Category Archives: crime
DSK OUT IMF
Bon vivant eurocrat, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), has stepped down from his post as managing director at the IMF. Abusing the economies of troubled countries from his current post at Rikers Island, where he stands accused of raping a hotel maid, must have proved too difficult.
DSK’s fall brings to mind the ousting of Paul Wolfowitz from leadership of the World Bank for his unprovoked attempt to bring accountability to that institution. Christopher Hitchens rehashes that one here in Slate.
Obama Enigma
Osama Bin Laden sleeps with the fishes.
Under President Obama’s orders to go mano a mano, Navy Seals shot and killed the Evil One in cold blood. His Miranda rights were not read and he won’t be tried in a civilian court. His corpse was thrown on a helicopter and flown to a ship in the Arabian Sea where it was dumped overboard. All well and good.
But hard to square with a president who wanted Gitmo closed, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tried in Manhattan, and considered prosecuting CIA interrogators to show the superiority of American justice. On the other hand, Obama has blown over 1500 terror suspects to smithereens.
In a display of respect, bin Laden’s body was washed and prepared for burial according to Islamic custom. His demise will not be verified by photos because “that’s not who we are… we don’t trot out this stuff as trophies”.
That won’t wash with the Muslim world.
Mad Men
President Obama acknowledged, at last night’s memorial pep rally, that accused Arizona murderer Jared Loughner wasn’t motivated by uncivil discourse . It was madness. It turns out that authorities were aware of Laughner’s problems in 2007. He was kicked out of college and told not to return without a psychiatric evaluation.
David Ignatius writes that the country is full of unmedicated mentally ill.
E. Fuller Torry says, in the WSJ, “These tragedies are the inevitable outcome of five decades of failed mental-health policies.” He estimates there are 21,000 untreated schizophrenics in Arizona alone, 10% of whom become violent.
Hard to see how more civil discourse will solve the problem.
Fighting Words
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has used the Tucson tragedy as a platform to attack his political enemies. Paul Krugman did the same even before Dupnik’s yellow crime scene tape was up. Los Angeles Times columnist, Andrew Malcolm, takes a dim view of Dupnik’s police work. Victor Davis Hanson wonders, in National Review, why people like Dupnik and Krugman focus on Sara Palin’s crosshairs on a map but not the president’s search for an ass to kick. And finally, here’s the Krugman view expressed in a more thoughtful way by Jacob Weisberg in Slate.
If some deranged person strangles an elephant, I’m in trouble.
This item from today’s NYT is by Yale history professor Joanne Freeman on congressional violence – by congressmen!- back in the good old days. I met Joanne at a conference in Boise last October. She spent 10 years digging up stuff for a book about duels, fist fights, and other interesting behavior in Congress.
