#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
A family is trying to figure out how their pet cat was summonsed for jury duty…. Anna filed for Sal’s disqualification of service. However, the jury commissioner was unmoved and denied the request.
I think the commissioner has it right. After all, the summoned cat is probably as capable of seeing justice done as the average American jurist.
Considering that highway robbery is in the job description, I don’t know why we’re supposed to be surprised when the occasional policeman simply extends the logic one step further:
Minneapolis police officer Timothy Edward Carson’s shift on Wednesday started at 9 a.m. But he wasn’t there. By the time he told a supervisor he was running late at 9:30, the FBI says, Carson had robbed an Apple Valley bank and was well on his way to getting caught. Carson, 28, was arrested early Thursday and appeared in federal court Thursday afternoon, charged with bank robbery. More criminal charges are expected to follow; police sources familiar with the investigation say he could be connected to at least a dozen robberies in the metro area over the past two weeks.
In the eyes of the police, his real crime wasn’t robbing banks. It was robbing banks for his personal benefit. Police robbery is supposed to be for the benefit of the department and the state, not the individual policeman. If Carson had simply walked into the bank with his uniform on and arrested the money under the pretense of it being laundered drug money, he’d have won a medal and a bonus.
And it’s only January 4th:
It was already dark on Saturday evening and Austin had little time to react when he discovered the reason for Angel’s strange behaviour. The boy spotted what he first thought was a strange dog emerge from the shadows. Just two metres away, the cat charged at him.
“He was like: Aw, crap, it’s a cougar.”
But Angel was ready – the young dog leapt at the hungry cougar and “took the whack,” Mr. Forman said. The boy escaped inside his home while the two animals battled for several minutes. “The cougar was latched onto her head, you could hear both the dog and the cougar screaming. Then it went silent.”
This is why we have the Dainty Flower. I have the utmost admiration for the courage of the brave golden retriever, but if a similarly smallish cougar were ever to make the fatal mistake of running into Spacebunny’s Ridgeback, I’d fully expect to discover her outside happily crunching away on the dead cat’s skull.
And armed with guns and badges:
IT WAS just after midnight. Brian Westberry and a woman friend sat frozen in his bedroom, hoping the persistent pounding on the front door of his Northeast Philly home would stop. It didn’t.
Westberry, 24, slipped his licensed .38-caliber revolver into his pants pocket and crept downstairs to open the door.
There stood Gregory Cujdik, 32, who demanded to see “Jen,” his girlfriend. Westberry told him “Jen” didn’t want to see him, and repeatedly ordered Cujdik to leave. When Cujdik refused, Westberry threatened to call police.
” ‘Do it. My family are cops,’ ” Cujdik said, according to Westberry.
Every policeman and prosecutor involved in this miscarriage of justice should be fired… but we all know they won’t be. One thing that many people probably don’t know is that militaries have historically despised police for their cowardice. Wargames even have codified rules based on the fact that when police units are used as combat units, they tend to be ineffective and overly prone to breaking and running. In total contrast to the military, the police are only brave so long as the other side is unarmed, outnumbered, and preferably, under the impression that the police are going to give them a fair shake.
The U.S. border patrol may not be able to keep out Mexican drug lords and Somali jihadists, but if you’re a Canadian science fiction writer attempting to leave the country, well, you’d better watch out, mister!
If you buy into the Many Worlds Intepretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car like army ants for no apparent reason; or perhaps they did, and I simply kept my eyes downcast and refrained from asking questions.
The madness, it grows.
I like John Scalzi, I simply don’t happen to agree with him very often. But give him his due. Every now and then, he simply knocks one out of the park:
Dear homeowners association: When a Medal of Honor recipient wants to have a flagpole in his front yard, you say “Yes, sir. By all means. Thank you, sir.” Because you know what? Dude’s earned that damn flagpole, and you all look like officious pricks for telling him he can’t have it because it messes with your neighborhood’s feng shui.
I think Heinlein may have taken things a bit far with suggesting that only veterans should vote, although it increasingly appears that his idea would almost certainly work better than the current concept of the universal 18+ franchise sans felons. But Scalzi is right. A Medal of Honor winner’s opinion about the suitability of a flag display absolutely trumps those of the persnickety sort of individuals who invariably fill the ranks of the homeowners associations of America.
Forget his flagpole. If a 90 year-old Medal of Honor winner tells you to put up a flag on your own house, the correct response is: “Yes sir, right away sir.” Combat service doesn’t make a man right, but it means he merits proper respect even when he’s wrong.