Dear PG County: You Don’t Shoot Puppies

Last summer I read about a disturbing story from Berwyn Heights, Maryland, where the mayor’s dogs were murdered in a SWAT raid gone bad. Some criminal on the west coast mailed a large package of marijuana to a random address–which turned out to be the mayor’s house–and when the mayor’s mother-in-law received the package, SWAT (without notifying local law enforcement) busted in guns blazing. The mayor’s two black labs were killed, and the mayor and his mother-in-law were held handcuffed for hours until the whole mess was sorted out. It was a major black eye for the Prince George’s County police.

Radley Balko, who was indispensable when the story first broke, has provided an update. The county sheriff’s department cleared its officers of any wrongdoing. Balko writes, “Police and county officials…stubbornly refuse to acknowledge any wrongdoing, such as not doing the least bit of investigation before sending the SWAT team to take down Calvo’s door, not knocking and announcing before entering, or slaughtering Calvo’s two Labrador retrievers. In fact, Prince George’s County officials have been stunningly callous about it all, at various points praising the officers for their ‘restraint,’ and commenting that everyone involved in the investigation and raid ‘deserves a pat on the back.’” An internal investigation reportedly found that deputies had acted in a “professional and acceptable manner” by shooting the labs because they had posed a threat (from what, licking?).

It’s not surprising county police would close ranks to protect their own. Correspondingly, I read in The Examiner that Mayor Calvo is suing PG County for damages and to ask the courts to rewrite law enforcement policy, because of the county police’s apparent inability to reign themselves in. The police department reported that SWAT teams were used in 400 incidents in 2008, and Calvo’s suit alleges that “the county police and sheriff’s office frequently break the law by having SWAT teams enter innocent people’s houses without a proper warrant and ‘randomly and routinely’ kill family pets.”

It Doesn’t Pay to be a Celebrity

Now Air McNair is dead? Of homicide? Good grief.

The Books of 2009: First Half

I’m posting my “books read” list every six months these days.

Blackston, Ray. Last Mango in Texas. A harmless beach read. Blackston’s trademark florid style is less pronounced here, which is an improvement. He does have a gift for dialogue and goofy humor. But all his characters are so danged earnest and his villains are caricatures (this time a radical environmentalist) that realism is seriously lacking.

Driscoll, Mark. Confessions of a Reformission Rev. You can skip this one if you’re not planting a church of your own for some reason. With the title I was expecting something like St. Augustine’s Confessions, but this book was very little of the sort.

Frum, David. Comeback. If you’re a Republican, this book is decent, but not great. I like how he gets (like Douthat and Salam in Grand New Party) that the growing wealth divide in this country is a real issue, and not just “class warfare.” As if we needed a recession to tell us, middle class life is increasingly unstable, with high levels of consumer debt and growing health care expenses taking a bite out of people’s pocketbooks. Frum recognizes that some government action in health care is needed, as well as in education and the environment. The environmental chapter in particular is a worthwhile alternative to the subsidy-love that Washington typically displays. On the other hand, the chapter on supporting marriage and big families was kind of odd. It was funny reading about a “conservative” manipulating family life like that. Comeback tries to be a Republican new deal aimed at winning back suburbanites and the upper middle class. But Frum’s proposals are less radical than GNP’s working class agenda–and therefore less compelling. I still wonder why neither Frum nor GNP even consider re-thinking the “war on terror” concept, Iraq, and the expansion of executive power that follows. That seems to be the only place where Republicans are afraid to challenge orthodoxy, yet probably where they need it most (see the Niebuhr book below). Even longer review here.

Hybels, Bill. Too Busy Not to Pray. Fairly simple book (with short chapters) on why prayer habits are important in one’s life.

Kunstler, James Howard. The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century. Kunstler is a prophet about Peak Oil, Peak Water, and many other kinds of environmental issues facing us in the 21st century. He blames most of our troubles on the development of suburbia and its concomitant “Happy Motoring” lifestyle, calling it “the greatest misallocation of resources” the world has ever seen. His solutions call for localism and scaling-down human activities—small towns, local farms, local businesses, communities traversable by foot and/or mass transit—and have a certain nostalgic appeal. This pugnacious book was a fun read.

Livingston, Gordon. Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now. Thirty nuggets of wisdom accompanied by short essays. A quick, inspirational read.

Livingston, Gordon. And Never Stop Dancing. Ditto.

Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Irony of American History. Thoughtful book on the need for humility in foreign relations and the ironies of the exercise of power. Convincing and Christian takedown of American exceptionalism and the problems it can raise. Niebuhr teaches that we are all historical actors as well as acted upon by history. We do not know as much as we think we do and hubris is our greatest foe. Though written during the Cold War, Niebuhr’s words were prophetic of the past 8 years, as Andrew J. Bacevich points out in the introduction. If Niebuhr really is Barack Obama’s favorite philosopher, we’re in good hands.

Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Favorite book of the first half of 2009. Review here.

Turtledove, Harry. How Few Remain. Alternate history novel about how the U.S. would have been different if the South won the Civil War. Part of a series.

NoVA Represent

Remember that SNL “Lazy Sunday” rap that went around a couple years ago? This guy Remy has now made one for my ‘hood, the northern Virginia DC suburbs. My friends have been passing it around Facebook for the past couple days and I thought I’d share. It’s quite funny and true. NoVA really is as sorry as he makes it appear.

Bobo 4 life, yo!

End of An Era

My grandmother’s church, where my parents were married, is closing its doors this weekend after 146 years. I think the church’s records found their way to the University of Pittsburgh. Perhaps an institutional history article is in order.

Metro Crash

It has been a week for tragedies. Monday saw the big crash on the Metro. Nine people died and over 70 were injured when a Red Line train crashed into the back of another outside Takoma Park station in Maryland. Apparently an emergency sensor failed and a speeding train didn’t realize the one in front of it had stopped short of the station. This was the worst crash in Metro history, and would have been even worse had the train been outbound during rush hour rather than inbound.

The Red Line was my line when I commuted from Silver Spring to work downtown 2001–03. I know that station well. I was on the Orange Line outbound when the crash happened (just after 5pm Monday), so I didn’t experience any service disruption. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have been on the Red Line at the time of the crash, or deal with the hours-long wait to get home afterward.

Celebrity

We lost two big ones today. First, 1970s icon Farrah Fawcett, who died of cancer at the age of 62. Too young.

Also, the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. He suffered a full cardiac arrest this afternoon, possibly brought on by a drug overdose. He was 50. Waaaay too young. Like Elvis, Michael Jackson deserves to be remembered in his younger incarnation. Not as the older escapee from Madam Tussaud’s.

Book’D

Well, that’s it. The 2009 baseball vacation has been officially booked. Let’s take a look at where we’ve been:

Baseball Tour 2005: Washington, DC (RFK Stadium); Baltimore, MD (Camden Yards); Philadelphia, PA (Citizens Bank Park); and New York City (Old Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium)

Baseball Tour 2007: Pittsburgh, PA (PNC Park); Cleveland, OH (Jacobs Field); Columbus, OH (Cooper Stadium); and Cincinnati, OH (Great American Ballpark).

Baseball Tour 2008: Washington, DC (Nationals Park).

And Baseball Tour 2009:
July 19-21: Chicago White Sox (U.S. Cellular Field)
July 23: Detroit Tigers (Comerica Park)
July 24-25: Chicago Cubs (WRIGLEY FIELD!)
July 25 (yes we’re double dipping on the 25th)-26: Milwaukee Brewers (Miller Park)

Pay ball.

A Good Year

It’s been a good year to be a Pittsburgh sports fan. February started with this of course. Last night added this.

I didn’t see it live. I went mini-golfing with friends and set the Tivo for the game. Successfully avoiding spoilers (except for Keith mistakenly telling me it was tied after two), I watched the entirety of the game and the awards ceremony in under two and a half hours. That’s the way to go, considering NBC loves to fill the game with commercials and talking heads. On the down side, our Tivo is not HD.

So it’s been a good year to be a Pittsburgh sports fan. Hey, the Pirates are only 5 games under at this point. They break their 17-year streak of futility, I’ll consider it the trifecta.

Update: Heh.

Politicos I Have Known

Commuting to work this morning I was greeted by a vaguely familiar face. Turns out it was Terry McAuliffe, former Clinton big money fundraiser turned Democratic hopeful for the Virginia gubernatorial nomination. Today is primary day in Virginia and McAuliffe was pressing the flesh in order to get out the vote. He was shaking hands with people as they made their way to the trains.

Now Terry McAuliffe was not my guy. That would be yellow dog Democrat Creigh Deeds (update: who’s won) or Republican Bob McDonnell, who doesn’t seem like a nut. But meeting McAuliffe got me thinking of other politicos I’ve met on my way to work. There are quite a few, mostly from my Maryland days. Immediately I can remember Chris Van Hollen, Connie Morella, Michael Steele, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.