A Police Shooting, Terra, Tranqs, Weather Alarmism, and Nuclear Bombers

Random shots around the web:

• Radley Balko is tracking yet another police shooting of an unarmed person during a drug raid. The police aren’t talking about it, which is usually a sign that they screwed up and are trying to get their story straight. As usual, they haven’t released the name of the shooter.
• The Battle For Terra sounds like it has a pretty dismal storyline.
• Here’s a novel approach to an unpleasant work environment:

BRYANT, Ark. – Police said a woman has been arrested for allegedly slipping some tranquilizers into her boss’s coffee because she felt “he needed to chill out.”

Yeah, I think we’ve all been there.

• Sometimes the national weather service seems a little alarmist:

Yeah, that abundant sunshine will get you every time.

Actually, Yahoo is just displaying the forecast poorly. If you click on the warning, you see that the real “severe weather” is this:

…FLOOD WARNING EXTENDED UNTIL THIS AFTERNOON…

THE FLOOD WARNING CONTINUES FOR
  THE DES PLAINES RIVER NEAR DES PLAINES.
* UNTIL THIS AFTERNOON…OR UNTIL THE WARNING IS CANCELLED.
* AT  845 AM SATURDAY THE STAGE WAS 5.1 FEET.
* MINOR FLOODING IS OCCURRING.
* FLOOD STAGE IS 5.0 FEET.
* FORECAST…THE RIVER WILL FALL TO BELOW FLOOD STAGE BY
  LATE THIS MORNING.

So, there will be some flooding. Water flowing out into the streets around the Des Plaines river…like it does every time there’s a lot of rain.

Last time I noticed a “severe weather” alert, it was high winds. The time before that, it was freezing rain. I suppose each of those conditions causes problems—more for some people than others—but if partially flooded streets is called “severe weather,” what kind of alert do they issue for the kind of bad weather that can kill you in your home?

• Speaking of misdirected alarmism, while George Bush and his supporters were playing up the goatherder culture of the Middle East as the greatest threat ever to the United States, the real greatest threat ever started to regain its strength:

MOSCOW – A Russian Air Force chief said Saturday that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has offered an island as a temporary base for strategic Russian bombers, the Interfax news agency reported.

The chief of staff of Russia’s long range aviation, Maj. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev, also said Cuba could be used to base the aircraft, Interfax reported.

What good does it do to knock down Saddam Hussein in Iraq if the Russians start to gain allies right here in the Americas?