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No shit. The police don't care.

Patterico - a conservative blogger in LA - was SWATted a few years ago, and wrote about this jackass:

Awful: SWATting Finally Kills Someone

...

I never described how slipshod the investigation was, but the FBI investigators clearly did not care about my case. They waited seven months to subpoena the phone records. They failed to subpoena records of other calls made by the SWATter until those records had been purged. Whenever I called them about the case, I got the distinct sense that I was regarded as a pain in the rear.

...

And note that Patterico's real name is Patrick Frey - he's an LA county prosecutor.

Think about that - a prosecutor gets SWATted, and the police don't fucking care.

Imagine how little they care about people they don't work with every damn day.

When seconds matter, the police are not only minutes away, they don't really care.

The other side of the coin

The most prominent cases of SWATing I'm aware of have been carried out against conservative bloggers:

• Aaron Worthing.
• Patterico
• Erik Erickson

Several cases seen to involve people criticizing convicted Speedway Bomber felon (and left-wing activist) Brett Kimberlin.

Believe me, that suitcase will have tons of security.

Think again:
http://patterico.com/2007/10/29/firearms-disappearing-from-airport-luggage/

1. Media coverage of the walker protests were overwhelmingly pro-union excep for fox.
2. The media was very clearly against the war in Iraq.
3. It also happily trashes republicans it perceives as too far to the right as enthusiastically as any Democrat. (Paul, Palin).
4. And yet the ratio of the share of taxation borne by the top 10% to their income is higher here than in any other western nation. The last two years have seen the deficits explode beyond any previous period in the last 40 years, even after correcting for inflation. Even most of the left sees a problem with current deficits.
5. The revers was true except for a brief period where the tea party become somewhat faddish. Large liberal protests receive far more coverage per attendee than tea party protests. What coverage there has been of tea party rallies has been generally negative. My personal favorite was when MSNBC worried about white racists protesters carrying guns, and edited out the race of the black man who was carrying the rifle at the rally.
6. Hit or miss on this one. The media seems pretty schizophrenic here. Honestly, I think the media is generally pro-statist with a slight leftward bent.

"while MS users largely resent MS" Where the hell did you get this idea?

Oh gee I don't know, maybe here, here, and here, as well as many real-life office conversations?

>I think it's indicative of just how fouled up the
>government is when one's motivations are
>investigated when you spill the beans on blatantly
>illegal government activities

He also revealed items that were classified that were not illegal to the NYT. Under normal conditions, this would land him, and rightfully so, in jail. Mr. Tamm isn't a hero, he's a partisan. He cares not one whit for "right or wrong", but for party.

In government work there are avenues for protesting the legality or ethics of almost anything. Mr. Tamm could have used one of those avenues without revealing classified information to the NYT. He chose not to simply because he wanted Bush to loose an election. He was acting for purely partisan reasons. That sir should give everyone pause.

I was in the Soviet Union when it was the Soviet Union, so that changes my perspective. Most of the time when I hear people scream fascist, or say we're loosing all our freedoms I tend to think that the shouter is both ignorant and I am thankful that they haven't lived under true fascism, or really lost their freedom.

We all must be watchful, but unlike Mr. Tamm, honesty, and reason will help us maintain a free world, not blind partisanship. Old Soviet Union was full of blind partisans.

You don't consider several different people commenting on blogs in support of Greenwald while using his IP address and many of the same mannerisms to be "damning" or even suspicious?!

I don't know how you would detect a mannerism without being there in the room with the writer; maybe it's just that you don't know what the word "mannerism" actually means.

And I don't know how you would prove that any specific IP address belonged only to Glenn Greenwald and not to any other person or organization, in perpetuity.

But, I do know that Patterico is such a mouth-breathing moron that he can't tell the difference between a funny costume and child pornography.

Not to mention all the other evidence included in the article.

What evidence? Not posting in an Ace of Spades thread? That's evidence of sense, not of sock-puppetry.

Greenwald's got a rep for turgid prose and multiple personalities.

There's no issue here about the info being classified.
What the story is about is that the court issued an opinion, then withdrew it, and issues a redacted opinion. Probably what happened is that the the court had inadvertently included info that was under seal by the district court.
One possible explanation for the redaction is to protect the guy's family in Egypt.
Another, maybe more likely, explanation was to avoid embarrassment to the FBI.
The story was broken by blogger Howard Bashman of How Appealing, who refused to take down the unredacted version after a call from the court asking him to take it down.
http://patterico.com/2007/10/21/was-a-passage-omitted-from-a-recent-second-circuit-opinion-for-security-reasons-or-to-cover-up-material-embarrassing-to-the-fbi/
http://howappealing.law.com/102007.html#029139

Above post is insightful and informative.

Not about how informed they were, but whether they happened to believe the particular tropes that PIPA picked out. Proving, I guess, that people sometimes differ in their interpretations of the same "evidence".

Some contemporaneous comments:

http://www.patterico.com/2004/05/09/the-pseudo-jou rnalism-of-the-ilos-angeles-timesi/

Glenn Greenwald's sock puppetry revealed.

If Glenn Greenwald with his shenanigans is the best example of a blogger you can come up with, blogging is so screwed up...

However, by the standards of 21st century political warfare, it was a creampuff. It was funny and didn't take itself too seriously, and was aimed to deflate Hillary, not directly attack her. Compare that to former Edwards campaign staffer Amanda Marcotte calling Catholics "godbags" and talking about how God filled the virgin Mary with "his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit" and it seems like the tiniest of molehills.

About the only person who really has casue to complain about the whole kerfluffle is Steve Jobs...

Crow T. Trollbot

• Millions of Americans still think that Iraq had something to do with 911.

• Millions also think that Bush is a good President and that he's "protecting" America by invoking a conventional or perpetual WWIII.

• 2.(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. [My emphasis]

But they're confirmed by satelite photo:

http://patterico.com/2005/04/30/2934/ilos-angeles- timesi-editors-edit-reuters-story-to-remove-critic al-facts-supporting-us-position/

The witnesses are lying or mistaken (and, I suspect, it's the former).

These assertions are denied by two of the witnesses, namely the two surviving occupants of the car.

OK.

Calipari claimed that her car was shot hundreds of times. If you look at photos of the car, there are not hundreds of bullet holes.

I watched an interview with Calipari. She claimed that her car was shot from behind. Unless the car was travelling in reverse the whole time, something is fishy.

There is hard evidence that confirms the US assertion that the car was travelling at a high rate of speed.

Whether you agree with the war in Iraq or not, Calipari hates the US and the war. If you read some of her writings, she has some ridiculous conspiracy theories.

Calipari is not a reliable witness. She has made many statements about this incident that are refuted by facts. Does that mean the US soldiers were acting correctly? No, but you should be skeptical of what Calipari says.

Now who's putting words in whose mouth? I never said I was on the right, unless libertarianism tempered with realism is a strict province thereof. I wasn't suggesting you were about to dive off the Michael Moore springboard, neither. And like I said, I don't subscribe to the notion that everyone who disagrees with me is evil. But I've heard enough of Biafra's talk (I was at h2k and h2k2 and it got tiresome after about a minute) to know that his argument about "being the media" is a sidepoint to his utter contempt for all things middle America. Now, before you tack another psychological hangup on me, I'm not from Middle America either, nor do I think they have everything right: I don't think the PMRC was a good idea either, especially when they started lobbying for censorship. I'm very anti-censorship. But I do understand not wanting your kids to get stupid ideas, and I don't think parents are closedminded or ignorant or naive for simply wanting to control what their kids see. Just like because I'm pro-drug legalization, doesn't mean I condone mindless drug use.

Anyway, now that that's out of the way: I hear what you're saying about media being fed from the same source, and up until a little while ago I would've disagreed with you. The story about the LA Times reporting Paul Bremer did not give a farewell speech to Iraq when he actually did, part of which was broadcast on CNN made me realize just how lazy, inept or disinterested many traditional media sources are about reporting news.

But I think for Biafra to bitch and moan that people are complacent, when technorati is now tracking something like 1.65 MILLION blogs updated more than biweekly, seems ignorant of the facts. There ARE plenty of news sources out there, and with the advent of blogging, some of them get considerable attention. I probably get most of my news from blogs nowadays myself.

In short, point well taken, if redundant.