Filed under: Alzheimer's, Book Conservation, General Musings, Health, Sleep, Weather
I’m afraid that Hillary will need to continue to cope with chaos here on the homefront. This morning we did have the people from the auction company come and haul away the better part of a truckload of furniture and boxes – boxes which we’d been working the last couple of days to fill with various kitchen items, dishes, silverware, china and glass. The place is a lot less piled high with boxes, but now we need to move into the next phase of rearranging furniture into its more-or-less final configuration.
Gods, I am so ready to be done with this. Between moving my wife’s office here home and getting things ready for the auction, I’ve not accomplished any conservation work in too long. And I’ve tapped into my reserves too much – now I am feeling tired, worn out. It shows in my uninspired writing, too. In spite of the desire to just get things done, I may well take a long nap today. With the remnants of Gustav rolling through here for the next couple of days, it feels like a good time to nap.
So, more, later. Hopefully stuff more interesting than reports on how chaotic my life is.
Jim Downey
Quick update to this post: I did finally get payment for the conservation work, and on Wednesday we finished getting my wife moved out of her office. By next Wednesday the bulk of the estate stuff will be gone for the auction, so things will eventually settle out here at home. This is good.
And my wife and I are getting ready to leave for the weekend. All weekend. Just going. Sure, we’ve made arrangements for someone to check in on the pets regularly, but that is all the arrangements we needed to make in order to be gone. Which is rather a substantial change from how my life had been the last five or six years. Wow.
Have a good weekend.
Jim Downey
Shawna Johnson was my manager, my assistant, my friend during a large portion of the time I owned and operated Legacy Art here in Columbia. A very talented artist in her own right, I also found her an invaluable resource at the gallery. We’ve maintained a close connection over the last several years, since she moved to New York to fight the good fight there.
Last night she sent me this meditation. After reading it, I asked if she’d allow me to post it here, since she talks about things I have referenced several times, and echoes many of my own thoughts. With her permission, here it is.
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Legacy became a legacy on May 31, 2004. The doors were closed and locked. Nothing was left but the dregs of a half-keg of stout from Flatbranch Pub and some empty plastic cups scattered around. The gallery space of 4000 square feet looked bigger than it ever had before. Each nail hole in the wall seemed to stare out at me, silently accusing. The ceiling fans clicked and their flat sound just reverberated in the dead space. Every inch of that space seemed to be waiting for something.
The only artwork that remained was the floor sculpture of Jim Kasper. It was a jester head. It stared out into the vast emptiness with a similarly blank expression, and said nothing. Just like the jester, everyone was putting on masks that day. Not out of deceitful urges, but because they just did not know what to feel. There really were just too many options. Memories crowded around, butting into conversations, demanding to be recognized. Maybe they were afraid of becoming legacies too.
Most artists came in rather subdued. For some, it appeared to be similar to going to a funeral. They spoke softly, as if out of respect for the dead or mourning. Or maybe they just didn’t like the way the mammoth space amplified their voices. One voice stood out over all. Jim Downey’s forced boisterousness comforted many and gave them the direction they needed. His laugh was heard booming overhead quite often, as if to retaliate against the despair, or to say something noble and profound about the unconquerable art spirit. Many left that day inspired by him to keep fighting the good fight. Few of us knew the fight that was going on inside of Jim. Even fewer knew that the laugh and the effort behind it were both forced. I was grateful for his effort, for it gave me the courage to do the same. As his assistant, it was crucial that I stay in synch with the tone he set. He projected the spirit of undaunted hope and continually repeated the list of victories, insisting that everyone focus on what had been accomplished in eight years of trying. I found myself saying the same things, as if we had rehearsed beforehand. We hadn’t. I just trusted his leadership and followed the tone he set. It may just be the only thing that got me through that day. Or through the next two years. That litany of good deeds running through my mind helped me to ignore the sounds of defeat.
Now, four years later, I am finally listening to some other sounds from the past. Each day a remembered voice penetrates my mental filter, or the image of an artist’s face. Scrolling through my phone’s list of stored numbers, a name jogs a memory. Often I have hurried on, refusing to accommodate the memory. But they keep coming back. Lately I have begun to allow myself to linger for a moment, here and there. Was Jim’s method the best for dealing with the loss we all experienced? I don’t know about right, wrong, or best, but it certainly enabled us all to survive and to put that day behind us. Now I have begun to bring it back, piece by piece, in manageable portions, to process and evaluate. To cleanse myself and let the wound heal.
My position at Legacy enabled me to see a lot of things. I saw how, for many people, art is simply decoration, a background for what they see as real life. It is not a necessary commodity, but a luxury of sorts. Most considered their art purchases as some kind of treat, and bought only on special occasions. People constantly needed to be reassured of the validity of their purchase. Very few felt confident as consumers to decide for themselves which paintings were better, and seemed to think there was some hidden magic code that they were not privy to.
I, on the other hand, felt quite confidant in my role. I knew what I believed about art. I knew what was good or successful art based on formal qualities and my own definition of art. I easily shared these things with patrons, offered them guidance, and encouraged their own confidence. People often left the gallery feeling bolstered by my input, whether they chose to buy that day or not. I felt that because of this, we were making progress. I believed it was possible for one little gallery to change the face of consumerism in that college town. I was convinced that if people were simply educated, they would come to see what I saw and value art as I did. Once that happened, the money would follow.
We had a wide range of price brackets. Anyone could afford something in our shop. In fact, when Jim ran the numbers that spring, he determined that if all of the members of our mailing list had spent ten dollars a month, we would have more than doubled our net income. (Ten bucks seems like nothing to me, living here in New York.) There were five hospitals in our town of 100,000 residents. We were home to the state university and two other private colleges. It seemed logical to deduce that there were plenty of intelligent, cultured people who could afford $100 annual investment in the arts. If only we could educate them and provide a safe, secure environment for them to ask questions and grow confident in their ability to choose which painting to buy. That was my theory.
So, what went wrong?
The subject perplexes me. It has to be a combination of factors…I’m just not sure which ones were most prevalent. Every time I examine the question, I come away with a different answer. How do you keep from repeating the past when you can’t understand it? At one time I thought it possible to change the way Americans view art. Now I am quite shaky on what I think. I see increasing evidence that the ones responsible for America’s view of art compose quite a stockpile list. All arts professionals have an influence: curators, gallery directors, teachers, grant-writers, critics, the media, and even artists themselves. Perhaps artists are the most responsible.
I would like to know why we failed and if there is any chance of redirecting this avalanche that is swallowing up my hope. Is it possible to change the system? I don’t want to grow old wondering, “What if…?” And I also don’t want to end up an old, bitter, jaded person who tried to change it but eventually accepted that resistance was futile. Can I live with myself if I don’t try? Can I live with the world if it doesn’t turn out to be what I want it to be? These two questions present an essential crossroad in life which I am trying not to view as a roadblock. In my efforts, I constantly fall back on Jim’s method of remembering old victories. I also think it’s O.K. if I let the engine idle here a while as I let myself refuel.
Shawna Johnson
There are times in your adult life when you just hunker down, get stubborn, and see to the end whatever unpleasantness you are experiencing. The last few weeks have sort of felt that way. Hell, the last few years have *been* that way. And a reasonable argument could be made that my entire life would qualify. It’s like that old paraphrase of the laws of thermodynamics: “You can’t win. You can’t even break even. And they won’t let you quit.”
Anyway, back to the present. I mentioned the beginning of last month that we were engaged in some moving chaos. Well, it’s gotten worse since. We’ve been getting things ready for the auction house to haul stuff away for an auction next month. And my wife is now moving her architecture practice home. This latter had been the long-term plan all along, once Martha Sr was gone, but for various reasons it has become necessary for this to take place now. Meaning more boxes, more moving of furniture, more crowding of space as things are shifted and re-shifted, juggling this and that in such a manner that the three-dimensional puzzle all works out the way it needs to. But at least I’m getting regular exercise.
Oh, that other thing I mentioned in moving chaos, about having just delivered the first big batch of books? Well, I still haven’t been paid for that work. Some kind of screw-up in the business office, people on vacation, yada yada. Which is a problem. Because unlike my private clients, who have to put down a 50% deposit on work, my institutional clients get billed when the work is completed. Meaning that I am effectively out about 4 months of pay (because I first did a batch of work for Special Collections, and then got started on the next round of books for the seminary). If there’s one thing worse than being unemployed, it is working but not getting paid for it. What should be the start of getting back on my feet financially, after years of minimal income due to care-giving, has become an unexpected crunch, thanks to the ineptitude of whoever was responsible for processing my invoice. Thanks, buddy – I owe you one.
*sigh*
Anyway, soon my wife will be out of her office, and the auction house will collect things. Eventually I’ll get paid by my clients. Things will get better. But for now, it’s just a matter of hunkering down, getting through this. As always.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, General Musings, Pharyngula, Politics, PZ Myers, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Terrorism, Violence, Writing stuff
[This post contains mild spoilers about Communion of Dreams.]
I’ve had some people say that the Edenists I created for Communion of Dreams are just absurdly overblown – that I have unfairly mischaracterized both fundamentalist religion and radical environmentalists. I don’t usually argue with people who say things like this – my goal is not to convince everyone that my book of speculative fiction is right in all of its particulars. I just hope that they will continue to pay attention to the world around them, and see what is happening.
Like this item, via PZ Myers:
Should Evolutionists Be Allowed to Roam Free in the Land?
* * *
Clearly then, “evolutionists should not be allowed to roam free in the land.” All that remains for us to discuss is “What should be done with evolutionists?” For the purposes of this essay, I will ignore the minor issue of Western-style jurisprudence and merely mention possible solutions to the “evolutionism problem,” leaving the legal details to others:
- Labor camps. Their fellow believers were high on these. But, my position would be that most of them have lived their lives at, or near the public trough. So, after their own beliefs, their life should continue only as long as they can support themselves in the camps.
- Require them to wear placards around their neck, or perhaps large medallions which prominently announce “Warning:Evolutionist! Mentally Incompetent – Potentially Dangerous.” I consider this option too dangerous.
- Since evolutionists are liars and most do not really believe evolution we could employ truth serum or water-boarding to obtain confessions of evolution rejection. But, thisshould, at most, result in parole, because, like Muslims, evolutionist religion permits them to lie if there is any benefit to them.
- An Evolutionist Colony in Antarctica could be a promising option. Of course inspections would be required to prevent too much progress. They might invent gunpowder.
- A colony on Mars would prevent gunpowder from harming anyone but their own kind, in the unlikely event they turned out to be intelligent enough to invent it.
That’s an excerpt from the close of the piece, after the author has gone through some effort to define who ‘evolutionists’ are (he seems to mix up socialism, communism, Nazism, and support for slavery. No, really, he says that ‘evolutionists’ are all of these things.) Feel free to read the entire piece.
Now, as one commentor over at Pharyngula said, “that’s some weapons-grade crazy.”
My intent here isn’t to get into a discussion on this particular fellow’s pathology. It is simply to point out that this stuff is out there, and in my experience is fairly widespread. He’s just down the road from me about 100 miles, and growing up and living in the Midwest I have met plenty of his type. There are a lot of people who would take such an eliminationist approach to all their perceived enemies. Unfortunately, as we have also seen with the Earth Liberation Movement, there are also those who claim to be radical environmentalists who are willing to take violent action. Melding two such groups was an easy step in my mind.
Don’t misunderstand me – I am not claiming that all religious adherents are violent extremists. Nor are all environmentalists. Hardly. But these groups are out there. They are not a figment of my imagination. And if we forget that, or ignore them, we may find ourselves in a world akin to Communion of Dreams (or someplace worse.)
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Connections, Expert systems, General Musings, Health, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Synesthesia, tech, Titan, Writing stuff
[This post contains mild spoilers about Communion of Dreams.]
One of the difficulties facing computer engineers/scientists with developing expert systems and true Artificial Intelligence is the paradigm they use. Simply, working from structures analogous to the human brain, there has been a tendency to isolate functions and have them work independently. Even in modern computer science such things as adaptive neural networks are understood to analogous to biological neural networks in the brain, which serve a specific function:
Biological neural networks are made up of real biological neurons that are connected or functionally-related in the peripheral nervous system or the central nervous system. In the field of neuroscience, they are often identified as groups of neurons that perform a specific physiological function in laboratory analysis.
But what if the neuroscience on which these theories are based has been wrong?
Here’s the basics of what was Neuroscience 101: The auditory system records sound, while the visual system focuses, well, on the visuals, and never do they meet. Instead, a “higher cognitive” producer, like the brain’s superior colliculus, uses these separate inputs to create our cinematic experiences.
The textbook rewrite: The brain can, if it must, directly use sound to see and light to hear.
* * *
Researchers trained monkeys to locate a light flashed on a screen. When the light was very bright, they easily found it; when it was dim, it took a long time. But if a dim light made a brief sound, the monkeys found it in no time – too quickly, in fact, than can be explained by the old theories.
Recordings from 49 neurons responsible for the earliest stages of visual processing, researchers found activation that mirrored the behavior. That is, when the sound was played, the neurons reacted as if there had been a stronger light, at a speed that can only be explained by a direct connection between the ear and eye brain regions, said researcher Ye Wang of the University of Texas in Houston.
The implication is that there is a great deal more flexibility – or ‘plasticity’ – in the structure of the brain than had been previously understood.
Well, yeah. Just consider how someone who has been blind since birth will have heightened awareness of other senses. Some have argued that this is simply a matter of such a person learning to make the greatest use of the senses they have. But others have suspected that they actually learn to use those structures in the brain normally associated with visual processing to boost the ability to process other sensory data. And that’s what the above research shows.
OK, two things. One, this is why I have speculated in Communion of Dreams that synesthesia is more than just the confusion of sensory input – it is using our existing senses to construct not a simple linear view of the world, but a matrix in three dimensions (with the five senses on each axis of such a ‘cube’ structure). In other words, synesthesia is more akin to a meta-cognitive function. That is why (as I mentioned a few days ago) the use of accelerator drugs in the novel allows users to take a step-up in cognition and creativity, though at the cost of burning up the brain’s available store of neurotransmitters.
And two, this is also why I created the ‘tholin gel’ found on Titan to be a superior material as the basis of computers, and even specify that the threshold limit for a gel burr in such use is about the size of the human brain. Why? Well, because such a superconducting superfluid would not function as a simple neural network – rather, the entire burr of gel would function as a single structure, with enormous flexibility and plasticity. In other words, much more like the way the human brain functions as is now coming to be understood.
So, perhaps in letting go of the inaccurate model for the way the brain works, we’ll take a big step closer to creating true artificial intelligence. Like in my book. It pays to be flexible, in our theories, in our thinking, and in how we see the world.
Jim Downey
Hat tip to ML for the news link.
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, ACLU, Babylon 5, Civil Rights, Constitution, Daily Kos, Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Government, Guns, J. Michael Straczynski, JMS, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, RKBA, Science Fiction, Society, Survival
There’s a line from a Babylon 5 episode (I’m a big fan of the series) which has always stuck with me. Several characters are discussing the political situation on Earth following the imposition of martial law. One character says that people love it – crime is down, things are calm, peaceful.
“Yeah, the peace of the gun,” replies another character.
And that, my friends, is what we have today, here in the US. Specifically, in one small city in Arkansas:
HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark. – Officers armed with military rifles have been stopping and questioning passers-by in a neighborhood plagued by violence that’s been under a 24-hour curfew for a week.
On Tuesday, the Helena-West Helena City Council voted 9-0 to allow police to expand that program into any area of the city, despite a warning from a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas that the police stops were unconstitutional.
Police Chief Fred Fielder said the patrols have netted 32 arrests since they began last week in a 10-block neighborhood in this small town on the banks of the Mississippi River long troubled by poverty. The council said those living in the city want the random shootings and drug-fueled violence to stop, no matter what the cost.
“Now if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I’m fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here,” Mayor James Valley said. “The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution.”
From another source:
Controversial Curfew in Helena-West Helena
Mayor James Valley has given residents in one high-crime neighborhood two choices…. go home or go to jail.
Valley’s issued a mandatory curfew for Second Street and the surrounding blocks — a place he considers to be a “hot spot” for crime. The curfew applies to anyone of any age at any time of day.
* * *
“This turf belongs to taxpaying citizens, not to hustlers and drug dealers….We are going to pop them in the head,” Mayor Valley said.
* * *
The mayor only has the power to issue a 48 hour curfew – so he says when this one expires, he’ll issue another one, and another one.
Predictably, the ACLU is taking a rather dim view of this:
The ACLU has written a letter to Helena-West Helena Mayor James Valley protesting the curfew he imposed on a portion of the city. The mayor says he’s received the letter, but believes it’s intentions are misplaced.
* * *
Mayor James Valley says no constitutional rights have been violated — he says they’re doing what’s needed to clean up the streets.
No doubt. And he’s willing to be reasonable:
Helena-West Helena Curfew Changes
Leaders in Helena-West Helena have come up with a new plan after criticism by the ACLU of the mayor’s recent curfew on a particular part of town.
This past weekend, Mayor James Valley issued a mandatory curfew for Second Street and the surrounding blocks — a place he considers to be a “hot spot” for crime.
* * *
Valley’s curfew will remain in place for all minors, but adults will be allowed out if they can answer questions about their need to be outside their homes.
See, like I said – he’s being perfectly reasonable about this. You can leave your house. If you can explain to authorities why you need to do so.
How could anyone possibly object to this?
*sigh*
This is nothing more or less than the peace of the gun. This is the abrogation of civil liberties as a solution for incompetent governance. Of course people like it – let things get bad enough that they fear for their lives more than they value their liberties, and you can get people to do almost anything. Mayor Valley is just applying the same logic as he applied in mid July when he, well, here’s the news report:
Mayor Orders Dogs Released Into Forest
You’ve heard it before…..Arkansas animal shelters struggling to take care of unwanted dogs and cats. One mayor has decided the best way to fix the problem in his town is to set the animals free.
KARK visited the Helena-West Helena animal shelter back in January. Conditions were dirty and animals were in poor health.
Thursday, KARK learned the town’s mayor James Valley has taken the unconventional approach of releasing the animals into the wild. In a press release, the mayor says “we fed and watered them and took them to the St. Francis National Forest.”
Yeah, he just turned them loose.
Like I said, incompetence. Let things get so bad, and then you can take absurd steps.
Like imposing martial law.
Is this just a trial run for other cities? Other levels of government? Because you can be damned sure that there are power-hungry people watching this situation very closely, and drawing their own conclusions. If a small-town mayor can get away with it, why not a large city mayor? Or a governor? Or a president?
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI and Daily Kos.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Book Conservation, General Musings, Health, Hospice, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Sleep, University of Missouri, Writing stuff, YouTube
I took some books back to Special Collections yesterday afternoon. As I was unpacking items, one of the staff members asked how I was doing.
“Pretty well. Been busy.”
She looked at me for a long moment. “You look – rested.”
* * * * * * *
On Wednesday, in response to a friend who asked what I had going on, I sent this email reply:
Need to do some blogging this morning, then get settled into the next batch of books for a client. Print out some invoices. Also need to track down some camera software and get it loaded onto this machine, and finish tweaking things here so I can shift over the last of the data from the old system and send it on its way. Need to work on learning some video editing, and start uploading clips from our ballistics testing project to YouTube. Then I can get going on creating the rest of the content for *that* website. Play with the dog. Should touch base with my collaborator on the Alz book, see where he is on some transcriptions he is working on. And then prep dinner. In other words, mostly routine. Yeah, I lead an odd life.
An odd life, indeed.
But here’s a taste of some of the documentation about the ballistics project that I have been working on:
That’s me wearing the blue flannel overshirt. Man, I’m heavy. I hope video of me now would look better.
* * * * * * *
The chaos continues. Yeah, we’re still in the process of completely re-arranging the house, and of seeing to the distribution of Martha Sr’s things. Looks like there’ll be an estate auction in our future sometime next month. But that’s good – it means that things are moving forward, heading towards some kind of resolution.
As mentioned in passing in the email cited above, I’ve been shifting over to a new computer system I got last week. My old system was starting to lose components, and was becoming increasingly incapable of doing things I need to be able to do. Well, hell, it was 7 years old, and was at least one iteration behind the cutting edge at the time I bought it. Thanks to the help of my good lady wife, this has been a relatively painless transition – though one which has still taken a lot of work and time to see through.
And one more complication, just to keep things interesting: My wife is moving her business practice home. This had been the tentative plan all along, once Martha Sr was gone, and for a variety of reasons it made sense to take this step now. She’ll be able to devote more of her energy to seeing to her mom’s estate, hastening that process. And she’s going to take on the task of shopping my book around agencies and publishers. Now that there have been over 10,000 downloads (actually, over 11,000 and moving towards 12,000), it would seem to be a good time to make a devoted push to getting the thing conventionally published, in spite of the problems in the industry. We’re hoping that she’ll be better able to weather the multiple rejections that it will take, and I’ll have more time and energy for working on the next book (and blogging, and the ballistics project, and – oh, yeah – earning money for a change).
* * * * * * *
She looked at me for a long moment. “You look – rested.”
“Thanks!”
It says something that with all I’ve been doing (as described above has been fairly typical, recently), I look more rested now than I have in years.
Actually, it says a lot.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Daily Kos, General Musings, Government, Guns, Politics, Society, Violence
Last week, in the investigation of a major drug distribution network, police staged a no-knock entry into a private residence. They seized over 30 pounds of marijuana. Two guard dogs who were a threat to the police had to be killed in the execution of the raid. Two people in the residence at the time were handcuffed at the scene and questioned as to their involvement in the crime.
Sound pretty straight forward? More or less standard procedure when police are investigating a large quantity of narcotics?
Well, how about this version of the story?
It now appears that the entire raid on Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo may have been illegal. Last week, police stormed Calvo’s home without knocking, shot and killed his two black labs, and questioned him and his mother-in-law at gunpoint over a delivered package of marijuana that police now concede may have been intended for someone else.
The Washington Post reports that the police didn’t even bother to get a no-knock warrant, which means the tactics they used were illegal:
A Prince George’s police spokesman said last week that a Sheriff’s Office SWAT team and county police narcotics officers were operating under such a [no-knock] warrant when they broke down the door of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo, shooting and killing his black Labrador retrievers.
But a review of the warrant indicates that police neither sought nor received permission from Circuit Court Judge Albert W. Northrup to enter without knocking. Northrup found probable cause to suspect that drugs might be in the house and granted police a standard search warrant.
“There’s nothing in the four corners of the warrant saying anything about the Calvos being a threat to law enforcement,” said Calvo’s attorney, Timothy Maloney. “This was a lawless act by law enforcement.”
Oh, a couple more things to fill in the blanks. One of the labs shot was running away from the police:
As the police came in, Calvo said, they shot his 7-year-old black Labrador retriever, Payton, near the front door and then his 4-year-old dog, Chase, also a black Lab, as the dog ran into a back room. Walking through his house yesterday, Calvo pointed out a bullet hole in the drywall where the younger dog had been shot.
The police were the ones who delivered the package:
Calvo’s home was raided after he brought a package addressed to his wife inside from his front porch. Police had been tracking the package since a dog sniffed the presence of drugs in Arizona. It was delivered to the house by police posing as deliverymen and left on the porch on the instruction of Calvo’s mother-in-law.
Police are required to provide a copy of any search warrant at the time the search is conducted. They got around to doing this several days later:
Another issue that could arise in court is whether officers provided Calvo a copy of the warrant at the time of the raid, as required by law. Maloney [attorney for Calvo] said they did not, even though a detective signed a sworn statement to the judge indicating that he had. Instead, the detective brought the warrant to Calvo several days later, Maloney said.
*Sigh*
Let’s recap: In the course of investigating a suspected drug distribution network known to be using false deliveries to private homes, police intercept one such package. Posing as delivery personnel, they take it to the home of Cheye Calvo. Where they are told to leave it on the porch. (Who the hell would leave an expected shipment of 32 pounds of pot sitting on the porch???) When Mayor Calvo gets home, he takes the package inside and sets it aside, leaving it unopened. A short time later, a SWAT team kicks in his door, and shoots his dogs, rather than having coordinated with local police to gain access to the suspect and home without the need to resort to violent tactics. Calvo and his MIL are handcuffed and interrogated at the premises for hours. No warrant authorizing the raid is produced until days after the event.
One more quote from the Washington Post story yesterday:
Were Calvo or his wife, Trinity Tomsic, to be charged in the case, the issue of the search could come up if prosecutors tried to introduce the box of marijuana as evidence. More likely, experts said, the issue could form the basis of a civil rights lawsuit filed by the family against the county in the incident.
No shit. The authorities responsible for this debacle are facing a huge lawsuit. And they’re damned lucky that the only bodies on the floor were dogs (as tragic as that itself is).
And consider for just a moment how this situation might have been reported differently were Calvo and his wife black or Hispanic, had they not lived in a nice middle-class home, had he not been well established and politically connected. Consider for just a moment if this situation had happened to you.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to Daily Kos and UTI.)
Communion Of Dreams 