THE CARNIVAL OF SPACE IS UP!

#OCCUPYFAIL: Readership of OWS Website Plummets as Movement Fizzles.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: James Lileks Demolishes Defenders of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh.

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals on kitchen gear.

REALLY? I mean, Really? I predict massive blowback.

UPDATE: Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy bus.

OF COURSE, NOBODY WILL GO TO JAIL: Botched raid costs Minneapolis $1 million.

The Minneapolis City Council approved a $1 million settlement Friday after a botched drug raid in 2010 in which an officer threw a “flash-bang” grenade into a south Minneapolis apartment burning the flesh off a woman’s leg.

The payout to Rickia Russell, who suffered permanent injuries, was the third largest payout for alleged Minneapolis police misconduct on record.

Flash grenades are intended to distract and intimidate, not to injure people, but during the raid the device rolled under the legs of Russell, who was seated on a sofa, and exploded. The police were looking that day for a drug dealer, narcotics and a firearm, but found nothing.

Russell, now 31, suffered third- and fourth-degree burns that caused a deep indentation on the back of one leg, requiring skin grafts from her scalp. She is still undergoing physical therapy.

“What happened in this case was an accident,” Minneapolis city attorney Susan Segal said in a statement. “It’s very unfortunate that Ms. Russell suffered serious injuries, however, accidents like this are rare.”

Yet incidents of fires, injuries and even deaths caused by the devices have led to costly settlements and policy changes in cities nationwide, including Minneapolis, where a 1989 fire started by a police grenade killed two people.

You throw a grenade, there had better be a credible threat to someone’s life, not just some bullshit drug raid. The supervisors on this raid should be in jail for reckless endangerment.

And note this: “In what Bennett called ‘a cascading series of errors,’ a Minneapolis police SWAT team smashed down the door with a battering ram without warning, when the search warrant police had obtained required officers to announce themselves before entering.”

Jail time and bankruptcy should be the result, not just a civil judgment against the city. And there should be no official immunity for no-knock raids.

ADVICE ON handgun slide manipulation.

STEPHEN GREEN IS Drunkblogging The Iowa Debate.

DIARY OF A USED CAR SALESMAN: How To Sell A Car That Smells Like A Corpse.

AT AMAZON, up to 50% off on DeWalt drills.

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Impeach Holder and DOJ Officials for DOJ Lies.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Don’t Like What People Say About You? Shut ’em down. Setting precedents here.

POLITICALLY CONNECTED TECHNOLOGY: LightSquared disrupts 75% of GPS receivers in gov’t testing. “The saga of LightSquared added a new chapter last night, as Bloomberg reported on the preliminary result of tests of the satellite Internet provider’s service in relation to GPS devices. The Obama administration has pushed LightSquared as a provider for its ambitious broadband expansion over the objections of the military, which warned that LightSquared’s operations would interfere with the satellite-based navigational system. The draft summary of the November testing shows that the military was right to be concerned.” That’s just a draft. It’ll be rewritten to show that there’s no reason to worry.

Plus this: “Why is this important? Philip Falcone is a big donor to the Democratic Party, and he has billions of dollars at stake in LightSquared’s approval. Also, Obama himself was an investor in LightSquared at one point, as were or are a number of his associates. The resounding failure in this test makes it look like the White House pressured witnesses to back off of exposing LightSquared’s product as exactly the kind of dangerous problem that critics had maintained all along — with the intent to mislead Congress into moving forward with LightSquared’s government contracts.”

EYE-TRACKING: What People Really Look At On Your Facebook Profile.

CHANGE: Evangelicals’ Collapsing Sexual Mores. This seems less horrible, and less novel, to me than it does to David French.

HYPE: Rick Santorum Will Score Upset Win in Tonight’s ‘Pivotal’ ABC Debate in Iowa. “It’s about the narrative arc, because TV news is show business, and show business requires a story that captures the public imagination. The people who run TV news are, to a greater extent than most viewers understand, deliberately controlling the story, deciding what is and is not ‘news.’”

UPDATE: Bill Quick: Whatever, Stacy. “The prospect of hanging focuses the mind wonderfully. And the national mind has felt the noose tightening around its collective neck for several years now. Angel-on-the-head-of-a-pin arguments about abortion, or sweeping hysteria about gays destroying the institution of marriage are minuscule distractions when you’re faced with possibly permanent unemployment, bankruptcy, negative home ownership, and a government that seems hell-bent on making your pain worse, not better. That’s what this election is about.”

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Join the Austin Texas “Welcoming” Party for Eric Holder Tuesday.

STEPHANIE PLUM MEETS BIG BANG THEORY: Reader Rob Steiner asks me to plug his Aspect of Pale Night, a geek-chic mystery. Done!

ROGER SIMON: Gingrich Tells Truth about ‘Palestine’—MSM Goes in a Dither.

ROOTING OUT BOGUS SCHOLARSHIP: “Some years ago, I noticed several authors making the assertion that indentured servants, and in one instance even women and the propertyless, were routinely barred from owning guns in the Colonies and in the early Republic. All those assertions turned out to rely on Michael Bellesiles’ pre–Arming America work that made such an assertion, especially Gun Laws in Early America: The Regulation of Firearms Ownership, 1607–1794, 16 Law & Hist. Rev. 567, 574, 576 (1998).” Reliance on Bellesiles is scholarly malpractice.

CHANGE: Protesters chant ‘Russia without Putin’ as Kremlin’s opponents stage unprecedented rally by Moscow river. “Only last year beaten to within an inch of his life for writing something the authorities did not like, Oleg Kashin appeared to be without fear as he addressed his audience, at the biggest anti-government rally to be held in Russia for two decades.”

SAYUNCLE: “Hard for me to have sympathy on a TSA agent who accuses another TSA agent of sexual assault. Isn’t that what you guys do for a living?”

CBS POLL: 54% say Obama doesn’t deserve re-election. So maybe the answer to my poll question below is “any of the above.”

#OCCUYPYFAIL: Boston Occupiers Leave Site In The Kind Of Condition The Country Would Be In If They Were Listened To:

The Utopian dreamers of Occupy Boston are leaving behind a disgusting field of filth on the formerly scenic Rose Kennedy Greenway, where trees will have to be replanted, grass resodded, sprinklers repaired or replaced and the entire area power-hosed in a massive cleanup that could take weeks.

“We’re close to the end of it, which is very good news. Soon, the park can be repaired and open to the general public,” Nancy Brennan, executive director of the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, said late yesterday. “We hope everyone makes a voluntary decision, and this can be a good, dignified end.”

The conservancy has been pushing the city to take action to remove the protesters, sending a letter to Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s office last month expressing frustration at rampant deterioration of the site, plus health and safety issues, including “disturbing” instances of drug use and interference of a farmers market. A judge this week lifted a restraining order on the city, giving it the green light to boot them out. . . .

Brennan said the grass, which has turned into a mud pit, will need to be completely resodded, and she fears several trees that have been damaged will have to be replanted.

“Three or four trees might be lost. There’s browning of the foliage, and there are some broken and bent limbs,” she said. “Part of what we need to do is check on the root systems, and that is just going to take a little bit of time.”

Brennan also expects that the sprinkler system was damaged so much it will have to be repaired or replaced. Also in need of replacement are about 20 percent of the shrubbery and the pebbles from a pedestrian walkway that runs along Purchase Street.

By contrast, I’ll note once more that the Tea Party protesters left things cleaner when they departed. Any comment from Elizabeth Warren?

IN LIGHT OF YESTERDAY’S POST ON POWER SYSTEM / CELLPHONE VULNERABILITY, I should also link back to earlier posts on low-budget disaster preparation and on generators. And remember, with any kind of generator or backup heat system it’s good to have a battery-powered carbon monoxide detector.