Police thwarted an apparent terror attack early Friday after an ambulance crew reported seeing a smoking car parked near Piccadilly Circus that turned out to be packed with gasoline, nails, gas cylinders, and a detonator.
The explosives ? safely defused by a bomb squad ? were powerful enough to have caused “significant injury or loss of life” ? possibly killing hundreds, British anti-terror police chief Peter Clarke said.
“Forensic staff are still examining the device, but once we know more about it, we’ll know more about what type of individuals are behind this,”
Hmmm. I wonder what type of individuals could be behind something like this.
And the car was smoking? Sounds like another case of bad explosives or bad bomb-making. Freedom’s best defense against terror seems to be bad luck and incompetence on the part of the terrorists.
I’ll admit I’ve watched a couple segments of this “To Catch A Predator” show. If you don’t know, it’s a sort of sting operation conducted by Dateline where pedophiles are lured to a house, embarrassed on camera, and arrested. But spineless DA John Roach isn’t touching these cases with a 10 foot pole.
A sting in which police teamed up with “Dateline NBC” to catch online pedophiles was supposed to send a flinty-eyed, Texas-style warning about this Dallas suburb: Don’t mess with Murphy.
Instead, it has turned into a fiasco.
One of the 25 men caught in the sting ? a prosecutor from a neighboring county ? committed suicide when police came to arrest him. The Murphy city manager who approved the operation lost his job in the ensuing furor…
“Dateline” works with an activist group called Perverted Justice, which supplies adults who troll Internet chat rooms, posing as underage boys and girls, and try to collect incriminating sex talk.
City manager Craig Sherwood approved such an operation in this well-to-do community of 11,000 after being approached by “Dateline” and Perverted Justice, but he never informed the mayor or the City Council. He said secrecy was necessary for the sting to be effective.
Then, last month, Collin County District Attorney John Roach dropped all charges. He said that in 16 of the cases, he had no jurisdiction, since neither the suspects nor the decoys were in the county during the online chats.
As for the rest of the cases, he said neither police nor NBC could guarantee the chat logs were authentic and complete.
“The fact that somebody besides police officers were involved is what makes this case bad,” said Roach, who was informed of the sting in advance but did not participate. “If professionals had been running the show, they would have done a much better job rather than being at the beck and call of outsiders.”
That hasn’t stopped other DAs in other cities from prosecuting these sickos.
As details of the suicide emerged, Murphy’s mayor, City Council and most of its residents learned for the first time that potential molesters were being luring to their city. Many were furious.
“They can chase predators all they want, but they shouldn’t do it in a populated area with children, two blocks from an elementary school,” said Lisa Watson, 33, who lives down the road from the sting house and has three children and another on the way.
Bryan Whorton, who lives with his wife and baby across the street from the house, said his neighborhood was put in danger. Cars sped up and down the street and police sprinted from hiding spots, guns drawn, to arrest suspects, he said. One suspect dropped a bag of crack, Whorton said.
If a neighborhood is put in danger by the proximity of sexual predators, these residents have bigger problems then the stings designed to capture them.
Some of these dots are the ones Mr. Roach won’t prosecute.
Forgive my titular play on words. For some reason, whenever I think about the democrat controlled congress references to communism pop into my head. Can’t imagine why.
Anyway, the House of Representatives has decided that it’s done such a fine job since the last election that it deserves its annual pay raise. Although the $4,400 increase is automatic, it can be denied by a congressional vote. Just such an effort was denied 244-181, paving the way for the increase to take effect. Ironically, this came as Gallup revealed that the current Congress has the approval of fewer Americans than ever before in the history of the Gallup poll. If I was a member of the most disliked Congress in 40 years, I’d prefer not to draw attention to my compensation by allowing it to be raised. But I guess having shame is not something typical of politicians.
The Supreme Court has been on a roll lately. This time they’ve correctly ruled that west coast liberals assigning students to schools according to race do so unconstitutionally.
The school districts have not carried their heavy burden of showing that the interest they seek to achieve justifies the extreme means they have chosen?discriminating among individual students based on race by relying upon racial classifications in making school assignments.
. . .Although remedying the effects of past intentional discrimination is a compelling interest under the strict scrutiny test, see Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U. S. 467 , that interest is not involved here because the Seattle schools were never segregated by law nor subject to court-ordered desegregation, and the desegregation decree to which the Jefferson County schools were previously subject has been dissolved.
The left often justifies their institutionally condoned racism with the claim that they are just correcting for past racism. They now make this argument so reflexively, that they don’t even bother to determine if there is any history of past racism to which they can possibly be referring. Indeed, they instinctively refer to any racial imbalance as “segregation”, but in so doing they lose the meaning of the word. Even the supposedly intelligent liberals on the Supreme Court can’t understand this basic distinction. Justice Thomas, in his concurrence, sets them straight.
Disfavoring a color-blind interpretation of the Constitution, the dissent would give school boards a free hand to make decisions on the basis of race—, an approach reminiscent of that advocated by the segregationists in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S 483 (1954). This approach is just as wrong today as it was a half-century ago. The Constitution and our cases require us to be much more demanding before permitting local school boards to make decisions based on race.
. . .The dissent repeatedly claims that the school districts are threatened with resegregation and that they will succumb to that threat if these plans are declared unconstitutional. It also argues that these plans can be justified as part of the school boards’ attempts to “eradicate earlier school segregation.” . . Contrary to the dissent’s rhetoric, neither of these school districts is threatened with resegregation, and neither is constitutionally compelled or permitted to undertake race-based remediation. Racial imbalance is not segregation, and the mere incantation of terms like resegregation and remediation cannot make up the difference.
Because this Court has authorized and required race-based remedial measures to address de jure segregation, it
is important to define segregation clearly and to distinguish it from racial imbalance. In the context of public
schooling, segregation is the deliberate operation of a school system to “carry out a governmental policy to separate
pupils in schools solely on the basis of race.” . . In Brown, this Court declared that segregation was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Racial imbalance is the failure of a school district’s individual schools to match or approximate the demographic makeup of the student population at large. . . Racial imbalance is not segregation. Although presently observed racial imbalance might result from past de jure segregation, racial imbalance can also result from any number of innocent private decisions, including voluntary housing choices. Because racial imbalance is not inevitably linked to unconstitutional segregation, it is not unconstitutional in and of itself.
The use of racial imbalance by liberals to justify their social engineering programs is no longer acceptable. It is time they accept that observing such an imbalance does not constitute evidence of racism.
Amnesty for illegal aliens appears to be completely dead until after the 2008 elections. Sorry, W, it looks like you might not be able to count bankrupting the country as part of your legacy. But we’ll remember how hard you tried.
Unfortunately, we’re now left with the intolerable status quo ? unless of course the government can be compelled to enforce the laws already on the books, which would include building the promised fence. Hey, if We the People killed shamnesty, maybe we can even persuade the government to perform its basic functions in exchange for the $trillions it sucks out of our veins.
The Texas high court has ruled that Tom Delay and his alleged “co-conspirators” were improperly indicted by Ronnie Earle. Short story here.
Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and two associates won a big legal victory Wednesday when Texas’ highest criminal court ruled they had been improperly indicted on charges of conspiracy to violate the Texas election code.
Naturally, in telling the story the Chicago Tribune manages to inform its readers that the Texas Court of Appeals is composed entirely of Republican electees.
However, it fails to remind them that Ronnie Earle, the prosecutor who indicted the men based on a nonexistent law, is a big time Democrat activist. The criminal charges, timed before the election, were primarily responsible for ending Delay’s congressional career and costing republicans a seat.
Hot Springs (AP) - Video from the popular internet web site YouTube that was posted by one of six people arrested for skateboarding in downtown hot springs is causing quiet a stir.
Hot Springs police say the skateboarders were in violation of a city ordinance. Now three minors and three adults are facing charges, and the officer who arrested them is on administrative leave.
The video–which was shot by one of the skateboarders, and captured almost the entire incident–was posted on YouTube Monday, and has already gotten more than 30,000 hits.
The kids who were arrested say they were just celebrating National Go Skateboarding Day last Thursday, but police say they were breaking the law.
(Matt McCormack, Arrested for Skateboarding) “He grabbed a kid from around his back by the neck and took him to the ground and choked him.”
(Skylar Nalls, Arrested for Skateboarding) “The kid didn’t know that he was coming after him. He kind of just grabbed him from behind and took him to the ground and started choking him.”
Skylar Nalls first ran toward his friend, snapping still photos, before the 19-year-old Nalls is seen on the video running away from the officer.
(Nalls) “He looked up at me and pointed and he said, ‘hey you, come here.” And then out of instinct, I just ran.“
Basically, they were just minding they’re own business, breaking city ordinance. And then out of nowhere, this cop just appeared out of control and started tackling and choking kids. That’s their story.
Here’s the video. “Uncut”.
As I’ve said before, a defining characteristic of these anti-law-enforcement video hit-jobs is that you NEVER see what leads up to the initial police involvement. To do so would might ruin the whole narrative and make the police look justified. Therefore, we’re not allowed to see that part.
So, true to form, we begin the video with a run up to the scene where the large police officer has the innocent young skater restrained on the ground. If you believe the skaters’ story, the officer just came out of nowhere and attacked them for nothing other than skateboarding.
Although if you actually listen to the conversation, it’s clear the the officer is lecturing the restrained teen about why you don’t flee from the police. Strike number one on the facade of innocence. Indeed, the fact that the cameraman is having to walk to the scene to capture the action is by itself telling. I think the likely flashpoint of this situation was that when the officer confronted them about skating on public sidewalk, the kid took off and the officer gave chase. I’m so inclined to believe this because, not half a minute later, the officer instructs another of the skaters, Mr. Nalls, to “come here”, and then Nalls up and runs off, the officer giving chase. Strike two. Then again, at time stamp 1:58, the girl skater decides to run off, and the officer begins to detain her. Strike three. But he doesn’t finish detaining her, because he has to arrest the fourth subject for interfering with the officers, allowing the girl to escape. Strike four - this is obviously softball, not baseball.
The claim is that they were arrested for simply skateboarding, and the officer was unjustified in using force. This claim is demonstrably false. Clearly, the reality is that nearly every one of them was arrested for some form of resisting arrest or disorderly conduct. And while I believe the officer could have used a bit of a lighter touch, especially with the young lady, I think those kids got exactly what was coming to them. Attention punks - don’t run from the police or you’ll get knocked on your rear.
Another suspicious aspect of this video is the amount of editing it has undergone, despite being tagged as “uncut” on the Youtube video description. Besides the glaring absence of the beginning of the video, another very important bit of action was cut out. Right around 1:58, the camera cuts. Where it resumes, the officer is immediately moving to detain the girl, and the girl is running away. The camera man isn’t even filming from the same position anymore, he’s moved. What caused the officer to want to detain her right then, and why did she run away? We’ll never know because an indeterminable length of time is missing from the video at the pivotal moment. My bet was she was running her mouth off and the officer had had enough.
I believe that had these teens cooperated with the officer and complied with his instructions, they would have walked away with a ticket or a warning and that would have been the end of it. But they’re recklessness and disrespect for authority got the better of them and landed them in handcuffs.
The formula we see at work here is simple: edit the video in such a way that makes the police look as bad as possible and proclaim your victimhood to the gullible masses on YouTube. And judging from the comments the video is receiving, it’s very effective.
There are scant few things that bug me more than the widespread assheaded contempt for those who work day on day to enforce the law. My heart goes out to this officer and his family. May he be returned to duty soon, and cleared of any wrongdoing.
U.S. Border Patrol agents seeking to secure the nation’s border in some of the country’s most pristine national forests are being targeted by illegal aliens, who are using intentionally set fires to burn agents out of observation posts and patrol routes.
The wildfires have destroyed valuable natural and cultural resources in the National Forest System and pose an ongoing threat to visitors, residents and responding firefighters, according to federal law-enforcement authorities and others.
In the Coronado National Forest in Arizona, with 60 miles of land along the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. Forest Service firefighters sent in to battle fires or clear wild-land fire areas are required to be escorted by armed law-enforcement officers.
Armed smugglers of aliens and drugs have walked through the middle of active firefighting operations, the authorities said.
The Border Patrol”s Tucson, Ariz., sector, which encompasses most of the Coronado National Forest, has the highest incidence of cross-border violators in the nation. Nearly 500,000 illegal aliens were apprehended last year ? more than 30,000 a month. In addition, nearly 100,000 pounds of marijuana, with a street value of $200 million, was seized as it was hauled through the Coronado National Forest.
Last month, the Border Patrol ? in a single operation targeting illegal aliens causing what Forest Service officials called “significant damage” to the Coronado National Forest ? apprehended more than 300 illegals along just a three-mile section of U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona and confiscated 600 pounds of marijuana in a 10-day period.
At least five fires were set below a Border Patrol observation post during the operation in an effort to burn the agents out, according to a Forest Service report. The fires were extinguished, and no one was arrested.
Wildfires are being set by alien and drug smugglers, authorities said, to create a diversion in an attempt to gain undetected access across the border. The fires correspond to a dramatic rise in assaults against Border Patrol agents ? up more than 100 percent over last year.
It’s at moments like this that I really don’t envy the libs. Imagine reading this story if you define yourself as both a environmental activist and an open borders multiculturalist. How many trees will we need to plant to offset the carbon released in these fires? But not even black Americans will plant trees so we’ve got to have the Mexicans to do it. It’s enough to make your head explode. I mean, who are you supposed to direct your anger at?
Hold up. Silly me.
The answer is obvious. In fact, it seems it’s automatic in most cases.
Blame America. It’s our fault they’re crossing the borders. So it’s our fault they’re setting the fires.
I tried to confirm this theory by looking at what blogs de liberal are saying about this story. But none of them have commented on it. Imagine my surprise.
There has been some rumblings lately about the possible end of the McCain campaign should he prove incapable of recovering from his steady sink in the polls. One report has him dropping out by September in such a scenario. The McCain campaign was built on very shaky foundations to being with, and trying to shove 20 million illegal immigrants into the building has led to its collapse.
Jim Geraghty warns it would be wrong to consider McCain as dead in the water. While the McCain ship may not be stranded out to sea just yet, it’s listing so heavily to port that one can’t help but conclude that a man so disdainful of basic principles like freedom of speech will prove incapable of a significant starboard correction.
