Cops Can Do Whatever They Want!

Thank God, the courts have decided that it's okay to use excessive force against pregnant women who may be exceeding the speed limit. I'm sure that tasering pregnant women won't be hazardous to the fetus, and it'll keep those poor widdle coppers from being overwhelmed by those big, mean pregos!
(h/t Pharyngula.)

Finally, a Little Taser Sanity

A federal judge has imposed limits on police use of tasers. The court sided with a man who claimed that the use of a taser by a police officer constituted excessive force. The taser attack left the man with broken teeth and a taser dart embedded in his arm.

The scary part of this article is that it mentions in passing that taser attacks were responsible for nine fatalities in just the Sacramento area. In other words, tasers allow police officers to act as judge, jury, and executioner, often simply because citizens are acting a bit strangely. Tasers are sold to police departments as a method of "non-lethal" control; clearly, this is untrue. Even if police officers could be trusted to use tasers only when they're called for (and they certainly can't), tasers often have deadly effects. Better that cops use guns, since they presumably know that gunshots are possibly fatal.

h/t Arkansas Times Blog.

Ha! Ha! Hilarious!

My "local" newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has one of the most awful, right-leaning editorial pages one could hope to find. It includes the folksy blatherings of Paul Greenberg, the incoherent ravings of Bradley Gitz, and a selection of unedited, apparently unscreened, often racist and homophobic letters from the Demozette's faithful readers. Despite the goofy rants always found on these pages, the worst features are almost invariably the political cartoons. One artist in particular, a person named Michael Ramirez (a selection of his crap can be found here), should probably win a Pulitzer Prize in the Category of Unsubtle Illogic and General Stupidity. However, today, the Demozette has outdone themselves. They ran a political cartoon by their own artist, Roger Harvell, that seems to be supporting the police officer who tasered a ten-year old girl. That's right. Apparently, according to Harvell and his paper, if a child is unruly, or won't do what mom wants, it's okay to call in a police officer to taser the young ruffian. Clearly, the only way an adult police officer may possibly subdue a child is with 50,000 volts of angry electrons. If you had any suspicion that the editorial staff at the Democrat-Gazette was not insane, this should lay it to rest.