Quotulatiousness

December 6, 2012

“Yeah, uhhh … I don’t think driving around with 20 pounds of drugs in my car is really a good idea”

Filed under: Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:23

What do you do when you find $175,000-worth of drugs stashed on your property?

I am standing chest-deep in a dank, muddy concrete-lined hole in Silver Lake, staring eye-level into a duffel bag full of high-grade drugs.

It smells strongly of marijuana — despite the fact that someone sealed it tightly into jars, Ziplocs and professionally vacuum-sealed pouches before THEY HID IT IN MY BACK YARD.

I am starting to panic.

I already did the full Tex-Avery-wolf AOOOOGAH! upon discovering the mammoth sackful of dope — estimated to be worth somewhere north of $175,000. My jaw already dropped. My eyes already bugged out. Now my heart is thumping my gullet. Breathing is getting iffy.

I try to speak. I think my exact words to the solar-panel technician standing equally open-mouthed next to me are something to the effect of “Holy. Fucking. SHIT!”

H/T to Matt Welch:

September 18, 2012

Jaywalking in LA County: a capital offence

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:06

A very disturbing story at the Simple Justice blog:

Jonathan Cuevas was a jaywalker. That’s right, a jaywalker. And jaywalking is an offense. This means that those who are of the view that the simple solution to whatever stems from the commission of an offense is, by definition, justified. After all, Cuevas chose to jaywalk. He chose to commit the offense. So he has no one to blame for his killing than himself.

And if this is what you think, then you have lost any shred of humanity.

[. . .]

The gun is a red herring. Notwithstanding the fact that the video fails to show anything remotely suggesting that Cuevas pulled it on the unnamed deputy, and despite the absurdity of such a claim, he was shot, again and again, in the back as he ran away. There is no theory to explain an officer in fear from a person’s back as he ran away. This, of course, didn’t stop the police from asserting with absolute certainty that it happened.

Yet, there is not only a lack of focus on what is clearly shown in the video, but the possibility that it was wrong to execute Jonathan Cuevas for the heinous offense of jaywalking was dismissed because the police and district attorney “investigated.” After all, if they investigated and decided that this was a righteous shoot, what more is there to say?

September 19, 2011

The “Day of Rage” turns into a damp squib

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:38

Apparently it wasn’t the start of the anti-capitalist revolution after all:

September 17 was supposed to be the Day of Rage, the starting point of an anti-capitalist revolution that (in theory) was going to sweep the country coast-to-coast. As I noted yesterday, “The plan is to protest in state capitals and major cities across the nation, but the focus of the revolution will be in New York, where a hoped-for 20,000 anti-capitalists will ‘occupy’ Wall Street.”

I dutifully sent my operatives out to cover what were to be three of the largest Day of Rage protests — in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles — so humanity would have a full record of this pivotal moment in history.

Really, I should have learned my lesson by now: The bigger the build-up to a protest, and the more grandiose the promises, the louder the sound of the bellyflop onto the dustbin of irrelevancy.

In other words: “Day of Rage” was a massive FAIL.

Lots of sad photos at the link. Even the fringy-est of fringe movements were represented. As one of the photo captions says, “Down in L.A., there were so few authentic protesters, that the LaRoucheites comprised a significant proportion of the attendees.”

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