This is the place for you to have your say — to engage, criticize, chime in, insult or just plain vent about the news of the day. I post, you decide in the comments, where I will also mix it up with you. Always wanted to be an op-ed columnist? Here’s your big chance. Ready…aim… let ‘er rip.
First, the news from Ferguson:
Michael Brown was shot in the head and chest multiple times, according to Mary Case, the St. Louis County medical examiner.
While Case declined to comment further, citing the ongoing investigation into Brown’s death, another person familiar with the county’s investigation told the Washington Post that Brown had between six and eight gunshot wounds and was shot from the front.
In addition, Brown had marijuana in his system when he was shot and killed by a police officer on Aug. 9 in Ferguson, according to this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
Legendary M.E. Michael Baden weighed in earlier:
Dr. Baden provided a diagram of the entry wounds, and noted that the six shots produced numerous wounds. Some of the bullets entered and exited several times, including one that left at least five different wounds.
“This one here looks like his head was bent downward,” he said, indicating the wound at the very top of Mr. Brown’s head. “It can be because he’s giving up, or because he’s charging forward at the officer.”
As I observed on Facebook yesterday:
All the shots hit Brown in the front, and the final shot hit him in the top of his head, indicating he was likely charging the cop when the officer put him down. Looking at Baden’s sketch, it is possible to suggest that the cop was trying to hit him center mass but was missing to the left (common in the case of a right-handed shooter, especially under pressure). My guess is that the two head shots likely came at closer range than the others. We shall see.
It’s hard to see a happy ending for this one. Black people were understandably outraged at what first seemed to be an unwarranted police shooting (it may still be. We don’t know all the facts yet.) Still, the ever-helpful New York Times does its best to race-bait:
… majority-black Ferguson has a virtually all-white power structure: a white mayor; a school board with six white members and one Hispanic, which recently suspended a highly regarded young black superintendent who then resigned; a City Council with just one black member; and a 6 percent black police force.
(The Washington Post begs to differ, here.)
There was once a failed, now vanished, state that kept obsessive, taxonomic tabs on racial statistics and I think we all remember what it was. Meanwhile, speaking of fascists, the Democrats in Texas have now sunk to a new low: criminalizing politics. Even lefties like Jonathan Chait are aghast at the indictment of Gov. Rick Perry for the crime of doing his job:
They say a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and this always seemed like hyperbole, until Friday night a Texas grand jury announced an indictment of governor Rick Perry. The “crime” for which Perry faces a sentence of 5 to 99 years in prison is vetoing funding for a state agency. The conventions of reporting — which treat the fact of an indictment as the primary news, and its merit as a secondary analytic question — make it difficult for people reading the news to grasp just how farfetched this indictment is.
Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg — a Democrat who oversees the state’s Public Corruption unit — was arrested for driving very, very drunk. What followed was a relatively ordinary political dispute. Perry, not unreasonably, urged Lehmberg to resign. Democrats, not unreasonably, resisted out of fear that Perry would replace her with a Republican. Perry, not unreasonably, announced and carried out a threat to veto funding for her agency until Lehmberg resigned.
I do not have a fancy law degree from Harvard or Yale or, for that matter, anywhere. I am but a humble country blogger. And yet, having read the indictment, legal training of any kind seems unnecessary to grasp its flimsiness.
And just who is Rosemary Lehmberg? Behold the shrieking Dem harridan/DA the Dems are defending by trying to indict Perry:
[jwplayer mediaid=”4696″]
Jailer: You’ve been arrested for DWI.
Lehmberg: That’s your problem, not mine.
Of course, she didn’t resign — why would she? She’s a Democrat! And now the Travis County thugs are using lawfare against the governor, the same way they did against former Rep. Tom De Lay. Now you know what happens when a criminal organization masquerading as a political party gets its hand on the levers of government. Remember: they never stop, they never sleep, they never quit. They have to BE stopped. As Andy McCarthy notes, this is now politics as combat, and the rule of law be damned.
Did someone say “criminal organization“? As John Hinderaker asks at Power Line, “Is Nancy Pelosi a Crook?” Let’s ask Maerose Prizzi herself!
Lachlan Marklay, writing in the Washington Free Beacon, reports that Nancy Pelosi steered more than a billion dollars in subsidies to a light rail project that benefitted a company run by a high-dollar Democratic donor and in which her husband is a major investor. Here, according to Marklay, is how the scheme operated:
Pelosi has worked for more than a decade to steer taxpayer funds to a light rail project in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, where Salesforce had planned a new campus. Experts say the project boosted the value of Mission Bay real estate.
The company’s CEO, Marc Benioff, is a high-dollar Democratic donor. Pelosi and her leadership PAC are among the recipients of his generous campaign contributions. Pelosi’s husband is also a major Salesforce investor.
In April, Salesforce sold its property in the Mission Bay area for a significant profit. CEO Benioff, the big Dem donor, obviously benefited from the increase in property values that federal funding helped generate. So did Pelosi, through her husband’s large investment in Salesforce.
Read the whole thing. As George Washington Plunkitt famously said, “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.”
Over to you. Follow me on Twitter @dkahanerules.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member