I think they’re against war, or something.

UPDATE: Yup. Four lame new songs later, still definitely against the war.

UPDATE x2: Intermission.

If I had to pick one word to describe these guys, it would be: “jowly.”

Sorry, Graham. I don’t mean you.

A week ago today, I was in the office of my friend alert reader hank k., who was ranting about the L.A. Times‘s coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. He still brings his paper to work every weekday, and showed me the front pages from the last week or so, which were just sitting around his office.

I don’t subscribe anymore, so I’d missed these. I started leafing through the front pages, and was aghast at what I saw: page after page after page of Lebanese suffering, with scarcely a hint of any suffering by Israeli civilians.

I asked my friend if I could borrow his newspapers to bring home, so I could eventually do a blog post about what I’d seen. He lent me the papers, and last night I took a bunch of photos of the front pages of each of these papers.

Here’s what I saw, beginning with the first Page One that my friend gave me:

(more…)

Chuck Philips writes today of the LAPD’s new cold-case investigation into the Biggie Smalls murder. Philips says:

But [Biggie Smalls’s] family has suffered numerous setbacks as it pursues the city in court.

Shortly before its first trial began last summer, the family dropped Mack and Muhammad as defendants. A paid informant who figured prominently in both LAPD and FBI investigations into Wallace’s murder admitted that his identification of Muhammad as the gunmen [sic] was fraudulent.

Sure sounds like Philips is trying to discredit this “paid informant,” huh? For some reason, Chuck Philips wants to portray the witness as simply having lied.

I wonder why.

Oh: in unrelated news, it turns out that the same witness also previously accused Chuck Philips of corruption. He recanted that allegation at trial, too.

So when the witness is portrayed by Philips as being untruthful at trial — rather than simply recanting allegations due to possible fear of gang retaliation — that portrayal actually protects Philips’s reputation.

Not that today’s article mentions that.

In a previous post, I explained the controversy regarding the witness’s allegations against Philips:

(more…)

Yeah, that’s about right. Except a lot of my defendants aren’t quite that bright.

Over the weekend, on a whim, I picked up a copy of Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers.” It’s an a capella piece. The version I got was performed by Robert Shaw and the Robert Shaw Festival Singers.

It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard.

Highly recommended.

Big thanks to neighbor Jeff C. for his invaluable help in finally getting the swingset in working order in the backyard.

Finally, the rugrats darling children can go outside and swing and play without immediate adult supervision. (Yes, yes, we’ll still keep an eye on them. But now we don’t have to stand right there holding the whole contraption down so it doesn’t fall over.)

Jeff, we owe you a steak dinner — at a minimum. And you are welcome to bring your boy by, any time.

P.S. Yesterday was beautiful here in Rancho Palos Verdes. The heat spell broke and we opened up the house to cool breezes. Happy days are here again.

Glenn Greenwald’s old comments appear to be, well, gone. All of ’em.

Weirdest thing, that.

Remember the post where he gave an (insinuated) defense to charges of sock-puppetry? Last time I checked, there were over 600 comments to that post.

Today, there are none.

Apparently, it happened during his installation of Haloscan for comments. He’d really like to restore all the old comments, but, you know, that apparently just isn’t going to work out. So unfortunate.

(h/t Freedom Fan.)

Oh: just one more thing, since we really should talk about Mr. Greenwald’s “substance.” In a post today, part of Mr. Greenwald’s “substance” is an approving reference and link to one “Mr. Montalban at Sadly, No.” Greenwald cites “Mr. Montalban” with approval — reverence, even — but uses the very formal designation “Mr.” to refer to the Sadly, No! blogger. Which allows him to forego using “Mr.” Montalban’s first name.

Which is probably a good idea. Since the first name of “Mr. Montalban,” you may recall, is . . . “Retardo.”

Ah, the substance!

UPDATE: Smiles, everyone! Smiles!

UDPATE x2: Greenwald defenders say: hey! all he did was change comment platforms.

I fall back on the old liberal saw: I question the timing.

UPDATE x3: In comments, Xrlq wonders what the big deal is. Well, it may not be. It’s just that Xrlq’s pal Tim Lambert and I were having a little debate over the meaning of some comments on Greenwald’s site, here, and Lambert was starting to convince me that these comments showed Greenwald’s guilt even further. (Lambert was actually trying to argue the opposite point, but he did it so unconvincingly that he ended up providing evidence for the point that he was trying to disprove.)

I was really interested in this further evidence of Greenwald’s guilt.

And then the comments disappeared.

It could be innocent, I suppose. If Greenwald has been wronged on the issue of disappearing comments, well . . . chalk it up to karma.

UPDATE x4: Oh: hi, Glenn!

Deb Frisch tried to leave the following comment on my site. It was caught by the spam filter. (Recent background on her here, older background here.) It was left under the same IP address as the recent comments from her IP address on Jeff Goldstein’s and Ace’s site: 71.34.251.220. It was left under the moniker “WW” (“Word Warrior”) with Frisch’s correct e-mail and URL.

It contains an interesting admission.

If foul language isn’t your bag, stop reading now. Here’s the comment (emphasis mine):

(more…)

What was the motive of the guy who shot up the Jewish Center in Seattle? L.A. Times editor Dean Baquet says:

You got me!

Yes, if you ask the editors of the Los Angeles Times, it’s an utter mystery why the shootings occurred. At least, if you look at Page One. Here is a graphic from the paper’s front page today, teasing stories appearing inside the paper:

The teaser leads to a story on Page A22, which contains the following clue to the “mystery” of the shooter’s motive:

Haq reportedly shouted about his anger toward Jews, toward Israel and its war in Lebanon, and toward U.S. policy in Iraq.

Hmmmm. Yes, it’s a head-scratcher. Further clues to this impenetrable conundrum appear further down in the story:

According to [Seattle Police Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske], Haq said he “wanted the U.S. to leave Iraq, that his people had been mistreated, the U.S. was arming Israel, and he didn’t care if he died.”

The official police report, released Saturday and based on interviews with witnesses in the office and on the transcript of the 911 call, quoted Haq as saying: “I’m not upset at you people; I’m upset at your foreign policy. These are Jews, and I’m tired of getting pushed around and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East.”

Then he repeated his name and gave his Social Security number, adding: “I just want us to get out of Iraq. I’m an American too, but I want our people out of Iraq.”

By Jove, Watson! I do believe we are getting closer to the solution of this indecipherable enigma!

Let’s look at some other news reports to see if we can get to the bottom of this brain-teaser. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports:

“He said, ‘I am a Muslim American, angry at Israel,’ before opening fire on everyone,” said Marla Meislin-Dietrich, a database coordinator for the center. “He was randomly shooting at everyone.”

Jot that down, Watson! He said he was “angry at Israel.” I do believe that could be a clew.

The AP gives us further leads in this story:

Seattle police said Haq picked up the two handguns and spare ammunition just days earlier, and appeared to have targeted the federation after a cursory Internet search for Jewish organizations.

Remember that, Watson! “Jewish organizations.” Why, I do believe that was the very type of organization that ended up being targeted! Yes, I believe we may be onto something here.

The game’s afoot!

We’ll examine what the paper may have really meant using the paper’s own style of burying context: by placing it below the fold.

(more…)

The L.A. Times reports:

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s civilian oversight office said Saturday that it will investigate whether authorities gave Mel Gibson preferential treatment when he was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving and tried to cover up alleged offensive comments and behavior by one of Hollywood’s most powerful figures.

I can announce that I have just completed my own investigation, which took me about two seconds. The results are in: Gibson got preferential treatment.

I spent my two-second investigation recalling the details of yesterday’s post on Gibson, which set forth the contents of police reports that redacted material embarrassing to Gibson. (The Times has confirmed with a confidential source that the documents linked to were indeed accurate.) Oh — and Lee Baca also personally ordered Gibson’s booking photo to be withheld from the media, something which law enforcement generally does not do.

I’ll be publishing the results of my investigation in about four mon — oh, wait. I just did.

Bonus moronic comments from Lee Baca below the fold.

(more…)