October 12, 2022

The Reading Of The Alex Jones Verdict

Nothing happens in the first 6 hours and 12 minutes of this video, but this link will take you to the point where the jury returns with their verdict.

Jones's' reaction:

permalink | October 12, 2022 at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)

August 2, 2022

Police Union Head Gets A Clue

"The head of the largest police union in Texas said the new timeline raised serious questions about the department's trustworthiness."

That sentence comes from this article concerning yet more previously undisclosed information about the Uvalde shooting. The department referenced is the Texas Department of Public Safety.

permalink | August 2, 2022 at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)

August 1, 2022

“I will always be a supporter of everyone’s Constitutional rights until you break the law,” Bianco wrote.

This is one of the problems with Bianco: after he thinks you've broken the law, you have no Constitutional rights.

permalink | August 1, 2022 at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)

July 20, 2022

Juvie Cannabis Thieves Busted

Press release from the Desert Hot Springs Police:

Armed Robbery Arrest

Desert Hot Springs, July 20, 2022:
On Monday, 07/18/2022 at approximately 11:51 am, Desert Hot Springs Police Officers responded to the 66900 block of Ironwood Drive for a report of an armed robbery. The victim, a cannabis delivery driver, told officers she was making a delivery of product at an apartment complex in the area. When she arrived, a male subject walked to her vehicle and identified himself as the customer. While speaking with the subject, he attempted to forcefully take the product from the delivery driver. She initially attempted to resist the subject, at which time, he drew a black handgun from his waistband and pointed it at the driver. The driver fled in her vehicle and the suspect fled on foot. DHSPD Detectives responded to the scene and assumed the investigation. Detectives were able to develop information on a suspect, and on July 19, 2022, at approximately 11:00 am, DHSPD Detectives and Patrol Officers, assisted by a helicopter from CHP Air Operations, served a search warrant at an address in the 66900 block of Ironwood Drive. During the warrant, a firearm believed to be used in the robbery was recovered and two male juvenile suspects were located and detained. Following additional investigation, both suspects were subsequently placed under arrest and later booked into the Riverside County Juvenile Hall in Indio. Charges include violations of Penal Codes 211 – Armed Robbery, 245(a)(2) – Assault with a Firearm, and 182(a)(1) – Conspiracy to Commit Robbery.

permalink | July 20, 2022 at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2022

Bits Gleaned From The Texas House Report On Uvalde
Records from the attacker’s early school years reveal varied accounts of his character and school performance. His pre-K teacher’s report described him as “a pleasure to have ... a wonderful student ... always ready to learn,” and it praised his “hard work and positive attitude in the classroom.” Yet early assessments showed he was behind other students academically, and by third grade, school officials already had identified him as “at-risk” due to consistently poor test results. School records reveal that someone may have requested speech therapy for the attacker, and his later internet searches show he himself sought information on dyslexia. Ultimately, he received no special education services.
Finally, the attacker developed a fascination with school shootings, of which he made no secret. His comments about them coupled with his wild threats of violence and rape earned him the nickname “Yubo’s school shooter” on that platform. Those with whom he played games taunted him with a similar nickname so often that it became a running joke. Even those he personally knew in his local chat group began calling him “the school shooter” after he shared pictures of himself wearing the plate carrier he’d bought and posing with a BB gun he tried to convince them was real.
The owner of the gun store described the attacker as an “average customer with no ‘red flags’ or suspicious conditions”—just that he was always alone and quiet. The owner of the store remembered asking how an 18-year-old could afford such purchases (the rifles alone were over $3,000), and the attacker simply said he had saved up. Patrons of the store who saw him told a different story in FBI interviews, saying after the tragedy that the attacker was “very nervous looking” and that he “appeared odd and looked like one of those school shooters”; another described his all-black clothing as simply giving off “bad vibes.”
Just minutes before, Chief Arredondo had been in his office at Uvalde High School when he heard “shots fired” on the radio. He rushed out, heard something about Robb Elementary School, and drove toward the school. He arrived with his radios, but as he exited his vehicle, he was fumbling with them and they bothered him, so he dropped them by the school fence knowing that Sgt. Coronado, the sergeant on patrol, was there and “fully uniformed” with his radio.
Principal Mandy Gutierrez had just finished an awards ceremony and was in her office when she heard Coach Silva’s report over the radio. She attempted to initiate a lockdown on the Raptor application, but she had difficulty making the alert because of a bad wi-fi signal. She did not attempt to communicate the lockdown alert over the school’s intercom. By phone, she called and spoke with Chief Arredondo, who told her, “shut it down Mandy, shut it down.” She told head custodian Jaime Perez to ensure that all the doors were locked. She initially locked down in her own office, but she later moved to the cafeteria.
Uvalde CISD Police Chief Arredondo quickly arrived as the incident moved to school property and the law enforcement response evolved. This made him a natural person to assume command over an incident as it developed. But Chief Arredondo does not consider himself to have assumed incident command. He explained to the Committee:
[W]hile you’re in there, you don’t title yourself ... .I know our policy states you’re the incident commander. My approach and thought was responding as a police officer. And so I didn’t title myself. But once I got in there and we took that fire, back then, I realized, we need some things. We’ve got to get in that door. We need an extraction tool. We need those keys. As far as ... I’m talking about the command part ... the people that went in, there was a big group of them outside that door. I have no idea who they were and how they walked in or anything. I kind of – I wasn’t given that direction.
***
you can always hope and pray that there’s an incident command post outside. I just didn’t have access to that. I didn’t know anything about that.

Other people could have assumed command, including the next people in Uvalde CISD’s preassigned line of command for active shooter response or others on the scene with more experience or training. ALERRT training teaches that any law enforcement officer can assume command, that somebody must assume command, and that an incident commander can transfer responsibility as an incident develops. That did not happen at Robb Elementary, and the lack of effective incident command is a major factor that caused other vital measures to be left undone. Also, the misinformation reported to officers on the outside likely prevented some of them from taking a more assertive role. For example, many officers were told to stay out of the building because Chief Arredondo was inside a room with the attacker actively negotiating.

But nobody ever checked the doors of Rooms 111 or 112 to confirm they were actually locked or secured. Room 111 probably was not. Chief Arredondo’s search for a key consumed his attention and wasted precious time, delaying the breach of the classrooms.

Nobody called Principal Gutierrez to ask about the location of a master key. She had a key, and the head custodian had a key. Yet despite all the effort to find a key, nobody called her.

permalink | July 17, 2022 at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)

Texas House Report On Uvalde

Texas Tribune summary article.

The report itself.

Yet in this crisis, no responder seized the initiative to establish an incident command post. Despite an obvious atmosphere of chaos, the ranking officers of other responding agencies did not approach the Uvalde CISD chief of police or anyone else perceived to be in command to point out the lack of and need for a command post, or to offer that specific assistance. Several will suggest they were misled by false or misleading information they received as they arrived; however, the “chaos” described by almost all of them demonstrates that at a minimum, responders should have asked more questions. This suggests a training deficiency, in that responding officers failed to adequately question the absence of command. Other responders failed to be sufficiently assertive by identifying the incident commander and offering their assistance or guidance, or by assuming command in the absence of any other responder having expressly done so. In this sense, the entirety of law enforcement and its training, preparation, and response shares systemic responsibility for many missed opportunities on that tragic day.

permalink | July 17, 2022 at 01:56 PM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2022

Something Unusual at the Children's Museum of Northern Nevada

Two adults and five children were found to be living in the Children's Museum of Northern Nevada with a cache of weapons.

Janitor charged after family found living with arsenal of weapons in Carson City children’s museum

CARSON CITY — A Nevada couple was found secretly keeping a cache of weapons and living with their two kids at a Northern Nevada children’s museum where they worked, authorities said.

A janitor at the Children's Museum of Northern Nevada was arrested late last week, the Carson City Sheriff's Office said.

According to a police report, officers discovered 41-year-old Wilbert Calhoun and his wife housing their five children in the museum, where Calhoun was a janitor and his wife was the manager.

Authorities discovered the arsenal in a storage room, authorities said. A police report listed an AK-47 rifle, three handguns, a pistol, ammunition, knives and a taser that could have been reached by a child. The stash also included drug paraphernalia like a bong and a used marijuana joint.

Museum ‘shocked and saddened’ by discovery

Officials realized the family was living in the museum after the man's 2-year-old child was spotted walking nearby unsupervised, the Sheriff’s Office report reads. It was not the first time police interacted with the man over his child being left alone. But this time, the toddler's older sister gave deputies the museum as their address.

Authorities, along with a museum board member, then walked through the property and saw signs people had been living there. Sleeping bags, mattresses, clothes and food were among the items found in areas off-limits to visitors, the Sheriff's Office said.

The janitor, according to his arrest report, faces charges including child neglect and endangerment and possession of a suppressor and a short barrel rifle.

The couple has since been fired and the museum closed.

The museum's board of directors is facing questions about how this was able to happen. The group issued an apology and said they were “shocked and saddened.”

“We are looking into the best path to reopen in a way that not only assures the safety of all of our visitors, but that we as a community can be proud of as well,” they said in a statement.

The museum will reopen after hiring a new manager.

permalink | July 15, 2022 at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)

July 13, 2022

The Problem In Uvalde

It's hard to believe that Uvalde politicians are still trying to suppress information about the shooting at their school.

permalink | July 13, 2022 at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

Criminal Brilliance

Suppose you were a felon on probation illegally in possession of two guns, one stolen and the other a ghost gun. Where would you hole up? Would it be at an AirBNB where you attempt to squat past the time of your reservation, thereby forcing the owner to call the cops? That's what the brillian Jamie Dellinger did in Coachella.

Reporting Deputy: Sergeant Mariano Matos III
File # Y221920033
Details:
On July 11, 2022, at 3:30 P.M., members of the Coachella Community Action Team (CCAT), with the assistance [of] patrol deputies assigned to the city of Coachella, responded to a residence located in the 86-100 block of Sonoma Creek regarding a subject staying pass [sic] their paid time at an Airbnb. Jamie Dellinger, a 33-year-old from the city of Coachella, was contacted and found to be on active county probation. During a probation compliance check, CCAT deputies located two handguns. One of the handguns was reported as stolen and the other was a non-serialized handgun (commonly referred to as a Ghost Gun). Dellinger was arrested for being a felon in possession of a firearm, felon in possession of ammunition, possession of a stolen firearm, and possession of a non-serialized handgun. Dellinger was booked at the John Benoit Detention Center in the city of Indio.

permalink | July 13, 2022 at 04:04 PM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2022

"Complete" Uvalde Video (1 hour, 22 minutes)

Using video mostly from a security camera inside the school, we are shown, again, that the story they've been telling has not been the truth, not by a long shot. Police were inside the school three or four minutes after the first shot was fired and they remained in the building continuously for at least the next 75 minutes doing absolutely jack shit nothing until the final minute. Here's my summary of the chronology (times given are the actual clock times shown in the video).
11:28 crashes truck
11:32 first shot?
11:33 enters school
11:33 first shots inside school
11:36 cops enter school
11:36 two cops proceed to scene of shooting, shooting stops
11:36 shooting resumes, cops retreat but remain in the building
11:52 ballistic shield arrives
11:56 identifiable sheriff deputy arrives
12:04 second ballistic shield arrives
12:10 second ballistic shield moved aside
12:21 for the first time since their retreat at 11:36, cops move toward the classroom where the shooting occurred
12:46 cops obviously prepare to do something
12:50 the cops do something, for the first time since entering the building 74 minutes earlier
12:50 video ends
I'm amazed that so many hopelessly indecisive and gutless uniformed law enforcement officers could be gathered together in one place. And in Texas!

permalink | July 12, 2022 at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)

July 4, 2022

Slavery in 20th Century California

The story of a woman held in slavery in Coronado, California. The couple who held her were tried in federal court in 1947. Interesting to me is that from shortly after WWI until 1946, the couple and the victim, Dora Jones, lived in Boston. The couple had retired in 1946 and all three of them moved to sunny California.

Neighbors and visitors to the house [in Boston] told federal investigators that she did all the chores during 16-hour days that sometimes ended with her sleeping on the floor in the kitchen. They saw her outside in the winter, shoveling snow without gloves or a jacket.

Here's a photo of the husband, Alfred Ingalls, from 1929. It seems he actually lived in Lynn, not Boston. He was a Republican member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives; a graduate of Brown University and Suffolk Law School.

75 years ago, slavery case in San Diego County riveted the nation
BY JOHN WILKENS SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

CORONADO, Calif. — Seventy-five years ago, in the summer of 1947, slavery was remembered vaguely as a Southern thing, vanquished by the Civil War nearly a century earlier and buried in the dust of Dixie.

Then Alfred and Elizabeth Ingalls got arrested in Coronado.

The white couple, both in their 60s and recently arrived from Boston, were charged with keeping their Black maid, Dora Jones, in involuntary servitude — forcing her for 30 years to perform menial tasks from morning to night, beating her when she complained, clothing her in rags, and paying her nothing.

It was believed to be one of the first federal anti-slavery cases since Reconstruction, a harbinger of a newly assertive Department of Justice seeking to expand the definition of civil rights, especially for African Americans and other marginalized groups. Newspapers and magazines from coast-to-coast paid attention to the trial.

In San Diego, it was routinely front-page news. Reporters for the morning Union and the evening Tribune-Sun provided gavel-to-gavel coverage almost every day for a month.

The public was engaged, too. On several occasions, hundreds of people hoping to sit in the courtroom got up at dawn and waited for hours in line. Frustrated would-be spectators chanted “Let us in! Let us in!”

It was, the Union declared after it was all over, “one of the most unusual lawsuits in the annals of American jurisprudence.”

The case resonates today in the ongoing work of a California task force exploring reparations for Black Californians whose ancestors were directly affected by slavery.

“Although progress has been made, Black workers continue to face discrimination today,” the group said in a preliminary report issued last month. “The badges and incidents of slavery have carried forward.”

Dora Jones knew that all too well.

Jones was born in 1890 in Athens, Ala., to parents who had been slaves. When she was around 12, she went to a missionary school not far from home and helped pay for her tuition by cleaning rooms. One of the rooms belonged to a teacher named Elizabeth Kimball.

A few years later, Jones was in the Washington, D.C., area, working for Kimball, now married and about to give birth. Later court testimony would disagree on whose idea the arrangement was, but Jones went voluntarily.

She was paid $8 per month, with half the money deducted in the early going by her boss — now named Elizabeth Harmon — as reimbursement for the train ticket purchased to bring Jones north.

Jones welcomed the work and enjoyed helping to raise the newborn. But in 1913 Jones became pregnant. The father? Harmon’s husband.

The way Jones described it under oath later, Walter Harmon forced himself on her regularly, a “kiss-less” relationship that went on for three years. “My part was just giving in to him,” she testified.

When a doctor suggested Jones go home to Alabama to have the child, Elizabeth Harmon objected. She didn’t want to lose her domestic worker. She suggested an abortion instead — illegal at the time — and made the arrangements.

After the operation, Jones remembered being told this: “You owe me your life now, because you have ruined mine.”

The Harmons soon divorced, and Elizabeth quickly got married again, to Alfred Ingalls, a lawyer, World War I veteran and future state legislator. They settled in the Boston area. Another daughter was born.

Jones continued to work for the family, now without pay. Neighbors and visitors to the house told federal investigators that she did all the chores during 16-hour days that sometimes ended with her sleeping on the floor in the kitchen. They saw her outside in the winter, shoveling snow without gloves or a jacket.

When she complained, she was beaten, the witnesses said. When she tried to run away, she was locked in the cellar.

In 1946, the Ingalls decided to retire and move to Coronado. They drove across the country in a new Packard and brought Jones with them.

They stopped in Berkeley, where their youngest daughter, Helen Roberts, lived. They stayed in a motel. When Roberts and her husband came by the motel for a visit, they found Jones sleeping in the car, crammed in among the suitcases in the backseat. She looked older than her 56 years, the daughter thought — frail, worn-out, neglected.

Police were called, and Jones left with Helen Roberts and her husband.

When the Ingallses discovered her missing the next day, they called police, too, and reported that she had been kidnapped.

Detectives brought everybody into the same room. Elizabeth Ingalls again told Jones how hard it would be for her to live on her own. She warned that Roberts and her husband wouldn’t have enough money to take her in.

One of the detectives asked Jones, if she was mistreated over the years, why hadn’t she left? “Because I came between Mrs. Ingalls and her first husband and I had caused her so much misery and trouble, I felt I should stay and make it up to her,” she said.

Police concluded this was a domestic dispute and let Jones decide what she wanted to do. She returned to the Ingallses, who continued on to Coronado, settling into the Hotel del Coronado for 30 days while they looked for a house to buy.

Jones slept in the Packard.

But the Ingallses’ troubles were just beginning. Someone had tipped off the FBI. A federal investigation ensued, one that fit into a broader campaign by the Department of Justice to expand constitutional protections.

On Feb. 24, 1947, FBI agents arrested the couple in Coronado and took the maid into protective custody.

A month later, the Ingallses were indicted by a grand jury and charged with violating the constitutional prohibition against slavery. They told reporters the case was absurd.

“Dora,” Elizabeth Ingalls said, “has always been very happy with us.”

A jury made up of nine men and three women was seated. None were Black. During opening arguments in late June 1947, the stage was set.

Lead prosecutor Ernest Tolin outlined 30 years of bondage, “a psychological chain of steel” forged in the aftermath of Jones’ pregnancy and abortion.

“Suffering another woman’s vengeance for 30 years was the price Dora Jones paid,” he said.

Defense lawyer Clifford Fitzpatrick said the Ingallses considered Jones a member of the family, “more of a protĂ©gĂ© than a servant.” He blamed the case on overzealous FBI agents and prosecutors filling Jones’ mind with “scurrilous” allegations.

“This is not, as depicted by the government, a sword of Damocles hanging over the head of Dora Jones,” he said. “It has more suitably been a sword over the head of the Ingallses, hanging by the psychological thread of this primitive girl’s unstable mind.”

As the trial unfolded over four weeks, newspapers reported every detail of what was commonly known as “the slavery case,” often illustrating the articles with black-and-white photos of the key players.

Attorneys called some 40 witnesses to the stand, each offering a glimpse into the couple’s household. Daughters. Neighbors. Friends. Police. A postal worker. Psychologists.

Under questioning by prosecutor Betty Marshall Graydon, the first female U.S. Attorney in San Diego, Jones talked about how the “jail sentence hanging over me” kept her in the Ingalls household. She said she’d had one vacation in 30 years, a trip to Alabama paid for by her relatives there.

Graydon had Jones step off the witness stand to show jurors her gnarled and knotted fingers, encouraging the panelists to decide for themselves whether “they are hands of a person who was a member of the family, or whether they are the hands of a slave.”

Alfred Ingalls approached the jury box, too, smiling at Jones as he looked at her fingers. His wife stayed seated at the defense table, remarking out loud that she had already seen those hands for many years.

When it was her turn to testify, Elizabeth Ingalls was on the stand for parts of three days. The newspapers described her testimony as “exceedingly voluble.” Judge Jacob Weinberger admonished her several times to answer the questions without veering into soliloquies.

She’d already made an impression as emotional, openly sobbing when both her daughters testified against her. She’d followed another witness, a family friend, into a courthouse hallway, pushing her against the wall and calling her a “dirty, dirty, dirty little skunk.”

On the stand, Ingalls admitted that she “nearly dropped dead” when she learned that Jones was pregnant, and she was desperate to keep the information private lest it create a scandal. But she denied forcing the abortion. She said that was Jones’ idea, as was sleeping on the floor at home and in the car when they traveled.

The maid “had a heart of gold” and never cared about money, according to Ingalls. “Her main desire was to help,” she said. “Aside from bananas and candy, such as chocolate and gum drops, she really had no real wants.”

Ingalls blamed any beatings that happened on Jones, claiming that the maid taunted her about her first husband: “I know what men want and you don’t.”

She also blamed her daughters for the criminal case happening in the first place. “They had been working behind my back for six years to do this to me,” she said.

After likening Tolin, the prosecutor, to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, she said, “I hardly think the United States government ever intended that a citizen of my caliber should be treated this way.”

Her husband was more measured in his testimony, but he, too, blamed Jones for any mistreatment that occurred.

Jones was free to go whenever she wanted, Alfred Ingalls said, and her claims to the contrary during the trial were the result of “events, people and forces that entirely changed her. I’m sorry for her and I only hope we will be allowed to see her after this case is over.”

On July 18, 1947, after the lawyers on each side delivered three hours of closing arguments, Judge Weinberger denied a defense motion to dismiss the case and sent jurors off to begin their deliberations. His instructions included this definition of a slave:

“A slave is a person who is wholly subject to the will of another, one who has no freedom of action and whose person and services are wholly under the control of another, and who is in a state of enforced compulsory service to another.”

It took jurors 30 minutes to convict Elizabeth Ingalls. They deadlocked for acquittal on her husband, with a majority deciding over the course of several votes that he, too, had been unduly influenced by her.

Jones wasn’t there for the verdict. She’d already left for St. Louis to live with a brother. Reporters waited for her at the train station there and told her about the outcome.

“It’s kind of hard not to feel bad about Mrs. Ingalls,” she said. “I was with her such a long time.”

As prosecutors weighed whether to try Alfred Ingalls again — they ultimately opted not to — the judge faced his own dilemma: what to do with Elizabeth Ingalls while she awaited sentencing. She faced a maximum of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Her husband stood up in court, and with tears in his eyes said, “I urge it with every fiber of my being that this woman not be sent to jail. This is not the case of a hardened criminal, but a woman well past middle age.”

But prosecutors reminded Weinberger about testimony earlier in the trial from one of the Ingallses’ daughters. She said her father had told her that if they were convicted, he would kill his wife and then himself.

The judge put Elizabeth Ingalls in jail. The next day’s Union had a photo of her there, under this headline: “Steel Bars Cage Boston Socialite.”

She stayed incarcerated for 11 days, while reporters chronicled her fondness for fresh oranges and the details of a visit she had with her Episcopal priest from Coronado.

“Must I suffer until the day I die?” she was quoted as saying.

Weinberger fined her $2,500 and sentenced her to five years of probation with a requirement that she not harass any of the witnesses.

“She has been subjected to national disgrace because of the publicity and attention given to this trial,” he said.

He also did something unusual at the time, according to the constitutional scholars. He ordered the Ingallses to compensate Jones — back pay, in effect, to the tune of $6,000 (about $78,000 in today’s world). She reportedly took the money in an annuity.

Not long after the trial, the couple sold their home in Coronado and moved to Santa Barbara. Alfred died there in 1965. Elizabeth passed away in 1972.

Jones also died in 1972, in St. Louis. She was 82. She had resisted opportunities to capitalize on the notoriety of the trial, turning down paid speaking offers.

She told reporters she was glad to have her freedom, “but in many ways I’m not used to it.”

permalink | July 4, 2022 at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)

July 2, 2022

"Right to Tranquility"

The Supreme Court’s chief security officer has written to authorities in Maryland and Virginia regarding the intolerable situation of citizens exercising their rights by protesting in front of the homes of Supreme Court justices, specifically citing a Maryland law that says a “person may not intentionally assemble with another in a manner that disrupts a person’s right to tranquility in the person’s home.” Clearly, there has never been a right to tranquility written in the Constitution. The Maryland law must be invalid. However, a law preventing a Supreme Court Justice from leaving Maryland to seek tranquility elsewhere is probably just fine.

permalink | July 2, 2022 at 03:58 PM | Comments (0)

Finally!

Pete Arredondo has resigned from the Uvalde City Council. This is the first acknowledgement by any of the involved police that maybe, just maybe, they did something wrong and voters are at least somewhat disappointed in their behavior. Why did it take a month for this clueless lump to resign? Did he think people were going to forget? Did he need the health insurance benefits? Has he never had his head anywhere but up his own ass?

Is anybody running a betting pool on when he will also resign his position as police chief for the school district?

permalink | July 2, 2022 at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

June 4, 2022

The Fire Was Where?

There was a fire last night around 7 PM in Desert Hot Springs. The Desert Sun phoned it in, relying on the fire department's tweet that said the location was "66700 Blk 6th St." But the fire department included a map in their tweet that pointed to the coordinates 33°58'07.4"N, 116°29'47.1"W, which is on 8th Street just east of Mesquite.

KESQ actually sent out a reporter and camera, but they were even less specific than the newspaper. KESQ said it was at "Mesquite Avenue, just off of Palm Drive." Since Mesquite parallels Palm, that's the equivalent of saying "somewhere on Mesquite."

So I put on my Brenda Starr boots and headed out to investigate. The fire was right where the fire department's map was pointing; they just mistyped 6th for 8th.

permalink | June 4, 2022 at 08:08 PM | Comments (0)

June 3, 2022

Angeli Gomez


Braver than any cop in Uvalde.

permalink | June 3, 2022 at 06:20 PM | Comments (0)

March 2, 2022

3,272 Breaches Of Trump's Border Wall

"Mexican smuggling gangs have sawed through new segments of border wall 3,272 times over the past three years, according to unpublished U.S. Customs and Border Protection maintenance records."

Smuggling gangs typically cut the barrier with inexpensive power tools widely available at retail hardware stores, including angle grinders and demolition saws. Once the 18-to-30-foot-tall bollards are severed near the ground, their only remaining point of attachment is at the top of the structure, leaving the steel beam dangling in the air. It easily swings open with a push, creating a gap wide enough for people and narcotics to pass through.

Video of a sawn-through bollard.

After smuggling crews cut through, they often disguise the breaches with tinted putty, making it difficult for agents to recognize which bollards have been compromised. The smugglers can return again and again to the site until the damage is detected, using the breach like a secret entrance.

permalink | March 2, 2022 at 06:21 PM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2022

The Thin Bread Crust

Thin Bread Crust

permalink | January 30, 2022 at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)

January 4, 2022

Who Were The January 6 Rioters?

Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago has collected data on the January 6 rioters in an attempt to profile them. He says the rioters were not fringe elements, but "mainstream" Republicans. Only 13% of those arrested are members of "skinhead gangs or prison gangs or militia groups or extremist groups, like the Proud Boys." Only 7% were unemployed, the national average. "[O]ver half of those who have been arrested are business owners, CEOs from white-collar occupations, doctors, lawyers, and architects." Two-thirds of them are over the age of 34. A quarter of those arrested have a college degree. While military veterans usually make up 40% of right-wing extremists, only about 15% of the rioters had military service. About 30% had prior criminal history, but that's less than half the usual rate among right-wing extremists.

52% of the rioters came from counties where Biden won the election.

Now, what else do those counties have in common? The No. 1 feature of the county sending insurrectionists, aside from simply the size of the population overall, is that these are the counties losing the most white population in the United States. The more counties have lost non-Hispanic white population since 2010—that is, between 2010 and 2020—the significantly more likely is the county to send an insurrectionist.

"There is a right-wing conspiracy theory called the great replacement, which says that white people are being overtaken by minorities and that this is going to cause a loss of rights for white people."

So Pape conducted a poll. He found "that 21 million American adults agree with two radical beliefs: one, that the use of force to restore Donald Trump to the presidency is justified, and two, that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election and is an illegitimate president. That is, 21 million don’t hold just one of those beliefs—they hold both of those beliefs. It’s 8 percent of the body politic, but that’s really significant."

Belief in the great replacement "is head and shoulders the No. 1 belief that’s driving the difference between being in the 21 million versus being in the rest of the body politic."

What we see is in the 21 million, the No. 1 set of news sources are conservative mainstream news sources. Forty-two percent of the 21 million report that it’s Fox News, Newsmax, One America. That’s their major source of news. The next set of sources, 32 percent report that it’s liberal or centrist media like CNN, NPR, NBC. You might say, well, wait a minute—how could that be? Well, just keep in mind that we’ve known for a long time as scholars that when you watch news that you disagree with, it makes you angry.

"Only 20 percent of these people report that their main sources are mainstream social media like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and only 10 percent report that it’s far right social media like Gab or Telegram."

permalink | January 4, 2022 at 06:04 PM | Comments (0)

December 23, 2021

Santa Claus Nabs A Hit & Run Driver


You'll probably appreciate this more if you speak French, which I do not.

permalink | December 23, 2021 at 03:51 PM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2021

Q: How Many Milwaukee Cops Does It Take To Pull Over A Minivan With Two Flat Tires Going 20 MPH?

A: All of them, apparently.

permalink | December 17, 2021 at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)

Next »