Tuesday, April 7, 2015 Uniformed Predators in the ER: The Scapegoating of Doug Towell “Lie still – Life Flight’s on the way.” Doug  Towell vaguely remembers hearing those words while prone and bleeding from a head wound on Idaho State Highway 21. His next memory is of being seized by irrepressible panic. “My wife!” he […]

Thursday, April 9, 2015 Michael Thomas Slager: Vocational Sociopath Solidarity, not skepticism: Patrolman Slager’s supervisor comforts the killer as the victim’s life ebbs away. As many have said, were it not for the video, Michael Thomas Slager would have been quickly exonerated – and, most likely, received a commendation – for the killing of Walter […]

Monday, April 13, 2015 Apparently, the Fantasy Cop Package Doesn’t Include “Qualified Immunity” Note: This essay has been updated to reflect the criminal charge against Robert Bates. Some wealthy men of a certain age pay an extravagant fee to attend fantasy camps where they can pretend to be Major League Baseball players, or engage in […]

Sunday, April 26, 2015 Gary Raney, Oath Breaker (Update, April 28)   Already planning his next career move: The double-minded Raney is sworn in, January 2013. When Gary Raney was re-elected as Sheriff of Idaho’s Ada County in 2012, voters who made that unfortunate choice expected that he would remain in office until the end […]

Wednesday, April 29, 2015 Globalizing America’s “Divorce Regime” A “single `no’ vote” by the Idaho Legislature disrupted “the finely crafted choreography” behind a UN child support treaty, laments the New York Times. Unless this is reversed in a special legislative session, the paper tremulously informed its dwindling band of readers, the legal architecture of international […]

Thursday, April 30, 2015 “Nickel Rides,” “Houdini Suicides,” and the American Torture State Like iron filings rearranging themselves in the presence of a magnetic field, reflexive apologists for the police quickly adapt to every official explanation for egregious misconduct. Knowing that official insinuation suffices when facts are withheld, the Baltimore PD leaked the suggestion that […]

Thursday, May 7, 2015 “This is America”: The Day Police Firebombed West Philadelphia “Let it burn”: Osage Avenue, Philadelphia, May 13, 1985 By the time Lt. Frank Powell hurled a satchel bomb onto the roof of a three-story row house on Philadelphia’s Osage Avenue, the siege had gone on for nearly twelve hours. Powell was […]

Tuesday, May 12, 2015 Support Your Local Private Peace Officer: He Has A Dangerous Job Peace Officer Down: The aftermath of the fatal shooting of Alvin Kinney in Houston. At the end of every shift, police officers call their loved ones to assure them that they “made it through another day without injury,” observes a […]