Wednesday Link Roundup - 19 March

William Teach of Pirate's Cove starts us off with Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

8. Powerline: The Left: Dedicated to Human Rights?
9. The American Conservative: U.S. Launches Strikes on Yemen’s Houthis

EBL - Obama Judge James Boasberg blocks sending Tren de Aragua back to Venezuela

Democrat Judges ♥️ Tren de Aragua
Why would anyone resist sending these criminals back to Venezuela?

Wombat-socho - In The Mailbox: 03.18.25 (Afternoon Edition)

Upstream Reviews: The Dragon (Awards) Thunder In!
Gab: Defeating Technological Doom

A View from the Beach - Flotsam and Jetsam - Trump Declares Biden's Autopen Pardons Void and Vacant

Libs of TikTok@libsoftiktok, "NBC News poll: Trump’s approval rating just hit an all-time high." Don Surber asserts 47 is better than 45, "This time he is a politician who dodged a bullet. Literally."

Theo Spark - Bits and Bobs..................

Tallow - Eat differently - Robert W Malone (it's called Dripping in England)
Week Eight: Trump's Triumphant Return to American Prosperity - Amuse
In Defence Of Nostalgia - Frank Furedi

Don Surber - Highlights of the week

ITEM 5: BBC reported, “A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.”

Glibertarians - Sunday Morning St. Paddy’s Links

Slate reminds us again what profound stupidity looks like.
“Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!”

In the Mailbox: 03.18.25 (Evening Edition)

Glenn Reynolds: A Nation, Not A Side Quest
Hollywood In Toto: Dick Tracy at 35: No MCU Film Ever Looked THIS Good

Vlad Tepes - Geopolitics: US ends Iranian SIGINT ship, Irish man risks consequences by removing Palestinian flag, Shakespeare gets F451d and some thoughts on Carney and other matters: Links 1 for March 18, 2025

2. I think Trump may be wrong here. Last I checked, China was building something like 5000 coal powered electric generation facilities a YEAR. Not hundreds. Either way the move to planet Earth from planet Chinese powered dialectics is a great one.

Small Dead Animals - Sunday On Turtle Island

Woke America: The Biden years. Hunter’s vacation.
Odds And Ends: Peter Hitchens on net zero. Caliphate of Britain.

Gates of Vienna - News Feed 3/16/2025

Democrats’ Approval Ratings Sink to Historic Lows Amid Infighting: Poll
Democrats have become so unpopular that more Americans believe that aliens are among us than agree with the Democratic Party.

A View From The Porch - Tab Clearing...

Undead Websites: Kotaku Australia
AI-generated slop is brute forcing the algorithms that drive traffic on the internet.

Political Hat - News of the Week (March 16th, 2025)

The Crimean War’s Lessons for War and Peace in Ukraine
History repeats itself in Ukraine, but we shouldn’t reenact it blindly.

Cafe Hayek - Some Links

Sierra McClain profiles new Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins and writes of her plans to shrink that overgrown behemoth.

Maggie's Farm - Saturday morning links

Genes and environment
Medical Schools’ Botched Pass-Fail Experiment - The early results of the United States Medical Licensing Exam’s new grading process are worrisome.

Doug Ross - Larwyn’s Linx: Do We Have 677 Unelected Presidents?

• Bummer: Second Columbia Hamas Supporter Arrested Cove
• ICE Director: Biden Admin Cooked the Books on Illegal Alien Arrests Catherine Salgado

J.J. Sefton at Ace of Spades HQ - The Morning Report — 3/ 18 /25

America needs tariffs to reshore our factories and revive the American Dream.
How Tariffs Will Lower the Cost of Living

I leave you with Sunday Funnies For 03-16-25 from Stately McDaniel Manor, Sunday Funnies from Flopping Aces, Saturday Meme Drop from Midwest Chick, and Tuesday's gifs from Wirecutter.

Public Radio in Chicago Notices Crime and (the lack of) Punishment

This article slipped into one of my news searches. There is one thing that is amazing about it. More on that later. Slim odds of arrest in Chicago when someone's shot, wounded, Sun-Times finds - WBEZ Chicago

More than 19,000 people were wounded in shootings in Chicago since 2018. The Chicago Police Department has made arrests in 1,200 of those cases.

Just over 6%, but math is hard, especially if you're a journalist. The numbers are slightly better if you only look at 2024, but it is still just over 6%.

But this is the part that jumped out at me.

Experts say the chronic lack of arrests is a big part of the reason for as many shootings as there are in many Chicago neighborhoods plagued by gunfire.

Those who did the shootings remain on the street, free to hurt more people. Seeing no arrest, victims’ friends in some cases try to take justice into their own hands and retaliate. Witnesses who already might be in fear but also don’t think arrests are likely might be less willing to cooperate with detectives — part of a widespread “no-snitch code” — making it harder to make arrests.

Did the NPR affiliate in Chicago just admit that without consequences for crime, crime will continue to get worse? They are going to lose their Progressive Loony cards over that. Next they will be saying that because shoplifting is not prosecuted, shoplifting has become a major problem, or that people should be held accountable for their actions. What is this world coming to?

They go on to detail the number of police, detectives, and how that compares to other major cities.

Department records show that 80% or more of nonfatal shooting investigations are “suspended” each year, meaning officers assigned to those cases no longer are actively investigating them. Slightly fewer than half of all cases are suspended within 30 days, according to police department figures.

They do include a statement from a shooting victim whose case was never solved, but the statistics tell the real story. There is very little Justice to be had in Chicago.

There is no mention of the Defund the Police campaign, the added burden of reporting requirements being piled on cops, the rules that make it all but impossible for Chicago Police to chase suspects either in a car or on foot, or the soft-on-crime policies of Kim Foxx, the previous Illinois State's Attorney for Cook County, who did not seek reelection in 2024.

Anyway... Do I think this means that the Left is waking up to the disastrous effects of the Soft-on-Crime, don't put the bad guys in jail policies that have taken hold in a lot of Blue Cities? No. They will continue to march in lockstep, because to do otherwise would mean admitting that they were wrong about a lot of things.

Lucky Number

The era of Post Punk, what the suits insist on calling New Wave because they hated Punk and everything about Punk, was a strange time in American music. Some of the music is just awful, but some of it is interesting in a way that a lot of 1960s and '70s rock wasn't.

This is another song that comes to us by way of WXRT's Saturday Morning Flashback. Some stats from 1979, which was the year in question. at the end of January.

• A gallon of gas was 86¢
• Inflation was 11%

This song is "Lucky Number" by Lene Lovich from her 1978 debut album Stateless, though it was released as a single in 1979

The New York Times Wakes Up to the Truth about the Wuhan Lab

Too little to late? Maybe not. Maybe we can prevent "next time" if people face facts. Opinion | We Were Badly Misled About Covid - The New York Times

How it started:

Yet in 2020, when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have been the spark that started the Covid-19 pandemic, they were treated like kooks and cranks. Many public health officials and prominent scientists dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory, insisting that the virus had emerged from animals in a seafood market in Wuhan, China.

How it's going.

We have since learned, however, that to promote the appearance of consensus, some officials and scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter, orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices and even compared notes about how to hide their communications in order to keep the public from hearing the whole story. And as for that Wuhan laboratory’s research, the details that have since emerged show that safety precautions may have been terrifyingly lax.

Five years after the onset of the Covid pandemic, it’s tempting to think of all that as ancient history. We learned our lesson about lab safety — and about the need to be straight with the public — and now we can move on to new crises, like measles or the evolving bird flu, right?

Wrong. If anyone needs convincing that the next pandemic is only an accident away, check out a recent paper in Cell, a prestigious scientific journal.

There is a whole lot more, including thoughts on the next lab accident. Click thru.

Hat tip to Small Dead Animals: NYT- Always The Last to Know

Tuesday Links - 18 March

We start with a story from Revolver News. LISTEN: Leaked audio of DEI activist feeding air traffic control exam answers to minority candidates…

Just look at this latest bombshell, courtesy of a Daily Mail exclusive. They got their hands on a voicemail from a DEI activist and FAA supervisor who, according to their report, handed out critical answers to an air traffic control exam—to a select group of minority candidates.

The Other McCain has a humorous look at advertising to Boomers. ‘Supports Digestive Health’

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what’s called a euphemism. We know what it really means, don’t we? You could come up with your own blunt expression, but what it means is this stuff is going to rip through your guts like a .45-caliber hollow-point slug. In a healthy way.

Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit - Pam Bondi Announces Leftist Terrorist Arrested After Hurling Molotov Cocktail at Tesla Dealership – May Face 20 Years in Prison

Several notable incidents have been reported since early 2025, primarily linked to backlash against Elon Musk’s role in the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Lone Star Parson has some thoughts and a musical interlude for us. Queen Of Diamonds

Can you, dear friends, call the Queen of Diamonds by the way she shines? Go on I challenge you, carry on and good luck. If, in the unlikely event that you'll win this challenge, you get a free weekend at REFORM, or, ahem, Farmers.

Set the wayback machine for just before the election. The Other McCain brings us The Worst Pundits EVER!

Saturday, November 2 — three days before the election, and the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson records a podcast segment featuring his colleagues Stuart Stevens, Jeff Timmer and Trygve Olson. All of them declare with ironclad certainty that Kamala Harris is going to run the table in the “battleground” States and stomp Donald Trump into tiny orange smithereens. The fun begins when Wilson introduces his guests as “three of the most brilliant minds in American politics.”

Wombat-socho - FMJRA 2.0: Breakthrough!

This was a good week to be a Senators fan. First we took two out of three from the Cardinals, losing only to Bob Gibson (and getting Carl Morton suspended for saying the Magic Words to Umpire Merriweather). ... Still, a 4-2 week has us tied with the Twins in third, four behind Pete’s Brewers.

The Art of Manliness - Honor in The Quiet Man

The Quiet Man represents a near-perfect meditation on the anthropological evolution of honor.

Chris Queen at PJ Media - The GOP Can Increase Its Margins in the Senate in '26 and '28. It Starts With These Two Seats.

I’ve long beat the drum that the characterization of Georgia as a “purple” state is overblown. The urban areas of the Peach State exercise an outsized influence, but Georgia’s electorate is more conservative than our current senators would lead people to believe.

Again from Wombat-socho - Rule 5 Sunday: Waitress on the Ramparts

University Responses to Trump Administration Mandates

You Can't Just Shoot People

Not even if they stole from you. Nash County homeowner shot at car after theft from his truck, hitting teen driver in head, sheriff says

"Every bullet comes with a lawyer attached."

This is one of the more insane stories about a homeowner going out to "confront" someone breaking into his vehicle I've seen in a while, and see a fair few of them. Yes, I know you are pissed off. The Law doesn't care about your feelings. That headline contains most of the relevant information.

Spring Hope, North Carolina is about a 35 mile drive east of Raleigh.

Zachary Bryant, 30, is facing several charges after a 15-year-old was shot in the head and is listed in critical condition, Nash County deputies said Sunday.

He didn't even have a gun on him when he went outside. He had to go back into the house to get it.

Bryant then went into his home, put on clothes, grabbed a handgun and flashlight and went back outside, deputies said.

Bryant checked his truck and noticed some tools were missing, deputies said.

He then fired at a car that was "similar to that from before." He wasn't even sure, couldn't be sure, it was the same people who stole from him. They were in a similar vehicle. They were on a main road near his house. He opened fire.

He struck the 15-year-old driver in the head, causing the car to crash. The cops didn't even mention if the 4 teens in the car had stolen from Bryant, because that is not relevant to the charges.

Deputies said Sunday that Bryant was not in the path of the car and “had no concern of the car hitting him” when he fired the shots.

Deputies said Sunday that the situation does not meet the criteria for justified use of deadly force.

Bryant is now charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and inflicting serious injury and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.

So he will now face the very real prospect of losing years of his life, his ability to legally own firearms, all over "some tools." If they were that valuable, maybe not leave them in your vehicle, or maybe park your vehicle somewhere secure.

What's Going On, Or Not, With AI?

The tech press, or at least The Verge, is finally starting to admit that the AI emperor has no clothes. All this bad AI is wrecking a whole generation of gadgets: We were promised multimodal, natural language, AI-powered everything. We got nothing of the sort.

AI was going to fix everything. You wouldn't need to learn to type. Or to think. Or something. AI assistants would do everything for you.

Which is sort of true. Reddit is full of posts written by AI bots, answered by other AI bots. No one needs to use Reddit anymore, because it is all AI. Mostly AI ads, so not only do you not need to use it, it is mostly full of nothing but garbage.

There was just one problem with the whole theory: the tech still doesn’t work. Chatbots may be fun to talk to and an occasionally useful replacement for Google, but truly game-changing virtual assistants are nowhere close to ready. And without them, the gadget revolution we were promised has utterly failed to materialize.

In the meantime, the tech industry allowed itself to be so distracted by these shiny language models that it basically stopped trying to make otherwise good gadgets. Some companies have more or less stopped making new things altogether, waiting for AI to be good enough before it ships.

Microsoft's continued threats to make AI a part of everything drove me off Windows. I don't want the system taking screen shots of everything I'm doing and uploading them to Microsoft. That's just creepy having Microsoft look at everything I type - including passwords.

I bought my current phone, which is not a high-end smart phone, because the battery on my last phone was failing to hold a charge. My current phone is not that different from my last 2 phones. If I could easily change the battery, and still get security updates (even ROMs like LineageOS only support phones for so long) I would probably still be using that two-phones-ago phone. I certainly don't want AI scanning all my photos, email, messages, whatever.

There is a lot of detail in the article, about Amazon (when was the last time they introduced an interesting bit of hardware?), Apple (Apple Intelligence anyone?), and more.

I've lost track of the number of times I've heard people say that "this next piece of tech" is going to change the world. Maybe someday they will get it right. "But it is not this day."

When Sci-Fi was about Ideas, Not Visual Effects

After Lucas kicked off the visual effects arms race with the original Star Wars trilogy in 1977, there was an era where science fiction was all about spectacle. No story required. The theatrical release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture comes to mind. It was visually stunning, but the story was recycled from an episode of the original series. You could have told the entire thing in under an hour. This got worse when 3D first came in.

Then Hollywood seemed to come to its senses, and realized that story was important. Star Trek: The Next Generation (and its siblings) was either the cause or the result, I'm not really sure. TNG dealt with everything from religious conflicts, to the nature of consciousness, to political witch hunts, and drug addiction. And they still managed to make it look good. Babylon 5 was another example from that time. Less episodic than TNG, it told a unified story over 4 years, even if it struggled for budget the whole time.

But somewhere along the way the idea that story matters in genre was lost again. Witness the result. Trilogies that don't hang together as a unified whole. Science Fiction stories written by people who have no idea about science. (Fire in the vacuum of space?) Stories written by people who hate science fiction and/or fantasy. You wonder why they want to work on something they clearly hate.

Back in that not-quite golden age, though maybe it will turn out to be just that, one of the things we got was Firefly. I'll let Drinker describe it to you.

This is Critical Drinker's video Firefly - We Didn't Know How Good We Had It

I'd take a Rough and Ready show like this over some visually spectacular, piece of soulless corporatized trash any day of the F*cking week.

The video is just over 10 minutes long.

That era when we got story and writing before visual effects gave us Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. So maybe it was a golden age of cinema.

St. Patrick's Day in Chicago

The festivities in Chicago aren't always what you would expect. Unless you know Chicago, and then they are exactly what you expect. HeyJackass! brings us St. Patrick's Stupidity.

Although Monday was actually St Patrick's Day, HeyJackass! stops counting on Monday morning, because all of the festivities, from the dying of the river to the drinking and shooting really happen Friday through Sunday. So the stats are Friday noon through 6 AM on Monday.

The river will be dyed, the parades will march and the bars will be at full vomit-inducing capacity. Additionally, the weather is agreeable to both drunken revelers and subsequent walks of shame while fueling the usual nonsense elsewhere around town.

The totals were as follows:

Final Vomit Tally: 2 killed, 24 wounded
2024 weekend tally: 5 killed, 18 wounded
2023 weekend tally: 1 killed, 17 wounded

There are links to a couple of stories, including one about a woman who opened fire in a liquor store for no apparent reason. (She was shot in turn by a bystander.) And the story of a 13-year-old who was shot and laid in a yard for 4 hours because no one called 911 to report gunshots. He didn't survive. The block had been monitored by ShotSpotter, but Mayor Brandon Johnson called ShotSpotter Raaaacist, and canceled the contract as of 23 September 2024.

That story is as follows. From CWB Chicago: Cops find ‘approximately teenage’ victim fatally shot in yard, but nobody called 911 about gunfire. The block used to have ShotSpotter

Chicago police officers on routine patrol found a murder victim lying dead in Lawndale overnight. Investigators were unable to immediately identify the victim, but a CPD media statement said he appeared to be “approximately teenage.” (Update: Family members told media outlets the boy was 13 years old.)

Nobody called 911 to report shots fired in the area before the boy was found shot in the head in the backyard of a home in the 1500 block of South Kildare around 2:10 a.m. Shell casings were lying nearby.

Now maybe he was killed instantly. We will never know. But there are clearly cases, where people survive, where ShotSpotter would have gotten them help sooner, and there cases were people died, where it might have made a difference. And since the bad guys were long gone, and there are no witnesses, there will be no justice. There rarely is these days

CWB Chicago has a series called "Brandon's Bodies." 37 people have been shot on streets, or in areas previouly monitored by ShotSpotter, in which no one called 911 to report gunfire, or a victim. Details are at the bottom of the CWB Chicago story linked above.

Such is the Progressive Paradise of Chicago under Mayor Brandon Johnson.

The image above is of the Chicago River, as dyed for St. Patrick's day from a few years back. People never believe that they dye the river. It's amazing what you can do with food coloring when you buy it in 55 gallon drums. If you look on YouTube or X you should be able to find video of the acutal dying of the river this year by the city.

Unholy Water

Dorothy is a band headed by Dorothy Martin. Sometimes she sounds metal, but often the music reminds me of old school Rock & Roll. I don't think it matters much.

This song is "Unholy Water" by Dorothy from her new album The Way, which was released on March 14th.

The Battle Is Not Over, But Just Begun

From The Other McCain: Making Sense of Democrat Disarray and the Future of the MAGA Revolution

We've had some fun laughing at the Democrats defending fraud and corruption on a grand scale, but there is work to be done.

They thought 2020 meant they could do anything and never pay a price.

Unfortunately for Democrats, the errors of the Biden era were numerous and quite harmful, and the appearance of the 2020 election as a decisive anti-Trump referendum proved to be an illusion. Once Biden’s cognitive decline became undeniable, and he was forced off the ticket in favor of Kamala Harris, there was a decisive shift in the other direction, yet even then Democrats remained in denial. The media kept hyping up the “joy” of Kamala’s campaign, and the usual suspects produced polls showing Harris leading Trump by four, five, even six points during that August/September period. They wanted to believe . . .

Click thru for a serious look at what comes next.

Why Do People Turn to Violence Over Words?

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but firearms can really ruin your day. Overnight shooting in Glendale neighborhood leaves 1 dead

I suppose it is an ego thing. They couldn't let someone get away with "saying that." Or something.

Investigators say the victim and another man started arguing, which escalated into a fight. The victim was initially able to break free and run away, but he then turned toward the shooter and “made a movement like he was armed,” according to police.

Glendale, Arizona is a suburb of Phoenix, being about an 11 mile drive northwest of downtown.

He was free of the fight. He was on his way out. He decided that he wanted to fight some more.

He was shot, and pronounced dead at a local hospital.

So. He lost his life over an argument, over words. He should have just walked away.

The investigation is ongoing, so the police are releasing very little information. The "Professional Journalist" seems a bit confused by that.

Arizona is not New Jersey, though the lack of details makes it hard to say how this will fall out. I suppose it will depend on witnesses and any video from security cameras.

And when did "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me," go out of style?

Self-defense is a human right.

Democrats Vote When They're Dead, Why Not Post to X?

The future is stupid. Dead Democrat Congressman Posts Tirade on X Attacking Trump & Musk - Slay News

A backlash has emerged against the Democrats after a tirade was posted on X from the account of late Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), who died earlier this week.

The post appeared on the X, supposedly from Grijalva, condemning President Donald Trump’s move to slash thousands of jobs at the U.S. Department of Education.

The statement, which presented Grijalva’s concerns for education and “social justice,” was published at 3:16 p.m. on Thursday, a few hours after Grijalva died that morning.

Democrats - the party of Technology and Science, or the Party with a messaging problem? Maybe they just don't care about facts, the truth, or being honest. Maybe they only care about continuing government waste at all costs.

e-Bike Explodes into Flames on London Underground Platform

I'll take "Reasons not to bring large lithium-ion batteries into enclosed spaces" for $1000, Alex. Ban e-bikes or we’ll strike, threaten London Underground drivers after platform fire

Firefighters responded to an burning e-bike, destroyed by the fire, with no reported injuries from the incident.

The Aslef union claimed that an internal London Underground investigation concluded that the e-bike was “only moments away from boarding the train”.

30 seconds later and he would have been on a train with the doors closed. All that toxic smoke could have killed people in an enclosed space.

The transit unions are now pushing for a ban on e-bikes. I doubt they will get it, since e-bikes are the darling of the environmental crowd.

So, if an e-bike bursts into flame, and puts off loads of toxic smoke, does it still count as a "zero emission" vehicle? (Hat tip to MGUY Australia.)

The End of the Movie Theater as a Viable Business

As I type this we only have an estimate for the domestic box office for the weekend, but it is telling a horrible story. The total North American box office for this weekend is estimated to be $50,336,771. Compare this to the weekend of March 16th, from 2019. Total box office for that 2019 weekend was $132,499,969

As Culture Casino covers in the video below, those numbers haven't been seen since 1997, and of course since they are not adjusting for inflation, those numbers were much better for 1997.

And this is not a singular bad week. Last weekend total box office was $54,904,384. The weekend before that, the weekend of February 28th, total box office was $53,657,775. Contrast that with a weekend in 2020, just before the lockdowns took over. The weekend of February 14th, 2020, total box office was $156,086,643. Sonic the Hedgehog, which debuted that weekend, pulled in $58,018,348. Even the previous weekend when Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) debuted was nearly $100 million with Birds of Prey bringing in just over $33 million.

The movie theater business cannot survive on the movies that Hollywood is producing. They need more than one big opening a year, and I'm not sure Hollywood will have one big release this year. It wasn't Captain America 4, It probably won't be Thunderbolts. DC's upcoming Superman film has a chance, but the initial test screenings were so poorly received that reshoots were ordered, and that is NEVER a good sign. Disney's Snow White staring Rachel Zegler is tracking for a horrible open. It has a small chance if parents, who aren't paying attention, take kids in droves. No one believes that will happen.

This is the Culture Casino video Box Office COLLAPSE: 2025’s Worst Weekend DOOMS Theaters!

Stationary Steam Engine from 1873

For the engineers and nerds in the audience, and other people interested in tech and history, or the history of tech. Also for anyone who likes steampunk, this is very cool.

Abandoned Steam Engine Brought Back to Life! - 1908 Industrial Time Capsule.

It is one hour and 17 minutes, but I think it is interesting.

This is the steam-powered water-pumping plant in Woburn, Massachusetts, which is a little ways north of Boston. It is a double-expansion, condensing steam engine. It was used to pump water to the local reservoir from about 1873 until 1908.

The engine wasn't preserved, so much as just left alone. It apparently took very little to get back up to running condition.

Clean water, available whenever we open a tap, is such a part of our lives, that we never even think about it, or what it would be like if it went away.

More info on the engine can be found at the following link: Woburn 1908 Steam Pump. There are a couple of shorter videos at that link if an hour is too long. Though the video embedded above is at least as good (almost as good, anyway) as the stuff you would find on PBS in the 1980s.

District Attorneys Want to Win At All Costs

If that means cheating, then they cheat. Cooke County, Texas murder conviction of Michael Newberry raises new questions | WFAA

At the center of the fight is District Judge Janelle Haverkamp, the former district attorney and now the county’s only elected felony court judge. In court filings, she is accused of withholding evidence in a 1997 capital murder case that sent Michael Newberry to prison for life.

Withholding evidence is against the law. More than that, it is evil. I seem to remember something about "bearing false witness," and lies of omission are still lies.

“When a prosecutor hides evidence, that dirties every other prosecutor,” John Warren, the current Cooke County District Attorney, told WFAA. “We won’t turn a blind eye to injustice.”

Court filings by Newberry’s attorneys paint a troubling picture. They claim his confessions were coerced, witnesses gave false testimony, and his own defense attorney had a secret conflict of interest. That attorney is now a county court at law judge, John Morris. He denies any wrongdoing.

Of course he denies wrongdoing. But given that the judge is the same person who prosecuted the case, how do we expect her to rule?

Like every bureaucracy ever, the Criminal Justice System is only interested in advancing its own interests. Justice? There are no points for Justice.

There is more. Cops continuing to question the defendant AFTER he asked for a lawyer. Witnesses changing their testimony, but that info NOT being given to the jury.

In short, they wanted to win. And the system didn't care about the law, only about winning, even if that meant cheating.

Now I don't know if Michael Newberry is guilty of what he was charged with. I do believe that the detectives, the prosecutors, and the courts didn't do everything they were supposed to do, but then I'm cynical when it comes to the government.

Use the NYC Subway? Maybe When It's Safe

I don't expect it to be safe in my lifetime. NYC overnight subway violence includes man beaten in mugging , another slashed over innocent bump: cops

The powers that be are still not putting bad guys in jail. So the law abiding are the only people paying the price for crime.

An outbreak of random violence erupted in the subway overnight, in which a thug slashed one man over an innocent bump and a gang of crooks pummeled a man during a mugging that netted just $15, cops said.

This the environment that the people trying to run NYC want to force people to use, by making it too expensive to drive in NYC.

First the eliminated lanes of traffic for pedestrian lanes and bike lanes. (Pedestrians can't walk on the sidewalks, because that is where the homeless people live, and sell the stuff they stole from Walgreens, or wherever.)

So when you reduce the number of lanes by 25 percent, congestion increases. Then they wanted to add congestion pricing to force cars to stay out of the city, because congestion is bad, or something. Makes perfect sense, to Democrats.

Well Trump just through a monkey wrench into the Congestion Pricing by revoking the federal governments OK to charge it on highways.

Here is a look at the state of the subways, though I think the title is a bit overstated. Trump Just Took Over NYC's Subway... Permanently. The video is from Cash Jordan, and its 17 minutes long.

Riding public transit is like picking up random hitchhikers. At least in NYC, that seems to be the level of safety. (I wish I knew where I first read that comparison.)

Darwin Award Near Miss Times 2

Every once in a while someone from the city, with no experience in the back-of-beyond, decides to "commune with nature." It rarely goes well. Father-son duo survives night in Utah wilderness after finding 'miracle' backpack

How it started.

Back at the beginning of January, 15-year-old Levi Dittman was planning to hike in the Red Mountain Trail area of Dammeron Valley. Stocking his hiking backpack with the best gear, first aid kit, snacks, and emergency supplies was a bit of a passion project for Levi.

He tossed the backpack somewhere he couldn't go, and then got trapped on a ledge overnight.

Apparently his $300 of supplies didn't include a US Geological Survey Topographical Map. I haven't purchased one in a long time, but I doubt they are more than $20 bucks even after all this time, and also you can download sections from the .gov for free.

“Looking at the map, it seems flat, which it’s not,” Levi said of the trail. “So, anyone else, do not try this.”

One month later...

On Monday, Feb. 17, Levi and his mother went to pick up his lost backpack at the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, getting the bag back from Julian Hernandez.

“We ended up getting trapped in the same place where, a month ago, that 15-year-old got stuck,” Julian told ABC4.com.

Julian and his son got stuck in about the same place, and they found Levi's backpack, which was a godsend.

A miracle in the shape of the green backpack Levi spent about two months building up, filling it with Pop-Tarts, Clif bars, bandages, and even an emergency tent — all things that Julian said helped him out in a time of need.

I'm not saying you shouldn't get out of your suburban enclave and have an adventure. But understand that there are things you don't know. And even worse, the things you don't know that you don't know. Your cellphone will be useless in most wilderness areas. What navagation skills do you have? Do you have a topo map for the area you're going to hike? Do you even have a compass? A GPS? Anything? What emergency supplies do you have? Do you know how much water you need for a hike in dry air? Do you know what the overnight temperatures are going to be? Even if you aren't planning to overnight, maybe you should be a little prepared, since accidents do happen. And most important, does anyone know where you are going hiking, and when you are due back?

Hat tip to Wirecutter and When city folks go outside.