Thursday, October 24, 2002

Seized gun matches sniper's. Bullets fired by the Washington sniper match a gun found in the car of two detainees named as suspects in the killings, the FBI says. [BBC News | Front Page] So they definitely got the right people. It's ironic, after all that nonsense about "ballistic fingerprints," that the real-world technology the victim disarmament crowd got the idea from confirmed it. comment () trackback ()  6:59:17 PM     U.S. agent is charged in clash with teens. Warren County Attorney Kevin Parker charged Petersen with 10 counts of assault with a weapon, drunken driving and two counts of simple assault. Parker said the charges cover separate incidents that occurred within an hour. Police say sobriety tests show Petersen's blood-alcohol content was twice the legal limit during the incidents. They also confiscated a loaded five-shot revolver from the front seat of his government-owned Jeep, which is equipped with emergency lights and a siren that he allegedly used to stop the pickup truck. Petersen was arrested at the scene for alleged public intoxication. [Des Moines Register] Petersen is the head of the Iowa office of the BATF. Since he acted in the finest traditions of his agency, he'll probably get a promotion out of it. The victims were a bunch of teenage punks, who have hopefully now learned that there's always a more dangerous and violent thug out there somewhere. comment () trackback ()  12:13:08 PM     Police arrest sniper suspects. Two men detained in Maryland are believed by police to be suspects in the sniper shootings that have killed 10 people. [BBC News | Front Page] The last time the police detained somebody there was another shooting to show they had the wrong person, so I expect we'll know pretty soon whether these are the right people. The BBC article doesn't mention it, but recently the police had been communicating in some way with the sniper, and had received a letter asking for $10 million. That suggests that the guilty parties had seen Dirty Harry a few too many times, but it's actually a good thing since it was almost certainly the communication attempts that got them captured. On the other hand, one of them is named "Muhammad," so it may be too early to rule out the Islamic terrorist connection. comment () trackback ()  12:08:53 PM     Slashdot | U.S. Ranks 17th in Freedom of the Press. reimero writes "According to this article on Yahoo! Germany the U.S. has experienced "serious restrictions" in freedom of the press, according to Reporters without borders' first worldwide press freedom index. Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands came in tops. An interesting study, to say the least." [Privacy Digest] Apparently the rankings are based on a wide variety of factors--one of them is the number of journalists arrested or imprisoned, which pushed the US down on the list. I'd like to see a study like this take into account the willingness of the press in a country to act as voluntary government agents. If this were done I expect the mainstream media in the US to be much further down the list. It doesn't matter how much freedom of the press a country has if the press chooses to act like a state-controlled propaganda mill. comment () trackback ()  10:50:41 AM     A woman friend who (I think) is watching the World Series this year because the men around her are so interested, writes to say her seven-year-old son seems, to her, to have a very special liking for the sport, and she posits that it's male hormones at work, and this set me thinking. Is it? Maybe, but probably not in the way she thinks. [Scripting News] I'm very dubious about the alleged male affinity for sports. The biggest fan of sports I know is a woman, while I am not only uninterested but actually regard most sports with distaste. comment () trackback ()  10:33:30 AM     Book: Carter, Democrats Asked Soviets to Stop Reagan, Sway U.S. Elections. Schweizer, after scouring once-classified KGB, East German Stasi and Soviet Communist Party files, discovered incontrovertible evidence that the Soviets not only played footsie with high-ranking Democrats, they also worked behind the scenes to influence American elections. [Counterpoint] Well, this is interesting! I might buy the book, just so I can see what sort of files were found. If the accusations are true, it probably won't make any difference to the leftists in the US, but I think everyone else would like to know about it. comment () trackback ()  10:17:35 AM

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