Obama, the far left radical. This Modern World (2010-06-12):

Left Flank (Cont’d).

Read the rest of Re: Obama, the far left radical …

• Fun with Android. James, snellspace.com (2010-06-03). I started a new fun android project last night... think of it as something along the lines of a peer-to-peer version of twitter where you can post status updates to specific groupings of contacts. If the contact is also using the app, they'll get a stylized notification, there will be… (Linked Wednesday 2010-06-09.)

• songs listened to while writing this comic: martha (tom waits), if rap gets jealous (k'naan), around the corner (sarah harmer). all pretty much entirely unrelated, but Here We Are. Dinosaur Comics (2010-06-10). T-Rex has not yet heard of the work of Elinor Ostrom. (Linked Thursday 2010-06-10.)

• A Few Million Bodies Between Friends. the Medium Lobster, Fafblog (2010-06-03). Well now. Israel, the Palestinians, and Gaza. It's a sad story, and we're terribly sorry about it all, of course, feeling pronounced Official Regret in our pronounced Official Regretbones, and we feel compelled at this juncture to demand a request for an investigation into the possibility of an inquiry into… (Linked Friday 2010-06-11.)

• Roundup on BP. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-06-08). The next time someone tells you that the BP oil spill shows the dangers of a free market and/or the necessity of government intervention, send them to: Darian Worden here, Sheldon Richman here, Gary Chartier here, Alex Knight here, and Kevin Carson here, here, and here. Please let me know… (Linked Tuesday 2010-06-08.)

Officer J. Smith, Las Vegas Metro, responding with a handstrike to the face

According to a story printed in the Las Vegas Review Journal, Officer J. Smith, a police officer working for the local governments in Las Vegas and Clark County, beat a captive prisoner in the face while the man was handcuffed. I’ve scare-quoted the name because that’s the most that the R.-J. could glean from the police reports; the police department is officially refusing to release the name of the cops accused of beating the hell out of a handcuffed prisoner. The cops were there late at night because of a noisy party and reports of a fight. James Akins didn’t want to talk to the police, and when they arrested him for not coming out of his apartment, Akins tried to stand his ground, while a pair strangers forcibly dragged him away in handcuffs to be driven off to jail. (The dragging away is dignified as escorting Akins to the car by the Las Vegas Review Journal.) So James Akins spat at the armed strangers hauling him off in the middle of the night. Officer J. Smith was apparently in no physical danger at all, but he did get spit at, and this insult to his dignity was enough to for him to have responded with a handstrike to Akins’ face. The report in the R.-J. makes it seem as though Officer J. Smith just smacked James Akins once; what actually happened is that Officer J. Smith handcuffed Akins, repeatedly slammed him into a door, forced him downstairs, and then threw him to the ground and punched him in the face several times.

The Incident is being Internally Investigated by Officer J. Smith’s coworkers at Las Vegas Metro, but cop spokesman Officer Marcus Martin is helpfully explaining to the press that There is no department policy that prohibits officers from striking handcuffed suspects. (No doubt there isn’t. What does that say about the policy?) In the meantime, Officer J. Smith, whose full name and identity Las Vegas Metro refuses to release, is still out on patrol on the streets of Las Vegas while being Internally Investigated for beating handcuffed prisoners.

• Defend Red & Black Cafe. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-06-04). My friend William Gillis writes to me: For over a decade I've frequented The Red & Black Cafe in Portland – an IWW, explicitly anarchist, worker-owned coop – and over the years they've faced all the sort of police harassment and surveillance you'd expect for a venue catering to radical… (Linked Saturday 2010-06-05.)

• My central air is finally fixed! Praise Jeebus! drunkenatheist, Drunkenatheist (2010-06-05). After a month and a half of fighting with our landlord (and sending off frantic emails to our realtor), the HVAC crew came out and cleaned our compression doo-dad.  Now, I think it might be possible to cut glass with my nipples. (I'll refrain from letting loose with a "hallelujah"… (Linked Sunday 2010-06-06.)

• Rand Paul Petition. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-06-06). If you're interested in signing a petition asking Rand Paul to support Red & Black Café's right to bar cops from their premises, click here. (I don't know how thrilled the Café would be with Paul's support – but I doubt they're at much risk of getting it ....) (Linked Sunday 2010-06-06.)