The top item in Sunday's "Odds and Ends" post erroneously mistook a gag for a serious account of a US Supreme Court ruling. The link, to a Wampum post, wasn't working when I saw it on Crimlaw. Joke's on me, I guess, but what's really funny is that the account seemed humorous, but, at the end of the day, not particularly exceptional. That's the mark of good satire.
UPDATE: Scott thinks I didn't kiss enough ass in this correction.
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Hard to say. You obviously thought I needed to grovel more, though - that simply correcting the error immediately when I learned of it somehow didn't forgive the imputed sin of my ACLU-tainted beliefs. Of course, you're certainly entitled to that opinion.
Well, to state the obvious, I was up early on a Sunday morning doing a round-the-blogosphere type post before I went out for the day that didn't rely on my original research. The source link was down when I looked at the Crimlaw site, but I pulled the story because it was a Texas USSC police case I thought I'd missed. When I compiled all the shorts, the ex-journalist in me scanned them to look for the best "lead" and pulled the spoof item up to the top. 187 bullets wasn't what was on my mind, but the idea that a) it's entirely possible that some stupid-ass politicians wrote a law that said cops could use "extraordinary measures" at a toll stop, and b) that the Supremes ruling that way was consistent with their utter failure to restrain the police in a series of recent cases. The fact that too often one sees Amadou-Diallo-style cases where police fired an extraordianry number of shots - even if 187 should have clued me into the spoof - inured me to the satire more than perhaps it would the average reader, because I see cases of police shootings all the time, including extraordinary ones.
So I make a mistake, I laugh at myself, I take a bunch of crap from you, and I still don't know what you want from me besides groveling, some admission that it's evidence of malice or I don't know what. If the remark makes you consider me less credible, I can't help that; I can't promise I won't make a mistake again, only that I'll try not to, and that I'll admit it when I do.
BTW, Scott, if I'm an expert I'm a lay expert at best. I'm not a lawyer, don't have a college degree, and my only credentials are 11 years of activism on the subject plus a little inherited horse sense. I'm glad you're reading regular, but don't want to set expectations too high. I'm no Bruce Schneier.
187 is the number of shots the spoof said were fired at the vehicle.
And yes, it's very sad, very, very sad. Fade to black. Begin mourning.
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