This is a recent bit of correspondence that I received from an anonymous victim-blamer through my online contact form. Apparently in response to my post from October 2007 on Officer Dan Gilroy, a grown-ass man who has no problem using his position as government police to repeatedly punch 15-year-old black girls in the face over allegedly walking outside after midnight. Our anonymous correspondent thinks that Shelwanda Riley — the 15-year-old victim of Officer Dan Gilroy’s sado-fascist power-trip anger management problem — is the one whose conduct ought to be at issue. And would like us to know, I guess, that she ought to feel grateful that the pig didn’t break her ribs or something:

From: Anonymous (no e-mail address provided)
Date: 10/28/2009 10:47 AM
Subject: Shelwanda Riley (radgeek.com feedback form)

I know this is old. I just saw the youtube video of the cop and the resister. That girl was fortunate to only have been beaten as badly as she was for the terrible behavior she exhibited. Police brutality is different with each situation, and if I was that cop… The cops will not mess with anyone who is not acting stupidly.

Oh, O.K., what with the girl walking alone at night and not doing exactly what this hyperviolent control-freak ordered her to do, well, obviously she was asking for it. Of course.

• Embracing Traffic From Those Darn Aggregators. Techdirt (2009-10-29). Next up, somebody is going to be surprised that the Associated Press and Reuters somehow manage to get by OK even with folks like Martin Nisenholtz shamelessly reprinting all their content in full. (Linked Thursday 2009-10-29.)
• Acoustic Kitty. Best of Wikipedia (2009-10-29). Today at Anarchist Cafe, one of the less productive questions that got asked was, without government, what would keep totalitarian governments from taking over and ruling forever. The simple answer to this question is that it wildly overestimates the efficiency and competence of government to maintain itself in power. I mean, look, dude, bad-ass James Bond government spy agencies spend $20,000,000 trying to train a spy cat only to have it get run over by a taxi. These guys aren’t as omnipotent as they’d have you believe. (Linked Thursday 2009-10-29.)
• How Is the Free Market Going to __________? S¢â’¶++, Everyone's Blog Posts – FR33 Agents (2009-10-12). I’m sure everyone gets that question. But see, that’s the beauty of it. You yourself don’t have to know how the free market will solve any given problem. Entrepreneurs will assess the problem and come up with solutions. And you don’t even have to pick one solution, you can have… (Linked Thursday 2009-10-29.)
• Wikileaks Decides: If The US Gov't Won't Create A Real Shield Law, We'll Shield Journalists Instead. Techdirt (2009-10-30). Of course, if you wanted to be “practical” you could waste years of your time and millions of dollars trying to vote away the problem or trying to out-lawyer the Department of Justice at the Supreme Court. Or you could just do this instead.
  
  Counter-economics gets the goods. (Linked Friday 2009-10-30.)
• HOW OBAMA CAVED TO BIG PHARMA. UNDERNEWS (2009-10-30). In which the new sheriff in town turns out to be a lot like the old sheriff in town. (Linked Friday 2009-10-30.)
• My New 10-Year Old Hero. Dispatches from the Culture Wars (2009-10-30). How about a 10 year old kid in the 5th grade from Arkansas who refuses to say the pledge of allegiance and got sick and tired of having a teacher push him to do so every day and “talked back” to her? Their son told them last weekend he had… (Linked Friday 2009-10-30.)

• Fantastic Photos of our Solar System. The Big Picture (2009-10-28). The Universe is awesome. (Cont’d.) (Linked Wednesday 2009-10-28.)

• Nokia Sues Apple, Claims iPhone Infringes on Slew of Patents. Daring Fireball (2009-10-24). In which government-imposed patent monopolies once again promote science and the useful arts by rewarding innovative research and development. (Linked Saturday 2009-10-24.)
• Would-be bounty hunters nab innocent woman in Bristol. State & Regional Politics for Richmond Times-Dispatch (2009-10-25). 1. The bounty hunters didn’t just “nab the wrong woman.” They strip-searched and sexually assaulted her. 2. As a result, these three rampaging rapist thugs are facing arrest and multiple charges of abduction, robbery, and sexual battery. As well they should be — and I hope they rot. But care to guess how many charges they would be facing if they really were on that government police “drug task force” they pretended to be on, and did exactly the same thing to exactly the same innocent woman?
  
  (If your guess is “any,” guess again.) (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• Sexist Beatdown: The Happy Hooker, Or Why Doesn't Steven Levitt Suck Dick For a Living? The Sexist (2009-10-25). In which Econo-Creep Central Junior Partners Levitt and Dubner examine the economics of sex work with a sample size of N=2. (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• Soviet Shoes, by David Henderson. EconLog (2009-09-30). I mentioned in Tuesday’s post that one of my favorite passages from Scott Shane’s Dismantling Utopia is the passage about shoes. Commenter Bill asked me for the passage. Here it is: My informal survey suggested that some of the longest lines in Moscow were for shoes. At first I assumed… (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• Miroslav Pa?@c5;a1;ek's work, in pictures. Mike Gogulski – nostate.com, Anarchoblogs in English (2009-10-23). A couple of post-police attack photos, taken on 6 September 2009, the day after. Bruising to right upper arm showing finger impressions of Miroslav Pa?@c5;a1;ek Slovak State Police hired thug Miroslav Pa?@c5;a1;ek has learned how to inflict great pain with his hands while leaving few if any marks on the… (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• How an insurance mandate could leave many worse off. Marginal Revolution (2009-10-26). In which it is discovered that forcing working folks to pay for big corporate health insurance, whether they want to or not, and whether they can afford to or not, might turn out to prop up big corporate health insurers at the expense of working folks. (Linked Monday 2009-10-26.)

Hey everyone, it’s Sunday Shameless Sunday.

If you’ve been reading here lately, you may know what I’ve been doing over the past few weeks: helping with the organizing for the Living Without Borders encuentro coming up in Vegas.

And y’all? What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.