Low Impact Crime

Crime is pretty hard on the environment. Creating, transporting and maintaining a weapon, shooting a handgun or exploding a bomb - these causes a lot of pollution.

So it’s nice to see our local Des Moines metro criminals think about sustainability and go low impact as they do their green crime thing.


A kid armed with a sharp pencil held off authorities for a half-hour at the Polk County juvenile facility today. It was a brilliant move, waving his weapon around and exploiting the rampant fear of getting poked with a pencil lead.







A thug pulled a stick from his sleeve and whacked a man in the face last night, after the man was told to move and refused.





Des Moines police stopped a man who had attempted suicide with his sword. Police confiscated the sword and a spear and battle ax.

An inmate at the Polk County jail has vowed to starve himself unless he is given a vegetarian diet. That’ll teach ‘em.

Rights Boy loves the Earth

Rights Boy sometimes cracks wise at the dire predictions of climate change and the motives of our global prophets. Downright cynical.

But he does believe in conservation, recycling and consuming less instead of more; especially if he can save some money. So he will occasionally give advice on important green issues or solutions.


Rights Boy loves the Earth. Our planet is so-o-o hot.

The core is molten iron around 1,800 degrees F. The crust is mostly silicate rock with a wonderful ability to store vast amounts of heat. The greenhouse effect is the best of all; it keeps the atmosphere and surface warm enough to support human life.

Rights Boy was recently talking to his good friend Andy, who has decided to exploit the Earth’s hotness through geothermal.

Geothermal is a new green technology, used since the time of ancient Rome, which takes advantage of the heat stored in the ground. A steady supply of energy is captured and moved from the Earth to and through the home. Once installed, it uses much less energy, saves ongoing money and reduces pollution compared to conventional furnaces and air conditioners. Andy estimates the pollution reduction equivalent to taking four cars off the road (!!)


This morning I marveled at Andy’s wisdom and selfless act to reduce pollution and save money. So Rights Boy went to the gas station, filled up, dedicated this latest tank to his friend, and turned the thermostat up three degrees when he got home.

Seriously though, Rights Boy thinks geothermal is a good thing. Does anyone else use geothermal and what do you think?

No promotion for you !!

Rights Boy’s good friend Mike Burgher opined again this week in the Des Moines Register; this time ripping into sitting Senators and Representatives who spend all their time running for president and ignoring their day job. You can view the opinion here with comments from other DMR readers. Following is the original unedited version.


I was always taught that voting is an important privilege and responsibility not to be taken lightly. You should be informed and you should vote; if you don’t vote then you don’t have much justification to criticize the outcome. I was thinking about this when Barak Obama came out swinging at Hillary Clinton recently for her vote on an Iran resolution, a vote which he didn’t bother to make at all.

For Senators and Representatives voting is not just a privilege, it is actually their job; to represent the citizens who elected them and pay their salary and endless perks. If they don’t show up for important votes, then they are representing no one, and they are stealing time and money from the taxpayers.

For the third time in this administration, the Senate was required to confirm a new U.S. Attorney General. After the fiasco that was Alberto Gonzales, and with Congress teetering around 15% approval, you would think that every Senator would want to be on record with his or her constituency as participating and voting.

Senators Biden, Clinton, Dodd, McCain and Obama skipped this vote, no doubt because of higher priorities somewhere in Iowa or New Hampshire. All four Democrats said that they opposed the nomination of Mukasey for Attorney General; but apparently not enough to show up and vote against it.

More and more, it seems like the daily operation of the federal government is interfering with the presidential campaigns. Several of the presidential hopefuls collect, but do not earn, a check for a daytime job in Washington and their own State. Chris Dodd is certainly the most transparent; he appears to be settling down in Iowa and has enrolled his daughter in school. A warm welcome to Mr. Dodd and family, but I do wonder what the citizens of Connecticut think about it.

These days, the duration of a presidential campaign is sometime between two and four years, and there are several sitting Senators and Representatives spending all their time and effort in Iowa with presidential aspirations as their only priority. Why we should reward any of these Senators a promotion to U.S. President, when they don’t even do their current jobs?

Ethanol Redux

Rights Boy’s good friend Mike Burgher opined in the Des Moines Sunday Register on ethanol; “A Crime against Humanity,” according to one United Nations official.

Rights Boy had previously posted the unedited version here. His favorite reader, Anonymous, ripped Rights Boy a new one for the opinion.

You can never please Anonymous!

What does privacy mean to you?

The definitive source for all human information, Wikipedia, defined privacy as “the ability of an individual or group to control the flow of information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively…Privacy may be voluntarily sacrificed, normally in exchange for perceived benefits and very often with specific dangers and losses.”

Merriam-Webster is more succinct. Privacy is “the quality or state of being apart from company or observation…freedom from unauthorized intrusion, as in one's right to privacy.”

Not anymore…

Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Americans can't expect to have privacy, because people give up so much information online already.

Kerr declared, "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won,” and privacy now means that “government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.”

I guess Kerr cannot see the difference between someone choosing to type info into a Google search query, verses the government sifting through one's private records and listening in on phone conversations without the proper warrants.

Our privacy rights are disappearing before our eyes. Between fears of terrorism, cameras and web cams everywhere, shared medical records, or Internet search engines that keep history for two years, there is no privacy. So just give up. And trust the government.

We are frogs in the cooking pot; the water is starting to boil and we don’t even notice.

Meanwhile, A US federal judge has ordered the White House to preserve computer backups of all its e-mail due to pending litigation over missing messages. Apparently the Bush administration has been deleting as much of its electronic history as possible. Some bureaucrat in the White House basement, bless his heart, still believes in privacy!

A crime against humanity

Rights Boy was amused that the Register issued a thistle to United Nations official Jean Ziegler, chiding his grammar, expertise and conclusions for likening ethanol production to a "crime against humanity."

The corporate welfare and subsidies for ethanol production in the United States is probably a crime against taxpayers, but it’s hardly a crime against humanity.

Perhaps now the Register and others will begin to recognize that the United Nations is an organization of politicians - not scientists, not global environmental prophets, not even lobbyists for the Iowa Farm Bureau.

Every UN diplomat and official has his own country’s self-interest, agenda, and product to sell to the rest of us.

So the next time someone from the UN, or the Vatican, or even a Hollywood Academy Award winner tells you that climate change is somehow a crime against the planet caused by human existence, think about it. If he tells you it’s the end of civilization as we know it, we can’t possibly adapt, we should be riddled with guilt and start purchasing carbon offsets, think about his motive and what he is really selling.

Sometimes it’s snake oil.

Irony on Parade

White House spokesperson Dana Perino said that the administration is deeply disappointed with the measures in Pakistan, and agreed in a press conference this week that “it is never reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism.”

Rights Boys wonders if Perino knows the definition of irony.

If you care anything about your constitutional rights you are probably ROTFLMAO.

Rights Boy must be so old. He has fond memories of the good old days when the U.S. Justice Departments protected and upheld rights, instead of trampling on them - before the Patriot Act, wiretapping without warrants, suspension of habeas corpus and unlawful search and seizure – just to name a few.

At least General Muschariff is honest that he has suspended citizens’ rights instead of acting like the people never had them.

First in the Nation in Weird

Most of the time, Iowans are normal, boring, middle-of-the-road farmers, bankers and insurance agents.

But when that special time comes around for Iowa’s ‘first in the nation’ presidential candidate selection, when the spotlight is on, Iowa proves that it is also first in the nation in weirdness. Odd news from Iowa has been so plentiful lately that we have been a regular feature on Fark.com and apparently under consideration for our own coveted weird ‘Iowa’ logo. We have finally made it.

The great pumpkin tax – Just in time for Halloween, Iowa started taxing pumpkins, deciding that they were decorations and not food. Forms were available at grocery stores and pumpkin patches where you could swear to the State that you were going to eat that pumpkin instead of making a Jack-o-Lantern and thus avoid the sales tax.

Boys with toys – A man was arrested in Cedar Rapids after a government agent allegedly found him in an office building restroom with his pants down lying next to an inflatable, anatomically correct doll. Everyone hoped that the doll was of legal age and didn’t have any communicable diseases.



Propping up the mammary industry – $200 or the best offer; a woman who doesn't want her breast milk to go to waste has taken out a newspaper ad in hopes of selling it.









Man’s best friend – Apparently deciding he’d had enough, a dog on a hunting trip pulled a Dick Cheney and blasted a man with a shotgun at close range. ‘Wufff! You go chase that damn duck!’

Stay tuned for more...