What about ‘Stand your ground’?

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

What about the Castle doctrine?

KILLEEN, TX — A police officer suffered fatal injuries while performing a pre-dawn no-knock raid on a local residence to search for drugs. Several officers were shot by a resident as they tried to enter an apartment through a ground-level window under the cover of darkness.

Detective Charles “Chuck” Dinwiddie, an 18-year veteran of the department — died two days after being shot on Friday morning. Approximately 5:30 a.m. on May 9th, the Killeen Police Department sent its SWAT team to execute a surprise raid on a middle-aged couple because they allegedly possessed substances without government permission.

Dinwiddie and several other SWAT agents snuck up to a window and tried to breach it to gain entry. The commotion caused one of residents to fire on the unidentified intruders, and Dinwiddie was struck in the face. Three others were shot; 2 were shot in the armor and 1 was shot in the thigh.

Oh, and you guessed it: No drugs were found. But because this is Texas, and the guy who shot the cop is black (unlike this guy), I imagine prosecutors will tie themselves in knots to go after him.

The real scroungers

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

The BBC political shows are so much more interesting than ours, aren’t they?

Salma Yaqoob called Tory bigwig Iain Duncan Smith a “scrounger” on Thursday’sQuestion Time, attacking the secretary for works and pensions over austerity measures that have left “13 million Britons living below the poverty line”.

“I’m sitting next to Iain Duncan Smith who labels poor people as scroungers when you {IDS} claim £39 for a breakfast, like you can’t afford your own breakfast, and you live on your wife’s estate and have taken a million pounds of taxpayers’ money, that’s what I call scrounging,” the Birmingham chair of Stop the War and the former leader of the Respect party said.

“What a load of old nonsense,” replied the angered Tory, before dismissing his attacker with a wave of the hand. “I have never, ever labelled them as scroungers at all,” he said, shaking his head. He also denied that he had claimed the money for breakfast.

Earlier, Yaqoob had called Duncan-Smith “patronising” when he spoke about poverty.

“There are people in this country, 13 million people, who are now below the poverty line. People in one of the richest countries in the world face the indignity of relying on food banks,” she said.

“My full-time job is in mental health and I have seen myself how people have become suicidal. I have counselled people who have lost members of their family who did not want to go on, because they didn’t want to be a burden after having their support taken away. These are very, very real issues.

“We have this drive on people called ‘scroungers’ but half the people on welfare benefits are pensioners. Our pensioners are not scroungers. And 60% of people claiming benefits are in work, because their wages are not paying enough.

Oh, and here’s the receipt for the breakfast he insists he didn’t claim: