MONKEY WITH A SHOTGUN!!!

All this arguing about gerrymandering (which is an unarguably awful practice no matter what party is involved) is noticing the oaks and missing the forest.

Hundreds, HUNDREDS of young, largely black voters marched miles and miles to participate in an election. They did not give in to apathy, they did not go online and blog about the unfairness, they went and did something about it.

They lit a candle rather than curse the darkness. That's a damn fine thing.

I think Penn Jillette is funny, I think Richard Dawkins is a brilliant scientist, I think George Carlin is a filthy poet, I think Christopher Hitchens is a beautiful drunk and Lovecraft a scary bastard. The fact that I believe in god and they do not is immaterial to that.

Anyone who disparages Carl Sagan based on his atheism (or agnosticism, I'm afraid I don't know precisely where he stood on the point) is simply being foolish. A condition that afflict those of religious and irreligious bents alike.

I judge a person by the content of their character, which is not something wholly defined by their stance on religion.

@Mikeylikesboingboing

Expect the christian talibanists to go BIG-TIME DEFCON 1 over this. Mark my words.

First off, using the Taliban is overwrought and overreaching. Just as nonsensical as saying that all Atheists are nihilists or social darwinists. The Taliban has alot more to do with politics and tribalism than religion. Take a look at the book "Charlie Wilson's War" to learn more than just the "Taliban=religious lunatics" cypher.

I'm religious and I think Carl Sagan was a marvelous educator and scientist. He inspired creative and critical thinking and did so with a graceful and charming wit. The fact the we might disagree about the underlying "Why?" of the universe does not mean we cannot marvel in the workings of it.

Religious does not mean ignorant or fanatical. Just the same as Atheist does not mean humorless and grim.

@clumpy:
That's because there's a conspiracy to keep Ron Paul videos off youtube. But if you just send 99.95 to Dr. Paul he can get a blimp to float over Washington displaying lulz for all the world to see.

Cory, have you seen Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man"?

There's a bit where he listens to a tape of a young man and his girlfriend being mauled to death. Herzog doesn't play the tape in the film, instead he listens, his face grave, with headphones on. At the end he hands the tape to a friend of the couple and simple says "You should never listen to this."

It's an amazing historical document. I will never listen to it.

The Constitution will be just fine ....

The first accurate thing you've said so far actually. It's only true because people have been fighting so hard against the broadside swipes at our civil liberties. The constitution survives because people fight for it, not just cuz.

I'd advise you to read up on the detainees in that prison before you start talking about how you'll "save your tears" for US prisoners. US inmates have a right to due process under law, they have the right to seek counsel, visitors and habeas corpus. None of these rights are afforded to prisoners at guantanmo bay.

The nonsense part of your argument comes from the words "enemy combtant". This is little more than propoganda speak from the Bush administration. It's a way of getting around the Geneva Convention, a document the administration thinks is outdated. The geneva conventions have been enforced against perpetrators of genocide, you're telling me that someone who planned to build an IED is more dangerous than Slobodan Milosovic? Please.

“It’s as if someone turned up the gain on our life to make it sound really bad.”

You say torture like it's a BAD thing.

It must be very hard for people who spend most of their day trying to make end runs around the constitution and chip away at due process to understand the value of satire and free expression.

@RRSAFETY:
It's not even a question of whether the prison is a "hellhole", though I'm pretty sure supermax conditions aren't cozy, it's a underlying illegality of it that is even worse. It's a prison that is not on American soil, detains men for years without trial or counsel and, by their own admission, use "stress techniques" to gain information. The fact that it's also a pretty horrid place to live is ancillary to those facts.

Add to that the fact that it makes Americans LESS safe. Oh indeed it does. First, they're wasting time on some poor bastard who was sold to US forces for the obscene bounties we place on "al-queda". Second, the very existence of what is essentially and oubliette truly serves to undermine the American arguments about freedom and the rule of law. Finally, and worst of all, it makes ready-made propoganda for any radical leader looking to whip up a frenzy. Much like how the invasion of Iraq made Osama Bin Ladin into nothing shy of a prognosticator.

If we held trials, put these men through a proper legal system, stopped torturing for information and stopped acting like children afraid of the dark the US might just regain some of it's lost honor with the rest of the world.

Calm is a powerful weapon. It shows discipline, patience, control.

My mum taught me that we can't control other people, but we can control how we respond. You can try to piss me off all day long, but when I give in I give up my control and you win.

I think alot of people's mums taught them that simple idea, and if more people practiced it, we'd have a much smoother ride.

@squashy

the poor guy was probably just trained to deal with criminals, and instead he gets TEENAGERS.

Hopefully. Community policing, beat-walking and just generally encouraging cops to have positive interactions with the public is a really good thing. Citizens get to see law enforcement in a positive way and cops get to interact with people on a more personable level, not in crisis mode.

And the shorts...the shorts need to go. There must be a correlation between police stress and wearing shorty-shorts.

@squashy:

I don't think you're hitler or Bill O'Reilly. But I do think you're operating from a false assumption.

The cops job isn't to control the masses, it's to police them. He entered this situation looking to assert control, dominance even, as opposed to acting as an agent of civil order.

We don't see the initial confrontation, just the choke hold picture, but let's assume for a moment that it was a valid arrest. If he'd ignored the other teens and kept his temper he could have effected the arrest and walked off with the young man in custody, end of situation. The other kids would have wandered off or gone home or moved on.

Instead he tried to assert dominance. He engaged the teenagers in anger, barking orders and threats. Yelling "Sit down, don't move" simply because the kids have the temerity to speak to him is ridiculous.

Yes, the one teen ran. Again, the cop looked completely out of control and they were likely scared.

It's not his job to scare them straight. It's his job to be a police officer. I was raised to believe that cops were there to help you, that they were people you could turn to if you were scared. This militaristic "scared straight" bullocks doesn't work in a free society.

Stop saying "he had a bad day". That's an excuse and does nothing to justify his actions. If anything it makes his actions more vile since he obviously can't control himself.

I'm not sneering at all cops. The over-whelming majority of them do a damn hard job the best they can. But when someone vested with the powers they have goes over the line it should disgust us. Like a politician who steals or a judge who fixes cases. It should offend us greatly and move us to action.

Do you mean the part where he says to the girl "hey, come here and sit down" and she says "No" and runs off?

Actually I mean the part where he grabs two children around their throats and shoves them to the ground. First off, taking on two people, from behind, is more of a pro-wrestling move than anything. He looked ridiculous and was clearing out of control of not only the situation, but his temper as well.

And he chases her and grabs her, and the other guy screams "She's riding a skateboard! What the fuck is wrong with you?" and kind of lunges at the cop
and tries to do an odd little barge move on him, so the cop grabs him too,

You mean when the child questions the police officer chok restraining another kid on the ground? "kind of lunges"? That's ridiculous and inflammatory. At no point in that video did any of those kids make anything resembling a physical move on that cop. They were freaked out, scared and angry. If he'd responded as an adult and a professional he would have tried to resolve that situation, not exhasturbated it.

I really don't see anyone's safety being seriously jeopardised here. Well, except for the risk of injury caused by kids skateboarding though town in the first place, which is the point where people were most in danger of breaking their necks.

Do a search on choke-holds and police officers. Wrapping your hands around the neck of a child as a method of restraint, from behind and on multiple children. You don't see the danger in that?

No he wasn't. Stop it with the melodramatics. He didn't choke anyone and he didn't threaten any violence.

Actually, he did. It's the first image on the video, taken on a camera phone. You say "restraining", I see a man clearly lacking in self-control lashing out and wheeling at a group of kids grabbing at their necks. Stop minimizing an act of violence because it's not "as bad" as other acts of violence. Equivocation makes things like this acceptable.

I'm also sure that knowing that the whole thing was being videoed made the kids act twice as obnoxious for their moment of YouTube stardom. Nothing like having an audience.

You honestly make my blood boil with that kind of rhetoric. "Oh look at those kids, playing it up for their moment of stardom". They were doing what skateboarders have been doing for decaces, making skatetapes.

This is one guy trying to maintain public order and do his job, and having a rotten day. Can we save the outrage for the real cases, and then do the outrage properly?

Good god. There's so much wrong with your logic I can't even think of where to start.

What you had were a bunch of kids being assaulted by a cop for committing an incredibly petty crime.

Again, if this is how this knobhead reacts to skateboarders and mouthy teenagers what does he do with shoplifters? Waterboard them and crack out the electrodes?

The police are not there to enforce order by whatever means they see fit. They are accountable to the public and charged with acting with due and judicious force. If you really look at that video and see judicious force and appropriate behavior...I pity you.

Squashy Said: The cop in the video posted on #3 didn't beat anyone up. He just held them down. I seriously doubt that anyone was hurt at all.

I'm sorry, did you see the adult man grabbing children by the throat for petty criminal offenses? That's what I saw. What is that thug going to do when he has to confront an actual criminal, just pull out his gun and shoot them dead?

The man in that video was trying to prove his toughness, not enforce the law. An actual professional law enforcement officer would not have escalated that situation into a mass arrest. Those kids were speaking to him, none of them touched him or stopped him from executing the initial (and assuredly also bogus) arrest. The kid running away, he was being threatened by a man choking another child. I'd run the fuck away from that as well.

If he can't handle a group of small children criticizing him he should not have police powers to begin with.

Cops get in much, much worse situations on a regular basis and are expected to remain calm and in control. That man was acting a fool.

@freakcitysf:

The creepy thing in that video is the lady passing by saying who instantly jumps to the cops defense.

Ok, that's one of about a dozen creepy things in that video.

When he grabs the two kids around the neck and tries to slam them to the ground, very easily could have broken their necks or severely injured them. And for what, the juvenile equivalent of a parking ticket. Disorderly conduct is nonsense. Good on the kids for filming it all. I'm put off by a surveillance society, but catching bastards being bastards on tape just does my heart good.