Texas court stops ‘implied consent’ blood draw

“’We hold that a nonconsensual search of a DWI suspect’s blood conducted pursuant to the mandatory-blood-draw and implied-consent provisions in the Transportation Code, when undertaken in the absence of a warrant or any applicable exception to the warrant requirement, violates the Fourth Amendment,’ Judge Elsa Alcala of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals wrote on behalf of the five majority opinion judges. Four members of the nine-judge court dissented.”


http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/11/fourth-amendment-triumphs-over-warrantless-blood-tests/

(For some time I wondered where the Texas legislature found authority for that blood draw.)

My wife's takeaway from How to Train Your Dragon, 2

"We are against war. Totally against war. But we have all the dragons, and if you try to start something, we will come and kill you."

The answer is, she said, "Make sure you have some dragons."

Voinyliv*

While searching for photographs of rural Ukraine, I came across Voinyliv. Wikipedia says:

“Prior to World War II, Voinyliv like most of western Ukraine, belonged to Poland and had ab. 1000 inhabitants.

“The book Where Once We Walked states that before the war Voinyliv had a Jewish population of 944 persons."

By my math, if the town’s population was about 1,000, and 944 of those were Jews, that sort of makes Voinyliv a Jewish town.

Now, Voinyliv’s population is around 2,700, “nearly exclusively Ukrainian.”

As with other towns of eastern Poland, Voinyliv’s population disappeared in ghettos and death camps. Victorious Russia populated the area with Ukrainians.

Wikipedia has a picture of the newly built (2004) “Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church” in Voinyliv.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynilov

The town is in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast.

Pictures: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=ivano-frankivsk+oblast%2c&qpvt=Ivano-Frankivsk+Oblast%2c+&FORM=IGRE

*There are various spellings.

’23 Toughest Militaries in the World’

http://www.rantpolitical.com/2014/09/19/20-toughest-militaries-in-the-world/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=Adblade#

Think the French Foreign Legion (#22) believes it is not as “tough” as Mexico’s army (#19)?

From the list: “Surprisingly our neighbors to the south have a very competent army. If only they could control their drug problems.”

“If only …” Right.

The list sucks. My computer went into slowdown mode at #12, a sure sign I did not need to read the remainder. There are not 23 armies capable of handling true military matters on their own. Suppressing citizens, maybe, but nothing else.

Link at dougrossjournal.

Cops and muggers

In The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe notes that all cops become Irish. Black or white, Catholic or Protestant, in NYC all cops become Irish. That is, of course, a way of identifying a group of people as having not just a similar identity, but the same culture. In other words, Cop is its own ethnicity.

From a Georgetown University mugee, who, along with a friend, was held at gunpoint while being robbed: “Not once did I consider our attackers to be ‘bad people.’ I trust that they weren’t trying to hurt me. In fact, if they knew me, I bet they’d think I was okay.”

‘I Was Mugged, and I Understand Why’

http://www.thehoya.com/i-was-mugged-and-i-understand-why/

Link at http://thezman.com/wordpress/

OK, Meathead. You just proved: All Progressives become idiots.

The real scary part, though: “The millennial generation is taking over the reins of the world, and thus we are presented with a wonderful opportunity to right some of the wrongs of the past.”

Yeah, that’s never been tried before.

Switch pitcher

Tony Mullane -- Batted both, threw both. Five consecutive 30-win seasons; 1890 Red Stockings – 25 games as pitcher, 1 game at first base, 28 games in outfield, 21 games at third base, 10 games at shortstop, batting average .276. In 1889, he hit .290 while pitching and playing first, third and the outfield.

Mullane’s overall record was 284-220, with a .305 ERA over 13 years. The Irish-born baseballer started 504 games and completed 468. In 1884 his record was 36-26, ERA 2.52, 567 innings pitched.

After retiring in 1894, Mullane joined the Chicago Police Department, retiring from there in 1924. Mullane is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Statistics from www.baseball-almanac.com

Oh, shut the **** up

Insulted, victimized pain-feelers rip Malaysian Airlines advertising tweet: “Want to go somewhere, but don’t know where?”

‘Cruel tweet sparks outrage’

http://www.examiner.com/article/malaysia-airlines-tweet-cruel-tweet-sparks-outrage-mh370-missing-jet-apology