About a year ago the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that your response to a crooked cop barging into your home should be to roll over and play dead. 

This idea that police can go where they want, when they want, for good reason or ill -- or none at all -- could be tested in Iowa.

---

In Des Moines, Cynthia King and Tavius King cohabited. No other relationship is noted. Cynthia and Tavius fell out, and she booted him from the apartment. Tavius called the cops, proved he once lived there,  and wanted them to help him get his clothes.  Cynthia came out, announced that this no-good ex-cohabiter was not coming back into her home, and slammed the door, giving one of the police officers an owie.

 The door hit Officer Greg Trimble’s hand and foot as he tried to keep it open and avoid it from hitting him, police said.


A little later she unlocked the door and was cuffed up, charged with interfering with official acts and assaulting a cop.


Sounds to me like the wrong person went to jail, but maybe that's just my notorious Fourth Amendment crankery. Sounds to me like Officer Greg got excited, assaulted the door and, by extension, Cynthia who was in intimate contact with it. Sounds to me like...


--The cops had no warrant to invade Cynthia's home.


--No "hot pursuit" exception to the Fourth Amendment existed because no crime had been committed, or even alleged.


--Some cop public relations REMF has a lot of trouble with kinetic concepts. Most of us will have trouble with the idea that Greg was trying to hold the door open without making contact with it.


---


It's a ham-and-egg case, and perhaps Cynthia will pay the two dollars. If so, too bad. It would be nice to see this one hashed out in an atmosphere of Constitutional concern

G'mornin' Mama

Mid-morning on a holiday weekend isn't the best time to cross the road in these parts, Woman. Trying to nest your eggs in the gravel adjacent to the tarmac is worse, a sure ticket to the unpleasant end of the Darwin-results spectrum.

That's why you got the ride on the grain scoop, and I'm sorry to have offended your  snappish sense of dignity. I really think you'll find greater happiness in a more obscure region of the canal network.

A slice of wildlife

In one of my AP gigs I was given a half-day a week  of "enterprise" time to produce a Midwest outdoor column. Of the hundred or so that hit the wire, I remember only a few in detail. One of them is a longish piece on how to find and kill a wild turkey.  It was well-received, though I suspect it discouraged many would-be hunters with its  long exposition of the expensive gear and Leatherstocking wilderness skills necessary to take a gobbler.

I'm glad I wrote that in pre-internet days. I would be embarrassed if it were commonly available today.

That point occurred to me a few minutes ago when my peripheral vision caught a movement just outside the big south window. A grand-daddy strolled by, glanced at me, strutted around the house to the mulch pile, and, careless of all concern, rooted around in the decaying leaves for whatever turkey goodies might be squiggling there.  It's getting so common that I didn't even reach for the camera. More tellingly, New Dog Libby didn't bother to bark.

A similar column today would be short; "Get a sling shot. Sit quietly on your deck. Pretty soon one will walk by. Shoot it."

All kinds of porn

Bad trigger procedure here, Mitzi. Rule 3.









But I forgive you because 













This is one of the better of the mid-century studio-glamour shots, so I used it instead of one of Ms. Gaynor as Ensign Nellie Forbush, the role that got a wee lad's attention about the time he started thinking less about Trigger and more about Dale Evans.


And what the heck. As long as I'm pandering to the vile instincts of the gentlemen in the room, here's a sop for the ladies. It is, in part, a fulfillment of an old promise to my buddy Doris.