The Northern Muckraker

• The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week, International Edition...

  ...are the police in Great Britain, collectively, as a "genetics watchdog" organization in that nation is accusing the bobbies of arresting large numbers of peasants for no other reason than to obtain samples of their DNA for the government's intrusive database of such information, and of targeting young men [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 9:46am EST
  

• Zero-tolerance, California-style

  The Willows, California Unified School District has expelled 16-year-old high school student Gary Tudesko for having two shotguns with ammunition, as well as a pocket knife with a 3-inch blade, present in his truck while he was at school.
  
  A fitting punishment? Maybe, that is until one finds [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 7:07am EST
  

• The epitome of chutzpah

  Former Stoughton, Massachusetts police officer David Cohen, who was found guilty of making an extortion attempt while on duty and in full uniform, has decided to attempt to bill his former employer for $113,496, the amount that this wingnut's attorney estimates (try not to howl with laughter here) Cohen's [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 10:13pm EST
  

• Question:

  If the proposed health care Ponzi scheme "reform" bill is such a good thing for our country, and the liberal Democrats in both the House and Senate are indeed so honored to be ramming it through Congress, then why do all of the key votes keep taking place late on [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 1:41pm EST
  

• A large part of the problem - no responsibility and no accountability

  Via Boortz, here's a picture from one of his listeners that infuriatingly illustrates exactly what types of things that people on welfare (using responsible citizens' hard-earned tax dollars, confiscated from them on pain of imprisonment in order to "redistribute" to the "less fortunate") are allowed to purchase, apparently with' [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 3:22pm EST
  

• A snapshot of life

  Thursday, November 19, 2009Phoenix, Arizona 2:10 p.m.
  We ducked into a local pharmacy to buy a newspaper, and ended up standing in line behind a young, fit-looking fellow dressed in yoga-type clothes and carrying a messenger bag embossed with an "Herbalife" logo.
  His purchase? Marlboro cigarettes.
  Why even bother with [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 3:17pm EST
  

• The original race pimp is still keepin' it real

  "'We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,' ["Reverend" Jesse] Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. 'You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.'"
  
  Says who? A supposed "man of God" who cheated on his wife and fathered a child out of wedlock [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 3:37pm EST
  

• They got another one

  "A 90-year-old former member of the Nazi SS has been charged with 58 counts of murder over the killings of Jewish forced labourers in Austria, officials said today."
  
  It's never too late to bring these sorts of brutal thugs, who committed horrific government-sanctioned atrocities under the weak justification [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 12:12am EST
  

• Today's TASER Travesty

  Ozark, Alabama Police Officer Dustin Bradshaw apparently saw fit to TASER a ten-year-old girl, pretty much solely because the child refused to take a shower before bed:
  
  "'Her mother told me to tase her if I needed to,' Bradshaw wrote."

  Well, then everything's just dandy then. Tell us, Officer [...]

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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 11:52pm EST
  

• The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week...

  Enclosure: [download]

  ... are L.A. County Sheriff's Deputy Richard Gylfie as well as his fellow partner in crime Deputy Bayes (no first name given), for exhibiting complete ignorance of the very laws they're supposed to be enforcing, as well as for juvenily threatening serious retaliation to a citizen simply for invoking their' [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 9:45am EST
  

• Why I carry a handgun for protection, Vol. 25

  Because brutal sociopaths like Vincent Scott, Gary Solomon and Marcus Solomon roam the streets of the metro area where we currently reside. These "men" beat and robbed a man simply because they felt a need to "get out some aggression", the trio apparently told Mesa, Arizona police.
  
  The [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 12:31pm EST
  

• How rude of him

  Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty apparently enjoys the exercise benefits and social camaraderie of being on a competitive bicycle team. That's all well and good, until we find out that Fenty's official police escort is allowing Fenty and his cycling buddies to piggishly take over roadways that they have [...]
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  Posted: November 16, 2009, 2:35pm EST
  

• So much for attempting to do the right thing

  This story is really and truly outrageous, even for the worst Nanny-state hellhole on the globe.
  
  Former British soldier Paul Clarke found a black plastic bag in his garden, and discovered that it contained a sawed-off shotgun and two shells. He immediately turned in the weapon to the local [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 7:03pm EST
  

• From the Department of Glaringly Obvious Headlines

  "111,000 criminal migrants ID'd through ICE program"
  
  The Feds finally decide to stop shirking their duties and get serious about evicting the many illegal aliens in this country who go on to break even more of our laws once here (by installing a program that allows local police' [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 6:29pm EST
  

• Apologies

  Personal circumstances have forced us to blog more lightly than usual. We hope to be back up and running by Saturday, November 14. [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 2:26pm EST
  

• Food for thought

  A caller to today's Schnitt Show posed an interesting (paraphrased) question to host Todd Schnitt:
  If a peasant was to flatly decline to purchase the insurance coverage that would be mandated for him or her under the proposed House Democratic health care "reform plan" that was rammed down our' [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 3:49pm EST
  

• Go back to covering something you know something about, like the gridiron

  Sports Illustrated magazine NFL writer Peter King regularly allows his tiresome elite East Coast liberal bias to seep into his online columns, which are purportedly about professional football (of which we are admittedly big fans). Here's today's installment:
  
  "My heart goes out to the victims of the Fort" [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 1:20pm EST
  

• Government as landlord? Sure, if one lives in England

  The London Daily Mail notes that in fully 20% of all the households in Britain the rent is now being paid by the diminishing number of suckers over there who still work and aren't on the dole government.
  
  This unfortunate development is the direct result of a decades-long' [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 10:41pm EST
  

• What do you do with the drunken sailors? Vote them out, hopefully

  The House Democrats, including our own Representative Harry Mitchell (boy, is he going to get an earful from us tomorrow morning), have taken advantage of a quiet Saturday night in order to spend 1.05 trillion more dollars that our government doesn't have in order to forcibly take over one-sixth' [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 10:10pm EST
  

• Maybe it's time you started, then

  "As a matter of practice, we do not carry weapons. This is our home"
  
  Lieutenant General Robert Cone, commanding officer of Fort Hood, Texas, where one crazed jihadist (forget that asinine "not jumping to conclusions" statement from our useless President. This was a terrorist attack, plain and simple) [...]
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  Posted: November 07, 2009, 11:39pm EST
  

• "Now let's see Barack do Riverdance"

  John Nolte of Breitbart's Big Hollywood has assembled a collection of no less than 11 online video clips, complete with lyric transcripts, of indoctrinated schoolchildren singing praises to Dear Leader President Obama. These clips, mind you, are all different from the ones we've previously commented about on this [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 12:03pm EST
  

• The President's definitely having a bad day today

  The top two headlines in today's print edition of the Arizona Republic:
  
  "GOP wins signal trouble for Dems" (New Jersey and Virginia governor races both won by Republicans)
  
  "Health reform snarled in Senate" (Senator Harry Reid announces that a bill may not be voted on until sometime next' [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 1:59pm EST
  

• Today's TASER Travesty

  "At the same time Taser International is publicly telling police to avoid aiming at a suspect's chest, the company is privately telling police officers [in conference calls closed to the public and press] that there is virtually no problem aiming at a suspect's chest."
  
  Then why [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 1:22pm EST
  

• Sickening

  Adams, Massachusetts Police Officer Alan C. Vigiard has been arrested on child-pornography possession charges. That fact is nauseating in and of itself, but the details of this particular case are truly disturbing.
  
  Vigiard is accused of not only downloading the kiddie porn from a computer in the department's' [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 10:26am EST
  

• We don't see a lot of sympathy being generated for this fellow

  "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time"
  
  - from the theme song of the 1970's TV show Baretta
  
  
  
  Bernard Kerik, the disgraced former New York City police commissioner currently awaiting trial on numerous charges including massive corruption,' [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 11:53pm EST
  

• The latest zero-tolerance debacle

  Jazmine Martin, an 11-year-old schoolgirl in Des Moines, Iowa, has been suspended from her sixth-grade class at Brody Middle School after she brought in a few empty shotgun shells from a Western show in South Dakota (where they were firing blanks, for Pete's sake) in order to show them' [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 10:11pm EST
  

• Off topic but interesting, at least to me

  What's worse than having a ten-foot great white shark hanging out near a busy swimming beach?
  
  Well, in this case it's the twenty-foot great white shark that bit the ten-footer nearly in half, and which is presumably still prowling the area off Queensland, Australia:
  
  
  [...]
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  Posted: November 01, 2009, 4:09pm EST
  

• Why I carry a handgun for protection, Vol. 24

  So that if I happen to be set upon by two coyotes while hiking alone in a national park, I will be able to successfully defend my life against the vicious and unprovoked attack.
  
  Does that scenario sound a little far-fetched? Well, it isn't. It's unfortunately exactly what happened [...]
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  Posted: October 29, 2009, 2:37pm EDT
  

• You go, girls!

  The number of lawful firearm purchases by women for the purpose of self-protection has been rising significantly in recent months, even in such traditional anti-gun strongholds as the Chicago, Illinois metro area (not in the city proper, of course, as both the purchase and possession of a handgun in [...]
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  Posted: October 28, 2009, 1:11pm EDT
  

• You can't get much dumber than this "professional"

  Eric Janik, a resident of Maryland (the state where we grew up), has been charged with assault and reckless endangerment after pulling out his pistol at a haunted house attraction and pointing it at the chest of one of the workers, a person dressed up as the movie character [...]
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  Posted: October 27, 2009, 2:51pm EDT
  

• A heartening surprise

  Senator Joe Lieberman, I-Conn (but he's really for all intents and purposes a Democrat) has announced that he will help Republicans filibuster Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's proposed socialized medicine scheme:
  
  "'We're trying to do too much at once,' Lieberman said. 'To put this government-created insurance company on" [...]
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  Posted: October 27, 2009, 2:33pm EDT
  

• We hear the Chattanooga Wal-Mart needs a greeter

  Kenneth Freeman, the off-duty Chattanooga, Tennessee police detective whom we previously noted was given a 28-day unpaid suspension from duty earlier this year after he was caught on a surveillance camera shoving to the ground a 71-year-old Wal-Mart greeter who was simply trying to check Freeman's store receipt (pushing' [...]
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  Posted: October 26, 2009, 10:35pm EDT
  

• Hear, hear

  Online friend Scott Jordan eloquently sums up just how far down the rabbit hole of madness our country has fallen in just ten short months:
  
  "General Motors and Chrysler are under Federal control, their assets summarily clipped from their bondholders' contracts and gifted to the unions by the politicians.[...]
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  Posted: October 25, 2009, 12:32pm EDT
  

• The issue is finally raised

  Enclosure: [download]

  (CNSNews.com) – "Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) would not say what part of the Constitution grants Congress the power to force every American to buy health insurance--as all of the health care overhaul bills currently do.
  
  Leahy, whose committee is responsible for vetting Supreme Court" [...]
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  Posted: October 24, 2009, 11:17pm EDT
  

• Today's TASER Travesty Triumph?

  Taser International, makers of the eponymous devices, has issued a training bulletin, along with an accompanying memo, to police agencies which advises officers who deploy their TASERS to target the pelvic, thigh or back regions of a suspect rather than the chest, as the company has finally admitted that [...]
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  Posted: October 21, 2009, 4:58pm EDT
  

• From the forgotten corner to the catbird seat

  Career Chicago-machine politician Senator Roland Burriss, D-Ill, apparently not being humiliated and ashamed enough to just sit quietly and keep his chair warm until his term is up in early 2011 after he was forced to admit that he did in fact attempt to raise money for disgraced ex-Governor Rod [...]
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  Posted: October 20, 2009, 4:25pm EDT
  

• The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week, International Edition...

  ... are the Bury St. Edmonds, England police who arrested grandfather Torben Merriott and subsequently grilled him for nine hours after he had the audacity to use a cheap flashlight in order to identify what was making the awful racket above his farmhouse in the middle of the night [...]
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  Posted: October 20, 2009, 9:10am EDT
  

• It's good to be the ones in charge

  "The National Health Service has spent £1.5m paying for hundreds of its staff to have private health treatment so they can leapfrog their own waiting lists.

  More than 3,000 staff, including doctors and nurses, have gone private at the taxpayers’ expense in the past three years because the" [...]

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  Posted: October 19, 2009, 10:10am EDT
  

• This isn't funny anymore

  Enclosure: [download]

  The old saying goes something like "You can judge a person's character by the company they keep".
  
  If that maxim is in fact valid, then we're getting more and more insight into President Obama's character every single day, and the picture we're getting isn't good at all, to say' [...]
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  Posted: October 16, 2009, 8:42am EDT
  

• Why should they believe him?

  We've previously noted how a core group of the Messiah's supporters was beginning to realize that it was being played like a cheap fiddle.
  
  Well, the grumblings are now getting much louder:
  
  "President Barack Obama restated his campaign pledge to allow homosexual men and women to'" [...]
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  Posted: October 15, 2009, 9:04am EDT
  

• Muckraker Television

  Enclosure: [download]

  An experiment in a new medium. Please forgive the muffled audio that occurs in the first minute or so of the clip, as we're still shaking out the production bugs. The dialogue during that period should nonetheless be understandable.
  
  Constructive feedback would be much appreciated.
  
  
  [...]
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  Posted: October 14, 2009, 4:20pm EDT
  

• Busted

  
  California First Lady Maria Shriver, caught on camera by the gossip website TMZ flagrantly breaking that state's recent ban on using handheld cell phones while driving, a prohibition that was supported and signed into law by none other than her husband, Governor Arnold' [...]
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  Posted: October 14, 2009, 1:00am EDT
  

• Jerks

  Two St. Lucie County, Florida sheriff's deputies have received written reprimands for their breathtakingly rude and bullying behavior while playing last March for a softball team sponsored by one of the local jail's food vendors (and thus leaving no doubt as to what the men did for a living):
  [...]
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  Posted: October 14, 2009, 12:43am EDT
  

• He's got no room to talk

  The "Reverend" Al Sharpton's labeling of Rush Limbaugh as "divisive" (while trying to derail the radio host's attempt to become a minority owner of the St. Louis Rams NFL franchise) makes about as much sense as Keith Richards discussing opening a health and wellness spa.
  
  Oddly enough, no [...]
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  Posted: October 13, 2009, 2:17pm EDT
  

• The Jack-Booted Thug of the Week...

  ... is Tempe, Arizona Police Chief Tom Ryff, for placing city resident Eleanor Holguin's home on a list that flags addresses which appear on it as "hazards", warning police and fire personnel to use particular caution when responding to calls for service at those locations.
  
  Holguin only found [...]
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  Posted: October 13, 2009, 10:41pm EDT
  

• When it rains, it pours

  We can safely state that the optimum time for a car battery to give up the ghost is not when one is attempting to pull an automobile back into the garage after having the passenger door window replaced.
  
  We've pretty much had enough car-related hassles for one day.[...]
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  Posted: October 13, 2009, 10:37pm EDT
  

• Violated

  One of our vehicles has been the target of a smash and grab robbery while parked in our driveway overnight, resulting in the theft of a laptop computer. Blogging will probably be light today while we deal with the aftermath. [...]
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  Posted: October 12, 2009, 11:23am EDT
  

• Socialized medicine can be quite painful. Just ask this chap

  British subject Torron Eeles is madder than a wet hen at his country's completely out-of-control National Health Service, and we certainly don't blame him one bit.
  
  You see, the poor guy broke his left humerus in a fall ten months ago, and yet he still hasn't undergone the' [...]
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  Posted: October 12, 2009, 12:05am EDT
  

• Wrapping up the tale

  John Patten of Venice Florida! dot com finishes up with Part 3 of his interesting series on the utter mess that purports to be the Police Department down there.
  
  At Officer Frassetti's arbitration hearing, six fellow Venice PD officers bravely go to bat for him, directly contradicting [...]
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  Posted: October 11, 2009, 10:23am EDT
  

• The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week, Bonus Edition...

  Enclosure: [download]

  ... is former Dolton, Illinois police officer Christopher Lloyd, for being caught on a school surveillance tape beating the snot out of a 15-year-old brain-injured student who dared to give the law enforcement "professional" some lip after he told the kid to tuck in his shirt:
  
  
  
  [...]
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  Posted: October 10, 2009, 10:33pm EDT