Author: Brian J. Noggle

In California, a child has hit another with a rock. As it is in California, common sense does not figure into what happens next:

Until the afternoon of April 29, 11-year-old Maribel Cuevas’ only connection with law enforcement was involvement in a mentoring program sponsored by the Police Activities League.

But that day a rock she says slipped from her hand struck Elijah Vang, 8, in the forehead. A 911 call led to Maribel being arrested by Fresno police officers, handcuffed and taken to Juvenile Hall, where she stayed for five days before a judge released her on the condition she wear an electronic ankle bracelet.

On Wednesday, Maribel is scheduled to go on trial in Juvenile Court on felony assault charges. Authorities say the rock-throwing incident was too serious to be treated lightly.

Fortunately, Californians don’t hang children for being children. Yet.

Local terror fighters think big: A homeland security grant wish list including an armored carrier reflects a worst-case scenario.:

Denver-area coordinators charged with fighting terrorism want to buy a military armored vehicle – a Vietnam-era troop carrier to move police through gunfire and heavy contamination at the scene of a mass- casualty chemical, biological or nuclear attack.

They’re also good for pit bull search-and-destroy missions.

For those of you whom have doubted LASIK surgery, wherein someone peels your eye open like a grape and sucks out some portion of the inside for your betterment, we offer this heartening story of a plucky survivor: He wins $7.25M in botched eye surgery suit:

A former Wall Street broker won a $7.25 million civil suit after a botched laser eye surgery that he says left his vision permanently damaged.

The award, handed down by a jury in Manhattan Supreme Court, is believed to be the biggest so far in cases involving LASIK surgery.

Mark Schiffer, a 32-year-old Yale graduate, said the shoddy care he got from Dr. Mark Speaker and the TLC Laser Eye Center in October 2000 forced him to ditch his Wall Street career and take a job with his dad’s security firm, according to his lawyer, Todd Krouner.

Botched? It ruined his life to the point that:

Mark Schiffer, WG’01, has been named chief financial officer of Safe Banking Systems. Prior to joining SBS, Schiffer worked for Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs.

Yeah, thanks, brother, for raising the cost of eye surgery and all surgery for the rest of us.

(Link seen on Overlawyered.)

This graph tells a story: The United States is the stingiest of all countries relative to military budgets.

For example, the United States spends the equivalent of 3% of its defense budget on foreign aid. Contrast this with the Danes, who spend the equivalent of 52% of its defense budget on foreign aid. That is, for every defense dollar Denmark spends, it apparently also spends about a half dollar on foreign aid.

That’s a nice story, Bodie. But what this chart doesn’t illustrate is the relative size of these budgets. Ergo, it’s possible (but I am to lazy to research to prove) that Denmark’s defense budget is so low that 3% of America’s defense budget dwarfs the 53% commitment of Denmark’s.

So one way to bring this into parity would be to raise the foreign corruption contributions and NGO viggorish to 53% of the current US defense budget. The other is to drop the United States’ to match Denmark’s.

One assumes either would please someone who points to these charts as evidence of the United States’ stinginess. Personally, I’ll be satisfied with the absolute, real number amount our wise and benevolent (or at least smiling) leaders in Washington, D.C., expend or perhaps a little dissatisfied that it’s so much.

In Nebraska, one government entity wants to take over other separate government entities by force:

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman said Thursday that he is against an Omaha Public Schools plan to take over schools in the metro area.

OPS wants to annex 21 Millard schools and four in Ralston, which are within Omaha city limits. Eventually, Elkhorn Public Schools also would be part of OPS under the plan. The OPS School Board calls it a plan of one city, one district and said the move would level the playing field.

Four school districts have banded together to fight the plan, and Douglas County officials have told OPS that they have no authority to redraw borders or reassign taxes.

More evidence, along with intragovernment lawsuits over funding and eminent domain for “public use” that is merely an increased tax base, that government of the people, by the people, for the people has indeed perished, with government of the government, by the government, for the government holding the pillow over the republic’s head until it stopped kicking.

From an op-ed from one of Missouri’s state legislators regarding Medicaid budget cuts:

Before voting against the Medicaid and adoption-subsidy cuts, I urged my fellow legislators to remember that we must accept responsibility for what happens to Missourians who lose health coverage and necessary family supports.

I laud this legislator for taking personal responsibility for helping out the underprivileged and by conceding her own income to ensure they have a minimum level of sustenance….

Aw, hell, who am I kidding? By we must accept responsibility, she means we must compel the citizens of Missouri to take fiscal responsibility. Her only effort needs to be to act to ensure that others must act.

You get statements like this:

In April, Hilton issued a terse statement saying it was “no big secret that Nicole and I are no longer friends. Nicole knows what she did, and that’s all I’m ever going to say about it.”

How profound.

At Tech Central Station, Arnold Kling sums up the expensive and ineffective security measures the government is putting into place in response to terrorism.

They might sound familiar, gentle reader, because you might have read similar sentiments right here.

3 Teens Accused Of Kidnapping 10-Year-Old Boy: Boys Were Playing Video Games:

The case started when the boy was at his grandmother’s home and went next door to play video games with the teens.

Police said the teens stopped playing the games and started a real-life drama with real weapons.

The newspaper offers the hint of causation; had the young man gone next door to play Parcheesi, would we have heard about it?

How many planets are there in the solar system?

Ten:

A newfound object in our solar system’s outskirts may be larger than any known world after Pluto, scientists said today.

It also has a moon.

I guess that’s one argument against book learnin’; the books become obsolete after a while, even on the most settled subjects.

Let the drumbeats begin:

Police apparently using stun grenades raided a west London home Friday seeking suspects in the failed July 21 bombings targeting the capital’s transit system, and a British television network reported one arrest.

Police snipers participated in a raid in the Notting Hill section of London, where suspects in the failed July 21 bombings were thought to be hiding.

The raid took place near Portobello Road in the chic Notting Hill neighborhood famous for its weekend street market.

Metropolitan Police confirmed that “an armed operation is currently in progress” but said it was in the “very early stages.”

Sky News reported two small explosions in the area, where helicopters buzzed overhead and police cordoned off a number of streets, and said one person had been arrested.

Compare London to Baghdad:

• An increased pace of suicide bombings? Check.
• Increasing violence? Check.
• Armed operations leading to hunt the insurgents? Check.
• Squabbling political rivals with incendiary rhetoric? Check.
• Rationing/shortages that impair the quality of life of citizens? Check. In Baghdad, it’s water or electricity; in London, it’s health care.

What’s the contrast? We hear positive news regularly coming out of London, about people who go about their daily lives, entertain themselves, raise families (well, letting the government or street raise families), and some sense of normalcy.

If all we got was a steady stream of stories like this one from England, along with some stories of soccer hooliganism (I mean, attacks by forces loyal to local warlords) to break it up, perhaps we would want to abandon England.

(Link seen on Michelle Malkin.)

Prices have risen here on nearly everything but beer

So, what’s the problem?

From the story Popular combination of Missouri Lottery numbers drawn twice in same day, we get this potentially earth-shaking rethinking of number theory:

Triple numbers are popular Pick 3 bets, with 4-4-4 ranked as the top combination and 0-0-0 coming in 11th, Gonder said.

0-0-0 comes in 11th of a possible 10 triple number combinations?

Gonder might have said that the two triple number examples are ranked relative to the combination of all possible values and not just triple numbers, but the paragraph is not really clear.

Space-time continuum rift: Averted!