Damn.

If you haven't thought about our boys in Afghanistan lately, take a second to read and watch the video, and appreciate what a hard job they're tasked with doing.

Exactly right.

Like friend Stephen Camp, I'm not a fan of the PRC, but this undercover police officer there did exactly the right thing when assigned to deal with a hostage-taker who had already stabbed his victim. She waited until he was distracted, and shot him in the central nervous system, repeatedly. (Video with English captions here.)

Some may try to make an issue of the smile and relieved chuckle that she gives to the surprisingly aggressive* interviewer's question about being nervous.

But she had won a fight, rescued an injured and endangered hostage, and had not gotten hurt herself. Moreover, she comported herself well throughout. Hell, she even had rounds left over.

When you win a fight, it's okay to give a relieved smile.


____________
*They ran up behind her to video over her shoulder as she fired the last rounds. You think American news crews would be so bold, on average? And would they get that kind of access? State-run news, people.

Well, duh.

U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill said what we all knew: Cheerleading is not a sport.

As the father of two daughters who was told that the huge bond floated to build a new football stadium would "benefit the girls as much as the boys" in our school district, I've just got to say, someone had to finally admit this.

The perfect 'Rita.

Marko mentioned his intent to make an over sized margarita today.

While I haven't made one in an age, I have pretty strong feelings about this strong mixed drink, and would like to share them here:

1: Don't waste your money on premium tequila in a margarita; you're mixing it. Use midrange tequila. (That said, don't scrape the bottom of the barrel.)

2. Always squeeze your limes fresh. ALWAYS. Limes are too cheap, and squeezing them is too easy (if you have a squeezer. If you don't, get one. A nutcracker-type clamshell metal citrus squeezer is about $11, and lasts forever.), not to.

3. Don't use mixes, EVER. There should be three liquid ingredients in your 'rita: Tequila, Lime Juice, and Triple Sec. If you have to, you can sweeten it a bit with some sugar, but my preferred sweetener is to add more Triple Sec.

4. Use a shaker-type mixer. It's not ABSOLUTELY necessary, but that $4 shaker over a pint glass (or $7 plastic shaker mixer with graduated markings, which are handy) will allow you to mix the ingredients in the presence of ice, while not diluting the drink. Then strain it (to get the seeds out) over ice into a chilled glass.

5. Bruise the rind of a fresh lime, and firmly press it down on the rim of the glass, running it around the glass a couple of times before running some lime juice (usually from the face of a cut lime) over the rim before salting the rim. Even if you don't salt the rim, do this. It puts some of the aromatic oils into the glass, and makes it taste VERY fresh. It takes far less time to do it than to say this, I promise.

This sounds like a bit of trouble, but in practice, it doesn't even double the time spent to make a margarita, and the outcome is far better than any margarita that I've ever tasted in a bar.

Try it just once, and tell me what you think. Note: This method uses a bit more Triple Sec (or if you're feeling saucy, Blue Curaçao) than a lot of recipes call for, so plan accordingly.

And be careful. Those things are potent, tasty, and sneak up on you. Plan accordingly.

This is getting old.

The most common (and apparently powerful) attack on the Tea Party movement that the Obama supporters have is race. You don't like the current administration, and some of you who are critical have been outspoken racists. Ergo: Your entire movement is racist. (Guilt By Association. Circumstantial ad hominem. Hasty Generalization. How many logical fallacies can they employ?)

You get people like those at Don't Tea On Me, who point to a single data point, and conclude that the argument is invalid, and thus the only answer for why you're critical of their side is that you're a racist.

The anonymous author of the story seems to interpret that graph differently than I do.

From what I can see, it shows that spending goes up during war. Even that's lamentable. Reagan ended the Cold War by outspending the communist bloc. Bush I spent in Iraq, Bush II spent in Afghanistan and Iraq. While I think that both Bushes overspent, I can't help but notice that the graph goes up at its steepest rate during the present President's administration.

That increase was predicted by the critics that heard the amazing array of government spending projects that were promised during the last presidential campaign. Give our President that: he's a man of his word, who spent and spent with his cohorts in Congress.

Again, though: it's offensive to be called a racist, simply for being the loyal opposition. I have NEVER thought of the President's race as a liability. Nor have any of my friends who are critics of him.

The truth is, the biggest wedge between the current President's administration and its critics are the knee-jerk supporters, who mindlessly attack the critical pundits with name-calling.

It's not the speech. It's the qualification.

Who knows what motivation Rick Glen Strandlof had for claiming that he was a former Marine, decorated with a Purple Heart and a Silver Star for his actions in Iraq? The fact is, the Marines don't have any records of his being a member of their rolls. That's pretty damning, right there, because the Marines, being the cliquish organization that they are, are darned good about keeping up with who was one of them, for better or worse. (For example, they still claim Whitman and Oswald, and even Jeremiah Wright, among their former ranks.)

So when the Justice Department found out about Strandlof's false claims, they utilized the relatively new Stolen Valor Act of 2005, which broadened a former law against claiming to be a Medal Of Honor recipient. The new version of the federal law made it a violation to claim all badges and decorations of the armed forces as having been earned. (Text here.)

The case went to trial in a Denver federal court. Strandlof claimed a freedom of speech defense, and the feds claimed that false speech isn't protected.

And that was their case.

Well, when you stop right there, it's almost understandable that U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn dismissed the case, ruling that the law was unconstitutional. My argument would have been one of qualifications. If a man puts himself out to be an attorney, but is not, he is guilty of a crime. If a woman claims to be a medical doctor, but is not, she is guilty of a crime. If a person claims to be a police officer but is not, that person is committing a crime. It is proper that these persons be charged with those crimes, because there is a compelling public interest in vesting real doctors, lawyers, and police with certain credentials, lest just anyone claim to be able to be able to give legal advice (that might get you locked up), or do surgery on you (that might kill you), or arrest you (which will take your freedom away.).

What's the compelling interest? Oh, offhand, I would say that it's in reducint the cheapening of the heroism of our nation's soldiers. That sounds jingoistic, doesn't it? It's not meant to be. I simply mean that, if our nation is to stand, it must maintain a group of armed forces that defends it against enemies foreign and domestic. That's a Constitutionally valid goal. If we allow the awards and decorations, badges, and ranks bestowed by our military to be cheapened by permitting those who did not earn them to claim them, then we are undermining the esteem held by the public for our veterans: "Oh, so you're a retired Army Major with two Bronze Stars? So what? That guy begging spare change out on the corner is a former Marine Colonel, with a Navy Cross, a MoH, and a Purple Heart for the damage done to his liver during the Kaiser War!"

In Texas, we've got a law against preparing or presenting a fraudulent educational degree as one that was earned. I'm glad of it, in that I put in my time and money and effort to get my degree, and I'd rather not have its worth diluted by worthless diplomas put out. In effect, that degree is a financial instrument, and may advance my career, earnings, and reputation.

At the very least, can we not look at military decorations the same way, for our veterans? While I was at college, they were earning their own skins on the wall.

About as good as we'll probably get.

I suppose we've got as good of a deal as we're going to get on the Polanski situation. He's served some time, and the warrant in the US is still extant, meaning that he'll not come to the U.S.

But most of that time was in house arrest, in Switzerland, not especially known for their horrific prisons.

Best would be if we as a nation would quit buying the product of a felon. But so long as the felon's product is bought and sold and produced in a land of insanity, this pretty much amounts to trying to buy things not manufactured by slave labor.

Motivation for a drama queen.

A lot of things have been attributed to the late Kurt Vonnegut, some of which the crusty old writer disavowed. But Derek Sivers says he saw Vonnegut describe this phenomenon himself, in a lecture, about why people demand drama. Good, quick read, with graphs!

Just Call The Cops.

I recently got notification from the District Attorney's office that I didn't need to come in to testify on a Stalking case that I filed last year.

The victim had called 911 and met me at the police department. I arrived to find a distraught woman, who wanted to go inside the locked P.D. very quickly. I interviewed her, and learned that her baby's daddy, Jimmy Joe Bob, had called and threatened to kill her, and her family. He was very specific about how he was going to do it, and what tool he was going to use, and what members of her family he was going to kill. He made special mention of her new boyfriend. She knew that he would do it, she said, because she had been with him for a long time, and he was a very violent man. I checked his criminal history, and found that there was evidence to support this. While we talked, her phone blew up with voicemail messages. He left message after message, saying that he was en route from his distant town, coming to kill her and her family and her boyfriend. You could hear car noises in the background. He laughed with others, and sang little sing-song rhymes about how he was going to do this thing.

Eventually, after I had her statement, I answered one of the calls, and I talked to Jimmy Joe Bob. I explained who I was, and asked him why he had said these things. He laughed, and said he was just joking, but went on to malign her boyfriend and parents. As we talked, I could hear his vehicle slow, stop, accelerate, and continue like it had been going. I asked him where he was going, and he told me that he was going back home. He'd decided to cut his 300 mile trip short, just 40 miles from his destination: her house. She went home, alerted the family, and they set in vigil. I did some close patrols on their house. Of course, he never showed up that night.

I gathered the evidence, and put together a case and a warrant for Stalking (a State Jail felony). He was picked up, and made bond. The D.A. dropped the charge down to Terroristic Threat (Class A misdemeanor), but still continued on with the case. At the last minute, he plead for 9 months and fines. Not too bad, considering a Class A is only good for up to a year in jail, and no one ever gets that much.

This case was an unusually strong one, because Jimmy Joe Bob got talkative when he was drunk and tweaking, and he told me a lot that hurt his defense. He also left those damning voicemail messages. I don't always get such good evidence to work with.

_ _ _ _
I thought about that case, as I read my friend Don Gwinn's response to the New York Times editorial: "The Hard Work of Gun Control."

Apparently, it's ludicrous, in the mind of a N.Y.T. editor, to conceive of a situation when an armed family member would be a more effective response to a real threat than calling a police officer to your location, away from the thousand-odd other persons that he's charged with protecting.

There are 13,400 sworn police officers in Chicago. Sounds like a LOT, doesn't it? But then consider that the population of Chicago proper is 2.8 million people (greater Chicago metropolitan area is 9.7M.). Then, too, realize that only about a quarter of those officers are on duty at any given time, and you end up with a ratio of one officer for every 836 people. Then consider that a lot of those sworn officers are detectives and supervisors who don't patrol. But if we ignore that, and pretend that the chief and the captains and the deputy chiefs and the superintendents all get out and patrol, you get about a 1 : 836 ratio of cops to citizens.

Here's the fact, coming from a patrol officer who's given this some study to get a graduate degree in criminal justice: Police VERY RARELY interrupt crimes in progress. Police are out patrolling mostly so that they can see things developing, and so that they can be in the neighborhood to respond when something does happen. That is, we are reactive. Laughing it off and telling Mom to just call the cops on a situation that may very well never happen, but which is likely enough to make her scared about it, is the kind of insensitivity that makes me wonder if the author of such a comment ever had a mother. As the officer who must make the decision between trying to justify his camping out at this ONE house for more than a few minutes longer, or patrolling for the other 835 people on my beat*, I can tell you that it would seem like the best idea is to make sure that someone in the house could take care of Mama.
__________
*FWIW, Chicago has one of the best ratios of cops. I'm at 1:4000 here.