• From the “R is for Retribution” Department – The courts in China have been instructed to be ruthless when it comes to punishing those who are convicted of molesting children.  For example, a school principal has been sentenced to die for a string of abuses against his young students.  I don’t agree with the government of the PRC very often, but in this case I’m a booster.  Hurting kids should bring some pretty horrific consequences.
• From the “R is for Retention” Department – A grandmother and a child at Disneyworld in Florida found what I would call a “bonus” when they discovered a loaded handgun on the seat of a ride.  Apparently, the owner of the gun didn’t realize that Disney World is a victim disarmament zone / criminal’s happy hunting ground, and lost track of the gun during the ride.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is why we buy good holsters and make damn sure that the thing can keep hold of your firearm during whatever activity you’re about to do.  No-one wants to be “that guy” when a kid finds a free gun and gets hurt.
• From the “R is for Reprehensible” Department – Eight people were arrested recently when a brawl broke out at a kindergarten graduation in Cleveland.  Apparently two members of the upright citizens brigade pulled out a pipe and a hammer, which is just the spice this story needed to move it from the “WTF?” category to the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!” category.  There’s nothing like showing little Johnny how adults deal with their problems like reenacting the Nika riots for his graduation.
• From the “R is for Recall” Department – Gun rights activists in Colorado have turned in twice as many signatures as necessary to kickstart the recall election of state Senate President Morse.  Morse, who was instrumental in the passing of Colorado’s new gun laws, has vowed to fight the effort and will not be stepping down.  Apparently this is the first time a politician in Colorado has been recalled.  I guess this is what happens when your constituents say one thing and you do another.  Morse plans to thoroughly vet each and every one of the more than 16,000 signatures and contest the recall effort’s tactics in getting the signatures.  I wish him luck, but I’m off now to make popcorn.  This is going to be good.
• From the “R is for Reptile” Department – A man in Ohio has been charged with animal cruelty after an underfed alligator was found in his basement.  Apparently in addition to underfeeding the creature, he had taken video of people taunting it and posted it to Facebook.  The animal is being sent to a Florida preserve.  Here’s hoping that this miscreant gets to spend a few years somewhere dark and dank to make up for this.
• From the “R is for RINO” Department – Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey has found himself in a bit of a pickle after Senator Frank Lautenberg died of pneumonia this week.  You see, Christie, a Republican, now gets to appoint someone to replace Lautenberg.  If he chooses a member of his own party, he risks angering the Democratic majority in his state that he needs to govern and possibly gain re-election.  If he appoints a Democrat, he risks outrage from the Republicans as he considers a run for president in 2016.  Personally, I don’t care.  Christie has been a waste of a good (R) for years, and anyone he appoints is going to just as horrid as he is or worse.
• From the “R is for Ridiculous” Department – Police in Florida used an electric stun gun to corral an escaped llama recently after the vicious beast spit at them.  I guess it’s OK to escape your pen and run the streets, but if you question their authoritah, you’re going to ride the lightning.
• From the “R is for Reprobate” Department – Former president Bill Clinton has been reported to have exchanged his support of President Obama in 2012 for President Obama’s support of Hillary Clinton in 2016, and allegedly called President Obama “amateur” and “incompetent”.   Wow, never thought I’d agree with Bill Clinton on anything.  Going to have to mark the calendar.

• From the “Get a Rope” Department – An Army non-commissioned officer, who was responsible for the care and feeding of 125 cadets at the West Point military academy, is being investigated on charges that he surreptitiously took videos of female cadets when they were in locker rooms and showers.  That sound you just heard off in the distance was my head exploding.   What part of “Duty, Honor, Country” includes voyeurism and sexual harassment?  The sad part of the matter is that pieces of crap like this are a very small minority in the Army, but they are prevalent enough to make even me question whether I want my daughter to sign up.  Something is rotten in the military, and if it doesn’t get fixed paco tiempo, it’s going to become fatal.  An organization that can’t trust its leaders to not violate the trust of its most junior members needs cleaning out in a most public and embarrassing manner.
• From the “It’s a Joke!” Department – Apparently some find the latest commercial from Samsung offensive.  In the commercial, a woman dreams that upgrading her husband from a couch wart to a renaissance man was as easy as upgrading her Samsung TV from one set of software to another.   Yes, the guy on the couch is a stereotype that wouldn’t be allowed for any other race or gender, and yeah, it’s a worn-out cliche, but you know what?   It’s funny.  Every man, and let’s be honest here and say woman too, has those days where all they want to do is sit on the couch, eat junk food and veg out on the boob tube.  Maybe it’s sports, maybe it’s Dr. Who, maybe it’s trash TV, but we all have that urge and sometimes we indulge.  Yes, caucasian males are the last people it’s OK to make fun of, and it gets tiresome, but some people need to grow some skin and a sense of humor.
• From the “Kharma” Department – A man in England recently painted his brother’s house pink with white polka dots in retaliation for the brother building a brick wall across his driveway.  This could escalate quickly, and I hope the two can bury the hatchet before one of them has kids.  It’s all fun and games until Uncle Tony takes little Ricky to the tattoo parlor.
• From the “Anniversaries” Department – Recently, the Nixon Library held an event to commemorate the anniversary of the Vietnam POW’s coming home.  The event included tours, a military fly-over, and a recreation of the dinner held at the White House by President Nixon for the POW’s in 1973.  The event was followed by a plane trip to Georgia, where the former POW’s took crowbars and baseball bats to the party commemorating the return of draft dodgers from Canada at the Carter library.
• From the “Frequent Flyer” Department – Due to a mix-up in routing, a couple recently ended up in Dhaka, Bangladesh, instead of Dhakar, Senegal.  Turkish Airlines has compensated the couple by flying them to their correct destination and giving them two economy class tickets to the destination of their choice, which I’m sure makes it all better.  One would hope that the couple enjoy their vacation, and knowing that they have their choice in airlines, I’m sure they’re glad they chose Turkish Airlines, whose motto is “Fly with us, we might get you there”.

• From the “Dickhead of the Week” Department – The mayor of Osaka, Japan, has made assertions that the Korean and Chinese women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese government were instead volunteers.  He also asserted that the use of women from conquered territories in brothels was a “necessary evil”, and advised the commander of US forces on Okinawa that the Marines there need to start visiting prostitutes to let off a little steam.  Apparently Psychosan feels it’s a good thing to rip the scab right off the festering wound of Asian history, but I’m sure he’s a good person at home.  You know, between ripping the wings off of hummingbirds and slapping puppies around, he’s probably a sweet guy with the kids.
• From the “Balls versus Brains” Department – A teacher in Colorado is being hailed for picking up a suspicious bag and taking it outside of the school.  It was later found that the bag held a real pipe bomb, not a training aid left over when the local constabulary was playing reindeer games.  While I applaud this teacher’s bravery and dedication to safety, I don’t think I’d have done the same in their shoes.  It’s just too easy for something to be unstable to be safely moved or for the miscreant who put it there to have put an anti-tampering mechanism on it.  Better to just get the kiddies as far from it as possible as quickly as possible and let the men in armored suits and their pet robots investigate.
• From the “And One for Your Mother” Department – When asked by the IRS to detail what they were studying at their book groups, a TEA Party group that was applying for non-taxable status replied with a copy of the Constitution.  Ladies and gentlemen of American Patriots Against Government Excess, I raise my glass at your mastery of the art of smartass.  Hopefully someone at the IRS took the time to actually read it before they threw it in the burn bag.
• From the “Proving the Adage” Department – A woman in Florida got the surprise of her life when she looked down and realized that she was bleeding while she was having coffee with her friend.  Imagine her shock when she found out she’d been shot by the .25 pistol her friend was keeping in her purse.  Somewhere in heaven, Jeff Cooper is looking down and nodding his head in an “I told you so” kind of way.  This is yet another example of why when you buy a gun, you should also buy a holster.  It’s amazing what can get into a trigger guard.
• From the “Who Watches The Watchers?” Department – One of the soldiers responsible for the Army’s sexual harassment and sexual assault prevention program at Fort Hood, Texas, has been arrested and charged with abusive sexual conduct, forcing a subordinate into prostitution, and sexual assault.  Remember how I called for public floggings for those who are found guilty of sexual misconduct in the military?  Well, I stand by that position.  If true, this means a senior NCO (You don’t get to that kind of position as a Specialist) was abusing his position to FORCE ANOTHER SOLDIER INTO PROSTITUTION.  Exactly how screwed is the vetting process for the program if you don’t catch a guy who’s going to pimp out his fellow soldiers during interviews and background checks?  Whoever is in charge of this needs to be sacked, along with a few layers of leadership who not only screwed up in the personnel selection process, but also let this continue.  I’m sorry, but you can’t say “I didn’t know my subordinate had a side job peddling flesh” unless you’re just not paying attention to what your troop is up to.  I know the sexual harassment pendulum can swing way too far the other way and people can get implicated in stuff they didn’t do if the climate gets too strict, but someone’s head needs to be put on a pike in front of III Corps headquarters, preferably in full view of every soldier on post.

• From the “Eye In The Sky” Department – The ACLU is suing the LAPD again, but this time it doesn’t have to do with nightsticks, flashlights, and car chases.  In this case, the ACLU wants to know the process by which the police put the automobiles of citizens into a list of targets for its “Automatic License Plate Reader” system.  What basically happens is that cameras connected to computers are placed on objects such as traffic lights and street signs, and they automatically examine every license plate that goes by them.  If the license plate is on a “hot list” of targets, data such as time and location are recorded for later retrieval by the police.  Police say that the system is essential in situations such as an AMBER alert for missing children, but won’t say what the criteria is for putting someone on the list, how police decide to take them off, and what non-police oversight is exercised on the system.  Police also say they use the system to track the movements of convicted sex offenders, even though they may not be under investigation for any current crime.  As disgusting as I find sex offenders, I have an issue with the state spending money to create a system that can not only track sex offenders, but could also be easily abused to track the whereabouts of any citizen they decide they need to keep tabs on.  There may be benefits to such a system in an emergency, but it shouldn’t be a dragnet.  Unless there are controls in place to minimize abuse, then it shouldn’t be used, and the controls should be transparent to the rest of us.
• From the “Mutton, Honey” Department – A university in Canada is trying to sell off 300 head of sheep from its research facility in one lot. Apparently, the cost of maintaining the herd is too much for the school after budget cuts, and they want the herd to stay intact.  Well, they want to sell them all at once.  Staying intact probably isn’t going to happen, because about two hours after I bought 300 sheep, a good number of them would be working their way through a facility to separate their fuzzy bits from their edible bits.  Too bad it’s such a pain to move livestock across the border, because I haven’t had good lamb in a long time.  Remember kids, Easter lambs make good Memorial Day dinners.
• From the “Butt Above the Grass” Department – A cemetery in Massachusetts has rejected a headstone inscription that included profanity.  It seems that using a four letter word on your grave marker might offend someone in the grave yard.  Profanity in public is frowned upon in our Puritan society.  This is why I learned to swear in multiple languages.  It’s amazing how you can mutter to yourself in Russian or Serb, and no-one calls HR.  Plus, let’s be honest, English is probably lucky to be in the top 10 list of languages when it comes to swearing.  Some languages make it an art form.  Who would do a better job cussing someone out, an Italian from Boston or her cousin from Naples?  
• From the “Oopsie” Department – The National Health Service in Britain has had 750 “never” incidents in the past four years.  These incidents, such as doctors leaving instruments inside a patient or operating on the wrong body part, are ones that should “never” happen.  One of the more shocking was a rather high number of cases where a feeding tube was inserted into the patient’s lungs, which I can’t imagine is a very healthy thing at all.  I wonder how the statistics for American hospitals looks?  By the way, it is never a good idea to read a book on methods for improving hospital and medical safety just before going in for inpatient surgery.  Irish Woman worked for a company that worked on digitization of medical records and radiology a few years ago, and they handed out just such a book to their employees, and I gave it a read.  It was absolutely fascinating, but not a good thing to have on your mind when you’re putting on the backwards gown and a surgical beret.
• From the “Fake Firewater” Department – Officials in Russia recently raided a warehouse that contained 300,000 bottles of counterfeit vodka, cognac, and wine.  Instead of name brand hooch, the bottles were filled with what amounted to moonshine.  Food purity and false labeling are one of the few areas where I believe that a little government oversight, within reason, is not a bad thing.  Imagine buying what you think is a good bottle of cognac, then waking up blind because it contained methanol.  For the most part, I stayed away from alcohol when I was in Russia, with the exception of the occasional tipple at the Liberty Bar in the embassy.  It was the height of the Yeltsin period, there were daily reports of tainted vodka or whatever in the newspapers, and let’s be honest, I’m not the sharpest tack in the box when I start drinking.  Trust me, you don’t want the inhibitions that keep me wrapped up nice and neat to peel away like a belly dancer doing the dance of 1000 veils.  It’s not pretty, and it causes me to have to apologize to scores of people.
• From the “Thumb in the Eye” Department – The final piece of One World Trade Center has been put in place, making the skyscraper officially 1776 feet in height.  It’s been over 11 years since 9/11, and while the skyline on Manhattan will never be the same, this building helps to fill the gap.  I think it should be looked at as a big middle finger pointed toward the Middle East.  All it’s missing is a head on a pike at its pinnacle. 
• From the “Justice” Department – A man who ran from a traffic stop in Florida the other night was arrested at a local hospital after he went there seeking treatment for wounds he got when he was attacked by an alligator.  Apparently as Mookie was giving the boys in blue a slip, a reptilian citizen decided to intervene and took a chunk out of his face, arm, and armpit.  No word yet on whether the alligator will be rewarded for doing his civic duty, but I for one hope that he gets his due, hopefully in the form of a certificate and a flock of plump chickens.

• From the “Irony” Department – The chief of staff of an Air Force effort to reduce cases of sexual assault in the service has been arrested for sexual battery.  It would appear that in between hours spent trying to figure out how to get male personnel to stop harassing and assaulting female personnel, this guy likes to get liquored up and assault strange women in parking lots.  I’m sure he can look forward to an abbreviated career handing out towels in the gym in Greenland, assuming that he can learn to keep his hands to himself.  I’m confused by the issues with sexual assault in the military, to be honest.  How hard is it to teach young men to keep their hands and other appendages to themselves?   Where are the senior NCO’s?  I’m pretty sure the first time some dumbass who decided that a female soldier needed his attention, whether or not she wanted it, was publicly shamed and berated by a Command Sergeant Major, with or without the use of dimensional lumber, the problem in that unit would dry up pretty quickly.  Step one should be telling young soldiers to keep their hands to themselves, step two should be a battalion formation to watch a rapist get 40 lashes.  General Washington would approve.  It’s only cruel and unusual if you don’t do it often enough.
• From the “Socialism at Work” Department – Residents of a San Fransisco neighborhood held a Cinco de Mayo party where they smashed pinatas in the shape of Google commuter busses.  Apparently, they feel that the entry of talented, employed, and motivated people in to their decaying neighborhood is a bad thing.  Hey, if you want lower-income people to not only be able to, but also want to, live in your area, stop turning it into a high-cost, high-crime, low-opportunity craphole.  I’ve seen pictures of middle-class neighborhoods in San Fransisco in the 1950’s and earlier, and they were quite nice.  Unfortunately, the adults stopped running that city in the late 1960’s, and now decent people can’t afford to live there unless they make a huge amount of money and are willing to work outside the city.  Either quit making things worse, or get out of the way of people who will make it better.
• From the “Unintended Consequences” Department – Democratic leadership appears to be asking Illegal Mayors Against Guns to stop trying to unseat Democrat Senators who voted against gun control legislation last month.  It appears that Mikey the First is going after Senators who actually listen to their constituents instead of kowtowing to the President and his ilk.  How horrible that Senators should legislate in a manner which reflects the views and wishes of the voters.  What comes next, women getting the vote?  These dimwits would have gone after people who voted against internment of Japanese civilians in 1942.  Here’s hoping that their efforts are unsuccessful.
• From the “Unpossible” Department – A 16 year old in Chicago was shot and killed by police recently when he rode his bicycle along a city street and randomly fired a pistol at pedestrians.  After he shot at police who were chasing him, they shot him in what I will have to call a righteous case of self-defense.  How a 16 year old was able to get a pistol in a city and state with some of the most draconian gun control laws in the nation is anyone’s guess.  Maybe one of us evil gun nuts slipped into Chicago under cover of darkness, intimidated the young choir boy with our evil mind control powers, and threatened to hurt his saintly mother if he didn’t randomly shoot up a crowd of people.  Or maybe Tywon bought the gun from Mookie on the street corner and decided to show how much a man he was by shooting at a bunch of defenseless strangers for the fun of it.  Mookie, of course, could have gotten the gun from a number of sources, including theft or commerce with other criminals.  All that can really be known about this, at the moment, is that a whole bunch of laws meant to keep guns out of the hands of 16 year old criminals did precisely diddly over squat to keep the pistol out of the hands of this particular 16 year old criminal.  Remember kids, gun control is what you do instead of something useful.
• From the “First World Problems” Department – A petty fight between vegans and agricultural students at a high school in California is drawing national attention.  Apparently, the plant eaters take issue with the ag students raising and caring for farm animals who are eventually slaughtered for meat.  Some are apparently handing out flyers around campus that show the rather gruesome aspects of slaughtering and butchering food animals. Of course, as usually happens in these cases, name calling has begun in earnest, with some calling those of us who recognize that we are, in fact, omnivores “carcass crunchers”.  Personally, I prefer to be called “Green Eyed Devil”.  I bear no ill will toward the leafchewers.  Heck, some of my favorite foods eat nothing but plants.  I will, however, point out that growing and processing plant-based food can be just as difficult and icky as slaughtering Stumpy the goat.  Haven’t these people ever listened to the screams of wheat stalks as they are harvested and put through a thresher?  I always feel horrible as I pluck the cherries off of our trees, knowing how hard the mother cherry tree worked to create and nurture her children. And you only know true sadness when you realize how many stoners had to give up their “wake and bake” so that some farmer could plant industrial hemp instead of Northern California wacky weed so that we could have matching artisanal tee shirts and sandals. 
• From the “Slow News Day” Department – An artist recently lifted the spirits of the people of Hong Kong by floating an oversized bath toy into the harbor.  Apparently Vincent van Daffy believes that the sight of a large yellow rubber duck in the waters off large cities will make people feel whimsical and childlike.  He plans to bring his travelling tubby-time exposition to the United States, but does not know exactly where.  I will alert Weer’d so that he can start lobbying now.

• From the “First They Came For The Smokers” Department – In a new battle in its decades long fight to be the uber-parent to American children, the Food and Drug Administration is investigating the current fad of adding caffeine to such things as beverages, candy, and snacks.  Their fears are that children may be imbibing too many stimulants in the course of the day, and that the demon caffeine may be wreaking havoc on their growing bodies.  Let me save the taxpayer a few million dollars and say this:  Caffeine, along with all of the sweeteners added to food to make caffeine palatable to children, is not good for them.  If you don’t want your kids drinking, eating, chewing, snorting, or injecting massive amounts of stimulants, quit giving them to the youngsters and quit giving your kids enough money that they can afford to buy a super grande caffeinated sugar bomb at the local Stop-n-Stab.  As for the ‘adults’ who drink 25 energy drinks and then wonder why they are having heart palpitations, my heart bleeds for you.  I also have no sympathy for people who mix alcohol with large amounts of caffeine and then either get into car wrecks or develop alcohol poisoning because the caffeine masked the effects of the alcohol and they over-imbibed.  There is one word for these kinds of behavior, and it’s ‘stupidity’.  And remember kids, stupidity is supposed to be a capital offense, so let’s quit using the government as surrogate parents and requesting that they put up rubber baby buggy bumpers on the sharp points of life.  One note – I have, on occasion, shared a cup of coffee (OK, milk with a dollop of coffee) with my kids as a social event.  It’s a family tradition.  Also, when Little Bear was teeny, his doctor prescribed not only caffeine, but also nicotine, to be added to his formula twice a day to keep his heart rate up.  If a doctor says it’s OK and can explain why, I have no problem with parents making the conscious decision to give their kids things that would normally cause me to look at a parent and say “What are you thinking?”.
• From the “Hold My Beer” Department – Authorities in Oregon are investigating how a pick-up truck ended up 10 feet up in a tree.  No injuries have been reported from the incident, and no-one can explain what happened.  Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrain has promised to continue his work to find the culprits ‘until the cows come home”.  Local brothers Bo and Luke Duke have been brought in for questioning, but are said to have good alibis and are cooperating.
• From the “Where Great Britain Used To Be” Department – A Welsh woman has pled guilty to a hate crime stemming from her use of the phrase “English cow” to insult a woman who was having an affair with her father.  Apparently British jurists haven’t read their Shakespeare, because old Will used quite a few insults that would have had him thrown into gaol these days.  Heck, I’ve called people a few things here that would probably have put me into the stocks in England.  Hopefully the woman who was attacked can get over her trauma, and the young woman learns that when you’re insulting someone, you insult the individual, not the group from which she hails.
•  From the “Dumbass of the Day” Department – I usually don’t post about people dieing from stupidity here, but in this case I’ll make an exception.  A man in Pennsylvania is dead after his wife negligently shot him during a drunken demonstration of gun safety.  Apparently no-one ever told this guy that alcohol and gunpowder don’t mix.  The story is that the man was pulling a gun out of a gun safe when his neophyte wife picked up a pistol, racked the slide, and the gun went off.  It would appear that “Keep your booger hook off the bang switch” and “Point that thing at something other than me” didn’t get put into the lesson plan.  Folks, it’s bad enough when we get blamed for things we didn’t do, so please stop doing things that can be used against us.

• From the “Automatic Overreaction” Department – A young boy in California was suspended and was threatened with expulsion from school after he committed the mortal sin of taking a small pocketknife camping.  Apparently an inch and an half of semi-sharpened steel is enough to cause the high pitched keening and shrieking to reach deadly levels in today’s educational system.  Am I the only one who has had a teacher ask to use his knife during class?  Where exactly did we go from days where I could take a .22 rifle to school for show-and-tell to this?  Heck, once I was in Cub Scouts, it was pretty much required that I carry my pocketknife to school on days that I was wearing my uniform.  Am I the only parent who would object if my child was taken to the woods for several days without a pocket knife in case of need or emergency?
• From the “Mayhem in the Mountains” Department – Climbers and sherpas are pointing fingers at each other after a fight broke out between the two groups on the slopes of Mount Everest.  Knowing nothing about the details of this, I will tend to side with the sherpas.  I cannot imagine spending weeks on end with people who are trying to find themselves, talk endlessly about their preparations for the trip, and complain even more about the cold, the air, the food, the tent, and the isolation of climbing the world’s tallest mountain.  “If this yuppie says one more word about how hard he’s worked to get ready for this trip, I’m going to remind him that this is my 15th trip up this year, right before I stuff his North Face parka down his throat.  Wait, did that son of a gun just compare my sister to the family yak?”
• From the “Bolshevik Booze” Department – A distillery in the Czech Republic is selling off its stock of Communist era whisky.  It appears that high-level communist officials wanted something nice and peaty to go with their perogi and paprikash, so they imported Scottish peat and figured out a way to make decent hooch.  The stuff has been sitting in barrels since 1990 and seems to have aged to quite a nice tipple.  Prices are about $60 a bottle, which isn’t bad for a decent bottle of whisky.  I will have to keep my eyes open.
• From the “Thank You Captain Obvious” Department – Gun-control advocates are playing the insensitivity card when decrying a gun giveaway in Nashville.  It appears that they have found a correlation between the contest and the date of gun-control legislation in the Senate.  And people say that the public school system doesn’t produce results.  Listen up, you dolts:  Of course the giveaway was timed to coincide with Senate debate and votes on gun control.  That’s kind of the point, to get people to think about guns when their rights to own guns without further government interference are being bargained over.  Here’s an idea:  Instead of whining to the papers about ‘insensitivity’, why not have a competing event that brings attention to your side of the debate.  Maybe you could raffle off an autographed portrait of Michael Bloomberg.  Or maybe you could have a sock-puppet talent contest.  Hey, how about an anti-gun costume ball, where you can dress up as famous useful idiots in history?  Ask your professors what that term means.  I believe one of your idols came up with it.
• From the “Bring It On” Department – In related news, Michael Bloomberg, mayor of that hive of scum and villainy on the Hudson and noted expert on nutrition, epidemiology, and fascism, has declared that he will be dipping into his own fortune to fund efforts to oust Senators who voted to quash anti-gun legislation.  He claims to want to be a counter to the NRA.  You know what, I wish him luck, but I caution him to bring a lunch to this particular fight so that we’ll have something to eat after we whip his ass.  Here’s an idea for Little Mikey: Why don’t you concentrate on doing your own job instead of trying to impose your will on the rest of us?  I’m sure that New York is a paradise, what with people being pushed onto the subway rails for fun and profit, nightly games of “Let’s outrun the roving gangs of muggers and rapists”, and bi-weekly matches of “Search you, search me” between the NYPD and anyone who isn’t as pale as the driven snow and walks down the sidewalk, but I’m sure that the ‘honorable’ Mayor Bloomberg can find something better to do with his time.  Hey, maybe he can have the laws of his city folded, spindled, and mutiliated so that he can run for office yet again?

I haven’t talked much about the bombing at the Boston marathon and its aftermath.  Honestly, it’s because just about anything I could say would have been a “Me too!” post after better minds and writers took a whack at the subject. But there are a couple of things that I think I can add to the conversation.

I am sickened that refugee immigrants to our nation would do this.   The animals who perpetrated this atrocity were admitted to our country not because we thought they would be a good addition to our culture, but because we took pity upon them and let them come here for their own safety.  Instead of recognizing what a chance they had been given and making the most of it, as the rest of their family did, the two bombers and their parents spat in our faces.  I hope that when the inevitable trial of the surviving bastard happens, the jury hears about the financial, social, and educational assistance he enjoyed and still decided that blowing the limbs off of innocent people was a good thing.

As for what Alan calls the “non-martial martial law” that happened last week in Boston, it looked eerily like what happened in California when the LAPD was looking for a cop killer earlier this year.  I won’t get into the “Would you let the police onto your property to search for someone you know isn’t there?” question, because, again, others have said done a better job than I could in discussing the slippery slope and constitutional issues.  But the repetition of the tactics to catch a killer, tactics which failed  in both cases, was almost eery.  In both situations, it wasn’t the police that discovered the miscreant, rather it was a private citizen who reported the presence of the fugitive to police.

My question about the house-to-house searches, armored vehicles and men with guns in the street, and everything else that happened last Friday is this:  Would the police have done it if it had been one of us who was gunned down or wounded by those two jerks?  The scenario in Boston was that a police officer was killed and others were hurt during what amounted to a meeting engagement with the bombers, and the police pulled out all the stops to find, fix, and… apprehend them.  This parallels Los Angeles again where a madman killed policemen and members of their families, and the police lost their collective minds for a few days.

If, instead of killing an MIT police officer, those bozos had shot and killed an armed citizen who recognized them and tried to stop them, would the city of Boston have been on lock down and an entire district searched?  Would what amounted to a running gun battle have occurred?  Would we even be discussing police tactics at all if police personnel hadn’t been killed or wounded?

As for the bombers’ family, I suggest you listen to Bryan Suits’ latest podcast, where he plays and discusses the ‘news conference’ their mother held the other day.  In it, she decries the United States, cries on cue, and demands to know why the police had to kill her son.  Mr. Suits’ comments about her are spot-on, and I agree with just about everything he says.

There has been some furor over Miranda rights and enemy combatant status for the surviving bomber, and I think I look at it in a different way.  As for interrogation by the police for a small period of time before being read his Miranda rights, so long as the courts do not allow whatever he said to be used as evidence against him, I don’t have a problem with it.  My caveats are that the questioning has to be for a very limited time, has to do with finding out things that will stop further harm to innocents, and should not include ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques.  You get the guy talking for a few hours to make sure there aren’t other conspirators or bombs scattered around Boston, then you read him is rights and call his lawyer.  I would certainly prefer that video of the interrogation be made available to the public once any prosecution has made its way through the courts, because I think it is vital that the populace knows what is being done in their name.

As for whether or not he should be considered an ‘enemy combatant’, for once I agree with the government on this one.  The guy they caught was an American citizen, albeit an alleged murdering coward child killer of an American citizen.  Even the British soldiers who perpetrated the Boston Massacre got a lawyer and a trial.  I’m not trying to defend what was done, because there is no moral way to defend it, but if we disregard the rights of the most heinous individuals in our midst, it becomes easy for the rights of the law-abiding to be disregarded.  Was what he is accused of doing an act of war?  Possibly, if he received help from outside enemies of the country.  But making an American citizen disappear into the legal limbo of “enemy combatant” status is wrong, no matter who the president happens to be.  Citizens who are accused of crimes committed here and are caught on our soil should be tried in an open court.  My feeling on this may be different for someone who was caught overseas or has proven aid from a foreign enemy.

So there you have it.  While  we work our way through investigations and trials, we must remember those who lost loved ones and were wounded in this attack, as well as those who ran toward the carnage to help.  I refuse to linger on the filth that did this to our people, and I hope that when they are convicted that they rot in obscurity instead of being made into media darlings.