There is so much going on in US police departments, large and small, that stinks to high heavens:

By Packratt, on October 11th, 2009

Members of a militaristic looking Dolton Illinois police department using
an armored personnel carrier during a standoff in 2008

There’s trouble in Dolton Illinois, and it may go beyond the highly publicized videotaped beating of a special needs student by a Dolton police officer with a worrisome past.

By now, most people are aware of the video showing Dolton police officer Christopher Lloyd assaulting 15-year-old Marshawn Pitts, a learning disabled student at the Academy for Learning school for special needs students, for nothing more than mouthing off about a dress code violation in May 2009.

Most are also now aware of officer Lloyd’s questionable past with the Robbins Illinois police department where he was involved with the questionable shooting death of his ex-wife’s husband and that he is currently sitting in a Lake County Indiana jail on charges of sexual assault.

However, the question people are still asking is how an officer like Lloyd was hired and placed in a high school with learning disabled students while he was still on unpaid leave from the Robbins Illinois PD over the the shooting death of his ex-wife’s husband when he was hired by Dolton in January of 2009?

( . . . )

Read the full article here.

Thank goodness the Washington Post didn’t perpetuate irresponsible Internet rumors on that snowball fight story. Instead, they went straight to MPDC for the official version of events, unskeptically published the resulting lies from the department’s spokesman, after which WaPo columnist Marc Fisherput up a smug blog post gloating about how responsibly the paper treated the story, as opposed to those hysterical blogs and Internet sites. Never mind that the blogs and videos had proof the WaPo got the damned story wrong. Facts aren’t as important as who followed journalistic protocol.

Interesting piece by Adam Liptak on the politicization of Supreme Court clerks.

Saddest Christmas story you’ll hear about today.

Speaking of the snowball fight heard ’round the world, Julian Sanchez has good thoughts on class, video, and police accountability.

Cow art. Some of these are quite moo-tiful.

The latest from Maricopa County.

Minnesota Supreme Court nixes innocent owner defense in forfeiture cases, says spouse has no claim if other spouse loses car after DWI stop.

Congratulations, Democrats. You’ve proven you can pass a major piece of legislation by buying off votes with last minute pork projects and special favors, then shoving it through the Senate in the middle of the night just as well as the Republicans. You’re an all-growed-up corrupt ruling party, now. (CORRECTION: As noted in the comments, the bill didn’t pass, the Dems were just able to force cloture.)

Awkward moments in webvertising.

The D.C. cop who drew his gun at a snowball fight this weekend is now international news. This will make it somewhat more difficult for MPDC to continue lying about the story.

If Mullholland Drive was the sixth best movie of the decade, I just lived through a different decade.

Prosecutors are still whining about the Supreme Court’s Melendez-Diaz decision from last term, arguing in a brief for a similar case next term that the decision “is already proving unworkable.” Oh. Well in that case, sure. Let’s go ahead and scrap the constitutional right to confront one’s accusers because, you know, it’s really, really inconvenient to the government to respect it. I always forget about that footnote to the Bill of Rights that says, “*Unless respecting these rights makes the jobs of government employees more difficult.”

A grand jury has ruled that the police shooting and killing of Georgia pastor Jonathan Ayers was justified. I’ll have more on this terrible story in coming weeks.

According to the Washington Post, a Black "D.C. police detective angrily confronted a group of (some white) snowball fighters, at one point even drawing his weapon, after they pelted him and his Hummer with snowballs near the intersection of 14th and U Streets NW Saturday, witnesses said." Responding in part to this and other videos, D.C. police said the detective, who they have declined to identify, has been assigned to desk duty pending the outcome of an investigation into the matter.

Are police officers as intelligent as they should be, and do they show good judgment?

When someone with a camera and a microphone asked the detective whether he had pulled his gun at the snowball fight, the detective responded, "Yes, because I got hit with snowballs."

Asked twice, "What's your badge number, Sir? What's your badge number?" the detective asked in response, "For what?!"

Submitted by: dunno source via Submission Page

Submitted by: dunno source via Submission Page

Submitted by: dunno source via Submission Page

Submitted by: dunno source via Submission Page

Dan Hayes from Reason.tv was there for the whole thing.

The uniformed officers seemed to have quite a bit more sense about the whole thing than Det. Baylor. Good for them, or the whole situation could have been a lot uglier.