British shopkeeper tackles shoplifters, gets fined

More on the fine British approach to criminal justice:

HERO shopkeeper was fined £250 yesterday — because he tackled three hoodie thieves.

Brave Jacob Smyth, 33, chased and caught the yobs after they grabbed armfuls of spray paint from his hardware store.

Cops gave two of them £80 fixed penalty fines — then HE was charged with assault.
…
Magistrate Angy Haslam conceded Jacob acted in self-defence but said his reaction was “aggravated by the fact you kicked the victim on the ground”.

Maybe if he had claimed that he was simply performing a drug abuse intervention, stopping these kids from huffing the cans? I’ll bet that would have earned him a medal, not a fine.

Funky headline from the military

Their headline:

Another senior al-Qaeda leader identified, killed

Seems like a serious change in the rules of engagement! ID ‘em, then shoot ‘em!

Of course the headline is backwards: the leader was killed during a cleanup operation, and then identified.

We’ve secured half of Baghdad?!? But Harry and Nancy told me…

It’s too bad that the surge has failed – now we’ll have to give half of Baghdad back:

In the face of stiffening insurgent resistance, U.S. and Iraqi security forces now control about half of Baghdad, the American commander overseeing operations said Friday.

Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., commander of Multi-National Division Baghdad, told reporters at the Pentagon that progress in securing the capital has been steady and that while he could use more U.S. troops he believes he has enough — with the recent arrival of reinforcements — to complete his mission.
…
“I see progress, a steady progress, in every neighborhood that we’ve cleared and then established a full-time presence.”

Fear-mongering Bush administration forgets to monger fear

I question the lack of timing:

Unexploded car bombs in London led to extra patrols in the United States Friday, but Bush administration officials said they saw no special terrorist threat heading toward next week’s Fourth of July holiday.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff urged Americans to be vigilant but said there were no immediate plans to raise the U.S. national threat level, now at yellow, or elevated.

Said White House press secretary Tony Snow: “There is no specific or credible evidence of any threat of any kind against the United States of America.”

They’re just using this lack of fear to press their fascist agenda and draw attention away from their troubles in the polls! Don’t let them not scare you into accepting infringements of your freedoms!

Here you see more of their devious strategy, where they unexaggerate the terrorist threat.

Snow said British authorities had not yet been able to determine if there was a link to any terrorist group.

“Look, it’s terrorism, but we don’t know if there — there’s no definite, there’s no established connection with any organization at this point,” he said.

When will you sheeple open your eyes?

The predicted finger-pointing by the Dems begins

The Washington Post has an article on the Democrats’ failure to make much legislative progress this year, and their one-sided piece (with only one quote, in the last line, from a Republican), talks about their upcoming strategy. A strategy that seems as productive as all those useless committee hearings that the Democrats have been holding:

By mid-July, Democrats say, they will offer weekly votes to force Republicans, and the president, to defend the war. “Though we failed in a particular action” to limit the war through the Iraq spending bill, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said, “we’re not stopping until a change in policy is effected.”

Great. Now they can tie up business on the floor, too. Of course Nancy knows who to blame, despite the fact that 20 Democrats voted against the immigration bill:

“Because of the obstructionism of the Republicans in the United States Senate, I’m not happy with Congress either,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

So Nancy is blaming Republicans for making no progress this year? Perhaps she should look over her agenda and her strategy for passing bills instead:

As the spending cycle intensifies this summer, Democrats will try to sneak more of their agenda items into must-pass spending bills. But with the bills already behind schedule and the president threatening to veto most of them for a range of reasons, the tactic has limits.

The Dems have codified dirty legislative pool since January, as a brief review of the Iraq war funding debacle will show (not that I’m at all happy with Republicans, either). Between the ineffectual and not particularly ethical performance of the Republicans when they had the majority, and the ineffectual and not particularly ethical performance of the Democrats now that they have the majority, all either party has shown is that our legislative system needs serious shock treatment.

And as to the WaPo, who I consider to be as close to center as you get in this country’s major newspapers, I really thought they would hesitate before publishing a piece that uncritically lists all of the Democrats’ talking points.