Another human being snaps and drags several innocent people into his hell. And rather than talking about what we can do to help make sure people don't snap, we will resume our national cultural argument over whether firearms should be objects of dread or of veneration. The fault lies not in our guns but in ourselves.

CNN reports that ten people were shot outside the Empire State Building. At least two are dead, include the shooter. WABC says the shooting was the result of a workplace dispute.

ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is an attempt by the copyright cartels to shit down free on-line speech in order to preserve their profits. In These Times has the story.

Score One for Online Activists

This July saw Europe declaring its own independence–from a multinational agreement that critics say would have increased censorship and restricted Internet freedom. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which aims to establish common standards for intellectual property rights enforcement, was defeated in the European Parliament by a 478 to 39 vote. Nine countries outside the EU have signed on to the treaty, including the United States, and if six now officially ratify it the pact will go into effect. But without European support, the agreement has lost its heft–an outcome that organizers attribute to a months-long campaign, in streets and on computer screens across Europe, to raise public awareness about the impact of this secretive trade agreement.

Gender bias bites would-be Good Samaritans...they saw a man and a woman fighting, the man must be the attacker, right? Not quite.

Plainfield police: Would-be good Samaritans inadvertently allow robbery suspect to escape (MyCentralJersey.com)

Two people driving down West Front Street together on Monday morning apparently thought they were doing the right thing when they leaped out of their vehicle and rushed to the defense of what appeared to be a man assaulting a woman, authorities said.

...

...The victim reported that he was attacked by an unknown female as he was walking down the street, then robbed of about $400 in cash and a gold chain valued at about $500, according to Hellwig.

The victim said he tried to prevent his assailant from leaving the area, engaging her in a physical struggle, when the passing motorists apparently intervened, restraining him but not assaulting him, Hellwig said.

Most of the country finally figured out -- too late -- that the Iraq War was a colossal, brutal, and fatal blunder that strengthened Al-Qaeda, killed too many innocent Iraqis and naive Americans, and drained our national treasury. But Joe Conason points out that Paul Ryan has shown that he remains in the stubborn minority who think this was a good idea.

The Wrong Kind of Experience: Paul Ryan's Big Foreign Policy Credential (Yahoo! News)

The Wisconsin congressman may come to regret his flippant response to Carl Cameron last Saturday, when the Fox News reporter asked how he would respond to critics who question his weak national security resume.

"I've been in Congress for a number of years," he said. "That's more experience than Barack Obama had when he came into office." Perhaps he should have stopped there, but instead blundered on, "I voted to send people to war."

LL Cool J: showing that old-school hip-hop is still badass. When a burglar broke into his home Wednesday morning, he fought the invader and held him until cops arrived. Reports are contradictory on the details: USA Today says that the suspect only had minor bruises, while the LA Times describes a knock-down, drag-out fight that gave the burglar a broken jaw and nose. Everyone will now reference "Mama Said Knock You Out".

Rarity of rarities, an abusive cop who assaulted a citizen has actually been charged for his crime. A conviction, I'm sure, is unlikely; and as it often true in civil liberties and police brutality complaints, the complainant (in this case, apparently a drunk hit-and-run driver out on parole for prior drug convictions) is the weakest part; still, nice to see someone remember that cops aren't above the law. From ABC news: Florida Police Officer Slams Woman into Car, Goes to Jail

A veteran cop was fired and charged with criminal battery after officers reviewed a video of him slamming a woman into her car in Pensacola, Fla.

"We have certain expectations of our police officers, and when I looked at the video, I was disappointed because I felt like that didn't stand up to those expectations," Pensacola Police Chief Chip Simmons told ABCNews.com. "We determined that what we saw on the video was inconsistent with what our policies allow and what state statute allows."

If it's impossible to keep drugs out of prisons, how do we expect prohibition to work in broader society, even with all the "drug war exceptions" to the Bill of Rights we live with now?
Yahoo! News carries an AP report on indictements for forty people accused of running a drug ring from inside Indiana prisons.

When you have any sort of filtering, rating, or censorship of content for objectionability, somebody has to look at all the objectionable stuff. BuzzFeed tells the tale of The Googler Who Looked At The Worst Of The Internet

I dealt with all the products that Google owned. If anyone were to use them for child porn, I’d have to look at it. So maybe like 15,000 images a day. Google Images, Picasa, Orkut, Google search, etc.

I had no one to talk to. I couldn’t bring it home to my girlfriend because I didn’t want to burden her with this bullshit. For seven, eight, nine months, I was looking at this kind of stuff and thinking I was fine, but it was putting me in a really dark place.

Proponents of restrictive voter ID laws claim that they are necessary to combat voter fraud; but an investigation by News21,
based on an exhaustive public records search, has found that the sort of fraud that voter ID laws would prevent, voter impersonation on Election Day, is virtually non-existent.

From Who Can Vote? - A News21 2012 National Project:

Analysis of the resulting comprehensive News21 election fraud database turned up 10 cases of voter impersonation. With 146 million registered voters in the United States during that time, those 10 cases represent one out of about every 15 million prospective voters.

“Voter fraud at the polls is an insignificant aspect of American elections,” said elections expert David Schultz, professor of public policy at Hamline University School of Business in St. Paul, Minn.

For comparison, the investigation found 491 instances of fraud involving absentee ballots, and 400 cases of registration fraud.

Like most Americans, I've often felt the urge to punch a politician. I'd have to think twice about mixing it up with Nevada's MMA-fighting Secretary of State, Ross Miller.
Norm! Vegas Confidential reports:

Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller is retiring. He's walking away from mixed martial arts as an undefeated light heavyweight.

There goes that dream division matchup between Jon “Bones” Jones, the face of the UFC, and Miller, 1-0.

“I’m one and done,” said Miller by telephone from Reno. “Competing in an MMA event was on my bucket list. Now that I’ve got done it I’ve got a day job and an important election coming up.”