Probable Cause

In 1998, Wayne Conley was arrested and trial began after he led a gang rape against an unconscious woman — a fellow soldier — while the others waited to take their turn.  After finishing, he told another man, “go in there and get you a piece.”

In 2009, after Melina Benninghoff was taken to task by blogger Mark Bennett because his articles were showing up on her website under her name, Wayne Conley — who turned out to be the tech guy behind Benninghoff’s website –  decided he was going to get him a piece of Mark Bennett.  Among other things, Conley has falsely labeled him “the worst lawyer in Houston.” Later, he went after Brian Tannebaum (for this post) and Scott Greenfield (who most recently wrote about it here).

As before, Conley does not seem to know when he has tried to get a piece that’s just too much for him.

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In Judaism, there is a tradition known as “building a fence around the law.” As the page linked in that last sentence indicates, it derives from a verse in the Tanakh — the Hebrew scriptures known to Christians as “the Old Testament” — specifically from Leviticus 18:30.

Leviticus, as you may know, is a favored book of the Republican Party because it tells them not to tolerate homosexuals and to avoid eating shrimp or lobster at fundraisers.  According to them one of those rules is absolutely applicable to the modern world.

But I’m not really going to get into politics here: this post is about the negative aspects of building fences and how this can as easily choke the law and divorce it from the intent behind it as it can protect it. (more…)

For a long time now, the Japanese have been on the cutting edge of technology. Now police there have parlayed this seemingly-nationally-inculcated skillset into a cheap way to catch criminals.

Frankly, I was a little surprised to hear that this story came out of Japan. It has all the earmarks of what passes for police work where I live in California.

Apparently, police in the Kanagawa prefecture of Japan really want to talk to somebody. Anybody. Apparently. Why else would they use Wii’s “Mii” feature to construct a “mug shot” of a person of interest. Or is he a suspect?

No, the only thing here that is suspect is whether the police officers in question have a) too much time on their hands and b) too few brains.

On the other hand, it just might work. How many Japanese can there be with hollowed-out cheeks whose skin tone nearly matches their hair? Add to that the fact that the head is large and the shoulders missing and I don’t think this guy should be as hard to identify as it first appeared.