More details in the mysterious death of LaVena Johnson
July 30, 2005 by Phil Barron · Comments
UPDATE: Pfc. Johnson’s death ruled a suicide by the Army. More here.
Norm Parish of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the primary reporter on the unexplained death in Iraq of Pfc. LaVena Johnson, has an additional piece in today’s paper: LaVena’s father suggests that his daughter’s body shows evidence of a physical assault.
The mystery of Private Johnson
July 29, 2005 by Phil Barron · Comments
Not by enemy hands
UPDATE: Pfc. Johnson’s death ruled a suicide by the Army. More here.
How did Army Pfc. LaVena Johnson die? Her St. Louis area family suspects the worst, but the government has no answers for them.
Johnson died July 19 near Balad, Iraq. Wednesday, the day of her visitation, was her 20th birthday. She was the first female soldier from Missouri to die while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.
An Army representative had told her father, John Johnson, that she died of self-inflicted, noncombat injuries, but that it was not a suicide.
After the funeral, John Johnson said he now thinks his daughter’s death may have involved foul play, although he would not elaborate. He said a military source had told him the military was investigating her death as a “criminal investigation.”
Army spokesmen said that while a criminal investigation unit was performing the investigation, it did not mean a crime was committed. Rather, all noncombat deaths are investigated, they said. The investigation is continuing and no completion date has been set.
Shifting stories from the Army inspire no confidence in the official investigation and only add to the mystery:
Another TechnoratiTags trial: multiple words
July 29, 2005 by Phil Barron · Comments
Or compound tag, if you prefer. The TechnoratiTags plug in does indeed seem to work; it generates the link to Technorati, at any rate. Now to test using multiple word tags by adding a ‘+’ to the keyword set.
An aside: the plug doesn’t seem to be retroactive; that is, I can’t tag previously published entries. Perhaps I just don’t know how. But later for that.
Anyway: Let’s try “mayor daley,” since that category seems to exist at Technorati.
Addendum: Well, that didn’t work. I hate to clutter up the nice taxonomy over there, but I need to figure this out.
Trial for Technorati tags?
July 29, 2005 by Phil Barron · Comments
This is only a test of the TechnoratiTags plugin. I’m pretty sure it’s not working because I’ve screwed up the installation. But we’ll see.
Crime and punishment in Atlanta
July 28, 2005 by Phil Barron · Comments
My brother down in Georgia sent me this tale fresh off the police blotter. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
A 69-year-old man stopped two alleged home invaders when he met their rush into his southwest Atlanta home with shots from his handgun.
One of the alleged home invaders, a 16-year-old, was shot in the chest and arm.
Atlanta police Sgt. Kevin Iosty said a woman knocked on the door of Robert Evans’ Ira Street home about 11:15 p.m. Tuesday, asking for beer.
When Evans opened the door, two males rushed in, one armed with a shotgun, Iosty said.
Evans “retrieved his own handgun and shot one of the perpetrators twice, at which point both males and the female took off running, jumped in a black Saturn and fled,” Iosty said.
Arriving officers broadcast a description of the Saturn, and other officers spotted the car on the Downtown Connector at Fulton Street.
Police stopped the car and found a 16-year-old male in the back seat with gunshot wounds. He was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital. His condition was not available Wednesday afternoon.
Two women, ages 19 and 38, also were in the Saturn, which had been stolen.
The wounded youth and the women were charged with armed robbery and theft by receiving, Iosty said. Police declined to release the names of those arrested because one of the suspects remained on the run.
No charges have been filed against Evans, Iosty said.
As a bleeding-heart lib, I’ve had trouble with gun ownership issues. But a story like this makes me feel all warm and cuddly. Way to go, old dude.
Wanted: A new vision for space exploration
July 28, 2005 by Phil Barron · Comments
Our manned space program, belly up
It didn’t take long for the chorus of hosannahs that accompanied Tuesday’s launch of the space shuttle Discovery to fall into brooding silence. After debris fell away from the shuttle during liftoff, NASA grounded the entire fleet - about two years too late.
The shuttle platform has been in use for twenty years, and its underlying technology is older than that. The infamous heat-dissipating tile technology - “the long pole holding up the tent,” as former shuttle project director Mike Malkin described it - is alarmingly fragile, as sad history has demonstrated. All it takes is a chunk of foam to damage the tiles and put the vessel and its crew at grave risk. Originally envisioned as inexpensive space access costing five million per launch, the shuttle actually costs about a hundred times that: five hundred million dollars per launch. The economic assumption underlying the shuttle - that the program would pay for itself as it went on, or would actually make money - was a fiction.
Pint-sized plastic pitchman pulled. Pity.
July 27, 2005 by Phil Barron · Comments
“Show ‘em my new motto - I’m lookin’ for work!”
I don’t often drink Sprite. I’ll do it once in a great while, usually if M and I have a two-liter left over after entertaining folks at the house. I can assure you that no commercial ever prompted me to buy that particular brand of sugar water, and the Kobe Bryant ads for the stuff actually turned me off for reasons you can probably guess. But the adverts that followed Bryant at least had the virtue of being fairly entertaining, due entirely to the presence of Miles Thirst. Yes, the ten-inch plastic doll with an outsized Afro and personality to match. The hip-hop fashions (with obligatory medallion) and huge sunglasses were just accessories to the little guy’s saucy, confident swagger. Actor Reno Wilson provided the voice and characterization, as noted by TV Acres:
Matt Blunt still America’s third least popular governor!
July 27, 2005 by Phil Barron · Comments
Got buyer’s remorse yet?
The Missouri governor’s staff is doubtless popping open the champagne in Jeff City - and firing the corks at one another. Today’s fun fact from Fired Up!: Matt Blunt still has the third-lowest net approval rating in the latest SurveyUSA poll, as noted by the Columbia Missourian. That’s 47th out of 50, for those keeping score at home. Awesome!
Blunt had to share the “honors” of 47th place with California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, who’s got his own problems.
Drive-by smearing, Malkin-style
July 27, 2005 by Phil Barron · Comments
Via Thomas Paine’s Corner: Michele Malkin commits an offense against fairness, tolerance, and clear thinking. The syndicated columnist harps on the ACLU lawsuit against the FBI charging it with unwarranted domestic espionage: thousands and thousands of pages of records generated by the monitoring of civil rights, environmental and other advocacy groups. Malkin tries to discredit the ACLU with a lazy, drive-by smear that lumps suspected “terrorists” with legitimate protestors and advocates for peace, forming a conveniently treasonous whole. In Malkin’s looking-glass world, a nonviolent protest (that is, nonviolent until the Oakland police decided to fire rubber bullets and drive their vehicles into the crowd) becomes “seditious,” and providing medical supplies, water purifiers, and blankets to the refugees of devastated Fallujah becomes aid “to the other side.”
It’s all very easy, once you put critical thinking and honest analysis on a shelf. But that’s Malkin for you.
Bill Fisher takes up the thankless task of educating Ms. Malkin on domestic espionage and civil disobedience, a lesson she seems to badly require. Let’s hope she takes notes.
ADDENDUM: The ACLU provides info and documents relating to the current round of FBI spying.
Snapshot survey
July 26, 2005 by Phil Barron · Comments
Annoyed by politics today. Jazz at Running Scared provides harmless diversion with snapshot-type survey. I indulge. Questions:
- Three things I’ve done today
- Three things on my desk
- Three people I’ve thought about today
- Two truths and a lie (and you guess which is which)
- Three books I’m reading
- Three places I’ve been
- Three places I’m going
Answers below the fold.
