04.28.07
Posted in News, Police State at 12:53 pm by Joe Blubaugh
I don’t know if you’ve heard about the Kathryn Johnson case, but it’s one of the canonical examples of police excess in prosecuting the War on Chemical Substances. She was an octogenarian living in Atlanta who was killed by police after firing a single shot to defend her home after police broke in with a ‘no-knock warrant.’ There were no drugs in her home, and narcotics officers have now admitted planting marijuana and presenting false evidence of cocaine purchases in order to cover up their mistake.
Two of the officers have pled guilty to manslaughter and are testifying that members of their squad routinely lied and planted evidence to get search warrants. They apparently did this because it was too hard to catch and convict drug dealers the Constitutional way.
No-knock warrants are meant to protect officers when entering homes that have surveillance equipment and, possibly, weapons that may endanger their lives. In fact, officers were able to get such a warrant for Kathryn Johnson’s home by falsely stating that her home was equipped with surveillance devices.
This is not a case of a corrupt police force. They didn’t take bribes or kickbacks. This is an overzealous, almost vigilante group like the NYPD’s Street Crime Unit in the Giuliani days. They’re the good guys and anyone who lives outside the narrowly defined behavior that they approve of are bad people, to be watched until there’s some pretense to arrest them. I’m glad the corruption in the APD is being exposed, but it’s foolish to think that this sort of thing doesn’t happen all over the country.
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04.27.07
Posted in Personal, News at 10:58 am by Joe Blubaugh
Minor Developments in my life:
- I acquired a $20 bicycle yesterday from another student. It is a cruiser, it is old, and it needs work. Hooray for summer projects.
- I’m getting ready to start development on a GUI redo of the Dromanova downloader for emusic. Dromanova is, as far as I know, the current best solution for emusic customers who use Linux. I’m going to start by building one in Qt so that it runs nicely on my KDE desktop. If it all works well, I’ll write a GTK version as well, and maybe even a native win32 one. Hooray for summer projects.
- I’m starting at GE May 14. I will be working in the MRI digital hardware group testing, documenting, and fixing FPGA logic for an RF reference signal board. Hooray for summer projects.
- I’m getting a new car. The spaceship (Dodge GC) is going to my brother, whose 16th birthday is impending.
Because it’s Friday, here are ten random songs I’m listening to:
- Fixing a Hole - The Beatles
- The Sporting Life - The Decemberists
- You’re the Reason I’m Leaving - Franz Ferdinand
- Jams Run Free - Sonic Youth
- Her First Mistake - Lyle Lovett
- Books Written for Girls - Camera Obscura
- Kelly - M83
- The Great Escape - We Are Scientists
- Life in a Glass House - Radiohead
- A Man Walks Into a Bar - Jens Lekman
The presidential race is actually beginning, with the first Democratic nomination debate last night. It’s a pretty bland field on both sides so far. All the Democrats support withdrawing from Iraq, all the Republicans support the President’s current “mo’ troops, mo’ problems” policy. Kucinich is at least an entertaining watch, and I love that he wants Cheney impeached. Komodo Dragons Out!
On the other side of the aisle, I can’t decide whether I’d like McCain or Giuliani less. McCain has sold himself out these last six years - he hasn’t been a maverick since we’ve had a Republican president. Apparently President Bush’s campaign tactic of slandering McCain put John in line, and now he’s doing propaganda walkthroughs of Baghdad markets. Sad. Giuliani’s a very mixed bag, too mixed for my taste. He’s shown some rudimentary support for gay rights and women’s health, but he’s also a hair-trigger freak-out artist with fascistic tendencies.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that I won’t be voting Republican in 2008, but as noted above, I’m decidely non-plussed with the Democratic field. Isn’t that always the case, though?
UPDATE:
I take it all back. Giuliani is total scum.
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04.16.07
Posted in News at 11:27 pm by Joe Blubaugh
There’s a lot of speculation and few facts right now about the Virginia Tech shooting. That hasn’t stopped members of the media and interest groups from pouncing ghoulishly on the event to push their particular ’safety before freedom’ agenda on the public as it reels from a tragedy.
As you see the reports, don’t forget:
- Violent crime is down in the US. Despite our constant paranoia about violent death, shooting sprees, and other violence, our country is already a pretty safe place to live. It is less likely that you will be the victim of a violent crime now than at any time since the statistics have been compiled.
- No matter what we do, some violent crimes will occur. Hindsight will always let us see ways that a particular tragedy could have been avoided, but we will never control all the factors that lead to violence, and some will always occur.
- There is almost always a tradeoff between freedom and security. Whether it’s police officers constantly patrolling a campus and watching you, searches and seizures when entering buildings, or random drug testing, your personal freedoms are limited every time you submit to another layer of security. Many of these practices really do little to increase security and are really meant to aid in convictions post facto rather than prevention.
It’s likely that people will be crying strenuously for increased campus security patrols for the next several months. Don’t accept the argument that this will suddenly make your campus a safer place. School shootings and violence on campuses is already rare. Increased campus security will likely only result in increased inconvenience and more citations for petty infractions like jay-walking, littering, and loitering, rather than any real increase in safety.
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04.06.07
Posted in News at 4:39 pm by Joe Blubaugh
At least this state. Indiana is such a mixed-up backwash of a state, and it’s only getting worse. We’ve got these awesomely tacky “In God We Trust” license plates now. They are not the standard plate, but they are offered to drivers at no additional cost. The cost difference between them and the standard IN plate is coming out of the state Highway Fund. The Fund also supports things like road repair, the State Police, and so many other essential infrastructure requirements.
Since Indiana is just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Bible belt, I’d like to predict a few future outcomes:
- Your neighbors ask you why you didn’t get one of the new IGWT plates. It’s just another street corner to profess your devotion to Jay-sus, to prove the depth of you Pharisitical piety.
- Your local BMV tells you that this is the only standard plate. I’ve already had people in Evansville telling me the BMV is making this misrepresentation.
- We continue to raise property taxes to fund the missing bits of the Highway Fund while our infrastructure keeps on languishing and we lease more of it to unsupervised, voter-independent private firms for way less than it is worth.
- The ACLU sues Indiana for violation of the establishment clause and infringing the rights of certain Hoosiers. Despite this being a very reasonable position, it turns into a PR nightmare for them as the people of Indiana continue to contort their brains into some kind of pretzel.
- Joe has one more reason to look somewhere far, far away for a job - somewhere that isn’t telling him a little more each day that he’s not really welcome here.
For more info, please see Lauren or Melissa. Ugh.
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04.04.07
Posted in Personal at 6:35 pm by Joe Blubaugh
You’ve got to be kidding me - it was snowing when I got out of class today. It’s just one of those weeks, I guess. Don’t look for anything favorable to happen until at least Saturday.
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04.01.07
Posted in Personal at 9:40 am by Joe Blubaugh
The power company decided to play a little April Fool’s joke on us today and shut down the power to almost all of West Lafayette. No traffic lights! No internet! I’m glad Purdue has its own power plant.
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