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Favorite Books of 2011

One of Mother Jones’s favorite books of 2011 is In Defense of Flogging. It makes a fabulous Christmas stocking stuffer, for all you Old Calendarists out there (just 10 shopping days left).

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Merry Christmas

I hope everybody goes gaga when they find a nice new Victrola under the tree! [thanks to Bob]

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A Christmas Message From America’s Rich

From Rolling Stone: The very rich on today’s Wall Street are now so rich that they buy their own social infrastructure. They hire private security, they live on gated mansions on islands and other tax havens, and most notably, they buy their own justice and their own government. An ordinary person who has a problem that needs fixing puts a…

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The more things change… December 21, 1829

The Constables are not, in any instance, to ask for a Christmas-box from any of the inhabitants upon their beats; if any money is offered to them as a Christmas-box they must report the circumstances to their superior officer, who will ask permission from the Commissioners for them to receive it as in other cases. What? No Christmas box?! Somehow…

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Ron Smith, RIP

Ron Smith was a newspaper columnist and radio host on WBAL in Baltimore. He died two days ago. Ron was a conservative and a libertarian. Suffice it to say, I’m not. We agreed on a few issues–like the stupidity of the war on Iraq and the war on drugs–but we disagreed on a lot more. And still he liked me;…

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Back to the Future

Back in 1829 London, Robert Peel and Company said that every police officer, “should be able to see every part of his beat, at least once in ten minutes or a quarter of an hour.” That’s a pretty good “response time.” Craaazy, I thought. But is it? I think there are 6,000 miles of streets in New York City. I…

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RIP Peter Figoski

From the New York Times: Officer Figoski, a father of four daughters and the brother of a retired city police officer, was shot with an illegal semiautomatic weapon, Mr. Bloomberg said. He had made over 200 arrests, nearly half of them felony arrests, Mr. Kelly said. He worked out of the 75th Precinct, one of the city’s most crime-ridden, where…

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The more things change… December 11, 1829

Sick days and line-of-duty injury. The Secretary of State for the Home Department has directed that, in future when a Police Constable is certified sick by the surgeon, from that day till he is again certified by the surgeon fit for duty, “a deduction of 1s. shall be made from his pay each day.” In certain cases, however, of wounds…

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More on UC Davis Pepper Spray

You can watch the 45 minute version here. This may not be thedefinitive version, but if you care about this issue, you owe it to yourself to at least take 45 minutes from your busy life and watch a version of the whole thing. Some have said the cops are surrounded. That is after-the-fact rationalization (at best). Perhaps it was…

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