Links for June 11th

Lynchburg Police: A Look at Citizen’s Arrest in VirginiaLike most states, Virginia has a concept of "citizen's arrest." But you'd best know what you're doing if you're going to try it. The crime has to be a felony and you have to have actually observed the criminal commit the crime. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up …

Links for May 25th

Gratiot County Herald Letters To The EditorIthaca, Michigan school superintendent Nathan Bootz wrote an open letter to the governor to ask that his school system be converted to a prison, noting that Michigan spends $30,000–$40,000/year on each prisoner, but only $7,000/year on each student. WVEC: Taxpayers foot the bill when the governor flies on state …

Links for May 13th

New York Times: Vitaly Borker of DecorMyEyes Pleads GuiltyYou'll remember this jackass as the guy who ran a series of scam businesses, physically threatened anybody who complained, and bragged to the Times that he loved web-based complaints because they helped his Google ranking. He received the Google death penalty a few days later, he was …

Links for April 13th

iWatch News: White House visitor logs riddled with holesThe Center for Public Integrity compared a list of publicly known visitors to the White House to the visitor logs that the Obama administration released. Funny—basically none of them are listed. Rahm Emanuel is listed as having hardly any visitors. Less than 1% of visit in the …

Links for April 12th

PolitiFact: Bob McDonnell says he cut $6 billion from Virginia’s budgetGov. McDonnell keeps claiming that he cut $6B from the budget "by cutting spending, not raising taxes." This is a lie. Spending reductions eliminated just $2.34B from the budget, only slightly more than the $1.9B of funding provided by federal stimulus dollars. (Apparently, federal stimulus …

Links for March 31st

Buzzfeed: 60 Completely Unusable Stock PhotosIt's difficult to know what these photographers were thinking. I can't envision a use for a photo of Hitler wearing a gingham dress, peeling potatoes. The Guardian: Doctor in court after father’s 27-year fight for justice for dead daughterAfter this Frenchman's daughter was raped and murdered, Germany wouldn't extradite the …

Links for March 29th

BBC News: Jordan battles to regain ‘priceless’ Christian relicsSeventy ancient books, made out of lead, have been found in a Jordanian cave. The text is in encoded Hebrew, little of which has been translated. Scholars are debating whether they are of Jewish origin or—far more tantalizingly—very early Christian origin. Village Voice: Women’s Funding Network Sex …

Links for March 9th

Richmond Times-Dispatch: 1,100 felons regain rights in McDonnell’s first yearColor me surprised. I would happily have put down $50 saying that McDonnell wouldn't restore the civil rights to but maybe 10% as many felons as Gov. Tim Kaine Kaine did. He's on pace to match Kaine. This is still a terrible system—we're one of just …

Links for March 8th

Wikipedia: Adjective OrderThe "red, big ball"? Of course not—it's "big, red ball." There's an adjective order in English: quantity, quality, size, age, shape, color, proper adjective, and purpose. One has a "nice, little, old, white, brick house," not a "brick, old, little, white, nice house." City Pages: Inside the multimillion-dollar essay-scoring businessThanks to NCLB and …

Is Sen. Webb planning to be a single-termer?

I have to wonder if perhaps Sen. Jim Webb is planning to spend just a single session in the U.S. Senate. His mission to totally overhaul the criminal justice system is something approaching political suicide. It also shows the man has balls of steel. Since the 1970s, politicians have all agreed that there’s no crime …