Patterico's Pontifications

4/3/2013

Sean Combs Latest (Attempted) SWATting Victim

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:30 pm



Sean Combs (Puffy? Diddy? P. Diddy?) was a victim of an attempted SWATting today:

Sean Combs’ Toluca Lake home was the latest target of “swatting” after a prankster reported a fake assault with deadly weapon Wednesday at the $5-million mansion.

Lt. Andy Neiman said Combs’ residence was targeted by a swatting prankster who made a call to authorities. The department will pursue those responsible for criminal charges, he said.

Multiple police cruisers responded to the large home shortly after 11 a.m. but found nothing unusual at the location. Sources said Combs was not home at the time of the response.

Early reports claimed Steve Carell had been SWATted; apparently he is a neighbor.

That makes Sean Combs; Chris Brown; Tom Cruise; Paris Hilton; Clint Eastwood; Brian Krebs; the Jenners and Kardashians; Justin Bieber; Miley Cyrus; Ashton Kutcher; Simon Cowell; Aaron Walker; Erick Erickson; Mike Stack . . . and me.

Nothing to see here, folks.

AP Changes Stylebook to Eliminate Term “Illegal Immigrant”

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:20 am



Washington Post:

The Associated Press has dropped the phrase “illegal immigrant” from its stylebook, a victory for immigrant advocates who argue that the term is biased against the people it describes.

“The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term ‘illegal immigrant’ or the use of ‘illegal’ to describe a person,” a blog post from AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll explains. “Instead, it tells users that ‘illegal’ should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”

The move, Carroll writes, is part of a broader shift away from labeling people and towards labeling behavior — for example, referring to people “diagnosed with schizophrenia” instead of “schizophrenics.”

The AP has previously rejected the term “undocumented immigrants,” favored by some pro-reform activists, as inaccurate. Many people in the country illegally have documents, just not the right ones.

Exactly. I mean, is an illegal immigrant with counterfeit government documents really “undocumented”?

So what in the heck are AP writers supposed to say? “Specify wherever possible how someone entered the country illegally and from where. Crossed the border? Overstayed a visa? What nationality?” Um, this seems a bit unwieldy, AP. If I want to say: “we should not count illegal immigrants among the uninsured in this country because their lack of insurance is an immigration issue, not a health care issue,” how am I supposed to rewrite that by referring to how the people entered and from where and whether they overstayed a visa?

Basically, the idea is to make the concept so unwieldy that you banish it from the discourse, using control over language to change the terms of the debate.

You know how I’m going to rewrite a sentence like that? I’m not. Because I don’t work for the AP.

While they struggle to make their pieces about political correctness, I will continue to make mine about truth, accuracy, and common-sense English usage.

White House to Host “Memphis Soul” Concert with Justin Timberlake, Queen Latifah, and Others

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:45 am



Great news!

Next week Justin Timberlake, Al Green, Queen Latifah, and many others will perform at the White House in a “Memphis Soul” concert, the White House announced today.

“As part of their ‘In Performance at the White House’ series, the President and First Lady will invite music legends and contemporary major artists to the White House for a celebration of Memphis Soul music. The program will include performances by Alabama Shakes, William Bell, Steve Cropper, Al Green, Ben Harper, Queen Latifah, Cyndi Lauper, Joshua Ledet, Sam Moore, Charlie Musselwhite, Mavis Staples and Justin Timberlake, with Booker T. Jones as music director and band leader. The President’s remarks will be pooled press and the entire event will be streamed live . . .

Ain’t it wonderful? Hey, do you think some enterprising White House reporter will ask Jay Carney if this event will cost anything extra in the way of Secret Service protection? And if so, how much? You know, at a time when cuts to the Secret Service budget supposedly mean we can’t have tours of the White House?

Me neither.

Updates on Colorado and Texas Murders of Law Enforcement Officials

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:32 am



The guy who killed the Colorado prisons chief and a pizza delivery guy in Colorado

benefited from a series of errors in the criminal justice system before he became a suspect in the slaying[s].

He got out of prison four years early because of a clerical error in a rural courthouse. He slipped his ankle bracelet and violated the terms of his parole last month, but authorities didn’t put out a warrant for his arrest until after the killings of pizza deliveryman Nathan Leon and corrections chief Tom Clements.

The clerical error: he was supposed to get four extra years for punching a prison guard in the face and threatening to kill his family, but the judge didn’t say the word “consecutive” when he sentenced the guy, because the plea deal already articulated that it was to be consecutive. Because the judge didn’t say the word, the clerk didn’t indicate it on the form sent to the prison. So they made it concurrent, meaning he got zero extra punishment for that crime, though he had agreed to four more years.

Meanwhile, after three murders in Texas suspected of being orchestrated by the Aryan Brotherhood, a federal prosecutor in Texas has given up on an Aryan Brotherhood case out of concerns for his safety and that of his family.

A federal prosecutor in a major case in Houston against the notorious Aryan Brotherhood of Texas prison gang has withdrawn from the case over security concerns in the wake of the weekend murders of a Dallas-area district attorney and his wife, said a source familiar with the case.

Jay Hileman, an assistant U.S. Attorney, had been assigned to the case.

The case will still be prosecuted, just by someone else.

It’s a tough system with dangerous people.

UPDATE: Commenters are providing links that say this happened at a hotel, not a mountain house as reported in the initial story I linked. Read the comments for the latest updates.


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