Sunday, October 20, 2013

Occupy Protester convicted of arson

On Friday, a Jury convicted Occupy Fort Collins activist Benjamin Gilmore of arson.  The Coloradoan reports:
Gilmore was an active member of the Occupy demonstration amid nationwide protests against social and economic inequality, and he spoke of the movement with media and at Fort Collins City Council meetings before his arrest. The fire was a block from the protest site.
According to prosecutors, the fire caused an estimated $10 million in damage and threatened 21 people’s lives,  Gilmore was also charged with attempted murder but the jury did not convict. (Hat tip: IOwnTheWorld.)

Separately in July, Occupy protester Aaron Greene pleaded guilty to explosives possession charges. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for his plan to bomb the Washington Arch.  He partner and ex-girlfriend, Morgan Gliedman,copped a plea and will not be serving jail time.

PREVIOUSLY on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement:
Occupy Wall Street activist arrested with guns, explosives
OWS opposes "the mere existence of private property"
NYPD identifies suspect in Occupy Wall Street rape
Occupy Portland explains its rape policy
Photos from Occupy San Francisco: the "general strike" that wasn't
Occupiers trash San Francisco restaurant
OWS: liberally anti-Semitic
Occupy Portland mob smashes windows
Occupy movement demands banks provide free money
OccupyFail: Corporations as people
Occupy Oakland: the devolution

Sunday, October 06, 2013

Intentional Stupidity?

Over at Slate, Matthew Yglesias writes:
Ed Henry, White House correspondent for Fox News, must have thought he was being very clever today. Why not ask White House press secretary Jay Carney a simple question—if Obamacare's so great, would you sign up for it?

Except as far as "gotcha" questions from hostile reporters go, this one is an incredible softball. Of course a 48-year-old man with a wife and two kids is going to prefer to have an insurance plan than to leave himself and his whole family uncovered.
Of course, that wasn't what Henry was asking.  Henry wanted to know if Jay Carney had enough confidence in his boss's program to give up his gold-plated plan and subject himself and his family to a plan found at an Obamacare exchange.  Given that it is his job to defend Obama, Carney's response was smart: he ducked the question.

Did Yglesias truly not realize what Henry's question was really about?  Or, is Yglesias just being intentionally dumb in order to serve the liberal narrative?

Hat tip: Instapundit and  The Daily Caller.

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

More Shutdown Theater: NIST website "closes"

If you go to the National Institute of Standards and Technology website (NIST.gov) today, you will see a "closed" notice:



Of course, the website isn't really "closed": in order to show you the page above, NIST still has to have an operational web server. It is just that they changed the server to show the above instead of the normal page. Like the closing of the WWII memorial, this is just shutdown theater.

MORE: If you need NIST documents, you can still get them: just go to the wayback machine instead of NIST. NIST's documents on computer security, for example, are found here.


Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Government has plan to reduce cancer

Forbes reports on the administration's new plan to reduce the diagnosis of cancer:
On July 29, 2013, a working group for the National Cancer Institute (the main government agency for cancer research) published a paper proposing that the term “cancer” be reserved for lesions with a reasonable likelihood of killing the patient if left untreated. Slower growing tumors would be called a different name such as “indolent lesions of epithelial origin” (IDLE). Their justification was that modern medical technology now allows doctors to detect small, slow-growing tumors that likely wouldn’t be fatal. Yet once patients are told they have a cancer, many become frightened and seek unnecessary further tests, chemotherapy, radiation, and/or surgery.
There is a valid policy issue here: one doesn't want to scare patients unnecessarily and cause them to pursue expensive and unneeded treatment.  On the other hand, when making such a decision, the government, as the largest payer of medical bills, has a clear conflict of interest.
Hat tip: Instapundit.

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