Washington D.C. is contemplating a sort of reverse "Escape From New York" scenario, where people driving into particular neighborhoods will be stopped by the police and turned away unless they can give what the police consider to be a legitimate reason to be there:

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced a military-style checkpoint yesterday to stop cars this weekend in a Northeast Washington neighborhood inundated by gun violence, saying it will help keep criminals out of the area.

Starting on Saturday, officers will check drivers' identification and ask whether they have a "legitimate purpose" to be in the Trinidad area, such as going to a doctor or church or visiting friends or relatives. If not, the drivers will be turned away.

Seeing the sights, chilling, cruising, and just getting in your car and going wherever you want is not a legitimate reason, apparently. Although the police apparently assume that the killers and drug dealers they are hoping to deter are lazy; they aren't stopping pedestrians. Scooters? Sedgways? Not yet clear.

You might remember that this is the same mayor and police chief who announced a program in which police would go door to door asking nicely if they could come in to search for guns. I'm sure their manners would be impeccable.

These programs won't be happening in Georgetown, in case you were wondering.

Note to blogger Gopalan Nair:

Your dogged criticism of the legal and political elite of Singapore is in the best tradition of journalism. Though your accusation that judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean was "prostituting herself" was insulting, it was fair comment in light of her tolerance of a lawsuit in which Singapore's ruling elite is using defamation law to suppress political dissent.

However….

This is what is known, in American political parlance, as "pulling a Gary Hart:"

I am Gopalan Nair. Today is May 31, 2008 at 10.40am Singapore time. I am at present in Singapore at Broadway Hotel, Room 708, 195 Serangoon Road, Singapore, 218067. The hotel telephone number is is 62924661. My local SingTel telephone number is 83764236.

I'm all in favor of you defying Singapore's ludicrous and oppressive defamation laws. But there's taking the bullet during battle in the interests of freedom, and then there's jumping in front of the bullet in the interests of self-promotion. Daring the officials of Singapore to jail you — a group that is thirsty for blood, not having caned any disaffected teenaged expats for more than a decade — seems to rush past courting danger and reach a level of pulling up to danger on a street corner and offering it $200 for a blow job.

Your arrest was not exactly a shock.

Dude, the point of blogging is that you can say anything you want and they can't do anything about it. What's the deal with telling them where to find you?

Everyone knows that if we can't keep ourselves safe, the terrorists win. Hence we must strive to eliminate all threats to air security. Like T-shirts and necklaces.

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This is London reports breathlessly that an Islamic extremist site has posted an image of nuclear terror:

Washington is laid to waste. The Capitol is a blackened, smoking ruin. The White House has been razed. Countless thousands are dead.

This is the apocalyptic scene terrorists hope to create if they ever get their hands on a nuclear bomb.

The computer-generated image below was posted on an Islamic extremists' website yesterday.

Here is the picture:

It is indeed a terrifying image.

But terror-wise, there's just one problem.

It's a concept drawing for the upcoming computer game Fallout 3, the latest in the beloved post-apocalyptic computer role playing series.

That, to me, sort of takes the edge off.

Observations:

1. Either someone put this up to scam media outlets, or Islamic terrorists are gamers as well.

2. Does the fact that Islamic terrorists have progressed from featuring Bert to featuring video game images mean they have graduated from toddlerhood to preadolescence? Can we expect some moody Indie album covers to appear on Al-Qaeda propaganda next?

(Note: some have already reported that the site was indie and not an "official" Al-Qaeda group. And as I discovered after I wrote almost all of this, The Fallout 3 Blog already picked up on this. Amusingly, they did so before This is London wrote the breathless prose above. And there are reports that at least one intelligence group was taken in.)

Hat tip to Farley of our forums on this one.

Dateline: North Charleston, South Carolina. City Prosecutor Dale DuTremble is deciding whether or not to prosecute an assault by one woman upon another. He elects not to do so. Usually such decisions pass unremarked, and indeed one might never receive word that the decision was officially made, let alone receive an explanation. But Dale DuTremble saw fit to give an explanation to the suspect and complainant.

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A couple of weeks ago I blogged about Bill Johnson, the candidate for superior court judge in Los Angeles with the white supremacist past. He tried to hitch a ride on the Ron Paul blimp but was wisely given the heave -ho.

My hometown weekly rag — which I grew up reading, and for which I wrote as a high school student — has decided to cover Johnson. Will it be incisive reporting? Will the La Canada Valley Sun blow the lid off of this scandal, or reach some profound conclusions about how a man's evil past can come back to haunt him 25 years later?

Not quite.

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John McCain, recognizing that he is perhaps two years behind Ron Paul in building an army of internet-savvy flying monkeys, has created a point system to encourage his minions to spread his talking points on blogs across the land.

Select from the numerous web, blog and news sites listed here, go there, and make your opinions supporting John McCain known. Once you’ve commented on a post, video or news story, report the details of your comment by clicking the button below. After your comments are verified, you will be awarded points through the McCain Online Action Center.

Wow! The McCain Online Action Center! And you get … points! What are they redeemable for? It's not entirely clear. Prestige? Bragging rights? Ambassadorships in the McCain Administration?

Whatever it is — I see this as a challenge. Who is the Popehatter who can get the most points based on blog posts that are not, in read carefully enough, complimentary to McCain? Scroll down on the page linked above and leave a message. Here's what I left:

Blog: Red State
Blog Username: ProudAmerican
Blog Body: I KNOW that John McCain is a proud AMERICAN unlike baroc HUSSEIN obamma! I was at a rally for JOHN MCAIN and a man walked up who was NOT WEARING AN AMERICAN FLAG PIN! In front of a VETERAN! And LADIES WERE PRESENT! John McCain saw him and got mad and kicked him in the groin so hard that he became incontinent (the guy without the flag pin, not John McCain). That's the kind of patriotism and leadership we need!

I'll let you know if I get points.

Maricpa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a popular guy with the voters. He's on his fourth term as Sheriff. He's achieved impressive popularity by building his brand as "America's Toughest Sheriff" — which has mostly meant doing crowd-pleasing talk-radio-rhetoric things like making jail inmates live in tent cities in the Arizona heat (and then telling them they have it better than soldiers in Iraq), making them wear pink underwear, slashing their food budget, limiting them to G-rated movies, and bringing back chain gangs. If you can imagine Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage suggesting that something be done to inmates to show how tough on crime we are, Joe Arpaio has probably done it and crowed about it.

But if you live there, whatever you do, don't criticize him.

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I only ask, you know, because apparently the FBI is trying to recruit college slackers to infiltrate "vegan potlucks" in the Twin Cities.

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You are an idiot.

The difference between your elected representative and me is that I'm honest enough to tell you what I think of you.  You should thank me for my candor.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.

The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.

They might as well pass a law against rain at the next Congressional Pages' Combined Picnic and Molestation outing for all the effect this bill will have on oil prices.

Via Matthew Gross

So now we're not only letting the Chinese interrogate our prisoners, we're softening them up for the Chinese interrogators first.

Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.

According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators.

Now, to be fair, it's not like the Chinese are getting special treatment when we allow them to interrogate their oppressed minorities or anything:

An official authorized to speak on behalf of the Defense Department but who declined to be named confirmed it was Pentagon policy to allow officials from other countries to have access to interview their nationals at Guantanamo but declined to discuss the specifics alleged in the report.

So, you know, if we should pick up any gay poets or anything, Raul Castro should feel free to ask for his secret police to have a chat with them.

Does this mean we think that Uighurs wobble around the edges of terrorism? Well, not exactly:

The U.S. State Department has found China to have suppressed the religious freedom of Uighurs, who are Muslim, and has accused the Chinese government of persecuting, even executing, those who advocate Uighur independence.

In 2006, after the United States released five Uighurs from Guantanamo, China asked for them to be repatriated so they could be prosecuted as terrorists. The United States declined to do so, out of concern they would not be treated humanely. Instead they transferred the men to Albania, which was the only country out of 90 approached by the U.S. government who would take them.

So. We won't send them to you so that you can prosecute them and torture them. But why not come over and interrogate them here? We've got nice facilities. We'll have a beer after or something.

Via.

Resolved: notwithstanding the diagrams that multiculturalism seminar organizers draw on flip charts, a tradition, habit, or belief is not admirable or worthy of respect simply because it comes from another culture or country or from people who look different than us.

Case in point:

Gambia — pardon me, The Gambia — is definitely not fabulous.

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Vito Fossella is a Republican Congressman.

Vito Fossella is a strong family values advocate.

Vito Fossella presents himself as a devout Catholic.

Vito Fossella has supported the Marriage Protection Act.

Vito Fossella shuns his gay sister, avoiding family events were she and her partner are present, on moral grounds.

You know exactly where this is going to go, don't you?

Vito Fossella is not seeking reelection. Why? Because when he got busted for drunk driving recently, it came out that the married, father-of-three Fossella had fathered a fourth child on a woman not his wife, an Air Force colonel with whom he shared a Congressional delegation trip to Europe in 2003.

No airport bathrooms involved, though. So he's got that going for him.

What the fuck? Why is something called the "Jewish World Review" publishing throwback-racist crap like this column by Kathleen Parker?

Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.

Who "gets" America? And who doesn't?

The answer has nothing to do with a flag lapel pin, which Obama donned for a campaign swing through West Virginia, or even military service, though that helps. It's also not about flagpoles in front yards or magnetic ribbons stuck on tailgates.

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically — and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century — there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.

We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants — and we are. But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.

Let's leave aside the appalling diction for now, if we can. What is this person's malfunction? And what is JWR's malfunction in printing it?

Via: Multiple, multiple sources.

Sixty-eight percent of Italians want to expel all Roma ("Gypsies") from the country, but expulsion's not enough for many.

Young Neapolitans who threw Molotov cocktails into a Naples Gypsy camp this week, after a girl was accused of trying to abduct a baby, bragged that they were undertaking "ethnic cleansing". A UN spokeswoman compared the scenes to the forced migration of Gypsies from the Balkans. "We never thought we'd see such images in Italy," said Laura Boldrini.

"This hostility is a result of the generally inflammatory language of the current government, as well as the previous one," said EveryOne director Matteo Pegoraro. "Italian football stars at Milan teams assumed to have Gypsy heritage, such as Andrea Pirlo, are now also the subject of threatening chants."

Commenting on the attacks in Naples, Umberto Bossi, the head of the Northern League party said: "People are going to do what the political class cannot."

The defence minister, Ignazio La Russa, said yesterday he would consider deploying soldiers to Italian streets to help fight crime, while a group of Bosnian Gypsies in Rome said they were mounting night guard patrols of their camp to defend against vigilante attacks.

The front explanation about gypsies kidnapping babies is so ludicrous as to bring to mind certain other quaint European folktales.  Buncha goddamned savages.

And where are the media, or at least the American media?  I've been watching loads of cable news over the past week, and wouldn't have heard of this at all if I didn't read fringe media as well.