If it's any consolation...

... earlier this week, I alerted on unjustly being called a troll, and it was permitted to stand, even though a quick look at my nearly 2600 posts should have quickly dispelled the notion.

Painfully spot on!

After seeing an onslaught of gun-not postings on Facebook today . . .

. . . I posted the following status update:

This has been a major concern of mine...

... The problem is, it polls well. But, as Andrew Rosenthal pointed out in a New York Times editorial concerning the section of New York's new gun regulations that requires such reporting, "screams unintended consequences."

Don't call it "gun control", but rather "gun regulation"

This excellent piece of advice was given on Facebook (and posted to Sharpton's Politics Nation) by my friend, Louie Crew (who, as it happens, is also the founder of Integrity, the LGBT organization within the Episcopal Church). I think it's great advice since, as we all know, words matter!

Great Keynes Quote...

... which I've adopted as my new sigline:

If we are going to arm teachers...

... then I say, why stop at guns? Why not give every schoolteacher a cache of firearms, assault weapons and a few RPG launchers besides. I mean, we wouldn't want to be outgunned, would we? And while we're at it, we could also put a ring of heavy artillery around every school. Hey, an even better idea might be to place mines in schoolyards. After all, the little shits should be busy studying anyway, not wasting time outside, and mines would take out a good number of potential shooters before they even got to the school. (And just think of the potential of "walking the yard" as a discplinary tactic for those truly unmanageable kids?)

I think I may have hit on a real plan here ...





(Yes, it's !)

Federal Judge Limits a Police Stop-and-Frisk Program in the Bronx

Source: The New York Times

An element of the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practice was deemed unconstitutional by a federal judge on Tuesday, a ruling that may have broad implications on the city’s widespread use of police stops as a crime-fighting tactic.

The decision, the first federal ruling to find that the practice under the Bloomberg administration violates the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure, focused on police stops conducted in front of several thousand private residential buildings in the Bronx enrolled in the Trespass Affidavit Program. Under that program, property managers have asked the police to patrol their buildings and to arrest trespassers.

< . . . . >

Much of her criticism in the ruling is directed at the training the Police Department provides officers, which she suggests sidesteps the Fourth Amendment. The evidence in this case, Judge Scheindlin found, “strengthens the conclusion that the N.Y.P.D.’s inaccurate training has taught officers the following lesson: stop and question first, develop reasonable suspicion later.”

< . . . . >

The fact that a person was merely seen entering or leaving a building was not enough to permit the police to stop someone, “even if the building is located in a high-crime area, and regardless of the time of day,” the judge ruled. Nor was it enough for an officer to conduct a stop simply because the officer had observed the person move furtively, Judge Scheindlin said.

< . . . . >

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/nyregion/judge-limits-nypd-stop-and-frisk-program-in-bronx.html?_r=0