Author: Brian J. Noggle

Nugget from this story: Skydiver Dies After Striking Plane in Fla.:

Skydive DeLand, which organized the jump, said Saturday’s accident was not common. The death was the second involving the company this year.

Two deaths this year by April, and the accident wasn’t common? Brother, that’s too common to us consumers.

Ladies and gentlemen, watch what the authorities do to child molestors, because they will eventually take those same measures with other offenders.

• Registries and posting their names on the Internet? Already crept to prostitution and arsonists.
• Permanent institutionalization beyond the sentence imposed by the court.
• GPS tracking of previous offenders.

Because the crimes are so repellent, citizens will accept these measures and parents will clamor for them. But as the first item shows, once these rights are abrogated to protect the children, law makers and law enforcement officials will use those mechanisms to persecute other criminals who might commit the same crime in the future.

Sure, Westchester County only wants sex offenders to wear a bracelet; but sex offenders can take those off. Countdown to mandatory microchipping has begun.

O’Connor Dismisses Ado Over Int’l Law:

O’Connor, a Reagan appointee, participated in a lively one-hour discussion at the National Archives with Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen G. Breyer. She said if there is no controlling U.S. precedent or the viewpoint of states is unsettled, “of course we look at foreign law.”

“This is much ado about nothing,” she said in response to a question by moderator Tim Russert of NBC. “Our Constitution is one that evolves. What’s the best way to know? State legislatures — but it doesn’t hurt to know what other countries are doing.”

Our constitution has a mechanism in it for evolution. It’s the amendment process.

Any other evolution, a la reading the penumbras, emanations, and secret codes inherent in interpreting the rights derived from reading the third letter after every punctuation mark isn’t constitutional evolution. It’s judicial creationism.

(Link seen on Althouse.)

More women’s bodies protected by security cameras:

A San Francisco police officer is facing possible disciplinary action for allegedly using surveillance cameras at San Francisco International Airport to ogle women as they walked through the terminal, according to San Francisco Police Commission documents.

Oddly enough, he’s in the most trouble because apparently it wasn’t his turn at the cameras:

Police share the surveillance system with several agencies. When the Police Department traffic substation is controlling a camera, none of the other agencies is able to use that camera, the charging documents note.

Rossi allegedly spent a total of three hours manipulating six of the cameras.

He ignored coworkers’ warnings that he should not be using the cameras, saying “he did not care since he was not assigned to the substation he would not get in trouble,” according to the charging documents.

Here’s a feel-good story with a happy ending:

At first, Charles Kulage suspected a buddy was playing a joke by calling to verify his address and then saying his $4,296 federal tax refund check had been found at St. Peters’ recycling center.

But it wasn’t a joke. While sorting paper, a worker at the recycling center spotted the check Monday and saved it from destruction.

A happy ending until you consider how much attention workers pay to papers in the recycling bin.

This message brought to you by someone too paranoid for a shredder.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want a new organization. I want People for Ethical Treatment By Animals. Because I don’t think it’s right that people are treated this way by animals:

74-year-old animal lover was found dead in her home after what police believe was a brutal attack by the woman’s two mixed-breed dogs.

Animals shouldn’t treat people this way. Join us next week when we splash some red paint on a chow to protest that breed’s tendency to bite off the hand that feeds it.

US sent banned corn to Europe for four years:

All imports of United States corn have been stopped at British ports following the discovery that the US has been illegally exporting a banned GM maize to Europe for the past four years.

It’s all part of the long-term Bush plan to alter the genetics of Europeans using genetically-modified corn to make Europeans lazy and unself-determined and to suppress their sex drives, yielding a lower birth rate so that Europe has to rely on radical, non-integrating Islamic immigrants for population stability. Ultimately, the Bush administration wants to generate a rationale for the Second Crusades which will begin in twenty years when Empress Barbara I invades Europe to liberate the Cradle of the Enlightenment from the Heathen.

That’s why the United States, as a nation and a single entity, shipped genetically modified corn to Europe. Those who think it might have been a single company’s error swallowed in the bureacracy are simplistic and lack the imagination for proper conspiracy-mongering.

Spokesperson spokes:

The TSA won’t comment on the specifics of the reports until they are released, spokesman Mark Hatfield Jr. said.

But, he said: “When the political posturing is over, rational people will see that American screeners today are the best we have ever had and that they are limited only by current technology and security procedures that are significantly influenced by privacy demands.”

Handy thumbnail translation for those of you outside of the government:

“We need more money and less oversight to increase our productivity.”

Three quick hitz from the last week’s Shepherd Express, which we picked up in Milwaukee but didn’t actually use to find activities downtown:

• Something Doesn’t Add Up: Did John Kerry Win?
  

  Five months after the election of George W. Bush on Nov. 2, 2004, something still doesn’t add up.

  Although the election results have been accepted by the majority of the country, a nonpartisan group of university-affiliated statisticians and other experts found that something may have gone very, very wrong—so wrong that the wrong man may be sitting in the White House.

  This group, USCountVotes, looked at the exit poll results taken throughout Election Day by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. The exit polls indicated that Democratic nominee John Kerry would win by 3% of the popular vote. Nevertheless, George W. Bush officially won the national popular vote by 2.5%. This type of discrepancy is the largest to ever occur in a presidential election. Exit polls are conducted with those who have just voted—they are not a sampling of “probable” or “eligible” voters before the election.

  Five months after the election and a non-partisan but named group has analyzed the exit polls and determined John Kerry won the presidency. If only we could get the damn constitution and its means for determining the presidency out of the way. What’s next for these people? In 2000, they wanted to selectively recount ballots from only certain areas; in 2004, they want to use exit polls instead of ballot counts. What’s next for 2008? I’m less than eager to find out.

• In a piece entitled "Destroying Dorothy: How a media tycoon got even with a Hollywood actress", the author poses this question:
  

  How much, if at all, was newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst to blame for the shocking fate that overtook the brilliant young Hollywood actress Dorothy Comingore?

  The author then spends two pages recounting what happened to Comingore, but the only evidence presented against Hearst is that she starred in Citizen Kane and that Hearst was rich and powerful. Ergo, or Ogre as the case may be, Hearst was behind it all. Because that’s the only reason it could have happened.

• But, on the other hand, I am what Media Musings columnist Dave Berkmann calls a blogosphere enforcer:
  

  You have to wonder—five years out, will any expression that a right-wing administration and its blogosphere enforcers object to be considered acceptable?

  I would bust Berkmann’s kneecaps, digitally and metaphorically of course, were he worthy of the attention. Because columnists among real papers know they’re inconsequential in 2005 unless the blogosphere either loves them or hates them. But Mr. Berkmann, I don’t think of you.

Since 2000, a large number of publications have become largely unreadable, with every article and column somehow bemoaning the controlling force of the Administration in Washington. Harper’s, Time, The Shepherd Express….

Funny how these sorts of publication laud more intrusion helpful participation from the Federal government in daily lives, whether through free health care that will determine who gets what care, to regulation that makes it harder for new pharmaceutical products that will help many come to market because it will harm a few, to what words the FCC will ban from television (whether it’s racial epithets that are banned or swear words). Unfortunately, its the growth of this encroachment benevolent despotism that makes the occupant of the White House too damn important for daily life and for overemotionalism in daily, weekly, and monthly publications.