OUTSOURCING COMPASSION in the health care industry?

THE ATLANTA SHOOTING STORY HAS BEEN UPDATED: Click here or scroll down.

LIVEBLOGGING THE DUTCH ELECTIONS: At Pieter Dorsman’s, of course.

NEWS FROM ANBAR: BILL ROGGIO REPORTS:

The Anbar tribes’ turn against al-Qaeda has developed significantly since the end of the Anbar Campaign late last year, which swept al-Qaeda and the insurgency from the major towns and cities west of Ramadi. Over the past year, the majority of the tribes have denounced al-Qaeda and formed alliances with the Iraqi government and U.S. forces operating in the region. Numerous ‘foreign fighters’ have been killed or captured by the tribes. The tribes are working to restore order, and are providing recruits for the police and Army, despite horrific suicide attacks on recruiting centers. These attacks have not deterred the recruiting, but in fact have motivated the tribes to fight al-Qaeda.

The Anbar tribes have also taken an active role in fighting al-Qaeda. In March, several tribes and Sunni insurgent groups formed the Anbar Revenge Brigades to hunt al-Qaeda operatives in western Iraq. At the end of the summer, 25 of the 31 Anbar tribes banded together and created the Anbar Salvation Council to openly fight al-Qaeda, and pledged “30,000 young men armed with assault rifles who were willing to confront and kill the insurgents and criminal gangs.”The Council has killed and captured numerous ‘foreign fighters’ and has provided hundreds of recruits for the police and Army, despite horrific attacks designed to terrorize new volunteers. . . . Lost in the current debate over Iraq – civil war or sectarian violence, success or failure, increasing troops or strategic redeployment, victory or defeat – is the sea-change occurring in western Iraq. The U.S. military has coaxed a large majority of the Sunnis of Anbar province, perhaps one of the most sympathetic groups to al-Qaeda in the Middle East, to turn on al-Qaeda. The choice wasn’t difficult after the tribes saw what al-Qaeda had to offer.

Read the whole thing.

I’VE WRITTEN HERE BEFORE about the Secret Service’s problems — see this collection of links — but here’s a new kind of embarrassment:

First Daughter Barbara Bush had her purse and cell phone stolen as she had dinner in a restaurant in Buenos Aires, Argentina, even though she was being guarded by a detail of Secret Service agents, according to law enforcement reports made available to ABC News. . . .

The purse snatching took place on Barbara’s first night in town while she was dining in the picturesque San Telmo neighborhood. According to the reports, the Secret Service agents failed to notice the incident.

They’re supposed to be looking for assassins, not petty thieves. Still, this is embarrassing, and I imagine that Barbara Bush’s cellphone may have had numbers in it that shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.

BIG NEWS: “Pajamas Media, as of 9:10 PST today, has been informed that the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has just issued an order barring the deportation of Zahra Kamalfar and her children from Moscow for two weeks. Aeroflot – the airline that was going to take Kamalfar and her children to Tehran – has been notified and is reportedly complying. Aeroflot is returning the family belongings that already were shipped by the airline to Tehran. Moscow airport authorities have given the family temporary blankets, etc.” About time.

There’s lots more on this story at Pajamas Media, which seems to be pretty much the only place covering it.

DIGITAL CAMERA CARNIVAL: Okay, the entries are in. There were actually so many that I’m breaking this Carnival into two parts, with the second to follow tomorrow or Friday. (That also means that it’s not too late to send one in — just put “digital camera carnival” in the subject line so that I can find it.) But first, my own post in response to a reader email from Danny Glover (yes, that Danny Glover: the blogger!). Glover writes:

My wife and I are wanting a digital camera but don’t really have any experience in that realm other than clicking a few photos of our kids on my Dad’s camera. I know you’ve written about cameras regularly.

We not looking for anything fancy, but we don’t want junk, either. Any recommendations on the best and most user-friendly options out there now for newcomers like us? Something in the middle tier that will take great pictures, interact well with our Dell Inspiron, etc.? Can you point me to some of your most useful blog posts on the subject?

The short answer is that it’s hard to buy a bad digital camera any more. Most anything in the $200-400 range will be very good, and pretty easy to use. I’m quite happy with my Sony DSC-W7 pocket camera, and you could drop to the 5-megapixel DSC-W5 without sacrificing very much. Ann Althouse has this small Sony, and a look at her blog will illustrate that it does excellent work. Unlike mine, though, it uses a proprietary rechargeable battery instead of AA batteries. I like the flexibility of being able to pick up fresh batteries anywhere in a pinch, though in truth I seldom have to do that.

In this earlier post, Andrew Marcus explains why he favors the Canon Powershot A630 — it’s good, reasonably priced, takes AA batteries and has a swinging display screen that’s handy for some shots. Things to look at: If your laptop has only one kind of cardreader — my Dell has an SD slot but no other — you might want a camera that uses that kind of card. It’s not hard to hook up a USB cable, though. Also check video formats. If you’ve got a PC, you’re better off with a camera that records video in MPEG; if you’ve got an Apple, you might prefer one that records in QuickTime, though this isn’t a big issue if you’re willing to spend 50-75 bucks on software. (More on digital still cameras and video here.) I also recommend checking out sites like DPReview.com, Steve’s Digicams, and KenRockwell.com for reviews. (I notice that Ken has a holiday camera guide posted, too. He calls the Canon Powershot A530 the best buy of the season, and at $149 on Amazon, it would have to be.) The good news, as I’ve said, is that you can’t really go wrong. Reader Allan McLane writes that he bought the Canon SD800 on Rockwell’s recommendation and reports “I completely agree with his comments.” He also recommends this photoblog.

Here’s a new forum for discussing digital SLRs. And here’s a cool surgical camera.

Clayton Cramer is posting pictures (with links to full 6MP images) from his HP Photosmart e427 camera.

Meanwhile, reader Trey Monroe stresses lenses:

My advice, get a camera that can use interchangeable lenses, and buy up a lot of the older lenses. I have a Nikon D50, entry level digital SLR. I have been buying old glass on eBay, I refuse to pay more than $40 including shipping. What I get are WONDERFUL old lenses that I can use manually on the camera. These lenses produce SHARP images with wonderful color. So far, I bought a 24mm, a 28mm, a 55mm macro, a 105mm, a 135mm, and a vintage 200mm with an original case. None cost more than $40 delivered. The differences in the images is visible even in 4×6 enlargements. The colors are better too! See if the Cannon cameras or other brands can do the same thing, then buy up the old glass, buy a handheld meter if you have to, and take pictures that will put those plastic zoom lenses that come with the cameras to shame. It is all about the lenses, garbage in, well, you know the rest.

Yes, I’ve noted before that my Toshiba 3.2 megapixel camera takes pictures that enlarge as well as many 6 megapixel images, because it has an excellent Canon lens. The glass does matter.

Speaking of glass, at Technogypsy there’s a look at Macro photography and legacy lenses.

John Palmer posts several pictures from his new Canon SD700 — plus a warning about shirt-pocket cameras’ tendency to fall out of the shirt pocket if you’re not careful. He adds by email: “Follow-up to that post. I dropped that camera into our hot tub and had to buy another one!” Beware.

My brother has a Panasonic Lumix with a smooth, slick body that looks great, but it’s so slick that it’s easy to drop it from your hand if you don’t use the wrist lanyard. But it’s otherwise a great camera. Hmm, maybe this is a marketing strategy!

Doug Landrum posts with suggestions to think about how you will use your camera. Good advice.

Some very cool balloon photoblogging here, with pictures by a Panasonic FZ4

Brian Leon looks at the question of filters vs. photoshop.

Phil Philpot sends a link to a 1500 Megapixel photo of Macchu Picchu. Can you say detail?

Eric Scheie still likes his Nikon Coolpix. It’s stylish yet competent — just like him. And his dog.

More later.

UPDATE: Disagreement on the AA battery issue, from Ann Althouse, with interesting discussion in the comments.

BEFORE SERVING YOUR GUESTS TOMORROW, be sure to go through this Thanksgiving pre-meal safety demonstration.

NOTING THAT JANET RENO IS CRITICIZING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S WAR ON TERROR POLICIES, SayUncle is conflicted:

I couldn’t decide which bit of smarmy commentary to use, so I’ll use both. Which comment should Uncle have made:

1 – Janet Reno criticizing the heavy-handed tactics of the Justice Department is like Michael Richards criticizing me for racial insensitivity.

or:

2 – When someone who set people on fire says you’re setting a dangerous precedent, it may be time for some serious introspection.

Decisions, decisions?

He’s soliciting feedback.

IF THE SAUDIS ARE WORRIED ABOUT BAD PRESS, perhaps they shouldn’t describe keeping slaves as “traditional Muslim behavior.”

POLICE IN ATLANTA have shot and killed a 92-year-old woman in what appears to be another wrong-house no-knock raid. As I’ve said before, these raids should only occur when there’s reason to believe that lives are in immediate jeopardy. And police should be liable, civilly and criminally, without any shield of official immunity, in cases where these no-knock raids go wrong.

UPDATE: The police claim that they knocked and announced. However, as Radley Balko has noted, often such behavior is pretty notional, with the door being kicked down immediately thereafter. Do the police have video that would support their story? Because in cases like this, I think the burden should be on the government to demonstrate that it acted appropriately. Home, castle, and all that.

Meanwhile, reader Harold Williams emails:

Reading the reports by professional journalists confuses me about what actually happened. The 3 plainclothes men were shot “as they approached the house.” The woman shot “from the inside.” That’s different than an alternative description ‘as they broke in the door.’

For a 92 year old lady to hit 3 fast-moving with a handgun in a surprise no-knock probably means that the detectives were less than 10 feet from her. If this is the case, then I would think that the relative positioning of everyone and time/distance would have let at least one detective overwhelm her.

Anytime an innocent person is killed it is a tragedy. In this case more so by the addition of a variety of factors. Could the police have been so STUPID as to break in a door in a troubled neighborhood without at least one clearly uniformed authority figure?

Let’s give the facts a day to clarify themselves, then assign blame. And I mean heads roll if stupidity and negligence resulted in an innocent death.

Heads, alas, don’t roll nearly often enough in such cases. But we should certainly try to figure out what happened. Of course, if raids like this were routinely videotaped we wouldn’t have to wonder quite so much who to believe.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tamara K. comments:

Look, if three burly dudes in street clothes start banging on my door one night and try and force their way into my home, I don’t care if they’re yelling “Police!” or “Singing Telegram!”, that’s why I keep a loaded M4 carbine in the house. They’re not dressed like cops, and I can think of no reason the police would need to get into my house, so my natural assumption would be that these were home invaders of some sort. If the real police need to talk with me, they can get two guys in stopsign hats and 1 Adam 12 outfits to come knock on my door like civilized people. I, a civilized person myself, will then answer it.

They will either say “Miss K., we have a warrant,” in which case we’ll all go for a ride to the station, call up some lawyers, and get everything as squared away as we can, since this is obviously a mistake, or they will say “Is Mr. Gonzales here? We have a warrant for his arrest,” whereupon I will reply “Why, no; you have the wrong address. Would you like to come in for milk and cookies and to look around and reassure yourselves that there is no Mr. Gonzales here?”

That makes sense to me.

MORE: More background here. Note that the officers weren’t in uniform.

And Radley Balko has more thoughts.

STILL MORE: Radley Balko watched the press conference and reports:

According to the Atlanta assistant chief of police:

1) The search warrant was in fact a no-knock warrant.

2) Police claim there was an undercover buy at the residence. The seller was apparently a man — obviously not Ms. Johnston.

3) “Suspected narcotics” were seized from the home, and have been sent to a crime lab for analysis. The assistant chief wouldn’t say how much of the suspected narcotics they found.

4) He also wouldn’t speculate if Johnston herself was involved in dealing drugs, or knew if drugs were being dealt from her home, saying only that both were “under investigation.”

5) He maintains that despite the no-knock warrant police still announced themselves before entering, though he acknowledged moments later that the announcement came as police were battering down the door.

It isn’t at all difficult to see how a 92-year old woman may not have heard or comprehended the announcement. A reader reminds me that the incident is pretty similar to a police shooting in Alabama this past June, where an innocent, elderly man was shot when police forced entry into his home while looking for his nephew. The man — who had done nothing wrong — also mistook the officers for criminal intruders, and met them with a gun. Fortunately, he survived.

Even assuming the controlled buy, the incident still illustrates the folly of these raids. Paramilitary tactics don’t defuse violent situations, as police groups and their supporters sometimes claim. They create them. They make things more volatile for everyone — cops, suspects, and bystanders. Does anyone honestly believe that Ms. Johnson would have opened fire had a couple of uniformed officers politely knocked on her door, showed her a warrant, and asked if they could come inside?

Meanwhile, reader John McGinnis emails:

Go to www.zillow.com. Enter 933 Neal St. Atlanta, Ga in the address bar. In the house pop up click the “bird’s eye view” link. You should get a two pane display. One overview satellite shot and a tighter shot of just that house. If you are like me the first that that should pop out is that there is a wheel chair ramp right up to the front of the home. I would have hoped that that substructure would have given the cops some pause if they had done some pre-site surveillance.

This link should get you the photo. Unless crack houses are taking the handicap-accessibility laws more seriously than I had thought, this might have sounded a cautionary note.

RENOWNED KIDNEYBLOGGER VIRGINIA POSTREL has more on organ donation policy here and here.

MORE ON GAY MARRIAGE IN ISRAEL: “The decision does not mean that Israeli gays and lesbians can enter into homosexual marriages in Israel itself. The Israeli state does not have any system of civil marriage, and – to my knowledge – none of the state-certified religious authorities (Jewish, Muslim, and Christian) endorse gay marriage. . . . However, under the new decision, Israeli citizens can enter into gay marriages in foreign jurisdictions that allow them (such as Canada, Massachusetts, and some European countries), and have them recognized by the Israeli state.”

GOING ON JEOPARDY: I said it was brave, but perhaps it was foolhardy.

THE LOST MEANING OF Casino Royale.

THE SWIFT SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM: Still alive!

GUN RIGHTS UPDATE: “Bush isn’t watching the store.”

THOUGHTS ON LEBANON, SYRIA, IRAQ AND THE U.S., from Jules Crittenden: “This is the thing about dirty jobs that need to be done. They can only be ignored or left half-done for so long.”

TERRY HEATON: The blogosphere belongs to the blogosphere.

IRAQ: “So far this month, the civilian casualty count is well below the casualty count in October and below the six-month average. The security force casualties reduced 21 percent over the past four weeks, and are at the lowest level in 25 weeks, he said.”

UPDATE: The U.N., on the other hand, says that civilian casualties are up. In this, as in most things, I’m not inclined to trust the U.N. But your views may differ.

ANOTHER UPDATE: D’oh! Greyhawk emails:

Check the first paragraph of that AP story – the key word is October.

“BAGHDAD, Iraq – The United Nations said Wednesday that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the highest monthly toll since the March 2003 U.S. invasion and another sign of the severity of Iraq’s sectarian bloodbath.”

The headline is of course “U.N.: Iraqi civilian deaths at new high” – but should be “UN releases report of last months death toll in Iraq”.

But I guess that’s how the AP wants to cover the huge drop in violence this (post-Ramadan) month.

Well, my face is red for not noticing the different periods.

HMM, does this mean he’s running in 2008? Joe Lieberman hires Marshall “BullMoose” Wittmann.

WITH COLD WEATHER HERE, Jigsha Desai explains how to make chai.

VOTER FRAUD UPDATE:

Why do I feel like a voice in the wilderness? I keep pointing out problems with the election commission in Shelby County and nothing happens. Now, I have been given a copy of the state voter database by the Republican Party for analysis.

Checking the oldest 200,000 voters, I find over 7,000 people who are deceased. This doesn’t include the voters who had birthdates from the 1800s or 01/01/01. Checking for voters who might have two registrations in the state, I find over 5,600. Why doesn’t this alarm other people? Why doesn’t the state election commission push for a state-wide voter database?

Via the Knoxville News-Sentinel’s Michael Silence, who has more. As I’ve said before, we should be addressing these problems now, not waiting until there’s a crisis with a disputed election.

VOTER FRAUD UPDATE:

Why do I feel like a voice in the wilderness? I keep pointing out problems with the election commission in Shelby County and nothing happens. Now, I have been given a copy of the state voter database by the Republican Party for analysis.

Checking the oldest 200,000 voters, I find over 7,000 people who are deceased. This doesn’t include the voters who had birthdates from the 1800s or 01/01/01. Checking for voters who might have two registrations in the state, I find over 5,600. Why doesn’t this alarm other people? Why doesn’t the state election commission push for a state-wide voter database?

Via the Knoxville News-Sentinel’s Michael Silence, who has more.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: This seems like good news:

Had the appropriators challenged Coburn and DeMint, their only weapon would have been to threaten to shut the government down (if the spending bills aren’t allowed to pass and a CR is not issued, the government is forced to shut down). And that was something they weren’t willing to commit to.

So…if Congress does pass the CR as is currently expected in December, and the Democrats subsequently extend it for a full year, then Coburn and DeMint will have unilaterally saved taxpayers a whopping $17 billion!

$17 billion here, $17 billion there, pretty soon you’re talking big money.