Category: Random News

If you haven’t heard the story of Kathryn Johnston, it is sad. Sadder still, it is not an isolated case.

Johnston Timeline (from Reason):

Federal investigators have released a timeline in the Kathryn Johnston case, and it’s absolutely horrifying. We now learn that even the initial bust that produced the tip leading to the raid was due to planted evidence. Which means everything about this case was created and manufactured by these cops. The instinctual ease with which these three officers piled lie on top of lie, the fact that they very nearly got away with it, and the fact that none of the three had a single moment of moral clarity until their case began unraveling three weeks later—it’s all chilling. Consider this passage:

Johnston got off one shot, the bullet missing her target and hitting a porch roof. The three narcotics officers answered with 39 bullets.

Five or six bullets hit the terrified woman. Authorities never figured out who fired the fatal bullet, the one that hit Johnston in the chest. Some pieces of the other bullets — friendly fire — hit Junnier and two other cops.

The officers handcuffed the mortally wounded woman and searched the house.

There was no Sam.

There were no drugs.

There were no cameras that the officers had claimed was the reason for the no-knock warrant.

Just Johnston, handcuffed and bleeding on her living room floor.

That is when the officers took it to another level. Three baggies of marijuana were retrieved from the trunk of the car and planted in Johnston’s basement. The rest of the pot from the trunk was dropped down a sewage drain and disappeared.

The three began getting their stories straight.

While an innocent, elderly woman lay bleeding, handcuffed, and dying on the floor of her own home due to their malfeasance, these animals went about planting drugs to implicate her, and concocting a story to save their own hides. Every case these officers ever worked on needs to be reopened. And that’s just getting started. A police department that could produce these three dirty cops, and allow them to operate, is a department that has almost certainly produced many more. It would be awfully coincidental if the only three bad drug cops at APD all happened to be working together and get caught on this particular raid.

This article, if its polling numbers are correct, comes to some strange conclusions

globeandmail.com: It’s all panic on the leftist front in France

Parties and voters have both realized this week that there is a very real possibility of two right-wing candidates contesting the presidency, even though most French voters lean to the left. To prevent such an outcome, the major left-wing and centrist candidates have been scrambling to strike a deal that could prevent the moderate vote from being demolished by the half-dozen tiny parties that chip away at its base. That is what happened in 2002, when only conservative Jacques Chirac and ultra-right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen were left on the final ballot.

That could easily happen again this year, with Socialist leader Ségolène Royal (who the latest polls show at 25 per cent) being bumped off the ballot by either the ultra-rightist Mr. Le Pen (13 per cent) or centre-right candidate François Bayrou (19 per cent), killing her bid to unseat the front-runner, right winger Nicolas Sarkozy (27 per cent). The half-dozen fringe, leftist candidates like Mr. Bové all are polling below 5 per cent, but their combined numbers make up 15 per cent of the electorate.

If these figures are correct, then 25 + 13 + 19 + 27 + 15 = 99%, leaving 1% undecided, and the majority (13 + 19 + 27 = 59%) favoring right or center-right candidates, directly contradicting the statement about the left-leaning electorate. But the article then goes on to say:

But between 30 and 40 per cent of voters remain undecided, and many could vote for one of the small parties instead of Ms. Royal. Eighty per cent of the people who intend to vote for the “third candidate,” the centrist Mr. Bayrou (19 per cent), say they are just as likely to back one of the other major candidates, but Ms. Royal’s aides say that Mr. Bayrou could steal enough voters from her to knock her out of the election.

If 30-40% remain undecided, then those first numbers must be those who express a preference (never mentioned in the article), and the actual numbers for the candidates are 16-18% for Royal, 8-9% for Le Pen, 12-14% for Bayrou, 16-19% for Sarkozy, and 9-11% for the field, with Undecided leading the pack by a large margin.

This weekend will be the last chance to see HITS’ production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, in which I play the King. Showtimes are 8pm Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The show is free, but if you want to sit in the covered seating, you have to get tickets at the Miller box office in Hermann Park between 11am and 1pm the day of the show. But camping on the hill is more fun, so bring a blanket, a picnic basket, and come enjoy the show!