Monday, October 20, 2014 Either Praise the Police, or Shut Up “Don’t just touch your chin — bang it, man, bang it!” Following Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia, members of the Persian elite were required to prostrate themselves before their new ruler. Polyperchon, one of Alexander’s generals, sternly rebuked one of the Persians whose […]

Tuesday, October 14, 2014 Cannibals with Cutlery Armed strangers on the doorstep: Fish & Game Officers raid the Watson home, October 8. (Scott Watson) Carolyn Brewer was startled by the unannounced presence of an armed man in her bedroom. Her mood didn’t improve when the intruder sternly ordered her, “You don’t get up.” That directive […]

Thursday, October 9, 2014 “Crush the Seed of Ishmael”: A “Final Solution” to the “Muslim Problem”   Decapitation by drone strike: A routine act of state terrorism by the US government. We have reached a point in our nation’s descent into psychotic tribalist fear where people of stature and apparent sobriety unabashedly use the expression […]

Friday, October 3, 2014 The Drug War’s Medical Quislings When police dragged Felix Booker, naked and shackled, into the emergency room at the Methodist Medical Center in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, they knew Dr. Michael LaPaglia would set aside his Hippocratic obligation to the patient and act as an agent of the State. On at least […]

Sunday, September 28, 2014 Blackmail, Witness Tampering, Criminal Misconduct: Routine Business for the Flathead County Gestapo If Kafka and Dickens collaborated on a character, Ed Corrigan would be the result. “These sort [sic] of things are not unusual,” sniffed Ed Corrigan, District Attorney for Flathead County, Montana, in response to a complaint against him filed […]

Tuesday, September 23, 2014 Time To Take Their Toys Away (UPDATED September 24) Yes, this is how we live now: Ada County SWAT arrests a man for “disturbing the peace.” When Daniel Webster warned that there will always be men who “promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters,” he most likely […]

Monday, March 17, 2014 One Unjustified Arrest, One Permanent File, and One Corrupt Sheriff: The Ordeal of Mark Patterson Any day that begins with a visit from police will probably turn out badly. Mark Patterson’s day got off to that kind of inauspicious start, and grew worse in crescendo.  The officers let themselves into Mark’s […]

Friday, September 19, 2014 “We Have Been a Paramilitary Organization”: How the Police Talk When They Think We’re Not Listening Chief Hite at September 17 City Council meeting.  “We have historically been a paramilitary organization,” observed Indianapolis Police Chief Rick Hite during a September 17 City Council meeting. “And we serve whoever sits in that […]