Year: 2011

My head hurts

Talk about culture wars cognitive dissonance. No matter your political leanings, there’s something in this story to make your head explode. A man born a woman was fired for not being man from his $10/hour job at a drug treatment center watching people pee into cups for drug tests. He’s suing his former employer on…
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Liking a Defense of Flogging

The first review of In Defense of Flogging is out today. It’s always a bit nerve racking when you click on that first review. But it’s favorable. Phew! Though I view descriptive/neutral-plus as favorable for a book like this. It’s hard to gush over a book called In Defense of Flogging, lest others start wondering…
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Hating the Lovers

Speaking of issues I thought we had long since decided (like slavery, segregation, suffrage, medicinal bleeding, etc.), a poll found a plurality of Mississippi Republicans believe interracial marriage should be illegal. Forty-six percent oppose, 40 percent support, and 14% are “undecided” (as if they’ve weighed the pros and cons of this timely issue, but still…
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Conservatives for Prison Reform

The United States has more more men & women in prison than any other nation including Russia and China…. The 95% conviction rate reached by threats of long sentences, intimidation, lies and prosecutorial abuse has got to be reckoned with now, not later. So says Duke Cunningham, an imprisoned conservative Republican, in Slate.

Cycle Cops: 1918

Washington, D.C., 1918. “District of Columbia parks — park policemen.” From Shorpy. Happy Opening Day!

Moskos Sent to Minors

Not me, but Daniel Moskosof the Pittsburgh Pirates. Hey, there’s no relation, but there aren’t too many Moskos’s on this side of the Adriatic. Hopefully, later this year, Moskos will be the first Moskos to play major league baseball (or any other sport, for that matter).

Marijuana Arrests in NYC to Decrease in 2011

As one does, I was just reading the future in my Greek (née Turkish) coffee grounds, and I saw an interesting development. [Cue swamy music] I see that the NYPD is going to start making fewer arrests for possession of marijuana this year starting right about now… I predict that in 2011, misdemeanor marijuana possession…
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Slash and Burn

Aggressive crackdowns on criminal organizations in Mexico and Colombia have increasingly brought the powerful drug syndicates into Central America. We winning yet?

Unfortunately, this is not The Onion

So in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County, Arizona, they send in a tank and the SWAT team to bust a guy — a guy with no history of owning weapons — for cockfighting. A scared neighbor said, “When the tank came in and pushed the wall over and you see what’s in there, and all…
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Harford Road police shooting

Detective Rice, the officer shot last week on Harford Road, evidently has had some medical setbacks. I wish him the best. What is it about the 2300 block of Harford? Here’s a picture from March, 2001, I took on the 2300 block of Harford. It’s the street memorial to Agent Cowdery.