the task force — but the jeweler told investigators he had declined to take the watches.

The watches are still missing, and Luger said it’s reasonable to conclude they were taken by officers or employees.

There’s a video link at the report.

It should surprise no one that a group given the power to collect what gangs call “taxes” would continue to do so even from people not involved in gang activity. Just as gangs “tax” dealers who work their territory, they also extort money from businesses and innocent bystanders. Even police officers like the ones in this story can fall prey to the temptation to extort money from people when they are given the authority to collect part of their own funding.

Gangs are not full of people who started out their career looking to be a “good guy.” Legalize pot and gangs will still “tax” the now legal pot dealers, and when those dealers go to the police they will be handled like any other snitch on the streets. Drugs fund gangs, but they don’t fuel gangs. The only reduction in crime that will come from legalization would be the elimination of possession beefs. But most people charged with possession aren’t recreational users, so they will likely continue on their criminal way.

Gangs, and unfortunately the cops above began operating as a gang, will not disappear or change when financial realities change. They will continue to commit crimes to stay in business and legalization will not change that. So let’s have an honest debate about legalization without the canard that you being able to smoke pot legally will magically make crime disappear.

h/t Knight of Pan

Support GOProud and Stand for Freedom in Iran on Sept. 24th

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GOProud is one of the organizations marching in support of the Stand for Freedom in Iran rally happening September 24th at the United Nations. If you’re in New York I urge you to turn out and show your support for the Iranian people, and if you get a chance support GOProud and their mission to provide a Conservative voice for gay Republicans.

Find out more about Stand for Freedom in Iran on their Facebook page or follow them on Twitter.