Musings from Brian J. Noggle

In testimony why he suspected Scott Peterson in Laci Peterson’s death, detective Craig Grogan unloads his litany of probable cause:

Grogan, the lead investigator on the case, told jurors Monday that there was a lot about Scott Peterson that made him suspicious. Peterson was the last person to see his wife alive, the first person to find her gone, he had an odd alibi and it looked as though the former fertilizer salesman had been making concrete anchors in his warehouse.

There you have it. If you’re married to a murdered housespouse and you work outside the home, obviously you kill him or her because you’re the last to see him or her and the first to notice him or her gone.

Definitely another argument against marriage and cohabitation, or perhaps against interpersonal relationships at all. Never see anyone! It’s the only way to be safe.

(Public service note: don’t blog hungry; lack of blood sugar makes on note something silly and leap to spurious assertions. It’s the only excuse I can think of.)

UPDATE: Noun/pronoun agreement now corrected, dear.

Ann Althouse reviews John Kerry’s appearance on The Late Show last night, and she knocks it:

Kerry cranked out a dismal performance on David Letterman’s show last night. He alternated between rerunning lines from his stump speech and plodding through scripted jokes. Unlike Nixon on “Laugh-In” and other candidates who’ve used pop culture shows successfully, Kerry did not use self-deprecating jokes. He attacked Bush and Cheney and used “Halliburton” as a punchline.

Compare and contrast Kerry and Bush’s campaign speeches. Bush cracked jokes at his own expense, Kerry, not so much.

When you’re wound tightly into defending your gravitas and authenticity and nuanced intelligence, you have to fear that any crack you put in that image with your self-deprecating humor will cause a complete collapse of the public’s understanding of your qualification to lead the country, which is your own sense of worth.

After putting a 3 inch nail into his finger, a Scottish man went to his state-run hospital’s ER — and waited 22 hours before leaving with the nail still in his finger.

Keep that in mind: when every American has health care provided by the government, those who accept that level of help will get care on par with the level of service doled out by the tenured functionaries that serve in departments of social services throughout the country. Meanwhile, those who can afford it, and that will include everyone who makes the mandates, will go to private caretakers. Unless they ban private practice, mandaters exempted, of course.

Not so with someone to politicize the dead–especially her son:

Seth, 24, was in debt after he graduated from Rutgers University in 2002. He joined the army for money and skills that, he was told, would help land him a job with the CIA or FBI — his dream jobs. “Not for patriotism,” said his mother, Sue Niederer, who is now an anti-war activist.

Congratulations, mudder, you have just called your son a calculating mercenary who went into the military only for money and job experience.

Sheesh, I hope my mother doesn’t affront me when eulogizing me. But she’s a Marine, so (aside from that) she’s got some sense.

Headline: U.S. Weapons Inspector: Iraq Had No WMD.

Lead paragraph:

Fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but left signs that he had idle programs he someday hoped to revive, the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq concludes in a draft report due out soon.

Considering that actual shells with chemical weapons have been found, that logically refutes the “no,” but I suspect logic remains outside the grasp of some AP reporters.