Year: 2010

Abolish Drunk Driving Laws?

So says Radley Balko: “If lawmakers are serious about saving lives, they should focus on impairment, not alcohol.” I’m not certain where I stand on this, but it does make some sense. Plus, I always appreciate counter-intuitive thinking.

“I don’t want ’em caught!”

Former Republican Governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson.

On Writing

People sometimes think I don’t work much (an opinion only reinforced when they see me having my morning coffee at 2pm and still in my bathrobe at dinner time). But I’m a night owl and I work from home. So along with teaching four classes (a very heavy load for a college professor), I have…
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The Murderers of Mexico

How to write about Mexico’s drug war? There are only a limited number of ways that readers can be reminded of the desperate acts of human sacrifice that go on every day in this country, or of the by now calamitous statistics: the nearly 28,000 people who have been killed in drug-related battles or assassinations…
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Stupid-mobiles

Does anybody believe this is a good idea for subway patrol? Granted with only 13 the NYPD isn’t making a major investment, but it’s still a big waste. “Their biggest benefit is increased police visibility, as they put an officer heads and shoulders above the crowds, police said” in the Daily News. What? Actually, no.…
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What do you expect?

“The longshoremen were paid $50,000 to $100,000 for unloading a single duffel bag of cocaine.” I’m glad nobody has offered me that kind of money for that kind of work, because I don’t know what I would do. Meanwhile the tunnel from Mexico business is booming, which is an unfortunate but inevitable result (along with…
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Man tells cops coke in buttocks is not his

I’m telling you, you can’t make this stuff up!

Seven Shots

I read this book by Jennifer Hunt. I loved this book. I’ll tell you more about this book… but only when I’m done writing mybook. On July 31, 1997, a six-man Emergency Service team from the NYPD raided a terrorist cell in Brooklyn and narrowly prevented a suicide bombing of the New York subway that…
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A well worn Maglite

“My God,” I said on seeing this over the weekend, “how many people you hit with that thing?” “A bunch!” He reckoned he picked up this baby in 1985. It got twenty years of service after that. When I was police, this gentle and soft-spoken man had been a cop longer than I’d been alive.…
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Where your tax money goes

This has been making its rounds on blog (I got it from Ta-Nehisi but the original source is The Third Way.) So if you want to balance the budget without raising taxes, where would you start? If wikipedia happens to be factually correct at this moment, we’re spending more on mandatory programs than we get…
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