Nylarthotep has the skinny.

Greeley Tribune:

In a bizarre twist of events, what should have been a routine film shoot turned into a real-life thriller.

Members of a film crew got the shock of their lives Saturday when a Larimer County SWAT team surrounded the crew and ordered everyone on their knees, hands behind their heads.

The crew from Twelve Monkeys Dancing Films, a Denver-based independent film company, was shooting a scene from their current low-budget feature, “Different Kinds,” in the North Pines campground just west of Loveland.

In the scene, Chris Borden, the lead actor, plays the role of Jared, who is holding a girl hostage and pistol whips a good samaritan who tries to intervene.

Borden surmises that someone passing through the park thought there was a real hostage situation, and in a panic, called the police.

The crew had a park permit and had been shooting the movie for several hours when the SWAT team moved in.

“One of the actor’s faces goes completely white and we all turn around and we’re all surrounded by SWAT,” Borden said.

The entire crew was ordered to drop to their knees with M-16 rifles pointed at their backs and then were forced to lay on the ground for 15 to 20 minutes. Several crew members tried to explain that they were just filming a movie, but were ordered by the SWAT team to shut up.

They were issued a citation for disorderly conduct. On the one hand, it’s another incident of a SWAT team acting a bit overzealous. On the other hand, the film crew should have probably notified the authorities.

Update: Apparently, everyone says films require permits and those serve as notification. SWAT team’s fault.

Rape down, Authorities stumped

The LAT:

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has revoked the concealed weapons license of a retired sheriff’s captain who waged a fiery but unsuccessful campaign to unseat him in last week’s election, a move the candidate’s lawyer called “blatant retaliation.”

And this is why I don’t like may-issue CCW. It’s subject to abuse. In this case, it was abused by giving it to a privileged person and again abused when it was revoked for political purposes.

Slate has an interactive feature on torture. Don’t worry, it’s not that interactive. It’s really just a gussied-up web page, but there’s lots of good information there. They break down all the controversial interrogation techniques, tell you where they’re used, what the official comment is and what the international lawyers say. Better yet, they try to tell a story about how these policies arose and hilight some of the problems torture has caused.

The real legacy of American interrogation practices, post-9/11, is that practices and justifications that should have been reserved for the worst of the worst (assuming we could know who they are) began to be used indiscriminately. In the eyes of the government, they began to seem almost normal. The effect has been to turn America from the world’s leader on many issues of international human-rights law into the world’s tyrant.

Reader Chris:

While our spouses may hope for the passage of the 1 gun per month law, it is meaningless because it can be defeated by the use of straw persons.

Dr. appointments for the kids and errands. Light blogging. Let me know if anything happens.