It all happened in Lynnwood when a suspected serial bank robber known as the “Old School Bandit” because of his old-school bandanna disguise tried to rob a Banner Bank.
The bodybuilder — Todd Jewell, 26, of Yakima — had just arrived at the bank on 188th Street Southwest with his wife, Shawna, 27, who was waiting to hand in her résumé….
They saw a man, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, slip on a bandanna, approach a teller and demand money. “It took a few seconds to realize what was actually happening,” Shawna Jewell said in an interview Saturday. The 6-foot, 280-pound Todd Jewell quickly sized up the robber, who appeared to be about 3 inches shorter and 100 pounds lighter. And when he didn’t see the robber holding a weapon, he ambushed him. “I realized I should have no problem throwing him around a little bit,” Jewell said. “I was basically trying to hurt him enough to get him to stop, to get him to the ground and to quit fighting.”
He succeeded, actually breaking the man’s ribs in the process when the man wouldn’t succumb.
The man was identified as Chadwick Asheim, of Seattle, and he’s suspected in nine Seattle-area bank robberies in the past two months. A warrant had been out for him for leaving a halfway house, but authorities hadn’t been able to catch him.

Hmm, waiting for the authorities to take immediate action has resulted in nothing eight times so far, until Todd Jewell as a private citizen decided to do something and stop this violation of the social contract. I don’t blame the local cops, nor the FBI; they weren’t there nor could they have gotten there fast enough. As I was watching this on the news we were wondering if Mr. Jewell would be sued or arrested for assault. I suspect similar thoughts about our litigious society have deterred others from taking action in the previous eight instances.

This guy ["Old School"] was elusive, and I applaud him [Jewell],” said FBI agent Larry Carr, who is based in Seattle. “This is one of those cases where, every week since this guy started hitting, I had to e-mail [warnings] to banks. Now I don’t have to do this, thanks to Mr. Jewell.” Asheim was taken to the hospital for broken ribs and cuts and will be transferred to federal custody. The FBI said charges likely will be filed Monday.

And Saturday, Todd Jewell, in a cellphone interview while he and his wife drove back to Yakima, said he wasn’t a hero. “I’m just a citizen tired of seeing innocent people victimized,” he said. “I had the right tools for the job, and I just got the job done.”
Jewell suffered minor cuts and bruises. But the unemployed man received good news: He said the FBI told him about a $5,000 reward he might receive. “Being my size, I have to eat a lot, and this [money] will go towards paying the grocery bill,” he said. Jewell recently quit his job as an aerospace machinist in Yakima to focus on his bodybuilding career.

Heh, humility. And other reports stated they wanted to move to a more urban area (Yakima is very agricultural). But that didn’t stop him from understanding Web 2.0 as he was wearing a t-shirt with his website during the interviews, which I hope will help him get sponsorships so he can turn pro — do good and good will follow you. I believe he did his actions because he thought is was right, but afterwards decided he might as well use the web to further his desired career. Might as well take advantage of the free publicity.

The broadcast reports I saw (I couldn’t find an online version tonight without coding issues in Firefox) had Mr Jewell describing how he threw the robber to the ground, then when the robber resisted, he grabbed him by the hair and basically bashed his head repeatedly into the ground while placing weight on the man’s back until his ribs cracked. I know some will disagree with this because it wasn’t Mr. Jewell’s job to enforce the law and he was too brutal, the poor robber’s ribs were cracked. I say he was right because the idea that only the police have authority is asking for a police state. Mr. Jewell says he is not a hero; I agree, he was being a citizen. Too few are citizens today.

Me (after reading triage sheet and rolling my eyes): Hi, I’m Dr.____. I’m the doctor in charge of the EMERGENCY Department tonight. I see that you came by AMBULANCE. What was so bad that you had to call 9-1-1 at 3 AM to be rushed to the EMERGENCY ROOM by AMBULANCE? What is your MEDICAL EMERGENCY? What is your LIFE OR LIMB THREATENING problem??

Patient (clueless to the sarcasm): Oh, I think I’m pregnant again.

Me (thinking that this clueless girl still don’t get it): You must be in a lot of pain or bleeding severely to come in by ambulance, huh?

Patient: No. I just didn’t have a ride.

Me: So you’re not having any pain or vaginal bleeding?

Patient: No, no pain. No bleeding.

Me: Did you take a home pregnancy test?

Patient: I didn’t have one.

Me: You know they sell them at Walmart. They’re open 24 hrs.

Patient: Well I couldn’t go to Walmart in the middle of the night.

Me: So you took an ambulance?

Patient: Yeah, but my insurance will pay for it.

Me: Insurance? It says here that you’ve got Medicaid.

Patient: Yeah, that’s my insurance.

Me: No, dear. Medicaid is not insurance.

Patient (quickly interupting me): Yes it is! That’s my insurance!

Me: No, dear. Medicaid is not insurance. Medicaid is a government hand out! It’s only called insurance if you’re paying for it.

Patient: Well, what ever! Medicaid will pay for it.

Me: Good grief! You didn’t have to take a $400 ambulance to the hospital for a simple pregnancy test.

Patient: But I didn’t have a ride.

Me: You could have taken a cab. Surely you got $20 bucks for a cab. And those pregnancy tests are under $20 bucks at Walmart ya know. $400 bucks ambulance ride versus $20 bucks…You could have save us tax payers a lot of money, ya know.

Patient: My insurance will pay for the ambulance.

Me: Good grief! How many times do I have to tell you that Medicaid is not insurance? And it won’t pay for nonemergent problems.

A quick 5 seconds physical exam. Push on the belly, no pain. Scribbled the discharge instructions and handed to patient to sign:

Go to local pharmacy and buy a home pregnancy test. Follow up with your medicaid assigned gynecologist if positive. If having pain or vaginally bleeding, return to ER.

Patient: So you’re not gonna run a test to see if I’m pregnant?

Me: No, a possible pregnancy is not a medical EMERGENCY.

Patient: But my insurance will pay for it.

Me: Not if I don’t order it. And even if I did order it, Medicaid…Oh never mind, just go to Walmart or any drug store and get yourself a home pregnancy test, alright. They’re the same urine pregnancy test that we use in the hospital anyway, and it’s much cheaper, too.

Patient (indignantly): So how am I gonna get home now? I got 4 kids at home.

Me: Well, you should have thought about that before you took an ambulance. Surely you didn’t think that we would admit you to the hospital for a possible pregnancy, did you? Your kids are not at home by themselves are they?

Patient: You’re a mean doctor!

Me: No I’m not! If I was, I wouldn’t have ask about your kids. They’re not home alone by themselves are they?

Patient: No, they’re with a friend of mine.

Me: Alright. I’ll see if the charge nurse can help you with a cab voucher home. There’s also a cop here from your part of town. Maybe he can let you hitch a ride home in a while.

Nope, if you subsidize medical care, you certainly don’t get people abusing the system like this. James really needs to add a rolling-eyes icon for posts like this.

On the shores of Lake Erie, the city of Buffalo and other communities have withered.
Two-thirds of cities and towns in upstate New York lost population this decade…

Since its 1950s high, Buffalo’s population has declined by more than half, to around 280,000. Meanwhile, since 2000, Charlotte has added 46,000 residents. And now, an Observer analysis of new data from the Internal Revenue Service shows a significant chunk of upstate New York’s population has moved to the Charlotte region….

Why the Carolinas?
Better weather, for one. Also, it’s roughly a one-day drive from the upstate. In recent years, the pipeline of previously arrived friends and family members has also fueled the trend. Here, New York transplants become part of the growth pressures straining roads and schools and sparking retail and cultural development. Back home, their departures cause the opposite pressures, with governments struggling to cope with declining tax bases and theater companies closing.

There are even Upstate New York oriented restaurants establish in the Charlotte area. These aren’t just the traditional retirees moving south, but families and recent college graduates.

Looking at OTB’s “home” of Fairfax County, VA, the out-of-area immigrants come from large cities (LA, Boston), or areas of large military concentrations (San Diego, Honolulu, Virginia Beach, Cumberland NC (Fayetteville), Bexar TX (San Antonio)), with similar numbers returning to the counties with large military bases. Looking at adjacent Prince William County, home of Quantico Marine Corps Base, the top out-of-area sources of moves are from counties with Marine bases, Onslow NC (Camp Legune), San Diego (Camp Pendleton and MCAS Miramar, plus Navy), Virginia Beach (Dam Neck, Little Creek, and Navy), Honolulu (All Services).

The grass is not always greener elsewhere either, or people that are inclined to make a major move are more inclined to move again. Most locations I looked at had movements to and from Maricopa AZ (Phoenix) and Clark NV (Las Vegas), plus Queens NY (odd). Perhaps you can find patterns in your own county.

“We’re talking about people walking sort of tuned in and in the process of being tuned in, tuned out,” Kruger said. “Tuned out to the world around them. They’re walking into speeding cars. They’re walking into buses. They’re walking into one another and it’s creating a number of fatalities that have been documented right here in the city.”

Yes I see this all the time. Why on just my way to work today I saw 15 people killed while fiddling with their Ipods. I tell you it is a national pandemic. [Note to the (morbid) humor imparied, I'm joking here.]

While I don’t doubt that there have indeed been cases of people getting hit while wearing an Ipod and not being fully aware of their surroundings, is this really a serious enough problem that we have to have the State deal with it? Exactly how many people walk with their Ipods and other electronic gadgets and how many deaths have been related to these gadgets? Why not go after bathtubs, swimming pools and curbs. How many people have been injured by curbs costing society untold productive work hours? Well? I tell you, we need to get rid of curbs.

Via Debunkers.

Whether they’re liberal or conservative, presidential scholars seem to prefer militant presidents who stretch against constitutional bounds — or break them.

[...]

But is that the right lesson to draw? Is there something wrong with limited-power republican presidents? Or does the fault lie with the scholars who give them short shrift?

Consider Warren G. Harding, dead last in the Schlesinger polls, next to last in the WSJ/Federalist poll. Historians have downgraded him for his scandal-ridden administration. But that can’t be the only reason for his abysmal ranking: Harding wasn’t personally corrupt, after all, and he never profited from his cronies’ misdeeds.

Place that fault against his great merits: Harding presided over the dismantling of Wilson’s draconian wartime controls, ushering in an era of prosperous “normalcy.” (Is it the normalcy that presidential scholars hold against him?) Harding’s good nature and liberal instincts led him to pardon the dissenters that Wilson had locked up, among them Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, imprisoned for making a speech against the draft. “I want [Debs] to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife,” Harding said.

I admit to not being completely up on Harding’s presidency, but it’s hard to be worse than Woodrow Wilson, who would easily make the top five of my Worst Presidents list. Healy also has nice things to say about Calvin Coolidge who, along with Grover Cleveland and James Monroe, counts among the most underrated Presidents we’ve had.

No mention of Presidential lists, though, should go without mentioning U.S. Grant, who is probably one of the most maligned Presidents, as far as lists such as these are concerned. Although his Presidency was far from perfect (there was a lot of corruption going on there), he was tireless in fighting for Civil Rights for blacks and in attempting to improve their status in the South. In that respect, he was far ahead of his time.

(link via Jim Henley)

Initially, Mezvinsky became the victim of “just about every different kind of African-based scam we’ve ever seen,” federal prosecutor Bob Zauzmer told 20/20 for a report to be broadcast this evening.

But then, says Zauzmer, Mezvinsky began to steal from clients and even his own mother-in-law to raise the money to try yet another scheme.

“He was always looking for the home run. He was always trying to find the business deal that would make him as wealthy as all the people in his social circle,” said Zauzmer.

[snip]

Prosecutors say Mezvinsky used his connections to the Clintons and his son’s social relationship with Chelsea to persuade people to give him money to participate in the scams.

Mezvinsky traveled to Nigeria numerous times and ultimately lost more than $3 million as a victim of the scammers.

Prosecutors say Mezvinsky fell particularly hard for what is known as the “black money” scam. Victims are told millions of dollars have been coated with black ink so the money could be smuggled out of Nigeria.

The scammers then offer to sell a special, expensive chemical to remove the black ink so the currency can be used.

Prosecutors say Mezvinsky fell for at least three separate “black money” schemes that he thought would bring him millions.

Amazingly stupid. I mean, okay to fall for the scam once, your a bit gullible and maybe a bit dim, but three times?!?!? And to think this man served in Congress.

In any event, like Ronald Bailey I shall be drinking a glass of Lagavulin tonight to toast the anniversary (not that I really need a special reason to drink Lagavulin).

There also appears to be a similar effect with regards to violent movies and violent crimes. That is, the more people watching a violent movie, the less violent crimes are committed. At least for a short period after the movie.

Via Radley Balko.

Sophia Khatoon, a 22 years old skilled furniture-maker in the tiny village of Jobra in Bangladesh, worked 7 long days a week, looked twice her age, and lived in abject poverty. She made stools and chairs out of bamboo, which she had to sell to a money-lender who provided the credit to buy the raw material. The price she received barely covered the costs.

Dr. Yunus, Professor of Economics at the University in the Southern port city of Chittagong who later founded the Grameen Bank – calculated that effectively Sophia was paying interest at the rate of 10% a day, more than 3,000% a year. Yunus could not reconcile the fact that a woman with such skill who worked so hard, produced such beautiful bamboo furniture and created wealth at such high rate was earning so little.

In fact the poor all over the world are trapped in such exploitation. While they work extremely hard and create enormous wealth, the middle-men, money-lenders and employers keep the fruits of their labour. The poor have no access to “institutional credit”, which you and I have, because they can not provide a collateral. The system keeps them firmly trapped in debt, poverty and exploitation.

With a loan of 50 taka (a few dollars), it took Sophia only a few months to establish her own little self-employment, increase her income seven folds and repay the loan.

Most of the borrowers at Grameen Bank are women (95%). The bank has almost 1,200 branches, services in 41,000 villages, and $3.2 billion in assets (link).

Grameen Bank started basically as an experiment and has helped lift millions (mostly women) out of poverty. Seems like a good choice to me for the Nobel Peace Prize.

About 4 percent of the nation’s total hop yield was lost to fire Monday, as 2 million pounds of the pungent beer-making crop smoldered in a Yakima warehouse….
“This will affect the U.S. market particularly because in some of the varieties, there was a feeling we were already a little short this year,” said Ann George, the administrator for the Moxee-based Washington Hop Commission.
Representatives of the Steiner company declined to comment Monday afternoon. The hops, packed in 10,000 bales weighing about 200 pounds each, were probably worth between $1.75 and $2 per pound, based on average prices this year, George said. That puts the fire’s monetary damage between $3.5 million and $4 million. Depending on the varieties, the hops’ value per pound could be even higher, she said….
About 75 percent of the nation’s hops are produced in the Yakima Valley.

This is the case where you have the horseshoe that was lost. Not that much value, but critical. For those drinking microbrews, be relieved as Hop Union is the major supplier to that industry which uses specialty hops. While I think this is just spontaneous combustion, the conspiracy theories will be investigated:

It was announced late Monday that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will lead an investigation into the cause of the fire.

CNN has more

Federal investigators were set Tuesday to begin an investigation into a fire that ruined about 4 percent of America’s yield of hops, used as flavoring in the brewing of beer and ale.
The fire started shortly before noon Monday in a 40,000-square-foot (3,600-square-meter) warehouse operated by S.S. Steiner Inc., one of the four largest hop buyers in the Yakima Valley of central Washington. By mid-afternoon flames engulfed most of the building, sending up plumes of smoke and a pungent aroma….
The United States produces 24 percent of the world’s hops, and about three-fourths of the U.S. crop comes from the Yakima Valley. Hops were a $77 million crop in Washington state in 2004. More than 40 families grow hops in the valley, which is dotted with orchards, vineyards and farms.
Fires have long been an expensive danger at hop warehouses, largely because of the potential for spontaneous combustion from heat buildup in bales of resin-loaded varieties….
Seventeen varieties of hops are grown in the United States, including aroma varieties which are added for flavor or fragrance and the bitter alpha varieties.

Sorry CNN, there are more than 17 varieties of hops grown in the USA, though the quantities of some varieties are quite low. Right now everyone is guessing as to the impact, but if this was oil …

I was in Yakima today and didn’t smell anything, but a week ago when I previously passed though, the town smelled of hops (ditto Sunnyside) as it is harvest season. However, I doubt this will affect next weekends’ Hop Festival in Yakima

LONDON – British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday the state should intervene early – possibly even before birth – to stop the children of problem families growing up into troublemakers.

One think-tank said the idea, the latest step in Blair’s drive against crime and anti-social behaviour in Britain, verged on “genetic determinism”.

In his first interview since returning from a Caribbean holiday, Blair told the BBC that teenage mothers could be required to accept state assistance with bringing up their children and could face sanctions if they refused.

Intervention might even be needed “pre-birth”, he said.

“If we are not prepared to predict and intervene far more early then there are children that are going to grow up in families that we know perfectly well are completely dysfunctional, and the kids a few years down the line are going to be a menace to society and actually a threat to themselves,” Blair said.

Blair is seeking to put the focus on his policies to try to halt a slump in his Government’s popularity and shift media attention away from the question of when he will step down.

He said the Government could say to an unmarried teenage mother who was not in a stable relationship: “Here is the support we are prepared to offer you, but we do need to keep a careful watch on you and how your situation is developing because all the indicators are that your type of situation can lead to problems in the future.”

Anastasia de Waal, of social policy think-tank Civitas, said: “It is teetering on genetic determinism this kind of saying that before children are even born they are labelled as problematic.”

Oliver Letwin, policy director for the opposition Conservative Party, slammed Blair’s idea, saying more state intervention and bureaucracy were not the answer.

“The only realistic way forward lies with social enterprise, charities and voluntary groups. It is no good the Government simply trying to run peoples’ lives,” he said.

On the other hand, it’s not as though Blair’s Labour Party has been altogether reluctant to ferret out problems caused by irresponsible parenting – and then some. Flashback:

Mr Ternouth’s thriller flooded back to me this week when I read of the Government’s plan to spend £224million of your money and mine on setting up a database, recording details of the lives of all 12 million children in England and Wales.

Among other things, the Children’s Index will record whether a child’s parents are providing a ‘positive role model’, how the child is performing at school — and even whether youngsters are eating the daily five portions of fruit and vegetables recommended by the Government. Presumably, children will be questioned at school each morning on what their parents fed them the night before.

The database, we are told, will be made available to social workers, teachers and doctors, who will have the power to flag up ‘concerns’ when they think that children are not meeting the criteria laid down by the state.

The truth is that the APBT is the only dog that I know of that was breed specifically not to bite humans. If you were a breeder of APBTs back when they were used in bull and bear fighting and later dog fighting, having a dog that was also human aggressive was dangerous for the handlers. As such any APBT that showed signs of human aggression was removed from the gene pool, literally such dogs were killed. Over the course of generations APBTs are far less prone to bite a human than just about any other dog.

And as Radley Balko notes, the law and the Mayor’s temporary ban on fines is just stupid as it will have precisely the opposite effect than what is intended.

Let’s put up two hypothetical put bull owners.

Owner A is a family who had the misfortune of picking a pit bull from the pet store, breeder, or pound. They’ve raised the dog as a pet, and it lives in a happy, loving home. It’s harmless.

Owner B is a drug dealer who bought a pit bull to protect his supply. He has trained the dog to attack. The dog, obviously, is dangerous.

Now ask yourself, which dog owner is more likely to care enough about following the law to take advantage of the amnesty? Which dog is more likely to be turned over and euthanized? How many harmless dogs will be taken from their families and killed, then, because of this stupid policy? How many truly harmful dogs trained to protect illegal endeavors will be?

The APBT is a powerful dog and the responsible owner should make sure the dog is well socialized in terms of both people and other dogs (dog aggression is the biggest problem with these dogs). Also, make sure that the dogs realize that all humans in the household are higher in the heirarchy than they are. Finally, make sure the dogs are well exercised. A dog cooped up in a small backyard all day or a crate is a dog with lots of energy. Take the dog for a good long walk (at least 1.5 to 2 miles each day). If you can’t do all of this, then be responsible and don’t own this type of dog.

Update: Fixed now.

The Association of Trial Lawyers of America voted during its convention this week to change its name to the American Association for Justice. Spokeswoman Chris Mather said there was overwhelming support for the change, and that the new name “reflects whose side we’re on in the fight for justice.” The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, a critic of the trial lawyers group, called it “an astounding admission of the unpopularity of trial lawyers in America.”

So they are now for justice! What they are really doing here is creating confusion as to what the organization is. What is next, a new moniker for the trial lawyers themselves? How about Justians?

UPDATE (James Joyner): And, presumably, we would have Association for Justice members on both sides of many if not most civil suits. So . . . both sides in each case are fighting for “justice.”

Oregon is on the leading edge of a new fertility frontier.

Decades after artificial insemination became commonplace, would-be parents are testing the ethical boundaries of surrogacy here, partly because Oregon is one state in which it is legal to pay surrogate mothers.

Gestational surrogacy, as it is known, allows infertile and gay couples to hire a woman to carry a baby to term. Surrogates earn $20,000 to $30,000 to become impregnated and deliver a baby for couples they have met briefly, through agencies or over the Internet. The baby might be biologically related to the would-be mother, father, both or neither.

Because few women will endure nine months of pregnancy for strangers without pay, the practice is growing in Oregon and California, where the legal climate attracts prospective parents.

“No one wants to call it this, but surrogacy — along with adoption and egg and sperm donations — is really an unacknowledged market,” said Debora Spar, an expert in the fertility business.

Nothing like free enterprise. I’ve also heard of similar in Maryland. The old ideas of family are falling apart, though I question their veracity, since in the old days usually one of the parents died a horrible death, and the other remarried in order to safeguard the family. My family goes back to 1612 in North America, and most of my ancestors had more than one spouse due to death. We do NOT need federal regulation in this (I’m anti-Commerce Clause BTW).

Although based on a complex contract, the relationship between a surrogate and prospective parents is also very intimate. Its etiquette and terminology are still evolving.

Keri is a Portland wife and mother of three who last month gave birth to another family’s twin daughters.

Keri, 31, and the intended mother met often; the families developed a warm friendship. “But it did start out kind of funny,” Keri said. “No one had ever interviewed me before to see if they wanted to use my uterus.”

The father of the twins agreed. During the pregnancy, he sometimes wondered how Keri’s husband, Scott, felt about his wife being pregnant with another man’s children. He never asked, though. “We’ll all talk about intimate details of Keri’s body. But the truth is, we don’t really know each other.”

Wise is the man who knows his own father. And I view this as a great gift from the surrogate. See the linked article for more on the legal and moral aspects, but I greatly respect the women who decide to become surrogates.

These children will have loving parents. Parents that can afford children, and can afford the time children require.

HT: orbusmax