NBC Anchor Brian Williams Cops to Fibbing About Iraq War Story - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "This isn't going to help the deteriorating trust and long-term slide in ratings for TV news, that's for sure. For years, Brian Williams, the anchor of NBC Nightly News, has claimed to have been aboard a military helicopter that was forced to land after being hit with an RPG during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He's now copping to the fact that the story is not true. "
Will Brian Williams Get Away With 'Misremembering' a War Story? Well, Hillary Clinton Did. - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on [March 25, 2008, that] she made a mistake when she claimed she had come under sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia in 1996 while she was first lady... Clinton described how she and her daughter, Chelsea, ran for cover under hostile fire shortly after her plane landed in Tuzla, Bosnia. Several news outlets disputed the claim, and a video of the trip showed Clinton walking from the plane, accompanied by her daughter. They were greeted by a young girl in a small ceremony on the tarmac and there was no sign of tension or any danger. "I did make a mistake in talking about it, you know, the last time and recently," Clinton told reporters in Pennsylvania where she was campaigning before the state's April 22 primary. She said she had a "different memory" about the landing."
Classic.
Keep Vaccine Choice—So Long as Families Pay Their Own Way - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "A friend of mine who worked in pediatric private practice in the Washington, D.C. suburbs had a strict policy on vaccination: If you didn't vaccinate your children, you had to find another practice. He would try to persuade, he would give several warnings, but ultimately, those who didn't vaccinate had to find another provider. My wife's policy is very different. As a rural pediatrician in an area with a large population skeptical of vaccines (and of anything that's happened since the Scientific Revolution, so far as I can tell), she knows that families have few alternatives and might just stop taking their kids to the doctor if turned away. The local culture, salted with New Age/alternative-everything types, requires her to compromise. So she persuades, details the gruesome realities of diseases against which vaccines protect, shifts vaccination schedules, and ultimately works with people who believe things that my wife knows to be...uh...contrary to the evidence. But she does start steaming when those same patients go to the front desk to pay their tab with AHCCCS, Arizona's implementation of Medicaid. That coverage guarantees that any preventable diseases and their health consequences that could likely have been headed off by a few shots will be treated courtesy of the taxpayers. "If they get meningitis and go deaf because they weren't vaccinated," she fumes, "the treatment for that comes out of public money. If you're going to take money from taxpayers, then follow standards of care."
...It is a national issue. Drawing off of recent Centers for Disease Control figures, CBS reports that "the immunization rate for the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine dropped from 92 percent in 2008 to 90 percent...The rate of children being vaccinated against whooping cough also declined slightly." Seriously, folks. The Scientific Revolution was a good thing. The crazy—it burns (and blinds, and cripples,and kills)...
I think my wife's approach makes the most sense. If you want the taxpayers to pick up the tab, you follow standards of care. Access to public services like government schools (where other tots might be exposed to your unvaccinated darlings) could work the same way (this is generally the rule now, though many states allow a variety of exemptions on non-medical grounds).
...if you want to pay your own way, educate your kids among like-minded people, and make your own choices, good for you. Stay over there, please. A little farther, if you don't mind.
...That approach won't make everybody happy. Some people will complain that they're denied public services to which they're "entitled." ...But simply requiring that people vaccinate their kids if they want taxpayers paying their bills should boost immunization rates without making the treatment worse than the disease."
Ronald Bailey: Shame and shun anti-vaxx parents - NY Daily News: "Bamboozled by misinformation spread by anti-vaccine hucksters, the number of parents who are refusing to get their kids immunized is growing. The predictable result is the resurgence of highly communicable diseases. It is long past time to aggressively counteract this threat to public health — not by resorting to government mandates and political arguments, but more importantly, through a concerted campaign of person-to-person shaming and shunning. In speaking to friends, co-workers and neighbors, we must upset the notion that choosing not to vaccinate your child is just a personal choice. I say this not as a progressive or a liberal but as a proud libertarian — a libertarian who understands that with freedom comes responsibility."
No “Officer Safety” Exception to the Constitution | Law & Order: The Magazine for Police Management: "Spend time at any law enforcement training facility in the country and you will likely hear a familiar refrain, “Officer safety is our number one priority.” In fact, this may be the most revered of our guiding principles. When considered figuratively, it can create appropriately strong motivation for law enforcement officers to approach their duties carefully, even cautiously. If interpreted literally, it becomes problematic and perhaps even paradoxical. A number of law enforcement agencies are currently under fire for their patterns and practices of “stop and frisk.” This is only the present manifestation of what has been for decades a national epidemic of illegal police practices rationalized by the mantra “officer safety.” Frisks are not supposed to be the rule in Terry-type stops; the rule would be no frisk. The same is true for handcuffing subjects and placing them in the back of police cars. Yet, some officers perform these actions as “routine officer safety precautions” even in the most ordinary of investigative detentions. These intrusions on privacy and liberty are supposed to be reserved for those exceptional Terry-type situations in which there is an articulable reason to believe that present threats require them. The words “officer safety” do not complete the required articulation; they hardly begin it. But where “officer safety is our number one priority” an officer is explicitly urged to put that concern above all others—including the law we have sworn to obey—and some officers are happy to find this rationalization so conveniently available."
“Old/New,” short film narrated by comedian Patton Oswalt - Boing Boing: "“Old/New,” a short from Red Giant and narrated by comedian Patton Oswalt, tells the tale of protagonist Drew McHugh. His “penchant for the new -- new devices, new fashion, new friends -- is challenged when he discovers the rustic appeal of old-fashioned things.”
A Fervent Cop Supporter Changes His Mind About NYPD After Gravity Knife Arrest - Page 2 | Village Voice: "When we wrote about gravity knife arrests in October, it set off a lengthy discussion on Thee Rant, a verified online forum for NYPD officers. One user, in what seems to be a prescient comment, wrote that gravity knife arrests are "Why the public hates us. [Be]cause discretion has been taken away and it's all about numbers." The same user noted that he had seen "rookies stalking the subways between 5-7pm to catch a construction worker wearing one so they could get a...Big CPW [criminal possession of a weapon] arrest." Another user put it this way: "There was a time when a cop had discretion and used common sense when enforcing the law. Now we look at the public as a 'number' to use to keep our steady tours and make OT and we wonder why the public hates cops."
...as he was being taken away in the back of a cruiser, he overheard a conversation that made him think differently. The officers were talking about promotions, about the kinds of arrest numbers they needed to move up in the ranks. The conversation turned to another officer they knew, and why he was getting a bump in status. "They were saying, 'Why is he getting promoted?' " Vogel recalls. " 'He's only got, like, two guns and a burglary and a few robberies?' " Vogel says he started to realize that his arrest wasn't about safety or the kind of law enforcement that most people want from their police. "Here they are talking about promotions, and the relationship between arrest and promotions. And I'm just a pawn," he says."
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