The Associated Press reports: Woman Beaten On Video Sues Cop, Chicago. This is the case of an off-duty Chicago police officer beating up a female bartender half his size while unaware that everything was being captured by a security camera.

Outgoing Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline has said [Anthony] Abbate had “tarnished our image worse than anybody else in the history of the department,” and vowed to speed up the process of getting officers accused of misconduct off the street. Soon after the incident, Cline announced he was retiring.

I would suggest in retirement Mr. Cline you look up the Haymarket Riots, and the 1968 Democratic National Convention. I assure you, as egregious as this conduct was, it is definitely not the worse thing your department has ever done. I think we both know that without the video tape nothing would have happened to Abbate. Everyone in Chicago knows it too.

It’s Hexennacht and the moon is just past full, but there is no Blocksberg available for dancing down here and local fire officials frown on bonfires.

Of course the Church grabbed this holiday too and called it Walpurgisnacht in honor of one of their Anglo-Saxon saints, rather than good German witches [Hexen].

Melamine is great for counter tops and lab tables, but it just isn’t good for your kidneys. LitBrit at Shakesville has been keeping tabs on this and has two recent posts [one – two] on the use of melamine by the Chinese food industry to cheat on the protein content of their products.

When the pet food story first broke I was amazed at how relatively quickly the manufacturer tagged the Chinese wheat gluten as the problem. Then I sort of wondered why they used a “food grade” gluten, instead of “feed grade” in their products. They made pet food for Wal-Mart, which is only interested in price, and the food grade should be more expensive. I’m beginning to suspect that they knew there was melamine in the feed grade gluten because of associated pet deaths in the past.

This is a good time to return to the policies of an earlier Republican President, Theodore Roosevelt, and start to really kick some corporate butt, because the slimy SOBs just don’t care about anything but short-term profits. The Food and Drug Administration was created because of the foul practices of the food industry, and if they aren’t under constant scrutiny, they return to their old poisonous practices.

Update: LitBrit brings out number three in her series.

Update 2: From the Yellow Doggerel Democrat:

Rhyme for the occasion:

First, melamine fed to our cats and our dogs,
Then into our food chain, by way of our hogs,
Now chickens, consuming their melamine feed…
So what have YOU eaten? (Oh crap… we’re all screed.)

– SB the YDD