Move over, Chicago. You’ve got nothing on Baltimore. So you let dead people vote in your elections? That’s nothing. Baltimore lets dead police officers issue traffic citations.

Under Maryland law, a traffic citation issued to the owner of a motor vehicle “caught” by a stoplight or speed camera must contain a sworn statement signed by a police officer stating that the officer has studied the camera images and that the vehicle was in violation of the law. Last week, WBAL-TV News discovered that some 2,000 stoplight camera citations were issued over the signature of an officer who was dead at the time of alleged violations.

The officer who had “signed” the citations was Baltimore City Police Officer James Fowler, who was killed in a traffic accident back in September. The problem came to light because someone who received one of the citations — for a violation that allegedly had occurred last month — showed it to a retired city police officer who had once worked with Fowler.

A police department spokesman said the problem was caused by a “computer glitch” and blamed it on the private contractor that operates the cameras. He said the department “does not blanket approve citations”. I don’t know whether he realizes it or not — or maybe he just thinks the rest of us are too stupid to realize it — but those two statements are contradictory. If a “computer glitch” was responsible, then the officer who really reviewed the citations should have caught the error. That is, if an actual, flesh-and-blood officer really did review the citations. Read more »

According to the grand jury indictment, it was a regular house of horrors:

The clinic reeked of animal urine, courtesy of the cats that were allowed to roam (and defecate) freely. Furniture and blankets were stained with blood. Instruments were not properly sterilized. Disposable medical supplies were not disposed of; they were reused, over and over again. Medical equipment — such as the defibrillator, the EKG, the pulse oximeter, the blood pressure cuff — was generally broken; even when it worked, it wasn’t used. The emergency exit was padlocked shut. And scattered throughout, in cabinets, in the basement, in a freezer, in jars and bags and plastic jugs, were fetal remains. It was a baby charnel house.

Sounds like one of those back-alley abortion mills women who wanted to exercise their reproductive rights were forced to go to back in those bad old days before Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that made abortion safe, legal and rare. At least, that’s the narrative.

But wait a minute. Roe was handed down 38 years ago. This indictment was handed down just last week by a Philadelphia grand jury after an investigation lasting nearly a year. You mean Roe didn’t make abortions safe, legal and rare?

Nope, it just made them legal. For any reason. At any time.

As for the clinic that was subject to the grand jury report, the paragraph quoted above is the least of it. According to the indictment, the doctor who operated this clinic “regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy — and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors.” And the women who got these “abortions” didn’t fare much better. Read more »

Last week Dan Rodricks, a local columnist for The Baltimore Sun, wrote about being issued a $40 speeding ticket after an unmanned speed camera clocked his car going 40 miles per hour in a 25 mph zone. He thought it was terribly unfair, because the stretch of road with the speed camera ran by a deserted cemetery, and he thought the cameras were supposed to be placed only in school zones and work zones.

I admit to feeling a moment — just a moment, mind you — of the smug satisfaction liberals must feel when a prominent conservative gets caught doing something unconservative, like soliciting sex in the little boys’ room.

Rodricks is a liberal and, as he says, “I support speed cameras.” So when his own puppy jumps up and bites him on the butt, it’s hard to resist taunting him, “Nyah! Nyah! See, I told you so!”.

But I will resist, partly because Rodricks has a valid complaint. And it’s not just about the speed camera not being anywhere near a school or work zone. The state law authorizing counties and municipalities to set up unmanned speed cameras requires that signs inform motorists that they are in a school or work zone where speed is photo-enforced. The law also requires that warnings, without fines, be issued for the first 30 days a speed camera is in place, but Rodricks was ordered to pay a fine for a violation that took place only eight days after the camera was placed at that location. Read more »