State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki yesterday:

Since his plane touched down in Washington at 4 a.m., Secretary Kerry was working all day and on the phone dealing with the crisis in Egypt. He participated in the White House meeting with the president by secure phone and was and is in non-stop contact with foreign leaders, and his senior team in Washington and Cairo. Any report or tweet that he was on a boat is completely inaccurate.

Completely inaccurate. You hear me? COMPLETELY!

(What’s that? They have photos? Photos of Kerry on the boat?)

Ahem.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki today:

While he was briefly on his boat on Wednesday, Secretary Kerry worked around the clock all day including participating in the president’s meeting with his national security council.

I don’t really care if John Kerry wants to stay on a vacation that he presumably planned not knowing there was going to be an international crisis.

Just don’t lie about it.

P.S. You know what would be nice, when government officials say x on Day 1 and “not x” on Day 2, would be an explanation as to why they said x on Day 1. Instead of just sort of pretending they didn’t.

Wouldn’t that be nice? I think it would. It really would.

You may have seen this viral video of Hawthorne police shooting a dog:

Where people come down on this, in 99% of cases, will have everything to do with their general attitudes towards police, and nothing to do with the facts. I’m realistic; it’s the Internet and it’s human nature and I can’t fight it.

For the other 1% of you, here is the context for what happened.

The dog’s owner is someone with a history of confrontations with police and resisting arrest. He has a lawsuit against the city and arguably had a motivation to start another confrontation that he could add to his lawsuit:

He said Monday he believed police were retaliating against him because of previous run-ins and struggles with officers. Court records show he has previous convictions for resisting, battery and driving under the influence. Rosby, who is black, said he has filed six complaints against the Hawthorne Police Department, alleging mistreatment and racial profiling.

Rosby filed a lawsuit against the city of Hawthorne and two police officers in March, contending officers broke one of his ribs when they responded to a domestic violence disturbance at his house, not far from the dog shooting scene.

He showed up to the scene of a standoff with a suspected violent felon (a robber) and started blasting his music so police could not hear what was going on:

As some, including resident Gabriel Martinez, aimed their cellphones at the scene to record it, Rosby drove up in his rented black Mazda. Swain said Rosby stopped in the intersection with music blaring from his windows. Officers told him to turn down the music because they were trying to hear what was happening down the street. Rosby pulled forward, parked and got out with his dog, but left the music still playing loudly.

“It’s distracting the officers,” Swain said. “It’s interfering with what they are able to hear. It’s not just a party call. It’s an armed robbery call. The officers need to hear what’s going on with the people being called out of the residence. That music in his car is bleeding over and it’s distracting them.”

Martinez said the Usher song “Tell Me Again” was looping over and over.

Rosby, who pulled out his own cellphone to record the police activity, did not lower the volume.

“I do apologize if I didn’t immediately comply. The music may have been a little loud but I was complying,” Rosby said. “I said, ‘Sir, I want to make sure nobody’s civil rights were being violated.'”

A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said the officers asked him to turn the music down, but he refused. Rosby, she said, responded, “It’s my (expletive) radio!”

You can hear the people taping this video talking about the “blasting” music, saying “I can’t hear shit” because of it. You can hear the dog owner yelling at the officers about how the lack of black officers at the scene is a “civil rights violation.” At this point the dog owner has already been asked to turn the music down and has profanely refused, making the officers’ jobs in arresting a violent felon more difficult. He has obstructed police and is subject to arrest, but they wait until the situation with the robber is under control before dealing with him.

Finally, police arrest him, and the dog jumps out of the car to defend his owner and is shot.

I feel bad for the dog, that he had such an irresponsible owner.

Now, Anonymous is threatening to retaliate against the police department (there has already been a DDOS attack), and people are leaving death threats against officers on the police department’s Facebook page:

A May 26 post honoring Hawthorne police Officer Andrew Garton, who was killed two years ago in a motorcycle crash in Torrance, turned Monday from a place to offer condolences into a stream of nasty comments.

“Better to have served honorable and died early, than to have been part of a department so full of greed and corruption,” Eric Beasley wrote. “Enjoy your time in Heaven, Officer Garton.”

Daniel Drobish wrote: “If your boys like playing with their guns so much, we should ship THEM over to Afghanistan. Then GOOD men and women won’t have to die!”

On a post about a “Coffee with a Cop” program, where police meet the public at a McDonalds restaurant to talk about their concerns, Keith McMahon wrote: “Throw the hot coffee in their faces!!!” He followed it with “I’ll have coffee with ya! I’ll poison you so you die a slow painful death … !”

Wrote Debra Smith: “I will have coffee with these cops, if the coffee is heated to boiling and I can pour it on their trigger fingers.”

Here is the chief talking about the threats and the incident, and all the protective measures the P.D. is now having to take because idiots on the Internet are threatening cops, and families of cops, including some who weren’t even there but have similar names to those of cops who were at the scene:

It must be fun to be threatened for doing your job — trying to arrest a violent suspect — while some jerk tries to interfere with you. Where can I apply for that job?