KRQE:

In one corner an aggressive panhandler. In the other a disabled, wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran who turned out not to be the underdog.

When the two met up five days ago in northeast Albuquerque the attacker became the attacked.

Gary Gould said the attempted mugging had him fighting for his life reminding him of what it was like fighting for his life in Vietnam.

“I can’t walk; I’m paralyzed,” he told KRQE News 13 today. “I got blown up in Vietnam.

“I’ve been in a chair for 38 years.”

Gould, 58, is safe at home now miles away from the Billiard Palace where he took a break from playing pool last Thursday. He said he went out back to smoke a cigarette when a man approached him asking for money.

“He put his hand out like this,” Gould said. “I said, ‘I don’t have any money. Get out of my face, man.'”

Melvin Romero should have listened he didn’t. Instead he then demanded money and repeatedly stabbed Gould with a pair of scissors, according to a criminal complaint.

Gould has some marks and bruises now, but Romero’s the one who ended up hurt the most.

“When he stabbed me, I grabbed him, and I wrestled him to the ground,” Gould said. “Every time he kept trying to get back up, I had to knock him back down.

“They transported him, and I heard he lost a pint of blood.”

Romero wasn’t booked into jail until Monday four days after the attack because that’s how long it took him to recover in the hospital.

How the Royal Navy Dealt with the Pirate Blackbeard

The London Times reports on the latest case of Pecksniffery from Britain’s Labour Government: Asylum for Pirates!

The Royal Navy, once the scourge of brigands on the high seas, has been told by the Foreign Office not to detain pirates because doing so may breach their human rights.

Warships patrolling pirate-infested waters, such as those off Somalia, have been warned that there is also a risk that captured pirates could claim asylum in Britain.

The Foreign Office has advised that pirates sent back to Somalia could have their human rights breached because, under Islamic law, they face beheading for murder or having a hand chopped off for theft.

Hat tip to Walter Olson (who reminded me of this one).

Serena Kozakura, a 38-year-old Japanese Bikini Model, was able to get her conviction for vandalism overturned by persuading the Tokyo High Court her most prominent assets precluded her entry to the scene of the crime.

Mainichi Daily News

Spanish Police don’t fool around with this hostage-taking bank robber.

0:55 video

Can’t you just imagine the protests and lawsuits if this happened in New York?

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Hat tip to Anti-Idiotarian via Stop the ACLU via MacRanger.

“Gus McCauley of Americans Against Guns” interviewed on a Fox 1/2 Hour News video

Hat tip to Xavier.

Thomas J. Lueck, one of the New York Times’ professional chin-strokers, contemplates a recent case of self defense against New York City crime, draws comparisons to history (Bernhard Goetz shooting four subway muggers in 1984), consults “expert” authorities, and concludes the incident must have been a meaningless aberration.

Law enforcement experts looking for parallels between Mr. Parks’s confrontation and that of Mr. Goetz 23 years earlier said there were few to be found.

Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for The New Yorker, included an analysis of the Goetz case in his 2000 book, “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.” …

“These two events are just not comparable,” Mr. Gladwell said. “The Goetz incident was when we hit rock bottom.”

“There was a spontaneous outpouring, with people calling him a hero,” he said. “We are so far from that now.”

There’s the classic liberal perspective. The shooting of four criminals in the process of attacking and robbing him by a New Yorker was widely publicly applauded. Consequently, Bernhard Goetz’s self defense rose from the level of an incident to a historical event. The Goetz shooting was an intolerable assertion of individualism, one potentially capable of effectively politically challenging the principle of the state’s monopoly of force. Thus, from the statist perspective of the left, it was the Goetz self defense incident, not the crime level, which constituted the nadir of history for New York City.

The routine, daily use of force by criminals against innocent people was not the same level of problem at all.

Tyler (Texas) Morning Telegraph:

Sheriff’s officials were astounded by a letter requesting the man accused of murdering his girlfriend and possibly participating in cannibalism be placed on a vegetarian diet to keep him from being “involved in any senseless killing” while incarcerated.

The letter was faxed to the Smith County Sheriff’s Jail from the national headquarters of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Thursday morning.

“You have to be kidding me, right?” was his initial reaction to the news of the letter asking the jail to feed Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, a special vegetarian diet and no meat.

McCuin is jailed for the murder of 21-year-old Jana Shearer and authorities have said, in previous stories, that when McCuin was taken into custody there was an ear boiling in a pot of water on the stove and a plate on the kitchen table with what appeared to be human flesh and a fork.

“It is up to you to prevent McCuin from contributing to any more suffering and death by placing him on a healthy, humane vegetarian diet,” the letter by PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich reads.

In a phone interview with the newspaper Thursday, Friedrich responded the letter was serious and was not intended to be funny nor take away from the brutal death suffered by Ms. Shearer.

“Like humans, animals are made of flesh, blood, and bone. They have the same five senses that we do, and they have the same capacity to experience suffering and fear. And all animals share the desire to live their lives free of pain and to avoid a violent death,” he said.

Friedrich said his organization hoped to help Smith County prepare a nutritional vegetarian menu and possibly help organize a menu for the entire jail population.

Clearly not all the crazies are behind bars.

AP:

Sara Jane Moore, who took a shot at President Ford in a 1975 assassination attempt, was released from prison Monday.

Moore, 77, had served about 30 years of a life sentence when she was released from the federal prison in Dublin, east of San Francisco, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said.

She was 40 feet away from Ford outside a hotel in San Francisco when she fired a shot at him on Sept. 22, 1975. As she raised her .38-caliber revolver and pulled the trigger, Oliver Sipple, a disabled former Marine standing next to her, pushed up her arm. The bullet flew over Ford’s head by several feet.

In recent interviews, Moore said she regretted her actions, saying she was blinded by her radical political views.

“I am very glad I did not succeed. I know now that I was wrong to try,” Moore said a year ago in an interview with KGO-TV.

Just 17 days before Moore’s attempt, Ford survived an attempt on his life in Sacramento by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson.

Moore said that she was convinced at the time that the government had declared war on the left.

“I was functioning, I think, purely on adrenaline and not thinking clearly. I have often said that I had put blinders on and I was only listening to what I wanted to hear,” she told KGO.

Moore’s confusing background — which included five failed marriages, name changes and involvement with political groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army — baffled the public and even her own defense attorney during her trial.

“I never got a satisfactory answer from her as to why she did it,” said retired federal public defender James F. Hewitt. “There was just bizarre stuff, and she would never tell anyone anything about her background.”

Sarah Jane Moore is probably too old to be a danger to anyone, but the same ideology, the same climate of insanity, which infected her and produced her murderous attempt on the life of an American president is just as thriving in San Francisco and other American cities. It is no less dangerous today.

Blackfive reports a recent hate crime incident in Chicago.

Jay R. Grodner, a Chicago attorney, was caught in the act of keying Marine Sgt. Mike McNulty’s automobile. Grodner was evidently provoked by McNulty’s Marine Corps license plate and decals.

After sending the car to the body shop, it was determined there is $2400 in damage, making this a felony. Mike went to court Friday morning to collect the damages against Mr. Grodner and file felony charges. Though the damages are over $300 (the amount which determines felony or misdemeanor) Grodner offered Mike to pay his deductible, $100, and have Mike’s insurance pay for it.

The Illinois States Attorneys tried to coerce Mike into accepting the offer. Appalled, Mike said he wanted this to be a felony. The state told Mike that it was not worth pursuing felony damage against Grodner because they don’t have the time. In addition, the state prosecutors told him that he would never it ‘would be difficult to recover the damages’ from Grodner because he is a lawyer.

Instead, the State asked Mike if he would accept probation for Grodner. Mike accepted, probation was offered to Grodner, and Grodner declined the offer, saying within ear shot of Mike, “I’m not going to make it easy on this kid”. Mike’s next court date is tomorrow, Monday, December 31st, to pursue misdemeanor charges against Grodner.

Mike’s leave is over on January 2nd when he reports to Camp Pendleton before heading to Iraq.

Jay Grodner knows this and is going to file for a continuance until Mike is gone and cannot appear in court.

This particular case is going to attract lots of attention. The MSM will be covering it in a day or two, and Mr. Grodner will be receiving a well-deserved 15 minutes of infamy. I predict he will soon be just as widely known as the District of Columbia judge who sued his Korean dry cleaner for $67 million dollars over a lost pair of trousers.

Matthew Murray, 24, evidently was acting on a grudge based upon being expelled “for health reasons” three years ago from a 12-week missionary training program conducted by Youth With a Mission (YWAM), a non-denominational evangelical organization founded in 1960. Murray had been sending hate mail to officials of WYAM for some time.

On Sunday night, Murray appeared and demanded a room at the dormitory for missionary trainees at the program center he had previously attended at Arvada, Colorado. When Tiffany Johnson, 26, told him he could not stay there, and tried suggesting alternatives, he produced a pistol and opened fired, killing Johnson and Phillip Crouse, 24, and wounding two other staff members.

WorldNetDaily

The following morning, Murray arrived at the Colorado Springs New Life Church wearing a trench coat and carrying two handguns, the kind of semi-uto the press usually refers to as an assault rifle and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition. He set off smoke cannisters at several entrances to the church complex, and launched his attack. Murray began firing at vehicles in the church parking lot, killing two teenage girls Stephanie and Rachel Works, 18 and 16, and wounding their father David Works, 51. He then entered the church vestibule, and wounded Larry Bourbonnais, a 59-year-old Vietnam veteran.

At that point, 42-year-old Jeanne Assam, a former Minneapolis police officer, one of a dozen volunteer security guards at the church complex licensed to carry a concealed firearm, had been attending the just concluded service and intervened. She drew her own pistol, and advanced upon Murray, demanding that he surrender. Murray shot at her three times with his own handgun, but Assam then walked directly toward him, squeezing off round after round. Murray fell.

Brady Boyd, the church’s pastor, observed that Jeanne Assam’s actions saved the lives of 50 to 100 people.

Bourbonnais’ account

Jeanne Assam interview 12:30 video

Russian police, lying in ambush, spring out of hiding to capture two criminals at the door of an apartment. One of them was carrying a very interesting pistol. It looks like a homemade silenced, single-shot assassination weapon.

1:46 video from Russian television.

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11/26 UPDATE: See Dominique Poirier’s informative comment.

Don Surber invented the game, and Glenn Reynolds and Scott Johnson want to play, too.