Last Call For Brownie Points

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans (and the Bush administration) former Bush FEMA Director Michael "Heckuva Job Brownie" Brown is still trying to pin the blame for FEMA's ridiculous response to the storm on everyone but himself.

I’m often asked, as the person who was running FEMA when Hurricane Katrina hit, why I didn’t evacuate New Orleans. My response is simple—FEMA had no authority to do that under the Constitution, which clearly establishes a system of federalism in which state and local governments are autonomous governmental entities. We call first responders “first” for a reason. When you dial 9-1-1 your call isn’t answered by an operator at 500 C Street SW, Washington, D.C., 20472. Your call is answered by a local government entity that has first and primary responsibility for a disaster. 

Could FEMA have ordered the evacuation of New Orleans? Yes, had it waived posse comitatus and invoked the Insurrection Act, which Congress ultimately amended in 2006 to permit deployment of troops in response to natural disasters. That unprecedented action was actually contemplated days after landfall aboard Air Force One—and I advocated for it. After I advised the president to federalize the response, he sat with Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Air Force One and outlined his plan. We immediately started drafting the federalization documents for the president’s signature, but Governor Blanco requested time to think it over and the president acquiesced. While the governor considered her options, the city became more and more dysfunctional. Blanco ultimately rejected the president’s plan, and political considerations eventually pushed the idea aside.

So again, FEMA could have evacuated the Ninth Ward but didn't because The Decider passed the buck.  So it's really Bush's fault.  Or Kathleen Blanco's fault.  But there's more!

Prior to Katrina making landfall, I asked then-National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield to forcefully explain on a secure video conference call with Blanco and Nagin the catastrophe they were potentially facing if they failed to evacuate at least two or three days prior to landfall. When that didn’t work, I called President Bush at the ranch and implored him to call Mayor Nagin and encourage him to evacuate his city. The president called; the mayor dallied. 

Nagin finally asked people to evacuate on Sunday morning for a storm that hit his city sometime after midnight that night. By that point, Amtrak had left the city with rail cars sans passengers. Airlines had evacuated Louis Armstrong International Airport with planes sans travelers. And school buses sat in their lots, soon to be flooded and ruined. The mayor’s incompetence cost lives.

So now it's Max Mayfield's fault for not convincing Ray Nagin to evacuate when FEMA could have done it but chose not to.  Two more people to add to the blameless Brownie's list.

The press was now on the hunt. Who is Michael Brown? Why does he have a nickname? Why is the president so uninformed about what’s really going on in Louisiana? 

As the media scrutiny increased, I faced another problem—chain of command. FEMA was part of the alphabet soup of agencies folded into the new Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Tom Ridge. But under the Stafford Act, which created FEMA and governed federal responses to disasters, FEMA’s director is to act “on behalf of the President of the United States.”

So now it's the press's fault.  Or Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge's fault.  Brownie goes on and on for thousands of words in his screed, not taking a single ounce of responsibility for his massive screwup.  Of course, the real secret is everyone Brownie names is partially responsible for the deaths in New Orleans too: Bush, Nagin, Blanco, Mayfield, and more.

But Brown's attempt to absolve himself is comical to the point of being vulgar and repulsive.  He's just the man who was so utterly incompetent, he actually ended up being the one to take the blame.

Bitter Home Alabama

Republicans in Alabama are showing the rest of Red State America exactly how to go about keeping those undesirable black, Hispanic, poor, and elderly voters from ever being able to cast a ballot: simply pass one of the nation's toughest voter ID laws and require state-issued drivers licenses or ID cards to vote, and then close 90% of the state's drivers' license offices.

Alabama's chief law enforcement officer said Monday he will close all but the state's four largest drivers' license offices next year if state lawmakers don't provide more funding than they are proposing. 

Secretary of Law Enforcement Spencer Collier told a press conference in Scottsboro that budgets proposed in the Legislature's regular session are "unacceptable" and "unworkable." Lawmakers must do better in the upcoming second special session on the 2016 budget, he said. 

Collier heads the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA), which was created in 2013 to merge the Department of Public Safety and 11 smaller policing agencies. His press conference was to rally support for Gov. Robert Bentley's proposed tax package as a second special session nears on Alabama's 2016 General Fund budget. State parks officials have scheduled their own press conference Tuesday near Joe Wheeler State Park. 

Collier said his agency received $55 million in state funding this year. Lawmakers have proposed $40 million for next year, and he wants level funding of $55 million. 

Without it, 33 part-time rural drivers' license offices will close Oct. 1, Collier said. More closures Jan. 1, 2016 will leave 12 offices statewide, and that number will drop to four on March 1 – one each in Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery and Mobile. 

That means an estimated 40,000 people a year will funnel to four offices for new drivers licenses and examinations, Alabama licenses for new residents moving from other states, and renewal of licenses after suspensions, department leaders said. 

Regular license renewal can now be done on line. Collier said that is one of several improvements the state has made to the process, including online examination scheduling, self-serve kiosks, and digital licenses for cell phones. But first licenses and examinations must be done in person, and properly licensing drivers who will be on Alabama roads is a public safety issue, he said. Public safety, he said, is the state's No. 1 responsibility.

Ahh, but let's recall that this means Alabama citizens who want to get a drivers' license or state issue ID ahead of the 2016 election will only be able to go to four offices in the entire state to get one starting in March.

And of course, this is the plan.  If you need a renewal, you can do it online.  But if you're new to the state or getting a voter ID, good luck.  These closings will end up disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters.

The Iran Deal Looks Like A Done Deal

It's looking more and more like President Obama's nuclear agreement with Iran and other global partners is a done deal, and that there are now enough Democratic votes to kill the Republican plan to scrap it, but will there be enough to prevent the President from having to veto it at all?

President Barack Obama’s almost certain to get the Iran nuclear deal through Congress — but whether he gets there by filibuster or sustained veto could make all the difference. 

A Democratic filibuster in the Senate would be a clear victory for the president, allowing Obama to say that for all the political noise there wasn’t enough actual opposition to the nuclear agreement with the Islamic republic to even get to a final vote. 

Having to save the deal with a veto (just the fifth of his presidency) and relying on liberals in the House and Senate to sustain it would be much more trouble: a procedural pull across the finish line that sows more doubts in a public already skeptical of the deal, leaves international partners worried about America’s long-term commitment and adds weeks of added time and tangles. 

The White House very much prefers option A. And even before he came out publicly for the deal on Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had been in frequent contact with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough to try to make that happen.

The numbers are tight: They’ll need 12 of the remaining 15 undecided Senate Democrats to go Obama’s way, along with the 29 already there. 

Obama, White House aides and Senate minority whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) — who’s been running the unofficial Iran vote-counting operation — have been scrambling to lock down the remaining votes to get 41 Democrats to stick with the president. 

“Those who are students of the process know that the president has the last word,” Durbin said. “I’d like to win it earlier.”

We'll see where undecided Democrats like Cory Booker, Barb Mikulski, Ben Cardin, Mark Warner and Chris Coons go with this.  Getting 12 of the 15 will be an issue, especially Warner, Cardin, and Coons.

We'll see where this goes, but considering the sheer number of times Senate Dems have screwed President Obama over, my money is on him having to take the veto option in the end.

StupidiNews!

• Three people have been arrested in connection with an abandoned truck with more than 70 bodies of Syrian refugees found near the Austrian-Hungarian border. 
• Prosecutors in Virgina will seek an indictment against the police officer who killed 18-year-old William Chapman outside a Wal-Mart in May.
• McDonald's and Tyson Foods have cut ties with a commercial farm in Tennessee after animal rights activists released a video showing farm workers stomping and clubbing chickens.
• Lower oil prices could cost energy companies nearly half a trillion in bond debt over the next ten years if prices remain at the $40 a barrel range.
• Apple has set September 9th for its next product event where the company is expected to unveil the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus along with iOS 9.

Last Call For Rand Lives Matter

Once again my senator has decided that as far as being a constituent of his is concerned, black Kentuckians don't really matter so much.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) criticized the Black Lives Matter movement on Wednesday, accusing it of “bullying people.” 

“I think they should change their name maybe, if they were ‘All Lives Matter’ or ‘Innocent Lives Matter,'” Paul told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “I am about justice, and frankly I think a lot of poor people in our country, and many African-Americans, are trapped in this war on drugs and I want to change it. But commandeering the microphone and bullying people and pushing people out of the way I think really isn’t a way to get their message across.”

Really?  Because it sure seems like to me that if we don't go grabbing microphones, our elected officials like to pretend we don't exist, or that we should just shut up and sit down.

Members of the movement have often pointed out that using the phrase “all lives matter” is a means for opponents to downplay the number of black deaths as a result of excessive force by law enforcement officials. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley was booed when he used the phrase “every life matters” during the Netroots Nation progressive conference earlier this month. He later apologized for doing so. 

The protest at Netroots touched off a series of appearances by activists connected to the movement at events featuring O’Malley and fellow Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, as well as GOP candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Protesters also met with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after reportedly being blocked from attending one of her events. 

Both Paul and Hannity also talked up the Tea Party senator’s outreach efforts to black communities. 

“I’ve appeared with many members of the Congressional Black Caucus to talk about criminal justice,” the senator said. “I’ve been to Howard University, I’ve discussed it in Chicago and other cities, and so I’m more than willing to discuss it. But having people take the microphone — they need to go somewhere else and they need to rent their own microphone.”

How about going to Louisville or Lexington and talking to black communities there, Rand?  Do your own constituents matter, or are you too busy running for President or jetting off to Haiti for photo ops to give a damn?

Jackass.

Words Overheard

Quinnipiac University asked people as part of their most recent 2016 candidate poll to name one word that describes the candidate the best, and the results were very interesting judging from the top five answers.

What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Hillary Clinton? (Numbers are not percentages. Figures show the number of times each response was given. This table reports only words that were mentioned at least five times.)

liar 178
dishonest 123
untrustworthy 93
experience 82
strong 59

Clinton still having serious issues on trustworthiness.  But she came off better than Donald Trump...

What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump? (Numbers are not percentages. Figures show the number of times each response was given. This table reports only words that were mentioned at least five times.)  

arrogant 58
blowhard 38
idiot 35
businessman 34
clown 34

Ouch.  "Arrogant blowhard idiot businessman clown" sums up The Donald quite well, I'd think.

But Jeb Bush came out with the most amusing bunch of descriptors:

What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Jeb Bush? (Numbers are not percentages. Figures show the number of times each response was given. This table reports only words that were mentioned at least five times.)  

Bush 136
family 70
honest 53
weak 45
brother 41 

Probably explains why Jeb has stopped pretending his brother doesn't exist and is now having Dubya help him fundraise.  He's in that much trouble that he's actually having the worst president in modern history stumping for him.

But if Hillary's in trouble, Donny and Jeb are deep underwater and sinking fast.

Bullseye On Your Back

I hear "At least Target isn't Wal-Mart" a lot, like you should somehow feel good about shopping there.  Frirst of all, that's an infinitesimally low bar.  Secondly,you might want to reconsider that position about it being "better", actually.

Target agreed to pay $2.8 million on Monday to settle a claim that the retailer disproportionately screened out applicants based on their race or gender. The complaint, filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), targeted certain hiring assessments used over the past decade. The sum represents one of the highest amounts paid in recent years to settle a claim of hiring discrimination; most are for less than $1 million. 

The EEOC said the tests were not sufficiently related to the actual jobs, which were for upper-level positions, and while on their face they were neutral, in practice they kept out particular groups, according to the agency’s statistical analysis. It also found that one of its assessments, by constituting a pre-employment medical exam, violated the Americans with Disabilities Act that bars such tests. 

The settlement money will be shared among more than 3,000 people who were adversely affected by the hiring assessments. The company also agreed to take steps to ensure the validity of its hiring process, including better data keeping, and it is no longer using the tests. 

A spokeswoman for the company noted that while the EEOC found the potential for adverse impact, it didn’t find any actual disparities in its hiring. “The EEOC has concluded that only a small fraction of the assessments administered during the relevant time period could have been problematic,” she said in an emailed statement. “We continue to firmly believe that no improper behavior occurred regarding these assessments.” 

So yes, over the last ten years, the hiring tests for Target's management positions systemically discriminated against minorities, women, and the disabled.  Sounds like yet another great American company to work for.

Ahh, but Target is far, far from alone.

The settlement is part of a larger effort by EEOC to root out systemic bias in company policies. Screening and recruitment processes, background checks, and tests can all be tailored to exclude certain groups of people.

And they have been for decades, if not longer.  There's a reason why the vast majority of managers in the US are white men and have been.  They're the ones deciding the criteria for management.

StupidiNews!

• Authorities are still trying to determine why former WDBJ-TV reporter Vester Flanagan killed reporter Alison Parker and her cameraman, Adam Ward live on the air near Roanoke, VA.
• President Obama will give a speech in New Orleans today marking the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, noting the city's recovery but that serious problems still remain.
• Louisiana Police have captured Harrison Wiley, who allegedly stabbed three women, including his wife, during a domestic dispute and then shot and killed a police officer who responded.
• Chinese government officials made a major intervention in the Shanghai stock markets today to break a massive losing streak and sending stocks up more than 5% in the final hour of trading.
• Microsoft says more than 75 million devices are now running Windows 10 after just one month of the upgrade being available.

Last Call For Smoke On The Lack Of Water

The 2015 wildfire season has been record-setting in more ways than one, and given that there's no end in sight to the brutal drought in the Western US right now, expect this scenario to get worse and worse as the years roll on.  In the short-term, firefighters battling these massive blazes are in desperate need of outside help and are getting it from as far away as Australia.

As of Monday morning, at least 13 large fires burned across the central and eastern portion of Washington, while 11 burned across Oregon. All told, 65 major wildfires are currently burning across seven Western states. According to the National Interagency Fire Center statistics, more than 27,000 firefighters are deployed across the country. To date, this years’ fire season has burned 7,487,737 total acres, more than any other season in the last 10 years. 

“Nationally, the system is pretty tapped,” Rob Allen, the deputy incident commander for the fires around the Cascade Mountain resort town of Chelan, told the Associated Press last Wednesday. “Everything is being used right now, so competition for resources is fierce.” 

Last week, for the first time since 2006, the National Interagency Fire Center mobilized 200 active-duty military troops to help control the fires that are spreading throughout the West. Along with active-duty soldiers, members of the National Guard and Air Force have already been called to help fight the fires. This weekend, dozens of firefighters from Australia and New Zealand were deployed to help fight blazes in Idaho, Washington, Montana, Oregon, and California. This isn’t the first time that firefighters have come from Australia to help fight U.S. fires — under an exchange program, Australian firefighters have come to the United States 11 times since 2000, according to the Strait Times. 

The military and foreign firefighters will provide crucial manpower for Western firefighting teams that have all but exhausted their local resources. Last week, the Los Angeles Times published a story about Rick Anderson, a fire chief in Stevens County, Washington who was forced to fight a fire with just 11 other firefighters and pickup trucks carrying 300-gallon water tanks. When Anderson called surrounding fire agencies to ask for reinforcements, he was told that none had extra manpower to spare — they were all busy fighting their own fires. 

Anderson’s story is just one example of a fire season that has pushed local and federal fire agencies to the brink. 

“It’s like the fire season gas pedal has been pushed to the floor in a really short period of time, and that’s stressed our resources,” Ken Frederick, a spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center, told the Associated Press. “And that’s got us relying on help from resources we don’t normally use.”

More wildfires, more firefighters needed to battle them.  The costs in money, property, and of course lives will only continue to increase as climate change and growing populations in Western US states makes droughts worse, taxes water and infrastructure resources, and leads to more incidents of accidents with fire and in some cases arson.

Welcome to the new normal.

Full-Blown Art Attack

Some days in life you trip and fall and just have to pick yourself up.  Other times, you trip and fall and put your hand through a million-and-a-half dollar painting.

A 12-year-old tripped at a museum in Taiwan this weekend; luckily a $1.5 million painting was there to break his fall. The kid is reportedly fine, the $1.5 million painting, not so much: according to reports, it now has a kid-sized hole in it.

And this is why art restoration experts exist.

According to the Telegraph, the boy was “nervous” he’d be held financially responsible—lol, duh—but by the grace of god, his family reportedly won’t have to pay any restoration costs for the 17th century Paolo Porpora oil painting, titled “Flowers.”

Life happens.  For everything else, there's insurance.

But you might want to fix those barriers, guys.

The Best Case For The Iran Nuclear Deal...

...is the fact that warmonger and generally awful supervillain prototype Dick Cheney is speaking out against any agreement with Iran and is trying to undermine this president once again,

Dick Cheney will speak out against the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran during a speech next month at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 

According to an AEI news release, the former vice president will share his concerns about the deal’s “consequences for the security and interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East.”

In July, Cheney said on Fox News that the deal would make the use of nuclear weapons more likely. 

“What Obama has done has, in effect, sanctioned the acquisition by Iran of nuclear capability. And it can be a few years down the road. It doesn’t make any difference. It’s a matter of months until we’re going to see a situation where other people feel they have to defend themselves by acquiring their own capability,” he said. “And that will, in fact, I think put us closer to use — actual use of nuclear weapons than we’ve been at any time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.” 

Cheney will speak on Sept. 8 — just a week ahead of the Sept. 17 deadline for Congress to vote on the deal’s authorization.

The guy behind lying us into a war with Iraq wants us to go to war with Iran.

That's all I need to dispel any doubts I may have ever had about this Iran nuclear agreement and that it's a massive win for the US, the world, and President Obama.

What possible credibility on foreign policy issues does this madman have?  He should be giving this speech at a federal prison, not a think tank.  By all means, Dick, let's have you on America's teevee screens to remind us once again what another four years of insane Republican rule will bring in 2017: hundreds of thousands of US troops fighting and dying for another massive lie in yet another idiotic war in the Middle East.

Please proceed, Dick.

StupidiNews!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Last Call For Fixing Ferguson

The Justice Department report on Ferguson, Missouri cited not only serious problems with the police, but massive issues with municipal courts using warrants and fines as the city's main source of revenue, preying on the town's black population for money.

This week, the process of repairing that breach of public trust began.

A new municipal judge in Ferguson, Missouri, on Monday ordered sweeping changes to court practices in response to a scathing Justice Department report following the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown a year ago. 

Municipal Court Judge Donald McCullin, appointed in June, ordered that all arrest warrants issued in the city before Dec. 31, 2014 be withdrawn. 

Defendants will receive new court dates along with options for disposing of their cases, such as payment plans or community service. Fines may be commuted for indigent people. 

The changes come five months after the U.S. Department of Justice strongly criticized city leaders in its report, saying the police force and court worked together to exploit people in order to raise revenue. 

The Justice Department specifically said Ferguson's municipal court practices caused significant harm to many people with cases pending as minor municipal code violations turned into multiple arrests, jail time, and payments that exceeded the cost of the original ticket many times over. 

McCullin, who is black, ordered instead that if an arrest warrant is issued for a minor traffic violation, the defendant will not be incarcerated, but will be released on their own recognizance and given another court date, the city said. 

"These changes should continue the process of restoring confidence in the Court... and giving many residents a fresh start," said McCullin in a statement.

He added that many people who have had drivers licenses suspended will be able to obtain them and start driving again. In the past, the city's director of revenue would suspend a defendant's driver's license solely for failing to appear in court or failing to pay a fine.

Things still have a long way to go in Ferguson and St. Louis County.  Decades of institutionalized racism in the police and municipal court systems have ravaged the place, but at least things are beginning to change for the better.

There's some small measure of hope, at least.

Getting Trumped By The States

What does it say about the utter chaos a political party is in when state party machines are actively conspiring to keep the party's national front-runner off the primary ballot?

Amid mounting concerns about Donald Trump’s candidacy from the GOP establishment, Republican leaders in at least two states have found a way to make life a lot harder for him. 

The Virginia and North Carolina parties are in discussions about implementing a new requirement for candidates to qualify for their primary ballots: that they pledge to support the Republican presidential nominee — and not run as a third-party candidate — in the general election. 

The procedural moves are clearly aimed at Trump, who pointedly refused to rule out a third-party run during the first GOP debate. 

They come amid Republican fears that the real estate mogul is gaining strength in the primary contest, and that his jeremiads against undocumented immigrants will alienate Hispanic voters. Despite coming under a hail of criticism in recent weeks, Trump has held steady atop state and national polls. 

John Whitbeck, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, said the proposal was among many that the organization was considering as it sketches out its ballot access requirements for the 2016 GOP primary. The ultimate decision, he said, would be made by the 84 members who make up the state party’s central committee, which is slated to meet on Sept. 19. The requirements must be submitted to the Republican National Committee by Oct. 1. 

If implemented, Whitbeck said, the provision would be similar to ones the party adopted for statewide races held in 2013 and 2014.

In other words, if Trump has any plans whatsoever to run as the ultimate GOP version of Ralph Nader and hand a massive win to the Democrats, he won't even get on the ballot in two key states.

Republicans at the national level are 100% terrified of Trump.  They know he'd lose in a landslide, but if they get rid of him this early, he'll just run as a third-party candidate and sink the party next November anyway. And worst of all, the Trump GOP faithful are going to do everything they can to bring his awful racism to the November 2016 ballot.

“Nothing disqualifies Trump.” 

That was the takeaway of Frank Luntz, the public opinion guru, after leading a focus group Monday night of supporters of Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign.
For two and a half hours, Luntz quizzed a group of current and past ardent Trump fans about their views on the businessman. He discussed the candidate’s past liberal stances and played past video of Trump saying provocative things about women. Yet when the focus group was over, not a single person who was planning to vote for him said they had changed their mind. 

“This is absolutely for real,” Luntz said of the intense and loyal support for Trump. “And he is not going away. And he is as strong as every survey shows. All those people who think he’s going to implode have not sat and talked to these voters the way that they should have.”

The focus group was made up of 29 people, six of whom said they no longer support Trump but did in the past. Asked to describe Trump in one word or phrase, the answers varied: “businessman,” “brave,” “successful,” “results,” “decisive,” “leader,” “guts,” “charismatic,” “bombastic,” “not a politician,” “not P.C.,” “true American,” “brash,” “decisive,” “kick ass and take names.” 

“When he talks, deep down somewhere, you’re going, ‘crap, somebody is thinking the same way I am,’” said one man.

It's nothing short of panic mode and we get to watch the long, slow train wreck for months.

Damned if you do, as they say.  Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of complete assholes, too.

Just Another Cop Killer

In Louisiana, a man shot and taunted a State Trooper at a traffic stop.  The officer later died.  It's a horrible story.

A Louisiana state trooper died Monday after authorities say he was shot in the head and then taunted when he stopped to provide aid to a man whose truck was stuck in a ditch. 

Col. Mike Edmonson, head of the State Police, said Kevin Daigle shot Senior Trooper Steven Vincent, then said, "You're lucky, you are going to die soon." 

Edmonson said Vincent, 43, drove up on Kevin Daigle near Bell City on Sunday afternoon and then determined that his pickup's plates matched the description of a previously reported "reckless vehicle." Edmonson said a recording from Vincent's cruiser shows Vincent was conversing with Daigle when he opened his door, pulled out a sawed-off shotgun and shot Vincent in the head. 

"I am very saddened to report that Senior Trooper Steven Vincent has passed away this morning from the gunshot wounds he suffered yesterday in conjunction with a traffic investigation," Edmonton said Monday. "As an organization, we are heartbroken over this senseless and tragic death. Our thoughts and prayers are with his surviving wife Katherine and his son Ethan as well as his entire extended family." 

Daigle, whose criminal history includes "numerous DWIs," will be charged with first degree murder of a police officer and aggravated battery, Edmonson said at a news conference. The investigation is ongoing, he said.

What made this evil fiend Kevin Daigle kill the brave Steven Vincent?  Was it the music he listened to?  Did his style of dress possibly indicate a gang affiliation?  Was he perpetuating criminal behavior because the culture he belonged to expected it of him?  He was a known criminal and obviously dangerous, and killing a cop surely meant he deserved what happened next, he was nothing more than a common thug who was put down like the animal he...

Kevin Daigle (Photo: Erik Stratton, AP)

Oh.

White guy.  Brought in alive.

Well, we shouldn't ask too many questions then.

Yes, a police officer is dead, killed in the line of duty, and that's a horrific tragedy.  But Kevin Daigle will face a court of law for his crime, unlike so many who are executed without due process.