He was the man standing next to Lee Harvey Oswald when Jack Ruby shot Oswald.
Ningali Lawford-Wolf, Australian Aboriginal actress. She was perhaps most famous as the mother in “Rabbit Proof Fence“.
Official NYT obit for Jessi Combs.
Ms. Combs was killed on Tuesday while attempting to set a land speed record.
Actual HouChron headline (on their homepage):
Tweet of the day:
My coworker brought in some biscuits from Germany called Choco Leibniz and I asked if there'd been a dispute over whether them or Fig Newtons had been invented first and nobody got it 🙁
— Robin Johnson (@rdouglasjohnson) August 26, 2019
Michael Drejka was convicted of manslaughter. (Previously.) You can call me lazy, but I’m going to point to Andrew Branca again, who is an actual lawyer and knows something about use of force and the law:
This case is an excellent example of how tiny changes in the fact pattern could lead to drastically different legal outcomes. If McGlockton had made any apparent movement consistent with re-engaging Drejka, Drejka’s perception of an imminent attack would likely have been unquestionably reasonable. Even a mere shift of McGlockton’s body weight toward, rather than away from, Drejka might have been sufficient. Such evidence was not in the case, however.
Also extremely unhelpful to Drejka was his post-event interrogation by police, to which he voluntarily consented, without legal counsel present. In that interrogation a happily compliant Drejka, believing he’s just helping the police understand why his shooting of McGlockton was no problem, hardly an inconvenience, as the internet meme puts it, agrees to conduct a re-enactment of the shooting.
“Really, seriously, just shut the f–k up.”
Interesting post from Stephen Wolfram’s blog that sits at a couple of intersections: rare book geekery, computer science (the rare book belonged to Turing), and detective work.
Actual headline from the Austin American-Statesman:
The article goes on to state that, according to industry experts, all of the Statesman reporters are intelligent, attractive, and all of their bodily functions smell like apple cinnamon Glade plug-ins.
Perhaps slightly more interesting: this column about the Texas State Cemetery, tied to Cedric Benson’s burial there. While the writing is slightly grating, it does answer some questions I had about who gets in and how.
Gerard O’Neill, investigative reporter for the Boston Globe.
Mr. O’Neill, who spent 35 years at The Globe, was one of three original reporters on the paper’s Spotlight Team, the full-time investigative strike force that was modeled after the Insight Team of The Sunday Times of London.
Two years after its founding in 1970, Spotlight — with the 29-year-old Mr. O’Neill on the team — won a Pulitzer Prize for its first major investigation, which uncovered rampant corruption in Somerville, a Boston suburb.
Later, as chief of the unit, Mr. O’Neill would help report, write and edit investigations that swept numerous awards, landed multiple Massachusetts officials in jail and led to reforms.
One of his (and the team’s) major accomplishments was breaking the story that Whitey Bulger was a FBI informant, and that the FBI had been letting him get away with major crimes (including murder) in return for informing.
Black Mass, while dated, is one of the two books on Bulger that I recommend (the other being The Brothers Bulger). Black Mass also won the best fact crime Edgar Award in 2001.
I was less enthusiastic about Whitey, which kind of felt like a quickly written update and attempt to cash in on Bulger’s capture.
Two stories from HoustonChronicle.com (not chron.com, which is basically imitation Buzzfeed these days):
Gerald Goines, the Houston Police Department officer at the center of the botched drug raid scandal, has been charged with two counts of felony murder. His partner, Steven Bryant, has been charged with tampering. (Apparently, that’s “tampering with a government record”, though I saw some early reports claim it was “witness tampering”.)
Lawrence has been on the botched drug raid story like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst exhibition, so I’m going to direct you over there for coverage and background. If the HouChron is too obnoxious for you (in terms of subscriptions and ad-blockers) here’s coverage from KHOU (with equally obnoxious auto-play video).
In other news, the paper would like for you to know that you can buy guns.
Okay, that’s not quite 100% fair. You can buy Bushmaster M4 assault rifles.
Okay, that’s still not quite fair. You can buy Bushmaster M4 assault rifles…from DPS employees who bought them from the agency.
The paper apparently found two – yes, two – M4 rifles for sale on “online gun forums” “recently”. That’s two out of “over 1,000” sold since September of 2016. DPS has also sold “over 2,000 SIG Sauer P226 pistols”, and a total of 5,254 guns during that time. So it looks like there’s about 2,000 guns not accounted for in this count. Shotguns? “high-powered rifles equipped with accessories worth thousands of dollars”?
So it sounds like you can buy up to three guns on your way out the door. But:
Does this mean you can buy more after you retire? That’s how I read it: it sounds kind of like how my Dad got an old Ford F100 pickup, by signing up for the waitlist at Brown and Root and paying $800. Except for guns.
Also according to the paper: the SIGs were going to DPS troopers for $350 each, and the Bushies were going for “$401-$601 each”. It’s not clear what the difference is between the $400 and the $600 Bushies, but: Mike and I have spent the past few weekends at gun shows, and you can get a pretty nice Smith and Wesson M&P-15 (not the M&P15-22, but the .223/5.56 one) for under $600 if you shop carefully. Right now, CDNN will sell you a SIG P320 for $350, and they have P226s with a factory optic for “too low to print – call”. (I would, but they’re closed now.) At least one DPS guy who was selling his Bushie (the ad’s been taken down now, according to the paper) was asking $975 for his.
I only note this story because it seems like a giant nothing burger, except for (maybe) the question of whether the state is getting a good deal by letting retired troopers buy these guns, instead of selling them to licensed gun dealers for credit towards replacements. But if CDNN is selling AR pattern rifles to the public for $600, and SIGs for $350, I doubt DPS is going to get anything close to that on a wholesale deal with any vendor.
NYT obit for David H. Koch, for the historical record. (Edited to add: Reason.)
Russ Conway. No, you’ve probably never heard of him, but I think he’s noteworthy.
Mr. Conway was a reporter for the Eagle-Tribune in North Andover, Massachusetts. He covered the Boston Bruins for the paper. And, while doing so, came up with evidence of serious – indeed, criminal – misconduct by the head of the NHL Players Union, Alan Eagleson.
Mr. Eagleson, he wrote, had, among many things, skimmed money from players’ disability payments; lent union funds to friends and associates at favorable rates; and billed the union for personal expenses, including a London apartment and Wimbledon tickets.
He also reported that Mr. Eagleson had promised that the N.H.L. players’ pension fund would profit from the Canada Cup — which was held five times between 1976 and 1991 between teams from Europe, the United States and Canada — but that little was left after subtracting questionable expenses.
His reporting was published as a series in the paper, and was a finalist for a Pulitzer. It was later expanded into a book, Game Misconduct: Alan Eagleson and the Corruption of Hockey.
Even better, his reporting led to investigations in the US and Canada, and a 1994 Federal indictment on 32 charges. Mr. Eagleson pled guilty to three counts of mail fraud in 1998, and was ordered to make restitution to the union. He was also convicted on fraud charges in Canada, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. (He served six months.) In addition, Mr. Eagleson was disbarred and forced out of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
What Mr. Conway uncovered about Mr. Eagleson occasionally disgusted him. He recalled one player, Ed Kea, who suffered a brain injury when he was checked into the boards during a game in 1983 while he was with a minor league affiliate of the St. Louis Blues.
“Al Eagleson didn’t even have the common decency to go visit the family,” Mr. Conway told Maclean’s. “He wouldn’t aid them in the insurance process. He was gone. Crush up the cigarette pack, throw it out. Next!”
This morning’s Linkswarm covered that story that’s been going around about the reporter who thought it was easier to buy a gun than to buy cold medicine. (Spoiler: she apparently didn’t realize you have to fill out a Form 4473 and go through a background check to buy a gun. The story is being presented as “she failed the check”, but the way I read it, the check was never done because the address on her driver’s license did not match her home address.)
Here’s a flip side to this story. Some background: a guy was arrested in one of our local parks earlier this week. He was carrying multiple weapons: “a loaded 9 mm handgun with an extra magazine, a collapsible baton, two knives, and an assault-style rifle loaded with a 30-round magazine and fitted with a stand, scope and tactical light.”
Ignore for the moment the question of what “an assault-style rifle” is (I haven’t been able to find any photos of the rifle in question, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it turned out to be a tarted-up 10/22). The gentleman in question was charged with “unlawfully carrying a handgun and a baton and deadly conduct”. He also had an arrest warrant out of Harris County.
More background: Michael Cargill owns a local gun shop, Central Texas Gun Works. Mr. Cargill is a prominent local Second Amendment advocate, who is frequently quoted in the local media when they run gun related stories.
Mr. Cargill sold the gentleman his rifle about a month ago. Now, it doesn’t exactly look good to be selling guns to folks who have open felony arrest warrants for domestic violence. But Mr. Cargill has an explanation for this, and it’s a doozy:
…
Cargill blamed that lapse on courts in Houston, which he said did not notify the National Instant Criminal Check System that Broesche had been charged with a felony. “When you have a warrant for your arrest,” Cargill said, “that triggers a denial for purchasing a firearm.”
Courts, sheriff’s offices and other local law enforcement agencies across the state often fail to notify the background check system of charges or when people are released from jail on bail, Cargill said. He said he frequently sees people’s applications to purchase a gun delayed because of an arrest, but the National Instant Criminal Check System’s database sometimes doesn’t include additional information related to the disposition of the cases, which can determine whether they are eligible to purchase a firearm.
Nut graph:
So the courts aren’t reporting information that impacts background checks. Meanwhile, the usual suspects are calling for “red flag laws”, when we can’t even trust the police to get the right person anymore than we can trust the government to list the right people on the no-fly list.
Jack Perkins, NBC News reporter and former host of “Biography” on A&E.
First one to call the cops wins.
Siwatu-Salama Ra was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and committing a felony while in possession of a firearm. Her conviction was just overturned by the Michigan Court of Appeals.
I think I’ve managed to keep on top of the Austin City Council and Travis County Commissioners lists.
But I let the list of Texas Congressional reps fall into disrepair and obsolesce. And I didn’t think the list of Texas Senators needed to be updated, either.
It seems that the House and Senate IT people (or whoever is in charge of the websites for reps and senators) have been doing a lot of reconfiguration and standardization. Even if the senator or rep hadn’t changed since 2016 or so, there were still broken links to district maps and contact forms. Plus it seems like these folks move office locations about as often as…well, as something that moves a lot.
Anyway, I’ve spent a good chunk of my spare time for the past couple of days updating the Senators and Representatives lists. Just in case you want to make use of those for a specific purpose, such as contacting your rep to explain that a magazine ban is going to cost him his seat in Congress. You know, the usual.
The next bunch of free mental CPU cycles are going to spent going back over the commissioners and city council lists, just to make sure they haven’t slipped in any changes. (It looks like Jeff Travillion has hired some staff members since he took office, and I’ve updated his entry.)
If you good folks notice anything that’s wrong or broken or out of date, please contact me and I’ll get it fixed ASAP.
In the meantime, UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.
Andrew Branca did a good post on Monday (that I missed) over at Legal Insurrection about the Michael Drejka case: the trial has started.
You might know the Drejka case better as the “handicapped parking space shooting”. Trying to summarize as objectively as I can: Mr. Drejka confronted Markeis McGlockton’s girlfriend about being parked illegally in a handicapped parking space. Mr. McGlockton intervened and shoved Mr. Drejka to the ground: Mr. Drejka, apparently believing he was in a vulnerable position and subject to further attack by Mr. McGlockton, shot and killed him.
Mr. Drejka was not initially charged: the local sheriff stated that he believed this was a legitimate case of self-defense. A month after the shooting, Mr. Drejka was charged with manslaughter.
Bonus: CNN debunking.
There’s an article in today’s NYT about Anwar Ghazali. Mr. Ghazali was convicted of second degree murder a few days ago.
What did he do? He shot a 17-year-old who shoplifted some beer from the convenience store Mr. Ghazali was clerking at.
You should apply the usual NYT gun related story discount to this article, but I think there are some illustrative lessons to be learned here.
So the guy was running off, he wasn’t a fleeing armed felon who could endanger others, and Mr. Ghazali was (by this account) out of danger. Why did he grab a gun and pursue? I’m not a lawyer, much less a Tennessee one, but I’m pretty sure grabbing a gun and pursuing a person who is in flight, and poses no immediate threat to you or others, takes you outside of “castle doctrine” and into “the DAs likely going to charge you – that is, if you don’t get shot by the cops while you’re running down the street waving a gun” territory.
The store clerk grabbed a handgun and chased him, firing off a few shots into the dark night, on March 29, the authorities said.
“I think I shot him,” the clerk, Anwar Ghazali, 29, told a customer when he returned to the store, according to a police affidavit and the Shelby County District Attorney’s office.
“I think I shot him.” So he was spraying shots into “the dark night”?
Always be sure of your target and what is beyond it. What if he had hit an innocent person in a house or apartment nearby?
But he did hit somebody.
And:
If he had called the police, there’s a pretty good chance they would have found Mr. Harris, stopped the bleed, gotten medics out there, Mr. Harris would be alive today, and Mr. Ghazali wouldn’t have been charged with murder. (Admittedly, I haven’t seen the autopsy report, which is why I qualify that with “pretty good chance”.)
Also on point: in a defensive gun use, even if you just display the gun without actually using it, first one to call 911 wins. Massad Ayoob’s writings contain more than one story of someone who legitimately displayed a weapon to deter a threat, and found themselves on the wrong end of a police investigation and legal bills. If I remember correctly (I don’t have the book here at work) Chris Bird’s Thank God I Had a Gun contains a story like this that ended “well”: in that the defensive gun user avoided prison time, but still racked up legal fees and other consequences.
So that’s my takeaways: don’t shoot people who aren’t an imminent threat to life, don’t shoot blindly into the dark, and call the police. Did I miss any salutary points? Feel free to mention my many shortcomings in comments below.