The Associated Press reports that Houston's murder rate has hit a 12-year high and increased by 13.5 percent over 2005.  There were 379 homicides in 2006.  The mayor thinks at least part of the increase is due to the Katrina evacuees that settled in Houston.

Regardless of who's responsible that's a lot of murders -- more than one a day on average.  It seems that violence in this country is widespread.  I've mentioned before the level of violence in the City of Brotherly Love.  The army trains its surgeons there before sending them to the battlefield.  A professional athlete was gunned down while riding in his limousine in Denver recently.  Hip-hop artists seem to shoot at one another for diversion.

The average American is probably much more safe from violence than the average Iraqi, but how long will that be true?  Today there are areas in this country that are not that different from Baghdad.

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The Associated Press reports that in New Orleans:

Police plan to set up checkpoints beginning Wednesday to help curb a crime wave that has claimed nine lives since the start of 2007, Mayor Ray Nagin said, stopping short of imposing a curfew on this tourism-dependent city.

Nagin acknowledged the criminal justice breakdown extended beyond the police force and said a corps of volunteers will be recruited to monitor homicide cases moving through the courts. "We're sending a signal that the system that used to allow you to commit a murder and there were no consequences is over."

It took nine murders in nine days for Nagin to figure out that murderers should be punished? It seems that what New Orleans needs is some adult supervision. It's clearly not going to get that level of supervision from the Louisiana governor's office. So, should the federal government intervene and force regime change?

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Fox News reports that 10,733 fugitives were rounded up in a sweep led by the US Marshals Service. The operation covered 24 eastern states and lasted six days beginning on October 22. State and local law enforcement officers aided the marshals. About 3,000 officers were involved. Sweeps of this type were previously conducted in April 2005 and April 2006.

Are you wondering what all these law enforcement people were doing between April and October? Apparently not finding and arresting fugitives from justice. Why else would there be an almost 11,000 fugitive backlog? Was the fugitive roundup season closed? Or was October just a really high crime month?

Let's examine the numbers a little closer. About 3,000 officers arrested about 11,000 fugitives in six days. That's less than 4 fugitive arrests per officer, or just a little better than one arrest per officer every two days. The Marshals Service is crowing about that?

Who wants to bet me that at least 80 percent of them won't be back on the street within a week?

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It's all over the news.  Some marketing company promoting a late-night cartoon on the Cartoon Network placed a bunch of blinking lighted signs around Boston, causing the police to call out the bomb squads and block off major parts of the city. Now the police have arrested two of the sign installers and are calling for the heads of Cartoon Network and Turner Broadcasting executives. Translation: We are so embarassed that we didn't know the difference between a battery and a bomb that we have to make more out of this than common sense dictates.

Nine other cities dealt with the signs without creating a furor. In fact, some of them did nothing about the signs until Boston converted them into a security crisis. Apparently cooler heads are running the police departments of those cities. I can understand that a large city woldn't want people going around sticking up lighted signs wherever they like. Fining the perpetrators might be in order, but arresting the lowest level hired help won't be an effective deterrent.

While I do believe that Boston overreacted, there is at least one question that authorities need to try to answer: Is the marketing company itself responsible for the frantic calls from citizens about the signs? Did they calculate that this would be a cheap way to gain a lot of publicity for the show even if they or Turner had to pay a fine? The signs were in place in Boston and the other cities for a couple of weeks before the reaction.

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Fox News has an article about the Feds arresting some men in Alabama for planning a machine gun attack on Mexicans. A federal agent said that the men call themselves the Alabama Free Militia. These very well might be some really bad guys who intended to harm some Mexicans, but I tend to be suspicious of cases like this. They might also be guys who went way overboard in preparing to protect themselves from what they see as potential threats. And who really knows what 'overboard' is in these days of terrorism and out-of-control illegal immigration?

The evidence, as reported by Fox, raises a lot of questions:

A federal agent testified they found two rooms loaded with guns and possible explosives components, including fireworks, ball bearings, primers, mouse traps, light bulbs and fertilizer.

Mouse traps? Light bulbs? As far as I know, every item listed is legal in Alabama. Notice that the agent said "possible explosives components." I would venture a guess that most residents of Alabama have mouse traps, light bulbs and fertilizer that are not used as explosives components. A few may have some loose ball bearings in their tool sheds.

I don't live in Alabama but I have every item on the list, except fireworks, in my workshop right now. I also have a couple of cans of gun powder. And some gun parts. (Whoops! Now the feds are probably going to come after me.) Years ago I used to hand load shotgun shells for skeet shooting and rifle cartridges for target practice and deer hunting. I haven't researched the laws in that area recently, but as far as I know all that stuff is still legal.

The five are charged with conspiring to make a firearm.

I didn't know that it was illegal to make a firearm, much less conspire to make one. I never made a gun myself but I knew back then of people who did. Perhaps they had a license or something. If I discussed with friends a desire to make a gun now could I be charged with a federal crime?

Nesmith (a federal agent) said one of the men told an informant that the group, which calls itself the Alabama Free Militia, saw government agents as "the enemy" and had a standing order to open fire if anyone saw government agents approaching.

Notice that he is getting this information from an informant, not from an undercover federal agent. We all know how reliable informants are. Is the informant a current or former member of the group with a grudge? Who knows!

I'm going to try to follow this case and see how it turns out.

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The Associated Press reports on a brawl involving thirty women in South Los Angeles. They state that "Unique Bishop, 21, fled but turned herself into authorities and was booked for investigation of murder." This raises several questions:

• If Unique now has the power of "authorities" why was she unable to avoid being booked?
• Why did she not choose to turn herself into a bird and fly away?
• Why doesn't the AP do a better job of editing its articles?

Okay, you can probably find a mistake or two in my writings, but I'm just an armature.

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Well, it appears there are some level heads in Texas. But what took them so long? The AP reports:

An appellate court decision upended the custody case that sent more than 440 children from a polygamist sect's ranch into foster care, but it's not clear whether the children might soon return home.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin said the state failed to show the youngsters were in any immediate danger, the only grounds under Texas law for taking children from their parents without court action.

Texas District Judge Barbara Walther now has 10 days to release the youngsters from custody, but the state could appeal to the Texas Supreme Court and keep the children from immediately going back to their parents.

The decision Thursday in one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history was a humiliating defeat for the state Child Protective Services agency. It was hailed as vindication by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who claim they are being persecuted for their religious beliefs.

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"Even if one views the FLDS belief system as creating a danger of sexual abuse by grooming boys to be perpetrators of sexual abuse and raising girls to be victims of sexual abuse ... there is no evidence that this danger is 'immediate' or 'urgent,'" the court said.

"Evidence that children raised in this particular environment may someday have their physical health and safety threatened is not evidence that the danger is imminent enough to warrant invoking the extreme measure of immediate removal," the court said.

The court said the state failed to show that any more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and offered no evidence of sexual or physical abuse against the other children. Half the youngsters taken from the ranch were 5 or younger. Only a few dozen are teenage girls.

The court also said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as a single household and to seize all the children because some parents in the home might be abusers.

Were these justices reading from my blog? No, it's just that, like me, they weren't among those hyperventilating over the strange behavior of the sect's members.

Now the Texas authorities should decide not to appeal the decision, get those children back to their parents and get on with investigations of individual instances of abuse -- if they can find any. Here's a guideline: motherhood at the age of 27 is not evidence of abuse.

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