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Cake day: February 2nd, 2024

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  • She did something about the system. She defended it. On two occasions she opposed the release of people who had convictions overturned by demonstrating actual innocence to appellate courts on the basis of legal technicalities, in both cases her office argued that they had waited too long to file a petition to be released. Her office argued against the release of inmates eligible for parole after a federal court ruled that the extreme overcrowding in California prisons was cruel and unusual on the basis that releasing the prisoners would reduce prison labor.

    She helped with a cover up of an employee at the state crime lab who falsified testing results. The truth came out after the employee was arrested for stealing drugs from the lab and hundreds of convictions were overturned. She defended a police detective that falsified a confession to coerce a defendant into accepting a plea deal. She opposed requiring police to use body worn cameras. She opposed legislation that would have required her office to review police shootings.

    She consistently declined to investigate allegations of police and prosecutor misconduct including police shootings of unarmed people. Eventually she had to for the police, it got to the point that the justice department eventually stepped in to investigate an incident where a group of officers surrounded a mentally ill man with a steak knife and shot him 21 times after Harris refused to review the case. While she cooperated with the federal investigation into the police shooting, she backed the prosecutor who had his entire office removed from a case because of proven misconduct including hiding exonerating evidence.







  • Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, did not have wmd’s, and was the only major Sunni power in the region. Saddam Hussain was not a good guy by any means but he actively worked against Iranian influence and was a stabilizing presence on the middle east after the first Gulf War. Pre-invasion Iraq was good for US policy. The invasion led to the growth of Iranian influence in the region and the rise of the Islamic State terrorist organization. We should not have attacked Iraq.

    I was in support of attacking Afghanistan at the time and still think military action to go after Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin was warranted. The diversion of resources from that conflict is another reason we shouldn’t have attacked Iraq. We probably should have extended that conflict into northern Pakistan where we knew Al-Qaeda’s leadership and the bulk of their fighters were hiding.

    We definitely should have invaded Saudi Arabia. They provided training, equipment, travel, and money to enable the 9/11 attacks. 9/11 would not have been possible without Saudi Arabia’s support. Saudi Arabia was(is) in the curious position of publicly allying with us while plotting terrorism against us. Curious because by siding with us publicly they gave up Iran’s advantage of attacks against them potentially leading to conflict with Russia. Iran had some part in 9/11 but between their having a lesser role and the risk of Russia coming to their defense it would not have been worth it to attack Iran. Saudi Arabia had our backing instead of Russia’s. When they used proxies to attack us we should have leveled their royal palace. So far we haven’t even pulled our support.









  • If fantasy is back in then Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series is very good. For a while Laurel Hamilton was my favorite modern author. I can recommend the first 9 books of the Anita Blake series. Unfortunately the further you get into the series the more mystery gets replaced with erotica. I didn’t read the last couple of books she released in that series.


  • I assume fantasy is also out based on the no sci-fi and no Stephen King request. That eliminates the majority of what I read.

    How do you feel about true crime? In Cold Blood is a classic and a very engaging read. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is quite good and the killer had not been identified when the book was written. The Poisoner’s Handbook gets into the origins of forensic science. The Blood of Emmett Till successfully presents Emmett Till is a human being while still framing his murder as the significant cultural event that it became. This last one is a bit controversial but If I Did It is very well written and very strange to read. The ghost writer’s commentary adds to the book in very meaningful ways.