Recently in Crime Category

Some times great minds think alike.

In this case Gerard Vanderleun attacks one of the "insidiously deceptive lines of the socialist-liberal agenda" which is "Violence doesn't solve anything." As the story he links to states:

Pacifism is a sickness, an actual moral perversity, and dangerous when its effects spread to anyone else beside the pacifist. You may choose to walk to the cattle car, but damn you if you let your children be led up the ramp. You must never allow any group or government to steal your right to exercise armed lethal force in a just situation.

This is a subject I've covered in the past, showing the old leftist saw to be nothing more than a pipe dream.

Violence does solve things. It has ended brutal dictatorships, saved citizens from the predation of criminals, prevented injustices on a small and large scale, and prevented wars.

Perhaps the old saying needs to be modified. Instead, it should be "Violence never solves anything if it is used at the wrong time in the wrong place." Violence in and of itself solves nothing. It is the proper use of violence under the right circumstances that solves problems.

Indeed.

We've all heard news reports about thieves stealing things like copper pipes and wiring from empty or abandoned buildings. It's not all that surprising considering the price of scrap copper and other metals. (Some thieves have gone so far as to steal bronze plaques from grave yards and buildings.) We've heard about Darwin Award nominees trying to steal electrical cables from power poles (usually frying themselves in the process). But this bunch of thieves have taken it to a higher level by stealing an entire building.

(The thieves] first apparently called the owner of a business next to 18400 Frontage Road along I-55 and told him the structure was being dismantled that day because the property had been sold, the Will County Sheriff's office says.

They then pulled up two semi-trucks to the building -- and tore it down. They removed the steel from the structure and then carted it away in the trucks.

The audacity of this crew! This is a crime that took a lot of planning. It was not a spur of the moment "Gee, that building is mostly metal, let's steal it!" kind of plan. They pulled off this large scale theft in less than a day and got away clean. That means a lot of organization and the use of an experienced crew.

While still a crime, it's success has me admiring the crew that pulled it off.

(H/T Scary Yankee Chick)

Way to go, Mister Hoffa! Let's see about bringing the unions back to their head-bashing, leg-breaking hey-days, shall we?

I guess he didn't get the memo about being more civil during political discourse. But then the unions are on the ropes and not finding much in the way of support from the public these days, so perhaps violent rhetoric is the only tool he and other union leaders have left.

It didn't help that Obama's Labor Day speechifying took place in that bastion of decades long Democrat machine politics and union hegemony, Detroit. As one wag put it, it appears Obama wants to do for the rest of the country what has been done for/to Detroit.

Thanks, but no thanks. I think we'll do much better without that kind of help.

A follow on to yesterday's cartoon rant about the riots in England is this video rant by one of my favorite Brits, Pat Condell. For those of you who have never seen any of his video pieces I must warn you that he does not pull any punches and calls it exactly like he sees it.

I think this cartoon illustrates the thinking of those rioting in the UK all too well.


For more head to Spider and Scorpion.

Last month I mentioned doing battle with a pernicious bit of computer malware that wanted money in order to make it go away, conning the unwary computer owner by offering to clean the list of viruses its 'free' scan showed were infecting the computer. I called it an extortion virus because its creators wanted money in order to make it go away.

Now I hear about yet another extortion virus out there doing something very similar, but this time the malware mimics a progressive hard drive failure and offers to 'fix' it...for a fee.

Gee, isn't owning a computer fun?

The battle between Wisconsin Republican lawmakers (including governor Scott Walker) and the public sector unions continue.

It seems the unions have decided to borrow a page or two out of old-time union playbook by sending letters to small businesses that, in effect, tell them "Support us and our cause...or else." Gee, it didn't take them long to resort to extortion to get their way, did it? While the unions could have claimed there was a misunderstanding, the union executive who sent the letters says he means what he wrote, so there's no possibility they can claim such a misunderstanding. The gist of the letter:

Dated March 28, 2011, the letter is addressed to "DEAR UNION GROVE AREA BUSINESS OWNER/MANAGER," in Racine County. And it begins with this warm greeting: "It is unfortunate that you have chosen 'not' to support public workers rights in Wisconsin. In recent past weeks you have been offered a sign(s) by a public employee(s) who works in one of the state facilities in the Union Grove area. These signs simply said 'This Business Supports Workers Rights,' a simple, subtle and we feel non-controversial statement given the facts at this time."

We doubt "subtle" is the word a business owner would use to describe this offer he is being told he can't refuse.

The missive concludes by noting that, "With that we'd ask that you reconsider taking a sign and stance to support public employees in this community. Failure to do so will leave us no choice but do [sic] a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means 'no' to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members."

The threat is implicit: put a sign supporting us in your window or we'll make sure it will negatively affect your business.

How...how...mob like. Vito Corleone would be proud.

Are we sure we want people like this to be working for us? Better yet, do we want them to have this kind of power over us?

Since this 'incident' the union has been back-peddling, removing signs from the businesses that knuckled under to the union extortion. But that doesn't undo the fact that they threatened business owners into 'supporting' them, meaning they've lost any credibility or moral high ground. They proven themselves be nothing more than thugs.

It wouldn't surprise me to find they've opened themselves to prosecution under RICO statutes. But somehow I doubt the US Attorney General will direct federal prosecutors to investigate such matters, considering his track record when it comes to dealing with corruption and coercion.

Blonde likely abducted and killed by a black man. News conference by cold-case team Wednesday. Story here.

They're using sonar equipment this spring at several properties to solve what looks like a hideous, Hollywood-style abduction, rape, and murder. But the story didn't get any kind of play outside of Lansing for reasons I don't want to go into.

I don't want to say that the perp likely being black and the victim an attractive blonde that goes against the "whites are racist" meme and thus gets spiked from expanded news coverage. I don't want to say that, it's not approved by NPR.

This ought to make us feel our privacy is in good hands:

Confidential data found on junked New Jersey Computers.

Taxpayers' Social Security numbers, confidential child abuse reports and personnel reviews of New Jersey workers nearly went to the highest bidder after the state sent surplus computers out for auction.

Nearly 80 percent of surplus computers in a comptroller's office sample had not been scrubbed of data before being shipped to a warehouse, according to an audit released Wednesday.

"At a time when identity theft is all too common, the state must take better precautions so it doesn't end up auctioning off taxpayers' Social Security numbers and health records," Comptroller Matthew Boxer said.

Ya think?

This type of equipment requires careful handing to make sure all the confidential data on the hard drives has been erased or otherwise destroyed. Just hitting the 'Delete' key doesn't do the trick. A program like File Shredder or Shredit should be used to ensure all deleted data is truly gone for good. Or the drives should be destroyed by using a drill press to drill through them (and the internal platters), making sure the data cannot be read.

Someone got sloppy, lazy, or stupid, allowing state-owned computers to go up for sale without making sure the drives had been wiped clean. Identity theft is tough enough to deal with without state government making it easy for the bad guys to get that kind of information.

There's an excellent Cato Institute instructive video about recording the police with cameras, including relevant recent examples of police excess and even brutality.

I believe that in NH police may be audio or video recorded only with their consent--even when they are on duty in a public place. I don't think that's liberal enough.

Cameras are everywhere. They can be used to enforce accountability and promote transparency. Certainly not bad things.

Some folks are just too mean and ornery to be allowed out in public without someone watching them.

A case in point: a nut with a rifle walks onto a man's property in Swanzey, New Hampshire and shoots the man's sleeping dog. Then, when confronted by the dog's owner, makes a claim "It's only a pellet gun," as if that's the only explanation needed. He then runs away. The gun was not a pellet gun as claimed, but a hunting rifle (the shell casings recovered by the police prove that).

The dog was shot in the leg and badly wounded, requiring the vet to amputate the injured leg in order to save the dog's life.

What type of a sick, twisted a**hole does something like that?

...as they beat and stomp on a burglary suspect who was voluntarily surrendering. Wow! What were they thinking? HT: Neal Boortz

Sen. Eric Adams, you mean well. But I'm afraid you are speaking from another culture than mine. And, dude, I believe the rights against illegal searches is an amendment other than the First.

Guns are not illegal where I live, and children who "secrete" drugs have to be given more than a discussion. If they're over 18, it's the boot.

But I'll cut you some slack since I know how tough it's been in the past, having seen first hand the crack scourge in the late 1980s in the metropolitan New York area. That, and guns used in crimes is not a white thing where you come from. Ninety-eight percent of all shootings in metropolitan NYC are done by blacks or hispanics. A violent criminal is 13 times more likely to be black than white.

What your community needs, Sen. Adams, is for the out-of-wedlock birthrate to drop. I believe 72% of black babies born today in this country--probably higher in your neck of the woods--are what was once called "bastards."

But we don't do that anymore since we don't do marriage anymore. A teenage mother is a recipe for disaster on the personal level, and, when done in large enough numbers, on the macro level, too.

I know most mass shootings in recent years occur in dangerous "gun-free zones," as amply chronicled by John Lott.

But deranged or suicidal people in recent weeks have opted out of the mass killings available to them in such places--where the police are only minutes away, so crawl to safety, people--and one I've just witnessed took place in DEtroit.

Only in DEtroit.

You know the Canadian justice system is screwed up when a homeowner confronts three men throwing Molotov cocktails at his home and is arrested for defending himself.

It seems the Canadian government has got some seriously screwed up people in their Parliament, making it illegal for their citizens to defend themselves against dire threats to them, their families, and their property.

The incident began six years of trouble for Mr. Thomson that culminated early one Sunday morning last August when the 53-year-old former mobile-crane operator woke up to the sound of three masked men firebombing his Port Colborne, Ont., home.

"I was horrified," he said. "I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what was happening. I had no idea what was going on."

So Mr. Thomson, a former firearms instructor, grabbed one of his Smith & Wesson revolvers from his safe, loaded it and headed outside dressed in only his underwear.

"He exited his house and fired his revolver two, maybe three times, we're not sure. Then these firebombing culprits, they ran off," said his lawyer, Edward Burlew.

What's ironic is that Thomson had surveillance video of the incident, showing the arsonists setting Thomson's house ablaze and Thomson exiting his home and firing the two or three gunshots. When Thomson showed the video to the police, they arrested him on the charge of careless use of a firearm.

It must be noted Mr. Thomson is an expert marksmen, meaning if he wanted to hit and wound or kill the miscreants, he could have. Instead, he showed restraint, aiming to miss and to drive the arsonists off. I would say that he wasn't careless at all. Instead he was exercising his god-given right to defend himself.

This sounds like something from a novel.

There are other lawless regions where al-Qaeda operates, outside Pakistan. The AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) is becoming an increasing player. Poor Edwin Dyer, a British tourist abducted and later killed by the group. Probably brutally beheaded.

French officials say the vast territory in which AQIM operates is essentially lawless and is outside the sovereign reach of governments.

Does anyone know what the Sahel is?

While I stopped watching CBS 60 Minutes quite some time ago, I made an exception for the piece linked below.

While the Left immediately went into attack mode against the Right shortly after the Tucson shootings, blaming everyone from the Tea parties, Rush Limbaugh. Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin as the instigators of Jared Loughner's deadly rampage, far cooler heads knew that no such link existed. They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Loughner's actions were those of a madman and not those of a political assassin.

Who are 'they'?

The United States Secret Service.

According to studies performed at the behest of the Secret Service, assassins like Loughner kill or attempt to kill not because of politics, but from some twisted perception that by killing the subject of their obsession - which their victim is - their problems will be solved.

Their descent into madness follows a specific pattern, one that Loughner fit perfectly.

Not that this revelation will stop the Left from pinning the blame on everyone but the shooter, but it lets everyone else know Loughner was a psychotic paranoid with delusions of persecution.

A guy kills eight in August of last year in Connecticut. His 911 call shows clear racist tendencies--though you'll never get that from the lame stream media. Video showed him clearly stealing from the beer distributor, which happens to be a gun-free workplace. And no one remembers it.

And now more recently this whackjob in Arizona kills six, wounding many more, and the media is going ape.

Why the disparity

Amidst all the hoopla over the Tucson shootings and the Left's efforts to paint them as a politically motivated assassination attempt by the Right (namely Sarah Palin and the Tea party) there's something these hate-mongers/fear-mongers have overlooked: violence in the US is is much lower now than it was in 1992. But you wouldn't know it to hear the media and the Progressives talking about it. So many people seem to think violent crime is a greater problem now than it was 20 years ago, but it's not.

I wonder how many Americans know that the country has never been less violent. Yet the establishment keeps telling us that we are under constant threat from violent elements among us and from abroad. We don't feel safe in this country because it doesn't serve the political power agenda.

So another sickness this incident draws attention to is how, in the absence of rampant violence, those with the microphones and who drive the national narrative insist on magnifying and manipulating every single act by a few nuts, especially white nuts...

Crime statistics the violent crime rate is almost half of what it was back in 1991, but it's still higher than it was 50 years ago. And one must also remember one particular violent crime - rape - was greatly under-reported due to the stigma laid upon rape victims 30, 40, or 50 years ago.

But none of this makes any difference. The Left will still make the accusation that the Tea party, the GOP, conservative talk radio, and particularly Sarah Palin are to blame for what's happened. Fortunately for us, Sarah Palin has a response to that canard, extending her condolences to the families who lost loved ones and condemning those libeling her, the Tea party, and others by saying they are responsible for the madman committing such a heinous crime.

Sarah Palin: "America's Enduring Strength" from Sarah Palin on Vimeo.

While there is media overload of the dreadful Tucson, Arizona, shooting, one needs to realize that we have this perpetual attraction available to the mentally sick. A narcissistic personality suffering mental illness will seek fame by ridding what he sees as a evil target.

Lee Harvey Oswald targeting JFK. Need I say more?

Norman Mailor's novel treats Oswald, a "pathetic nonentity," with the proper depiction he deserves: Why Kennedy? "It was the largest opportunity he had ever been offered."

Having a ridiculously grandiose self-conception, Oswald wanted to shape history. And he did. As much as that's difficult for us to accept.

MEANWHILE, in a truly more important story--almost wholly ignored--showing the drift of a culture, check out Diana West's disturbing evidence that free speech is ending in Denmark because of the twin assaults of Marxism and Islam. Unfortunately, we won't be too long behind.