Category Archives: Crime and Punishment

Those touchy-feely guys at GlockWorld

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Bob’s post about guns reminded me of something I ran across last week…

Trying to figure out how on Earth that guy managed to kill 32 people and wound many others withoutChopoint2
anybody stopping him (a subject I will come back to because it still puzzles me; I’ve put together some notes on it) caused me to pore through news stories in the first day or so, looking to find out what he was armed with. The fact that he did not have an automatic weapon made me all the more curious.

The Wall Street Journal told me over breakfast last Wednesday that he had some sort of Glock 9mm — the AP says it was a Glock 19 — and a Walther P22, so I looked those up on my PDA. And I gotta tell ya, I was really touched by what I found.

Of all the outpourings of sympathy from across the country, what could have been more heartwarming, more comforting, than this, posted at GlockWorld.com?

TGSCOM, Inc is appalled by the events at the Virginia Tech campus on April 16th, 2007 and we hope that you will join us in thoughts and prayers to bring some comfort to the families of the victims. We advocate the responsible and legal use of firearms and are saddened that there are some who will pick up a firearm with the intention of harming an innocent human being. A fund has been set in place at Virginia Tech to help the families of the victims of this unthinkable crime. Donate here.

How about them guys at GlockWorld.com, huh? Not only do they "buy and sell Glock (TM) and Glock (TM) accessories at some of the lowest prices on the web," but they have feelings, too. If I ever buy a Glock,Glock_19
I’m going to these fellas. By contrast, the actual, official Web site of Glock Gesellschaft mbH seems cold, unfriendly. Not to cast aspersions, but kind of Teutonic, you might say. Maybe that’s why the U.S. Army went with the Italians; I don’t know. (Some enthusiasts still advocate for Glock, while there are reports that some Defense types talk about going back to the old .45, so it’s all in flux.)

I didn’t get any warm fuzzies from Walther, either. I’m sure they make fine pistols, though. But their PR needs work.

McAlister: Forcing the issue

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Chotwogun

After reading the excerpt we had in Monday’s paper, I went to read this post on Bob McAlister’s blog. An excerpt:

Media forcing gun control issue into tragedy
April 17, 2007 3:50:58 PM
    Just like clockwork, the national media see a political opportunity in the tragedy at Virginia Tech. All network morning shows, at least the ones I saw, raised the issue of gun control. Here’s how CBS did it. (That link’s no longer working, Bob.)
    I don’t usually quote Rush Limbaugh, but he made a good point today. He said the pending liberal cry to "take the guns off the street" is as logical as conservatives saying because the shooter was South Korean, we should just shut down the borders and not let anybody in–ever.

I didn’t want to get into this thing, but ideological observations accusing other people of being ideological — on thin grounds — tend to provoke me. Here is a slightly edited (in other words, improved from when I sent it from my PDA this morning) version of the comment I posted in response:

"Forcing?" Seriously, Bob — I’m with you part of the way. I generally think efforts to find meaning or lessons in such events is pretty pointless. But it seems to be part of human nature — not mine, but plenty of other humans. And if you ARE going to grasp quickly for an answer, you don’t have to have an ulterior, ideological motive to think, "wouldn’t it be great if he just couldn’t have gotten ahold of those guns?" It may be pointless in a political environment in which such thoughts are anathema, but it’s a fairly reasonable idle thought.

And Rush might make a good point now and then — I don’t listen, so I don’t know (he’s on in the middle of
the day, and I work for a living) — but this isn’t one of them. Banning a national of people and trying to make sure crazies are not running around armed are hardly the same thing, in any rational scheme. It’s unAmerican to condemn a person’s nationality; it’s simple self-preservation to want to stop killers from having the means — if you can, which I doubt. You don’t address who people are; you address what they do.Chohammer

Think about it; which presents a greater threat to the public weal — a crazy Korean with a hammer, or a crazy Korean with a pair of semi-automatics?

I tend to take a fatalistic attitude toward gun control. With 200 million guns chasing God knows how many crazies, it’s hard to imagine further control preventing any really determined sort from getting hands on one. The problem is that 200 million guns exist, not how we keep track of them — and good luck doing anything about that.

But it’s quite natural, and not sinister, to wish something could be done about it — unless you’re just ideologically opposed even to thinking about it.

Pee Dee justice

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Wow. What do you say to this?

DARLINGTON — Kenneth Glenn Hinson was found not guilty this morning of raping twoHinson
17-year-old girls and leaving them to die bound with duct tape in a secret chamber underground in a rural section of Darlington County last year.
    Jurors rejected the victims’ story after deliberating four hours on trial’s eighth day on two charges each of kidnapping, rape and assault and battery with intent to kill.

I don’t ordinarily pay much attention to crime stories — what do you say, except "I’m against it?" — but that message, apparently inadvertently sent as a buildingwide global by the reporter covering the trial, pulled me away from policy issues when I received it.

Or rather, when I heard a colleague down the hall exclaiming in amazement, and I went to look and see what it was about…

(Oh, and about the headline on this post — I’m from the Pee Dee myself, so I’m not casting slurs.)

Discuss: Virginia Tech shootings

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Folks, I am tied up in all-day meetings yesterday and today, which is why you haven’t heard from me since Monday.

Until I get back, I thought I’d start a thread on the horrific murders at Virginia Tech. I don’t know what to say about things like this, but maybe you do.

While you’re composing your thoughts, here is our lead editorial today on the subject, some letters, an op-ed piece and some snippets from what others said, from The State today.

I’ll be back to read your comments soon.

Lindsey walks right into it

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Not to stir up another round of "you’re a coward;" "no, you are," but this was an interesting tidbit in
The Washington Post yesterday:

Some Loaded Comments at ‘Abu Ghraib’ ScreeningKarpinski
    When the lights go up after most documentary screenings, you usually can expect a politely snoozy lovefest at the "panel discussion to follow." So the folks who turned out for the preview of HBO’s "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" at the Ronald Reagan Building last night were unusually lucky.
    Among the VIPs on hand to discuss the Rory Kennedy project (set to air Feb. 22) were Uncle Ted Kennedy and Sen. Lindsey Graham. The latter livened things up in a big way when he denounced Army Col. Janis Karpinski, who was demoted from brigadier general after the prison torture scandal.
    "Karpinski should have been court-martialed," said the South Carolina Republican, who sits on the Armed Services Committee. "She was not a good commander."
    Awkward! For who was in the audience but Karpinski herself. "I consider you as cowardly as [Lt. Gen. Ricardo] Sanchez or [Donald] Rumsfeld or [former Guantanamo Bay commander Geoffrey] Miller," she shot back. "You’re saying I should be court-martialed — they didn’t want me in a courtroom because I would tell" the truth. Graham sputtered clumsily until moderator Jeffrey Toobin jumped in.
    Afterward, Karpinski told our colleague Michael Cavna: "Ninety-nine percent of the story is still covered up. . . . Miller and Sanchez and Rumsfeld should be in those cells" with the Army guards who were found guilty.

Maybe Lindsey Graham has gotten a little too accustomed to speaking frankly on "Meet the Press," and neglected to consider the possibility that at a live speaking event, the person you’re talking about just might be there.

I don’t know who’s right here (although I’ve always blamed Rumsfeld), but I know I don’t want to make Col. Karpinski mad at me. I’m just going by her pictures (although she is smiling in this one, bless her heart). She looks like somebody you’d rather have on your side, or just avoid. Perhaps that’s her misfortune; her rather severe habitual expression makes her a convenient scapegoat (the "evil lady torturer" from Central Casting). Or perhaps she’s just as culpable as Miller and Sanchez and Rumsfeld and the Army guards who were convicted. There were probably no angels anywhere near the situation.

I just don’t know. But it would have been interesting, and perhaps enlightening, to have her testify.

Is he really gone?

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Howardhunt1

"Disinformation," I thought.

I know it’s disrespectful of the dead, and I do feel guilty about that, but the truth is that when I heard the news this morning of Howard Hunt’s death, my very first thought was:

"Do you really believe he’s gone?"

I know, I know: I’ve read way too many spy novels… There’s that, and the fact that I started my career in the middle of the whole Watergate thing.

Howardhunt2jpgpart

Saddam shocker — or not?

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Saddamhang

Well, I’m back and I just wrote an editorial for tomorrow’s paper about Saddam’s execution.

Which leaves me wondering — did you find that as shocking as I did? I mean, I knew they had said 30 days and all, but I’m used to what that means over here, which is, "You’ve got 30 days to file your motions" before an automatic stay. He was in the middle of another trial, after all, with more to come.

But to state the obvious, things are different over there. Over there, "30 days" means, "You see how the moon looks tonight? He ain’t gonna see it like that again."

Still, since everything about Iraq has been so complicated and so hard to pull off, it was sort of disorienting so see how easy it was to hang a guy.

Beyond my first question, I suppose I should also ask what you think of it — as if you wouldn’t tell me anyway. For me, it’s like this: I don’t believe in capital punishment. At the same time, I won’t mourn the loss of this particular subject. Note the ambivalent, bureaucratic word "subject." I want to make myself feel better by calling him a "monster," but I know he was a man. I also believe he was a man the world is better off without, but I’m not God, which is why I’m against capital punishment.

Of course, one makes allowances, and by Iraqi standards this is progress. For a man to be hanged by the numbers after due process with the world looking on — that’s Iraqi justice, and that’s a new thing. Now all we need is for there to be justice for the millions of folks outside the Green Zone, who deserve far better than their former leader.

This was a pretty small step in that direction. But it was a step. Ironically, after all the years of conflict over Saddam, it seemed like a footnote as we struggle with the issue of whether to keep trying to bring about a just and peaceful Iraq. Here we are moving into this enormous national conversation about what to do about Iraq, and out of nowhere comes this development.

We look briefly over our shoulders and say, "They hanged who? Saddam? Well, that was quick," and turn back to the larger debate. That’s fitting. In a more just world, Saddam would have amounted to no more than that.

Hanging Saddam

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What do you think when you hear the news that Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death? Do you:

  • Fear the violent reaction to come from Sunnis?
  • Volunteer to bring the rope?
  • Think hanging’s too good for him?
  • Think capital punishment is always wrong?Saddamverdict

Here’s the way things like this strike me: I believe capital punishment is wrong, but I also believe
violence can be justified under many circumstances — in the defense of innocents, for instance. Also, he certainly fits in the "if anybody deserves it…" category. Of course, he can’t hurt anybody in prison, as long as he’s held securely enough. But as long as he lives, especially with his defiant attitude, he offers hope to his ex-followers for a restoration to power and privilege (particularly with so many Americans crying for a pullout). And if he’s dead, he’s a martyr to the Ba’ath cause. But is there anyone else those thugs can rally around with the "appeal" he has to them?

In other words, I find it hard to reach a conclusion. What do y’all think?

Talk about your bad timing

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A press release to this effect moved at 1:28 p.m. today from the Rex campaign:

(COLUMBIA)  Today, as Karen Floyd continues to hide behind
news releases and refuses to debate Jim Rex, campaign manager Zeke Stokes called
on Floyd to explain how she plans to pay for her outlandish plan to put a camera
in every classroom.

"There are more than 43,000 classrooms in South Carolina," said Stokes.  "It
would cost tens of millions of dollars to place a camera in every one of them
and hire the additional personnel needed to monitor every classroom for
disruptive behavior.  This over-the-top ‘big brother’ approach would require
another one of Karen’s favorite things – a massive tax increase.  Isn’t her
half-a-billion-dollar Voucher Tax enough?

At about the same time, the nation was learning about this:

Milk Man Storms Amish School, Killing 3

NICKEL
MINES, Pa. (AP) — A milk-truck driver carrying two guns and a grudge
stormed a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday, sent the boys and adults
outside, barricaded the doors with two-by-fours, and then opened fire
on a dozen girls, killing three of them before committing suicide. It
was the nation’s third deadly school shooting in less than a week, and
it sent shock waves through Lancaster County’s bucolic Amish country, a
picturesque landscape of horse-drawn buggies, green pastures and
neat-as-a-pin farms, where violent crime is virtually nonexistent.

A member of my immediate family is teaching pre-school up in Pennsylvania, probably less than an hour’s drive from where this happened. I spoke to her just before she was going into a 6 p.m. staff meeting, at which security is likely to be discussed. I expect at this particular point in time she wouldn’t mind a camera in the classroom one bit, whatever the cost.

Some quick attaboys

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Leadership

Sorry to have been absent so much of the week. I’ve been tied up in marathon meetings — I’m about to go into another all-day one (administrative ones, related to the newspaper’s budget and such) — and have had to spend breaks and evenings racing to do the basic tasks involved in getting the editorial pages out.

But until I can get freed up a little, here are a couple of quick items for my dear readers to cogitate over and discuss in my absence. I’d like to offer thanks and congratulations to:

  1. Sens. Lindsey Graham, John McCain and John Warner for having won an apparent victory in favor of the American Way. Sure, they didn’t get every thing, but that’s the way compromise works. And they seem to have held their ground as to the principles that mattered most. Thanks to them, the rule of law is finally being established with regard to the treatment of prisoners, and the legislative branch is a little closer to playing its proper role in the War on Terror.
  2. Sen. Tommy Moore, for having acted with uncharacteristic boldness to make a couple of000moore_3 important points: First, that candidates for governor should not ally themselves with political
    actions intended to hurt the state’s economy. Second, that the inconsistent and ineffective NAACP boycott accomplishes nothing at all for South Carolina. I would add that it accomplishes nothing but the opposite of its stated purpose. It puts a solution on the Confederate "battle flag" farther away, not closer. And make no mistake. The only solution is to put dead relics of our most tragic past in museums or bronze monuments, not to fly them as though they were alive and had positive relevance to who we are as a people today.

Back to meetings…

Grownups

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Fivepoints_1
I seldom write editorials (and if anyone needs me to explain the difference between an editorial and a column, I will). They’re mostly written by Associate Editors Warren Bolton, Cindi Scoppe and Mike Fitts. But when a hole in our schedule emerged yesterday — and the hole was in today’s newspaper — and we talked about ideas that we might address, and I said "I’ll do that one," my friends and colleagues cried "Sold!" with an alacrity that suggested that some of them think I don’t do enough around here.

Well, I showed them.

Here’s the editorial, with links. Maybe it will provoke a little discussion in this venue:

The grownups
strike back
in Five Points
ONE OF THE greatest needs in America in the 21st century is something we used to take for granted — grownups. In a time when everything on TV, from “reality” shows to celebrity-and-sensation-soaked “news” to you-gotta-have-it-now commercials, screams immaturity, one wonders where the grownups have gone.
    The situation takes on infinitely greater urgency when our front pages tell of drunken children dying in car crashes, of a mother giving other children alcohol
and encouraging them to have sex, and of still others “accidentally” killed in the crossfire of warring gangs.
    And that’s just in the Midlands. The whole world seemed to catch its breath for days on end when a twisted head case insisted that everyone believe he raped and murdered a 6-year-old whose death is an object of obsession because her parents made her up to look like a full-grown woman for beauty pageants.
    Where, indeed, are the grownups? The adage “It takes a village to raise a child” assumes the presence of watchful grownups sharing a communal concern for the children of the society growing up safely and sanely into the kinds of responsible adults who will in turn work together to protect and teach the next generation.
    Obviously, the mere fact of chronological majority — turning 18 (an “adult” forSex voting purposes), 21 (for drinking), 25 (according to Cutline2car rental companies) or 35 (to be president of the United States) — doth not a grownup make. Chronological “adults” are a huge part of the problem. The woman accused of encouraging drunken bacchanalia at her house is 46.
    A grownup is someone who knows how and when to say “No” to a child who insists that “I can do whatever I want” — whether that child is 2, 16, 18 or 46.
    Well, fear not. There are still grownups in charge, at least in Five Points this past weekend.
    That’s where and when Columbia police — acting in behalf of the grownups of our community to protect both children and the rest of us from some of adolescents’ more dangerous behaviors — staged their “Welcome Back” operation.
    This crackdown on underage drinking led to 160 charges including DUI, having open containers and public drunkenness. Twenty-eight people were arrested and charged specifically with underage drinking.
    The place and the timing were perfect. Smart grownups set out boundaries ahead of time to avoid bad behavior before it really gets out of hand. This was the first weekend after classes had started at the University of South Carolina, and the best time ever to let students — especially freshmen overwhelmed with the freedom of being away from home for the first time — know that there are rules, they exist for excellent reasons, and they are to be obeyed.
    Those who run Five Points bars and restaurants seemed to welcome the police presence, and said they were doing their bit to prevent underage drinking as well. Good. Grownups should work together.
    Sometimes kids, particularly of the adolescent variety, feel like the whole grownup world is involved in a conspiracy to keep them from doing what they want. When “what they want” involves behavior that is a threat to their lives and those of others, it’s a good thing to know they’re not just being paranoid.
    Congratulations to the Columbia Police Department, and to grownups everywhere who are still willing to draw the line wherever it needs to be drawn.

Gangbangers using infantry training

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In response to the last post, Preston e-mailed me this fascinating video clip from the Fox affiliate in Los Angeles. It tells about how increasingly, gangbangers are using tactics (and in at least one case, a weapon) they picked up in the military.

Perhaps most riveting is the actual surveillance camera footage of a Marine/gang member using his rifle and professional tactical maneuvers to kill one cop and critically wound another in a matter of minutes, despite their own use of cover and returning fire.

It remains astounding to me that anyone could retain the petty, narrow mentality of a street gang member after joining the military — especially the Marine Corps, with the mystique it instills of duty, honor and fidelity to something so much larger than Bloods and Crips.

Yes, I’ve heard and read all about the psychological reasons for disaffected boys and young men to join gangs — the sense of belonging, an ethic (however twisted), something to fight for. But the military offers that in such greater, more rewarding portions. It’s a brotherhood of men, not boys, and would have to offer far greater reinforcement.

Anyway, I said that stuff before. But the video is something new, and worth checking out.

And to keep our honor clean

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The allegation that a bunch of gangbangers that included four U.S. Marines were planning a rumble at an Irmo High School football game — not knowing that there was no game scheduled — is sufficiently bizarre to spawn bad jokes:

Asked why they thought they would find a game if they invaded Irmo, the Marines said, "President Bush promised us it was based on solid intel."

Hey, I told you it was a bad joke. Chalk it up to my trying too hard to throw a bone to you anti-war types out there.

Here’s another excuse: Though I gave it a shot, there’s just nothing funny about this situation. It’s appalling to think that a corporal and two lance corporals could have made it through boot camp and advanced training, be assigned to a unit, get promoted and still have enough loyalty left to something as worthless as the Crips to soil the honor of the Corps in such a manner.

Allegedly. For the moment, they are innocent. I hope they turn out actually to be so in the end. I know that not everybody who goes through Parris Island is a choir boy, but boots usually learn enough pride and discipline not to be thrown into the brig for something this stupid.

Did they just want to fight that badly? Were they disappointed at being wing wipers instead of serving in a rifle company? I just hope it was the cops who got the bad intel on this one.

They still haven’t nabbed me

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Banksy1
You know, it’s been a long time since this article ran on March 24, 2005, and I’ve stopped waiting for the knock of the Museum Police on my door. Maybe those snobs up in New York think no one in South Carolina has the wit or talent for this class of pranksterism (right, like the British are so cultured). If so, that’s a blessing, because their prejudice has protected me from suspicion.

Unwarranted suspicion, I might add, since the evidence against me — entirely coincidental, superficial, and misleading as it is — is quite striking. I was stunned when I saw the article.

In case you can’t read it, I’ll give you a taste below. Frankly, I was a bit surprised that the link still worked for me. I had saved it back when I was thinking about starting a blog. I didn’t start it for another six weeks or so, and by then I had pushed it to the background. Anyway, I hope no one will mind my reproducing the photos, the provenance of which seems doubtful in any case. If I getBanksy2 objections through official channels, I’ll take it down. It’s just that if you don’t seen the pictures, you miss the point of this post — to the extent that it has one. If you can call up the link, look below the bogus portrait of an 18th-century British officer with a spray-paint can, and click on the link for the slide show.

Oh, yes — the excerpt:

(O)ver the last two weeks, a shadowy British graffiti artist who calls himself Banksy has carried his own humorous artworks into four New York institutions – the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History – and attached them with some sort of adhesive to the walls, alongside other paintings and exhibits. Similar stunts at the Louvre and the Tate museum have earned the artist – who will not reveal his real name – a following in Europe, where he has had successful gallery shows and sold thousands of books of his artwork. But his graffiti has also landed him in legal trouble.
    Elyse Topalian, a spokeswoman for the Met, said that museum officials believed that a painting found there – a small, gold-framed portrait of a woman wearing a gas mask – was hung surreptitiously on March 13. Guards noticed it and removed it from a wall near other paintings in the American wing, she said. Ms. Topalian added that no damage had been done to the wall or to other artworks.
    The museum does not look kindly on such unauthorized additions to its walls. “I think it’s fair to say that it would take more than a piece of Scotch tape to get a work of art into the Met,” Ms. Topalian said.
    Sally Williams, a spokeswoman for the Brooklyn Museum, said a painting – in this case, of a red-coated colonial-era military officer holding a spray-paint can, with antiwar graffiti in the background – was discovered and removed on March 16. The painting was hung between two others from the museum’s permanent collection in the American Identities galleries on the fifth floor. She said that the painting was now sitting in the museum’s conservation lab and that its fate was uncertain….

By the way, if you can’t get to that link, you can almost certainly get to this one — which apparently was a source for the NYT piece.

Fortunately, not many people have seen me as I looked in the winter of 1980, shortly before the caucuses, when I was up in Iowa covering the scramble among Republicans for a jumpstart on their party’s presidential nomination.

It was a crowded field, but I was mainly concerned with Sen. Howard Baker. He was my excuse for being there, since I worked for a Tennessee newspaper.

Anyway, the photo below of my meeting Sen. Baker in the Des Moines airport has not been widely circulated. To my knowledge, it has never been published in print or online.

And that’s probably a lucky thing for me.

Baker

‘Mary’ stands accused

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I’ve decided to set before this "community" an interesting proposition. Buried deep among the record 108 comments on my lengthy March 26 column is the following, from fellow Unpartian (I think) Paul DeMarco:

Thanks for trying to keep the debate civil. Personal attacks simply
demonstate that the attacker’s argument won’t stand on its own merit.
Mary’s "worthless piece of garbage" routine is tiresome and mitigates
any impact the substance of her message might have. If I were Brad, I
wouldn’t stand for it. I’d warn her and her like and then ban them from
the site if they continued. If not, I predict, the ugliness will only
worsen.

As you can see, the Unparty — assuming I’m right about Paul’s affiliation — is not for libertarians. We believe in the rule of law.

The thing is, the shifting community that has formed on this blog has no laws as yet. And we are still small enough that we have not formed a republic, therefore to the extent that we deliberate, we must do so through the "town-meeting" sort of direct democracy.

But now Citizen DeMarco has proposed not only a law, but presented its first test. He says that Mary Rosh‘s behavior is unacceptable in these virtual parts. He proposes a community standard, and a means of enforcement — a warning, followed if necessary by excommunication.

This is fascinating. We are present at the birth of a society, however rudimentary it may be. I’d like to see where the group will take this. I expect a wide variety of viewpoints to be expressed, but I’m curious to see whether we can nevertheless move toward a consensus — one way or the other, or in between somewhere.

Since I have a rather unique role in this society — you might say I’m sort of a unitary executive in a very liberal (in the classic sense) democracy — I’m not going to say what I think about Mary’s case at this point.

Anyway, we have the bill before us. Let’s debate it.

Anybody know the story behind this?

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In a comment on a previous post, a reader says:

Maybe this would be a more entertaining topic

Bill allows foreign prisons to house S.C. inmates

Sure, we can discuss it. Or rather, you can discuss it. I can’t tell what the bill is all about. Here’s a link to it. Apparently, all that’s happened is it was introduced today and sent to Judiciary Committee.

So, what’s it about? Anybody know?

Speaking of legislative updates, personally, I’m more interested in this absurdity, in which one of our major local institutions is pulling a fast one on two others. Remember when hospitals just took care of folks, rather than having all these high-stakes political battles?