FULL IMMERSION: A curved 42″ widescreen monitor for gamers.

MCCAIN JUMPS AHEAD OF HUCKABEE in South Carolina.

ANOTHER DUMB S.W.A.T. RAID:

A tactical law enforcement team broke into Tom Shiflett’s home and took his 11-year-old son to hospital for court-ordered medical treatment for a minor head injury.

Garfield County’s All Hazards Response Team raided the home Friday night, a day after Jon Shiflett fell after grabbing the handle of a moving car. The child was returned to the family at about 2:30 a.m. Saturday, hours after the raid.

“Inappropriate is not nearly strong enough a word. It was gross irresponsibility and stupidity,” said Ross Talbott, owner of the Apple Tree Mobile Home Park south of New Castle who rents to the Shifletts and who witnessed the raid. “Is this Russia? I don’t know what we’re coming to when they think your kid needs medical help and they send a SWAT team.”

In the end, the injury wasn’t as severe as caseworkers from the Garfield County Department of Social Services thought when they went before a judge seeking a search warrant and order for medical treatment.

The doctor recommended fluids, Tylenol and ice to treat the bruises, according to a copy of Jon’s patient aftercare instructions.

People should lose their jobs over this. But they probably won’t. Accountability is for the little people.

UPDATE: Here’s the police side of the story:

Use of the Garfield County All Hazards Response Team (AHRT) was appropriate to seize Tom Shiflett’s son for medical care because of Shiflett’s confrontational history and repeated lack of cooperation, according to Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario.

“I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think we would have been able to accomplish it with just the deputies we had on duty,” Vallario said. “The end result of what happened was based on (Shiflett’s) decisions, not mine.”

The team used force to break into Shiflett’s home Friday night in Apple Tree Park near New Castle, and seized his 11-year-old son, Jon Shiflett. The boy was examined and returned hours later with the recommendation to ice his bruises and take Tylenol. . . . Vallario said Shiflett’s statements that his family members were thrown to the ground and that the warrant was never announced are false. He said two Garfield County deputies arrived Friday before the AHRT and explained the warrant and that they would need to take the 11-year-old boy in for medical evaluation.

“He was rather vulgar in his response,” Vallario said Tuesday. “I was given a court order, and I really don’t feel I have any choice but to comply with that court order.”

Read the whole thing. There are two stories here, but this still seems excessive. Meanwhile, reader Herschel Smith makes an excellent point:

Consider the irony. The Marines and Army have now progressed in their counterinsurgency campaign and the understanding of the population to the point that they can cordon and knock. They are respectful, cautious, and unwilling to impose anything foreign or hostile to the culture or the honor of the head of household. Yet in America we have men donning tactical gear to forcibly enter the homes of people and remove them for … forced medical service for non-life threatening injuries. It is a sad picture.

It is indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Phil Dean emails:

Kudos to you for fairly reporting the police’s side of this story, which is something that a lot of internet libertarians seem to consider beneath them.

Based on the facts we know, I don’t agree that the raid was necessarily excessive. Consider: the police have to enforce the court order. They sent two deputies to knock on the door and ask. They were unsuccessful. THEY STILL HAVE TO ENFORCE THE COURT ORDER. Now, whether this particular court order was reasonable or not is a separate issue, but that’s not the cops’ doing. And as far as “accountability” goes, they can also be held accountable for NOT executing a court order pertaining to the health and safety of a child. Just another one of the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t scenarios that make modern law enforcement so much fun.

Here’s my thing: critics of SWAT teams invariably say that the police’s legitimate interests can be served without tactical uniforms and big guns, that if the police would just be reasonable and knock on the door, all would be well. Fine. But here the police did that, and it didn’t do any good. When they escalate, of course, they’re fascists.

Fair points. Though I doubt they’d have gone this route in a fancy neighborhood nearly as quickly as in a trailer park.

AT SAYUNCLE: “Another case of the press taking dictation from The Violence Policy Center.”

WHAT NEWSPAPERS CAN DO that bloggers mostly can’t.

CLOUD COMPUTING: Ed Cone interviews Nick Carr.

MORE ON THE RON PAUL PROBLEM, from Rand Simberg. And Hot Air notes that now that he’s back in the debates, he can expect to be grilled on the subject of race. Oh goody.

THREE INTERESTING SCIENCE ITEMS FROM ALAN BOYLE, including a roundup on progress toward low-cost fusion. Bring it on! Not only do we need the power, but I always liked Robert Bussard.

DR. SANITY: A not-so-inexplicable anger.

“IRON MY SHIRT:” A radio stunt:

It turns out the guys who the Daily News named work for Boston station WBCN 104.1 FM, and are members of the Toucher and Rich Show.

So much for real political protesting, eh? But it amuses me that few news outlets bothered to do the leg work to find all this out and went ahead to report this incident like it was legitimate. It did give the MSM a chance to show Hillary looking PC by claiming she was being confronted by examples of “sexism” run wild, though. So, maybe that is why they didn’t want to look into it too hard. It would destroy the illusion of Hillary’s “strength” and place the focus on a radio stunt.

Nice work, guys.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, religious intimidation would lead to self-censorship by artists. And they were right!

JOHN MCCAIN AND JOE LIEBERMAN: The Surge Worked:

The question we face, on the first anniversary of the surge, is no longer whether the president’s decision a year ago was the right one, or if the counterinsurgency strategy developed by Gen. Petraeus is working. It is.

The question now is where we go from here to sustain the progress we have achieved — and in particular, how soon can more of our troops come home, based on the success of the surge.

Don’t rush things.

DON’T SUPPORT OBAMA? It’s because you’re a racist! There could be no other possible reason.

UPDATE: Phil Bowermaster disagrees: “Looks to me like he’s not saying that people who don’t support Obama are racists; he’s saying that people who lie about voting for Obama are racists. That still may be a huge reach, but there is something peculiar about the behavior of these democrats who say they’re for Obama but vote for Hilary. Taranto noted this yesterday.”

ANTI-GUN FOLDEROL from Citi Services.

UPDATE: Citi responds, but SayUncle isn’t satisfied.

JONAH GOLBERG’S LIBERAL FASCISM is now up to #20 on Amazon despite the best efforts of the anti-Jonah lefty blogosphere. Somebody even hacked the page — an Amazon first, I think — and replaced the cover photo with one of Jonah with a Hitler mustache, though Amazon had taken it down by the time I heard about it. The toxic response to the book, as some reviewers are noting, kind of proves his thesis . . . .

DRIVING AROUND in Intel’s mobile WiMax demo.

WAGE PRESSURE IN CHINA.

ROMNEY AND OBAMA are actually ahead in the delegate count.

UPDATE: But Romney’s behind Fred Thompson in the polls? Can this be right?

CHINA IN AMERICA: Representatives from NBC, Microsoft, several digital filtering companies and telecom giant AT&T said the time was right to start filtering for copyrighted content at the network level. Call them the Copyright Commissars.

UPDATE: Orin Kerr: “Would ISPs risk massive liability under the Wiretap Act to try to combat copyright infringement? I can’t imagine why they would do that, but I suppose that’s a question to ask them and their lawyers.”

HUCKAPPEAL: And some related thoughts here.

PROPHECY: Last week, Jonah Goldberg wrote:

Imagine the Democrats do rally around Obama. Imagine the media invests as heavily in him as I think we all know they will if he’s the nominee — and then imagine he loses. I seriously think certain segments of American political life will become completely unhinged.

Now note this email from an Andrew Sullivan reader:

Watched the NH returns with some friends last night, and something quite unexpected happened when the AP called it for Clinton — inexplicable ANGER. I was surrounded by people in their early 30’s, registered Democrats, receptive to the Clintons in the 90’s, and I swear I thought someone was going to throw their wine glass at the tube during her ‘victory’ speech.

And that’s just one primary! All is proceeding as Jonah has foreseen. I wonder if Glenn Greenwald has figured things out yet. Probably not . . . .

UPDATE: Check out this post over at DailyKos, and note the accompanying poll on whether the New Hampshire primary was rigged by those evil, Hillary-loving dudes at Diebold. (Bumped).

RESVERATROL UPDATE: “For the first time, scientists have proof in human subjects that a derivative of an ingredient in red wine combats some symptoms of aging. Sirtris Pharmaceuticals announced the results here on Monday at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference.” (Via Bill Quick).

I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE to note Barack Obama’s channeling of Bob the Builder.

BILL RICHARDSON quits.

VIRGINIA POSTREL posts a rare criticism of Reason magazine over the Ron Paul affair. Actually, I think it’s the only time she’s criticized the new regime; the only time I can remember, anyway.