LA Police Chief William Bratton resigned yesterday. I can’t imagine anything worse for the future of L.A. He’s the first decent Chief the city’s had in at least twenty years, and I don’t look forward to living in a city with Bozo the Clown as Chief of Police.

Past LAPD Chiefs of Police: Daryl Gates – he was a good leader but never knew how to cope with racial strife between the public and his police officers. Willie Williams – he was regarded as an outsider and an ineffective leader, the city mayor’s hand puppet. Bernard Parks, the last chief before William Bratton, was an insider, a veteran LAPD officer, but he didn’t make a good Chief of Police. He fixated on enforcing minor rules and regulations that made it difficult for police officers to concentrate on doing their jobs.

This isn’t a good thing for LA at all.

LAPD Chief Gives His Notice

LA Times: Plea deal is rejected in hit-and-run death of USC student

Earlier this year, a drunk driver ran over and killed a USC college student named Adrianna Bachan and left her companion Marcus Garfinkle with permanent disabilities. The crime would have been bad enough – the drunk driver’s husband, stepped out of the car, pushed Marcus Garfinkle OFF THE WINDSHIELD and then got back in the car and the couple drove off – a hit and run. The husband later fled to Mexico and was captured as he tried to sneak back into the country.

The DA offered Josue Luna – the husband – a plea deal of six years and four years for his wife Claudia Cabrera, the drunk driver. The couple turned down the plea deal. God, please please please let this case go in front of a jury. I hope they get life in prison. What kind of upside-down world are we living in, when you can negotiate murder and attempted murder charges down to four and six year prison sentences?

Here’s a web link to an earlier LA Times news story about the crime. Man charged in connection with fatal hit-and-run at USC

Suspect in Burk’s death had pass to visit DMV on day that staffers were furloughed

Collision of 2 L.A. worlds may have led to girl’s death

This is the face of early parole for non-violent offenders. Lily Burk was not the criminal, but she became the victim of one – police report that her throat was slashed by a career criminal (read: nonviolent) who kidnapped her in a failed robbery attempt.

Lily Burk was a community volunteer, the upcoming lead in her school play, and by all accounts, a wonderful young woman with a bright and limitless future. While I do not know the Burk family, I grieve for them, and for the loss of their beautiful daughter. Remember her face and her name when politicians representing you start talking about early release of 27,000 ‘nonviolent’ prisoners.

Her alleged killer was considered a low-level, non-violent offender, and yet, he is charged with kidnapping her and slashing her throat. Remember her, and remember what this worthless junkie did to her. Allegedly, of course. We wouldn’t want to affect the bastard getting his right to a fair trial now, would we?

The picture above is credited to the LA Times/other unidentified individuals.

Edited to add: The more I think about this, the angrier it makes me. Parents can do everything right – from the car seat to the booster seat, well-baby checkups and carefully screened playdates – and then, when the kids are old enough to go out in the world on their own, some worthless bastard slits their throat. This isn’t right. It just isn’t right at all.

Useful links and other info for those who want to help the Iranian dissidents. Unconfirmed, but rampant online are these hints:

Change the time and date on your computer’s time clock in Windows to Tehran time. This tip (unconfirmed but repeated by users inside Twitter) is supposed to throw off the Iranian gov’t, which is going after in-country Tweeters and other dissidents with a vengeance.

The more technologically savvy can parse details from the following ComputerWorld.com article: I do not endorse or recommend launching DDOS (electronic denial of service attacks) on official Iranian gov’t websites, nor do I understand how in the f— it works in the first place, but some people around the world are taking matters into their own hands. This action is a response to the Iranian govt’s shutting down of cell phone networks, SMS and other methods of communication. Unrest In Iran, The Tech Side Of The Story

Here’s a link to a blog written by a network security expert. Iranian opposition launches organized cyber attack against pro-Ahmadinejad sites

DDos attacks might very well be construed as a crime by the US Federal Gov’t, and I highly don’t recommend launching your own attacks. If you’re smart enough to understand all this gobbledygook (and thank God, I am not, or I’d probably be in there committing electronic mayhem), then have at it: just be aware that there may be legal consequences for your activism.

For those with a Twitter account, log in and do a search, and then you can sign up to be on the notification list to support the international journalists, reporters, and the Iranian dissidents, all of whom are risking their lives to report the news as it happens. The account names aren’t listed here because of reprisal attacks that have been launched against those inside Iran who are reporting the news back out to the world via Twitter.

Google’s supposed to have an update coming for the clunky interface on the G1, but if you install the hacked version now, it will lock you out of the G1 Marketplace. That means no downloading of new programs until the real version of the G1 update is released to the public.

I tried following the hackable directions available on some tech websites to install the Google update, but it’s way past what I know how to do. I don’t want to turn my G1 into an electronic brick.

Google does it again with the G1

The one thing that makes this gadget worth owning is the Marketplace. I’m also a huge fan of T-Mobile as a service provider. Regular folks have written hundreds of programs that make the G1 better to use. There’s a lot of junk too, but I am constantly amazed at the new programs that are added every single day. If you leave people alone, they do a better job of fixing problems than – well, the government, and way better than big corporations like Google and T-Mobile. Most of the downloads are free, although some cost money. A user-generated feedback and rating system gives the end user an idea of whether or not a program is worth downloading.

Which is why the open-source format was the smartest choice that Google could have made when they partnered with T-Mobile on the production of the G1 and the Android operating system. When the G1 was released, the camera was worthless. Someone wrote a program that made the camera work right, and then they uploaded it to the G1 Marketplace.

Also worth noting is T-Mobile’s user-friendly attitude towards their customers, compared to other wireless providers, such as Verizon. T-Mobile does not nickel and dime the customer to death. On my Verizon phone, which thank God, the contract is almost up, everything costs extra, from a ringtone (99 cents+, plus a monthly $3 user fee for all ringtones, PLUS, you have to pay the 99 cents+ fee again in 12 months, if you want to use the sound again for another year) to GPS navigation.

On T-Mobile, these options on their smartphones and PDAs have always been free. As soon as my Verizon contract is up, I’ll add phone service to my G1 and I’ll cancel my service with Verizon. I’ve been a customer for 15 years. They lost me over their closed-source, nickel-and-dime attitude. Yeah, I modded my Verizon phone with my own ringtones, saving myself $37 a year in fees (which I wouldn’t have spent on a stupid ringtone, anyways), but after spending almost 5 years with T-Mobile as a data customer, I have to say that I’m now used to doing business their way.

Former Los Angeles talk show host John Ziegler was arrested at USC after handing out free copies of his new DVD, ‘Media Malpractice.’  He was objecting to a journalism award being presented to Katie Couric for an interview she did with Sarah Palin.

Strange.  If it was Jesse Jackson who’d been roughed up, handcuffed and arrested, there would be 24/7 news coverage.  Don’t get me wrong.  I voted for Obama.  I just think this is an obvious case of reverse racism and trying to shut someone up because their opinions don’t agree with the majority.   Ziegler’s not my favorite person, which is the whole point of freedom of speech.  The voice of the minority has a right to protection from the oppression of the majority. 

We all could wake up one day and find out everything is gone. 

“When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
Then they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Attributed to Martin Niemöller

LA Journalist Arrested

President-elect to Travel by Train to Inaugural Weekend

President-elect Barack Obama will board a train in Philadelphia on January 17 to make his way to Washington in the final leg of his incredible, nearly 2-year journey to the White House.

Obama’s Inaugural Blog

David Maxwell for The New York Times
Usually bustling with orders for Christmas cookies, the Archway plant in Ashland, Ohio, has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The crisis is on display here. Starla D. Darling, 27, was pregnant when she learned that her insurance coverage was about to end. She rushed to the hospital, took a medication to induce labor and then had an emergency Caesarean section, in the hope that her Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan would pay for the delivery.

When a Job Disappears, So Does the Health Care

Blogs of Note:
Technology Liberation Front – Protecting Free Speech On the Net and Exposing the Lunatic Fringe