“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
It continues:
Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Jason Ramos said the killer or killers who targeted the house could see who was watching TV in the family’s living room because there was plenty of ambient light.
Four bullet holes pierced the living room window barely a foot from the back of the girl’s head.
Please, a Moratorium on Moriartys 0
It is often said that some girls are attracted to bad boys.
If that is the case, it’s not just some girls. It’s also film and television folks.
Nothing else accounts for the tongue-dragging slavering over Professor Moriarty.
Frankly, they should get over Moriarty already.
He was a minor character invented for only one purpose: to facilitate A. Conan Doyle’s plan to assassinate Sherlock Holmes. He was not a criminal genius; he was a tool and hit man.
The story is a sordid one.
Doyle had decided that Sherlock Holmes was overshadowing his more “serious” fiction (anyone who has read his more “serious” fiction realizes overshadowing it was not difficult) and must be done away with.
Doyle spun the tale of a mysterious shadowy criminal mastermind so he–Doyle–could pitch Holmes over the cliff at Reichenbach Falls. Moriarty never actually appears in the story, being merely an invisible red herring to distract the reader from the true assassin, Doyle himself.
Moriarty appears, again only by name and never in person, in only two of the other 59 tales of the Canon: The Adventure of the Empty House, in which Holmes, defying the malevolence of his creator, reappears, rounds up the last of Moriarty’s (that is, Doyle’s) henchmen, and resumes his career at 221B Baker Street, and The Valley of Fear, again as a mention in what is quite possibly the worst of the Canon–it’s the only one of the original Sherlock Holmes stories I have not been able to re-read, though I’ve read the rest of the Canon five? six? seven? I forget how many times.
Yet movie makers and television broadcasters keep returning to Moriarty.
(Spoiler Alert)
Not a Sou, Not a Sovereign 0
Daniel Ruth considers the case of a “sovereign citizen.”
He has a lot of fun in the column and, indeed, sovereign citizens may reside in the “People’s Republic of Stupidstan,” as Ruth suggests, but they can also be dangerous.
More Politeness 0
Police found several shell casings from an assault rifle scattered in the parking lot of the Shawnee Apartments, according to Channel 2.
To add insult to injury, it happened on Gun Club Road.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
A polite little boy.
Randolph County deputies said that the toddler found the handgun in his parents’ room at their home just outside Asheboro around 2 p.m. on Saturday. The boy put the gun in his mouth and fired it.
A Drone By Any Other Name . . . 0
. . . is something entirely other. The ACLU reports:
More linguistic magic tricks at the link.
Lies and Lying Liars 0
Josh Marshall fisks ABC’s John Karl’s non-apology for spreading Republican propaganda in a blatantly–er–let’s just say “erroneous” news report.
(Link fixed.)
If Speeding Were Banned, Only Criminals Would Speed 0
Pete Hamilton recognizes the wisdom of the NRA’s reasoning:
(snip)
My experience on the interstate certainly seemed to support such logic. There I was, attempting to obey the law while almost every other driver seemed to be totally ignoring the speed limit, and was adding insult to injury by casting aspersions in my direction. Just like the proposed gun control legislation that the NRA opposes, those speed limits were serving no purpose other than to harass me — a law-abiding citizen — while imposing no restrictions whatsoever on those who chose to ignore them.
Follow thw link to learn more about his revelation.










