Happy Birthday, Kouryou-chan!

Yesterday was Kouryou-chan's birthday, and we took the little sprog out to her favorite restaurant where we were more tolerant than usual of her using her hands to eat macaroni and cheese and then her ice cream.

She's a great kid. I read books to her and she went to bed without much complaint.

Stratford High School, the LEO POV

technoshaman, I believe, made a comment a few days ago about the Stratford High School incident in which ten cops with guns drawn entered a high school to conduct a "drug raid." Kids were thrown to the ground, sniffer dogs were called in, the whole freaking mess.

Among the press reports that attempted to justify the assault was one from a young man who said that he "saw kids running from the school, throwing pills and stuff into the bushes." If that's so, why didn't he tell the cops, and why didn't the cops search those same bushes?

No drugs were found in the raid.

But what bothers me more is one police officer from the neighboring town of Charleston who, in his own blog, said, "Because of the media coverage, we are going to get beat up, and the bad guys are going to be jumping on that lawsuit bandwagon."

The bad guys. That's what this officer calls the innocent students who were harrassed that day, who were physically assaulted without reason or cause and basically treated like members of some Columbian cartel when, in fact, they're students. Americans. With rights that they do not surrender at the door of the school.

He doesn't like the whole incident because it "looks bad" for other cops. Oh, well. Another commentor said that it was probably the principal, who strutted up and down in the video clip and "played cop." We'll see, but damn if the whole thing doesn't suck.