TGIF 6/17/22

It's Friday again, and time for our good week/bad week lists. As I was gathering notes for today's post, I wasn't sure which list some of these would end up on. 

We learned this week that John Hinckley, the guy who shot President Ronald Reagan, his press secretary James Brady, Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy, and DC Police Officer Thomas Delahanty back in 1980 to impress actress Jodie Foster, had been released from all supervision. 

I was unaware that Hinckley had been working on art and music during his decades of confinement, but it seems he's been trying to sell art on eBay, and he cut a record and scheduled a concert tour, once he knew the date he'd be free of all supervision. (I am not encouraging anyone to look at his art or listen to his music; I include the links so you know I'm not making stuff up.)

Sadly, or thankfully, his concerts are being cancelled, mostly because of strong feelings on the part of people who think it's sick to pay money to a guy who tried to kill the president, or who think it's wrong to make money off a guy who tried to kill the president, or for any number of other strongly held opinions on this. Here's a statement from one venue that decided to cancel Hinckley's performance. In part, it says

So, Hinckley had a good week, based on his release after "41 years 2 months and 15 days," but a bad week because some of us are not willing to accept that he deserves a chance at a normal life? Is that how it works out for him? And the rest of us? Do we make the good week list for keeping him from performing? Or does that put us on the bad week list?

Here's another mixed week mention. The EU "gave its blessing" for Ukraine to become a candidate to join it. That's just the first step - becoming a member can take years, as the article pointed out - and there's no guarantee.

...there are 35 "chapters of the acquis" setting out standards to meet in areas from judicial policy and financial services to food safety...talks have been stalled for years with Turkey, a candidate since 1999.

That said, as Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president said,

Ukrainians are ready to die for the European perspective. We want them to live with us the European dream."

If nothing else, it's a symbolic step for the Ukrainians, still caught in the very ugly war with Russia, but it's hard not wondering how much of a Ukraine will be left to try and meet the onerous requirements. Does that make this news, like the Hinckley story, a candidate for both lists? 

Axios is reporting a number of police crime reporting failures, saying that "nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies nationwide...failed to report their 2021 crime data to the FBI. Agencies that failed to send some or all their data included the LAPD and the NYPD, as well as several significantly smaller law enforcement organizations across the country.  

The report, from a partnership between The Marshall Project and Axios Local, noted

The FBI's annual data set is the country's foremost way to understand how crime across the U.S. is changing, measuring things like how many murders or rapes took place last year or how many people were arrested. It's going to be really hard for policymakers to look at what crime looks like in their own community and compare it to similar communities," Jacob Kaplan, a criminologist at Princeton University, told The Marshall Project.

The FBI switched to a new system last year, but it shouldn't have been a surprise; the transition was "announced years ago, and the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars" to help departments switch over to the new system. Many agencies that didn't submit data blamed "staffing shortages and technical issues. You can see an interactive map of who didn't report in the Axios article.

I don't know about you, but to me this seems like a bad week for LEO agencies, and for the FBI, and for policy makers. And, I'd have to add, for the hundreds of political candidates who are running on a platform of fighting crime in their communities. We know they make stuff up, and talk out of their hats half the time, but without accurate data, it's hard to fact-check their nonsense, and that's bad for all of us.

Here's what I think is, hands down, a good week list story: we'll have COVID vaccines for the youngest among us.

U.S. regulators have authorized the first COVID-19 shots for infants and preschoolers. That paves the way for vaccinations for children under 5 to begin next week. The Food and Drug Administration's emergency use authorization Friday follows a unanimous recommendation by its advisory panel. The kid-sized shots are made by Moderna and Pfizer.

I've read and listened to enough interviews with medical professionals - researchers and doctors and nurses alike - who believe that this is a very good thing, and who have said they'll vaccinate their kids as soon as the vaccine is available, to convince me this is a good thing.

And it's also a good week list thing that states have pre-ordered doses of the vaccine, so that they'll be widely available where they're needed. Except Florida, of course. The alleged Sunshine State is the only state that didn't pre-order by the deadline. Why, you ask? 

Because Gov. Ron Bad Week DeSantis.

I would say we are affirmatively against the Covid vaccine for young kids. These are the people who have zero risk of getting anything

Residents will be able to get the shots from a pharmacy, or from their pediatrician, assuming there's enough quantity to go around. 

And, finally, today is the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. I offered some thoughts on that earlier today - and I'd have to say, Richard Nixon would have ended up on the good week list, which is hard to imagine under normal, scandalous circumstances.

TGIF, everyone.