Say goodbye summer.

Dave Winer:

When a cop gives you an order, you do what he says.

Jay Caruso:

In dealing with law enforcement, I remember being told one thing in particular about it when I was younger is and that was: “Don’t mouth off to the cops.”

Wow, really people? Come on. I’m going to violate Godwin here, but this isn’t a fascist state we live in. I love cops, I think they’re great and 99.999999% of the time I side with them (there’s a reason I tend to idolize Superman and not characters like Batman or the X-Men). But a police officer is worthy of respect but he isn’t your boss.

They aren’t in a different class of society where they tell us the citizens what to do when we aren’t violating the laws. The idea that we just say “yes sir” to a cop no matter what is antithetical to the very idea of America. I’m not pretending as if things aren’t different in a real life situation, but the goal here should be to change the behavior on behalf of the police officers, not bend ourselves to their will.

I also know that there have been incidents of false reports of racism by police officers — the Tawana Brawley case, for one.

And you know what? Every time a case comes up involving racism and police, we hear about Tawana freaking Brawley from 22 years ago. Yes, she lied. Yes, Al Sharpton is a fool. But every single time, it’s always “remember Tawana Brawley”. That one screwjob of a case is simply not the get out of jail free card for racism that conservatives so often think it is.

Also, the stories about the officer in this case being involved in racial profiling supervision or that he performed resuscitation on a black NFL NBA player don’t have anything to do with what happened the night he went to Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s house. It’s the “some of my best friends are black” argument. No relevance.

The 110-story Sears Tower, tallest office building in the Western Hemisphere, will be renamed the Willis Tower later this year, global insurance broker Willis Group Holdings announced on Thursday.

Willis said it was leasing multiple floors in the 1,451-foot 442-meter building in downtown Chicago to consolidate several offices. As part of the agreement the building will be renamed the Willis Tower this summer when the move takes place, the company said.

Sears, once the largest U.S. retailer, occupied what was then the world’s tallest building as its headquarters after the structure was completed in 1973 but moved out in the early 1990s.

(photo)

You’re the man now, dog.

Twitter Updates

follow me on Twitter ]]> http://www.oliverwillis.com/2009/01/20/inauguration-live-thread/feed/ 29 http://www.oliverwillis.com/2008/12/12/corker/ http://www.oliverwillis.com/2008/12/12/corker/#comments Sat, 13 Dec 2008 01:19:24 +0000 Oliver Willis http://www.oliverwillis.com/?p=11857 I know it’s my anti-southern bias rearing its head again, but man does Bob Corker have an annoying accent. It’s about a million times worse than Bush’s.

A San Marcos, Texas, police officer has been accused of inappropriate behavior during a traffic stop which may have lead to a dog’s death.

Officer Paul Stephens spotted driver Michael Gonzalez speeding down Interstate 35 and pulled him over for clocking 100 miles per hour. After a brief pursuit, Gonzalez pulled alongside the highway and emerged from his car, saying, ‘He’s dying.’

…

Gonzalez and his girlfriend said they were speeding because they were rushing their choking teacup poodle Missy to an emergency veterinary clinic for treatment.

But on the video, Stephens sounded less than empathetic as he berated the driver for putting others’ lives at risk as he sped down the highway.

“You’re driving down the highway at 100 per hour,” he said sternly. “It’s a dog, it’s OK. You can get another one. Relax.”

If my dog is choking, I take the speeding ticket – the cop can go screw himself.

photo credit: szlea

Ezra Klein makes the (convincing to me, at least) that American foreign policy should better be expressed as Superman versus Jack Bauer. Though to be honest the foreign policy we’ve got right now bears more resemblance to Lex Luthor.

New figures from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service show that the number of hunters 16 and older declined by 10 percent between 1996 and 2006 – from 14 million to about 12.5 million. The drop was most acute in New England, the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific states, which lost 400,000 hunters in that span.

The anthem isn’t played before movies, but I’ve been to a few sporting events in different parts of the country (Maryland, California, Florida) – NBA, MLB, and NFL – and the vast majority of the crowd is usually quite respectful and reverent when the anthem is played. Most men (including myself) take of their ballcaps and put their hands over their hearts.

I respect the hell out of the armed forces, but I think efforts to say that they’re more American than the rest of us because they serve are quite misguided.