Walter In Denver

Still Digging In Juárez

El Paso Times:

Excavators could still be heard Wednesday digging up the Juárez patio where five bodies, two heads and three torsos were unearthed in the past few days.

And a big stash of marijuana.

Don't You?

Found here.

Stranger Than Fiction

Fidel and Che playing golf.

Read the rest the article to find out how the socialist paradise's governmental ineptitude is hurting the tourist trade.

Again

Doesn't look like this has made much of a splash in the news media yet; Another mass grave found in Juárez.

It's not yet known how many bodies are contained therein.

This carnage brought to you by The War on Drugs. Stay tuned for more.

Mark Cuban

Great interview over at GQ, here's a bit:

When the scandal over referee gambling broke, everyone came to you, since you’ve always been so vocal in criticizing the referees. They were expecting you to say, “See, I knew this was happening.” And you didn’t. Why not?
Well, I did know it was happening, but what was the point? If you’ve been saying it all along, there’s no point in repeating it. I mean, look at the way the media handled Barry Bonds. They never pay attention to the fact that no one in government ever gets fired for trying to put a skin on the wall. They’ll only get promoted—other than Nifong from Duke.

Nifong was an extreme case.
It wasn’t an extreme case. He was just stupid enough to drive it in the media with his own name. You don’t know the guys behind the Barry Bonds investigation. You don’t know that someone’s not saying, “If I can only get Barry Bonds, I’ll be the stud in this government office.” Barry Bonds can’t sue the person who’s trying to make him a poster child. To spend however many years of government money to prove something that happened four years ago—what does it accomplish for the American people?

It sounds like you’re taking this personally.
Well, I’m a target, too. Like Barry Bonds. The most disgusting thing in the world is how much money I pay to lawyers. I get audited every year, and if you saw some of the things that the IRS said to me, you would think we’re living in a Communist country. I even had someone who worked for a government agency accuse me of throwing the playoff series with the Warriors last year. It’s ridiculous. I can afford it, so it’s okay, but it’s kind of sad.

Do you consider yourself libertarian?
Absolutely.

That's a perceptive take on the Nifong case. I'd love to read transcripts of his conversations with IRS agents. Wonder if he'd consider airing them?

Seems Like The Right Time

Back now from vacation, I find Zomby has suggested it, and Jed has the graphic.

I think that makes it official.

What Happened In Kirkwood?

In the news the past days, an irate resident of Kirkwook, MO shot several city officials during a city council meeting, killing five. Let me qualify this by saying it was a gross overreaction. But from initial reports it does appear to be a reaction against city government abuses. From a local wiki site:

It would be easy to chalk off last night's shootings as one man's beef with the Kirkwood government. Honestly, that is what I thought when I first started reading about it and watching the news. Then I saw Charles Lee “Cookie” Thornton's brother speak to a channel 4 reporter. First of all, simply seeing that he was black, and realizing that the shooter was black, immediately made me suspect there was more to the issue. The words that he spoke made it very clear that my suspicions were correct. "The only way that I can put it in a context that you might understand is that my brother went to war tonight with the people that were of the government that was putting torment and strife into his life. And he had spoke on it as best he could in the courts, and they denied him all access to the rights of protection, and therefore he took it upon himself to go to war and end the issue."
[...]
So what pushed him so far? It started when Charles Thornton left town for three days. Owning his own construction business, he had 7 vehicles which he parked in the area around his home. He received no complaints about the vehicles in the past, but when he returned from his three day trip, he found 21 parking tickets (one on each vehicle for each day he was gone). He felt he was being targeted for no real reason. He'd caused no harm to anyone. If his vehicles caused a problem, couldn't they have simply mentioned it to him without hundreds of dollars worth of tickets? Well, the Kirkwood Police had found an easy target to bring in some revenue, and they took advantage of the situation. Following this, the Kirkwood police found reasons to give Thornton over 150 citations, which cost him thousands in fines.
[...]
There we many ways this incident could have been prevented. Lets make a list

1. The police department could have been courteous and asked Thornton to move his vehicles rather than simply placing hundreds of dollars worth of tickets on them.
2. The police department could have restrained themselves from issuing over 130 more citations to Mr. Thornton as their own form of punishment for fighting the first tickets.
3. The City Council could have addressed Thornton's concerns about their plans and policies, as they would have any other citizen that attended their meetings.
4. The City Council could have addressed Thornton's feelings that he was being disenfranchised because of the color of his skin rather than having him arrested and banned from speaking.

If that's even close to accurate, and I have no reason to believe it's not, I can understand his anger. I found the above quoted article via Thomas Knapp, who notes:

Over the years, that attitude has become increasingly typical of local government:

We have shiny badges -- we won elections, or were appointed by those who won elections. We will tell you how to live. If you don't bow, scrape and conform (or, worse yet, if you fail to notice and genuflect before our !authorita!) we'll make you pay. If you complain, we'll make you pay more. If you protest, we'll have you arrested. If you resist, our boyos will gun you down like a dog and we'll call them heroes for it.
[...]
As I've already clearly stated -- and as some commenters will no doubt ignore -- no, I don't think for a moment that this justifies Thornton's actions.

On the other hand, nothing justified the actions of the police and the public officials of Kirkwood, either. The big difference, apart from degree, was that they thought their shiny badges endowed them with impunity and immunity ...

I think it's a credit to the peaceful nature of the American public that these incidents are not as common as they might be.

Denver Weather Recap

From a local weather blog, DenverMark:

The snowpack in the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado is now approaching double the normal depth for this point in the season. This is a level not seen in some spots since the legendary winter of 1978-79, when Wolf Creek Pass set Colorado's all-time seasonal snowfall record of 837" (almost 70 feet) and all-time record snow depth of 251" (almost 21 feet)!! On Tuesday morning, the Wolf Creek ski area measured a depth of 171", or over 14 feet.
[...]
At the start of February, Colorado's mountain snowpack ranges from near normal in the north-central part of the state to excellent in the southwestern mountains. Here are the latest SNOTEL data by river basins (% of normal snowpack for February 1):

Gunnison River Basin 143%
Upper Colorado River Basin 122%
South Platte River Basin 97%
Laramie and North Platte River Basins 101%
Yampa and White River Basins 106%
Arkansas River Basin 162%
Upper Rio Grande Basin 168%
San Miguel, Dolores, Animas and San Juan River Basins 158%
[...]
AT DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT:

Average high 40.1F (4.5C)
Average low 15.7F (-9.1C)
Monthly mean 27.9F (-2.3C)
(1.3F/0.7C below normal)

If we can just find a way to keep it snowy in the mountains and warm down here, it would be perfect.