Category: News

Magic Marker used in commission of felony:

Students at Kirkwood High School provided information to police that helped lead to the arrests of four teenagers in the scrawlings of a racial slur and a swastika at two schools, police said Friday.

Kirkwood Police Chief Jack Plummer said officers picked up the teenagers, one of whom is a juvenile, on Thursday and Friday on suspicion of vandalism and a hate crime, a felony. Plummer said officers sought one more suspect.

The slurs were discovered Aug. 29 near the south entrance of Kirkwood High and at St. Paul’s Lutheran School in Des Peres. Officers said the scrawlings, made in permanent marker, were a curse word, a racial slur and a swastika at Kirkwood, and a swastika at St. Paul’s. The scrawlings included the phrase “the kings,” a reference to a band the suspects like.

Well, then, it was permanent marker, so lock them all up for five years!

The magic hate crime designation multiplies every crime, no matter how trivial, into a felony. Say nigger, and it’s free speech. Say kike while throwing a gum wrapper on the ground as you pass a synagogue, and you’re penitentiary-eligible.

Owen at Boots and Sabers has the story of an Appleton judge who assigns custody of a minor to an inappropriate institution.

Manchester mayor expects retail center will happen:

In a tie vote, the Manchester Tax Increment Financing Commission declined Tuesday to recommend that the city approve the Manchester Highlands shopping center project – and the tax increment financing plan that would go with it.

The six members of the commission appointed by city officials favored the Pace Properties Inc. project. The six members appointed by other jurisdictions, mainly St. Louis County and the Parkway School District, opposed the proposal.

Aldermen are expected to consider the commission’s action at a meeting Nov. 7. Mayor Larry Miles said he expected the project to move forward anyway.

This isn’t taxation without representation at all. It’s reduction of taxation without representation, and although it does place a larger tax burden on the non-Elect amongst us who don’t have the juice to impress municipal officials, it completely adheres to the founding philosophy of our nation. Also:

Some city-appointed commission members urged Pace to avoid using eminent domain to get land for Manchester Highlands. Doug Huff, vice president of Pace, said his company generally avoided its use.

As a mere citizen of a former representative democracy, where governments exercised emininent domain and other rights ceded to governments by its citizens, I supplicantly plead that Pace also not raise an army and compel me to shop at its little principalities scattered among the formerly free city-states that comprise what was the United States of America.

Columnist charged with domestic battery:

Chicago Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member Neil Steinberg was arrested at his home late Wednesday and charged with striking his wife during an argument.

Steinberg was charged with domestic battery and interfering with the reporting of domestic battery, both misdemeanors, Northbrook Police Sgt. Tony Matheny said.

I’ve enjoyed Steinberg’s column for years, but one thing I’ve disliked is when he’s made cheap shots on Bob Greene, former columnist for the Chicago Tribune for a slightly sordid but legal adulterous dalliance with a teenager. Now he’s got his own troubles and material for cheap shots from people who disagree with him.

There’s a lesson to be learned from this, gentle reader. Unfortunately, it kinda eludes me, and I expect I, too, will continue to be snarky until my own wife beating comes to light.

Please, gentle reader, send me flowers when my beautiful wife puts me in the hospital.

1. Declare something a fundamental right:
   

   San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who became internationally known for his campaign a year ago to legalize gay marriage, said on Monday he considered wireless Internet access a fundamental right of all citizens.

   Newsom told a news conference that he was bracing for a battle with telephone and cable interests, along with state and U.S. regulators, whom he said were looking to derail a campaign by cities to offer free or low-cost municipal Wi-Fi services.

   Wi-Fi is a short-range wireless technology that is now built into most laptop computers and is increasingly offered on handheld computers and certain mobile phones. Local officials are mulling plans to blanket every nook and cranny of this hilly city of 750,000 residents with Wi-Fi access.

   “This is inevitable — Wi-Fi. It is long overdue,” Newsom told a news conference at San Francisco’s City Hall. “It is to me a fundamental right to have access universally to information,” he said.

2. Fund it with tax dollars–or do you want to roll back all civil rights and repeal the right to vote for blacks???!

Lindenwood wants city to use eminent domain

Lindenwood University officials want the city to use the controversial power of eminent domain to force out a heating and air conditioning business to make way for a new fine and performing arts center.

Lindenwood President Dennis Spellmann asked city officials Tuesday night to consider using such authority to allow a redevelopment corporation, headed by Spellmann and two other university officials, to purchase a 4-acre site along West Clay Street near the northwest corner of West Clay and First Capitol Drive. The private university has already acquired about 20 acres for the project.

The 138,000-square-foot, $32 million complex would feature a 1,375-seat auditorium for live performances as well as classrooms, rehearsal studios and office space. University officials hope to begin construction before the end of the year.

Local universities seem to have some sort of phallic competition regarding these venuews; UMSL has opened one which continues to struggle with low attendance and debt, but the president of Lindenwood wants the city of St. Charles to steal some land to give his university land to build another. Well, not the university, per se, but a redevelopment corporation run by him and a couple of other officials.

But he’s been pushed to the end of the rope:

Spellmann said he’s avoided using eminent domain to acquire property in the past but thinks the university has exhausted its options in this case.

Spellman’s damn benevolent to avoid using his power of stealing private property, but he’s almost exhausted all options.

But Spellman fails to, purposefully I would suspect, to take the remaining legitimate option available to the university: Build his boondoggle somewhere else. Or don’t bother. Two options Spellman doesn’t include in his list of options for confiscating someone else’s land for his own ends.

Leader of New Orleans Police Resigns

Police Superintendent Eddie Compass resigned Tuesday after four turbulent weeks in which the police force was wracked by desertions and disorganization in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.

I’ll grant Police Superintendent, but leader? I think not.

Professor Reynolds overlooks the obvious when he comments on the disparity between males and females in universities:

I like to walk around campus on nice days, and sometimes I take pictures. When I post them on my blog, people always comment on the number of women in them. But, in fact, that’s a pretty accurate reflection of what college campuses look like these days. (Fellow photoblogging professor Ann Althouse has noticed the same thing.)

Reynolds quotes an article from USA Today which posits 138 women for every 100 men in college. Reynold speculates about the causes and possible solutions to the disparity, but he overlooks the “Jan and Dean” solution.

Universities can move more towards an equitable distribution of genders by promoting:

1.38 Girls for Every Boy

That would certainly increase male enrollment.

A European Space Agency mission, named Don Quijote, might practice deflecting asteroids.

Geez, does anyone else think that the result of the mission might be akin to a break in billiards, where a bunch of things go flying off in all directions, making previously not dangerous Near Earth Objects into killers?

I mean, they did name it Don Quijote, for crying out loud. Also, they have an aging population which weighs upon their economies that cries out for a radical solution.

Holiday Inn Unrolls Gen X Welcome Mat:

“It has lots of glass and is very open. We’re collaborating with a feng shui expert,” Snyder said. “Gen X is very into looking toward the east.”

Cancel our reservations for the Hilton, honey, its layout will anger ancient Chinese spirits and besides, you know how the temprapedic mattresses malign my chakras.

I’d weep for my generation if I weren’t a part of it and close enough to know Snyder’s kookier than we are.

State set to roll out tire-cleanup fee:

Lack of money temporarily let the air out of Missouri’s program to find and clean up tire piles.

But that should change soon. For the first time since January 2004, retailers will collect a 50-cent fee on each new tire sold in the state, starting Oct. 1. The money will support the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ waste-tire cleanup and enforcement program.

Missouri lawmakers renewed the program this year when they passed a larger hazardous waste bill. Senate Bill 225 also created a 50-cent fee on the sale of car and truck batteries, to address broader hazardous waste efforts. That fee, which also goes into effect Oct. 1, covers batteries containing lead and sulfuric acid that are six volts or more.

Will they cut our taxes by an equal amount? Will they quit collecting the fee after they’ve cleaned up all old tires in the state?

How naive do they think we are?

They don’t care so long as we continue to have spare change in our pockets and we continue to hand it over.

What’s wrong with this story:Road-rage bullet hits tip of a raised finger:

About 12:40 a.m., the 25-year-old man was waiting at 500 South for the light to change so he could get on the freeway, said South Salt Lake Police Capt. Chris Snyder.

As he waited, a woman in what turned out to be a stolen car pulled up next to him.

The two made eye contact, but there was something about the contact that made the man uncomfortable, Snyder said. The light turned green and the two cars entered the freeway.

On the onramp, the man told police, the woman began to drive aggressively and sped up to pass the man. In doing so, she hit some traffic cones that gradually closed some of the southbound lanes, Snyder said.

Somewhere between 2100 South and 3300 South, the woman rolled down the window of her car and yelled at the man.

So he made an obscene hand gesture.

That’s when she apparently fired four shots at the driver’s side of the man’s car. One of the bullets hit the tip of the man’s middle finger on his right hand, severing it. His index finger also was injured, but not as seriously.

That bullet lodged in the man’s windshield.

The man tried to follow the woman, Snyder said, but lost her and so he went to seek medical help. He called for help near 6900 South and was taken to Cottonwood Hospital where he was treated and released.

So this woman whom the victim has never seen before yells obscenities at him, follows him, and shoots at him four times with a .357, managing only to hit the tip of his finger, after which he immediately pursues the crazy woman who just shot him until he loses her?

Why do I suspect any actual investigation will uncover more to this story?

Road rage? I think not.

Hiker stumbles onto pot farm in national forest:

It began when a hiker in the Prescott National Forest stumbled across some interesting-looking plants Wednesday and notified authorities.

It ended on Thursday, after a stakeout, with the arrest of a Mexican national from Los Angeles charged with marijuana production.

That’s indeed code. For:

Rodriguez-Martinez and the others were believed to be illegal immigrants, Jarrell said.

Look who’s blurring the distinction between the Mexican nationals from Los Angeles and illegal immigrants. It’s not the opponents of illegal immigration.

Boy, 4, lived in filth — and died:

When Ethan Patrick Williams fell off his bicycle in July, no one would have called the cuts and scrapes on his legs serious injuries. Four weeks later the boy, 4, died from an infection. Police say the boy had been living in filthy conditions, and they believe that squalor might have played a role in his death.

Because the police think that the squalor might have played a role, they did the only sensible thing: broke up a grieving family:

Ethan’s mother, Emily A. Altom, 25, and his stepfather, Michael D. Altom, 25, were charged Tuesday with voluntary manslaughter and three counts of endangering the welfare of a child. They were released Wednesday from the Perry County Jail on $15,000 bonds.

But let’s get to the squalor:

In a sworn affidavit, Cpl. Jason D. Kelley of the Perry County Sheriff’s Department described the Altoms’ trailer as unfit for any human dwelling. He described walls and carpeting as soiled and stained and said the floor and kitchen counters were piled high with clothes, broken toys, empty beer cans and rotting food.

He said there “was not enough sleeping space for three children, and no crib for the youngest child.” Kelley said the entire trailer reeked of “a foul offensive odor.”

Friends, that sounds like the Noggle household to a critical eye. As for no sleeping space for the children, am I to assume they never slept then?

I always get a little queasy with stories about child abuse and neglect, particularly as they play out in the papers and in the affadavits. I realize that I Don’t Have Children and Therefore I Cannot Understand (the Sheehanist religion), but building laws to defend the Children which depend upon arbitrary interpretations and impressions of public officials whose livelihoods depend upon prosecution seems like a couple of skips into tyranny. But of course, I don’t have children, so I look at this like a rational man and not a parent.

Five accused of stealing Missouri tax credits:

Five people were indicted this morning on federal fraud and money-laundering charges for what prosecutors called a $10 million scheme to steal state tax credits.

This could have been avoided if the state only adhered to a policy of taxing businesses equitably, regardless of how the state thinks the businesses benefit either the state or the state’s whims.

But that would deprive the state of its twofer: giveaways to its favorites and the ability to get tough on the crime its giveaways encourage.