Herd Immunity to Violence

Feb 26, 2015 with 2 Comments

I praised Juan Williams the other day. Let me balance that out. On Tuesday’s The Five, a Fox news opinion chat show, in the wake of the Mall of America terrorist threat, Greg Gutfeld decried “gun-free zones” advancing the “more guns, less crime” argument that economist John Lott has more

Chasing Protocol

Feb 10, 2015 with 4 Comments

Early in January, store manager Don Watson chased a thief who had fled an Alabama Walmart with over $1,000 worth of goods. With the help of security personnel at a nearby apartment complex, he stopped the culprit, getting a punch in the nose for his trouble. A month later, Watson

Baby Steps in Reform

Feb 3, 2015 with 5 Comments

Bounkham “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh was in the wrong place at the wrong time. His crib. The Georgia toddler was badly burned by a flash grenade during a drug raid gone wrong. A remorseful sheriff’s department claims they could not have known what would happen. But such botches are not rare.

Honoring Tyrants

Jan 29, 2015 with 3 Comments

A Saudi blogger has just received the first 50 of 1000 lashes for “insulting Islam.” He’s got 950 lashes and ten years of prison to go. That’s the sentence the Saudis imposed on Raif Badawi last May for criticizing clerics. His blog is shuttered and — because 10,000 lashes and

Blood Sport Justice?

Jan 28, 2015 with 6 Comments

The trial of Dr. Annette Bosworth has been postponed from next week to May 18. She faces 24 years in a South Dakota prison on 12 felony counts of election fraud and perjury, as well as the loss of her medical license if convicted on even one charge. Pursuant to

A Learnable Moment

Jan 19, 2015 with 3 Comments

It used to be called “the Blue Flu.” Cops, in the course of union negotiations, would deliberately slack on the job, or falsely call in sick (the “flu”) . . . just to get more moolah out of union contract negotiations. Betraying a not wholly dissimilar epidemiology, New York’s finest

Time to Drop Charges

Jan 14, 2015 with 11 Comments

Annette Bosworth is a medical doctor. She’s also a political neophyte, last year having sought the Republican Party nomination for the U.S. Senate in South Dakota. She lost. Which is not surprising. But the next day, she was arrested on twelve counts of election fraud and perjury. She awaits a

Rand Paul Raises Banner

Dec 26, 2014 with 2 Comments

Last weekend, 60 Minutes offered up a fascinating profile of outgoing Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma). Coburn has prostate cancer, and is leaving Washington for his home state before his term is up. My trouble with the segment? It didn’t mention Coburn’s views on term limits, or make any point about

Gun Nuts

Dec 9, 2014 with 10 Comments

“Gun violence is as serious as the Ebola virus is being represented in the media,” says Beloit, Wisconsin, Police Chief Norm Jacobs, “and we should fight it using the tools that we’ve learned from our health providers.” Hmmmm, I immediately wondered what tools used against Ebola could possibly be used

Keep Your Money

Dec 5, 2014 with 4 Comments

“Thanks, but no thanks.” So says Michigan State Representative Tom McMillin to President Barack Obama. In response to the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and its aftermath, and then the non-indictment of the officer involved, and its aftermath, President Obama requested that Congress fund a new $263

Against Protester Brutality

Dec 1, 2014 with 7 Comments

Most people agree about the wrongness of police brutality, if not about whether a particular police action is an example of it. But what about protester brutality? Again, most oppose it. Still, skeptics on this point have been particularly loud and insistent lately. Some even suggest (or scream) that violence

Cause of Death in Utah

Nov 25, 2014 with 2 Comments

Utah is the happiest state in the country — we’re told. Though the state does have high suicide rates, those might be explainable in biochemical terms, neatly enough. So what are we to make of the Beehive State’s disturbing pattern in other-person homicide? Police shootings dominate the stats: A Salt