Archive for the ‘Crime’ Category
Why Does This Story Bother Me?
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010A 7 year old boy calls 911 and begs police to come save his family from a home invasion:
There is no mistaking the terror in the boy’s voice. On the 911 recording, you can feel it like a physical object.
“They come. They come. They open and ring the door. They have guns. Can you come, really fast? And bring soldiers, too,” the unidentified 7-year-old says in 911 tapes played on TODAY Wednesday. He gasps for breath after each burst of words, his voice filled with urgency.
“They” were three men who had forced their way Tuesday morning into a home in Norwalk, Calif., a town in suburban Los Angeles. While the men held the boy’s mother and father at gunpoint, the boy and his 6-year-old sister hid in a bathroom and called 911.
As Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies rushed to the home, the dispatcher attempted to get more information.
“Stay on the line with me. Don’t hang up,” she told the boy. “Listen to me. We’re coming to help you. But just listen to me, OK?”
“OK,” the boy replies.
“When you were in the house, tell me exactly what happened, OK? Just stay where you are and don’t hang up whatever you do,” the dispatcher continues.
The boy started to respond, saying, “OK. The guys, they have …”
At that point, blood-curdling screams fill the tape. The home invaders had heard his voice and had broken into the bathroom. Deputies said one of the suspects grabbed the boy and asked who he called.
“911,” the boy said.
When the suspects heard that, they fled the house, driving away in a car without taking anything or harming anyone, deputies said.
Read more: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35794401/ns/today-today_people#ixzz0hmvXutwh
When do the police ever get to the scene of a crime on time, ever? They never do.
And if they had, there would have been a hostage situation.
If these homeowners had been armed, however, this story would end differently. Or could.
The helplessness of common citizens before an armed and aggressive criminal should make every American want to buy a gun, load it, and keep it handy.
Pentagon Shooter John Patrick Bedell 9/11 Truther–UPDATED: And A Democrat
Friday, March 5th, 2010The press in the U.S. is already trotting out that Bedell was a Right-Wing extremist. Meanwhile, the BBC reports this:
Police said they had found no immediate connection to terrorism, but internet postings suggested Bedell had harboured ill-feelings towards the government.
A user by the name of “JPatrickBedell” wrote that he was “determined to see that justice is served” in the death of Marine Col James Sabow, who was found dead at his California home in 1991.
The Associated Press news agency said that death was ruled a suicide, but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover-up.
The posting referred to conspiracy theories concerning the 9/11 terrorist attacks, saying the Sabow case was “a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions”.
Don’t buy the right-wing b.s. This guy was a nutter, no question, but he was a nutter of Truther persuasion. It’s the Democrats that embrace that conspiracy theory…them and the Ron Paul folks.
UPDATED:
Michelle Malkin does more digging and guess what? The shooter is a Democrat. Big surprise…..to no one but the press who is constantly having to adjust their expectations.
Update:
www.Electorates.us has 180 million registered voter records available online (thanks to Anne Horrigan). John Patrick Bedell’s voter registration records in Hollister, CA are available for any journalist before he/she goes off and labels him a “right-wing extremist.”
Guess which party he registered under in 2005 and was actively registered under as of 2008?
DEMOCRAT.EMID 15324137
STATESOURCE California
DATAACQUIRED 20080121
PrefixTitle MR
LASTNAME,FIRSTNAME,MIDDLENAME Bedell,John,Patrick
SOURCEIDVOTER 30048
DATEOFBIRTH 5/20/1973
PLACEOFBIRTH CA
REGDATE 20051006
GENDER M
PART Democrat
ACTIVECODE ACTIVE
STATUS
ResAddr1,ResAddr2,ResCity,ResState,ResZip 110 Georges Dr Hollister,CA
STATEHOUSE 28
STATESENATE 12
USCONGRESS 17
LASTDATEVOTED 20051108
Stop playing games, MSM.
Now, Michelle also says this:
As Patterico reports, he hated Bush and littered the Internet with 9/11 Truther rants.
But just as I passed on playing the blame game with the global warmicides earlier this week, I’m not playing MSNBC/NYTimes-style “gotcha” with this one, either.
Well, Michelle is nicer than me. And so is Zombie, who says this:
So far, however, I’ve noticed a deafening quietude on the left-leaning blogs about this guy’s affiliations and belief systems. Those brave enough to troll leftist comments sections have noted mumblings therein that the guy was probably a secret “teabagger,” despite all evidence to the contrary.
Compare this to the response in the leftosphere when Joseph Stack flew his plane into an Austin IRS building a couple weeks earlier. Despite leaving a suicide note that approvingly cited Karl Marx and that condemned capitalism as nothing but “greed,” he was pilloried by every left-leaning site as a right-wing hitman who epitomized the inherent violence of the Tea Party movement — because he had anti-government feelings.
Now, just for a moment, let’s set aside the false guilt-by-association game everyone’s always playing. We all know that John Patrick Bedell and Joseph Stack are basically insane, plain and simple — as are any number of similar whackjobs who periodically go loco and erupt into violence. Violent psychopaths often incorporate some seemingly random overarching theme into their mindset, and on occasion that theme involves politics. Whenever someone like Bedell or Stack goes ballistic, every pundit jumps into the fray and tries to spin the outburst as “exemplifying” the political viewpoint of those with whom the pundit disagrees.
But that only rises to the level of a valid argument when a distinct pattern emerges. If, say, 5,000 suicide bombers in a row are invariably Islamic fundamentalists — well, OK, we’ve got a problem with the belief system, not just with the individuals. Yet I don’t see a pattern in these “going postal” violent outbursts which seem to happen perhaps three or four times per year, every year, no matter who’s in power or who’s president: it seems that the “philosophy” (if you can even call it that) of each of the attackers is unique, idiosyncratic and just plain illogical. Even so, if he starts shooting or killing when a Republican is president, he is deemed a left-wing psycho (see: Charles Manson); if he starts shooting or killing when a Democrat is president, he is deemed a right-wing psycho (see: Joseph Stack). But the truth is, paranoid people simply feel threatened by the external power structure in general, so they lash out at any symbol of authority, regardless of its political affiliation.
So, instead of playing the blame game so unapologetically employed by the Left when they feel they can spin things to their political advantage, I’m not going to say that Bedell’s actions at the Pentagon epitomize the leftist worldview. Rather, he was just crazy, as clearly indicated by his belief in the craziest of modern crazy conspiracy theories, 9/11 Truthism.
Are most Truthers leftists? Yes. But that doesn’t mean that all left-leaning Americans are thereby just as crazy as the most extreme among them; it simply indicates that when a leftist goes crazy in the post-9/11 era, he often gloms onto Truthism as his paranoia of choice.
Put it this way: Leftism fails as a coherent philosophy on its own terms. We shouldn’t try to wring significance from the delusional outburst of someone who just happened to be leftist. There are plenty of ways to logically disembowel Marxism and its numerous noxious contemporary offspring without having to resort to an unnecessary round of political “gotcha!”
Now, of course, this is true. One psychopath doesn’t represent the whole–unless the psycho has right-leaning beliefs (see Charles Johnson’s obsession with a few nutters).
The bigger issue is the conflation by the press. And so, I say, embrace John Patrick Bedell left-wing psycho extremists (that’s redundant, I think). He is yours. The leftist ideology spawns murderous, psychotic behavior. Evil. Evil. Evil.
See? That sounds rational and accurate right? Well, it does, if it’s describing a conservative or Teapartier. Guess what? I’ll stop the silliness when you all do. You first.
Did Late Term Abortion Doctor Collect Dead Babies As Trophies Like A Serial Killer?
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010Abortion provider Dr. Kermit Grosnell has “dozens” of frozen babies–late term abortion deaths–stored on site of his Philly abortion clinic:
They found the dozens of unborn children killed in abortions who were frozen for decades. CBS 3 indicates they are now determining whether or not they may have been victims of illegal late-term abortions.
CBS 3 also reported that records from 1995 show Gosnell was publicly reprimanded by the State Licensing Board which found he ”employed a physician’s assistant that was not certified … saw at least one patient and treated him.”
So far, as a result of the abortion death, Gosnell’s medical license has been temporarily suspended, but he has not yet been charged with anything illegal. His abortion center is temporarily closed while the investigation proceeds.
Troy Newman, the president of the pro-life group Operation Rescue, told LifeNews.com that the suspension order described “deplorable and unsanitary” conditions at the clinic, indicating that “there was blood on the floor, and parts of aborted fetuses were displayed in jars.”
The order declared Gosnell to be “an immediate and clear danger to the public health and safety.”
Newman says the notion that legalizing abortion made it safer for women is fiction.
“This is not the exception to the rule in our nation’s abortion clinics. It is standard operating procedure,” he said. “This clinic is no better than a back alley abortion mill, and in fact may be worse.”
“Collecting the remains of dead babies over a 30 year time frame is reminiscent of the actions of deranged serial killers who keep body parts as trophies. It doesn’t get much sicker than that,” he added.
Don’t you wonder about abortion providers–especially those who “specialize” in late term abortions? What kind of depravity and psychological distance from the act must one engage to do such a thing?
There is a visceral repulsion to something so violent as killing a baby who could survive outside the womb, but it’s legal because the baby’s head is still in the mom’s body.
And there is something wrong with the mind of a doctor willing to engage in such a procedure. This Philly doctor is just more overt about the pleasure he gets from his kills. He belongs in prison.
Pro-Life Groups In Wisconsin Illegally Investigated By Government And Police
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010Remember when Janet Napolitano included Pro-Life groups in her terrorist lists? Yeah, well, looks like her talk resulted in illegal government action. From Lifenews:
In response to an open records request by the Alliance Defense Fund and Pro-Life Wisconsin, the Middleton Police Department and the Wisconsin Department of Justice, along with the Department of Homeland Security all refused on February 4 to release copies of the threat assessment.
Pro-Life Wisconsin officials told LifeNews.com that the assessment was “inappropriately shared” and should never have targeted pro-life groups.
“The majority of Americans identify themselves as pro-life, and the Middleton Police Department has shown they are out of touch with this peaceful majority,” said Peggy Hamill, state director of the pro-life group. “Pro-lifers are not a minority of the population, nor are they second-class citizens. We refuse to let our First Amendment rights be silenced.”
A few months later in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights concluded the investigation was an improper use of department resources.
The conclusion said the department inappropriately directed against activities protected by the First Amendment, in which law enforcement inappropriately engaged in “the collection, retention and dissemination of U.S. person information regarding protest groups which posed no threat to homeland security and… violated [DHS] Guidelines.”
Hamill said DHS destroyed its copies of the report, but the Middleton Police Department retained its copy.
In January 2010 the Alliance Defense Fund, on behalf of Wisconsin pro-life advocates, asked the Middleton Police Department for a copy of the report pursuant to Wisconsin’s open records laws.
The Middleton Police Department refused to disclose the report and further said that the DOJ similarly refused to authorize disclosure of the report, despite the fact that DHS had already determined that the report was an improper investigation of freedom of speech activities.
“This move by DHS illustrates the Obama administration’s goal of silencing pro-lifers. It is disturbing that a local police department has apparently tapped into the security apparatus of the federal government to potentially obstruct free speech,” Hamill concluded.
“Last year, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano unjustly included pro-lifers in a report on domestic terrorism, and here we see her words in action,” she said.
It’s almost like an enemies list, isn’t it?
Pregnancy Center Burned: Domestic Abortion-Rights Terrorists Suspected?
Thursday, December 31st, 2009A pregnancy assistance center was attacked:
Whiteriver, AZ (LifeNews.com) — A pregnancy center in rural eastern Arizona that serves a predominantly native American population was severely burned in what appears to be an arson attack. The Living Hope Women’s Center clinic has closed indefinitely as a result of a fire that gutted a portion of the building on December 20.
And this will adversely affect the community:
The center president told the newspaper that ATF officials asked her if the pregnancy center was involved in anything controversial that might have sparked a hate crime.
“The agent very gingerly asked if we were involved in ‘anything controversial’ in our ministry,” she said. “You can imagine what they hear about Crisis Pregnancy Centers, abortion clinic bombings and the like. I assured him that even though we are a CPC ), our work was mostly pre-natal and parenting and that the culture in Whiteriver is very pro-life.”
She told the newspaper the apparent arson will set the pregnancy center back quite a bit financially and logistically.
“When we think of everything we had in there it is a bit overwhelming. We had just gotten two new computers, a new ultrasound machine, a very large screen TV and of course our beautiful, huge Mommy Store. But these are things that can be replaced. One greater challenge will be where do we go from here?” Monahan asked.
She is concerned because the availability of buildings in Whiteriver is very scarce.
Monahan indicated the Whiteriver pregnancy center had 400-600 visits every month from the low-income people who live in the community.
“As our staff stood outside the building, clients would come and cry as they looked at the devastation,” she said. “This ministry is so loved by so many there. We are looking at our options, one which is to lease a large lot and build or place a modular on it. Whatever we do, build, remodel or use a modular, we feel strongly that the people of Whiteriver are the ones who should do it.”
Well, the crime, since it was on a reservation, is a federal crime. It will be interesting to find out who committed this attack.
ACORN: A Money Laundering Scheme?
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009Matthew Vadum of the American Spectator investigates:
I have just discovered that three senior ACORN officials have recently given wildly divergent accounts of the size of ACORN’s budget.
ACORN current CEO and chief organizer Bertha Lewis claimed in October that ACORN had an “average budget” between “$20 [million] and $25 million a year for everything, all of the offices combined.”
ACORN national president Maude Hurd reported in the ACORN entry of Erica Payne’s handbook for liberal activists, The Practical Progressive, that ACORN’s annual budget last year was $50 million.
That’s double the figure quoted by Lewis, yet even $50 million seems impossibly low given ACORN’s lucrative ongoing corporate shakedown rackets and other revenue sources. The four main ACORN affiliates alone — ACORN Housing Corp. Inc., Project Vote, American Institute for Social Justice Inc., and ACORN Institute Inc — took in a total of at least $106.9 million in donations from foundations and individuals from 1993 through 2008. And ACORN takes in untold millions every year in member dues from its 400,000 members — a figure that has crept up to 500,000 in Bertha Lewis’s recent public statements.
Well, it does seem curious that a company can be off by $50 million dollars in talking about operating budgets. Then again, these don’t seem to be the brightest people, either–just wise in the ways of manipulating the system. One suspects that those shady operators at the bottom are representative of the institution. That is, if any of these people spent real effort to get a real job, they might actually add value. Instead, ACORN’s prime goal seems to be gaming the system. They might want to try to get in the system and fix it one person at a time. But then, if they did that, they’d be conservatives.
Podcast: Tigers, And Crashers, And Climate, Oh My!
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009John Hawkins joins me to discuss the latest culture and politics stories.
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When Melissa isn’t on the radio, you can find her at melissaclouthier.com and on Twitter. Her username is MelissaTweets.
Tiger Woods Can’t Win This Game
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009Tiger Woods is in the deep rough today. He’s avoiding talking to the police. They’re seeking search warrants for his medical records. This is a disaster of monumental proportions for the golf star. No matter what he loses.
He was either under the influence of some controlled and crashed his vehicle. Or, he was beat by his jealous wife and trying to escape. If it’s the former, his squeaky image is tarnished (though less so if it’s by pain medication). If it’s the latter, he’ll have the ignominious reputation for being an abused husband.
Women initiate physical contact in relationships but rarely do the damage a man does..unless the woman is wielding a golf club, say. Glenn Reynolds writes late yesterday about the implications of the abuse:
Rosin also writes: “It is impossible to imagine Tiger occupying the same cultural brain space as Rihanna, with Nordegren playing Chris Brown. If Tiger had been chasing down his wife with a golf club and she had shown up with bruises, even if she had cheated with, say, K-fed, we would be a lot less ambivalent and complacent.” That’s probably correct, for certain values of the word “we,” but why is that, exactly? Cheating men deserve to be beaten, even with weapons, while cheating women do not?
Or could it be, you know, sexism? But that’s not possible, because Hanna Rosin can’t be sexist, and neither can those who agree with her. If you’re Hanna Rosin, “sexist” is a name you call other people. You know, bad people who believe in stereotypes and stuff.
Here’s the thing: While it’s just as bad for the woman to beat the man as vice versa, the consequences for this story coming out will not benefit the victim. In fact, the victim will be re-victimized. Tiger Woods will be the butt of jokes; he is already. Again, this is wrong. And maybe his case will help change the culture around husband abuse, but I doubt it. The more likely outcome will be further humiliation.
In this case, Tiger Wood’s fame works against him. As others have pointed out, a regular guy would have answered the police questions. The wife would be arrested. It would be her first offense. Very likely the charges would be dropped. And this would go away.
But Tiger Woods didn’t talk to the police after promising he would and now, irritated at his elite star status, they’re going after him….ostensibly to come to justice, but just as likely because they don’t like being put off by the star.
Howard Kurtz blames the media for the circus and asks this:
Is all this, well, news? Edwards’s romance with Rielle Hunter, which he initially denied, took place during a presidential campaign. Is there a compelling public interest in the private life of the world’s top-ranked golfer?
The public is interested because Tiger Woods has everything: fame and fortune. Does he have the same sort of messy life as average Americans? Inquiring minds want to know.
Can Woods hit a miracle shot and save his reputation? That remains to be seen, but I’m doubtful.
Cop Killer in Washington Pardoned By Governor Mike Huckabee? Update: Yes.
Sunday, November 29th, 2009Looks like a violent, life-long criminal is responsible for the four police officer murders in Washington and that Governor Huckabee is the reason this man is on the streets. From the Seattle Times:
Nine years ago, then-Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee granted clemency to Clemmons, commuting his lengthy prison sentence over the protests of prosecutors.
“This is the day I’ve been dreading for a long time,” Larry Jegley, prosecuting attorney for Arkansas’ Pulaski County said Sunday night when informed that Clemmons was being sought in connection to the killings.
Clemmons’ criminal history includes at least five felony convictions in Arkansas and at least eight felony charges in Washington. The record also stands out for the number of times he has been released from custody despite questions about the danger he posed.
Clemmons had been in jail in Pierce County for the past several months on a pending charge of second-degree rape of a child.
This via Confederate Yankee who says:
If Huckabee—now a Fox News personality—did set this man free, his aspirations for a future White House run may be over.
I’d say so.
Updated:
Michelle Malkin has more.
