From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 11:38 PM To: 'Richard Rider' Subject: RE: [LPC-candidates] Watch video of police attack on high school I'm replying off the candidate's list because neither this issue nor your personal criticism of me are as nearly as important to me as the current strategy discussion (on which you and I agree). Richard Rider wrote: > Gosh, you're right Brian. Upon review, that was just fine police > work. Uh huh. I said "What I do see looks very bad". Please argue against my actual statements, and not your own substitutes. > How would you define "burst in" if that ain't it? "Bursting in" implies ingress. The video doesn't depict any form of ingress whatsoever. > And I saw what looked like a gun being pointed at student after > cowering student on the left side of the hall. That cop has his gun temporarily pointed at the feet of approximately two students. Seconds later that cop's gun is pointed the same way as the only other two guns I see in the video: almost straight down at the floor in the unoccupied middle of the hallway. The website said "police pointed guns at the students' heads". No gun is pointed at a head in the video. > ask any policeman when it is appropriate to pull > one's firearm to threaten people I already knew the drug war involves police misbehavior. But I don't need the MPP using blatant distortions on me to try to shake me down for a donation. > Don't know how to satisfy your concept of "waving" a gun around. Simple: point it in a succession of places, and not consistently down at the floor a meter in front of your own feet. > "Surveillance video obtained by CBS Affiliate WCSC > in Charleston shows the police waving their guns . . . " CBS undoubtedly saw more surveillance video than the 25 seconds the MPP showed us. At any rate, CBS is a little low on credibility these days. :-) > ACLU: "This week a police video of the raid surfaced showing even > more disturbing detail of police handcuffing students and > holding guns to their heads What is the frame number in the MPP video in which a gun is held to anyone's head? CBS quoted a parent making the gun-to-head allegation, and the ACLU is just as motivated as the MPP to relay any exaggerated claims here that they can. My problem is simply this: if I had quoted the MPP site' claim about the video -- which is worded differently than what you forwarded -- without checking it myself, I would be subject to charges of exaggeration or credulousness. So now whenever the MPP makes a claim, I'm going to have to check it out myself. That doesn't make me a fan of the MPP. They should be making my work as an anti-drug-war advocate easier, not harder. > Brian, I really don't know what your problem is these days. > Seems you're out to alienate everyone -- or at least every > Libertarian. Can you quote me ever using on a Libertarian the kind of sarcasm you just used in the first paragraph of your email? (Feel free to use the full-text search of all my postings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/messages.) I seem to recall some name-calling with Mr. Hacker of a kind I haven't been involved in, and some contentious betting that helped send Zander Collier off the list. On the whole, I think your postings have been by far the most valuable of anybody's on the list, but you also have a few times taken things to a somewhat personal level when it wasn't really necessary. If you're seriously concerned about me alienating list members, then feel free to forward this email to the list and ask anybody who feels alienated by anything I've written here to email Ted Brown privately so he can report a count. > On every issue. I'll put my record of civility up against that of anybody on this list. Obviously, an issue is far more likely to be discussed here if there are differences among us on it. I indeed disagree with three or four significant positions in the Libertarian platform, and I'm not shy about my agenda of trying to change minds regarding them. Even if I don't change their minds, I want them to realize that there are well-informed liberty-loving people of principle who nevertheless disagree with them. Such a realization may indeed be personally uncomfortable, but I won't apologize for causing such discomfort. The LP has a serious problem if, as is so often the case, the lack of lockstep party-line agreement is considered grounds by Libertarians that one side of the disagreement should feel alienated or perhaps even leave.