A REAL CLASSLESS ACT

Yesterday, in “A Real Class Act,” I wrote about Cowboys owner Jerry Jones rushing on the field at the end of the game to give Minnesota quarterback Brett Favre a big hug after the Vikings had thrashed his team’s dreams of a Super Bowl game.

That is not what Dallas linebacker Keith Brooking did. After Jones had hugged Favre, Brooking rushed over to the sidelines to berate Favre, the Vikings and their coach for running up the score with a late game touchdown, well after the game had already been decided. In the post-game press conference a still seething Brooking told reporters that the Vikings had been “classless and disrespectful.

I’ve got news for Mr. Brooking. If he and his teammates hadn’t done such a lousy job on defense, the score probably wouldn’t have been so lopsided. Sorry Brooking, but yours was the only classless act out there – in fact, it was a real classless act!

Here is the story:

VIKINGS THROW LATE TD IN BLOWOUT, BROOKING GOES AFTER FAVRE
By Chris Chase

Yahoo! Sports
January 17, 2010

Did the Minnesota Vikings run up the score on the Dallas Cowboys in Sunday's NFC divisional playoff? Keith Brooking thinks so. A late Brett Favre touchdown pass infuriated the Dallas linebacker, who charged over to the Vikings' sideline to voice his displeasure. And in his post-game press conference he didn't back down.

The Vikings had held a comfortable 27-3 lead since the early part of the fourth quarter. Dallas looked completely deflated after going down 24 points and the team's subsequent play did nothing to dispel that notion. On the Cowboys' next two possessions the team went four-and-out, gaining a mere 14 yards on eight plays.

After the second turnover on downs, Minnesota took over on Dallas' 37-yard line. With 5:26 remaining and the Vikes holding a nearly insurmountable lead, runs to milk the clock were expected. But after an Adrian Peterson run on first down, Favre hit Bernard Berrian for 19 yards on the next play. Two Peterson runs followed, before Favre threw a short three-yard pass to bring up fourth-and-three after the two minute warning.

Here, the Vikes had four choices: 1. They could take a knee and give Dallas the ball back for the game's final two minutes; 2. Wave a partial white flag and run the ball up the middle; 3. Kick a field goal (which also could have been perceived as running up the score); 4. Drop Favre back to attempt a pass.

Minnesota went with option No. 4 and Favre hit tight end Visanthe Shiancoe for an 11-yard touchdown. This choice did not go over well with Brooking. The Cowboys' linebacker, presumably upset because he felt Minnesota was running up the score, stormed over to the Vikings sideline and exchanged words with coaches and players, including Favre. He had yet to calm down after the game:

"I thought it was totally classless and disrespectful. This is the NFL, that's not what this is about. I don't think there's a place for that ... I was looking for [Vikings coach Brad] Childress. I didn't think it was right, but they've got to see us next year."

Brooking needs to relax and listen to his own words.

He's right. This is the NFL, not high school or college. The Dallas Cowboys don't get sympathy. Throwing that pass may not have been the greatest sportsmanship, but it also wasn't an affront to decency. If Brooking didn't want Minnesota to score then maybe he and his 10 teammates on the field should have done something about it.

Just because the Cowboys quit doesn't mean the Vikings needed to also.

SCAM TARGETS OLDER MEN

The victim of a scam targeting older men sent me this warning. I believe that younger men could fall victim to this scam as well.

GOOD ADVISE FELLOWS.....YOU CAN NEVER BE "TOO ALERT."

Please be careful guys....I just don't want any of you to have to go through this.

Women often receive warnings about protecting themselves at the mall and in dark parking lots, etc.

This is the first warning I have seen for men. I wanted to pass it on in case you haven't heard about it. This will only become more commonplace when the weather warms.

A 'heads up' for those men who may be regular Lowe's, Home Depot, or Wal-Mart customers. This one caught me by surprise.

Over the last month I became a victim of a clever scam while out shopping. Simply going out to get supplies has turned out to be quite traumatic. Don't be naive enough to think it couldn't happen to you or your friends...

Here's how the scam works:

Two seriously good-looking 20-something girls come over to your car as you are packing your shopping into the trunk. They both start wiping your windshield with a rag and Windex, with their breasts almost falling out of their skimpy halter tops. It is impossible not to look. When you thank them and offer them a tip, they say 'No' and instead ask you for a ride to McDonalds.

You agree and they get into the back seat. On the way, they start undressing. Then one of them climbs over into the front seat and starts crawling all over you, while the other one steals your wallet.

I had my wallet stolen December 4th, 9th, 10th, twice on the 15th, 17th, 20th, 24th, & 29th. Also November 1st & 4th, twice on the 8th, 16th, 23rd, 26th & 28th, three times last Saturday.

So tell your friends to be careful. What a horrible way to take advantage of older men. Warn your friends to be vigilant.

Wal-Mart has wallets on sale for $2.99 each. I found cheaper ones for $1.99 at Dollar General and bought them out. Also, you never will get to eat at McDonalds. I've already lost 11 pounds just running back and forth to Wal-Mart, Lowe's, and Home Depot.

EVIDENCE-BASED POLICING

CALIF. POLICE RAMPING UP EVIDENCE-BASED POLICING
Research will help the department focus its efforts to benefit the community

By Jesse B. Gill

Redlands Daily Facts
January 17, 2010

REDLANDS, Calif. — The Police Department is ramping up its efforts to use a scientific approach in suppressing crime.

On Dec. 6, police corporals, sergeants and lieutenants filed into the Carriage House at Prospect Park for training in evidence-based police techniques. Dr. Cynthia Lum traveled from George Mason University near Washington D.C. to train the Redlands police personnel.

"(Evidence-based policing) is basically applying research into the application of policing," said Detective Ben Zimmerman.

Police Chief Jim Bueermann said the concept of evidence-based policing is modeled after medical research.

Medical research forms largely-accepted opinions about what does and does not work on patients, Bueermann said. Evidence-based policing does the same thing, except with what works in policing specific communities.

"I'm very excited about it," he said.

The department recently hired a criminologist thanks to a U.S. Department of Justice grant. He is now undergoing a routine background check before starting work with the department. After his background check is complete, Zimmerman and Sgt. Rachel Tolber will work with the criminologist to put the evidence-based policing techniques into practice.

The criminologist will help the department find crime-fighting programs that are the right fit for Redlands, said Cmdr. Tom Fitzmaurice. And those programs will help the department focus its efforts in ways that will best benefit the community.

"A lot that's done in policing is done because of tradition, because it's worked before, or because it worked for one department," Fitzmaurice said. "They think that because it worked for (one department), they think it will work for everybody when they haven't evaluated the programs to see why it works."

ESRI mapping software has also allowed the department to take its research techniques to a new level, Bueermann said. The software changed the department's focus from beats and districts to addresses and streets where data shows crime is most likely to occur.

"Their software allows us to do things that we would never have been able to do in the past," Bueermann said. "We didn't have the ability to look at crime data the way we do now."

The concept of evidenced-based policing is not new to the Police Department, Zimmerman said. Bueermann has stressed an academic approach to police work for years.

"He's a very innovative person," Zimmerman said.

A REAL CLASS ACT

Led by 40-year-old twice retired Brett Favre, who threw four touchdown passes, the Minnesota Vikings gave the Dallas Cowboys a real 34-3 ass whipping, thus erasing any dreams the Cowboys had of making it to the Super Bowl.

A grim-faced Jerry Jones, owner of the Cowboys, appeared on the sidelines as the game was winding down. When the game ended, Jones rushed on the field, sought out Favre, and gave him a big hug. Now that was a real class act!

CONSEQUENCES OF A STATE-SANCTIONED JAIL BREAK (3)

According to independent research organizations, for every 5,000 felons who receive an early release, 45,500 new crimes will be committed over a three-year period, and 9,000 of those crimes will be violent felonies.

PRISON GATES OPPEN EARLY FOR THOUSANDS OF FELONS JAN. 25

Los Angeles Police Protective League
January 15, 2010

Starting January 25th, thousands of dangerous criminals will be released early from California state prisons – and for the first time in nearly 30 years, sent back to local communities without any supervision.

“The County of Los Angeles will be dramatically impacted, with over 5,000 felons to be released to our city,” said Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) President Paul M. Weber.

“What concerns law enforcement is that unlike the current program, where released inmates have been placed on parole, restricted from certain types of activities, or provided various community-based rehabilitative resources, these inmates will be completely unsupervised.

“The only condition for these released inmates is that local law enforcement officers are allowed to search them without a warrant. However, since local law enforcement will not know who these people are, that is a virtually useless provision,” Weber said.

“We can expect crime to go up as a result of this massive release, considering California has the highest recidivism rate in the nation, with seven out of ten parolees reoffending then returning to the prison system,” added Weber.

For months the LAPPL has been warning the public that the prison gates are going to fly open in order to close the state budget deficit.

“Now we know that January 25th is the date that the state of California has decided to begin jeopardizing public safety with no perceivable financial benefit,” continued Weber.

“It is a virtual certainty that the releases’ overall cost and risk to local communities are going to far outweigh any initial savings for the state. Each incident of crime costs taxpayers, on average, $18,000 for arrest and prosecution. Thus, the early release program will cost taxpayers more in the long run based on the number of inmates to be released and standard recidivism rates. On top of the wasted dollars there is a much greater toll – the pain and suffering of victims, their families and our communities.”

Weber said he disagrees with state officials who will attempt to portray some of the inmates being released as low-risk and nonviolent.

“The people being considered for release are convicted felons, many of whom have plea bargained their crimes down to lesser offenses. A large number of them are parole violators – in other words, they are people who have already proven they cannot remain law abiding after being released from prison."

TAKE THAT ALL YOU GUN CONTROL NUTS

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The Washington Post
January 10, 2010

WHAT DIDN’T HAPPEN AFTER THE D.C. HANDGUN BAN ENDED

I invite readers to undertake a brief thought experiment with me. The Jan. 1 front-page article "Homicide totals in 2009 plummet in District, Prince George's" reported that the District has just experienced its lowest total number of homicides in 45 years. This was also the first full year after the D.C. handgun ban was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller, and therefore the first year that city residents were able to maintain handguns legally in their homes.

The thought experiment is this: If the numbers had, tragically, gone the other way, and 2009 had the highest number of murders in nearly a half-century, imagine the hue and cry that would have gone up from opponents of Second Amendment rights. There can be no doubt that The Post's editorial page would have cried ominously that the increase was linked to the court decision, and anti-gun activists of all stripes would have been hysterical.

More disturbing still is that the article made no mention of the Heller decision. Surely, regardless of one's political opinions, it is reasonable to expect that a news article focused on a remarkable and startling change in the homicide rate would at least mention the landmark ruling that led to the only significant change in the District landscape in 2009.

William Ciucci, Washington

LOOK AT WHAT MARXIST PROFESSORS ARE TEACHING OUR KIDS IN COLLEGE

Wake up parents! Thanks to your hard-earned dollars, this is the drivel that some of your kids are getting from Marxist professors at our nation’s colleges and universities. All Americans, not only parents, should be incensed that their taxes are paying the salaries of ideologues who are trying to poison, not enlighten, the minds of impressionable students in our publicly funded institutions of higher (?) education.

The Progressive Workers Organization Committee is a campus group at College of the Mainland that was founded by one of the college's professors and his wife. COM is a community college located in Texas City, between Houston and Galveston. The telephone number for this organization, 281-534-7638, is listed as DAVID OR RONA SMITH. COM government professor David Michael Smith is a self-avowed Marxist and his wife Rona, also a Marxist, is a public school counselor. Rona Smith was once quoted by the local newspaper as declaring that THE REVOLUTION CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED WITH LITTLE OR NO VIOLENCE.

Here is the organization’s manifesto, the standard fare put out by Marxist professors:

PROGRESSIVE WORKERS ORGANIZATION COMMITTEE

P.O. Box 234
Dickinson, Texas 77537
United States
281-534-7638

We are an organization of working class people committed to the development of a mass revolutionary and democratic socialist party in the United States. We call ourselves an Organizing Committee because we recognize that we are only the nucleus of a pre-party formation. We understand that many years of difficult work will be required for us to develop into a political party which can unite working class women and men of all races, nationalities, and cultural backgrounds in the struggle for fundamental social transformation.

We are committed to the abolition of capitalism because this economic and social order is inherently based on exploitation and oppression. Although capitalism is different than slavery or feudal societies in some important ways, it is grounded in the exploitation of workers labor power through the process of wage labor. In this process, workers are paid wages representing only a fraction of the wealth they produce. The bulk of this wealth is surplus value appropriated by the capitalists; this is the basis of profits and capital accumulation. Thus the dominant capitalist class becomes rich not through their own labor but through the appropriation of wealth produced by laborers. In this sense, capitalism is similar to slavery and feudalism.

Even in the United States and other advanced capitalist societies, the current mode of production results in a significant amount of poverty, even more widespread economic insecurity, and glaring social inequalities. The so-called American Dream has always been an illusion for most workers, and this continues to be the case today. The overwhelming majority of people in our country earn far less than what the federal government admits is necessary for a comfortable standard of living. Although automobiles, consumer electronics, household appliances, and designer clothing flood the market, decent jobs, adequate housing, affordable health care, good schools, secure retirement income, and safe neighborhoods are in short supply. The remarkable advances in technology today are being used to eliminate jobs and increase capitalist profits, not improve the living standards of the people.

The control of most economic enterprises and most of the nation’s wealth enables the capitalist class to dominate most of our major social institutions. Most of the mass media, publishing houses, the entertainment industry, and even sports teams are, in fact, capitalist businesses which exist to make profits for their owners. In addition, most non-profit public institutions, such as schools, colleges, and cultural organizations are undemocratically
controlled by representatives from the capitalist class. It is no surprise that most economic and social institutions follow the dictate that ‘What’s good for business is good for America.’ But the results for the working class majority are catastrophic.

Although business owners, politicians, and most journalists describe our political system as democratic, nothing could be further from the truth. The U.S. Constitution was developed by slave owners and capitalists to safeguard their economic interests and prevent any meaningful challenges to their wealth and power from the masses of people. To be sure, there has been some significant progress made during the last two centuries. But it is essential to recognize that the empowerment of women and people of color, the recognition of some workers’ rights, and the development of some social protections have been achieved only through decades of mass political protest and the disruption of ‘business as usual’ by the oppressed. Even today, regular elections and universal voting rights are inherently unable to provide real democracy because the government, both major political parties, and most politicians are dominated by the capitalist class.

We are convinced that we must abolish capitalism if we are to bring about a genuinely democratic society. In such a society, the working class majority would democratically and cooperatively control economic enterprises, develop national economic planning based on the needs and aspirations of the population as a whole, and end the traditional imperialist exploitation of other countries by the U.S. In such a society, the working class majority would democratically and cooperatively exercise political power through a new socialist government. A workers’ government would be based on direct popular participation in decision-making where possible and delegation of authority to accountable representatives where necessary. A new socialist constitution would provide the legal framework for the empowerment of the working class majority in the economy, politics, and society as a whole. This constitution would protect the freedom of all individuals, organizations, and political parties, except for those which support violent counter-revolution or fascism.


We recognize that the historical experiences of twentieth-century socialism do not provide models for us. We acknowledge that the socialist regimes in the former Soviet Union, China, and other countries did a great deal to eliminate exploitation, poverty, economic insecurity, and cultural backwardness. But we are also aware that most of these regimes suffered from authoritarianism and bureaucracy, and that they failed to develop genuine workers’ democracies. In our view, these unfortunate developments were partly caused by Western capitalist invasions, sabotage, and subversion, and partly caused by grievous errors made by the revolutionaries themselves. In the long run, these developments led to the downfall of most socialist regimes. However, like Marxists and socialists all over the world, we can learn from both the achievements and the mistakes made by the ‘first wave’ of socialist revolutions. We are convinced that the lessons to be learned from twentieth-century socialism can help us develop a theory and practice of socialism which places workers’ democracy, internationalism, and socialist morality at the heart of the radical project.

As the nucleus of a pre-party formation, we know that the first step in recruiting and retaining new members must be radical political education. We are especially concerned with helping working class people overcome bourgeois ideology, anti-worker views, national chauvinism, racism, and sexism. However, we are not a ‘talk shop’ of armchair radicals. We will join other workers in ongoing struggles for better wages and working conditions, affordable health care, adequate housing, and good schools. We will strongly support ongoing struggles to end racial and gender discrimination, police brutality, the imprisonment of political activists, and U.S. imperialism. As we do so, we will retain the right of independent political action while we strive to unite as many people as possible in support of the most advanced political orientation.

However, our fundamental strategic objective will be to grow into a large, multi- racial working class organization of women and men which can become a revolutionary and democratic socialist political party in the years ahead. Both in conducting outreach activities for our collective and in supporting other workers’ struggles, our paramount priority must be the recruitment and retention of new socialists. We pledge to do all that we can, collectively and individually, to support each other in everyday life. We pledge to work together democratically and cooperatively in order to serve as a model of the socialism we envision. We pledge to take significant special measures to end national oppression, racism, and sexism. We pledge to oppose all forms of chauvinism. Finally, we pledge to make the struggle for socialism a central part of our lives and show our brother and sister workers that there is reason for hope amid the oppression of contemporary capitalism.

TERRORIST TEACHER ARRESTED IN NEW YORK

A public school teacher was arrested today at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a compass, a slide-rule and a calculator… At a morning press conference, the Attorney General said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

'Al-Gebra is a problem for us', the Attorney General said. 'They derive solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in search of absolute values.' They use secret code names like 'X' and 'Y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined that the y belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.

As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'There are 3 sides to every triangle'.

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Obama said, 'If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, he would have given us more fingers and toes.' White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the President.

It is believed that the Nobel Prize for Physics will follow----

OLIVER STONE IS AT IT AGAIN, SYMPATHIZES WITH STALIN AND HITLER

Oliver Stone, the darling of Hollywood's far-left, has half the American public believing that the CIA, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex, the Secret Service, the FBI, and Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson were all part of a coup d'etat conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy.

Now he wants us to believe that Stalin, Hitler and other despots weren’t really all that bad. I’m sure the entertainment industry will inundate his latest pseudo-documentaries with all kinds of awards. And Stone wants to put this shit into our public schools too.

WHY OLIVER STONE BELIEVES HITLER WAS AN ‘EASY SCAPEGOAT’
By Reuters

Haaretz.com
January 11, 2010

American film director Oliver Stone has many in the viewing world up in arms over his new documentary series which seeks to "put into context" certain controversial figures ? including Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin ? who he says have been "vilified pretty thoroughly by history."

"Stalin, Hitler, Mao, (U.S. Senator Joseph) McCarthy," Stone told reporters at the Television Critics Association's semi-annual press tour in Pasadena. "These people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history."

"Stalin has a complete other story," Stone said. "Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good.' "Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply. He's the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect ... People in America don't know the connection between World War I and World War II.

"I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view. We're going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions ... Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated."

The controversial director's 10-part documentary series for Showtime promises to focus on events that "at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America's unique and complex history of the last 60 years." An airdate has not yet been set.

Subjects in "History" include President Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, and the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

"You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate," Stone said during the show's trailer, which promised to put historical villains "in context."

"I don't want to put out conventional History Channel product where it's easy to like it," Stone said.

"He's not saying we're going to come out with a more positive view of Hitler," emphasized professor Peter Kuznick, the lead writer on the project. "But we're going to describe him as a historical phenomenon and not just somebody who appeared out of nowhere."

Stone said that conservative pundits will dislike the show.

"Obviously, Rush Limbaugh is not going to like this history and, as usual, we're going to get those kind of ignorant attacks," said Stone, who also compared the experience of sympathizing with war criminals to making his "W" movie about former President George W. Bush. "I'm trying to understand somebody I thoroughly despised."

The project will also show lesser-known positive aspects of American history and unsung heroes. Stone eventually hopes to send "Secret History" to schools as a teaching curriculum.

"It would be a very different counterweight to what they're learning," Stone said. "Nobody is going to force it down anybody's throat.

HITLER'S SUICIDE

NEWLY RELEASED RECORDINGS SHED LIGHT ON HITLER’S SUICIDE
By Ofer Aderet

Haaretz.com
January 14, 2010

BERLIN - New testimony on the death of Adolf Hitler in his Berlin bunker came to light in Germany this week. The Spiegel TV channel discovered recordings of statements given by the first two people to discover the bodies of Hitler and his bride Eva Braun after they committed suicide in the bunker on April 30, 1945.

Among those testifying were Hitler's aide, SS officer Otto Gunsche, and his valet Heinz Linge.

"When I entered on my left I saw Hitler on the sofa," said Linge, who died about 30 years ago, in the recording. "His head was bent forward and I could see a bullet hole about the size of a penny on the right side of his temple," he said.

Gunsche, who died in 2003, said, "Hitler sat leaning on the arm of the sofa with his head hanging down on the right shoulder ... On the right side I saw the bullet hole." The two said they helped carry Hitler and Braun's bodies out of the bunker and tried to cremate them in the garden outside the compound.

The two were later captured by Red Army troops and sent to prison in Moscow for 10 years. They returned to Germany after their release.

The Bavarian government taped the recording in a Berchtesgaden courtroom on October 25, 1956. The court, at the site of Hitler's former Bavarian mountain retreat, had been convened to formally declare the Nazi dictator dead, enabling the state authorities to legally seize his fortune and the rights to his memoir "Mein Kampf."

Some 40 people gave evidence under oath that they entered Hitler's study after hearing shots on April 30, 1945, and found him dead.

Until now, the recordings had been kept in Munich's state archives and have not been heard, apparently due to technical difficulties. Now that their sound has been improved, historians and researchers will be able to make use of them. Although history books say Hitler shot himself on April 30, 1945, at 3:30 P.M., for years doubts about the Nazi leader's death lingered in the media and among some historians.

Various intelligence services have been searching for Hitler throughout the world since 1945, suspecting he escaped from the bunker on the eve of Berlin's surrender to the Red Army, escaping to Spain, Argentina or another South American destination.

According to one version, Hitler escaped in a German submarine to the Antarctic Queen Maude Island, a former German submarine base. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin added to the mystery when he claimed in July 1945 that he did not know where Hitler was.

In 1970 the Soviet Union admitted that Hitler's remains, which were found in the yard outside the bunker by the Soviet Army, had been taken for examination and confirmed to be his.

In 2000 the Russian intelligence service released photos of part of a skull and jaw it maintained had been taken from Hitler's body.

Last year, however, an American explorer said he believed those parts belonged to a woman's body, reviving speculation about Hitler's whereabouts.

LET'S BE REASONABLE WITH THE REGISTRATION OF SEX OFFENDERS (3)

Proposition 83, Jessica’s Law, is a bill passed overwhelmingly last November by 70 percent of California voters that prohibits convicted sex offenders from residing anywhere within 2,000 feet of any schools and parks. According to Sacramento Sheriff's Sgt. Mike Jones, supervisor of the department's sex assault felony enforcement team, "If you drew a 2,000-foot radius around any school or park, the centers would overlap to where there would be almost nowhere sex offenders could live."

As a former California parole agent, I know exactly where Paco is coming from when he slams PC 290. And I don't blame Paco for sprinkling the following story of the Pariah family with a good dose of sarcasm. For those of you who are not from California, PC 290 is the sex offender registration section of the California Penal Code. To top it off, the Pariahs may soon find themselves homeless because the problem they experienced with PC 290, as described by Paco, occurred prior to the passage of Proposition 83.

MEET THE PARIAH FAMILY
By Paco Villa

PacoVilla Corrections blog
January 14, 2009

Ed and Edna Pariah are a stable couple, married for over 20 years, who provided a loving and prosperous home for their children (now adults). Ed, who had always held down several jobs, found a stable career as a long-haul truck driver a few years ago. Edna, a skilled professional, has been out of work due to an industrial injury--She requires crutches or a wheel chair and has years of physical therapy ahead.

When he was 18, Ed committed a rape. He served a decade and a half in prison and paroled in the early 90's as a High Control Sex Offender. I was his parole agent.

Pariah was a compliant parolee. Both his institutional and parole records indicated Ed accepted full responsibility for his crime and consistently expressed appropriate, apparently sincere remorse. He had no criminal history prior to the commitment offense, complied with all instructions and fullfilled all requirements.

In the mid 90's he discharged from parole, following the mandatory 36 months of violation-free community supervision. Of all the parolees who successfully completed parole under my supervision, Ed was one of a handful I would bet a paycheck against re-offending--Whatever he was 25 years ago, he was a productive, well-balanced member of society then...

Last year, the police knocked on Ed's door. He figured it was a routine compliance check at this, his duly registered home. Instead, he was arrested for violating PC 290's (then) recently added requirement to participate in an exit interview with one agency prior to moving to the jurisdiction of another. In the estimation of the officers, and later DA, Ed was illegally registered at 2 addresses since he didn't UNregister. And yet, the arresting officers knew where to arrest him by checking the DOJ distributed database.

In any case, there was no question Ed's oversight violated 290 PC. So, he pled guilty and received a grant of probation.

In the meantime, the freight company Ed worked for terminated him after the 1st week of his 4 month jail stay. And, even though the firm was fully aware of his sex-offense when he was hired, he was denied re-employment. Company policy prohibits hiring active probationers.

So, Ed and Edna had to move in with family members. However, pressure from neighbors wore out their welcome. The couple, in their mid-40's, have been living in an old mini-van for months. Edna's disability check is their only income--It won't cover rent.

Even so, Ed reports, "I'm doing what the system wants me to do: I live in the shadows and never sleep in the same spot 2 nights in a row. As long as I stay in the county but don't have a roof over my head, it's all good to the police."

Let's take a moment to consider Ed and Edna's situation, shall we?

Clearly, Ed deserves to be punished for the rest of his life. He committed a rape nearly 30 years ago. The fact he led an exemplary life thereafter only serves to show how dangerous he is. After all, if all rapists are likely to rape again, he has been repressing those sick urges for decades!

Of course, we know the overwhelming majority of rapes are singular crimes as opposed to those of the serial variety but, HEY, why not treat all sex offenders as though they were typical, compulsed child-molesters anyway?

Voilà: Jessica's Law!

Now, the system has gone to great lengths to make certain this otherwise productive member of our society remains a permanent outcast. AND, as it stands, he's a burden to his wife, whose disability stipend isn't enough to house and feed one, much less two people. Fortunately, PC 290 says Ed really isn't a whole person like the rest of us. In that context, Edna could stretch her limited income two-fold if she:

1. Doesn't have to feed Ed and,
2. Can eat Ed.

Have a heart, California. Eat the 290's.

AN AMAZING ACT OF HEROISM ON THE GREEK ISLAND OF ZAKYNTHOS

Excerpts from a Jerusalem Post article by Leora Goldberg:

Whoever knows the history of Greece and its islands even faintly knows that there was no place struck harder by the Nazis. Rhodes, Corfu, Salonika, Athens. The loss of Jewish life in Greece was devastating. From 1944, there were almost no Jews left even in the bigger communities.

On September 9 1943, the governor of the German occupation named Berenz had asked the mayor of Zakynthos, Loukas Karrer, for a list of all Jews on the Greek island.

Rejecting the demand after consulting with Bishop Chrysostomos, they decided to go together to the governor's office the next day. When Berenz insisted once again for the list, the bishop explained that these Jews weren't
Christians but had lived here in peace and quiet for hundreds of years.

They had never bothered anyone, he said. They were Greeks just like all other Greeks, and it would offend all the residents of Zakynthos if they were to leave.

But the governor persisted that they give him the names.

The bishop then handed him a piece of paper containing only two names: Bishop Chrysostomos and Mayor Karrer.

In addition, the bishop wrote a letter to Hitler himself, declaring that the Jews in Zakynthos were under his authority.

The speechless governor took both documents and sent them to the Nazi military commander in Berlin. In the meantime, not knowing what would happen, the local Jews were sent by the leaders of the island to hide inside Christian homes in the hills. However, a Nazi order to round up the Jews was soon revoked - thanks to the devoted leaders who risked their lives to save them.

In October 1944, the Germans withdrew from the island, leaving behind 275 Jews. The entire Jewish population had survived, while in many other regions Jewish communities were eliminated.

In 1948, in recognition of the heroism of the Zakynthians during the Holocaust, the Jewish community donated stained glass for the windows of the Church of Saint Dionyssios.

In 1978, Yad Vashem [the "Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority" in Jerusalem] honored Bishop Chrysostomos and Mayor Loukas Karrer with the title of "Righteous among the Nations."

NOW THE TAXPAYERS ARE GOING TO GET SCREWED TWICE

"If these companies are in good enough shape to afford massive bonuses, they are surely in good enough shape to afford paying back every penny to taxpayers. We want our money back.” That’s what an angry President Obama declared about the bailout funds banks received to keep them afloat. "My determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people who have not been made whole, and who continue to face real hardship in this recession,"

The Obama administration is going to do us taxpayers a favor by imposing a 10-year, $90 billion tax which the president calls a "financial crisis responsibility fee" on banks to recover the tax funded bailout money they received from the government. Thanks for little favors!

Don’t Obama’s financial wizards, some of the very people who helped get us into this mess, realize that any costs incurred by those taxes will just be passed on to the bank customers through the imposition of increased or additional fees? Of course they do. That is just their way of fooling the public into believing that banks are going to have to pay for their evilness, when in fact they are not going to lose a dime.

That means us taxpayers will be paying for the tax money that will be recovered by the government for us taxpayers. Now we’re going to get screwed twice. Duh!

COMING CLEAN, BUT RATHER LATE

Mark McGwire has finally admitted to using steroids and human growth hormones in order to enhance his baseball career. As if we didn’t already know. The human growth hormones gave him some grotesque looking King Kong-like arms. You don’t get arms like that by pumping iron.

McGwire claims that he wanted to confess when he appeared before Congress but his lawyers advised him not to do so. That figures. Remember how those lawyers lied when they declared that their client never used any steroids?

Although rather late, McGwire has now joined Jose Canseco, Alex “A-Rod” Rodriguez, Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi and other major league baseball stars in admitting to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Despite evidence to the contrary, Barrly Bonds continues to insist that he never knowingly used any performance-enhancing drugs, and Roger Clemens steadfastly denies ever having used any of these drugs either.

So, when is Clemens going to come clean? Oops, he can’t! While McGwire refused to admit or deny any steroid use before a Congressional committee, Clemens testified under oath that he never took any human growth hormones. Clemens is still under investigation by the Justice Department for lying under oath to Congress.

LET'S BE REASONABLE WITH THE REGISTRATION OF SEX OFFENDERS (2)

In “Let’s Be Reasonable With The Registration Of Sex Offenders” (2-18-08) and “Registration Of Sex Offenders” (2-13-09), I wrote that the problem with sex offender registration laws is that those who have to register may be subjected to some stipulations which are simply unreasonable. Convicted sex offenders are prohibited form residing within certain distances from any school, child care center, playground or any other place where children might gather. When that distance reaches 1,500 feet, there are few places, if any, where a sex offender can live.

Miami has some of the toughest sex offender restrictions in the nation. Sex offenders in Miami are prohibited from residing within 2,500 feet of any place where children might gather, thereby making it impossible for them to reside anywhere within that city. Thus, its restrictions have made Miami’s sex offenders homeless. And just the other day, the Homeowners Association of April Sound, an upscale subdivision in Montgomery County (north of Houston), has amended its deed restrictions to prohibit any sex offender from living there.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have absolutely no sympathy for sexual predators. Just read my blog, “The U.S. Supreme Court Should Restore The Death Penalty For Child Rapists (12-24-09), and you’ll know where I stand.

Shooting is to good for those who sexually molest infants, toddlers and pre-teens. They deserve the death penalty. At the very least, they should serve the rest of their lives confined behind bars, never seeing the light of day outside of prison walls. None of this crap about an abusive childhood or a diminished mental capacity. Those who forcibly rape older juveniles and adults deserve a harsh prison term and, if released, should be required to register as sex offenders. But once they’re out of prison, they’ve got to have a place to live!

Our registration laws are utterly nonsensical. A "weenie waver" is a sex offender while some jerk taking a leak in public is not. Yet, when the guy taking a piss is convicted of indecent exposure, he is required to register as a sex offender. When a 20 year-old is convicted of having consensual sex with a 17 year-old, he is also required to register. The federal Adam Walsh Act, passed by Congress in 2006, even mandates that any male juvenile who had consensual sex with a female juvenile must be included in the national sex offender registry.

Those sex offender registration laws are really feel good laws designed to placate an angry and frightened public. Intended to protect the public, especially our children, those residence restrictions may actually have the opposite effect.

Here is Paco’s blog on the problem with California’s paroled sex offenders:

THE LAW OF IGNORED INEVITABILITIES: 290 TRANSIENCY RATES SOAR…AS EXPECTED

PacoVilla Corrections blog
January 12, 2010

STEEP RISE IN SEX OFFENDER PAROLEES LIVING ON THE STREET

By John Simerman
Contra Costa Times

Less than a year after state corrections officials tightened a $22 million spigot of free apartments and motel rooms for paroled sex offenders, the number of parolees who say they are homeless has nearly doubled, adding fuel for critics who say the tight living restrictions under Jessica's Law threaten public safety more than bolster it.

More than 2,200 paroled sex offenders were registered as transient in November, state figures show, up from 1,257 a year ago and 88 in September 2007. That was just before parole officials began enforcing a ban on sex offenders living within 2,000 feet of a school or park where children "regularly gather."

The ranks of paroled sex offender at large — free of GPS anklets — also grew, from 58 in 2007 to about 500, according to the state Sex Offender Management Board

[Paco then continues with his own take on the problem.]

THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES VS. THE INVINCIBILILTY OF IGNORED INEVITABILITIES

"The law of unintended consequences, often cited but rarely defined, is that actions of people—and especially of government—always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended. Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely ignored it."
-Rob Norton, Concise Encyclopaedia of Economics

While the context of Mr. Norton's observation was economics, Jessica's Law would appear to be the epitome of unexpected consequences. After all, it wasn't the intention of the voters to convert the known sex-offender population into shadowy Hoboes--The stated goal was the precise opposite. Yet, that is precisely what happened.

The question is, how could this outcome possibly be unanticipated?

Isn't it apparent actively ignoring reality effectively nullifies unintended consequences as an excuse? Which is to say, if you SHOULD have fathomed an outcome but chose not to, you have ignored the inevitable.

YOU ASKED FOR IT!

To illustrate this rather obvious reality, let's consider a rather obvious analogy.

A man decides he is going to stop an approaching freight train by standing on the track. He calculates the train's speed, determines the distance needed for the engineer to bring it to a stop and stands in the best location for the engineer to spot him. The train doesn't stop.

Now, it's clear getting squashed like a bug was not the man's intention--It is equally clear this outcome was inevitable.

So it is, we ignored the only possible outcome of driving sex-offenders out of neighborhoods. Now, there really are Boogie Men out there...it's the Law.

MAXINE WATERS, THE FEMALE AL SHARPTON

Maxine Waters, the female Al Sharpton, has long been recognized as the black Democratic Congresswoman from California who sees racism around every corner, under every rock and behind every bush. Waters is upset because police officers in Inglewood have killed some of her constituents. She wants the federal courts to oversee the Inglewood Police Department.

Here is how one police officer responded to her concerns:

“Once again, a politician using very little research and having no knowledge of crime and police operations speaks out and gets the Feds involved in something that should be a non-issue.

If Maxine Waters looked at Inglewood's total demographics she would realize that Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks is doing an excellent job. Crime in Inglewood is just barely above the national average while crime in cities with very similar demographics is two, and in many cases, three times the national average.

Police in Inglewood must deliver police services with about 56 percent of the officers they should have. Only 64 percent of the population has a high school diploma. The median household income is only $44,000 while it's $61,000 California-wide. The population is 95 percent minority with 45 percent Hispanic.

And, not wanting to be called a coward by Attorney General Eric Holder when it comes to talking about race, demographics identify Inglewood as being 46 percent black. As I said earlier those demographics normally identify with crime rates two to three times above the national average.

What the Justice Department should be doing is finding out what Chief Seabrooks is doing right, recommend other police chiefs around the country look at her operations, and telling Maxine Waters to ‘kiss off.’”

I could not have put it any better.

Here are some excerpts from an Associated Press report on this matter:

LAWMAKER MAY SEEK FED OVERSIGHT OF CALIF. COPS
Rep. Maxine Waters claims that Inglewood police have a ‘vague’ use-of-force policy

Associated Press
January 12, 2010

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — A California congresswoman said she's alarmed by the number of people killed by Inglewood police and will look into getting a federal court to oversee the department.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, said she will inquire into a possible federal consent decree in the wake of U.S. Justice Department findings that the Inglewood department's use-of-force policies are vague, outdated and possibly unconstitutional.

"These deaths are the result of the failed policy," Waters told the Los Angeles Times for a story published Monday.

A Times investigation last year found that five of the 11 people shot and killed by Inglewood police between 2003 and 2008 were unarmed. They included a man stopped for public drinking who was shot in the back when an officer thought he was reaching for a gun, and a homeless man killed after reaching for a toy gun in his waistband.

The 220-member [Inglewood Police] force operates in a small city south of Los Angeles that is notorious for gang violence.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Eleven people killed by the police over a five year period dos not seem to be unreasonable for a city with the demographics of Inglewood. And the fact that five were unarmed should be no cause for alarm. If an officer believes that his life is in imminent danger, he should have every right to shoot someone, whether they are armed or not.

POMPOUS PRINCIPAL IS EDUCATED IDIOT NO. 1

The following story is almost unbelievable. If I had been the cop in this case, I would have told that pompous educated idiot to go fuck himself. And if SFPD would have disciplined me for telling him to go fuck himself, I would have looked for a position with a more enlightened police agency.

A public school is exactly that – PUBLIC! A police officer does not need an invitation or anyone’s permission to enter the premises of a public place in the performance of his duties. It has been my experience that faculty members and administrators of public schools are prone to burn an investigation, either inadvertently or deliberately, if an officer informs them that he wants to take some kind of police action on campus. The same holds true for colleges and universities.

PRINCIPAL BOOTS COP OVER STUDENT’S ARREST
Phillip Matier & Andrew Ross

San Francisco Chronicle
January 11, 2010

A San Francisco police officer was ordered out of John O'Connell High School for arresting an alleged gang member in connection with a double homicide without first consulting the principal.

Officer Joel Babbs, who is assigned to the department's schools detail, thought he was doing his job Dec. 15, getting a potentially dangerous suspect out of the Mission District school as fast as possible and without incident.

The 15-year-old boy in question is one of three suspects arrested in connection with a double homicide at Papa Potrero's Pizza on 24th Street in September. Police suspect the killings were an act of revenge by gang members for an earlier slaying.

"For me this was a safety issue," said Babbs, a 19-year veteran of the force. "Do you want your child sitting next to a double-homicide suspect? What if a rival gang decided to come after the guy and shot up the place?"

However, O'Connell principal Rick Duber - who told us he believes in "intervention over suspension" - said he was upset that Babbs had not informed him of the planned arrest and had handcuffed the student in public.

" I am very concerned about (Babbs') actions," Duber wrote in a memo to his school district superior the day of the arrest, adding that "his action today precludes any possibility of him ever returning to our campus."

Police homicide Inspector Brian Delahunty says the youth "wasn't the shooter" in the pizzeria killings, "but we do believe he held the victims down."

He says he told that to Duber the morning of the arrest when he called the school to see if the 15-year-old was there.

Duber told him the boy had been sent home a day earlier for being drunk in class and that he wasn't in school.

Unbeknownst to Duber, however, the boy had shown up with his aunt that morning and had been readmitted.

After talking to Duber, Delahunty called Babbs at the school and told him to arrest the boy if he saw him.

Within the hour, Babbs saw the youth, got a school security guard to take him out of class and arrested him when he got to the lobby. He cuffed the teen and took him to Mission Station for booking.

Babbs got a pat on the back from the cops, but when he returned to the school he was confronted by Duber, who accused him of going behind his back and booted him off campus.

Later that day, the principal fired off the memo to his boss, who suggested he calm down and work out his differences with Babbs.

And he has, sort of. After the two and their respective bosses met, Babbs went back on the job - but on the advice of his captain, is staying off campus unless he is called upon.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION BLACKMAILING ISRAEL (2)

Although George Mitchell now says that he was merely mentioning an option available to the Obama administration and not threatening Israel, there can be absolutely no doubt that his statement constituted an implied threat.

To all those liberal Jews who shamefully continue their support of Muslim loving, Palestinian supporting Barack Obama, take note of who Israel’s true supporters are!

McCAIN, LIEBERMAN: CONGRESS WILL NOT FREEZE AID TO ISRAEL

IsraelNationalNews.com
January 10, 2010

Four U.S. senators, including White House hopefuls John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, and Joe Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut, vowed during a visit to Israel Sunday that Congress would not approve cutting loan guarantees to the Jewish State. They were reacting to U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who proposed the option during an interview with American television journalist Charlie Rose.

Republican Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming and John Thune of South Dakota agreed with McCain and Lieberman that “any attempt to force Israel to negotiate by denying Israel’s support will not pass the U.S. Congress.”

All four senators are wrapping up a trip that has taken them to Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon and Israel.

CONSEQUENCES OF A STATE-SANCTIONED JAIL BREAK (2)

The Economist has referred to the early release of prison inmates as a “state-sanctioned jailbreak.” That is exactly what happened in Illinois when the state secretly changed its policy of prison releases.

When the media exposed it at the end of last month, Illinois Gov Pat Quinn reversed a secret budget relief policy that would have allowed more than 1,700 inmates to be released from state prison early. Beginning in September, around 850 inmates were let out weeks early.

Bob Walsh notes in today’s PacoVilla Corrections blog that “of those [Illinois] inmates released, 56 are already back in custody. Of those, 48 are for violation of parole. Many of those are for violent crimes including attempted murder, armed robbery and aggravated assault on a peace officer.

Of those rolled up seven were found in possession of weapons.

The program was called MGT Push. MGT stands for Meritorious Good Time.

Among the beneficiaries were Timothy Warren, 38. A search of his home revealed a .32 caliber handgun. He has been charged with 2 counts of unlawful use of a weapon. He was out for 11 days, after serving 6 months of a 2 year sentence for unlawful use of a weapon.”

I would think that many of the 850 early releasees who have not been “rolled up” so far are out there committing crimes but just haven’t been caught yet. And some of those crimes are sure to be violent ones.

In previous blogs I have posted that according to independent research organizations, for every 5,000 felons who receive an early release, 45,500 new crimes will be committed over a three-year period, and 9,000 of those crimes will be violent felonies. If the Illinois authorities had been aware of that study, maybe they wouldn’t have tried to pull off what Bob called an “unmitigated disaster.”

LAWYERS ARE LIARS

On Thursday the State of Texas executed Kenneth Mosley, for the 1997 murder of a Garland police officer. Officer David Moore, a 10-year police veteran and father of three, responded to a 911 call placed by a bank employee who recognized Mosley as the man who robbed that bank a month earlier.

Mosley was standing in line when Moore approached and asked to talk to him. Instantly, Mosley pulled out a gun and shot the officer four times.

His attorneys contended that the murder was accidental, insisting that THE GUN WENT OFF FIVE TIMES as Mosley was trying to give himself up.

That contention constitutes more PROOF THAT THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LAWLYER AND A LIAR IS THE SPELLING.

Accidentally went off five times? How can anyone keep a straight face while making an absurd statement like that? A gun can discharge accidentally once. There is a remote possibility that it can discharge twice. But three, four, five times? Come on, let’s get real.

It never fails to amaze me when time after time lawyers, including the most prominent ones, blurt out blatant lies about their clients to the media. But then, that’s what they get paid to do.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION BLACKMAILING ISRAEL

The Obama administration continues to pressure Israel to make suicidal concessions to the Palestinians. The latest threat by George Mitchell to withdraw America's loan guarantees to Israel constitutes nothing less than blackmail. However, if the U.S. were to withhold its aid to Israel it would be shooting itself in the foot. That aid comes with strings attached. It requires Israel to buy its military weapons and other products from the U.S. Those purchases contribute to our economy in no small way. The cutoff of aid would surely cost some Americans their jobs.

It’s way past time for all those liberal Jews who foolishly continue their support of Barack Obama to wake up and help make him a one term president. Shame, shame on them if they continue to back this Muslim loving supporter of the Palestinians!

MITCHELL: MIDEAST STAGNATION ENDANGERS US AID
On eve of visit to region, American special envoy threatens Israel with sanctions if it fails to advance peace talks, two-state solution.

By Yitzhak Benhorin
Ynetnews.com
January 8, 2010

WASHINGTON – On the eve of his visit to the Middle East, US special envoy George Mitchell threatened that his country would freeze its aid [in the form of loan guarantees] to Israel if the Jewish state failed to advance peace talks with the Palestinians and a two-state solution.

According to American law, Mitchell said, the US can freeze its support for aid to Israel.

NBA COMMISSIONER'S SHAMEFUL CAVE-IN TO AL SHARPTON

To Linda Chavez, I say: Thank you for exposing this scandal and for reminding us that Sharpton is an out-and-out four flushing phony!

DON’T TAKE CUES FROM AL SHARPTON
by Linda Chavez

Townhall.com
January 8, 2010

I am no fan of thugs or wannabes in professional sports, but NBA Commissioner David Stern is making Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas a scapegoat for Stern's own past inaction in dealing with violence among NBA players. Stern announced this week that he was indefinitely suspending Arenas, saying that Arenas "is not currently fit to take the court in an NBA game."

Stern's action ostensibly stems from an incident involving Arenas bringing unloaded guns to the Wizards locker room in December and then joking about the incident. But the real impetus seems to be some effective mau-mauing on the part of Al Sharpton, who claims to have called Stern personally to pressure him to get tough with Arenas. Sharpton has suddenly become interested in reducing violence in the black community. Now that's a noble goal, but Sharpton is rather late in coming to the conclusion that black-on-black violence is a major issue, having spent much of his career fanning the flames of racial hatred.

Sharpton has yet to renounce his own role in provoking an arson attack against a Jewish storeowner in Harlem in 1995, which killed seven victims; or his involvement in the Tawana Brawley hoax, in which a 15-year-old girl falsely accused six white men, including police officers, of having abducted, raped and tortured her; and dozens of other similar incidents. Listening to the likes of Sharpton suggests Stern is the one not "fit" to keep his job.

There is no question that Arenas made a mistake, and one that requires some penalty, but his actions both on and off the court belie the notion that he is some gang-banger wannabe inspiring young black men to violence. Neither David Stern nor Al Sharpton seems to have a clue as to who Gilbert Arenas really is. Unlike so many of his colleagues in the NBA, Arenas is a model citizen: a family man; a philanthropist who gives not only money but his time to helping underprivileged kids in D.C.; a man who showed up in person at the D.C. Armory with $18,000 in clothing and toiletries to help Hurricane Katrina victims; a man who donated $100 for every point he scored to DC area schools, raising $215,000 in one season. He doesn't do this stuff for publicity but because he believes in giving back to his community.

But Stern's actions aren't just misguided given Arenas' character. Stern has repeatedly dealt with far more egregious behavior on the part of NBA players by doing nothing or with slaps on the wrist. Just this season, Cleveland Cavaliers player Delonte West was pulled over for driving recklessly and cutting off a police officer. West was arrested when police found a loaded Beretta 9mm in his waistband, a loaded Ruger .357 magnum strapped to his leg, and a loaded shotgun slung over his back. Yet Stern never suspended West. And he only suspended NBA players Stephen Jackson, who fired a gun outside a strip club in 2007, for seven games, and Sebastian Telfair for two games for carrying a gun aboard a team flight in 2006.

However, that was before Sharpton pressured Stern. Why is Stern even listening to a guy who fanned anti-Semitic riots in Crown Heights, N.Y., saying, "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house" and referring to Jews as "diamond merchants." Nor has Sharpton changed his tune; in the last presidential campaign, he said of Republican candidate Mitt Romney, "As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him."

Instead of listening to Sharpton, Stern should spend some time getting to know the players whose lives he exerts such control over. He's passed judgment on Arenas before all the facts are fully investigated. If Stern were a judge passing sentence on someone accused of a crime, he'd hear from character witnesses and try to assess whether the behavior was indicative of a single mistake or part of a worrisome pattern that deserved harsh justice. Arenas does not deserve to have his career ended by a single -- if admittedly awful -- incident of bad judgment.

Arenas has shown time and again that he's one of the good guys in the NBA, and there are all too few of them to see him pay the price for Stern's failure to deal with those who deserve to be sent packing. Stern should give him another chance. He's worth it.

DEATH PENALTY JUSTIFIED

I have always maintained that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to premeditated murders and felony murders (killings committed during burglaries, robberies, sexual assaults). The death penalty will not deter killings committed in the heat of passion, but then nothing can prevent those murders.

No study has ever shown that the death penalty does not deter homicides. At best, the studies touted by the opponents of capital punishment have been inconclusive.

When I was a California cop (before Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Rose Bird as chief supreme court justice) the state was still executing murderers. There was solid empirical evidence that the death penalty does act as a deterrent. Back then, many armed robberies were committed with empty guns. It was common practice for us to ask a crook why he committed a robbery using an empty gun. The response almost always went something like this: I won’t carry a loaded gun because, if I have one, I might kill someone in a moment of panic, and I don’t want to get topped (executed).

Now we have a scientific study which backs up that empirical evidence. Here are some excerpts from a report on that study:

STUDY SAYS TEXAS DEATH PENALTY A HOMICIDE DETERRENT
By Michael Graczyk
Associated Press

Houston Chronicle
January 7, 2010

HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS — As many as 60 people may be alive today in Texas because two dozen convicted killers were executed last year in the nation's most active capital punishment state, according to a study of death penalty deterrence by researchers from Sam Houston State University and Duke University.

A review of executions and homicides in Texas by criminologist Raymond Teske at Sam Houston in Huntsville and Duke sociologists Kenneth Land and Hui Zheng concludes a monthly decline of between 0.5 to 2.5 homicides in Texas follows each execution.

“Evidence exists of modest, short-term reductions in the numbers of homicides in Texas in the month of or after executions,” the study published in a recent issue of Criminology, a journal of the American Society of Criminology, said.

The study adds to decades of academic dissection of the death penalty and deterrence. Results over the years vary from capital punishment saving more lives than suggested in this study to no conclusive effect.

This study, however, is the first to focus on monthly data in Texas, where researchers said the number of executions — 447 since capital punishment resumed in 1982 — is statistically significant enough “to make possible relatively stable estimates of the homicide response to executions.” A national deterrent effect can't be determined because “most states ... have not engaged in a sufficient level or frequency of executions per year,” they said.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports capital punishment, said the study “would be sufficient by itself to justify the death penalty.”

The study analyzed data from January 1994 through December 2005, during which 284 lethal injections were carried out in Texas — about one-third of all death sentences carried out in the U.S.

The year 1994 was selected as the starting point because state and federal legislation and court rulings beginning then led to “an orgy of executions in Texas,” the researchers noted.

Of the years studied, four had more than 30 executions, including a record 40 carried out in 2000.

Researchers ran mathematical models that considered homicide figures from the Texas Department of Public Safety to see if month-to-month fluctuations in executions could be associated with subsequent month-to-month fluctuations in homicide counts.

Teske told The Associated Press that while the published study ended with results through 2005, the conclusions are valid for subsequent years.

David McDowall, a professor at the State University of New York at Albany and an expert in statistical analysis of crime and violence patterns, said the study appeared solid and used standard accepted research methods.

Teske acknowledged some experts disliked the results. He speculated criticism came from peer reviewers opposed to capital punishment.

“I have a hard time getting people to understand that this reports a scientific analysis of an issue and is not a political statement,” Teske said.

OBAMA JUST DOESN'T GET IT

In the wake of the underwear bomber fiasco, President Obama issued his strongest anti-terrorism statement yet.

"We are at war, we are at war against al-Qaida," he said. "We will do whatever it takes to defeat them."

Obama just doesn’t get it. Or worse yet, our Muslim loving president doesn’t want to get it!

We are not at war with al-Qaida and we are not at war with the Taliban either. We are at war with fundamentalist Islam. Al-Qaida and the Taliban are merely two units within the army of Islam.

Islam is at war with the Western World. The Islamization of Europe is already well on its way. The Islamization of Canada and the United States is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Obama has been reaching out to the Muslim World. Surely, he cannot be ignorant of the fact that the majority of the world’s Muslims are fundamentalists. The Muslims Obama has been reaching out to are the very same Muslims who want to destroy us. What part of that can’t our president understand?

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION GONE BERSERK

The Democrats who run the City of Chicago are so anxious to get more minority (black) representation on the city’s police force that they are considering eliminating police entrance exams. What a lame-brained idea! Affirmative action gone berserk! That’s what the people of Chicago really need – a bunch of illiterate cops.

Earlier today, in my blog “Holy Grail Of The Left,” Paco showed us that affirmative action in higher education has not reduced the high black crime rate. Affirmative action in policing, if carried to Chicago’s extreme, will lower standards to the extent that orangutans would qualify as cops. Come to think of it, orangutans would probably be more capable than some of those illiterate affirmative action cops.

Here are some excerpts of this story from the Chicago-Sun Times:

CHICAGO POLICE MAY SCRAP ENTRANCE EXAM
Fraternal Order of Police President Mark Donahue said the idea "sounds too stupid to be true"

By Fran Spielman and Frank Main
Chicago Sun-Times
January 6, 2008

CHICAGO — The Chicago Police Department is seriously considering scrapping the police entrance exam to bolster minority hiring, save millions on test preparation and avert costly legal battles that have dogged the exam process for decades, City Hall sources said Tuesday.

If the process is opened to everyone who applies and meets education and residency requirements, Chicago would be virtually alone among major cities. Most cities have police entrance exams -- and for good reason, experts say.

"A background check and a psych [exam] alone will not eliminate some people who should not be there," said Brad Woods, who ran the Personnel Division under former Chicago Police superintendents Phil Cline and Terry Hillard.

Calling an application-only process a "step backward" and the "wrong way to go," Woods said, "When you lower your quality, you will get poor police service and more complaints. . . . Whenever you make it easier to be the police, you're doing the citizens and the Police Department a disservice."

Charlie Roberts, who ran the training division from 1995 to 1999, noted that there are 11 subject areas recruits must go through in the police academy, including the law and the municipal code.

"If you don't give someone at least a reading comprehension test, can you just put them in and risk the possibility of having so many of them fail? That could get quite expensive," Roberts said.

"We were getting people with 60 hours of college credit who were reading at a third-grade level. What do you think you'll get if you have no screening process?"

HOLY GRAIL OF THE LEFT

California’s governor has proposed a constitutional amendment that would dedicate at least 10 percent of the state general fund to the University of California and California State University systems and LIMIT PRISON SPENDING TO NO MORE THAN SEVEN PERCENT. That just about reverses the amounts in those lines from this year's California budget. He pointed out that the state now spends 45% more for prison operations than for higher education, a reversal from "traditional" funding ratios.

I strongly believe that Schwarzenegger’s foolish proposal, if approved, will only lead to more early releases of prison inmates and result in endangering the safety of the public. Here is Paco’s illuminating take on the left’s mantra that higher education is the cure to a high black crime rate:

EXPERTS LAUD SCHWARZENEGGER’S PLAN TO SHIFT PRISON FUNDS TO UNIVERSITIES

PacoVilla’s Corrections blog
January 7, 2010

And so it is, GA$ [Gov. Schwarzenegger] abandons all pretense of Conservatism by embracing the Holy Grail of the Left: Education cures all.

The notion a nexus exists between a higher education and crime control is an absurdity. Yet, it is the mantra of the Left. Why is that?

It's no secret our universities are incubators of Leftist activism. The President himself is the beneficiary of a public-subsidized degree...small wonder he thinks it's such a hot idea. How better to indoctrinate the unwashed masses than a 4 year bath with Karl Marx?

Obama is on record asserting a college degree should be guaranteed to all Americans. This is particularly remarkable within the context of the nation's unemployment rate: The college educated enjoy the highest increase in joblessness during this recession.

The demand for skilled and semi-skilled labor has outpaced domestic supply for decades. Yet, vocational and technical training received short shrift from our "leaders." At the same time, college enrollment increased across the board. Most notably, COLLEGE ENROLLLMENT AMONG BLACKS INCREASED 122 PERCENT OVER THE PAST 20 YEARS. Concurrently, the incarceration rate among blacks increased exponentially:

After more than a decade in which the Black incarceration rate increased by an average of 138.4 per 100,000 per year, more than doubling the number of Blacks in federal custody between 1980 and 1992, the Black incarceration rate continued to increase by an average of 100.4 per 100,000 during the Clinton era...(FinalCall.com 3/6/2001)

How can this be? If higher education is prophylactic to criminality, should not the black incarceration rate have dipped?

CREDIT CARD DEBTORS ARE LIKE EMBEZZLERS

Credit card debtors are like embezzlers. Bookkeepers or other employees with the ability to take money from their employer usually intend to return the stolen money shortly. Unfortunately, the circumstances that led them to steal in the first place prevent them from returning the money and usually lead them to steal more. Credit card holders may have intended to pay off their monthly credit card bills but when they find themselves unable to do so, they keep right on spending until they run up thousands and thousands of dollars in credit card debt.

Next month, credit card reforms enacted by Congress and signed by the president will go into effect, but not without unintended consequences. The new laws were designed to stop banks from abusing credit card holders with practices such as imposing unreasonable interest rates. No good deed goes unpunished. Those of us who pay our credit card debts off every month will soon be having to pay a price for the undisciplined and unbridled idiots who have been unable to pay off their credit card bills.

Consumer advocates report that, in order to make up for any losses incurred by the credit card reforms, there are up to 250 common banking fees that will begin cropping up for many customers. Some of the most significant fees consumers should be aware of include:

Minimum balance fees
Tele-banking fees
“Fraud-protection” fees
FDIC insurance fees
Incoming wire fees

Banks are adding fees to checking accounts. Along with monthly fees just for the privilege of having a checking account, new charges include new fees or higher fees for:

Becoming overdrawn
Remaining overdrawn
Overdrawing multiple times
Transferring money from another account
Using a debit card in a foreign country

And here, from creditscorecowboy.com, is some really important information for all bank customers concerning unreasonable overdraft charges:

Customers who don't keep close tabs on their checking accounts could rack up close to $400 in fees in a single day at some banks. This is because they've raised the number of overdraft charges per day from 5 to 10, and some banks charge $39 per overdraft.

Banks use a "highest first" method of posting checks to customer accounts, so an accounting error of a couple hundred dollars can be devastating. Say you made a house payment of $1,000 and also made 5 small purchases, totaling $100. You thought that you started out with $1,150 in the account and that you still have $50 in the account, but you really had only $950.

Because the bank will process your large payment first, you will receive an overdraft charge on all 6 checks that you wrote that day. Had they applied the small payments first, you would have had only one overdraft charge.

If they're charging $39 per overdraft, you are now $234 further in the hole.

The message to consumers: Be sure to write down every debit card transaction as it happens, because lost receipts can cause expensive errors. Check and re-check your math. Reconcile every bank statement as soon as it arrives, to check for errors. And don't allow yourself to become overdrawn.

PRISONERS OF WAR, NOT COMMON CRIMINALS

When will President Obama realize that it’s not just al-Qaeda and the Taliban that we’re at war with? When will he realize that it’s Islam that is at war with the western world? Obama just can't bring himself to admit that the very Muslims he's been reaching out to are the same ones who want to destroy us.

Islam is well on its way to turning all of Europe into an Islamic state. That is also their aim for Canada and the United States. We are making a big mistake by saying that it’s only “radical” Muslims or “extremists” that are behind the attacks on the West. It is the fundamentalists, a majority of the world's Muslims, who are at war with us.

When captured, Islam’s fighters (suicide bombers) should be treated as POWs - no rights under American jurisprudence and no release until the war is over! To prosecute captured Islamists in our civilian courts, treating them like common criminals with all the constitutional rights afforded to those charged with a crime, is not only ridiculous but threatens the security of the United States.

It was a big mistake to prosecute shoe bomber Richard Reid in a civilian court for attempting to destroy a commercial aircraft in-flight by setting off explosives hidden in his shoes. Now we’re making the same mistake with underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. And the Obama administration is compounding those mistakes by transferring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, and four other men accused in the plot from Guantánamo to New York City to be tried in a civilian court.

All of the captured Islamists are soldiers in a war just as sure as if they were fighting for the Nazis in WWII. Why then treat them any differently than we treated the German POWs? They should be tried by military tribunals and, if convicted of attacking us, or of intending to attack us, while dressed as civilians, they should be executed. When, in 1942, we captured eight German saboteurs who landed on Long Island and in Florida from two submarines, they were tried by a military tribunal and six of them were promptly executed.

When, under both Bush and Obama, we released some of the POWs from Gitmo and sent them back to Yemen, they rejoined their comrades-in-arms to resume their fight against us. That is why we should not shut down Gitmo! Gitmo is a righteous and secure POW camp. Just because it’s gotten a bad rap in the past is not an excuse for shutting it down.

Wake up Mr. President, we are at war with Islam, not just with al-Qaeda and the Taliban!

PROFESSOR MIKE ADAMS ON BLACKS AND GAYS

Mike Adams notes: I believe that blacks and gays have one thing in common: Their spokespersons – whether Perez Hilton or Al Sharpton – hurt the people they purport to represent by remaining in a constant state of offense, faux outrage, and self-righteous indignation.

PROFILING IS THE KEY TO AIR TRAVEL SECURITY (3)

Political correctness at work:

“One month after 9/11, the Department of Transportation issued guidelines forbidding its personnel from generalizing ‘about the propensity of members of any racial, ethnic, religious or national origin group to engage in unlawful activity.’”

“MICKEY-MOUSE steps, Clouseau-like measures” implemented by the Transportation Security Administration after the underwear bombing attempt. “The TSA engages in ‘security theater’ - bumbling pretend-steps that treat all passengers equally rather than risk offending anyone by focusing, say, on religion.”

SECURITY THEATER, NOW PLAYING AT YOUR AIRPORT
By Daniel Pipes

The Jerusalem Post
January 6, 2010

As hands are wrung in the aftermath of the near-tragedy on a Northwest Airlines flight approaching Detroit, a conversation from London's Heathrow Airport in 1986 comes to mind

It consisted of an El Al security agent quizzing one Ann-Marie Doreen Murphy, a 32-year-old recent arrival in London from Sallynoggin, Ireland. While working as a chambermaid at the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane, Murphy met Nizar al-Hindawi, a far-leftist Palestinian who impregnated her. After instructing her to "get rid of the thing," he abruptly changed his tune and insisted on immediate marriage in "the Holy Land." He also insisted on their traveling separately.

Murphy, later described by the prosecutor as a "simple, unsophisticated Irish lass and a Catholic," accepted unquestioningly Hindawi's arrangements for her to fly to Israel on El Al on April 17. She also accepted a wheeled suitcase with, unbeknown to her, a false bottom containing nearly two kilograms of Semtex, a powerful plastic explosive, and she agreed to be coached by him on how to answer questions posed by airport security.

MURPHY SUCCESSFULLY passed through the standard Heathrow security inspection and reached the gate with her bag, where an El Al agent questioned her. As reconstructed by Neil C. Livingstone and David Halevy in Washingtonian magazine, he started by asking whether she had packed her bags herself. She replied in the negative. Then: "What is the purpose of your trip to Israel?"

Recalling Hindawi's instructions, Murphy answered, "For a vacation."

"Are you married, Miss Murphy?"

No."

"Traveling alone?"

"Yes."

"Is this your first trip abroad?"

"Yes."
"Do you have relatives in Israel?"

"No."

"Are you going to meet someone in Israel?"

"No.

"Has your vacation been planned for a long time?"

"No."

"Where will you stay while you're in Israel?"

"The Tel Aviv Hilton."

"How much money do you have with you?"

"Fifty pounds."

Since the Hilton at that time cost at least £70 a night, he asked: "Do you have a credit card?"

"Oh, yes," she replied, showing him an ID for cashing checks.

That did it, and the agent sent her bag for additional inspection, where the bombing apparatus was discovered.

HAD EL Al followed the usual Western security procedures, 375 lives would surely have been lost somewhere over Austria. The bombing plot came to light, in other words, through a nontechnical intervention relying on conversation, perception, common sense and (yes) profiling. The agent focused on the passenger, not the weaponry.

Israeli counterterrorism takes passengers' identities into account; accordingly, Arabs endure an especially tough inspection. "In Israel, security comes first," David Harris of the American Jewish Committee explains.

Obvious as this sounds, overconfidence, political correctness and legal liability render such an approach impossible anywhere else in the West. In the US, for example, one month after 9/11, the Department of Transportation issued guidelines forbidding its personnel from generalizing "about the propensity of members of any racial, ethnic, religious or national origin group to engage in unlawful activity." (Wear a hijab, I semi-jokingly advise women wanting to avoid secondary screening at airport security.)

WORSE YET, consider the panicky Mickey-Mouse steps the US Transportation Security Administration implemented hours after the Detroit bombing attempt: no crew announcements "concerning flight path or position over cities or landmarks," and disabling all passenger communications services. During a flight's final hour, passengers may not stand up, access carry-on baggage nor "have any blankets, pillows or personal belongings on the lap."

Some crews went yet further, keeping cabin lights on throughout the night while turning off the in-flight entertainment, prohibiting all electronic devices and, during the final hour, requiring passengers to keep hands visible and neither eat nor drink. Things got so bad, the Associated Press reports, "a demand by one attendant that no one could read anything... elicited gasps of disbelief and howls of laughter."

Widely criticized for these Clouseau-like measures, TSA eventually decided to add "enhanced screening" for travelers passing through or originating from 14 "countries of interest" - as though one's choice of departure airport indicates a propensity for suicide bombing.

The TSA engages in "security theater" - bumbling pretend-steps that treat all passengers equally rather than risk offending anyone by focusing, say, on religion. The alternative approach is Israelification, defined by The Toronto Star as "a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death."

Which do we want - theatrics or safety?
----------

The writer, director of the Middle East Forum and Taube fellow at the Hoover Institution, has super-elite status at two airlines. www.DanielPipes.org

AHEAD TO THE FUTURE

THE NEW YORK TIMES
“All the news that’s fit to print”
January 5, 2011

CONGRESS VOTES TO OUTSOURCE PRESIDENCY

Washington, D.C.
The Associated Press

Congress today announced that the office of President of the United States of America will be outsourced to India as of March 1, 2011.

The move is being made in order to save the President’s $500,000 yearly salary, and also a record $750 billion in deficit expenditures and related overhead that his office has incurred during the last 3 months. It is anticipated that $7 trillion can be saved to the end of the President’s term. “We believe this is a wise financial move. The cost savings are huge,” stated Congressman Thomas Reynolds (R-WA). “We cannot remain competitive on the world stage with the current level of cash outlay,” Reynolds noted.

Mr. Obama was informed by email this morning of his termination. Preparations for the job move have been underway for some time.

Gurvinder Singh, a teletechnician for Indus Teleservices, Mumbai, India will assume the office of President as of March 1, 2011. Mr. Singh was born in the United States while his Indian parents were vacationing at Niagara Falls, NY. Thus making him eligible for the position. He will receive a salary of $320 (USD) a month, but no health coverage or other benefits.

It is believed that Mr. Singh will be able to handle his job responsibilities without a support staff. Due to the time difference between the US And India, he will be working primarily at night.

“Working nights will allow me to keep my day job at the Dell Computer call center,” stated Mr. Singh in an exclusive interview. I am excited about this position. I always hoped I would be President.”

A Congressional spokesperson noted that while Mr. Singh may not be fully aware of all the issues involved in the office of President, this should not be a problem as President Obama had never been familiar with the issues either.

Mr. Singh will rely upon a script tree that will enable him to respond effectively to most topics of concern. Using these canned responses, he can address common concerns without having to understand the underlying issue at all.

“We know these scripting tools work,” stated the spokesperson. “President Obama has used them successfully for years, with the result that some people actually thought he knew what he was talking about.”

Obama will receive health coverage, expenses, and salary until his final day of employment. Following a two-week waiting period, he will be eligible for $140 a week unemployment for 26 weeks. Unfortunately he will not be eligible for Medicaid, as his unemployment benefits will exceed the allowed limit.

Mr. Obama has been provided with the outplacement services of Manpower, Inc. to help him write a resume and prepare for his upcoming job transition. According to Manpower, Mr. Obama may have difficulties in securing a new position due to a lack of any successful work experience during his lifetime.

A greeter position at WalMart was suggested due to Obama’s extensive experience at shaking hands, as well as his special smile.
----------

Various sources contributed to this story.

PROFILING IS THE KEY TO AIR TRAVEL SECURITY (2)

All 9/11 and post-9/11 terrorists have been MALE, MUSLIM AND JIHADIST. That's why all male passengers who are Muslims, who are from Islamic countries, or who have passed through them, should be subjected to extraordinary security checks before being allowed to board any international flights. And that also applies to some women. But it makes absolutely no sense to treat all boarding passengers as if they might be terrorists.

Here are some excerpts from another article, this one from IsraelNationalNews.com, showing that our practice of screening everyone the same way is ridiculous:

‘PASSENGER BEHAVIOR’ KEY TO CATCHING AIRLINE TERRORISTS
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

IsraelNationalNews.com
January 4, 2010

Rafi Sela, a security consultant at Ben Gurion International Airport, advises that eyeing passenger behavior is critical for preventing attacks.

The United States often has been charged by minority groups with “profiling,” but Sela criticized security procedures that check everyone equally, regardless of whether he is a potential threat or a tourist who is among the majority of harmless travelers.

"You have to actually look for the things that are dangerous, and not just scan everybody," he advises. “This calls for a total change in approach to the transportation security issue."

Sela said that direct eye contact by security officials can help them spot abnormal behavior. Using such procedures probably would have stopped last month’s bomb maker if he had tried to board the plane in Israel - although no system is failsafe, Sela added.

He also noted that the security warnings that the U.S. State Department received on the [underwear] terrorist would have red-flagged him at Ben Gurion Airport.

FIRST STEP TOWARD GUN CONTROL

Although unique to California, is this law the first step toward gun control? And since California is a trend setter, will the feds and other states be far behind?

While microstamping, IF IT WORKS, will help the police in solving some shooting crimes, it and the ban on NOT SAFE ENOUGH guns will have little, if any impact on the number of shootings and gun-related deaths in California. These laws will not deter criminals from acquiring the banned guns. All they do is impose restrictions on the law abiding citizen.

Ironically, I had just returned from a gun show at Houston’s cavernous George R. Brown Convention Center when I read Bob Walsh’s piece on the microstamping requirement. Got to the gun show at 10 a.m. and the place was already packed. On display were lots of those guns banned in California. Handgun sales were brisk. Thank God for the Great State of Texas. I pity the law abiding citizens of what Bob calls “the formerly great state of California.”

MICROSTAMPING REQUIREMENT IN 2010-MAYBE
By Bob Walsh

PacoVilla’s Corrections blog
January 2, 2010

One of the most far-reaching pieces of law with regards to firearms will kick in this year, MAYBE. Its the Microstamping requirement. This requires that all new semi-autos approved for sale in the formerly great state of California must stamp each fired shell case with the make, model and serial number of the weapon that fired it. That stamp must appear on two different locations on the fired case. You can thank Arnie [Gov. Schwarzenegger] and the Democrats for this, he signed AB 1471 back in 2007.

As most of you are aware, the state of California designates which guns are "safe enough" to be sold in California. Manufacturers are required to submit multiple samples of each variation of each weapon for destructive testing at their expense. I've you've got a new weapon, produced with a 2", 4" and 6" barrel you have to kick down for EACH barrel length. It gets expensive.

Semi-autos now must have magazine disconnects and a loaded chamber indicator.

In the last three years only nine new models of semi-automatic pistols have been approved for sale in California. Only one was approved in all of 2008.

The inventor of the micro-stamping technology, Todd Lizotte, says he intends to release the patent rights in early 2010.

I am still hearing conflicting information about how this would track. If the weapon actually leaves the make, model and serial number on the case that is one thing. If it uses an index number, then an index would have to be set up and maintained, and would certainly have at least occasional errors. The people pushing this say it would cost about $8 per firing pin. Presumably the breach face would also be engraved. How this would work for replacement firing pins has yet to be determined.

In any event, if you want to get the latest whizbang semi-auto pistol, you may very well be out of luck.

You also may want to purchase at least one spare firing pin for your current semi-autos. NO, there is no plan to apply this law retroactively, yet....... I got mine already.

PROFILING IS THE KEY TO AIR TRAVEL SECURITY

Because the "underwear bomber" managed to board a Delta-Northwest airliner, here are excerpts from a December 31 Jerusalem Post article by Yaakov Katz:

It is widely agreed that El Al is the safest airline in the world, and Ben-Gurion the safest airport. This has to do with the stringent security measures used mostly at its home base, but also at all of its overseas bases as well.

BEN-GURION AIRPORT has three layers of security. The first is on the perimeter, which can be accessed only by two gates that are manned by guards - armed with M-16s - who make you roll down your car window and tell them where you are coming from. The idea is to prevent cars filled with explosives or gunmen from entering the airport and attacking a terminal.

The second layer is the profiling of passengers. There are several methods, although the most common is the questions asked by security guards as you wait at the check-in counter along the lines of, "Who packed your suitcases?" and "What is the purpose of your trip?"

The questioning varies for the type of passenger. Starting in the 1970s, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), which oversees airport security, created different categories for types of people that require a more thorough inspection. This was based on an analysis of all known acts of aviation terror.

"People think that profiling is old fashioned and invasive, but it saves the day," said Pini Schiff, who served for close to 30 years in the Ben-Gurion security division. "The Nigerian terrorist would have undergone comprehensive inspections at Ben-Gurion Airport, and without a doubt I can tell you that the explosives he was carrying would have been discovered."

Schiff's proof is the Hindawi affair. On April 17, 1986, a pregnant Irishwoman, Anne-Marie Murphy, arrived at Heathrow Airport with a large bag to catch El Al flight 016 to Tel Aviv. Her bag, Schiff said, had been checked by British airport security and passed, but during the standard questioning, the El Al security guard decided to check it once more.

"Her answers to our questions just didn't add up," Schiff recalled.

A second inspection of the bag discovered a sophisticated bomb made up of Semtex plastic explosives with a detonator hidden inside a calculator that was set to activate when the plane reached a cruising attitude of 39,000 feet. During her subsequent interrogation, Murphy spoke about her Jordanian boyfriend, Nizar Hindawi, who, together with the Syrian Embassy in London, it turned out, had planned the attack. Murphy, who was carrying Hindawi's child, was entirely unaware that he had been sending her to her death.

"Profiling makes the biggest difference," explained another Israeli aviation official. "A man with the name of Umar flying out of Tel Aviv, whether he is American or British, is going to get checked seven times."

The third layer of security at Ben-Gurion consists of the CT scans and metal detectors that luggage and people go through which can detect explosives and weapons. In addition, there are more sophisticated explosive-detecting machines that are used infrequently.

According to Schiff, the trick is how to use all of the different methods and to create a modus operandi that balances between security and the need to be able to keep on operating an airport with high-quality service.

"You cannot use all of the methods on all of the passengers," he said. "If you decided that everyone is suspicious, the real suspect would get lost and get away."

This is why, he said, profiling is the key, since it enables the airport security teams to put their focus where it is most needed.

"Security is first and foremost based on common sense, which is supposed to provide you with the right intelligence, technology and modus operandi," he said. "It is all about brains, since if you do everything automatic, it won't work."

This, for example, is one of the main reasons why not all of the passengers going through Ben-Gurion security are required to take off their shoes, in contrast to the US where it is mandatory for everyone, no matter how old or young.

THE GREATEST PLAYER IN THE WORLD

Tiger Woods announced that he was taking time off from golf in order to work on his marriage. Well, if reports circulating now are true, Tiger is really hard at work. It has been reported that on Saturday night Woods partied together with mistress Rachel Uchitel at the Everglades Club in Palm Beach and that he was spotted holding hands with her at a private mansion party in Palm Beach on Sunday night.

So far 10 babes have been identified as alleged mistresses of Tiger Woods: Rachel Uchitel, Jaimee Grubbs, Kalika Moquin, Jamie Jungers, Mindy Lawton, Cori Rist, Holly Sampson, Julie Postle, Veronica Siwik-Daniels aka Joslyn James, and Theresa Rogers. Rogers, 48, described as a “sex-addicted cougar,” claims Woods informed her that he only married wife Elin Nordegren to boost his image.

That must be why comedian Jeffrey Ross said: Tiger Woods is the greatest player in the world and he happens to be a pretty good golfer too.