The Wandering Minstrel

Circa 2002 Jaguar S-Type seen this week in Lennox, CA.

Occupation of the occupant? You make the call. Clickable image.

Every once in a while, the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon phenomenon rears it’s head. Today, I read about a former acquaintance and co-worker in the local news.

The former aerospace worker who killed a Los Angeles airport officer by dragging him along the side of his carjacked patrol car believed he was Jesus Christ on a mission to save Russia, jurors heard Monday on the first day of his trial.

William Sadowski was blinded to his actions by the voice in his head telling him to save a Russian woman he loved from hell, Sadowski’s attorney told the Los Angeles Superior Court jury in Judge Lance Ito’s courtroom.

Deputy Public Defender Irene Nunez said her client’s only intent was to kill himself to get to hell.

Sadowski, a 51-year-old divorced father of two with a long history of mental illness, did not have the intent to commit murder, nor did he deliberate or premeditate Officer Tommy Scott’s death in April 2005, Nunez said.

But Deputy District Attorney Linda Loftfield noted that Sadowski clearly said in a tape-recorded interview with a Los Angeles police detective that he knew Scott was hanging on to the car, and he drove fast and swerved to shake him off.

Note the presiding Judge, Lance Ito, is the same one who screwed up the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

This is weird shit, alright, but it pales in comparison to seeing another creepy co-worker acquaintance to turn up in the news back in 1977 - the Trash Bag Murderer.

I must say that I had a lot of problems with “Dubya” when he was in the Oval Office. For example: Harriett Who? For the Supreme Court? And Shamnesty? The McCain-Kennedy Immigration Reform Act? He rankled the most ardent conservative nerves with those, for sure.

But the Bush Administration never let us down when it came to protecting Americans from a repeat of 9/11 or the USS Cole incident. They were not nice to terrorists and they did not give a shit what CAIR and the ACLU might think about it. Props to them for that.

It’s like comparing a vigilant watch to a right twice a day cuckoo clock á lá the Obamination . . .

Note the time on the watch. Hat tip Patriot Post.

Charles Krauthammer on Obama’s attempt to defuse the Gates controversy:

I think it was important, because the Democrats have suffered for almost a half a century of a reputation of being soft on crime. The flip side of that is tough on cops, or insensitive to the duties and the sacrifices of law enforcement. …When the Cambridge police came out–a multi-racial police force came out–and spoke unanimously about how this was wrong, this was not about race, and the president really ought to apologize, they [the White House] understood it was a serious political issue. It seems that a lot of the Obama presidency is a contest between his intelligence and his arrogance. And I think he thought when he was asked that question [the Gates arrest] Wednesday night that he can say anything on race and is so smart that he will be untouchable. And one reason is that he gave the famous speech in Philadelphia, the race speech, during the campaign in which, in fact, he did not renounce Jeremiah Wright. He blamed everybody for racism–black, white and grandmother–except for himself, and was hailed by a supine press as the second coming of Lincoln at Cooper Union. So after that, you think you can say anything on race and be hailed as a genius. Well, he now understands that you can’t get away with that forever, and he got really caught on this one.

Emphasis mine. One of many instances where the Obamination continues to demonstrate why he should never have been elected.

WTF? A man INTENTIONALLY runs down some people in a parking lot with a vehicle and gets off with “vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon causing great bodily injury.”

If this asshole had used a GUN instead of a vehicle, how much time do you think he would be doing? One hell of a lot more than eight years!

San Pedro Man pleads no contest to car assault charges

A driver who intentionally ran down several men, killing one, in a San Pedro parking lot will spend more than eight years in prison, prosecutors said Friday.

Samuel Pinto, 38, pleaded no contest on April 17 to one count of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon causing great bodily injury, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s Office.

Pinto apparently fought with one of the men inside the 7-Eleven at 1519 N. Gaffey St. around 1:15 a.m. on Jan. 19, 2008.

Outside the store, the man and his friends, who had just left a birthday celebration, were going back to their limousine bus when Pinto, who was waiting, backed up his van and rammed the men.

Francisco Aguirre Jr., 31, of San Pedro was dragged from the lot into the street and died immediately.

The other two men were injured.

Pinto left the scene but was later arrested.

Pinto was originally charged with murder and attempted murder in Long Beach Superior Court.

Aguirre’s brother told the Los Angeles Times’ Homicide Report blog that Aguirre, who was known as “Pancho,” was planning to marry his longtime girlfriend.

Face it people - the instruments of death have NOTHING to do with the motivation of the perpetrator. Death by flatiron and death by vehicle are still DEATH.

The court system is BROKEN.

The Secretary of State went to Mexico City and apologized for us evil Americans who sell guns to Mexican Drug Cartels. She pins the blame on ‘assault weapons’ sold at every American corner gun store. You know, stuff like RPGs, grenades, fully-automatic weapons, rocket launchers and the like.

Of course the long-standing policy of Clinton and her philandering hubby, is to disarm you and me. To use her status as head of the State Department to further their whacko political position makes her resemble a malicious
equine posterior - an ugly prospect to be sure.

Jim Geraghty, who writes at National Review’s Campaign Spot, posted a pretty good accounting and analysis of Clinton’s politicizing guns in lieu of actually solving Mexico’s cartel problem:

Hillary’s Foreign-Soil Sales Pitch for Reinstating the Assault-Weapons Ban

Hillary Clinton, speaking in Mexico City yesterday:

We believe that we have announced a plan to use every tool at our current disposal through administrative actions to track illegal guns, to arrest and punish those who are trafficking in illegal guns, to share more information with the Mexican Government so that they can also track and seize these guns. Obviously, I am someone who supported the assault weapons ban which was passed in 1994, but it was passed with an expiration date and it expired ten years later. I, as a senator, supported measures to try to reinstate it. Politically, that is a very big hurdle in our Congress. But there may be some approaches that could be acceptable, and we are exploring those.

Certainly, the export of assault weapons and illegal weapons is something that has grave consequences for Mexico. And we’re going to look at whatever is possible that we can do ourselves within the Administration, and we will explore with Congress other steps to take

Those who traffic in “illegal guns” are already violating the law — making the reinstatement of the assault-weapons ban superfluous.

Secondly, notice this account in the Los Angeles Times from March 15, spotlighted by Instapundit:

Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals.

Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiautomatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

Obviously, “hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets” are not available in the civilian market. If those weapons are coming from America, it means that someone in the military is secretly selling this stuff on the black market — again, a factor not influenced by the expiration of the assault-weapons ban.

UPDATE: After having some fun with it, I decided to tone-down the name-calling and just let the snark do it’s thing.

The last time I went to a gun store or a gun show, I do not recall seeing RPGs, automatic weapons, high capacity magazines or hand grenades. So how do A.G. Holder, members of congress and the anti-gun community manage to blame U.S. gun ownership on the ability the cartels have to obtain this kind of firepower? The answer is they are purposely being myopic about the reality of the situation (as always) and focusing on their primary enemies, the legitimate gun owners of America.

From the NRA-ILA:

Trouble in Mexico? Anti-Gunners Say, “Blame America.”

Over the past few weeks, the number of stories in the press regarding the escalating violence in Mexico has dramatically increased. Now, hardly a day goes by when another story describing the atrocities committed by violent drug cartels cannot be found in an American newspaper or on a cable news channel.

Gun owners need to pay attention to these stories, because the opponents of our Second Amendment rights are starting to use this situation as a pretext to push their gun ban agenda here in the United States.

New Attorney General Eric Holder is the first Administration official to cite Mexican drug cartel killings as an excuse to reinstate the semi-auto ban. And now some in Congress have jumped on the bandwagon.

This is dedicated to Sean Penn, Janeane Garofalo, George Clooney, and the hundreds of narcissistic Hollywood types that won’t just shut the fuck up and act.