NJ Cops Discover Photoshop

Sorry I missed this last week! On the Delaware River in Camden is Riverfront State Prison, clearly a great place to put criminals. Anyway, the state is going to close the 16.7 acre site — or at least according to New Jersey law enforcement, who put out the above amazing flier in response.

It’s a minimum security prison, and Camden officials say they’re not just releasing everyone in it to halfway houses — as the unions allege. But, I mean, I think we can trust the police unions, right? I mean, look who’s in there! There’s Kevin Dillon, or maybe Brad Pitt in Fight Club, and then there’s a couple breakdancers, including some guy from that famous breakdancing crew, the Crips. And then there’s a hipster in some band, Latin Kings. There’s also a rapist who is literally ripping off the chains that have bound him, and some murderer who is like an IRA terrorist or something.

The prison, also, is guarded by horrible human-animal hybrids. Ha, ah, look at the guy in the red shirt! What was he arrested for, taking up the whole sidewalk with his legs spread real wide?

If these kinds of fliers are what we can look forward to from prison reform, I’m doubly psyched.

Plan to close Riverfront State Prison causes a stir [Daily News]

Town Scraps ‘Pervert-Free Zone’ Idea

The tiny borough of Trumbauersville, Bucks County (pop. roughly 1,000) apparently has a big problem with — get this! — sex criminals. They must! The borough recently considered restricting where registered sex offenders could live in town, so it’s clearly a big problem in town.

The idea was scrapped for various reasons, mainly because the borough doesn’t have the money to fight the inevitable lawsuit restricting those convicted of sex crimes from living in the town at all. (At 0.4 square miles, pretty much any law would restrict sex offenders from living anywhere.) Also, Borough Council President Ed Child realized the ridiculousness of such a “feel-good law”: “What difference does it make how far away from [schools or parks a sex offender] can live… when we can’t control where they go?”

Hey, that’s some top-notch thinking there, Eddie! It’s better to be sensible than to just follow what NBC scares you about. And… oh.

[T]he borough briefly considered enforcing what Child jokingly called a “pervert-free zone.” Instead of restricting registered sex offenders by residence, it would have restricted where they could go.

Trumbauersville scrapped the idea, realizing the “even murkier legal territory” it would be in with such a law, and not that the idea would be impossible to enforce. Won’t someone please think of the children and ban all perverts from America soon? That would solve the problem.

Restrictions for sex offenders on hold [The Intelligencer]
[Image via some ridiculous t-shirt store apparently from 1996]

Boy, It’s Almost Impossible To Tell Them Apart

I was going to write some words about Jill Porter’s Daily News column today column about how new breath mints “look uncannily like tiny heat-sealed bags of cocaine, crack, heroin or any other powdered drug.” But then I decided the photos the Daily News ran with the story told it all.

More »

NBC 420

We all know the local news attempts to scare its viewers in order to keep them watching. Usually, this is accomplished by reports about things that are endangering your children. And the most dangerous time, according to NBC 10’s Tim Furlong, is 4:20.

Four twenty, as you probably know, is slag for a time to smoke weed. Most likely, it comes from when a group of high school students in California would smoke up. (Some people in college said “smoke out”? I don’t know.) Somehow, the slang made it into popular culture, and today most people could tell you 4:20 is a marijuana reference. You would probably get in trouble in school for putting a 4:20 patch on your bookbag.

More »

N.J. To Create Clone Army To Conquer U.S.

Today, New Jersey residents will vote on a stem-cell funding bill, one that Gov. Jon Corzine says would turn the state into a leader in stem-cell research.

It would borrow $450 million for 10 years of grants to fund stem cell research. But, as The Bulletin reveals, there is a deep dark secret:

“Voters need to know that this question is highly deceptive,” stated Marie Tasy, executive director of New Jersey Right to Life.” Ms. Tasy argues lawmakers “withheld vital information” concerning the question and left numerous holes in the question’s interpretative statement.

According to Ms. Tasy, the question fails to disclose the type of stem-cell research permitted, allows human cloning, and misleads voters into believing the question will result in increased revenue.

While the Bond Act condemns cloning, Ms. Tasy asserts its definition of the practice opens the door for cloning funding.

“The Bond Act purports to ban cloning, but it only bans cloning research during the fetal stage, a stage left undefined by the act,” Ms. Tasy said.

Man, that bill has a love-hate relationship with cloning. It condemns it, but for some reason is also going to do cloning research anyway? Weird.

Hmm.

One-Paragraph Rant Disguised As Newspaper Column

The large, one-¶ rant to your right is not a blog post on a comment on some messageboard. No, it is a one-paragraph column by none other than America’s Best Columnist, Chris Freind,!

It was one-paragraph online, at least. The Bulletin doesn’t have the customary line of white space between paragraphs online, and there are spots that could have broken this rant into as many as four (4) paragraphs. Freind’s enemy this time is New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who is apparently promoting a plan to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.

I don’t care enough to look up Spitzer’s reasoning for the plan, but Freind says it will only lead to terrorists flying planes into the Empire State Building. No, really: “If the brotherhood of Mohammed Atta decides to target the Empire State Building with weapons and explosives bought legally with their state-sanctioned drivers license, or, on the off-chance, they take a one-way joyride in a 767, you may have a few people knocking at your Mansion door.” Why is mansion capitalized?

Freind has a ton of awesome arguing techniques in this column, including a reminder that illegal immigration is against the law. “Period.” He actually writes that! And he uses the term “fat cats”! Oh, and he talks about how terrorists are now going to be voting in record numbers, since they’ll be able to obtain driver’s licenses. Basically, it reads like a parody of a right-wing opinion column.

The ending is my favorite part, though, because I’m not sure if he’s inciting a call to violence or not:

In the midst of the most dangerous time in our nation’s history, our “leaders” go out of their way to aid and abet the enemy. In case you’re interested, the Governor’s Mansion is in Albany.

So… are we supposed to storm the capital, Bastille-style, and come out with Spitzer’s head on a pike? I mean, I like Macbeth and all, but I don’t really know if recreating Macduff’s beheading is the best way to settle disputes in 21st century America.

However: On Saturday, Spitzer went back on his plan, meaning Freind turning up the heat most certainly worked. Don’t try to cross America’s Best Columnist; you’ll only get burned.

Driver’s Licenses For Illegals Makes Al-Qaida - And Dems - Cheer [The Bulletin]
Governor Accused of Betraying Principles [NYT]