Re:Enoch Root question (Spoiler for cryptonomicon)
on
Quicksilver
·
· Score: 1
What the hell is Enoch Root still doing alive at the end of the book when he dies halfway through and is pronounced dead by a doctor? He seems fine 50 years later. Did I miss something vital?
Root's role seems to be to provide a certain amount of Deus ex machina. It's hard to have that without the Deus.
Possibly frangible bullets? I remember reading about using them in airline and urban applications; the bullet fragments quickly after hitting a hard surface, reducing the chance of putting a hole in a pressurized cabin, or hitting someone in the next apartment.
Maybe, but I doubt it.
I've never heard of an agency actually issuing frangibles. Sure, they won't overpenetrate, but they generally won't penetrate enough either. And oftentimes, they're downloaded, which causes reliability problems in semiautos.
Most agencies, when they have their officers fly armed on commercial aircraft, stick with conventional duty ammunition.
But I could be wrong. It's happened once or twice before.
Odd, I'd swear we went to war with them after they KILLED 3000 CIVILIANS. It was almost 2 years ago, around September 11th or so.
Back up about a decade.
Our first brush with al-Qaeda on US soil was the truck bombing of the WTC back in (1993?)
Prior to then, I'm not sure they were really on our map. A few of them may have benefitted from the various and sundry weapons we dumped on Afghanistan during the 1980's when the Soviets were trying to 0wn the place.
I'm having a hard time connecting a certain work of fiction (yes, Virginia, fiction) copyrighted in 1949 with today's government press releases.
I hope Colt seeks approval for some of their.45 semi-autos. When confronted with terrorists, I can't think of anything else I'd rather have.
Don't laugh just yet. About ten years ago, some ammunition manufacturer (Speer?) began marketing a "counterterrorism bullet." I'm not entirely sure what the physical properties of terrorist bodies are that might require a special bullet. I was always under the impression that the usual duty ammo would work well enough.
Well, besides my blankie and my mommy, anyway.
Are you suggesting that the sky is falling and you want your mommy?
Why the fuck do people still feel the need to bring up 9/11 when it is completely offtopic.
Stop using it as a crutch.
A crutch? Maybe. Maybe not.
Prior to 9-11-01, relatively few Americans really understood on the gut level that they could be murdered like that. For all people in other countries hear about our violent crime rate, relatively few of us have ever actually been touched by the prospect of violent death.
In one incident, about three thousand of ours were slaughtered. You'll probably have to go back to 1865 to find the last time that many people died violently on American soil in one day. And that reminded a lot of people that there's nastiness in the world and there are shitbags for whom brutal murder is not a game, but merely a way to advance an agenda.
Though it be tiresome for some, the events of that day really changed how many of us view the prospect of violent death. Just like the bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in 1995.
"Good people sleep soundly at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -Unknown
Re:OT: One nation (was: Re:You kicked my dog...)
on
Dotcom Era Fads
·
· Score: 1
Seems Queensland judges agree theres not much good in One Nation, the two remaining leaders, including the reprehensible Pauline were just jailed for three years for electoral fraud.
Thereby illustrating that the US does not have a monopoly on jackasses in office. Now, let us return to the far more important question of when you plan to start exporting VB or Toohey's.
Nah mate, I'm Australian. There's not much we'll take offense at over here:-) You can even look us in the eye and tell us our beer stinks, and we'll just laugh at you. Tell us our politicians are dickheads, and we'll probably even buy you one of those beers!:-)
The beer you export sucks ass and is even worse than our (Yank) beer, the One Nation Party are a bunch of pricks, cricket is just cheap imitation baseball, and I'll take a Toohey's Red.
Iran is a potential threat much in the way that France is or the soviet union was--they present alternatives to our system of running things. The soviet union had to be destroyed because it was a competing system, not because it was evil.
The USSR wasn't the enemy because they were socialists. They were the enemy because they were expansionist mass-murderers.
If we were really trying to suppress the socialists, I imagine the United Kingdom and Sweden would also have been added to the "axis of evil." However, Sweden is mainly a trading partner to us, and the UK is one of our few dependable allies.
Arrest is being detained against your will by the state.If he is not free to go at any time he must have had his rights read to him.
Again, not in the US. An arrest is the act of reducing someone to custody, by "significantly impairing" his freedom. Merely preventing him from leaving doesn't count.
"you are under arrest, you have the right to remain silent etc."
Again, not here. Only required prior to in-custody interrogation.
What is it called then in the States to be held involuntarily by the police while you wait to be arrested?
Detained, for a period reasonable under the circumstances. Most of the time, the courts will allow up to half an hour before we need to either escalate to an arrest (requiring the greater legal justification) or turn someone loose.
As for de-arresting, there's nothing wrong with the concept. If I hook someone up, lodge him with the sheriff, and subsequently find no basis to hold him (complainant admits to lying, etc.) I can have him kicked loose. (And then charge the complainant with False Reporting, but that's another story.)
What's the attraction of hunt sabotage? Being an animal-rights ass or just fighting some dumbassed class war?
I hate to break it to you but at 60K/year you are still making more than 75% of all US taxpayers. In many parts of the country 60K is still a damn good salary.
Indeed.
I probably see $2800/month after taxes, 403(b), PBA, and et cetera, for about a forty-five hour week. Amazingly enough, you can live quite well on that in some places. Not Aspen, not California, not Boulder, and certainly not NYC, but for those of us who think the southern non-mountain part of Colorado is tolerable it ain't a bad living at all. Doubling my $850/month mortgage on my ranch-compact for a shack next to a ski lift would make it harder. That's why people who aren't rich shouldn't buy in expensive neighborhoods.
There are advantages to being where I am. I grow better tomatoes than the Safeway. I can eat my own beef, or venison. I can cut my own firewood. And the door-to-door solicitor is trespassing if he comes literally within 218 yards of any part of my house (Yes, I measured it.) I shudder to think what my mortgage payment would buy in Tokyo or LA. No elbow room. No privacy. No watching sunsets over mountains. My neighbors don't live right in my lap the way they would in a city, and that means they didn't wear out their welcome ten minutes after they moved in.
I can bake my own bread, brew my own beer, change my own oil, split my own wood, handload my own ammo, urinate off the front porch at my convenience, and THAT is a far better way to live than living stacked in boxes in San Joaquin, riding trains, drinking $4-cup coffee, listening to traffic and sirens all night, freezing your cojones off if the electricity quits and you can't just light a fire, and having to eat the crap at the City Market and pretend it's actual produce.
It must be my midwestern heritage: whatever I make, spend less. If you can't afford to buy it, make it. The world doesn't owe you a living. And hell isn't necessarily other people, but if those other people are New Yorkers, Californians, or Boulderites, then you're at least in purgatory.
What I want to know is, what technologies are they using to integrate all those different computer systems? That has to be a nightmare and a half.
In general, DHS has been an organizational nightmare and a half. Remember how much they had to integrate from the rest of the US government?
They basically took over US Customs-part of the Dep't of the Treasury for two centuries.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service and it's sub-component, the US Border Patrol, have long been part of the Dep't of Justice. Those two agencies essentially were meant to regulate who and what crossed the US borders, but were part of separate (and rival) cabinet-level departments. And the agency which controlled the issuance of visas to foreign nationals was part of the State Department, yet a third cabinet department.
The Federal Protective Service, basically a police department and physical security consulting service for most nonmilitary Federal property, was part of the General Services Administration's Public Buildings Service, an independent agency of office managers and real estate agents. Now they get to integrate into DHS.
FEMA used to be an independent agency, which mainly oversaw disaster-reconstruction money, flood insurance, and model fire-prevention codes and training. Now they're in DHS.
CIA was an independent agency. I think they're part of DHS now.
In the name of duplication, the US Marshall's Service in the Dep't of Justice used to provide the same security function for Federal courts that the Federal Protective Service did for most other Federal property. DHS tried to take that away from them. Don't think they succeeded, though.
The National Infrastructure Protection Center was taken away from FBI and added to DHS. It's a wonder the rest of the feebies were left alone.
The US Coast Guard has traditionally been a part of the Department of Transportation during peacetime, and part of the Navy during wartime. They almost got sucked into DHS.
When you fly into a US airport from abroad, you'll see three different uniforms before you can even worry about making a connecting flight. INS inspectors (white shirts with guns) check your passport. Now they're part of DHS. Then Customs inspectors (navy shirts with guns) to make sure you don't have any drugs or counterfeit blue jeans. And THEN white shirts without guns to ask you about fruits and vegetables and crop pests. They're a third agency, the US Dep't of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. No shit, DHS almost took them over too.
So, I think it's fair to say that IT integration is the least of the organizational headaches DHS will have this year.
There's a good reason why this was written as a criminal statute rather than civil. Good for the spambags, anyway.
A criminal statute allows for jail, true. However, only one class of people can actually file criminal complaints: law enforcement. Peace officers and prosecutors.
You can call your local police department to make a complaint. However, except for certain types of crimes (Domestic violence and protective order violations in my state-most are similar) there is no law prohibiting us from sending the complaint straight to the shredder. As a point of Federal law (Federal district court ruling for WA DC, sustained on appeal) the police and prosecutors do not have a duty to any one particular person.
In other words, not much will change. A few cases may be filed. Most, however, will end up sitting in some detective's inbox until the statute of limitations expires. My department doesn't even have enough detectives to cover all of the stuff that needs detective followup: if a burglary/auto theft/just about any nonviolent property crime isn't thoroughly handled by the patrol officer taking the initial complaint, it'll languish marked "inactive-open pending leads" forever. The info-hogs can only follow up on the leads in the bluesuits' reports.
Now, take a wild guess how many patrol officers are qualified to handle these. I may be the only one here. And I spent today (a relatively quiet Monday dayshift) taking cold crime reports, three neighborhood disturbances (two of which weren't even criminal and one was petty enough not to charge anyone with anything) one unwanted subject (started screaming in a McDonalds and didn't leave when the manager invited him to eat elsewhere) and a drunk driver.
When I work swing shift, my normal shift, I'm running from call to call to call. It'll be close to midnight before I have time to follow up on a funny email. I think my time from 11 PM to end-of-shift is better spent on drunk drivers.
In other words, most cops will consider this to be a waste of time that could be better spent on areas where someone might actually get hurt.
That's why it's CIVIL spam laws that actually matter. The clown who wrote this law knows we won't be able to really do much, living in the real world and all. A civil law, OTOH, with a private right of action, would make the spammers shit themselves with fear and consider career changes. That's because a victim with the legal power to act may actually do something, when the police don't have the resources.
Some will complain that it's not their responsibility to do anything, even when the whiner is also the original victim. Who has the moral responsibility to act is an open question. However, the real question IMHO is 'if you don't give a shit, and you're the victim, then why should I care?' And if someone can't be bothered to take an interest in his own life, then I've got better things to do than fix his minor annoyances for him.
Oh yes, people who manage to over-charge their way into great, vast, mountains of wealth "represent humanity". It is the HEIGHT of existance to become rich. The rich are role models to be envied and emulated, bow down in respect for our new merchant kings. We should aid their rise into the HEAVENS as our ambassadors because of their righteousness.
I don't think anybody said that being rich was the moral and ethical equivalent of being the Buddha. Being rich is merely the state of having more money than I do. I'm pretty much limited to a capped civil service salary, so everybody has more money than I do.
please - I cant imagine a WORSE idea. rewarding people with respect, elevating them to roles of demi-gods all because they managed to make themselves profit???. WHO CARES? having money does not make you a great person..
Nor does poverty make you better than wealth makes Buffet or Branson or whoever.
However, private space flight gives an option: Now, C. Montgomery Burns can spend a few zillion bucks on something that will eventually benefit society, rather than spending it on releasing the hounds or whatever it is he does.
Archie Bunker isn't going to hire either of us. Nor is he going to supply venture capital for either of us to open our own business. He's not going to underwrite the mortgage on my farm. He's not going to fund a blood bank, even if he can take a huge tax deduction in the process.
Maybe one is a "better person" than the other. Maybe not. I've arrested both rich and poor, and about the only significant difference I've seen yet is that one has more money than the other. One is just as likely as the other to cheat on spouses and taxes, beat his children, throw lit cigarettes out of moving cars, under-tip waitresses, keep fish in catch-and-release-only areas, drive drunk, et cetera.
in fact, i would agrue that being rich means you are, by definition NOT A GOOD PERSON.
Then do so. I'll go pop some popcorn. This should be good.
I'm not sure what you were getting at. It's against the law for a private organization to set people up for a crime. Even official sting operations are questionable.
Nope. It's not entrapment unless the cop actually plants an idea in someone's head. I had someone try that argument on my case back when I did my three months in Narcotics. The judge laughed his ass off. Well, after laughing, he ruled (consistently with ample precedent, and the statute referenced below) that it wasn't entrapment to ask someone to sell me a few grams of meth. Not when I only asked once and he just so happened to have the shit with him.
In my state (Colorado), the relevant statute is CRS 18-1-709. I can't find the Federal statute offhand.
As for you statement about it being illegal for private organizations to gather evidence, that's just plain nonsense. Neighborhood Watch does it all the time. So does any retail loss prevention crew. The RIAA's attorney can't convene a grand jury or file a Complaint and Information in court, but he can sure call the US Attorney's office and say "this is what we've got. You gonna do something with it?"
And I know your next objection. And it's wrong. The Constitution is silent on this matter, and it does not restrain private parties in any way. It only restrains government.
Re:Hypocrisy
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Somewhere, sometime, highly populated states are going to realize that they are not entitled to simply purchase energy production from other states without suffering the drawbacks of that production.
It's not just energy.
I live in Colorado's Front Range. We're hoping that this year our state will start to emerge from a really nasty multi-year drought. Among other things, drought increases wildfire danger, and last year was a truly terrible wildfire season. Thankfully, the actual body count was held to single digits, but enough people ended up homeless and one of the burn areas (Hayman, in Jefferson/Douglas/Park Counties) will likely to take decades to recover.
And the West Slope got hit pretty badly too. A few nasty fires, one near Durango and another near Rifle. To be fair, the one near Rifle had been burning for about a century underground.
Have you ever noticed that, until the Colorado River was diverted and California and Arizona started asserting that they owned its water, the Imperial Valley was a desert? They didn't grow cotton in Arizona. And now, Scottsdale, AZ, has more green lawns than the entire Denver area.
With COLORADO'S water. We can't suppress wildfires when they start, we can't irrigate, but a bunch of rich shitbirds in PHX can have green lawns and a bunch of welfare queens can grow peaches in the middle of the damn desert.
And we can't dam, retain, or divert it. To do so would make a bunch of people in two other states cry about how they have to act like they live in the desert and it's our responsibility to suffer for it.
Yes, I'm pissed. I'm not allowed to water my corn, because someone in Arizona needs to water a golf course. I'm not even allowed to use a rain barrel, because legally the rain belongs to someone downstream and out-of-state the instant it hits the ground!
So, I'd happily take a windfarm. One of the power companies here is starting an experiment of offering wind power, albeit at an increased price. When it hits my area, I'll take it. Or, at least until I get off my lazy ass and get off-grid.
Glock training pistols; they do everything we need them to do (except fire real ammo -- Glock sells one that shoots CO2 powered marking cartridges). I'd think live ammo could be.. a little dangerous.:)
I guess simunitions would make sense. I've got a kit for mine too, but we've never thought of using live OC in a sims drill.
Maybe I can talk the instructor into this. God knows I've had plenty of practice: whenever our guys break out the liquid jiujutsu, I always end up getting most of it.
But still OC is not really good for taking someone down who doesn't *really* want to be (or is on some sort of controlled substance), but it's good for the pile of drunk fratboys fighting each other in the middle of the street.:P
Probably better than a garden hose, anyway. I keep wanting to keep a supersoaker in my car. Get to a student fight, hose them down, and yell "Down, Mini-Me! No humping!"
Useless for dusters, though. Shoot them, pigpile them, or wait for them to go down on their own is about the only choice.
Of course not. Why do you think we're zapped with it several times a year (depending on the department) and still expected to turn, draw, and fire (and most importantly hit the bad guy)?
Your range officer actually has you doing OC drills with LIVE AMMO???
I don't know if that's the best or the worst idea I've heard in months, but it's definitely something I'd love to see in person!
On the other hand, we do hit each other with real (not foam) batons, and not touch-drills either. Did that last week and almost had to take the night off. Just my luck to get paired off with a guy who thinks he's a cross of Alan Greenspan and Bruce goddamn Lee.
As I understand the law (here in CO, anyway) you can be charged for assault without ever touching.
CO=Colorado? It cannot be charged as assault here in CO without some degree of injury sustained.
If I yell in your face and cause you to believe that I intend physical harm (e.g. I raise a fist to hit you) then I've committed assault.
No, you've committed "Menacing." Knowingly and unlawfully placing another person in fear of death or serious bodily injury. Misdemeanor, and a felony if committed with a real or simulated deadly weapon.
If I grap your lapel while I'm doing this, I've committed battery.
That was either harassment or assault. Knowingly making unwanted physical contact is harassment. Knowingly or recklessly inflicting bodily harm is assault.
Yes, I know most states use slightly different words. Most states also have strict liability forfeiture or criminal laws, utterly toothless self-defense laws, and are probably stealing our water too. Who are you going to actually listen to?
I'm not sure how much benefit one year of classical martial arts training is actually worth, either. I'd spend the money on not living anywhere in Adams County, personally.
I think this varies state to state. In the state I live in, it's perfectly legal to produce a certain amount of alcohol for personal consumption.
Not quite.
Federally (and therefore depending upon state law) there's no prohibition on fermented beverages like beer or wine. I think Uncle Sucker allows something like 100 gallons per person and 200 per household, in the absence of a more-restrictive state law.
Distilled is another story. To legally run a still takes a permit from BATFE (now a part of the Justice Department) and probably one from your state. This is regardless of whether the product is for personal consumption only or for sale.
The first one talks about distilling whisky. It's just a touch short on specifics.
I don't know if that's for legal reasons or because the kind of 16-year-olds who write historical non-fic books for class projects don't delve too deeply.
Re:Gaming the Recorder and Black Boxes
on
DVRs for Cop Cars
·
· Score: 1
Is this the current 'best practice' for help keep officers from losing their weapon to an assailent?
It is. Nevermind a better-but-impractical option. Even that doesn't yet exist.
What percentage of the officers killed or wounded in the line of duty, are getting shot with the own weapon?
The most recent stat I remember gives about 15-20% for that. Well, 15-20% leaving aside the statistical blip that was 9-11-01.
Violent deaths account for fewer than 100 of us per year on average. Put simply, we have more on-duty deaths from traffic accidents. And from ON-DUTY stress-related illness. Hell, we have more cop suicides than that. (Yes, we're unfortunately better at killing ourselves than the criminals are.)
If the percentage is still too high, then those two solutions, the special holster is not working or the training isn't enough, so what else could they do?
Most of the cops killed with their own weapons in recent years have had a combination of training issues and bad luck.
Some don't keep current on their training. Sad, but true. It's a bitch getting some of my beat partners to even go running with me after work. Others keep current on what they learned in the academy, but that's the same as keeping current on everything that one needed to know about your Red Hat 4.0 install. Better techniques and new threats come along, and if your professional knowledge doesn't keep up...
Others just get swarmed. I'm not sure it's possible to defend a holstered weapon against five attackers. Not without a little help anyway.
Still others, as a consequence of not training, simply don't understand. A gun takeaway is a real live deadly force threat, and is therefore something to be taken VERY seriously. (I explain it to field trainees this way: He's trying to shoot you. He didn't bring his own gun, so he's reaching for the one weapon guaranteed to be present-yours!)
To be fair, the number of us being murdered on duty has dropped sharply over the last few decades, and this with more people actually trying to kill us. Better training, primarily, IMHO.
Look at how many sysadmins/netadmins run unpatched sendmails, old Windows NT boxen, old apache installs, et cetera. Then realize that my profession includes over half a million in the United States, and any group that size is going to include a few slugs who don't stay current.
But staying with the whole point of this article: technology doesn't make us better at our jobs. It's a nice tool. I started out in the late 1980's. Back then, our portable radios weren't that great, car radios weren't much better, reports were still written by hand, fingerprints had to be compared manually (which meant mailing them to the FBI) and the whole notion of in-car computers or cellular phones being standard equipment for everybody was something from an SF novel. And the in-car camera? I've got a Sony HandiCam mounted in mine. Love the thing: More than once someone has complained about how abusive I was when I stopped him for weaving, and the video shows him opening the car door and passing out drunk on the road before I'm within fifteen feet of him. And we sure didn't have THAT kind of help in 1989.
And just the same, we did our jobs and did them reasonably well. When it's a genuine improvement, it can make a good officer even more effective. Unfortunately, these wristwatch gadgets are a disaster waiting to happen IMHO.
Re:Gaming the Recorder and Black Boxes
on
DVRs for Cop Cars
·
· Score: 1
A guy in his house has different needs and "use cases" than an on-duty cop. I don't blame you for not wanting such a watch, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea for cops.
Actually, yeah it does.
And this is Thomas Edison's technology. How much more fragile is a wristwatch? (Hint: I break at least one Casio G-Shock a year on duty.)
I won't trust my life to one of these gadgets. Nor would I recommend that anybody else do so. The combination of a good retention holster and proper training is plenty to keep a cop from being killed with his own weapon.
This is very true, but the problem was exaggerated by investors that were too gung over "dot com hype" to carefully look at the financials that they would have done with any other sector.
Unwise investments weren't limited to the dot bombs.
Look at energy, for instance: Enron. I'm no accountant, but I can usually read a balance sheet. Theirs was written with the intent to conceal a whole mess of liabilities and inflate the stock price. That's exactly why Arthur Andersen is in a boatload of trouble and a bunch of their execs are facing criminal penalties.
And the analysts and professional investors should be able to read understand this stuff. They SHOULD have been able to see a company with a very badly mangled balance sheet, and recognize that a company not forthcoming about its financial situation probably has ample reason to lie or at least obfuscate.
Look at telecoms. How many other people here watched Qwest go tits-up? And being a Qwest customer, the notion of seeing Nacchio and Anschutz in Canon City married to the self-respecting armed robber with the most cigarettes doesn't offend me as much as it probably should.
It wasn't just techs. There were plenty of other sectors in which investors didn't do the due diligence.
Slashdot Mirror
Root's role seems to be to provide a certain amount of Deus ex machina. It's hard to have that without the Deus.
In plain English: God. Root. What is difference?
Maybe, but I doubt it.
I've never heard of an agency actually issuing frangibles. Sure, they won't overpenetrate, but they generally won't penetrate enough either. And oftentimes, they're downloaded, which causes reliability problems in semiautos.
Most agencies, when they have their officers fly armed on commercial aircraft, stick with conventional duty ammunition.
But I could be wrong. It's happened once or twice before.
Back up about a decade.
Our first brush with al-Qaeda on US soil was the truck bombing of the WTC back in (1993?)
Prior to then, I'm not sure they were really on our map. A few of them may have benefitted from the various and sundry weapons we dumped on Afghanistan during the 1980's when the Soviets were trying to 0wn the place.
I'm having a hard time connecting a certain work of fiction (yes, Virginia, fiction) copyrighted in 1949 with today's government press releases.
Don't laugh just yet. About ten years ago, some ammunition manufacturer (Speer?) began marketing a "counterterrorism bullet." I'm not entirely sure what the physical properties of terrorist bodies are that might require a special bullet. I was always under the impression that the usual duty ammo would work well enough.
Well, besides my blankie and my mommy, anyway.
Are you suggesting that the sky is falling and you want your mommy?
Stop using it as a crutch.
A crutch? Maybe. Maybe not.
Prior to 9-11-01, relatively few Americans really understood on the gut level that they could be murdered like that. For all people in other countries hear about our violent crime rate, relatively few of us have ever actually been touched by the prospect of violent death.
In one incident, about three thousand of ours were slaughtered. You'll probably have to go back to 1865 to find the last time that many people died violently on American soil in one day. And that reminded a lot of people that there's nastiness in the world and there are shitbags for whom brutal murder is not a game, but merely a way to advance an agenda.
Though it be tiresome for some, the events of that day really changed how many of us view the prospect of violent death. Just like the bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in 1995.
"Good people sleep soundly at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -Unknown
Thereby illustrating that the US does not have a monopoly on jackasses in office. Now, let us return to the far more important question of when you plan to start exporting VB or Toohey's.
The beer you export sucks ass and is even worse than our (Yank) beer, the One Nation Party are a bunch of pricks, cricket is just cheap imitation baseball, and I'll take a Toohey's Red.
The USSR wasn't the enemy because they were socialists. They were the enemy because they were expansionist mass-murderers.
If we were really trying to suppress the socialists, I imagine the United Kingdom and Sweden would also have been added to the "axis of evil." However, Sweden is mainly a trading partner to us, and the UK is one of our few dependable allies.
Again, not in the US. An arrest is the act of reducing someone to custody, by "significantly impairing" his freedom. Merely preventing him from leaving doesn't count.
"you are under arrest, you have the right to remain silent etc."
Again, not here. Only required prior to in-custody interrogation.
What is it called then in the States to be held involuntarily by the police while you wait to be arrested?
Detained, for a period reasonable under the circumstances. Most of the time, the courts will allow up to half an hour before we need to either escalate to an arrest (requiring the greater legal justification) or turn someone loose.
As for de-arresting, there's nothing wrong with the concept. If I hook someone up, lodge him with the sheriff, and subsequently find no basis to hold him (complainant admits to lying, etc.) I can have him kicked loose. (And then charge the complainant with False Reporting, but that's another story.)
What's the attraction of hunt sabotage? Being an animal-rights ass or just fighting some dumbassed class war?
Indeed.
I probably see $2800/month after taxes, 403(b), PBA, and et cetera, for about a forty-five hour week. Amazingly enough, you can live quite well on that in some places. Not Aspen, not California, not Boulder, and certainly not NYC, but for those of us who think the southern non-mountain part of Colorado is tolerable it ain't a bad living at all. Doubling my $850/month mortgage on my ranch-compact for a shack next to a ski lift would make it harder. That's why people who aren't rich shouldn't buy in expensive neighborhoods.
There are advantages to being where I am. I grow better tomatoes than the Safeway. I can eat my own beef, or venison. I can cut my own firewood. And the door-to-door solicitor is trespassing if he comes literally within 218 yards of any part of my house (Yes, I measured it.) I shudder to think what my mortgage payment would buy in Tokyo or LA. No elbow room. No privacy. No watching sunsets over mountains. My neighbors don't live right in my lap the way they would in a city, and that means they didn't wear out their welcome ten minutes after they moved in.
I can bake my own bread, brew my own beer, change my own oil, split my own wood, handload my own ammo, urinate off the front porch at my convenience, and THAT is a far better way to live than living stacked in boxes in San Joaquin, riding trains, drinking $4-cup coffee, listening to traffic and sirens all night, freezing your cojones off if the electricity quits and you can't just light a fire, and having to eat the crap at the City Market and pretend it's actual produce.
It must be my midwestern heritage: whatever I make, spend less. If you can't afford to buy it, make it. The world doesn't owe you a living. And hell isn't necessarily other people, but if those other people are New Yorkers, Californians, or Boulderites, then you're at least in purgatory.
In general, DHS has been an organizational nightmare and a half. Remember how much they had to integrate from the rest of the US government?
They basically took over US Customs-part of the Dep't of the Treasury for two centuries.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service and it's sub-component, the US Border Patrol, have long been part of the Dep't of Justice. Those two agencies essentially were meant to regulate who and what crossed the US borders, but were part of separate (and rival) cabinet-level departments. And the agency which controlled the issuance of visas to foreign nationals was part of the State Department, yet a third cabinet department.
The Federal Protective Service, basically a police department and physical security consulting service for most nonmilitary Federal property, was part of the General Services Administration's Public Buildings Service, an independent agency of office managers and real estate agents. Now they get to integrate into DHS.
FEMA used to be an independent agency, which mainly oversaw disaster-reconstruction money, flood insurance, and model fire-prevention codes and training. Now they're in DHS.
CIA was an independent agency. I think they're part of DHS now.
In the name of duplication, the US Marshall's Service in the Dep't of Justice used to provide the same security function for Federal courts that the Federal Protective Service did for most other Federal property. DHS tried to take that away from them. Don't think they succeeded, though.
The National Infrastructure Protection Center was taken away from FBI and added to DHS. It's a wonder the rest of the feebies were left alone.
The US Coast Guard has traditionally been a part of the Department of Transportation during peacetime, and part of the Navy during wartime. They almost got sucked into DHS.
When you fly into a US airport from abroad, you'll see three different uniforms before you can even worry about making a connecting flight. INS inspectors (white shirts with guns) check your passport. Now they're part of DHS. Then Customs inspectors (navy shirts with guns) to make sure you don't have any drugs or counterfeit blue jeans. And THEN white shirts without guns to ask you about fruits and vegetables and crop pests. They're a third agency, the US Dep't of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. No shit, DHS almost took them over too.
So, I think it's fair to say that IT integration is the least of the organizational headaches DHS will have this year.
A criminal statute allows for jail, true. However, only one class of people can actually file criminal complaints: law enforcement. Peace officers and prosecutors.
You can call your local police department to make a complaint. However, except for certain types of crimes (Domestic violence and protective order violations in my state-most are similar) there is no law prohibiting us from sending the complaint straight to the shredder. As a point of Federal law (Federal district court ruling for WA DC, sustained on appeal) the police and prosecutors do not have a duty to any one particular person.
In other words, not much will change. A few cases may be filed. Most, however, will end up sitting in some detective's inbox until the statute of limitations expires. My department doesn't even have enough detectives to cover all of the stuff that needs detective followup: if a burglary/auto theft/just about any nonviolent property crime isn't thoroughly handled by the patrol officer taking the initial complaint, it'll languish marked "inactive-open pending leads" forever. The info-hogs can only follow up on the leads in the bluesuits' reports.
Now, take a wild guess how many patrol officers are qualified to handle these. I may be the only one here. And I spent today (a relatively quiet Monday dayshift) taking cold crime reports, three neighborhood disturbances (two of which weren't even criminal and one was petty enough not to charge anyone with anything) one unwanted subject (started screaming in a McDonalds and didn't leave when the manager invited him to eat elsewhere) and a drunk driver.
When I work swing shift, my normal shift, I'm running from call to call to call. It'll be close to midnight before I have time to follow up on a funny email. I think my time from 11 PM to end-of-shift is better spent on drunk drivers.
In other words, most cops will consider this to be a waste of time that could be better spent on areas where someone might actually get hurt.
That's why it's CIVIL spam laws that actually matter. The clown who wrote this law knows we won't be able to really do much, living in the real world and all. A civil law, OTOH, with a private right of action, would make the spammers shit themselves with fear and consider career changes. That's because a victim with the legal power to act may actually do something, when the police don't have the resources.
Some will complain that it's not their responsibility to do anything, even when the whiner is also the original victim. Who has the moral responsibility to act is an open question. However, the real question IMHO is 'if you don't give a shit, and you're the victim, then why should I care?' And if someone can't be bothered to take an interest in his own life, then I've got better things to do than fix his minor annoyances for him.
I don't think anybody said that being rich was the moral and ethical equivalent of being the Buddha. Being rich is merely the state of having more money than I do. I'm pretty much limited to a capped civil service salary, so everybody has more money than I do.
please - I cant imagine a WORSE idea. rewarding people with respect, elevating them to roles of demi-gods all because they managed to make themselves profit???. WHO CARES? having money does not make you a great person..
Nor does poverty make you better than wealth makes Buffet or Branson or whoever.
However, private space flight gives an option: Now, C. Montgomery Burns can spend a few zillion bucks on something that will eventually benefit society, rather than spending it on releasing the hounds or whatever it is he does.
Archie Bunker isn't going to hire either of us. Nor is he going to supply venture capital for either of us to open our own business. He's not going to underwrite the mortgage on my farm. He's not going to fund a blood bank, even if he can take a huge tax deduction in the process.
Maybe one is a "better person" than the other. Maybe not. I've arrested both rich and poor, and about the only significant difference I've seen yet is that one has more money than the other. One is just as likely as the other to cheat on spouses and taxes, beat his children, throw lit cigarettes out of moving cars, under-tip waitresses, keep fish in catch-and-release-only areas, drive drunk, et cetera.
in fact, i would agrue that being rich means you are, by definition NOT A GOOD PERSON.
Then do so. I'll go pop some popcorn. This should be good.
Nope. It's not entrapment unless the cop actually plants an idea in someone's head. I had someone try that argument on my case back when I did my three months in Narcotics. The judge laughed his ass off. Well, after laughing, he ruled (consistently with ample precedent, and the statute referenced below) that it wasn't entrapment to ask someone to sell me a few grams of meth. Not when I only asked once and he just so happened to have the shit with him.
In my state (Colorado), the relevant statute is CRS 18-1-709. I can't find the Federal statute offhand.
As for you statement about it being illegal for private organizations to gather evidence, that's just plain nonsense. Neighborhood Watch does it all the time. So does any retail loss prevention crew. The RIAA's attorney can't convene a grand jury or file a Complaint and Information in court, but he can sure call the US Attorney's office and say "this is what we've got. You gonna do something with it?"
And I know your next objection. And it's wrong. The Constitution is silent on this matter, and it does not restrain private parties in any way. It only restrains government.
It's not just energy.
I live in Colorado's Front Range. We're hoping that this year our state will start to emerge from a really nasty multi-year drought. Among other things, drought increases wildfire danger, and last year was a truly terrible wildfire season. Thankfully, the actual body count was held to single digits, but enough people ended up homeless and one of the burn areas (Hayman, in Jefferson/Douglas/Park Counties) will likely to take decades to recover.
And the West Slope got hit pretty badly too. A few nasty fires, one near Durango and another near Rifle. To be fair, the one near Rifle had been burning for about a century underground.
Have you ever noticed that, until the Colorado River was diverted and California and Arizona started asserting that they owned its water, the Imperial Valley was a desert? They didn't grow cotton in Arizona. And now, Scottsdale, AZ, has more green lawns than the entire Denver area.
With COLORADO'S water. We can't suppress wildfires when they start, we can't irrigate, but a bunch of rich shitbirds in PHX can have green lawns and a bunch of welfare queens can grow peaches in the middle of the damn desert.
And we can't dam, retain, or divert it. To do so would make a bunch of people in two other states cry about how they have to act like they live in the desert and it's our responsibility to suffer for it.
Yes, I'm pissed. I'm not allowed to water my corn, because someone in Arizona needs to water a golf course. I'm not even allowed to use a rain barrel, because legally the rain belongs to someone downstream and out-of-state the instant it hits the ground!
So, I'd happily take a windfarm. One of the power companies here is starting an experiment of offering wind power, albeit at an increased price. When it hits my area, I'll take it. Or, at least until I get off my lazy ass and get off-grid.
You! Must not! Watch! South Park! He! Would ask! What! Would! Brian Boitano Do!
And then! Send! Some extras! In red shirts! Who don't even! appear! in the! closing! credits!
I guess simunitions would make sense. I've got a kit for mine too, but we've never thought of using live OC in a sims drill.
Maybe I can talk the instructor into this. God knows I've had plenty of practice: whenever our guys break out the liquid jiujutsu, I always end up getting most of it.
But still OC is not really good for taking someone down who doesn't *really* want to be (or is on some sort of controlled substance), but it's good for the pile of drunk fratboys fighting each other in the middle of the street. :P
Probably better than a garden hose, anyway. I keep wanting to keep a supersoaker in my car. Get to a student fight, hose them down, and yell "Down, Mini-Me! No humping!"
Useless for dusters, though. Shoot them, pigpile them, or wait for them to go down on their own is about the only choice.
Your range officer actually has you doing OC drills with LIVE AMMO???
I don't know if that's the best or the worst idea I've heard in months, but it's definitely something I'd love to see in person!
On the other hand, we do hit each other with real (not foam) batons, and not touch-drills either. Did that last week and almost had to take the night off. Just my luck to get paired off with a guy who thinks he's a cross of Alan Greenspan and Bruce goddamn Lee.
CO=Colorado? It cannot be charged as assault here in CO without some degree of injury sustained.
If I yell in your face and cause you to believe that I intend physical harm (e.g. I raise a fist to hit you) then I've committed assault.
No, you've committed "Menacing." Knowingly and unlawfully placing another person in fear of death or serious bodily injury. Misdemeanor, and a felony if committed with a real or simulated deadly weapon.
If I grap your lapel while I'm doing this, I've committed battery.
That was either harassment or assault. Knowingly making unwanted physical contact is harassment. Knowingly or recklessly inflicting bodily harm is assault.
Yes, I know most states use slightly different words. Most states also have strict liability forfeiture or criminal laws, utterly toothless self-defense laws, and are probably stealing our water too. Who are you going to actually listen to?
I'm not sure how much benefit one year of classical martial arts training is actually worth, either. I'd spend the money on not living anywhere in Adams County, personally.
Funny. I thought that was why Europe won't import food from the US.
(Or was it because they wanted to eat mad-cow beef and drink Amstel Light? I forget...)
Not quite.
Federally (and therefore depending upon state law) there's no prohibition on fermented beverages like beer or wine. I think Uncle Sucker allows something like 100 gallons per person and 200 per household, in the absence of a more-restrictive state law.
Distilled is another story. To legally run a still takes a permit from BATFE (now a part of the Justice Department) and probably one from your state. This is regardless of whether the product is for personal consumption only or for sale.
The first one talks about distilling whisky. It's just a touch short on specifics.
I don't know if that's for legal reasons or because the kind of 16-year-olds who write historical non-fic books for class projects don't delve too deeply.
It is. Nevermind a better-but-impractical option. Even that doesn't yet exist.
What percentage of the officers killed or wounded in the line of duty, are getting shot with the own weapon?
The most recent stat I remember gives about 15-20% for that. Well, 15-20% leaving aside the statistical blip that was 9-11-01.
Violent deaths account for fewer than 100 of us per year on average. Put simply, we have more on-duty deaths from traffic accidents. And from ON-DUTY stress-related illness. Hell, we have more cop suicides than that. (Yes, we're unfortunately better at killing ourselves than the criminals are.)
If the percentage is still too high, then those two solutions, the special holster is not working or the training isn't enough, so what else could they do?
Most of the cops killed with their own weapons in recent years have had a combination of training issues and bad luck.
Some don't keep current on their training. Sad, but true. It's a bitch getting some of my beat partners to even go running with me after work. Others keep current on what they learned in the academy, but that's the same as keeping current on everything that one needed to know about your Red Hat 4.0 install. Better techniques and new threats come along, and if your professional knowledge doesn't keep up...
Others just get swarmed. I'm not sure it's possible to defend a holstered weapon against five attackers. Not without a little help anyway.
Still others, as a consequence of not training, simply don't understand. A gun takeaway is a real live deadly force threat, and is therefore something to be taken VERY seriously. (I explain it to field trainees this way: He's trying to shoot you. He didn't bring his own gun, so he's reaching for the one weapon guaranteed to be present-yours!)
To be fair, the number of us being murdered on duty has dropped sharply over the last few decades, and this with more people actually trying to kill us. Better training, primarily, IMHO.
Look at how many sysadmins/netadmins run unpatched sendmails, old Windows NT boxen, old apache installs, et cetera. Then realize that my profession includes over half a million in the United States, and any group that size is going to include a few slugs who don't stay current.
But staying with the whole point of this article: technology doesn't make us better at our jobs. It's a nice tool. I started out in the late 1980's. Back then, our portable radios weren't that great, car radios weren't much better, reports were still written by hand, fingerprints had to be compared manually (which meant mailing them to the FBI) and the whole notion of in-car computers or cellular phones being standard equipment for everybody was something from an SF novel. And the in-car camera? I've got a Sony HandiCam mounted in mine. Love the thing: More than once someone has complained about how abusive I was when I stopped him for weaving, and the video shows him opening the car door and passing out drunk on the road before I'm within fifteen feet of him. And we sure didn't have THAT kind of help in 1989.
And just the same, we did our jobs and did them reasonably well. When it's a genuine improvement, it can make a good officer even more effective. Unfortunately, these wristwatch gadgets are a disaster waiting to happen IMHO.
Actually, yeah it does.
And this is Thomas Edison's technology. How much more fragile is a wristwatch? (Hint: I break at least one Casio G-Shock a year on duty.)
I won't trust my life to one of these gadgets. Nor would I recommend that anybody else do so. The combination of a good retention holster and proper training is plenty to keep a cop from being killed with his own weapon.
Unwise investments weren't limited to the dot bombs.
Look at energy, for instance: Enron. I'm no accountant, but I can usually read a balance sheet. Theirs was written with the intent to conceal a whole mess of liabilities and inflate the stock price. That's exactly why Arthur Andersen is in a boatload of trouble and a bunch of their execs are facing criminal penalties.
And the analysts and professional investors should be able to read understand this stuff. They SHOULD have been able to see a company with a very badly mangled balance sheet, and recognize that a company not forthcoming about its financial situation probably has ample reason to lie or at least obfuscate.
Look at telecoms. How many other people here watched Qwest go tits-up? And being a Qwest customer, the notion of seeing Nacchio and Anschutz in Canon City married to the self-respecting armed robber with the most cigarettes doesn't offend me as much as it probably should.
It wasn't just techs. There were plenty of other sectors in which investors didn't do the due diligence.