She spoke about recent events and took questions from reporters this morning:
By the way, her airplane is white and blue, not whatever color that is.
Tag Archives: Crime
Sgt. Joe Friday Lays It on the Line
A brief reference to the 1955 movie Pete Kelly’s Blues, which starred Jack Webb and Janet Leigh, and for which Peggy Lee received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, inexorably led me to the following clip. It’s from an episode of Dragnet, the long-running TV show that featured Mr. Webb’s immortal performance as Sgt. Joe Friday of the Los Angeles Police Department.
In this scene, Sgt. Friday gives it straight to a smirking con man who’s been caught impersonating a member of the LAPD (it’s hard to imagine a more heinous crime in Sgt. Friday’s eyes):
As YouTube videos often do, this led to an idle thought:
Where’s Jack Webb now when we need him to give it straight to a certain smirking con man who’s hard to avoid these days?
It wasn’t long before an online pal responded under the heading:
Where Jack Webb Is Department
Proving once again, he pointed out: There’s never a cop around when you need one!
PS: Does anyone doubt that Mr. Bookman, the library cop on Seinfeld, enjoyed the occasional episode of Dragnet when he wasn’t out rousting book criminals?
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
The fair in question was the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, more formally known as the World’s Columbian Exposition in honor of the 400th anniversary of Columbus visiting the New World. The book provides a lot of information about the fair that I found very interesting, especially the new technology that was introduced. I found the parallel stories of the fair’s chief architect and a serial killer who preyed on visitors to the fair much less interesting. So I skipped some of it, but not the story of George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., an engineer from Pittsburgh.
He conceived and then built the world’s largest, most amazing Ferris Wheel. People were worried that it would blow over in strong wind, but it remained standing and was the most popular attraction at the fair. It was 264 feet tall and was meant to rival the Eiffel Tower, which had been constructed for an earlier world’s fair in Paris. The Ferris Wheel had 36 enclosed cars that could each hold 60 people. That allowed 2,160 people to ride at the same time. That was some Ferris Wheel.
Hillary Clinton Made a Great Speech
At the A.M.E. Church conference in Philadelphia on Thursday, July 8th, the day after the killings in Dallas. The full speech is here, with excerpts below the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjEum2hS_b4
Partial transcript of her remarks:
Gun violence is ripping apart people’s lives. They’re trying to tell us. And we need to listen.
I know that, just by saying all these things together, I may upset some people. I’m talking about criminal justice reform the day after a horrific attack on police officers. I’m talking about courageous, honorable police officers just a few days after officer-involved killings in Louisiana and Minnesota. I’m bringing up guns in a country where merely talking about comprehensive background checks and getting assault weapons off our streets gets you demonized.
But all these things can be true at once. We do need police and criminal justice reforms, to save lives and make sure all Americans are treated equally in rights and dignity. We do need to support police departments and stand up for the men and women who put their lives on the line every day to protect us. And we do need to reduce gun violence. We may disagree about how to do all these things, but surely we can all agree with those basic premises. Surely this week showed us how true they are.
Now, I have set forth plans for over a year to reduce excessive violence, reform our sentencing laws, support police departments that are doing things right, make it harder for the wrong people to get their hands on guns. For example, there are two important steps that I will take as president.
First, I will bring law enforcement and communities together to develop national guidelines on the use of force by police officers. We will make it clear for everyone to see when deadly force is warranted, and when it isn’t. And we will emphasize proven methods for de-escalating situations before they reach that point.
And second, let’s be honest — let’s acknowledge that implicit bias still exists across our society and even in the best police departments. We have to tackle it together, which is why in my first budget, I will commit $1 billion to find and fund the best training programs, support new research, and make this a national policing priority. Let’s learn from those police departments like Dallas that have been making progress, apply their lessons nationwide.
Now, plans like these are important. But we have to acknowledge that — on their own — they won’t be enough. On their own, our thoughts and prayers aren’t enough, either. We need to do some hard work inside ourselves, too….
I’ve tried to say for some time now that our country needs more love and kindness. I know it’s not the kind of thing presidential candidates usually say. But we have to find ways to repair these wounds and close these divides. The great genius and salvation of the United States is our capacity to do and to be better. And we must answer the call to do that again. It’s critical to everything else we want to achieve — more jobs with rising income; good education no matter what ZIP code a child lives in; affordable college; paying back debts; health care for everyone. We must never give up on the dream of this nation.
I want to close with a favorite passage — a passage that you all know — that means a great deal to me and I’m sure to many of you, from Galatians. “Let us not grow weary in doing good” — “for in due season, we shall reap, if we do not lose heart.”
The Decline of the Militia
From What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe:
Jeffersonians of the founding generation had reposed great confidence in the militia as an alternative to a standing army that could be used against the liberties of the people it supposedly protected.This militia, organized in each locality, consisted of all physically fit white males of military age, who would supply their own arms and donate as much of their time as necessary to keep in training and readiness when called upon to deal with insurrection or invasion. This was the “well regulated militia” postulated in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights and prescribed by the federal Militia Act of 1792.
The militia had proved ineffective on many occasions in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 (George Washington never put much trust in it), but its gradual disappearance in the generation after 1815 had nothing to do with its military shortcomings.
The militia gradually ceased to function because most male citizens resented it as an imposition, and hated serving in it so much that they either refused to show up for the periodic musters and drills, or if they came made a mockery of the occasion. Since the men who defied the militia laws constituted the electorate, politicians dated not to coerce service. White male democracy could successfully defy the law, as squatters defied landlords or Indian treaties…. When the war with Mexico came in 1846, the administration made little use of the militia and relied instead on its small professional army plus volunteers trained and equipped at government expense [p. 491].
Now, 170 years later, we have the most powerful military and most heavily-armed police in the world, while sad, angry men, with a death wish for themselves and others, “serve” in the “militia”.
Whereof One Can Speak 🇺🇦 
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