Free pens and solid-gold paper clips

Happy Friday news dump, gun nuts! After eight hours of debate, booing and sighs, the gun bill went to the House yesterday with the assault-weapons restrictions intact. Nathaniel T. Oaks: "Why do the authorities need to retain the fingerprints?” 
Uhm like because duh?
Also released, a list of items found at Adam Lanza's house. What a difference a Bushmaster makes-- if he'd taken an armful of any of the other weapons in his arsenal, how many might still be alive?

Ed Ericson Jr. writes about the variegated dramas of the "Men of the Pen" -- Big Boyz Bail Bonds

Harbor East developers are edging closer to a $107 million tax break, and howcomes traffic cones got 5 times more expensive in three years and office-supply costs quintupled? Hrm?

In another case of the city paying taxes for developers, the state's attorney's office will be spending $1.4 million a year to get out of its rat-infested courthouse offices and into schweet suites in the SunTrust building.

Batts and Bealefeld sat behind a table together at UB Law

White supremacist Matthew Heimbach blarbed to the JZ

"God - given innocence"

Homicide #48 was in Oliver*

Here's the dumbass who was shot by cops on Danville Ave. (6700? 8700?) after he "tested" his shotgun in his city back yard.

Has anyone else heard that the State's Attorney's Office is moving out of the courthouse and to the SunTrust building? I haven't seen this reported anywhere, but a person can't read everything always...

The officer-involved shooting victim/subject/target was reportedly firing off guns in his back yard.*

So Jezebel has picked up the "White Student Union at Towson U" story, simultaneously enlightening the masses and spreading the WSU's message that "The virtue of white Christian womanhood is under attack at Towson University by degenerate criminals seeking to rob our women of their God given innocence." He's in the New York Daily News too.
"school officials said that Towson, which is near Baltimore, has one of the safest campuses in the University System of Maryland. It has the lowest crime statistics among the USM campuses, and the total number of violent crimes in 2012 was down 37.5% despite a 2.3% increase in enrollment."
INteresting that his page features "White Girl Bleed a Lot"-- the author of that book emails me constantly trying to get me to run something about "race riots." ... Anyway best of luck to you, Matthew Heimbach. Keep subverting the dominant paradigm. May you attend all future CPAC events and let everybody know all about what kind of a party Conservatives have in mind.

18-year-old freshman at College Park in trouble for trying to solicit sex from a 12-year-old.

Graceland, Enchantment, Unicycles

A suspect was shot by a cop in the 6700 block on Danville Rd in the SW

Justin Fenton ‏@justin_fenton

A police-involved shooting reported in 6700 Danville Rd., a neighborhood called Graceland Park. In 5 yrs I've never heard that neighborhood

and Pigtown recorded its first homicide this morning* of 2013(march 28). Unidentified Male at the 1300 block of Carroll Street. Shooting victim. via Cham, it was the 47th murder of the year.

Ed Ericson Jr. has taken over the Ink from laid-off Anna Ditkoff, he details six homicides from March 20-24; the murder in Remington, D'Andre Thomas, was apparently a beef about some woman that alleged killer Benny Davis had.

but reports of a woman slain on the Enchantment of the Seas were premature.

In the Patch blotter, an assailant wielded a knife in Oakanshawe and a juvenile assaulted a police officer in Pen Lucy.

Do you ever wonder what goes on in Harford County? Well, I'll tell you: nothing but naked girls,* unicycles and cows in the road.

The big MD gun control vote is in the House tomorrow.
And so if everyone in A-town supposedly supports Curt Anderson's bill so much, why is everyone so sure it won't pass? Is Vallario going to sit on it? That guy is the worst.
Meanwhile, opiate poisoning rates are going through the roof, but I don't see him being all "save the children!" about that. 

Dead, taxed and argued over

Note new AP style guidelines when it comes to rifles, weapons and being slain and homicided 

It's hard to focus of Baltimore with DOMA on every news feed in the land-- read the transcript, listen to the audio. It's fascinating and neat to hear Roberts, Clement, Kagan and Alito duking it out re. the estate of Edie Windsor (could you wish for a more perfect or deserving plaintiff)?

Two Acquittals and a Mistrial but Maybe Three Life Terms

So Policarpio Perez was acquitted of the murders-- but convicted of conspiracy to murder-- Ricardo Espinoza and Alexia Quezada, but a mistrial was declared for the murder count* for the death of Lucero (though he was also convicted of conspiracy in that case.  Just, what? Could there possibly in any way be a fourth trial for this guy? Says Cheshire, "I would like to note that Espinoza Perez was convicted of three counts of conspiring to commit first-degree murder. As a result, he faces a maximum sentence of three life terms in prison." ... which I take to mean no fourth trial because he'll already be as jailed as he's going to get.

Paige Croyder is back! and blogging about the "Stupid Trial" of the officer who recorded Judge Joan Gordon.

Here's the full transcript of Hollingsworth v. Perry at SCOTUS today, and some backstory from NYMag on the case they'll be hearing tomorrow.

Titillating Tuesday

Will Prop 8 /DOMA get struck down ... between now and June?
Will the jury find Policarpio Epsinoza Perez guilty a third time for killing three children?
So much suspense!

Some Enchanting Elevator

Royal Carribean's Enchantment of the Seas in the news again-- a 62-year-old woman was apparently murdered aboard a cruise ship that embarked from our fair port en route to Nassau. The ship has been crime blogg'd before-- a 14-year-old girl was allegedly sexually assaulted by a 25-year-old pool boy, two years ago a crew member was busted with cocaine and heroin.

But wait, isn't that already the law? Senators passed a bill to end the speed camera bounty system, and the bill "does not tighten requirements for allowing offenders to verify a violation."

WYPR's doing a show on our blue-light cameras on Friday.

Pro-gun-control moms are rallying in A-town today.

Progressive MD uncovered $60 million a year MD in lost revenue spent on "corporate welfare"-- loopholes, allowable shifty accounting and superfluous tax breaks that the legislature refuses to fix.

Speaking of A-town, ef the medical marijuana bill, which would lend not a whit of help to pot-smoking grannies like Cher Neufer and Brenda Brown.* Can't we just leave hippie grandma and AIDS grandma alone and give pot to everybody (and tax it) like HBill 1453 aims to do?

The day Andrew Zimmern's "Maryland" episode of Bizarre Foods aired, the House passed a ban on shark fin soup-- TIL MD fisherpeople catch sharks for Chinese consumption. Incidentally Zimmern also went to the eastern shore, where he skinned and ate BBQ'd muskrat and grilled eel that's caught here and also shipped to Asia. The gallivanting gourmand also enjoyed chitlins prepared by Koreans, Korean food prepared in Silver Spring, and Spike Gjerde's whales (or maybe they were hotels).

Saved for later dept:
- A compendium on "The Rise and Fall of Prohibition in Baltimore, 1918-1933."

Fascinating look at world of trap-making, i.e. secret compartments in vehicles often used to hide drugs, money wired.com/threatlevel/20…
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) March 25, 2013

Self-reliant and suicidal

Gun deaths as well as gun control attitudes both appear to have racial bias: according to government data, white people five times more likely to commit suicide with a gun than black people. Mansplained the NRA's Wayne LaPierre on the disproportionately high rate of gun suicides by gun owners:
"Gun owners are notably self-reliant and exhibit a willingness to take definitive action when they believe it to be in their own self-interest. Such action may include ending their own life when the time is deemed appropriate." And an ABC News/WaPo poll has found 79% of (presumably self-defined) black people were supportive of stricter gun control laws vs. 48% of white people. And, not for nothing, urbanites favoring stricter gun laws by a 2:1 margin over country folk.

When it comes to HeLa cancer cells, Hopkins' patient privacy liberties are the gift that keeps on giving.

In case you missed it: map of doomed-to-close liquor stores by Cham Green

Mary Washington

about an hour ago

HB 829, Correctional Services - Pregnant Detainees and Inmates - Restraint Restrictions has just passed the House of Delegates (131 Yeas, 4 Nays). Now on to the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.

Two women, two dogs

Are homicide stats are what Baltimoreans "care about most" when it comes to crime? Does having a flood of cadets walk the beat* in a violence-plagued neighborhood make a difference? I'll take no and no for $200, Alex.

Jermaul (sic) Dean was charged with posing as a city police officer before frisking and rob a man in the SW.

A man robbed a sex shop in Havre de Grace,* but only for cash.

Great reading: the Maryland Law Review.

In Queen Anne's county, the body of missing Robin Pope was found in the water on Kent Island and ID'd; three weeks ago her dog's body was also found. Curiously, in AAC the day before another woman was found dead with her dog.