Police are investigating whether or not there was any connection between the map and the burglary.

Given that the robbers went straight for the gun-safe, it may seem as if the map informed them of the presence of guns in the house. Then again, that map would not have, of course, specified precisely where in the house the guns were, and yet the thieves went straight to them.

That bit suggests inside information, or opportunity to view the gun safe previously. In which case the map wouldn't be needed.

At the moment we don't know whether the Journal-News' map abetted this crime. Though it remains inarguable that the map could abet crime, and may abet future crime.

We also don't know about the more likely possibility -- that the map is being used to target homes without guns. It seems unlikely we'll ever know about that, as proving that would require the criminals to state "We picked the house because we knew it had no guns." I don't see any legal reason a prosecutor would ask about that, and as it's no legal defense (of course), I don't know why a criminal would offer that up. That is, the statement is important as regards a political/media controversy but isn't very important to the prosecutor trying to lock the guy up or to the criminal's legal defense, so I don't know how that would enter the record, or wind up being publicized.

In ten years, who knows, there might be a statistical analysis of crime in Westchester county which shows that the map did in fact inform criminals of their best targets. But that's a lot of years and a lot of data away.

One thing we do know, however: This anchorwoman really fills out a fuzzy sweater. Update: Emmy-worthy.

Huzzawhanow?

More: Tara Rosenblum seems to be deliberately hiding her elbows.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:46 AM | Comments (264)
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I would have posted this right after the news broke about the passing of the World's Oldest Toddler, but I was a bit held up last Monday. So here it goes.

For those who don't live in California, Mr. Howser was the host of over a half-dozen travel shows on public TV out here. So what?

Here's what: he was comically consumed by the most tedious aspects of every "journey" he took (see any of Adam Carolla's podcasts with Dana Gould), genuinely enthused about any tourist trap, sand pit, and park bench he came across, and there will never be another like him. He sucked you in with his child-like wonder. Often impersonated, never imitated, he truly loved the state he adopted and made his home, and it won't be the same without him.

R.I.P., and may the clouds be amazing.

Every possible example of his excitement to follow.
more...

Posted by: CAC at 12:52 PM | Comments (29)
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A year ago the LA coroner reclassified Natalie Wood's death from "accidental" to "undetermined."

They'll now reclassify it again -- to something other than "accidental" or "undetermined."

Which leaves only homicide, either of the murder or suicide type.

Posted by: Ace at 11:19 AM | Comments (123)
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What could go wrong?

In an interview, she explained the Republican character thus:

Why make him a Republican?

We liked the idea of a Republican entering their universe. And Hannah doesnÂ’t really have a clear sense of why you shouldnÂ’t date a Republican; itÂ’s kind of just like the same reason why you shouldnÂ’t date a Nazi: You just shouldnÂ’t.

Wait, so your position is that you shouldnÂ’t date a Republican?

My personal position is that you should date anyone you want so long as they treat you respectfully and share your value system. So it might be hard for me to date someone who was against gay marriage and abortion rights — I don’t think I would be attracted to them — but I don’t have any personal problem with dating a Republican. I do think that Hannah has this reverse ignorance where she’s like, If they’re Republican, get them out of my airspace, and that was a fun thought to explore.

Breitbart seizes on the Nazi quote while NakedDC argues that she didn't really call Republicans Nazis.

I don't think she really called Republicans Nazis herself-- it's more complicated than that. Actually, based on what she said, she's exploring the idea of "reverse ignorance" about Republicans, with the character just considering them beneath contempt without knowing why, is of course something we ourselves talk about.

Of course, the reason the show can explore this idea, and the reason Dunham is interested in it, is because it's a genuine phenomenon which she either a) partly believes or b) completely believes or c) completely believed when slightly younger and now that she's older only partly believes it.

So yes, certainly, the whole idea will make for a credible storyline because it's a real phenomenon, but it does seem that she's aware it's a form of "ignorance" and it seems pretty likely her character will wind up on the wrong side of the Learning Things storyline.

Of course, while it's nice and all that the storyline will involve reasons why the character (and by extension, us) is not really a Nazi, and why Dunham's character (which is pretty much just Dunham) is wrong about that and a little bit bigoted and ignorant, we're still going to have a show in which the heroine harbors these bigoted and ignorant views and suffers no social consequences for them -- no back-turning, no shaming.

While she'll undoubtedly learn that some of her intolerance is unfounded, I'm going to play Psychic here and just guess that 90% of her intolerance will remain unchallenged and hence, as a matter of unstated editorial, will remain endorsed in the show's view of the world. In fact, I'm going to go head and Predict that her big epiphany on Republicans is that some of them are reasonable and enlightened enough to hold Democratic positions on social issues.

NakedDC subtitles her take on the brouhaha "This is why we lose" -- that is, that conservatives tend to be looking for a reason to be outraged in a way we'd find tedious and silly if exhibited by others.

I do think it's a little bit that -- sometimes the Outrage Meter should be allowed to fall back down to zero, if only to make sure it's still functioning properly and can still fall to zero (or if it's broken and its lowest setting is now "Moderately Outraged").

But I think it's more two different effects:

The first effect is the Internet Dumb Effect, where people basically have only two possible reactions, glowing support or fiery scorn. People used to parody this effect when we saw teenagers arguing about -- so very long ago -- NSYNC, where one group of teenagers thought they were just the cat's pyjamas and another group called them NSTINK. Opinions on the Internet -- because they're often now expressed via Twitter, and 140 characters does not permit much nuance -- tend to be compressed into only two possible responses, "SUXXOR" and "ROXXOR," as the kids used to say (and we used to make fun of the kids for saying that).

SUXXOR and ROXXOR (or absolute hate and absolute love) are pretty rare emotions in someone's actual life but tend to appear on the Internet with far, far more frequency. And that's probably a silly thing.

The other thing that's going on is this -- most people do not really stay on the immediate topic, anytime, ever. If I found some kind of old document that reported Hitler's care for his dog, and the document said he treated the dog extremely well, people from all walks of life would call me a Hitler-loving Nazi-apologist.

People aren't particularly good at separating some minor piece of data from the entire corpus of data they know about a person or subject. Thus, my hypothetical "Hitler treated his dog well" document would immediately become grist for discussion not about the thing itself, but of Hitler and Hitlerism.

You see liberals do this all the time, of course. If a rare film has a conservative message, you'll see liberal critics reviewing not the film (which is what they're supposed to be doing) in favor of reviewing conservatism, which is not a film.

Kathryn Bigelow didn't get a Best Director nomination because many liberals in the Academy didn't review/evaluate her film, but instead chose to review/evaluate enhanced interrogation methods (SPOILER ALERT: they don't like them).

But people generally do this. They don't really parse this particular thing and that specific thing.

In this case, although there's "outrage" over Lena Dunham's words -- and probably somewhat misplaced -- what people are really doing is finding a new context in which to express their general disapproval of Lena Dunham, her politics and her insultingly jejune political ad (insulting even more to those it intended to sway-- a rare feat!) and her general worldview and Hollywood as a general matter.

Still, while that's understandable, and a perfectly normal method of human communication ("Let me take this one bit of minor data as a pretext to discuss the bigger thing I want to talk about"), it's not a very precise way to communicate.

And it can result in some silliness. In the Lena Dunham outrage, people are ignoring some words she said and smuggling in some words she didn't say in order to get to the bigger picture point, that she sucks.

I don't disagree that she sucks, but this quote probably isn't the best way to establish that proposition.

More: This part of the interview illustrates the perils of the ROXXOR/SUXXOR polarity:

Is that a fear thing, do you think?

Well, this is what I think about Taylor Swift all the time, that she’s like, “If you didn’t want me to write a song about you, then you should’ve been nicer.”

You were talking about Taylor Swift last week, and you said that some of your Twitter followers were horrified to learn that you like her.

Like three quarters of the girls that follow me love Taylor Swift, and one quarter are hipster doofuses who think the fact that she is Â… hereÂ’s the thing. Anyone who thinks Taylor Swift isnÂ’t good for the girl cause has to be crazy, because any woman whoÂ’s dominating the charts, the creative director of her own empire, and made whatever millions of dollars last year is only lifting us up. Killing it. And sheÂ’s super-creative, an amazing role model, beautiful.

My reaction was sort of, “You maybe don’t get this show if you can’t like these songs.”

And also I’m like, if you don’t want to feel, then — I don’t even know what music you should listen to. Just go home and listen to your German techno and leave me alone. But I just love Taylor Swift. And I think it’s fake intellectuals who don’t have an interest in her. I think real intellectuals would be interested in what she’s doing and understand that she represents something really cool and like a great cultural shift.

I'm with ya -- fake intellectuals, yeah. Keep it coming.

Anyone who tries to debate Taylor Swift with me, I’m like, “You are an uninformed consumer, and you will be shut down. You’re not doing this.” I feel the same way about Katy Perry. I’m like, If you wanna have a fucking conversation with me about Katy Perry — Katy Perry is a brilliant, hilarious Democrat genius.

You lost me.

Posted by: Ace at 10:37 AM | Comments (310)
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Gee, what a surprise! Organic foods are essentially identical to conventional foods, except of course for the massive price tag. So all of the billions of gallons of gasoline pissed away driving to out-of-the-way hippie hang-outs just to buy that organic kale and celeriac were wasted. Women and children hardest hit, of course.

The health claims made by the willing fools are legion. Corporate farming is responsible for a litany of first-world diseases (ignoring the thing that they are most responsible for....old age!), and organic farmers were going to save us from their depradations.

So who or what are they going to blame their imagined health problems on now?

Bush....of course!

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:55 AM | Comments (421)
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Posted by: andy at 10:08 AM | Comments (255)
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The second stage of the House's likely passage of bloated, "off-budget emergency spending" unrelated to the Sandy weather event will take place tomorrow. The bill has been cut into two parts so as to provide reluctant conservatives cover for passage of the pork-fest.

The first part is House Appropriations Chairman Rogers Sandy Supplemental bill, HR 152 as amended. This is the one that conservatives get to vote for, but it's far from perfect. HR 152 (including Rogers' amendment) clocks in at $17 billion. It includes:

• $3 million for oil spill research;


• $25 million for the failed Head Start daycare program; and


• $3.9 billion for a new HUD disaster program.
  

None of these should be off-budget expenses. They are in no way "emergency" or even one-time expenses. The new HUD program is particularly egregious, since, as you know, few federal programs are ever shuttered once created. Look for the program to get continued funding in March's budget proposals.

And that's just the "clean," conservative-friendly bill. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) will move to amend the bill to add enough pork to buy the votes needed for passage. The amendment adds another $33.67 billion to the price tag, including for such inappropriate spending as:

• $16 billion for HUD to spend on any disaster "emergency" that was declared in 2011 and 2012, and any that will be declared in 2013 (meaning in 47 states plus Puerto Rico at the moment).
  
• $2.02 billion for Federal Highway Administration to spend on roads first in Connecticut, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia whether they need Sandy-related repairs or not and then elsewhere in the country as FHA chooses;


• $561 million for the Corps of Engineers to spend outside of areas affected by Sandy, including $10 million for a national Water Resources Priorities Study;


• $100 million for Head Start;


• $86 million for AMTRAK on non-Sandy capital improvements;


• $40 million for military base repair and maintence, which includes spending for Guantanamo Bay;


• $25 million for NOAA to improve weather forecasting;


• $10 million for FBI salaries and expenses; and


• $2 million for Smithsonian roof repairs.

Once again, we see things that should be part of the regular budget (or, to be sure, cut from the regular budget) being slipped into off-budget "emergency" spending, like AMTRAK capital improvements, improved NOAA weather forecasting, Head Start funding, and FBI salaries.

Rep. Frelinghuysen's vote-buying scheme radically exceeds even the unconscionable proposals of President Obama and the Senate. The FHA road spending is $1.7 billion more than the President asked for and $1.1 billion more than the Senate passed. And the total Corps of Engineers spending is $166 million more than the President asked for.

These non-Sandy relief bills should be voted down. I could support a bill to aid the region hurt by superstorm Sandy. This pork-laden monstrosity is not that bill.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:14 AM | Comments (755)
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• 3.7 Million Guns Were Purchased In November And December Of Last Year
  
• Home On Journal News Gun List Burglarized, Gun Safe Targeted
  
• Jeanin Pirro Goes Nuclear On Journal News Cowards
  
• NBC Sports Sponsoring Gun Show
  
• Bin Laden Death Photos Might Not See The Light Of Day
  
• Schumer Asks Gun Retailers To Stop Selling Guns While Congress Works On Legislation
  
• More British Military Fail. C17 Breaks Down Moments After Receiving Praise From David Cameron
  
• Large Protests Against Gay Marriage In France
  
• Belgian Twins Request Euthanization And Receive It
  
• British Girlymen Want Miniskirts Banned From Offices
  
• Colin Powell, Democrat
  
• Reminder, You Can Buy This Caveman's Assault Weapon On E-Bay
  
• Piers Morgan, Fileted
  
• Clearly, He's Still Smating From That Interview
  
• Notes From Atlantis
  
• The Problem With The Greens
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:45 AM | Comments (138)
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Happy Monday.

Patterico has an exclusive about prosecutorial overreach and potential misconduct in the federal case against tech genius Aaron Swartz for "liberating" thousands of JSTOR academic articles. Swartz co-authored RSS 1.0 at age 14, built the platform that eventually became reddit, contributed to what became Creative Commons. He took his own life on Friday, at age 26, just as federal prosecutors disclosed that they'd withheld a crucial email in the case that could have sent Swartz to jail for 30 years. Alas, it's moot now. Patterico has more on the whole mess.

A New York state senator is claiming that an attempted burglary has been tied to the Journal News' publication of the names and addresses of gun owners.

Both the Treasury and the Fed have ruled out the platinum coin. On Sunday, Treasury spokesman Anthony Coley announced via email: "“Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit."

That's good news. The platinum coin, like the IOU idea and the 14th Amendment idea, were just ways that Democrats wanted to use to allow Obama to sidestep negotiating with Republicans over the debt ceiling.

I have to admit to some irritation with Coley's vague statement. Does it mean Treasury and the Fed think the coin is illegal, unconstitutional, or just impractical? Does it mean the production of platinum coins for other purposes would be okay? Treasury and the Fed aren't saying, but have definitely killed the platinum coin trick proposal, so the debate over the coin's legality will remain an academic one.

I don't remember if I wrote about this at the time, but in light of this Politico piece, in which GOP officials are quoted as saying that many in the House GOP want to force a government shutdown, I thought I'd repost this bit of advice from Patterico: "If you donÂ’t want to be blamed for a government shutdown, donÂ’t say youÂ’re trying to achieve a government shutdown."

That Politico piece and, apparently, the GOP officials who talked to Politico make some embarrassingly idiotic statements about what they think is going to happen if we blow through the debt ceiling. First, and most importantly, hitting the debt ceiling does not mean the U.S. will automatically or even immediately be in default of its loans. The government can prioritize its principal and interest payments over other spending. Legally, I think the government is required to do that, but the Democrats keep saying they'll spend the money on entitlements and cowboy poetry first even if it means missing loan payments.

Second, hitting the debt ceiling without a deal does not mean that there will be a government shutdown. This is the dumbest part of the Politico article and the GOP officials' threats. In the context of the debt ceiling being reached on February 15, they say their bosses aren't afraid to force a government shutdown if Obama doesn't allow spending cuts -- except hitting the debt ceiling on February 15 won't result in a government shutdown. The federal budget is authorized through the end of the current continuing resolution, which doesn't expire until the last week of March.

Similarly, letting the sequester go through will not result in a government shutdown either. It will trim federal department and agency budgets, but not close them down.

So the bloviating GOP officials whispering to Politico about shutdowns aren't serious about avoiding the debt ceiling or fixing the sequester. They're just jawing about a shutdown so they can boast to their own constituents about how tough they are, even if that's an utterly stupid and impossible claim in the current situation.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:55 AM | Comments (263)
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Hey it's a fresh new week. So we have that going for us. 

NRA Ratings by Congressional District

For the most part they're about what you'd expect but it is interesting how nearly every Southern states has at least a few districts with NRA F-rated congressmen while the west has most of the full-state A-ratings.

Also Piers Morgan Exposes Dana Loesch's Lack of Gun Knowledge by Just Making up Models, Calibers

. @piersmorgan And again, I must correct you. .223, not .233.
Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) January 12, 2013

@DLoesch No, he used a Bushmaster .233 AR-15 assault rifle - and killed 26 people in a few minutes. That not enough for you?-
Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 12, 2013

@DLoesch I haven't misused any terminology - are you questioning the fact Lanza used an assault rifle?-
Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 12, 2013

. @piersmorgan You're claiming that guns in these shootings had selective fire, auto capability? Is this new, unreported information?-
Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) January 12, 2013

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:09 PM | Comments (606)
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