Year: 2010

Gates Arrest was “Avoidable”

Ya think? Here’s the final report by the Cambridge Review Committee. I haven’t read it yet, but this may be the key sentence: “But instead of de-escalting, both men continued to escalate the encounter.” And the key insight may be here: “To say that the arrest of Professor Gates was avoidable is not to say…
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Checks and Balances

Wouldn’t it be nice if the Senate said, “Liberal or conservative, we’re not going to approve any Supreme Court justice that won’t tell us his or her position on issues”? The Senate is not supposed to be a rubber stamp. The founding fathers had no stated opinions on many current issues. Semi-automatic handguns didn’t exist…
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Brother, can you spare a dime?

So I’m in the grocery store, buying a few things, and decide to use the self-serve lane for a change. I realize I have just $15.25 in cash. So I start scanning things… careful not to go over. Then I go over. An employee walks by and I tell the lady, a middle-aged black lady,…
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Granny Rap

Plenty to do in Amsterdam… thanks to GVB, Amsterdam public transportation. But I’m really posting this because it’s starring… my mom! It’s also produced by my brother (and he’s the questionably hetero one in the video). This may be the slickest ad ever for public transportation (with the old Detroit People Mover song as a…
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Heather MacDonald on NYPD Stop-and-Frisks

Heather MacDonald has an op-ed in the New York Times. You know, on police issues we probably agree 75-80% of the time. And yet I’m always left frustrated and strangely disappointed by her writings. She’s too predictable. And her writing lacks depth as she simply sidesteps the main points of the opposition. I generally agreewith…
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LEAP vs. Prohibition

LEAP has made a parody of the Mac vs. PC ads, but about the war on drugs.

Somebody Snitched

And Ronnie “Skinny Suge” Thomas get sentenced to 20 years in the Federal Pen. Ronnie was the not-so-smooth talking star and co-producer of the 2004 “Stop Snitching” video which had its moment of fame when basketball player Carmelo Anthony was featured in the first DVD. From the Sun: “Eight other people associated with the videos…
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Trial of Officer London

I don’t really have a problem with the first two minutes. The suspect, Walter Harvin, was aggressive and uncooperative. Harvin pushes Officer London at 0:26 and has to go. I turns into a messy arrest, but that’s sometimes how it is. As much as I don’t like tasers… tasing this guy sure would have saved…
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Schoolcraft Tapes

The more of these tapes I hear, the more I think how good these secretly recorded NYPD officers sound. And this is the best [read: worst] they could come up with? To me it shows what a good job most men and women in the NYPD do. In the latest batch, particular kudos to Lt…
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Baltimore Arrest Settlement

Seems like the city got off easy by having to pay $870,000 and promise to do the right thing. About 100,000 people were arrested each year in first half of the 2000s. Last year the number was down to about 70,000, which is still a lot. By comparison, New York City had 341,000 arrests in…
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