Last Monday, a jury found two former Fullerton, California, police officers not guilty on one charge of excessive force, two of manslaughter, and one of second-degree murder in the beating death of Kelly Thomas. The 2011 altercation, which lead to Thomas’s death five days later, was captured in detail by surveillance cameras and audio from police recorders—on tape, the cops can be seen beating the homeless man mercilessly and Tasing him twice in the face. At one point, Thomas is moaning “Help me dad” as the officers swing their nightsticks at him.

That fairly clear video evidence, along with the activism of Kelly’s father Ron (a former sheriff’s deputy) and the mobilization outraged community, ensured Thomas’s death got a lot more media coverage than the killing of homeless people by police normally do. But the officers are still walking free after beating an unarmed man to death. (In fact, one of them, Jay Cicinelli, already wants his job back.) How does that happen? A great many people in the community are asking that same question—multiple protests against the outcome of the trial this week resulted in 14 arrests

One answer to that question is that the jurors, like most Americans, probably thought that cops are generally almost always right. A Gallup Poll from last month found that 54 percent of respondents had “high” or “very high” amounts of trust in police officers. People think more favorably of cops than they do journalists, politicians, lawyers, or even members of the clergy. The only authority figures more trusted than the police are doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and grade school teachers.

That trust is buttressed by laws that grant cops various kinds of immunity against prosecution. For instance, in 2010, a Seattle cop named Ian Birk shot and killed John T. Williams, a Native American woodcarver, and after the dust settled, a review panel had found that the shooting was unjustified, Birk had resigned from the force, and the city had paid Williams’s family $1.5 million. Yet Birk never faced criminal charges for killing Williams, since under Washington state law prosecutors would have had to prove evidence of “malice or bad faith” on his part when he pulled the trigger.

http://www.vice.com/read/we-need-to-stop-trusting-the-police

We see a lot of things come across our desks, but the goat in the front row of a Wormrot show that’s been kicking around the internet for a few years is one of the best images in metal. Now, thanks to the team over at Noisey, we not only know that the goat had a name, Biquette, but sadly, that Biquette is no longer with us, having passed away last month. The site got in touch with Flo, who helped put on shows at a farm/DIY venue in Mauriac, France, which is where Biquette lived and died.

Biquette, which is actually French for “goat,” was 10 years old, according to Flo. She’d spent the first half of her life in a milking factory, and was then handed over to the farm, where she immediately started to hang out at the shows. “Seeing as the barn floor where we throw the concerts is wooden, I think that she felt the vibrations in her hooves,” Flo said. Flo added that the goat really enjoyed any settings with lots of people, and would hang out whenever there was a gathering. In another article for Pigeons and Planes, Wormrot’s manager said that Biquette was very tame, and followed the Maylaysian grindcore band around like a dog. “When it was Wormrot’s turn to play, the goat suddenly went in front of the crowd and watched them play the whole set,” Azean Rot said. “It was just chilling around the corner when other bands were playing.”

http://www.metalinsider.net/in-memoriam/grindcore-fan-that-happened-to-be-a-goat-passes-away

Without the scandal-engulfed New Jersey governor, Republicans don’t have a candidate who could even come close to the votes needed to win the presidency in 2016.

Well, well, well, today is an interesting day: it’s Chris Christie’s re-inauguration day. It was just two weeks ago, a little more, that this was going to be a day of shimmering triumph. I was just reading this CNN dispatch, from January 6, that talks about how the governor is planning on starting his day at a black church (whose reverend presided over Whitney Houston’s funeral) and ending it at Ellis Island. There’s nary a word in it about bridges and subpoenas.

Back then, today was supposed to be the official beginning of the slow and ineluctable ascent to the White House. He didn’t have to do or prove anything in this putative second term. Lose a little weight, maybe. But otherwise, he was on the glide path to the GOP nomination, not that Rand Paul and others wouldn’t have something to say about it, but the party establishment and most of the big money all set to gather around Christie and make sure that he didn’t have to spend too much time crossing swords with the crazies.

Now? Things are a little different, aren’t they? I trust you’re enjoying the Christie panic among Republican establishment types as much as I am. That New York Times story on Sunday, with big boosters like Home Depot’s Kenneth Langone fretting publicly that he really must surround himself with better people (so it’s their fault!), combined with the cable damage-control efforts by the likes of Rudy Giuliani, really shows the extent to which the party big shots have been counting on Christie to save them.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/21/how-bad-does-the-gop-need-chris-christie-really-bad.html