I like how they found the wine glass intact at the end.

There's a lesson here about why you should drink quality wine.

Fewer guns! More wine!

Bleeding heart liberals: better at crime prevention than gun-wielding law and order types.

Crap, pwned by Nakku. I hate you, Nakku.

This is like some liberal gun-control fantasy:

"Well, I bet if someone broke into your house, you'd want a gun."

"No, you give most people a glass of wine and a hug, and they realize we're all one big family."

But it's true!

I'm astonished the guy had the presence of mind (or the stones) to respond with an offer of wine. Maybe he took inspiration from this lady.

Arms are for hugging.

The person who offered the wine was a woman.

What about where he says "I must have the wrong house"? This guy sounds seriously delusional to me.

Even nobody got hurt this time--although I suspect the 14-year-old might suffer some lingering effects of having a gun at her head in such an apparently-safe setting--we've still got this lunatic wandering around with his gun, looking for the right house.

A woman named "Cha Cha."

The person who offered the wine was a woman

...thus making the possession of stones even more remarkable

I hate you, Nakku.
Somebody needs some wine, and a hug.

10: lunatic? Or diamond in the rough?

10: Having a gun shoved in your face at that age doesn't have t be particularly lingering. I agree the comment suggests he still wanted to rip someone off, just not these people. He's got problems --- but we already knew that.

10: Obviously that whole "I've got the wrong house" thing is merely a polite excuse to excuse himself.

All we need is love. Love. Love is all we need.

13: Wine and a hug would be awesome. Could you also get my husband to stop nagging me before I've finished my coffee?

i still remember one of the first pre-sentence reports I ever received (for a felony client).

Dad was in the penitentary. One brother was dead. Another in jail. Mom just got out. Sister was a multiple felony.

Looking at her family life was liking seeing a big funnel to where she was then.

Mama's in the graveyard, Papa's in the penn.

20: well, gosh, with a dad in the Ivy League you'd think the prospects for the kid would be at least okay.

15, 16: Seems to me there are two ways to read the "wrong house" bit. One is soub's, that he rationally wanted to rob somebody, but then these people turned out to be nice. My preferred interpretation is that he was actually in the grip of a delusion, and this behavior was so unexpected as to jar him out of it, rendering him totally confused. I picture lots of blinking and occasional shakes of the head accompanying that statement. As for polite excuses, I'm unconvinced.

I'm all in favor of the lady defusing the situation through hospitality--seriously. And it may be best that nobody snuck up behind him while he was distracted by the camembert and held him down until the cops showed up. Maybe. But if we assume the guy isn't actually a committed criminal (in which case, yes arrest him immediately), then he needs help and shouldn't be sent out into the streets again. The wine and the hugs were good for him, sure, but their effects may fade.

2- Indeed- if it had been 3 buck chuck they'd all be dead and raped.

21:

You must have never been to Penn.

16: "I've got the wrong house" is the new "Gotta go talk to a man about a dog".

we've still got this lunatic wandering around with his gun, looking for the right house.

Are you saying that he ought to be in the wrong house? Because that's nuts! Nuts! Right houses for everyone!

My theory is that the house RIGHT NEXT DOOR was owned by a drug lord and made out of goldplatinumdiamonds. There is as much textual support for my theory as for that in 22.

Let me guess, papa was a good'n but the jealous type?

Right house typically means "Not a white person's house."

test

27: Textual support, nice. From text, too.

I conclude that he was confused partly because the story says the fingerprints haven't yet led to an arrest. Or is the new theory that this was an accepted way to enter the party at the drug lord's house, so no violence ensued/nobody reported it?

Oh wait, the drug lord's not likely to call the cops, is he? Well played, text, well played.

29: for some reason I also assumed (non-textually! Ahh!) that this was a swanky-white neighborhood. Any DC-ers fill me in on the 1300 block of Constitution Ave NE? The story says it's on Capitol Hill...

Arms are for mashing.

nice, MYB. I guess what I mean is, why pick the least charitable interpretation possible? Isn't it more likely that the guy just had a change of heart?

33 written by con-text.

Is there a more charitable interpretation? I thought I was being nice by considering the guy criminally sick instead of just plain criminal. B's theory, which I assume was tongue-in-cheek, supposes a robber who is desperate/committed enough that he pulls his gun on a child and then, when offered wine, says "whoops, sorry!" I see that behavior, I think crazy.

So, yeah, I'm open to other suggestions about how this can be read--the part I expected people might disagree with wasn't my figuring the guy's a loon, but my criticizing the bleeding-heart huggy wine people (who did, to be fair, prevent their daughter from getting shot in the head, so good on them for that) for letting him go.

Everyone knows that all robbers are heartless bastards who would just as soon shoot you as to drink your wine.

It just show that politeness and hospitality conquer all.

37: I was once burglarized (and my roommate assaulted) by a very slight acquaintance who felt that I had been rude when I failed to offer him food when he barged in one night uninvited and hungry. Rudeness is never acceptable!

I shot a man in Reno, just to drink his wine.

Rudeness is never acceptable!

I agree, but I'm torn: should this behavior be considered rude, or just playful?

Disarmed by a Troisième Cru? What a plebe.

Carolina was the place that gave us Beverly Russell and Sharon Smith, right?

(Two Carolinas? Are you serious? Thr idea makes my head hurt.)

But civilians "letting the criminal go" is exactly what cops tell you to do - don't fuck with a criminal, even if you don't think he's armed. One night I woke up to see some guy breaking into my MIL's car (she was staying with us). I called the cops, and they kept telling me to stay in my house, even if he started to leave before they got there.

Now, perhaps they should have offered him more wine, but maybe they weren't willing to invest that much - any estimates on the cost of Chateau Whatever?

Apo is correct. This was not the time to offer him Mad Dog 20/20.

43: Recent vintage, 60 bucks.

42: That was the other Carolina. We're the ones who sent the folks up to protest the Hindu chaplain delivering the Senate invocation the other day.

(re 23) It's now three buck chuck?! Man. Too rich for my blood.

MYB, I disagreed with both parts of the comment. There are probably a lot of criminals who are just a hair trigger away from not committing crimes, this was one of them, and it worked out in an unexpected way. It's probably unsettling to think that the lines are this blurry, but they are.

But civilians "letting the criminal go" is exactly what cops tell you to do - don't fuck with a criminal, even if you don't think he's armed.

Sure, and I'm not sure the cops are wrong to give that instruction. Make sure nobody gets unnecessarily hurt is the first priority, and then worry about catching the criminal after everybody's safe.

The position from which I've been arguing, though, calls proponents of that view a bunch of pussies and blames them (you? us? gays? liberals. that's it. liberals) for everything that's wrong with society today. See, if more criminals just had the fear of God in them and knew that if they gatecrashed a swanky party on Capitol Hill they'd find themselves looking at the business end of a .45, well, then maybe crime rates would go down overall. Because if there's one thing this guy can teach us about criminals, it's that they're rational actors who take account of all the risks associated with any course of action before they decide what to do. Or something.

So maybe trying to hold the guy down when he's crazy and he's got a gun isn't the best idea. But couldn't they have tried to talk about his problems with him? He reached out to them, asking for that group hug, and then they just let him walk out the door. Where's the love, people?

30:
test

well? are you waiting for a hug too?

I think that we should hear the gunman's side of the story before we leap to any conclusions.

There are probably a lot of criminals who are just a hair trigger away from not committing crimes [...] It's probably unsettling to think that the lines are this blurry, but they are.

Yeah, I think that recidivism studies and the loss of belief in rehabilitation have poisoned thinking on these lines.

Here, to me, is the clear evidence that we've confused cause and effect, and that (most) criminals are made, not born: we're up to, what, 1% of the entire US population in prison? Statistics make it quite clear that most of these will commit more crimes and spend more time in prison. But we know that a huge portion of these people wouldn't be in prison at all if not for our fucked-up drug laws. And, since the imprisoned percentage used to be so much lower, we also know - or have a pretty good idea - that 1% of the populace is not inherently criminal.

IOW, we as a society are choosing to create more criminals by criminalizing near-harmless behavior and then placing these "criminals" into finishing schools with experienced felons. (any analogy with terrorists and Iraq is actually coincidental, but probably apt)

That's not a very swanky part of Capitol Hill.

That's what she said.

Zing!

#40. Very rude. Etiquette demands that the legislator first offer the blower/blowee some nominal gratuity.

"I must have the wrong house"

Once, at 6AM, in nothing but my shorts, when I confronted the guy who'd just broken into my house by waving a fireplace poker and screaming like a lunatic, he said the same thing "Sorry. I must have the wrong house."

This is actually a paradigmatic Washington DC story, where some of the worst, most violent neighborhoods in the country are right up against some of the wealthiest and most gentrified populations.

since the imprisoned percentage used to be so much lower, we also know - or have a pretty good idea - that 1% of the populace is not inherently criminal.

I don't know what you mean by "inherently criminal". The imprisoned percentage used to be a lot lower, but the violent crime rate also used to be a lot higher. The increase in imprisonment is a delayed response to an explosion in violent crime that occurred starting in the early 60s.

The idea of "inherently criminal" is coming out of 48's response to MYB. That maybe (not likely, but this is for the sake of discussion) this guy really wasn't much of a criminal, and might not simply go one block over to perform the robbery he was weirded out of by the Crazy White People.

As for crime & prison rates, you're right, but I was thinking over the past 100 years, not just the past 30-40. We've never felt the need to imprison 1% of the population before, not because people used to like criminals more, but because we defined the criminal class differently. The relationship between Civil Rights and black prison rates (emancipated blacks are scary, throw them in jail) is important but not, I think, critical to my hypothesis.

52. is right, too many people in jail is a big problem in the US, and rarely discussed reasonably. Which democratic candidate is most courageous in supporting unpopular legislation to change this?

59: Not sure about the Dems, but on the other side, you gotta give Sam Brownback some credit for taking tentative rhetorical steps in the right direction

Imprisonment in the U.S. is more a state than Federal issue. A lot of states are buckling under the burden of prison costs and looking for ways to keep non-violent criminals out of prison. I think the war on drugs is terrible public policy. But generally people like first time non-violent drug offenders are very unlikely to end up in prison, unless they are dealers.

I think most people are a little less concerned with how people become violent criminals than the fact that they are violent criminals. Someone who would pull a gun in a garden party is an extremely dangerous person, however they got that way and whatever the result of this particular incident. This society has higher levels of lethal violence than any other major industrialized country. It's very important to address the "root causes" of this, but it's even more important to protect law-abiding citizens from the fallout.

Edwards doesn't really address it on the poverty policy section of his website , but he's proposed some anti-war-on-drugs changes as part of his anti-poverty proposals here and here.

I wish he had the courage to be more up-front about it, but at least it's there.

62 to 59.

The increase in imprisonment is a delayed response to an explosion in violent crime that occurred starting in the early 60s.

It's much more than that. Among other things (see 58), it's the result of a system that profits from incarceration, i.e., the prison-industrial complex.

Why is my theory insane? Guy breaks into party to rob it, grabs first available person, tries to intimidate everyone into handing over their wallets so he can make a quick getaway. He's tense and hyped up. Party guests freeze, then calmly treat him politely, which surprises him and leads him to relax a bit while still thinking they're being compliant. He sips some wine, they continue to be polite to him, the entire situation calms down a little bit and he starts to feel like a dick, so he says "I must have the wrong house" (i.e., "you seem like nice people, I don't want to rob you any more") and leaves.

It doesn't mean he's crazy. It means that being calm around people who are all pumped up with adrenalin is a good way of defusing a tense situation.

It means that being calm around people who are all pumped up with adrenalin is a good way of defusing a tense situation.

Now that is a good point. The wine and cheese were most likely irrelevant.

Which democratic candidate is most courageous in supporting unpopular legislation to change this?

I wouldn't call him reasonable, exactly, but Mike Gravel has certainly been outspoken in his opposition to the war on drugs policies.

23: Ah, but if they'd offered him the Two-buck Chuck 2005 Chardonnay, they could have mentioned that it recently won a gold medal. 'See - we're giving you good cheap wine!'

When I was mugged in Atlanta by two guys who were poking knives into my abdomen, I was pretty much in an otherworldly mental space while I was getting out my wallet. They just took my cash and handed me back my wallet, telling me to look at the ground. Ok. But then I had a really odd disassociative moment because I suddenly thought to myself, I don't have fare for the MARTA or even any money to call my friend to come get me. So as they were getting ready to move away, I said, "Hey, could I have a bit of money back to call a friend or catch a cab or something," in the tone of voice I might have used to ask my mom for a bit of money for the movies when I was a teenager. They sort of looked at me uncertainly for a second--they were young, but I can't really see them in my mind beyond that--and one guy said, "Sure, man, no problem" and handed me two singles. "See ya," said the other--not at all nastily or sarcastically, like we were buddies or something. And then they were off, on a slow run.

I think people can flash over from a hard mental place in a second if some other kind of social routine gets superimposed on the interaction. I think even a guy who has killed a bunch of people can suddenly have his mental channel switched over by some unexpected conversation.

The wine and cheese were most likely irrelevant.

I don't know. Ch. Malescot St-Exupery has a fair bit of Merlot in it. I shudder to think what might have happened if they'd served a more Cabernet-heavy blend.

I agree wholeheartedly with 69. Think about all the fairly fast changes in mood you undergo in a day - happy song on the car stereo, then BAM road rage, then, I dunno, hawk swoops in front of your car with a mouse in its claws. Road Rage forgotten.

We're so much less rational than we're willing to admit, that we actually deny that our out-of-control emotions are irrational, and thus easily changed. We'd rather own road rage than admit that it can be trumped in a second by some other fleeting stimulus.

people can flash over from a hard mental place in a second

This accords with a couple other hold-up stories I've heard. One guy held up at gunpoint near the U of C, who handed everything over, but told the stick up guy that he was keeping a ring, because it had sentimental value (the guy agreed), and a woman held up in NY, who chatted with the guy, walked to an ATM with him, where he introduced himself by name, apologized, and left with her money. The guy who keeps jacking Bubbles probably wouldn't be so reasonable, however.

To me it would be really embarrassing if I suddenly realized that I was holding a gun to the wrong 14-year-old's head at the wrong address, and I'd be very admiring of a tactful hostess who managed to salvage the occasion like that. Well done, gracious hostess!

The guy who keeps jacking Bubbles

I am unfamiliar with this euphemism.

I'd be very admiring of a tactful hostess who managed to salvage the occasion

John would then chase her around the room screaming "Suck it, baby! Suck it!"

Pacifying robbers with wine and cheese is more a communitarian tactic than a liberal one, IMHO.

I am unfamiliar with this euphemism.

Which season of the Wire are you up to?

72: I had a friend who grew up in a bad neighborhood, and would regularly ward off muggings by engaging the people in conversation, along the lines of:

"gimme your money!"

"why?"

"shut up, gimme your money!"

"really, what's that going to accomplish. I'm sure you need money, but think about..."

etc. etc.

Worked for him, but maybe an expert technique.

By the way, I think B is right about what happened.

Worked for him, but maybe an expert technique.

Did the muggers have guns?

By the way, I think B is right about what happened.

I once managed not to get beaten up at lunch by saying, "okay, just let me finish my peanut butter sandwich." I think it made the bully feel stupid.

80: I'm not sure. Probably not; I think they were mostly 14 year olds.

I defused an attempted mugging once by being grumpy. A bunch of guys surrounded me as I was carrying my bike up some stairs, and I said "please don't fuck with me, it's been a long day," to which the most aggresive guy said, somewhat huffily, "if we were gonna fuck with you we woulda done it already," and walked off. Another friend defeated a mugger by throwing a salad at them. Moral of the story? Many muggers are not highly motivated.

This is reminding me of that Orwell story from the Spanish Civil War about not shooting someone on the Fascist lines because they were holding their pants up, and you can't shoot a man who's holding his pants up, because that makes him a real person.

I defused an attempted mugging once by cracking the guy over the head with a 3/4 liter beer bottle, but that's not really relevant to the thread.

You should have just offered him the beer.

OTOH, your predilection for violence is probably genetically determined.

86: on the veldt, the men went off to hunt while the women cracked muggers over the head with beer bottles.

I think we should make this the all-evo-psych, all the time blog.

The bottle was empty -- I was going back to the store for the deposit and to buy more. If I'd had beer to offer, everything would have been simple. (As long as I'd also had pretzels, which are I assume the relevant analog to cheese.)

A couple of days ago I was fantasising about hiring LB to frighten the shit out of my delinquent roommate. (The primary tenant has a family member lawyer who's going to serve.)

77: Still midway through Season 1. My viewing was interrupted by the beach vacation.

JM I had some ideas for fucking with him for you in the other thread.

78 seems like a great way to get shot in the leg.

Yeah, I saw those. Don't know where I'd get a sonogram, though.

I can see I'm getting outvoted on whether or not this particular robber was weird in his susceptibility to being talked down, and as I (luckily) have no first- or second-hand experience with the Criminal Mind I'm almost ready to concede. One last plea, though: within seconds, this guy goes from "Give me your money or I start shooting" to "Can I get a hug?" in a matter of seconds, and you're all saying this is not evidence of imbalance?

In a matter of seconds, I say! sorry, poor editing.

Well, being a violent criminal at all is evidence of being kinda flippy -- someone who's all hyped up and in a strange emotional state is probably a much more typical criminal than your stone-cold killer. So, evidence of imbalance? Sure. Evidence of being crazier than your average criminal? Probably not.

94: sonogram images. Of course, they'd need a little photoshopping, since they usually include dates and names.

I think having him served by a lawyer is the best bet.

When I lived in NYC, up by Columbia, all of my roommates were mugged at one time or another [one even had his shoes taken]. I escaped this, in part, I believe, because I used to wear Finnish stompin' boots [Doc Martens before Doc Martens] and, in cooler weather, a threadbare [furbare?] sealskin coat I'd bought for $1.50 at a thrift shop in Boston. I also scowled a lot. So I'd come wandering home at all hours of the night, when the bar closed or after a bit of slap and tickle, and no one ever bothered me, much less held me up. I didn't have to provide cheese or even a naive Merlot.

What's wrong with hugs? Hugs are nice.

And, as the NRA would remind you, guns are also nice.

This guy was just all-around nice!

in a matter of seconds

It was about 10 minutes, according to the article.

Still midway through Season 1.

All will become clear.

Gah!

sonograms

97: I guess that's what I'm underestimating. Or, I would have thought the flip into "violent criminal" mode was serious enough that a person wouldn't flip back out so readily. But maybe that's just because I'm a man of conviction.

And I have no idea at all what I'm talking about in any concrete sense, honestly. But it sounds pretty likely.

Call me a hippie, but I suspect that most people who commit crimes are, in fact, not psychopaths, but instead folks who are kinda desperate for one reason or another. And that carrying a gun and pointing it at someone does require/create a kind of massive adrenalin rush. And that people who are in fight/flight mode are best dealt with calmly, because any kind of aggressive or resistant response is just going to feed into that loop.

Have I told this story here? When one of my professors was in college, a drunk Native American tried to mug him at knifepoint while he was waiting for a bus. So he started up a conversation with the mugger, how bad it was that Whitey was always keeping him down, what tribe he was from, and so on. Then the bus pulled up, he got on, and the mugger was left standing there with a baffled look on his face. Advantage: whitey!

I once was mugged and had my shoes taken. But the mugger left me his shoes, so it was alright.

More to the point, in my experience things like what Burke described in 69 and what Ogged described in 72 are quite common. If you act calmly you can often have amicable conversations, even with a guy that just threatened to kill you.

And that carrying a gun and pointing it at someone does require/create a kind of massive adrenalin rush.

Well, duh, B. What do you think we live for around here?

99: yeah, I had a roommate in Boston who always used to talk about the worth-it scale of potential mugging victims. Since he was both extremely large (6'7", 300) and extremely poor looking, he figured he could pretty much walk anywhere he wanted without trouble.

Call me a hippie, but

Hippiebutt.

97/106: A lot of it has to do with familiarity. Most people who commit violent crimes are feeling pushed into it, and the first time they do it they're likely as scared & wound up as the victim. So B's right, calmness is really a good idea. People can get used to anything though, so if you run into a particularly smooth/relaxed mugger or armed robber, they've probably done it a bunch. Those one are much less likely to hurt you unintentionally.

In one sense, I'd rather run into the latter. I'm probably going to lose my wallet, but I'm much less likely to get shot because the guy thought someone was moving to fast or whatever. On the other hand, these people are pretty much cooked. A nervous kid on his first or second B&E is probably a lot easier to turn around (I mean his live) than a guy whose been living off robbing people for a year or two.

This is reminding me of that Orwell story from the Spanish Civil War about not shooting someone on the Fascist lines because they were holding their pants up, and you can't shoot a man who's holding his pants up, because that makes him a real person.

You sure it was Orwell? Robert Graves relates a similar story in Goodbye to All That; at one point he's doing some sniping, and has a bead on a German soldier taking a bath. He decides he can't shoot him and turns the rifle over to one of the soldiers with him, who has no such compunctions.

Not sure, but I think so: it sounds like the sort of thing that might be a common experience.

113 & 114: From "Looking Back On The Spanish-War"

"At this moment, a man presumably carrying a
message to an officer, jumped out of the trench and ran along the top of
the parapet in full view. He was half-dressed and was holding up his
trousers with both hands as he ran. I refrained from shooting at him. It
is true that I am a poor shot and unlikely to hit a running man at a
hundred yards, and also that I was thinking chiefly about getting back to
our trench while the Fascists had their attention fixed on the
aeroplanes. Still, I did not shoot partly because of that detail about
the trousers. I had come here to shoot at 'Fascists'; but a man who is
holding up his trousers isn't a 'Fascist', he is visibly a
fellow-creature, similar to yourself, and you don't feel like shooting at
him."

And that's why the Democrats lost the White House.

116: Exactly. If Orwell had been a neocon, he would have understood the necessity to not just shoot the guy, but torture him afterwards. Preferably in some sexualized manner.

107: So what tribe was he?

Bitch is right -- I was just embarrassed, so I made up the "wrong house" thing. What would *you* say? Huh?

The race of the mugger is a relevant. It's a testimony to the political correctness of the press that a relevant fact like that is not mentioned.

117: Orwell would have seen this.

It's a totally different story if the mugger is white or not white.

Given the circumstances, I'd say it's a virtual certainty that the mugger was black. I don't think it actually matters, though.

Does it also change the story if the people at the party were black?

If a friend was telling me this story, that'd be my first question. And it was my first question when I read the story. I guess if he was white it would have been mentioned.

Of course.

Want to spell out why we should care?

He's tense and hyped up. Party guests freeze, then calmly treat him politely, which surprises him and leads him to relax a bit while still thinking they're being compliant.

This agrees with what my friend the bank teller told me about her instructions in case of hold-up. By the time the robber gets to the teller, they are (according to the bank) so pumped up and feeling so entitled to the money that they can be agreeable to waiting a few minutes for the clerk to "get authorization" or some other bank-y sounding, but bogus, delay. She had used this, successfully.

Incredible nose. Full-bodied, with ultra-elegant tannins that go on and on.

This had to have helped.

I'm already bored with this topic. But can you imagine blacks giving a group hug to a white mugger? Kind of hard to believe, right? But for the enlightened I guess race doesn't matter. That's why it wasn't even mentioned in the article, I suppose.

Kind of hard to believe, right?

More so than whites hugging a black mugger? Really?

Actually I could see that as a good sketch on Living Color. Jim Carrey holds up the Wayans and they end in a big group hug. It's comedy because it's hard to believe. Turn it around and it's just white self-congratulation. Not funny.

I honestly don't find either of these scenarios more improbable than the other.

That's because you're a self-congratulating liberal.

I didn't know that about you, teo.

I hope it's in your dating profile.

FWIW, I pictured Wesley Willis as the robber, and Kimberly from Diff'rent Strokes as the hostage.

I'm already bored with this topic.

Perhaps it would be more interesting if we knew if the man had tattoos? Was he in a hooded sweatshirt? A jacket? Could you imagine people offering wine to a man in a hooded clown suit? With the read nose you'd think he'd already had a bit too much to drink. And would we know if he was white, or just painted?

red

He was in a hooded sweatshirt, wasn't he? Because he pushed back the hood---the first sign of his warming up to the party guests!---upon being offered the wine.

I didn't go back to look, but I liked that bit of narrative detail, so...

I'll bet the mugger wasn't circumcised.

I'll bet he had a domineering mother who wouldn't LET him get circumcised.

He was wearing a hooded something, but the article didn't say if it was a sweatshirt or jacket. He was wearing nylon sweatpants, though. This is very important information.

I was imagining something that hid his face.

Yeah, could you imagine a bunch of self-congratulating white liberals hugging a guy in nylon sweatpants??

Who would wear a hooded jacket in July? Implausible! It's got to have been a hooded sweatshirt!

144: His enormous, uncircumcised mugger penis. Which none of you self-congratulating liberals would hug unless you were totally tanked on expensive wine.

I had a pet mugger once. I named him Shooter.

Maybe he was descended from the inhabitants of one of these islands.

Implausible!

Why does Chewbacca live on Endor, anyway?

A hoodie, you say? I think we have a suspect.

Yglesias is exactly the sort of guy who would be mollified by wine and a group hug. DeLong, on the other hand, would have painted the walls with that kid's head.

DeLong, on the other hand, would have painted the walls with that kid's head.

Only if she muttered something negative about free trade.

In that situation, you almost can't help but.

-- Protectionism is the only way to keep wines this good on the market.

{WHAMMO}

All our tellers must in future have a bottle of Chablis and a glass [or glasses in the case of an armed gang] to hand in the event of.....

Isn't that sort of erratic behavior commonly associated with meth? Yay for low-key, anyway.

I'm already bored with this topic.

<gord>Door's to your left.</gord>

The original link has gone stale. Here's a link to the Washington Post article. There's a photo of the girl's father attached to the story.