Category Archives: Crime

DWB’s freed

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DWB suspectsYes, Driving While Brown is still enough to get you tossed in jail. Oh gosh, what am I saying? It’s getting so bad you could probably get a week in solitary just for a Mystic Tan these days.

Admittedly, these guys were not only driving while brown, they were also transporting cellphones. You know the most popular kind of cellphone? That’s right, the Razr! Razors are like box cutters…and vans and planes are both kinds of transportation…you see where we’re going with this. Do we have to spell it out for you?

From BoingBoing:

Cellphone terror detainees: not guilty, just inconveniently brown

The FBI today said it has no reason to suspect terrorism ties for three Palestinian-American men arrested in Michigan and charged with “collecting or providing materials for terrorist acts and surveillance of a vulnerable target for terrorist purposes.” The men were stopped by authorities after buying 80 pre-paid cellphones at a Wal-Mart. Their van contained nearly a thousand such phones, and the men said they planned to re-sell them at profit. Nearby, in Ohio, a prosecutor today said he lacked evidence to present felony terrorism charges against two more Arab-American men arrested in a similar incident last week over bulk cellphone buys. Link to AP story, via MSNBC (Thanks, Malik Mitchell).

Sploid R.I.P.: let’s not shed a tear

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for when they die, we get their stuff.

Yes, Sploid, one of my favorite sites, is no more. Axed. Deep-sixed. Ah, well, I can’t say it any better than they did.

Just like YouTube, Lebanon, Joe Lieberman, newspaper circulation and airline travel, Sploid is being demolished.

It is a great victory for bullshit peddlers everywhere … if they had any idea Sploid existed.

Shut down, laid off, on the nickel, run out of town, shown the door, eighty-sixed, suicided, under heavy manners, finaled by the fuzz, down in the hole, out of the groove, sadder than a map, under the Hoover blankets, taking a bank holiday, riding the rails to Hungry Town, brought down and fought down.

Winners write the history books, but anybody can write the blog post. So get right up close to your computer screen and we’ll tell you a little story…

And so they do, at length, but who cares? More interesting to me is their secret file of Weekend Filler How-To’s, as apparently Denton didn’t want them to play with real news on the weekend, as they might break it. So here’s their secrets to handy-dandy filler, secrets which I intend to carry to my grave.

After posting them here, of course.

This magical world

When in doubt, run a picture of a monkey

Sploid wasn’t just a 24-7 news operation — it was a painstakingly engineered information factory.

While free from the dull tyranny of “Headline News” or “whatever’s on the front page of the New York Times,” Sploid editors nonetheless followed careful instructions formulated by senior editors.

Say it was a Saturday, and nothing was happening in the world except bombs in the Middle East and world leaders dying or lapsing into comas, and maybe the planet was getting hotter or whatever. On those “slow news days,” and even on some exciting days, the editors had to rely on a detailed technical manual with exact instructions for filling the “news hole.”

Following the Sploid Topic List requirements resulted in the following wonders from this magical world we share:

Animal adventures

* Violent deer
* Cat-eating raccoons
* Insidious marmots
* Puppy bombs
* Fainting goats
* Disgraced goats
* Worthless panda bears
* Christmas-ruining possums
* Headless roosters
* Monkey cops

Nation of …

* Foreclosures
* Gangsters
* Murderers
* Retards
* Teenage crack whores
* Witches

Hoboes

* Killed for a beer
* Secretly practicing law
* Rioting
* Talking on cell phones
* Acting righteously
* Roughed up by high schoolers
* Killed by elderly sociopaths
* Suing libraries

Jesus

* Not screwed by Judas
* Appearing in a plate of manicotti
* Appearing in asparagus
* Coming out
* Being blond
* Lacking health insurance
* Probably died hanging upside down like a bat

NASA

* Kills the Ivory Billed Woodpecker
* Launches a non-exploding shuttle
* Enlists the aid of robot lemurs
* Valiantly battles an army of roadkill
* Hits a run of even worse luck than usual
* Bans dangerous foreign 5-year-olds

Other topics of constant concern included robots, monkeys, occult killings, X-rays of humans revealing foreign (and frequently disturbing) objects lodged within, Nazis, dismemberments, frightening conspiracies featuring the Knights Templar and/or Dick Cheney, dumb and/or evil cops, UFOs and the many problems faced by America’s obese citizenry.

We hope you continue to enjoy these timeless tales from our most delightful planet.

Sara K. Smith was Sploid’s bureau chief in Austin and is a novelist, which means she has to get a job now.

UK T.W.A.T. ratio of arrests to convictions less than 41:1

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Support TWAT!Stolen  from Horse Badorties, who put it in a comment here on Guido‘s blog.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal): Statistics provided to the Home Office by the Police on arrests and charges from 11 September 2001 until 31 December 2004 under the Terrorism Act 2000 are on the Home Office website. (These are compiled from recent police records and are therefore subject to change as cases go through the system.)

Key Facts and Statistics
Police records show that from 11 September 2001 until 31 December 2004, 701 people were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000.

Charges
119 of these were charged under the Act. Of these, 45 were also charged with offences under other legislation.
135 were charged under other legislation. This includes charges for terrorist offences that are already covered in general criminal law such as murder, grievous bodily harm and use of firearms or explosives.

Convictions
17 individuals have been convicted of offences under the Terrorism Act

Other Information
The following table gives the outcome for those not covered above:

Outcome
Transferred to immigration authorities 59
On bail to return 22
Cautioned 7
Dealt with under mental health legislation 7
Awaiting extradition 1
Returned to prison service custody 1
Released without charge 351

ironic quote o’ the day: Justice Department censors Supreme Court on Freedom of Speech

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F*ck CensorshipOkay, so this is an oldie; it’s still a goodie. From the Memory Hole, which I miss dearly; not gone, just stagnant.

“The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent.”

Yes, that’s the quote the Justice Department attempted to suppress.

Anybody who has read many official documents—including those making headlines in the last year or more—has seen plenty of redactions (those portions that are blacked out or otherwise made unreadable). This, we’re told, is for legitimate reasons, such as “national security” or “protecting intelligence sources and methods.” But now we have absolute, incontrovertible proof that the government also censors completely innocuous material simply because they don’t like it.The Justice Department tipped its hand in its ongoing legal war with the ACLU over the Patriot Act. Because the matter is so sensitive, the Justice Dept is allowed to black out those passages in the ACLU’s court filings that it feels should not be publicly released.Ostensibly, they would use their powers of censorship only to remove material that truly could jeopardize US operations. But in reality, what did they do? They blacked out a quotation from a Supreme Court decision…The mind reels at such a blatant abuse of power (and at the sheer chutzpah of using national security as an excuse to censor a quotation about using national security as an excuse to stifle dissent).

maximum security for flyer distribution

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Free stater arrestedAre we all so very sure that the Swastika isn’t becoming more and more appropriate? Several years ago, The Memory Hole reported on an American who was thrown in jail for days, simply for taking a photograph of a major chain hotel in which Dick Cheney was staying.

Note that this is not, in fact, against any law.

Now BoingBoing reports that an American libertarian has been thrown into maximum security for sending leaflets to IRS agents.

Homeland Security nabs Free Stater
Anonymous says:

 A member of the Free State Project, Russell Kanning, was arrested recently for attempting to distribute a flyer to IRS agents in his home town asking them to quit their job. The flyers contain anti-war content, criticism the Bush administration for its erosion of civil rights, and a form resignation letter addressed to President Bush, which he is asking IRS agents to sign.

Kanning remains in a maximum security and will not be allowed visitors.

And just in case anyone thinks I’m playing favorites here, I’m not a fan of the Free State Project (they are the types who are the worst bores at parties) but even I don’t think they should be thrown in prison. Check it out:

A new strategy for Liberty in our Lifetime

Are you frustrated at the loss of freedom and responsibility in America, while the growth of government and taxes continues unabated? Do you want to live in strong communities where your rights are respected, and people exercise responsibility for themselves and their dealings with each other?

If you answered “yes” to those questions, then the Free State Project has a solution for you.

What the Free State Project is…
The Free State Project is an effort to recruit 20,000 liberty-loving people to move to New Hampshire. We are looking for neighborly, productive, tolerant folks from all walks of life, of all ages, creeds, and colors who agree to the political philosophy expressed in our Statement of Intent, that government exists at most to protect people’s rights, and should neither provide for people nor punish them for activities that interfere with no one else.