More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad.
2. Linkwad.
3. Linkwad and an update.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Forest/trees.
2. Linkwad.
3. Linkwad.

Whether or not Mehersle actually intended to shoot Oscar Grant, the trial is a reminder of a few things:

1. Juries, especially juries where blacks are excluded, are unduly sympathetic to police.
2. Even when not confused with guns, Tasers have caused hundreds of deaths in the last decade. However, police still use them freely, even in confrontations with unarmed suspects.
3. This trial only came about because of citizen-recorded video, which will get you arrested in several states (Maryland has been particularly incoherent on the subject).

Update: Adam Serwer has a much more complete take on the trial’s import.

More potentially-related posts:

1. The NRA’s James Bond: an overweight 60-yr-old.
2. EFF the RIAA.
3. Under oath.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad.
2. Linkwad (updated).
3. Linkwad.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad.
2. Linkwad (updated).
3. Linkwad.

1. Maryland cops are still arresting people for recording them, even though it’s legal.
2. In Ohio, cops can now give you a ticket based on their guess of your speed. Unfortunately, Youtube has no clips of Chief Wiggum saying “That’s some nice work there, boys.” (HT: Radley Balko)
3. Ezra Klein’s guest-blogger Mike Konczal on the “romance of the public domain.”
4. Want to learn how to make gyros? You should, because it’s delicious.
5. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 made orbit, becoming the first commercial spacecraft¹ to do so.
6. Going to see the National in Philly tomorrow, so here’s “Bloodbuzz, Ohio,” from High Violet.
   

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad and an update.
2. (Late) Five for Friday, May 22 2010.
3. I always wanted FigPlanet.com

1. The worsening African AIDS crisis.
2. Religious extremists are dumb.
3. So are destroyers of civil rights, Obama possibly included.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Don’t worry about the government.
2. Speaking of narcissism…
3. Under oath.

In [Army Private Lee] Pray’s estimate, it might not be long (months, perhaps a year) before President Obama finds some pretext—a pandemic, a natural disaster, a terror attack—to impose martial law, ban interstate travel, and begin detaining citizens en masse. One of his fellow Oath Keepers, a former infantryman, advised me to prepare a “bug out” bag with 39 items including gas masks, ammo, and water purification tablets, so that I’d be ready to go “when the shit hits the fan.”

When it does, Pray and his buddies plan to go AWOL and make their way to their “fortified bunker”—the home of one comrade’s parents in rural Idaho—where they’ve stocked survival gear, generators, food, and weapons. If it becomes necessary, they say, they will turn those guns against their fellow soldiers.

This just reinforces my belief that nothing good happens in Idaho. After the jump, more whackadoo theories in the mix:

Oath Keepers is officially nonpartisan, in part to make it easier for active-duty soldiers to participate, but its rightward bent is undeniable, and liberals are viewed with suspicion. At lunch, when I questioned my tablemates about the Obama-Hitler comparisons I’d heard at the conference, I got a step-by-step tutorial on how the president’s socialized medicine agenda would beget a Nazi-style regime.

I learned that bringing guns to Tea Party protests was a reminder of our constitutional rights, was introduced to the notion that the founding fathers modeled their governing documents on the Bible, and debated whether being Muslim meant an inability to believe in and abide by—and thus be protected by—the Constitution. I was schooled on the treachery of the Federal Reserve and why America needs a gold standard, and at dinner one night, Nighta Davis, national organizer for the National 912 Project, explained how abortion-rights advocates are part of a eugenics program targeting Christians.

It also goes without saying the group has some…unsavory members.

In January, [Oath Keeper Charles] Dyer was arrested on charges of raping a seven-year-old girl. When sheriff’s deputies raided his home, they found a Colt M-203 grenade launcher believed to have been stolen from a California military base. He now faces federal weapons charges and is being hailed by fringe militia groups like the American Resistance Movement as “the first POW of the second American Revolution.”

It’s probably not good for any future political campaigns to admit that I share some–really, any–common ground with these “patriots,” but I actually agree with them on a few of their ten “Orders We Will Not Obey:”

2. We will NOT obey any order to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects — such as warrantless house-to house searches for weapons or persons.

3. We will NOT obey any order to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to trial by military tribunal.

7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.

9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies, under any emergency pretext whatsoever.

10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

Now, I don’t really believe that an “order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps” is coming anytime soon. I haven’t heard any Oath Keepers complain about warrantless cell phone tracking or the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010, and I don’t believe for a second that their members care about Jose Padilla. Moreover, I sincerely doubt that this organization would be anything but a fringe militia group if there were a Republican in the White House, and a lot of their most vocal members seem pretty unhinged. However, even if they’re only driven by their fantastic paranoia, any pushback on civil rights from the crazysauce right-wing is something to…well, not applaud, certainly, but maybe worth a cautiously-approving nod.

Of course, toying with trained killers’ fears is playing with fire, and there’s always the chance that one of their members will snap and try to destroy the government singlehandedly.

More potentially-related posts:

1. In morning.
2. Molehills.
3. “Iran has a bright future, with so many young people getting involved.”

Google’s action and accompanying blog post strongly suggests that they believe the hack was directed by the Chinese government:

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China.

You could argue that not having a presence in China, even a censored one, would ultimately contribute to the government’s stranglehold on the people, given that the Green Dam and Great Firewall (which, as far as I know, still doesn’t care for yours truly) are still standing tall, but I commend Google’s willingness to take a stand, especially considering the money they could have made in China.

Thanks to BB, Erin, and everyone else who highlighted the story.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Don’t like Google Buzz?
2. Linkwad.
3. The Digg model comes to Google: SearchWiki

While explaining his opposition to allowing same-sex couples to adopt children, [Utah Senator Chris Buttars] told the press… “I don’t mind gays. But I don’t want ‘em stuffing it down my throat all the time. Certainly not in my kid’s face.”
[...]
In the past, Buttars has said that gay men and women are “the greatest threat to America going down.”

That said, I want to give him credit for backing the Mormon Church’s surprising push to bar employers and landlords from discriminating on the basis of sexuality, even if the thought makes him gag. So kudos to two overlapping groups of people (the Mormon Church, old white men) that I don’t often mention favorably in this space.

* “2M4M” was the ironic acronym used for National Organization for Marriage’s gay-marriage-bashing campaign.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Which ERA do Mormons hate?
2. The NRA’s James Bond: an overweight 60-yr-old.
3. Don’t worry about the government.