UPDATE: The guy who tried to flee Australia on a jet ski last week, and was caught 146 km later (4 km short of New Guinea), apparently raised suspicion in the small town of Bamaga by saying he only needed a one-way ferry ticket to the tip of Cape York (the long pointy part of northeast Australia). They also suspected he might not be coming back because he left a note in his car saying he wasn’t coming back. Well, it said, “If I’m not back by Wednesday, I’m not dead, but I’m not coming back,” so that’s pretty close. Turns out he’s not coming back there because he’s wanted in Western Australia, but regardless, not coming back.
Probably you already know about this one, but Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) filed a lawsuit against Twitter and two Twitter accounts purporting to be written by “Devin Nunes’s Mom” (@DevinNunesMom) and “Devin Nunes’s Cow” (@DevinCow). Nunes alleged the writers were defaming him and demanded NOT LESS THAN $250 million for the hurtful words and damage to his reputation. In doing so, Nunes, who is an idiot, provided far more publicity for the criticism than it would have garnered on its own, so that within a few days both accounts had many more followers than Nunes himself.
Nunes (and/or his lawyer) reprinted many of the insults in full in the complaint, which, in addition to showing that they are pretty much all statements of opinion not meant to be taken as fact, made me laugh. For example, probably no one thinks Devin Nunes’s high-school classmates actually voted him “Most Likely to Commit Treason,” or that he was part of something called “the President’s ‘taint’ team,” or that he is in fact a “presidential fluffer and swamp rat.” These were not meant literally.
You sometimes hear that inmates charged with or convicted of hurting children don’t do well in prison because other inmates look down on them, and by “look down on” I mean “beat.” According to this report, alleged child abusers don’t like each other much, either. These two, already separated from general population for their own safety, reportedly ended up attacking each other. The sheriff said that each was apparently disgusted with the other’s crime, and you know what? They were both right.
No qualified immunity for you, the Sixth Circuit tells a Michigan police officer, because “[a]ny reasonable officer would know that a citizen who raises her middle finger engages in speech protected by the First Amendment.” Cruise-Gulyas v. Minard, No. 18-2196 (6th Cir. Mar. 13, 2019). Pretty sure this is the argument Ben Franklin would always make during the debate over the Bill of Rights, but I might be thinking of something else.
“The investigator was not professional in doing his job,” a police chief in Indonesia said in February, apologizing for the investigator’s conduct. I guess that makes sense, if you think it’s not professional to wrap a snake around a suspect’s neck while interrogating him. It does seem a little extreme, just to find out how many times a guy has stolen cell phones. “‘Only two times,’ the prisoner is heard saying [on the leaked video], as another man rubs the snake on his face.” So FYI, that is not in the Investigator’s Handbook, apparently.
