It's about freaking time!

For the record, I know everybody and his brother will be posting on the topic of G-Rod, today.

I'm unoriginal.

So sue me.

Anyway.

I love my home state of Illinois, but for years I've been embarrassed and frustrated by its politics. We who live downstate have little or no power to counter the massive forces of corruption from Chicago.

That's why it's nice to hear that the feds have taken Blagojevich into custody. He's the most frustrating and embarrassing element of IL politics, currently -- frustrating because his actions are quite obviously corrupt, and embarrassing because they're so obviously corrupt. It's bad enough to have a crook in office, as long as, for the most part, he's done little real harm to the people (hearken back to the days of Da Mare, Richard J. Daley). But this guy and his cronies have been both criminal and harmful... and the Blowdried One has been stupid and clumsy, to boot.

Of course, I should be grateful that Blago is such an idiot. He has probably made it very easy to remove him from office, and possibly opened the door to a thorough house-cleaning. But we have to live with the aftermath. Part of the aftermath is that there is no Republican party to pick up the pieces. The last batch of candidates for gov. from the right side of the aisle were mostly a bunch of wooden lumps, none of whom seemed able to demonstrate a lick of leadership in simple times... so we're supposed to expect them to handle a mess like this? We haven't had a real leader in the Illinois Republican party since Big Jim Thompson left office. Edgar was okay, but he just held the office, no great shakes. And then, of course, there was Ryan. [cue theme from "Jaws"]

So, we'll just get more Dems. Same old same old. Except we'll be getting more of the less-experienced Dems, and it's likely that, in the long run, they'll grow up to be more like Blowdriedovich than like Big Jim.

But wouldn't it be nice to think we really were heading for a happy future?

"Brothel bus" shut down in FL

End of "hello, sailor" tour.

Via Jammie Wearing Fool:

Miami Beach Police shut down operations and tour of what they termed a "brothel bus", on which clients could have unlimited drinks for $40, plus lap dances, and, for a slightly greater consideration, some intimate contact...

I understand the owner had decorated the bus up to draw the right sort of customers... I suppose it might have looked something like this. But I'm just guessing.

Pigging it lovingly, 21st century style

In my training for work at Colonial Williamsburg, lo, these many years gone by, I was given a journal in which the author had spent a night at a one-bedroom farmhouse/inn, sharing his bed with the owner, his wife, and multiple children, "pigging it lovingly," as would a sow and her litter.

I think this carries the concept a little too far:

RCMP have arrested a pair suspected of stealing 22 pigs from a barn near Sussex, N.B., in a getaway that police say was likely a very tight squeeze.

snip

The two from Petitcodiac, aged 19 and 20, are suspected to have used one small car to haul the 22 pigs, weighing 23-27 kilograms each [approx. 51-56 lbs.], from the farm to the house in Havelock where police tracked them.

For those of you who are farm illiterate, we're talking about wedging into a compact car 22 animals whose dimensions approximately match those of a mid-sized dog. Plus the two thieves. Plus any ... uh ... pork by-product which may work its way to the floor.

Const. Jim Gass said the stench from the pigs was immediately apparent to investigators, who found a small car, filled with pig droppings, as well as sacks used to transport the pigs.

"This little car they transported them in once had like 22 pigs," Gass said. "Man, it wasn't a lot of room in the car. She would have been a noisy affair, I would imagine, and quite a wild ride. Something you see in the movies, I would guess."

I wonder who squealed on them?

(HT: Jungletrader, working backup at Jules Crittenden's blog)

What's the difference?

Ed Morrissey asks the question of "what difference exists between this and the hate-crimes legislation that I opposed two weeks ago."

The case in question is of Jonathan Paul, member of the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front -- a radical anti-scientific-research, anti-development, generally anti-human organization connected to PETA -- standing trial for arson terrorism. This is, right here and now, different from plain arson due to the intent to force the majority population, by fear, to follow the radicals' agenda.

The acts of which Paul stands accused are attempts to undermine this constitutional democratic republic's rule of law. His action isn't aimed at anybody special -- it's aimed at everybody. This is a deliberate threat to our entire free nation, in much the same way as any other treason, petty or grand.

But in a later post, Morrissey says

I'm starting to think that hate crimes and terrorism designators both take us down a dangerous road. If the criminal act doesn't carry enough deterrent through normal penalties, then increase the penalties for everyone who commits them -- whether it be battery, arson, or murder. Let the motivation prove the crime rather than become a crime in itself. Otherwise, we invite a thought-police mentality that will ensnare American liberty more than it does evil.

Ed is right. It is a dangerous road to start down -- having special laws for intent... but then, isn't that always the case? After all, the difference between plain old manslaughter and murder is often one of intent. "I didn't mean to kill him," can get a person out of jail (well, maybe with a fine and probation) nine times out of ten, if the argument is well presented. But if your intent was to kill and leave his body parts across seventeen states so he'll find it hard to rise again on Judgment Day, well, heck, see you in Marion, eh? The difference between prosecution for shoplifting and going home embarrassed is, did you really mean to run out from Victoria's Secret into the Mall's Food Court with that unpaid-for bra draped across your arm? (And, no, it didn't happen to me. It's hypothetical, okay?) Did he really need those 300 kilos of heroin for his own use, or is he a dealer? Did she drive over her ex-husband thirty-seven times because she hoped to teach him a lesson or did she just think there was something goofy going on with her left rear tire? The whole issue in most criminal cases involves intent.

A young man I once knew burned down a building in a town quite far from here, because he liked to watch those sexy fires. He is a danger to anybody who owns a flammable structure, but, by and large, that's the extent of his threat.

Jonathan Paul, on the other hand, was networking to do damage far beyond just watching the pretty colors of the flames. Intent matters.


"Hate crime" laws, on the other hand, are designed to declare or create one or more protected classes, and an act against one of those classes is not necessarily an act against the entire nation. There is often no crime other than expressing an ugly opinion -- as in the case of the Illinois high school girls.

In some ways, I see the laws describing and limiting "hate speech" and the like, as much of an assault on our free nation as Paul's fires are. It is again the tyranny of the few, and in both cases, it's done in all arrogance, by others who in reality don't give a rat's patootie about any of us, "for our own good" and for their own gain.

And, sadly, the latter of Ed's two posts rather nicely reinforces our apparently very similar opinion of those "hate crime" laws.

Is it good news or bad news for Blagojevich?

Yesterday's Trib ran the news that Governor Blagojevich's campaign finances were subpoenaed by the feds....

Today, they report that his Chicago campaign office suffered a break-in last month, and a laptop computer -- with all sorts of crucial information -- was stolen.

Is this a bad-luck-all-around thing, or a bad-news-good-news thing?

21 32 dead in Virginia Tech shootings

I came to it a little late, but I've just spent the past hour and change watching the news on television. It's enough to have made this agnostic invoke a deity. Several times.

I don't know any more about the VA Tech shootings than anybody else does, which is to day I know nothing, really. Nobody has released the name of the shooter, nobody knows his motive (and it will likely be some time before anybody does). Nobody has answers, yet. We hear nothing.

Unfortunately, what's been going through my head has been the old Boomtown Rats' song, I Don't Like Mondays.

I remember.

It's worse, I think, when you grow up thinking that a school campus is your second home. As a child of a professor, with nearly all my friends being teachers' kids, I want to think that the schools and colleges are safe -- safer than my house. It just isn't so. Aside from the everyday savagery that kids develop and dish out, the large, lethal scale is not a one-time thing. And it isn't just Brenda Ann Spencer, or the boys at Columbine. It has happened repeatedly, over the years, and nothing we can do will prevent it from happening again someday. No matter what we do to try to protect the students and teachers, there is risk in everyday living.

I grieve for every life taken.

The use of children in ugly ways

Many people are now almost immune to the news of pedophiles, baby-rapists, and such abusing children. The news and entertainment industries have made a big noise (justfiably) about the problem, and it makes headlines on a regular basis.

The problem is, that's not new. Neither is the use of children as decoys in committing crimes. The news Charles Johnson posts at lgf is horrific, and deserves headlines, as well, but kids have been decoys for a very long time. The practice even touched our own family, in my pop's childhood.

Pop had an uncle who lived in Missouri, just across the border from "dry" Kansas, in the 1930s. After all the other states had repealed prohibition, Kansas continued to bar the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages. All liquor transport was stopped at the state lines. But Pop's uncle used to make the rum run on a regular basis, tossing my pre-school-aged pop on the seat above the crates of hooch.

The first time Pop was asked if he wanted to go for a drive in the country, it seemed like a swell time. But it gets to be a chore, and my father has, to this day, resented the role he played in breaking the law -- especially considering the risks being taken -- and, I believe, would not forgive his uncle even at graveside. After all, this was the sort of thing that would get the old man arrested, and where would the cops keep a little kid when the old man was in the clink? And, Pop was the sort of kid who had his moral bearings quite early -- he was a guaranteed Eagle Scout, he and his mom and sister and aunts all had strong senses of right and wrong.

Pop learned to dread the rides.

Pop was one of the lucky ones. He lived to tell the tales. He was otherwise unharmed, for all of his rides. He still has a family who loves him, regardless of how ill-used he was as a child.

The tots used by terrorists (why do the MSM persist in calling them "insurgents"?) have not been identified. The men who brought in the car bomb ran from the scene like cowards, letting the babies perish in a blast and a blaze. There was no love at all in this. Do the little ones' parents know and truly understand what happened to them? If so, how could they live with themselves, throwing away precious little ones in such a vile act. If not, then the act was doubly cruel for stealing the lives of little ones from caring families, and the terrorists will have a special place in hell.

From this agnostic's lips and keyboard to whatever deity's ear...