A merry stop to the Terry stop

The hits just keep on comin'.

A vigilent cop stood tall in defending the safety of Council Bluffs citizens with a righteous but, he figured, dangerous bust of a guy riding his unlighted bicylcle after dark.

Officer safety being paramount, he patted the Lance down because "it was dark and people in the neighborhood were known to have weapons."  Yep, a smidgeon of reefer and a ride to jail in defense of law-abiding  citizens everywhere.

The Iowa Court of Appeals told Officer Friendly he was full of it and vacated the pot-possession conviction.

It's almost like the Fourth Amendment followed us home for cuddling and warm milk.

Lo, the poor eaglet

I'm getting pretty damned tired of complimenting our semi-elected masters in the Iowa House of Representatives. I was comfortable in the days when truth required only occasional reporting that our solons personally didn't steal much compared to, say, the legislators of Illinois.

But this morning  --a day afer advancing a stand-you-ground bill  --- our guys struck another blow for liberty by saying it's okay to shoot at doves with lead shot.  That created another giggle as a horrified, but maladroit, Des Moines Register reporter tied himself in verbal granny knots to get the upcoming environmental Armageddon in his lede.

"A type of ammunition used in hunting that leaves lead remains in the environment and is linked in some studies to deaths in Eagles (sic) and other animals was approved this morning in a House vote."



Oh the egality!


---


There's a background here that leads a fellow to suspect the lead ban debate doesn't have much to do with doves, eagles, or lead-poisoned children growing up to be important politicians.


Iowa got its first dove season in something like a century last year. The debate made the abortion controversy look like a polite chat in the Harvard faculty lounge. When it passed  the rivers rose with tears of  PETA-type anguish. 


The Iowa DNR was especially petatrified and, by administrative fiat, said hunters had to use high-price non-lead shells, making dove-hunting a sport of relative lairds and economically difficult to impossible for the peasantry.


Peasant voices yelled in lawmaker ears. The message was transmitted to lawmaker brains and processed into the takeaway, "Hot damn, but I got an election coming up in nine months." (Well, one or two of the more astute might have added, "Besides, where do a bunch of appointed DNR bureaucrats get off making a law of general applicability. That's what our General Assembly is for."


I know nothing of the alleged science behind the lead-shot scare, but I know something of  droop-ass bureaucrats anxious to wonk policy via end runs around constitutions (nodding to  Sir Winston). 


Anyway, I'll be checking the craws of all the dead baby eagles I run across, and if I find a bunch of cold-rolled No. 7 1/2s, I'll let you know.

Castle Doctrine/Stand Your Ground

A House committee this afternoon approved House File 573.  Oversimplified, it embraces the sensible notion that your right to defend yourself against violence is well-nigh universal and that you have no legal duty to retreat from threat, in your home or on the streets.

I like to think of it as putting the fear of God into violent criminals, one thug at a time, any time, anywhere.

The antis will resume their snide characterization of a "shoot your neighbor law."

That is their understanding of reasoned discourse, and they will not admit to being persuaded that (a) little, if any, additional gun play will occur as a result of HF573 and (b )the value of the policy is in making thugs think twice before they sneak into your bedroom or grab your wife's purse (or something) as you stroll home from the movies.

---

The politics of the thing is iffy. Conventional wisdom has it passing the GOP-controlled house but faltering in a Senate laden with Democrats and some Republican metrocons.

While that may be a smart-money bet this early in the legislative goat rope, it's also the same conventional thinking that was dead wrong on shall-issue in 2010. Liberals that year eyeballed an upcoming election and scurried to the camp of most Iowa voters, a peaceable lot who really hate shooting other folks but reserve the right to do so when there's no time to summon a cop or even a government-trained crisis counsellor.

War is a glorious thing, isn't it, Private Slovik?

They've taken off his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,

An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.

On this day, 1945, The United States Army shot one of its own. In eastern France, twelve soldiers, combat veterans,  aimed M1 Garands at the heart of coward Eddie Slovik of Detroit. All eleven rounds found a mark on the slight body. Officers had humanely loaded one of the rifles with a blank in deference to the polite fiction that  each of the soldiers could believe that he, personally, did  not kill the deserter.

"What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.

No bugles sounded for the execution of Private Slovik who had run from his comrades as they  readied themselves for further blood-letting in the Hurtgen  Forest. The regiment was not massed,  no flags flew proudly in a hollow square. No national nor military honor was proclaimed as the  saddest of Sad Sacks was lashed to a six-by-six timber in a dreary courtyard. One can fairly read the accounts of that morning near Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines as memoirs of a sordid act by the citizens of the United States of America, perhaps necessary, perhaps not.

Private Slovik was not the stuff of which memorable characters are made. His letters to his wife reveal one of those genetic mishaps, a personhood barely fitted for survival even in circumstances more benign than military combat.

HIs youth was a mosaic of weakness, thievery, drunkenness, jail, and general failure. It  extended even to being declared unfit for military service. His final misfortune began when he was scraped from the bottom in the last troll for cannon fodder, reclassified as suitable to be shot at, drafted, trained after a fashion, and shipped out to slay the Hun in the final allied drives of World War Two.

His bad luck accelerated when SHAEF -- Eisenhower and his staff -- added fear of mass desertions to their other worries at about the time when Eddie turned tail, wrote a confession, and hoped he would spend the rest of the war safely in a warm stockade alongside all the others who did what he did. The court-martial and the chain of command, apparently expecting the Supreme Commander to commute, ordered the firing squad. But Eisenhower said "shoot him." Not because he murdered, like Danny Deever, but:

Pour encourager les autres.


To valor.


It is written that Private Slovik died well and with courage in the minutes before he was buried in a hidden grave, marked only by code number. As to les autres?


...The regiment's in column, an' they're marchin' us away; 
Ho! the young recruits are shakin', an' they'll want their beer to-day, 


After hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.