Saddam is DEAD, and the liberal media bleeds

Here's a curious passage from the main New York Times story on Saddam's hanging:

Finally, he was ousted by an American-led invasion force in 2003 and the country fell into a new round of internal violence as the rule of law disintegrated and the Western invaders proved unable to control a country in the aftermath of totalitarian rule.

"The rule of law" is "totalitarian rule"??? I suppose it could be mere sloppiness, but it's revealing nonetheless.

Along similar lines is this from the Associated Press:

Hours after Saddam faced the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power, Iraqi state television showed grainy video of what it said was his body, the head uncovered and the neck twisted at a sharp angle.

That "accused" is also revealing, but more important, did Saddam really face "the same fate" as his victims? Yes, al-AP, there is a difference between a lawful execution of a duly convicted murderer and the murder of innocents by a dictatorial state. Come to think of it, it's the difference between the rule of law and totalitarian rule.

"Ghost Riding The Whip" -- Multicultural Driving at its finest!

And I thought drunk driving was a big enough problem. Let's hear it for Multicultural Diversity in Driving:

"Ghost riding the whip" a stunt in which a driver gets out of his car and dances around and on top of the slowly moving vehicle to a thumping hip-hop beat has gotten at least two people killed, led to numerous injuries and alarmed police on the West Coast and beyond.

A fad among devotees of a West Coast strain of hip-hop music called "hyphy," the stunt has been celebrated in song and performed in numerous homemade videos posted on YouTube.

"It did not take Einstein to look at this thing and say this was a recipe for disaster," said Pete Smith, a police spokesman in Stockton. "We could see the potential for great injury or death."

Earlier this month, Davender Gulley, a ghost-riding 18-year-old, died after his head slammed into a parked car while he was hanging out the window of an SUV in Stockton, police said.

Davender Gulley? I have met many wonderful people in the Indo-American communities, Hindu, Sikh and Christian alike. It saddens me to think THEIR kids are getting caught up in this too?

Here is a YouTube clip of some jackass doing this.

At least these guys have the sense to use an empty parking lot.

Now THERE'S some Christmas Cards!

Christmas Eve Patrol, 1966

The following comes from Jerry Pearce, "The Radio Detective", a great Central California private investigator and talk show host, about an experience he had when he was a deputy sheriff in San Luis Obispo County back on Christmas Eve in 1966:

"I was sitting here at the ranch thinking about Christmas. My son is a one year new police officer for a neighboring town and he is going to have to work both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. He works the graveyard shift.

As I thought about that, I recalled one Christmas, back in 1966, when I was a deputy sheriff and was also working both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. There was a relatively poor family living out on what was called the Mesa. The father was a long-haul trucker and the mom worked at a local cleaners. Their four kids ranged from six to thirteen years of age. The father was going to be home for Christmas with his family for the first time in a long while. You see, he hauled frozen turkeys as part of his trucking job.

Well, on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, my partner and I got a call to take a burglary report at this same family's residence. It seems they came home from work and found their house had been burglarized and all the Christmas presents under their small Christmas tree were gone. The younger kids were crying and even the oldest had big ol' tears in his eyes. The dad was down, and I mean down in the dumps, and the mother was busy trying to comfort all of them.

My partner and I even felt really bad about what happened to them on that Christmas Eve. We took the report and left them to themselves to suffer through what would have been a very merry Christmas. That would have been especially true for two of the boys, since they were going to get brand new bicycles for Christmas. The dad had picked them up from lay-a-way the day before.

Well, we drove off in our patrol car and decided to go have some coffee in a local coffee shop. Cops tend to do that a lot, you know. Anyway, we finished our coffee and pulled away from the coffee shop only to spot an older model large truck pass by with what appeared to be two brand new bicycles in the truck bed. The driver and the passenger were men who appeared to be in their late fifties.

We couldn't seem to feature those two older guys riding bicycles for some reason. We fell in behind the truck as it made its way slowly along State Highway One near the beach. As we pulled closer (it was dark by now), we could see in our headlights what appeared to be red bows tied to the handlebars of the two bicycles.

We could also see some Christmas wrapping once in a while from a little further down inside the truck bed. The bicycles that were stolen were reported to be blue and red in color. The bicycles in the truck were blue and red.

Now, even two deputy sheriffs full of bad coffee could figure out that what we were looking at was a clue. We lit up the truck (turning on our red lights) and pulled it over.

I did the walk up from the driver's side while my partner covered everything from the right rear while holding a racked up 12 gauge shotgun. He and I knew immediately that we had found the Christmas burglars. We busted the two bad guys and booked them in the county jail for burglary.

We knew the whole time the charges were not going to stick because we took that stolen property, and instead of placing it in evidence we had another deputy haul it in his own personal truck back to the family out on the Mesa. When we all pulled into the family's driveway at about eight o clock that same night with all those gifts, including the two new bicycles, there are not any words that could describe the amount of happiness that filled the air. That trucker looked at my partner and me and simply said, "I owe you guys big time."

It was on the following New Year's day that my partner and I arrived at the department to go on duty and the desk sergeant told us to go look in the squad room. Setting on top of the table in there were two huge and still frozen, thirty pound turkeys."

My thoughts:

1. Sadly, if this story took place in Christmas 2006, the sheriffs could not have taken the same approach. If they had, no doubt various criminal coddling so-called "minority rights" groups, ranging from the ACLU to the SPLC to whoever else, would have accused the police of false arrest, and taking a bribe--of frozen turkeys. Perhaps today the sheriffs could have phoned the family and told them their gifts were found and to have a delayed Christmas.

2. The sheriffs would be accused by the aforementioned commie lib groups (ACLU, La Raza, SPLC, etc.) of abusing the poor ethnic minority criminals if they happened to be Mexican American or some other designated group (a high demographic chance in San Luis Obispo County), and it wouldn't matter one bit even if the robbed poor family was also Mexican American or some other designated group (an even higher demographic probability in San Luis Obispo County, as burglars often are burglarizing their own communities). And God help the sheriffs if the robbers were illegal aliens.

3. Gee, if the police back in 1966 had such power to abuse minorities with impunity, as the commie libs assert, why would the burglary charges not stick if the stolen property was returned in time for Christmas? Wouldn't the testimony of the victims and the sheriffs been enough? Could it be that the police back then didn't have the ability to act with impunity after all?