Here’s some, via The Daily Caller.
A Tulsa convenience store clerk took on four masked men during an attempted robbery earlier this week, shooting and killing two and helping bring an end to a serial robbery ring.
I wonder how that would have worked out had the clerk not been armed.
First we have the NSA collecting personal telephone call data. Now we find out about this shadowy program, which was uncovered only because DEA had to give up its existence pursuant to a criminal case involving a man accused of planning the export of technology to Iran:
The Drug Enforcement Administration has formally acknowledged that it maintained a sweeping database of phone calls made from the United States to multiple foreign countries.
And
…the program relied on administrative subpoenas to collect records of calls….
Not even a secret, but at least Article III, judge granting (or, rarely, refusing) warrants to search. Now we have, also, the same sort of warrant issued administratively (but just as sub rosa if not outright secretly).
What other secret databases is the Federal government keeping on its employers, us citizens?
These two programs, shrouded as they’ve been, are illustrations of why government cannot be trusted with such collections absent open, publicly sought and issued or refused 4th Amendment warrants. These two programs demonstrate instead that, without such public requests and issuances/denials, the Constitution will be ignored at convenience.
An aside: DoJ says this DEA collection program has been discontinued. There’s no evidence, though, that the database has been destroyed. DoJ is only willing to claim that the contents have been deleted. We know, of course, from IRS deletions that deleting doesn’t necessarily mean deletion.
A Southern California high school basketball coach has been suspended and faces accusations of mercilessly running up the score after his team won a game 161-2, one of the most lopsided scores in state history.
Based on what misbehavior, exactly?
The coach, Michael Anderson of Arroyo Valley High School’s girls’ basketball team had some comments.
I didn’t play any starters in the second half. I didn’t expect them to be that bad.
And on any do-over, perhaps
I wouldn’t play the game at all.
But what would that teach his girls? What would such an insult teach the opposing team’s girls?
The losing coach, Dale Chung of Bloomington High, also had some remarks.
He’s a great X’s and O’s coach. Ethically? Not so much. He knows what he did was wrong.
What about you, Ace? Where are your ethics in your lack of preparation of your team? You set them up for this loss. Where are your ethics with your “They’re victims” nonsense instead of your teaching them to play the game, or even (gasp!) to compete?
I have some questions.
Why must the girls on the winning team’s bench, who are trying to earn a starting position on their team, be held back from doing their best during their chance on the floor?
What about the opposing team’s girls, who offended the game with their apparent lack of effort on the court?
What about the opposing team’s girls’ parents, who didn’t bother to teach their children how to compete?
What is California trying to do to the children in its schools’ care?
Atlanta Fire Department Chief Kelvin Cochran has been fired from the Department altogether by Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. Cochran’s reprehensible crime? He wrote a book, Who Told You That You Were Naked?, about morality from the Bible’s perspective. He also wrote about his views of homosexuality as informed by the Bible.
Reed suspended Cochran for a month over that book, and then on the day Cochran was to return to duty, Reed fired him. Reed said he did it because
I profoundly disagree with and am deeply disturbed by the sentiments expressed in the paperback regarding the LGBT community. I will not tolerate discrimination of any kind within my administration.
And yet, Reed is committing exactly that bit of miscreancy. He’s discriminating against a Christian man for his Christian beliefs. Reed’s willingness to be tolerant, and his claim to be anti-discrimination, are to be extended only to those who agree with him. To those who don’t think like he does, he gives the back of his hand, and he tells them to hit the bricks.
This is a textbook example of what the Bible is describing when it talks about hypocrisy.
In the wake of the Islamic terrorist attack, sponsored, if not directed by the al Qaeda network, Charlie Hebdo (their site is down or overwhelmed as I write this) printed their next issue with an image of Muhammed on its cover.
Even as they cover the news of this story, though, as Howard Kurtz pointed out in his recent column, American “news” outlets refuse to print the image that is the center of this news story: Charlie Hebdo‘s cover. CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, and the New York Times are among those refusing to complete their news stories by showing what it is they claim to be talking about. Kurtz wrote this about that decision:
[N]ews executives had to weigh the safety of their employees, as well as their usual practice of not running images that are gratuitously offensive to religion. (Yes, I know that some have run anti-Christian images in the past but seem to be more skittish about offending Muslims.)
The parenthetical in that cite gives the game away. News…executives…aren’t worried about safety, and they’re not concerned about gratuitous religious offense (they’re not worried about gratuitous offense at all—see the slurs and degrading stories they publish about Tea Partiers, conservative women, conservative blacks, anyone who doesn’t think like they do).
American news executives are cowards, plain and simple. And they’ve surrendered their erstwhile freedom to speak to Islamic terrorists in their cowardice.