from the what’s-the-word dept
This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to our post about the head of ICE saying journalists should stop asking questions about ICE officers. In first place, it’s Justinfinity with a comment about the fear of officers being targeted:
That’s especially wild when held up next to the very common justification for our loose gun laws: “only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun”.
A masked, plain-clothed, un-badged person with a gun that is detaining unarmed people for unspecified reasons is a “bad guy with a gun”, and should be getting “targeted” by all these proverbial “good guys with guns”.
In second place, it’s frankcox with a comment about how bad the whole situation is:
Highly dangerous for everyone involved
When you are approached on the street by masked individuals ordering you to do something, how do you know if they’re police or random thugs?
Even a random thug can yell “Police!” or hold up a shiny object resembling a badge. If they’re out of uniform and have their identities concealed, they’re gangsters.
There was a case last year where a man ran over an undercover police officer when he was attempting to escape what he genuinely believed was a kidnapping attempt.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/umar-zameer-verdict-1.7180011
Police should always be fully uniformed and readily identifiable. Any “undercover” operation should be short-term with damn good reasons behind it, but arrests should always be made by uniformed officers. No exceptions.
(Incidentally, that linked story happened here in my home city. Cops spent three years trying to get him convicted of murder, and were accused of borderline-perjury by the judge for what they said on the stand.)
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from MrWilson about the supposed spike in assaults on ICE officers:
The obvious way to read the claim is that ICE has been making so many more abusive arrests that the rate at which they assault people that they are detaining and then claim to be assaulted by those victims has increased.
“We’re violating so many rights that we have to make up even more fictions in order to defend our fascistic tactics!”
Next, it’s an anonymous comment about Republican lawmakers trying to create a new standard for obscenity, with the obvious goal of marginalizing LGBTQ+ people:
We tried toning it down and sticking to our own spaces back in the day. They used public money to send men with guns into our spaces. Anyone who believes the end goal isn’t mass murder is a fool.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Thad replying to a comment that raised a question about what a certain other commenter had said in the past:
I can’t imagine why anyone would care.
In second place, it’s Whoever with a correction on our post that mentioned how Kristi Noem was “being gifted with an honorary degree”:
I think you misspelled “grifted”
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got another anonymous correction regarding Noem, this time on our headline about what the “DHS Secretary thinks”:
Facts not in evidence.
Finally, it’s an anonymous suggestion about that Chicago Sun-Times reading supplement written by an AI that made up a bunch of books:
Just have the AI write the works in question and they won’t be “made up” anymore. Problem solved!
That’s all for this week, folks!
