"Look a how mean/distasteful/condescending/dumb/Other-Side he looks!"

You can generally tell a hit piece, lately, by the photo which accompanies it.
As a junior baby wannabe amateur photographer, I will tell you that I delete the portraits that I take which make my subject look bad. If I'm taking a candid shot of an event, I only keep the unflattering ones if the subject is doing something which I don't have another shot of, and the real subject is the action.
Photographers covering a newsworthy event with talking heads take a LOT of pictures of those talking heads. While it is not unethical for a news photographer to publish an untouched photograph of what happened, it causes me to wonder about their objective journalism, when they ONLY publish photos of the subject with his or her face in an unpleasant expression.

We ALL can get caught momentarily with our face in such expressions.

Oh, and don't try to make out that it's only The Other Team that does this. Your team is just as bad about it.

This and that

--And other duties, as assigned. A cop has probably made a hundred undercover busts in his career, but this one makes the national news wire. That's gotta suck. So to speak.

--In another story about Indiana cops, IMPD lost one with some grit, this week. When hearing the screams of a distressed citizen, there are cops who will wait for a cover unit, and there are those who will take the door. Officer Bradway made the tough call, and passed away falling toward the bad guy, shooting back. There are worse ways to go. EDIT: I just now found that Tam's words almost perfectly reflected my own sentiment.

--Phlegmmy's a little concerned about her puppies when large raptors are around. I thought it was a little unrealistic to worry about them, until I saw these pictures from Siberia, of a golden eagle taking down a deer. Awesome.

--I have some kind of extra duty every day for two weeks. (Court, grand jury, vehicle maintenance, mandatory off-duty job by direction, fire shift, cover another shift.) Meh.

--I really like the pewter stocks on the Blackhawk Oleg shows here. Truth be told, I like the whole setup.

--I need to pick up some ammo for a match this weekend.

--We just had three or four days where the temperature in the morning was under 65. One day, it was 52. That's a HUGE deal, here, in September. Nothing's better than a fall day.

Interesting story developing.

On April 17th, a fertilizer plant blew up in West, Texas.
At least 15 people were killed, mostly first responders.
Hundreds were injured. Hundreds of homes were obliterated, destroyed, or damaged.

There were two very newsworthy types of fertilizer there at the plant: anhydrous ammonia, and ammonia nitrate.

--Anhydrous ammonia is scary stuff. It is highly reactive to oxidizers, and gives off a caustic gas. It is stored as a liquid, in tanks. It is used in the production of methamphetamine.
--Ammonia nitrate is a plastic solid, and was used in the Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City. It's highly explosive, but is more stable than Anhydrous.

News people cast around, talking to people who didn't know what they were talking about. I saw news stories early speculating that the firefighters had sprayed water onto reactive substances, causing the fire and explosion. I saw references to them responding to a re-kindle.

At this point, they still aren't exactly sure what caused the fire.

Blame came, as it always does. Someone HAS to be to blame.
If Texas governor Rick Perry hadn't realized that his political aspirations for the national stage were ended in 2012, I hope that he realizes now that it's over. Political cartoonists and pundits in California, Illinois, and the east coast all tore into Perry, for his recent attempts to woo investors to Texas with his quite correct claim that Texas is booming. In his radio spots, Perry cited no income tax, and less interference by regulations for Texas' success. His critics seized on this as Exhibit A in the case of why half a Texas town was blown off the face of the earth.

The truth is, that West is a hub community, in the midst of farmland. A fertilizer plant and seed company would certainly have been an economic engine there, 60 years ago. The town grew around it. These things happen.

But now, we find that BATFE[IEIO] and the Texas Rangers have an open case of Possession Of A Destructive Device against one of the paramedics who was a first responder with the West Volunteer Fire Department, and who lost friends in the blast. You can see the newsies champing at the bit to connect this with the cause of the blast. And I'll admit that it would make a helluva story. Haven't we all heard the tale of the firefighter who is a secret arsonist, and been amazed? What better story than to find out that this small-town medic wanted to be a Walter Mitty with Münchausen syndrome-by-bombing?

But it's not necessarily the case. The BATFE boys are in town. The Rangers are in town. They're looking under every rock for ANY clue as to what might possibly has caused that fire. So if Mr. Reed was into making homemade firecrackers in his garage, this is not a good time for him. If he's fulfilling a lifelong dream to make his own recoiless rifle in his basement, these guys might get a bit twitchedy, and put a case together on him, out of something to do.

But time will tell.

**EDIT**
Looks like it was components for a pipe bomb which Reed had. Ruh roh.