Congresswoman Tailgunner Nancy

Nancy Pelosi has accused President Trump of a coverup in plain sight of crimes that she's not willing to mention.  Seems to me that Senator Joe McCarthy was censured by the Senate for about the same thing.  Just sayin'.  Same thing goes for Schiff, Nadler, and a whole lot more.

Why rape investigations go nowhere

One might think that a key element in the 88-96% of rape allegations that end with neither a criminal conviction nor a conclusion that the reporter was lying would be the fact that typically, a rape is witnessed only by the perpetrator and the victim.  True as far as it goes, but according to this report from the Star-Tribune, other key elements include:

• Investigator never assigned to investigate, 25%
• Investigator never interviews victim, 33%.
• Police never interview potential witnesses, 50%. 
• When the name of a perpetrator is provided, police check background only 10% of the time.

Overall, adequate investigation appears to have been done, according to the Strib, in only one of five cases.  The scarier thing, in my view, is that the conviction rate in Minnesota appears to be better than average, implying that nationwide, the police may be putting even less effort in this regard.


But you can always find Officer Friendly on traffic patrol, or busting dopers.


It strikes me that if someone you love is assaulted this way, you might do very well to keep the parable of the persistent widow in mind.  Don't let it be comfortable for police investigators to let your case slide.

Too true

The Babylon Bee reports that a caravan of pre-born babies has escaped to artificial wombs and stolen their mothers' cars to make it safely to freedom and safety in Alabama.


Yes, for the humor impaired, this is satire, but at a certain point, Roe v. Wade does need to be challenged, and it will be done with a law like Georgia's or Alabama's.  Probably wasn't wise to eliminate exceptions for rape and incest, but at some point, it will need to be challenged. 


One big mistake I think the laws' sponsors made, though, was trying to get the laws passed simply because they had the votes, and not after seriously trying to make the case that there is something obscene about things like keeping abortion clinics open (and medical clinics closed) in poor neighborhoods by routing Medicaid recipients to Planned Parenthood for birth control and the like.  Laws that pass without establishing a consensus are awfully hard to maintain.

Where'd the 4th Amendment go?

One of the most interesting questions that comes to mind with the attempted full body cavity exam of the President by House Democrats is whether there is any limitation imposed on Congress by the 4th Amendment, or at least by the principle that there must be a justifiable reason for a demand for evidence.  A new tactic by Comrade Pelosi is to demand it under the threat of impeachment. 


Now this is yet again more evidence that Pelosi is not the sharpest knife in the block, as even she should know that without a clear piece of evidence, the Senate is not going to vote to convict, but for those of you who value the opportunity to have decent men and women in public service, you'll want to oppose those who want to impose a legal "full body cavity exam" when there is no clear evidence of wrongdoing.  Fishing expeditions are for fish, not for people.

Missed it

According to Russell Moore, I have apparently missed my midlife crisis.  I guess I am going to have to come up with another great reason pathetic excuse to get myself that $10,000 carbon fiber bicycle. 

Pure genius!

Somebody is spoofing bottled water while creating a brand just perfect for punk rockers by selling canned water from the Alps as "Liquid Death Spring Water."  Looks like something that I'd be glad to take to yoga class.  That is, if I did yoga besides "downward dog doing something inappropriate for the living room." 


Yes, you can buy it on Amazon.  I just might get some, just so I can drink from a can of "liquid death" at group meetings.

New York Times: Doxxer?

That's about the only conclusion I can come to with the recent New York Times article about President Trump's tax returns.  They say the returns were provided by someone authorized to have them, but that doesn't change the fact that if the person is in government, releasing them without proper cause is a felony, and even if the person is outside the government, it's generally a crime.  Certainly H&R Block would reconsider an employee's  employment status if they found out an employee was shopping such information around, and notify authorities.


It strikes me here that it's very interesting that the media couldn't talk with people who knew Barack Obama in college, or find an indication of what his grades might have been at that time, but they can induce people (perhaps Michael Cohen?) to break the law to release Trump's tax returns. 


Can't exactly say they're not biased, can we?

Life and times of the unobservant

New Jersey "Senator" Cory Booker is endorsing a national registration of gun owners, apparently first of all ignoring the fact that such national registries were used to disarm victims in all of the major genocides of the 20th century.


Now that I can sort of forgive--Booker's degrees probably don't include history--but what is telling is that Booker, a lawyer, appears to be not only unclear on the Heller and McDonald decisions, but also appears to be unclear on the fact that where they exist, state and city gun owner registries do not appear to have a measurable impact on crime rates.  For example, the Illinois FOID program is entirely compatible with huge crime rates in Chicago, East St. Louis, and elsewhere.  It is as if criminals are people who do not obey the law.


It also is worth noting that when we think of the mass killings which get a lot of press, almost all of them are the first major crime by the perpetrator, which means that either the national registry would fail to help the problem, or it would require a fairly lengthy psychological evaluation that would wrongly prohibit many people who pose no threat from exercising their legal right. 


Even then, you've got the reality that a lot of people seem to "snap" into a psychosis or other disorder that leads to violence--the long and short of Booker's proposal is that huge amounts of treasure and liberty would be squandered for little gains in public safety--or possibly losses in public safety, as, again, criminals are defined as people who do not obey the law.


It's especially galling in that there are two wonderful known ways to greatly reduce carnage on our streets.  First of all, shift police from traffic patrol to things like murder and rape investigations, and shift resources to make sure things like rape kits are properly analyzed and catalogued.  Second, stop paying people to have children outside of wedlock.


Or is that too much to ask? 

Now here's an interesting question

Attorney for sexual abuse survivors John Manly links a very interesting article that deals with the detection and punishment of child pornography.  It's saddening to consider the poor guy who has to look at the stuff, and it's not surprising that those who look at child porn are also likely to molest children, but the thing that raises the most question is why black men are only 3-5% of those convicted of possession, trafficking, and the like--when they are 12% of men overall. 


You could argue it's poverty, but if so, Hispanics are also strongly likely to be poor--and about 2/3 of blacks are middle class or upper class as well.   Now I admit I'm working from stereotype, but I have to wonder whether the (again, stereotypical) preference among blacks for more prominent "features that become prominent after puberty" (hips, breasts) inoculates them against child porn.


Is it possible that doing what both feminists and traditionalists have been pleading for for decades--to redefine beauty away from the "Twiggy" standard--might put the kibosh on this perversion?  I don't know, but it's worth a look.

Snort

Apparently some clowns in Philadelphia have stolen half a million bucks worth of colonoscopy probes from a hospital.  So we would infer either that there is a market out there for back-alley colonoscopies, or somebody has a level of sick I don't even want to consider. 

Good news from Paris

Apparently the organ at Notre Dame escaped damage during the fire.  Especially interesting to me is the notion that the instrument ought to be played during the restoration to keep it healthy.  I'm guessing that this will NOT be done while the masons are restoring the vaulted ceiling!


On the flip side, talk about a great job--restoring one of the premier cathedrals of the world while listening to its organ being played.  Well, great except for the possibility that said vaulting might be fairly unstable and dangerous, of course.

Votes for felons?

Apparently some of the Democratic candidates for President are all in favor of letting convicted felons vote, including those who are still in jail.  It really boggles the mind; these guys are in jail for various kinds of assaults on their fellow man--physical, financial, drug related, etc..--and Democrats seem to want to allow them to continue their assaults on society by how they vote.


Of course, the big reason Democrats want to allow felons to vote is because they believe those felons would vote predominantly for Democrats.  Makes one wonder, really, whether we ought to rewrite the Democratic Party platform as "we victimize you". 


In other fun news, Hilliary Clinton has come out saying that if Donald Trump were not President, he'd be being prosecuted for obstruction of justice.  Now for starters, the woman who "lost" her Rose Law Firm billing records until the day after the statute of limitations expired, and who evaded prosecution for her server based on a rather novel interpretation of the law by Jim Comey, really ought to be lying low for a little while, I'd think.


But more importantly, she's showing her status as either not very smart or a demagogue here, as any halfway intelligent person knows that the entire case Mueller might have made against Trump hinges on....actions Trump could only have taken as the President.


Nice rhetorical flourish, Mrs. Bimbo Eruptions Team, but let's try reality for a while.

Now there's brilliance

New York City mayor DiBlasio has argued that steel and glass buildings ought to be banned due to perceived energy inefficiency.  Lost in his argument, really, is the fact that despite the fact that even "Thermopane"/"low-E" glass has abysmal insulation value, big buildings like the World Trade Center and the Sears Tower do not have boilers for heating because lighting, people, and the like heat them.  They run air conditioners year-round, and hence those big glass windows are actually a feature, not a bug--they allow heat to dissipate. 


Plus, the masonry that characterizes Gotham's iconic brownstones and other historic architecture has about the same "R" value--about 2.4/12" thick--as thermopane windows.  So DiBlasio's proposal would, if implemented, have about the same effect as it would if all of New York City's residents decided to live like the mayor--driving a big SUV to work each day, living in a big mansion, and the like.

Missing your Easter basket?

Apparently the Easter Bunny got involved in a brawl in Orlando, Florida this year.  So if your Resurrection Day treats were a little bit scant this year, you might know why now.  No word if he spent time in the pokey, but obviously fights like this are going to make it more difficult to deliver Easter baskets.  And if you follow the link to the local coverage, evidently the Easter bunny knows him some serious Anglo-Saxon words, and you can see the poor guy who will be known forever as "the guy who got beaten up by the Easter Bunny". 


It reminds me of the time when my brother and I, along with my cousin, found that a rabbit had burrowed into our basement while my mom and aunt had gone out to eat.  They arrived to find us all downstairs, and when my aunt asked her son what we were doing, he happily announced (at about age six) that we were hunting the Easter Bunny.


Upon which my mother and aunt wondered if they'd underestimated how much they'd had to drink that evening.  The good news is that the offending rodent was safely captured and released into the wild after getting stunned by a piece of plywood we'd put across an open doorway (it was otherwise hidden by a curtain). 

A cure for drug addiction?

Researchers have found evidence that alcohol-dependent rats drank less after being given a dose of oxytocin, the "cuddle hormone."  One might wonder whether getting oxytocin in the normal way might be helpful, too.  I'm telling Mrs. Bubba that we've got to do what it takes to prevent addiction.