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“She sure shouldn’t be going to the press.” [Darleen Click]

So claims US Marshall Matt Wiggins of the woman he could have easily killed when he headed a no-warrant, militarized, home invasion style “search” of Louise Goldsberry’s apartment

After leaving her operating room scrub nurse duties at Sarasota’s Doctors Hospital on Wednesday, Louise Goldsberry went to her Hidden Lake Village apartment.

Her boyfriend came over, and after dinner — about 8 p.m. — Goldsberry went to her kitchen sink to wash some dishes.

That’s when her boyfriend, Craig Dorris — a manager for a security alarm company — heard her scream and saw her drop to the floor.

Goldsberry, 59, said she had looked up from the sink to see a man “wearing a hunting vest.”

He was aiming a gun at her face, with a red light pinpointing her.

“I screamed and screamed,” she said.

But she also scrambled across the floor to her bedroom and grabbed her gun, a five-shot .38-caliber revolver. Goldsberry has a concealed weapons permit and says the gun has made her feel safer living alone. But she felt anything but safe when she heard a man yelling to open the door.

He was claiming to be a police officer, but the man she had seen looked to her more like an armed thug. Her boyfriend, Dorris, was calmer, and yelled back that he wanted to see some ID.

But the man just demanded they open the door. The actual words, the couple say, were, “We’re the f—— police; open the f—— door.”

Dorris said he moved away from the door, afraid bullets were about to rip through.

Goldsberry was terrified but thinking it just might really be the police. Except, she says she wondered, would police talk that way? She had never been arrested or even come close. She couldn’t imagine why police would be there or want to come in. But even if they did, why would they act like that at her apartment? It didn’t seem right. […]

The cops opened her locked front door, coming down the hallway to confront the couple.

Dorris remained frozen and kept his hands in sight. He saw more people outside, and decided it probably was a police action. But he started fearing that in this case that was not much better than a home invasion. With his freaked out girlfriend and the macho commando-style intruder aiming at each other and shouting, someone could be dead at any second.

Dorris told the man at the door he would come outside and talk to them. When he got permission and walked out slowly, hands up, he was amazed at what he saw as he was quickly grabbed and handcuffed.

The cop at the door, and some others, had words on their clothes identifying them as federal marshals, but there were numerous Sarasota Police officers, too, and others he couldn’t identify, though his security company job involves work with police.

More than two dozen officers, maybe more than 30, were bustling around, many in tactical jackets.

It was like nothing he had ever seen.

“It was a Rambo movie,” Dorris said.

This couple almost became another static based on nothing but a “tip”

Matt Wiggins was the man at the door.

He’s with the U.S. Marshal’s fugitive division.

I asked him what happened. He said they had a tip that a child-rape suspect was at the complex.

That suspect, Kyle Riley, was arrested several hours later in another part of Sarasota.

The tip was never about Goldsberry’s apartment, specifically, Wiggins acknowledged. It was about the complex.

But when the people in Goldsberry’s apartment didn’t open up, that told Wiggins he had probably found the right door. No one at other units had reacted that way, he said.

Maybe none of them had a gun pointed at them through the kitchen window, I suggested. But Wiggins didn’t think that was much excuse for the woman’s behavior. He said he acted with restraint and didn’t like having that gun aimed at him. […]

“We were clearly the police,” Wiggins insisted. “She can’t say she didn’t know.” […]

Goldsberry wasn’t arrested or shot despite pointing a gun at a cop, so Wiggins said, “She sure shouldn’t be going to the press.”

I’m just wondering, as Wiggins is a Federal employee, just when Goldsberry can expect an audit from the IRS.

116 Replies to ““She sure shouldn’t be going to the press.” [Darleen Click]”

  1. John Bradley says:

    So… remind me again why police forces were such a great idea? Because at this point, I fear these dangerous armed lunatics considerably more than the actual ‘bad guys’. (The bad guys at least presumably still have the decency to realize that what they’re doing is wrong, and will get them shot if they choose the wrong house. Say what you will, I like my home invaders to show that little bit of respect to the invadee.)

    Now, if we could get a Stand Your Ground clarification to the effect that it’s perfectly fine to shoot police that don’t politely knock on the door and bring a warrant with them, well, I guess that’d be okay.

    (Also, refresh my memory, but for the life of me I can’t remember the episode of Adam-12 or Dragnet where these sort of Gestapo tactics were used. But it’s been a while…)

  2. mojo says:

    Cherchez les flics…

  3. Darleen says:

    JohnB

    It’s been an escalation of tactics and every PD who wants a SWAT team wants to also deploy them.

    No where in this story was anything that the fugitive they sought was “armed & dangerous” or that anyone in the complex was in “imminent danger.”

    The only time I remember anything approaching this kind of militarized police action when I was a kid was the whole SLA shootout.

    THIS is what you get when the Feds help local PDs militarize their operations/policies/procedures … and Obama’s “I’m Trayvon Martin” speech yesterday proposes much more of the same.

  4. geoffb says:

    You’re dealing out facts and evidence of police misconduct, how conservative, old fashioned, of you.

    It’s not the nature of the evidence that counts but the audacity of the charge and its political usefulness for the cause.

  5. Darleen says:

    oh good lord, geoffb

    The reason that more perps are NOT “fingered” and arrested is that the inner-city black community refuses to cooperate. Whether it is fear or “bros before pigs” comes down to a murderer cannot be arrested if s/he cannot be identified and evidence gathered.

  6. leigh says:

    Cops here are pretty much like Andy Taylor. Everywhere else I’ve lived? Not so much.

  7. The unarmed British “bobby” we used to snicker at is looking better and better.

  8. And the sheriff here in Cow Eater County could be Andy Taylor for the 21st century, for all I ever hear about him.

  9. serr8d says:

    Shorter Overbearing, Militarized US Marshal Matt Wiggins: “Shut up, BITCH.”
    *

  10. cranky-d says:

    You must learn to obey our fascist overlords and their minions like Wiggins. It’s for your own good.

  11. LBascom says:

    “You must learn to obey our fascist overlords and their minions like Wiggins. It’s for your own good If you know what’s good for you. “

  12. richard mcenroe says:

    With the metastazing of DHS and the flood of “militarizing” funding to PD’s, not only are a lot of weapons and ammo being purchased but I suspect a lot of agents and officers are being hired who would not have made the cut previously.

  13. “He has sent forth swarms of officers, to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

  14. happyfeet says:

    police departments serve the useful function of both providing employment for these dumb violent animals as well as separating them from the general population and giving them uniforms so they are easily identified and avoided

  15. geoffb says:

    I suspect a lot of agents and officers are being hired who would not have made the cut previously.

    More cost effective to get them on the public payroll and extract union dues which get kicked back to the Party than to always deal with private contractors who may have their own agendas.

    The father of New York gun control was Democratic city pol “Big Tim “Sullivan — a state senator and Tammany Hall crook, a criminal overseer of the gangs of New York.

    In 1911 — in the wake of a notorious Gramercy Park blueblood murder-suicide — Sullivan sponsored the Sullivan Act, which mandated police-issued licenses for handguns and made it a felony to carry an unlicensed concealed weapon.

    This was the heyday of the pre-Prohibition gangs, roving bands of violent toughs who terrorized ethnic neighborhoods and often fought pitched battles with police. In 1903, the Battle of Rivington Street pitted a Jewish gang, the Eastmans, against the Italian Five Pointers. When the cops showed up, the two underworld armies joined forces and blasted away, resulting in three deaths and scores of injuries. The public was clamoring for action against the gangs.

    Problem was the gangs worked for Tammany. The Democratic machine used them as shtarkers (sluggers), enforcing discipline at the polls and intimidating the opposition. Gang leaders like Monk Eastman were even employed as informal “sheriffs,” keeping their turf under Tammany control.

    The Tammany Tiger needed to rein in the gangs without completely crippling them. Enter Big Tim with the perfect solution: Ostensibly disarm the gangs — and ordinary citizens, too — while still keeping them on the streets.

    In fact, he gave the game away during the debate on the bill, which flew through Albany: “I want to make it so the young thugs in my district will get three years for carrying dangerous weapons instead of getting a sentence in the electric chair a year from now.”

    Sullivan knew the gangs would flout the law,
    […]
    Ordinary citizens, on the other hand, were disarmed, which solved another problem: Gangsters had been bitterly complaining to Tammany that their victims sometimes shot back at them.

    Can’t have them citizens shooting back, that’s bad business and bad for Party business.

  16. geoffb says:

    A taste of the current New York City Dems. The spots don’t change or wash off.

  17. sdferr says:

    Says Bill de Blasio in geoffb’s last link:

    *** I think there’s a large number of Americans who are deeply deeply upset by the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case; we don’t accept it. We believe in our jury system, but we think that this verdict was fundamentally unfair, and we need action to overcome it. That’s why we want our Justice Department to stand and take over the case, and show that there’s going to be fairness in this country. ***

    What’s up with this “we” shit?

    Some political moron in NY takes it as his concern what a jury verdict in Florida happens to determine, and claims some amorphous “need”, some necessity that the Federal Government take “action”? On what grounds? There are no grounds!

    These fucking people have lost their minds. Evidently they believe they can say or demand anything, lawlessly, since there isn’t any sanction to come from their own moronic constituents.

  18. newrouter says:

    perhaps baracky has jumped the trayvon&trade:?

  19. Blake says:

    Cops need to start going to jail for this kind of crap.

  20. Mueller says:

    Tell me again. What types of people and activities has HS labeled “terrorist”?

  21. cranky-d says:

    We’re the terrorists, Mueller.

  22. palaeomerus says:

    “But when the people in Goldsberry’s apartment didn’t open up, that told Wiggins he had probably found the right door. No one at other units had reacted that way, he said.’ ”

    Fired with extreme prejudice, sued into poverty, separated from any non self funded pension, used as a text book example of the kind of flat headed asshole who gets people killed and brings shame on the police department. Problem solved.

  23. palaeomerus says:

    Helen Thomas died.

  24. Mueller says:

    Then I’m in good company, cranky

  25. Pablo says:

    *** I think there’s a large number of Americans who are deeply deeply upset by the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case; we don’t accept it. We believe in our jury system, but we think that this verdict was fundamentally unfair, and we need action to overcome it. That’s why we want our Justice Department to stand and take over the case, and show that there’s going to be fairness in this country. ***

    MLK III was on the tube this morning talking about the need for civil rights charges against Zimmerman. The host (black, FWIW) asked him what the basis for such charges would be, what the legal theory behind them is. MLK III reaffirmed that he INAL and thus couldn’t speak to any such technicality. He just knew there should be civil rights charges. “The right to walk home” was as close as he got to elucidating the theory upon which this White Hispanic should be deprived of his liberty.

    Sorry, Pops. Your boy is an idiot.

  26. Pablo says:

    Helen Thomas died.

    Yes.

  27. sdferr says:

    One less jew-hating leftist propagandist parading around in journalist’s disguise, one quieter more peaceful day in the world.

  28. palaeomerus says:

    ding dong…

  29. serr8d says:

    “She sure shouldn’t be going to the press.”

    (Denounce me, but at first, had that figured as a Helen Thomas send-off.)

  30. sdferr says:

    Cuban defector Henry Urrutia gets his first major league appearance tonight at dh hitting in the 8spot. These are good days for Cuban defectors in MLB. With more to come, I hope.

  31. serr8d says:

    For something, I need denouncing, I’m guessing.

  32. Helen Thomas’ last public appearance was as a cave troll in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

  33. palaeomerus says:

    Serr8d a lot of people just aren’t going to see the pit in that cherry. We live in an era where the Onion is no longer more outrageous than what they make fun of.

  34. geoffb says:

    Father serr8d, the father in his dreams.

  35. Ernst Schreiber says:

    If someone’s already mentioned this, pardon the repitition:

    “We were clearly the police,” Wiggins insisted. “She can’t say she didn’t know.” […]
    Goldsberry wasn’t arrested or shot despite pointing a gun at a cop, so Wiggins said, “She sure shouldn’t be going to the press.”

    My guess is that if she really couldn’t say she didn’t know, she would have been arrested –probably shot too. Also, I think she has a pretty good case for criminal tresspass. They were looking for a fugitive suspect based on a tip, not executing a search warrant. She had every right to tell them to fuck 0ff if she wanted to. Then the Marshal Gerard wannabe could have called for a warrant based on being told to “fuck off.” I bet the judge would have loved that.

  36. newrouter says:

    seal team 6 wannabes?

  37. leigh says:

    I heard Dr. King’s boy on the radio and he is indeed an idiot as well as completely unfamiliar with the facts of the case. Trayvon was not walking in HIS neighborhood, he was walking in Zimmerman’s neighborhood when he decided to open up a can of whoop-azz and got his azz shot in mid-whoop.

    Don’t bring a sidewalk to a gunfight.

  38. SBP says:

    “seal team 6 wannabes?”

    I’d guess closer to walrus, myself.

  39. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Cops need to start going to jail for this kind of crap.

    Seriously. I mean, the next thing you, this kind of jackassery is going to lead to some suspect getting shot in the middle of an interview.

  40. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Cops here are pretty much like Andy Taylor. Everywhere else I’ve lived? Not so much.

    Speaking of Sheriff Andy

  41. newrouter says:

    “I heard Dr. King’s boy on the radio and he is indeed an idiot as well as completely unfamiliar with the facts of the case.”

    i think he is mlk 3. so like they kennedy’s progeny industrial grade stupid.

  42. leigh says:

    MLK was a Junior, so his kid would have been the third (bet they didn’t call him Trey), I think. Unless I miss my guess, that’s the way it works. One of my kids is named after his grandfather and is the second and he has an uncle who is named after the grandfather who is Junior.

    But I could be wrong. I still can’t get that second cousin and first cousin once removed thing straight.

  43. Pablo says:

    Dat wadn’t shot, dat was jus poke a ho in da nigga. You dont unnastan da kulcha.

  44. leigh says:

    Nome sane, Pablo?

  45. Pablo says:

    Iss jus a lil ho, nigga! Get you azzzz up!

  46. leigh says:

    Sheeeeeee-it. (sucks teeth)

  47. palaeomerus says:

    Shh-dawg. Ya already know…

  48. Now chillun, doan yaw be tawkin dat sass where propa fowks cain hear ya. Dey might be thinkin yallar ingnerit.

  49. newrouter says:

    rj 3.O! lives

  50. palaeomerus says:

    OMG son. You don’t even know…

  51. palaeomerus says:

    This blog is fire. OMG son. Off tha chain.

  52. happyfeet says:

    I’m trying to think of a congresswhore what looks more like a pedophile than Peter King.

    I’m sure there’s at least one.

  53. dicentra says:

    I’ve got distant family and ancestors from Mt. Airy (Mayberry) and Pilot Mountain (Mt. Pilot), NC.

    Among them, a couple of sisters—third cousins four-times removed (or fourth cousins, three times removed)—who married the original Siamese twins: Chang and Eng.

    Who, these days, could easily have been separated shortly after birth, as their connection was all soft tissue and stuff.

    This makes me incredibly important.

  54. dicentra says:

    Also, I’m starting to wonder about our previous confidence in the cops not turning on citizens should some kind of martial law go down.

    It might end up being good cop/bad cop in a whole new, awful way.

  55. dicentra says:

    Also, it looks like some wolves are being admitted to the sheepdog ranks.

    More wolves, that is. I guess there always were a few who slipped in.

    What can we expect when we tear down the very structures that create honorable people? The counter-culture revolution has produced this: people who can’t tell the difference between right and wrong and frankly don’t care.

  56. cranky-d says:

    I never believed the cops wouldn’t turn on honest citizens. They have already done it many times.

    I don’t think the military would, but those guys are quite different.

    Note that cops who were (or still are) military are excluded from my conclusion about their fellow officers. For now.

  57. newrouter says:

    – I’m starting to wonder about our previous confidence in the cops not turning on citizens should some kind of martial law go down. –

    wonder no more

    ” identifying them as federal marshals, but there were numerous Sarasota Police officers, too, ”

    the local police should be raked over the coals for participating in this cluster eff

  58. newrouter says:

    local police need to be put on notice that if “joe fed(whatever stripe) knocks on their door the answer to “joe fed” is: ‘go do sumthing biologically impossible without a warrant”. go local/state save the republic from the commie thugs!

  59. happyfeet says:

    most of our military people aren’t obsessed with their pensions

    some of them yes but not most of them

    but if you can change that they’ll become just as sociopathic as your average piggy piggy cop slut

    this is what we have learned about the american character

  60. leigh says:

    Cops are lousy shots. I am not.

  61. happyfeet says:

    personally except for the wounded ones I’ve stopped doing things to make military people feel special

    it’s just too risky to go down that road in a fascist state

  62. leigh says:

    This makes me incredibly important.

    Word.

  63. happyfeet says:

    Dead Ringers by Mr. Cronenberg

    I’d like to revisit that film with my friend T when she comes to visit

  64. SBP says:

    “congresswhore what looks more like a pedophile than Peter King.”

    Waxy.
    Loebsack.
    Markey (technically no longer eligible).

    “It might end up being good cop/bad cop in a whole new, awful way.”

    765,000 cops. Well over 100 million gun owners.

  65. dicentra says:

    I just got a door-to-door visit from a mayoral candidate whom I asked what he thought the worst problems of our fair city were. He said there have been problems with corruption among the cops, from doctoring evidence to stealing drugs and money.

    Granted, not all of them are like that, and sometimes good cops turn them in, but it really erodes faith in police authority when it’s pre-Serpico NYC all over again.

    Why do people decide to be corrupt? Why ruin the world just for your own short-term gain?

  66. dicentra says:

    Also, I truly despise it when people rip on a woman who is a public figure who also happens to be as ugly as a mud fence, so they rip on her looks. For example, some radio guys refer to Janet Napolitano as “he,” on account of she looks and sounds awfully butch. That’s really low. Diss her for her actions, not for misfortunes of birth.

    If it’s something the person cannot control (facial features, voice), knock it off, say I. However, if it’s hair, makeup, clothing, or anything else that the person decides on, it’s fair game, e.g., Donald Trump’s hair or some chick who dresses like a slut.

    That said, Helen Thomas was a truly ugly person inside, and I can’t help but wonder the extent to which it affected her looks. Some people are their own portraits of Dorian Gray.

    I wonder how Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Elijah regard her. I don’t reckon she’s eager to tell them about her anti-Israel stance.

  67. happyfeet says:

    oh man Loebsack has Bad Touch written all over him

  68. happyfeet says:

    Why do people decide to be corrupt?

    a lot of it has to do with car payments and mortgages

    and having children

    have one too many children a car payment and a goddamn mortgage and your idealism flies right out the fucking winder

  69. happyfeet says:

    i made an epitaph for helen i will share with the group brb

  70. happyfeet says:

    there was an old lady who scorned her some jew
    with hatred so fierce what was she to do?
    she cheered all things fascist and gave food stamp head
    and dreamt of a day when the jews were all dead

  71. Ernst Schreiber says:

    People decide to be corrupt because it’s easier than being virtuous. Probably more immediately gratifying too.

  72. happyfeet says:

    virtue is its own reward

    tell me I’m wrong

  73. Dicentra wrote:

    What can we expect when we tear down the very structures that create honorable people? The counter-culture revolution has produced this: people who can’t tell the difference between right and wrong and frankly don’t care.

    All they care about is getting the end achieved – the means don’t matter to the Man bereft of Morality.

    This is the triumph of Utilitarianism.

    Both the Left and the Right have encouraged the Utilitarian Impulse, which seeks efficiency unbounded by Virtue.

    [I count myself among the guilty ones who for many years cheered-on this caprice, this death instinct, refusing to understand that Efficiency unrestrained by a Moral Sense leads to cold and indifferent calculation.]

  74. It turned me into a Newt……..I got better.

  75. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Immediately gratifying and rewarding aren’t the same thing.

  76. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Bob, Michael Knox Beran quotes Lionel Trilling to great effect here:

    It is probable that at this time we are about to make great changes in our social system. The world is ripe for such changes and if they are not made in the direction of greater social liberality, the direction forward, they will almost of necessity be made in the direction backward, of a terrible social niggardliness. We all know which of those directions we want. But it is not enough to want it, not even enough to work for it—we must want it and work for it with intelligence. Which means that we must be aware of the dangers which lie in our most generous wishes. Some paradox of our nature leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion. It is to prevent this corruption, the most ironic and tragic that man knows, that we stand in need of the moral realism which is the product of the free play of the moral imagination.

  77. newrouter says:

    -But that is not the most important thing. The term “dissident” frequently implies a special profession, as if, along with the more normal vocations, there were another special one— grumbling about the state of things. In fact, a “dissident” is simply a physicist, a sociologist, a worker, a poet, individuals who are doing what they feel they must and, consequently, who find themselves in open conflict with the regime. This conflict has not come about through any conscious intention on their part, but simply through the inner logic of their thinking, behavior, or work (often confronted with external circumstances more or less beyond their control). They have not, in other words, consciously decided to be professional malcontents, rather as one decides to be a tailor or a blacksmith.

    In fact, of course, they do not usually discover they are “dissidents” until long after they have actually become one. “Dissent” springs from motivations far different from the desire for titles or fame. In short, they do not decide to become “dissidents,” and even if they were to devote twenty-four hours a day to it, it would still not be a profession, but primarily an existential attitude. Moreover, it is an attitude that is in no way the exclusive property of those who have earned themselves the title of “dissident” just because they happen to fulfill those accidental external conditions already mentioned. There are thousands of nameless people who try to live within the truth and millions who want to but cannot, perhaps only because to do so in the circumstances in which they live, they would need ten times the courage of those who have already taken the first step. If several dozen are randomly chosen from among all these people and put into a special category, this can utterly distort the general picture. It does so in two different ways. Either it suggests that “dissidents” are a group of prominent people, a protected species who are permitted to do things others are not and whom the government may even be cultivating as living proof of its generosity; or it lends support to the illusion that since there is no more than a handful of malcontents to whom not very much is really being done, all the rest are therefore content, for were they not so, they would be “dissidents” too.

    But that is not all. This categorization also unintentionally supports the impression that the primary concern of these “dissidents” is some vested interest that they share as a group, as though their entire argument with the government were no more than a rather abstruse conflict between two opposed groups, a conflict that leaves society out of it altogether. But such an impression profoundly contradicts the real importance of the “dissident” attitude, which stands or falls on its interest in others, in what ails society as a whole, in other words, on an interest in all those who do not speak up. If “dissidents” have any kind of authority at all, and if they have not been exterminated long ago like exotic insects that have appeared where they have no business being, then this is not because the government holds this exclusive group and their exclusive ideas in such awe, but because it is perfectly aware of the potential political power of living within the truth rooted in the hidden sphere, and well aware too of the kind of world “dissent” grows out of and the world it addresses: the everyday human world, the world of daily tension between the aims of life and the aims of the system. (Can there be any better evidence of this than the government’s action after Charter 77 appeared, when it launched a campaign to compel the entire nation to declare that Charter 77 was wrong? Those millions of signatures proved, among other things, that just the opposite was true.) The political organs and the police do not lavish such enormous attention on “dissidents”—which may give the impression that the government fears them as they might fear an alternative power clique-because they actually are such a power clique, but because they are ordinary people with ordinary cares, differing from the rest only in that they say aloud what the rest cannot say or are afraid to say. I have already mentioned Solzhenitsyn’s political influence: it does not reside in some exclusive political power he possesses as an individual, but in the experience of those millions of Gulag victims which he simply amplified and communicated to millions of other people of good will.

    To institutionalize a select category of well-known or prominent “dissidents” means in fact to deny the most intrinsic moral aspect of their activity. As we have seen, the “dissident” movement grows out of the principle of equality, founded on the notion that human rights and freedoms are indivisible. After all, did no well-known “dissidents” unite in KOR to defend unknown workers? And was it not precisely for this reason that they became “well-known dissidents”? And did not the well-known “dissidents” unite in Charter 77 after they had been brought together in defense of those unknown musicians, and did they not unite in the Charter precisely with them, and did they not become “well-known dissidents” precisely because of that? It is truly a cruel paradox that the more some citizens stand up in defense of other citizens, the more they are labeled with a word that in effect separates them from those “other citizens.”

    This explanation, I hope, will make clear the significance of the quotation marks I have put around the word “dissident” throughout this essay.-

    link

  78. If it doesn’t serve a higher purpose, it’s not efficient.

  79. -Indeed, Ernst.

    -From A Man For All Seasons:

    ALICE (Exasperated, pointing after RICH) While you talk, he’s gone!

    MORE And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

    ROPER So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

    MORE Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

    ROPER I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

    MORE (Roused and excited) Oh? (Advances on ROPER) And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you-where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? (He leaves him) This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast-man’s laws, not God’s-and if you cut them down-and you’re just the man to do it-d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? (Quietly) Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

  80. once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion.

    That’s why my laziness saves me. I’ve long since decided that making people the objects of my wisdom is more effort than they’re worth. Coercion was never even on the table.

    I have a few extra milligrams of pity left, but I’m hoarding them.

  81. happyfeet says:

    i don’t care if monday’s blue

  82. Ernst Schreiber says:

    If it doesn’t serve a higher purpose, it’s not efficient.

    Ironical Orwellianism, or Orwellian Irony?

  83. cranky-d says:

    Friday I’m in love.

  84. One wishes Mr. Trilling were alive today.

  85. Ernst Schreiber says:

    He’d just be another Jewish neo-Conservative for the Left and the Right to slap around.

  86. But a few of us would listen.

  87. newrouter says:

    cupcakes or commies?

  88. dicentra says:

    Remind me: Tension shower curtain rods are supposed to have a spring inside them that pushes them against the walls, right?

    Also, why is my iPod suddenly screaming about unsupported FireWire connections? I was just listening to it while it was not connected to anything, and I’ve only ever used a USB cable with it.

    Just because it was sitting in the top pocket of my overalls while I messed with the sprinklers in the dark (with predictable effects)…

  89. newrouter says:

    good allan insanity no?

    ” As we have seen, the “dissident” movement grows out of the principle of equality, founded on the notion that human rights and freedoms are indivisible.”

    “that’s sir is retarded” – rj3.O!

  90. Ernst Schreiber says:

    a few of us would listen.

    We still have Gertrude Himmelfarb. So at least we have that going for us.

  91. newrouter says:

    funny how a guy living in 1977 czechoslovakia knows so much about baracky’s america?

  92. Ernst Schreiber says:

    An Austrian living in London and teaching at London’s School of Economics saw it all coming in 1944.

    There’s this Anglo-French papist fellow who was talking about it even earlier —in 1913, if I remember correctly.

  93. And we few, we happy few, are all that matters.

    Like the monks and a few enlightened princes in The Dark Ages, we’ll keep Right Reason alive.

    Good will never be defeated.

  94. happyfeet says:

    there’s a carrot-top what can barely walk with a sippy cup of milk

  95. newrouter says:

    “Good will never be defeated.”

    val gal will run/back over it. she’s got to keep iranians on board >The Clash – Rock the Casbah

  96. pdbuttons says:

    white girls are pretty funny
    sometimes they drive me mad
    black girls just want to get fucked all night
    i just don’t have that much jam

  97. palaeomerus says:

    Gah. I hate the fuckin’ stones.

  98. BigBangHunter says:

    – “I hopey someone changey my red diaper soon” –{My pre-autobiography – the lost years of a Kenyan Prince}

  99. Mueller says:

    765,000 cops. Well over 100 million gun owners.

    Yeah, but the cops are better organized.

  100. cranky-d says:

    A lot of those gun owners still respect the police, because they haven’t had to deal with them lately.

  101. serr8d says:

    Somebody proof this for me..

    #Obama + #WilliamWilkins ? #Sweat ? #Trayvon + #Speech

    The #IRS Goes to Washington

  102. serr8d says:

    Ha! Two mathematical operators (characters) won’t resolve in WordPress! Who knew?

  103. bgbear says:

    Someone who would rape a child sounds like a small and cowardly person. Why an army? A girl scout with a Labrador could have probably made the arrest.

  104. SBP says:

    “It’s been an escalation of tactics and every PD who wants a SWAT team wants to also deploy them.”

    And they was using up all kinds of cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer’s station.

    They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us.

    Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that’s not to mention the aerial photography.

    It’s like Alice’s Restaurant, only not nearly as funny.

  105. leigh says:

    The first time I saw a SWAT team in action was in San Diego in about 1985. I was in my upstairs apartment talking on the phone and looking out the window at my next door neighbor’s backyard. I saw some guys peeking over her fence and then a hand reaching over and opening her gate. The a half dozen guys in full tactical gear can charging up her back walkway with a battering ram and smashed in her back door. Several other cops with rifles and SWAT gear fanned out around her property and turned a couple of dogs loose. Dogs, men with rifles and some kind of armored vehicle parked in my alley all on a Wednesday afternoon. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t home or at least they didn’t haul her out. They didn’t confiscate anything and they left after trashing her place and leaving her door hanging in splinters.

    I moved not to long after that to a more peaceful and less crowded part of town.

  106. John Bradley says:

    Alice’s Restaurant: Agreed, police overkill was a lot funnier when they were armed with plaster kits, dogs, and a photographer. With the flak jackets, the night-vision, and the AR-15s, not so much.

    Me: I think the regular cops have been suffering from “Short Man’s Syndrome” ever since the public became of aware of SWAT. Not only did they have lots of cool toys and rappelling equipment, but they had an awesome theme song.

  107. […] PROTEIN WISDOM– “She sure shouldn’t be going to the press.”; Obama’s hoodie moment — “Coulda […]

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