Quotulatiousness

December 20, 2025

The “pursuit” of the Brown University shooter as a parable of incompetence

Filed under: Law, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Mark Steyn is supremely unimpressed with the quality of police work demonstrated by the “forty-seven genius law-enforcement agencies” apparently involved in investigating the murders at Brown University and the murder of an MIT nuclear fusion expert:

The Brown University shooter has been found dead by his own hand in a storage locker in southern New Hampshire. The entire officialdom of Providence, Rhode Island celebrated by throwing “the most worthless, uninformative, cover-your-ass press conference I have ever seen in my entire life“.

You’ll be glad to hear that the DEI Mayor of Providence has declared “we believe that you remain safe in our community“. He said this at 11pm last Sunday, but his statement was technically true because at that point the shooter was driving out of “our community” up to someone else’s community to kill an MIT professor, who would assuredly be alive today had not everybody in Providence bungled everything that could be bungled. The storage-locker guy and the Boston guy are both Portuguese nationals of the same age who are believed by the FBI to have attended the same university in Lisbon at the end of the last century. What that means, who knows? A random mass-shooting as prelude to something more personal and targeted? As is now traditional, I doubt we shall ever know, […] However, we do know how the forty-seven genius law-enforcement agencies “cracked the case”. An Internet user saw this post on Reddit, and brought it to the attention of one of the forty-seven agencies, who shortly thereafter swung into what passes for action. Here’s what the Redditor wrote:

    I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental. That was the car he was driving. It was parked in front of the little shack behind the Rhode Island Historical Society on the Cooke St side. I know because he used his key fob to open the car, approached it and then something prompted him to back away. When he backed away he relocked the car. I found that odd so when he circled the block I approached the car and that is when I saw the Florida plates. He was parked in the section between the gate of the RIHS and the corner of Cooke and George St.

That’s it. That’s the entire “investigation”. “He blew this case right open. He blew it open,” cooed the Rhode Island Attorney-General, Peter Neronha. “That person led us to the car, which led us to the name, which led us to the photographs of that individual renting the car, which matched the clothing of our shooter here in Providence, that matched the satchel which we see here in Providence.”

Great. His name is “John”, and he had multiple interactions with the killer on the day of the shooting — both in the bathroom of the building two hours beforehand and by the car to which the killer kept circling back to see if “John” had ended his apparent stakeout of the vehicle. He spoke to the man long enough to determine that he had an “Hispanic” accent. In fact, Portuguese. But close enough. Or closer than the forty-seven kick-ass agencies.

But here’s the thing: “John” only wrote his post on Reddit because nobody on the scene was interested in what he’d seen that day. “John” is apparently a homeless man who lives in the basement below the scene of the shooting.

Come again? Brown University lets the homeless live in its faculty buildings? You might want to bear that in mind if you’re thinking of taking on six-figure debt to be gunned down at the Ivy League.

Oh, wait, no, relax: “John” is not any old homeless man but a graduate of Brown. They’re not all working as baristas. So it’s some grandfathered-in alumni legacy racket.

Which brings us to the other thing: He was generally known to be living there. So, on Saturday or at the very latest Sunday, why did no-one from the forty-seven kick-ass agencies seek to interview him? His would surely have been a unique perspective: neither teacher nor pupil, but someone who knows the building after-hours and observes the comings and goings. One expects the three-mil-a-year DEI president’s “campus security” to totally suck, but how can you call in the FBI and then the elite best-of-the-best G-men not be aware that there’s a guy living in the basement under the scene of the crime who had multiple interactions with the perp?

As I have had cause to remark a thousand times, nothing works anymore. When I observe that of the UK, English readers get mildly peeved. When I observe it of the Fifth Republic, French readers start gabbling and waving their Gauloise-stained hands around so animatedly their strings of onions fall from their shoulders. And, when I observe it of the United States, American readers get particularly chippy. But I’m an equal-opportunity civilisational doom-monger: we’re all going over the falls, and arguing that the canoe of the Euro-pussies or the tight-assed Brits is a foot-and-a-half ahead isn’t really much consolation. Police-wise, the Aussie constabulary bollocksed Bondi Beach and the forty-seven Yank agencies bollocksed Brown and MIT.

Of course, with the revelation that the shooter may have been Portuguese, the race hustlers are busy re-sorting the hierarchies of victimhood:

May 5, 2021

QotD: The United Nations

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

One of the reasons I’m in favour of small government is because big government tends to be remote government, and remote government is unaccountable, and, as a wannabe world government, the UN is the remotest and most unaccountable of all. If the sentimental utopian blather ever came true and we wound up with one “world government”, from an accounting department point of view, the model will be Nigeria rather than New Hampshire.

Mark Steyn, “Would you trust these men with $64bn of your cash? Of course not”, Telegraph Online, 2005-02-06.

January 11, 2017

QotD: Seasteading

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

It’s an enticing idea though hardly an uplifting one, a pricer version of the escapist Free State Project. Yet the underlying rationale behind those fleeing to New Hampshire, or trying to establish civilization in the middle of the ocean is the same: We’ve lost the battle for freedom at home.

This defeatist mentality is common among refugees. It is also understandable among those whose countries have fallen into dictatorship and civil strife. America is neither a dictatorship nor on the verge of a second civil war. Adam Smith observed that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation. It will take more than eight years of Barack Obama to fell the most powerful nation on earth.

There’s a strange irony with projects like Seasteading and the Free Staters. The type of people naturally attracted to these movements are hardly weak willed or easily deterred. A list of advocates for setting up some small piece of libertarian paradise reads like a Who’s Who of Silicon Valley. Men and women who feel confident enough to creatively destroy entire industries but, somehow, feel incapable of winning a political argument against those often less intelligent and accomplished than themselves. There is more than a whiff of nerds being intimidated by the cool kids.

The dream of running away and creating a perfect society, or at least a better one, is hardly new. It must have been in the minds those early colonists who spread across the Mediterranean in the wake of the Greek Dark Age. It was, of course, the impetus for British settlers to establish their colonies in North America and the Antipodes. There are times when the only sensible thing to do is leave.

The cost, however, is enormous. Creating a new society, even while carrying the best of Western Civilization, is a dangerous and incredibly complex undertaking. It took the thirteen American colonies more than a century and half to reach anything like a critical economic and political mass. This is the basic flaw in Seasteading, even leaving aside the enormous cost of building the infrastructure. Societies are not computer software, they cannot be programmed or adjusted at will. They must evolve organically over time if they are to survive. This is why many Seasteading proposals come off as pitches for high-end hotels and conference centers. The social element is missing.

Richard Anderson, “A Billionaire’s Utopia or How To Run Away From Your Problems”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2015-05-28.

January 23, 2014

Rand Paul as 2016 frontrunner

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:36

It’s probably a case of The Atlantic needing to get extra pageviews, but here is Peter Beinart making a case for Rand Paul being the frontrunner for the 2016 Republican nomination:

To understand the Kentucky senator’s hidden strength, it’s worth remembering this basic fact about the modern GOP: It almost never nominates first-time candidates. Since 1980, George W. Bush is the only first-timer to win a Republican nomination. And since Bush used the political network his father built, he enjoyed many of the benefits of someone who had run before. It’s the same with Paul. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, he begins with an unparalleled infrastructure left over from his father Ron Paul’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns.

Start with Iowa. Last May, Rand Paul gave the keynote speech at the Iowa Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner. How did he secure this prize invitation? Because the chairman, co-chairman, and finance chairman of the Iowa Republican Party all supported his father. Rand Paul’s not the only potential 2012 candidate who will inherit a political infrastructure in the Hawkeye State. Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee also have networks left over from prior runs. But their supporters don’t play as influential a role in the state GOP. “RPI no longer stands for the Republican Party of Iowa,” noted a recent article in Politico, “but for Rand Paul, Inc.”

Because the Iowa GOP will elect new leaders next spring, it’s unlikely “Paulestinians” will so thoroughly dominate the party leadership in 2016. But Craig Robinson, former political director of the Iowa GOP, says that’s actually to Rand Paul’s advantage, since it will free up some of Iowa’s most powerful Republicans to run his 2016 campaign. The Iowa caucuses are, famously, a test of organization. And for that reason, Robinson argues, “Rand Paul has a huge advantage in this state. There’s an organization built that has grown and been able to be maintained for four to six years. That’s a headstart. There’s no other candidate who has something like that.” It’s “almost like having the advantage of having run before.”

Despite his organizational strength, Ron Paul’s libertarian views capped his support in Iowa, preventing him from winning over more traditional conservatives. But in 2016, Rand Paul will be less of an ideological outlier than his father was in 2012. That’s partly because he has avoided some of his father’s edgier views. (He’s more supportive of foreign aid and sanctions against Iran, for instance.) And it’s partly because more Republicans now share his suspicion of the national-security state. Last summer, more than 40 percent of House Republicans voted to curb NSA data collection. “Rand has a much broader appeal than his father,” Robinson says. Polls reflect that: A survey last December for the Des Moines Register found Paul with a lower unfavorability rating among Iowa Republicans than either Christie or Jeb Bush.

If Paul is, arguably, the early leader in Iowa, he may be the early frontrunner in New Hampshire as well. While Ron Paul placed third in Iowa in 2012, he placed second in New Hampshire, losing only to Mitt Romney, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts and a national frontrunner with a vast financial edge.

December 5, 2010

“People talk about how knives are dangerous, and then they go in the kitchen and they have 50 of them”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:54

Marc Lacey looks at the non-firearm right-to-carry movement:

Arizona used to be a knife carrier’s nightmare, with a patchwork of local laws that forced those inclined to strap Buck knives or other sharp objects to their belts to tread carefully as they moved from Phoenix (no knives except pocketknives) to Tempe (no knives at all) to Tucson (no knives on library grounds).

But that changed earlier this year when Arizona made its Legislature the sole arbiter of knife regulations. And because of loose restrictions on weapons here, Arizona is now considered a knife carrier’s dream, a place where everything from a samurai sword to a switchblade can be carried without a quibble.

Arizona’s transformation, and the recent lifting of a ban on switchblades, stilettos, dirks and daggers in New Hampshire, has given new life to the knife rights lobby, the little-known cousin of the more politically potent gun rights movement. Its vision is a knife-friendly America, where blades are viewed not as ominous but as tools — the equivalent of sharp-edged screw drivers or hammers — that serve useful purposes and can save lives as well as take them.

[. . .]

“People talk about how knives are dangerous, and then they go in the kitchen and they have 50 of them,” said D’Alton Holder, a veteran knife maker who lives in Wickenberg, Ariz. “It’s ridiculous to talk about the size of the knife as if that makes a difference. If you carry a machete that’s three feet long, it’s no more dangerous than any knife. You can do just as much damage with an inch-long blade, even a box cutter.”

[. . .]

“We had certain knives that were illegal, but I could walk down the street with a kitchen knife that I used to carve a turkey and that would be legal,” Ms. Coffey said. “I’d be more scared of a kitchen knife than a switchblade.”

She said switchblade bans were passed in the 1950s because of the menacing use of the knives in movies like “West Side Story” and “Rebel Without a Cause.”

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