“
Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
”
”
Franz Kafka (The Trial)
“
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.
”
”
Oscar Wilde
“
Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.
”
”
Franz Kafka (The Trial)
“
It was wrong. It was like arresting the gun for murder.
”
”
Ellery Queen (The Player on the Other Side (Ellery Queen Detective, #27))
“
They're not going to arrest you,' Skulduggery said as they walked through the door. 'They might glare at you and say angry words, but they won't arrest you. Well, they might arrest you. There's a good chance they will. But the important thing is that I've done nothing wrong.'
'For once.
”
”
Derek Landy (Dark Days (Skulduggery Pleasant, #4))
“
Her endeavor was misguided and wrong and maybe plain crazy, akin to someone waking up one day and deciding he’s going to scale Kilimanjaro because he can’t stop imagining the view from the top, the picture so arresting and beautiful that it too soon delivers him to a precarious ledge, where he can no longer turn back. And while it’s easy to say this is a situation to be avoided, isn’t this what we also fear and crave simultaneously, that some internal force which defies understanding might remake us into the people we dream we are?
”
”
Chang-rae Lee (On Such a Full Sea)
“
I think Bob appreciated my outfit. He made me buy the more expensive pendant. You might think that was to my disadvantage, but I accept that status comes with a price.”
“Not usually so immediately.” I shake my head. “You better not be hitting on federal agent ladies. They’ll arrest you.”
His grin widens. “I like handcuffs.”
I groan. “There is something seriously wrong with you.”
“Nothing that a night being worked over by a hot representative of justice couldn’t fix.
”
”
Holly Black (Black Heart (Curse Workers, #3))
“
I had been in France less than 48 hours before that obliging agent of yours had to stop me being run over by a French van full of French chickens because I’d looked the wrong way before crossing the street. Which shows how cunning the Gestapo are. “This person I’ve pulled from beneath the wheels of certain death was expecting traffic to travel on the left side of the road. Therefore she must be British, and is likely to have parachuted into Nazi-occupied France out of an Allied plane. I shall now arrest her as a spy.
”
”
Elizabeth Wein (Code Name Verity (Code Name Verity, #1))
“
I remember my mother telling me that, when she was a little girl in Catholic school, the nuns used to hit her left hand every time she wrote with it. Nowadays, if a teacher did that, she'd probably be arrested for child abuse. The optimist in me wants to believe sexuality will eventually be like handwriting: there's no right or wrong way to do it. We're all just wired differently. It's also worth noting that, when you meet someone, you never bother to ask if he's right or left handed. After all, does it really matter to anyone other than the person holding the pen?
”
”
Jodi Picoult
“
Most twenty-four-year-old women I know sleep in something more revealing. Something more adult." I raised my eyebrows. "There is nothing wrong with my Hello Kitty T-shirt." It was thin and comfortable, and it reached to my mid-thigh, which meant that if I had to get up in the middle of the night to dispatch any intruders, I'd do it with my butt covered and modesty intact. Sean frowned. "Sure, if you're five. Got a touch of arrested development happening there?" Argh.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles, #1))
“
What is wrong with you?” He glared at me.
“I’m somewhat sure I’m suddenly gay,” I shrugged, “My father and mother are hypocritical abandoning homophobic assholes. The former defending my chief suspect in the biggest case of my life—something I’m sure you had a hand in. I’m obsessed with your freckles, your bunny slippers and your lips—which I should be getting points for not kissing while you’re incapacitated, by the way. I’m dating a whore while working on the vice squad—points to me again for not arresting your ass for that—and I’m ridiculously horny. Oh, and my fiancée won’t talk to me.
”
”
Dani Alexander (Shattered Glass (Shattered Glass, #1))
“
When an officer finds themselves arresting pastors that are feeding people who have nothing, they should know they’re on the wrong side.
”
”
Justin King
“
What sort of adventures?' I asked him, astonished.
‘All sorts, Monsieur. Getting on the wrong train. Stopping in an unknown city. Losing your briefcase, being arrested by mistake, spending the night in prison. Monsieur, I believe the word adventure could be defined: an event out of the ordinary without being necessarily extraordinary.
”
”
Jean-Paul Sartre (Nausea)
“
Wednesday, November 8th, 1893
Here I sit in the still winter night on the drifting ice-floe, and see only stars above me. Far off I see the threads of life twisting themselves into the intricate web which stretches unbroken from life’s sweet morning dawn to the eternal death-stillness of ice. Thought follows thought—you pick the whole to pieces, and it seems so small—but high above all towers one form … Why did you take this voyage? … Could I do otherwise? Can the river arrest its course and run up hill? My plan has come to nothing. That palace of theory which I reared, in pride and self-confidence, high above all silly objections has fallen like a house of cards at the first breath of wind. Build up the most ingenious theories and you may be sure of one thing—that fact will defy them all. Was I so very sure? Yes, at times; but that was self-deception, intoxication. A secret doubt lurked behind all the reasoning. It seemed as though the longer I defended my theory, the nearer I came to doubting it. But no, there is not getting over the evidence of that Siberian drift-wood. But if, after all, we are on the wrong track, what then? Only disappointed human hopes, nothing more. And even if we perish, what will it matter in the endless cycles of eternity?
”
”
Fridtjof Nansen (Farthest North: The Incredible Three-Year Voyage to the Frozen Latitudes of the North (Modern Library Exploration))
“
We’re loyal servants of the U.S. government. But Afghanistan involves fighting behind enemy lines. Never mind we were invited into a democratic country by its own government. Never mind there’s no shooting across the border in Pakistan, the illegality of the Taliban army, the Geneva Convention, yada, yada, yada. When we’re patrolling those mountains, trying everything we know to stop the Taliban regrouping, striving to find and arrest the top commanders and explosive experts, we are always surrounded by a well-armed, hostile enemy whose avowed intention is to kill us all. That’s behind enemy lines. Trust me. And we’ll go there. All day. Every day. We’ll do what we’re supposed to do, to the letter, or die in the attempt. On behalf of the U.S.A. But don’t tell us who we can attack. That ought to be up to us, the military. And if the liberal media and political community cannot accept that sometimes the wrong people get killed in war, then I can only suggest they first grow up and then serve a short stint up in the Hindu Kush. They probably would not survive. The truth is, any government that thinks war is somehow fair and subject to rules like a baseball game probably should not get into one. Because nothing’s fair in war, and occasionally the wrong people do get killed. It’s been happening for about a million years. Faced with the murderous cutthroats of the Taliban, we are not fighting under the rules of Geneva IV Article 4. We are fighting under the rules of Article 223.556mm — that’s the caliber and bullet gauge of our M4 rifle. And if those numbers don’t look good, try Article .762mm, that’s what the stolen Russian Kalashnikovs fire at us, usually in deadly, heavy volleys. In the global war on terror, we have rules, and our opponents use them against us. We try to be reasonable; they will stop at nothing. They will stoop to any form of base warfare: torture, beheading, mutilation. Attacks on innocent civilians, women and children, car bombs, suicide bombers, anything the hell they can think of. They’re right up there with the monsters of history.
”
”
Marcus Luttrell (Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10)
“
The notion that a vast gulf exists between "criminals" and those of us who have never served time in prison is a fiction created by the racial ideology that birthed mass incarceration, namely that there is something fundamentally wrong and morally inferior about "them." The reality, though, is that all of us have done wrong. As noted earlier, studies suggest that most Americans violate drug laws in their lifetime. Indeed, most of us break the law not once but repeatedly throughout our lives. Yet only some of us will be arrested, charged, convicted of a crime, branded a criminal or a felon, and ushered into a permanent undercaste. Who becomes a social pariah and excommunicated from civil society and who trots off to college bears scant relationship to the morality of the crimes committed. Who is more blameworthy: the young black kid who hustles on the street corner, selling weed to help his momma pay rent? Or the college kid who deals drugs out of his dorm room so that he'll have cash to finance his spring break? Who should we fear? The kid in the 'hood who joined a gang and now carries a gun for security, because his neighborhood is frightening and unsafe? Or the suburban high school student who has a drinking problem but keeps getting behind the wheel? Our racially biased system of mass incarceration exploits the fact that all people break the law and make mistakes at various points in their lives with varying degrees of justification. Screwing up-failing to live by one's highest ideals and values-is part of what makes us human.
”
”
Michelle Alexander
“
Even if he tries to keep his head down, people are going to notice how good-looking he is—by human standards,” she quickly clarified, feeling her cheeks burn. “I lived with humans for twelve years, and I doubt I’d be able to hide there without ending up with Child Protective Services or something. He could get himself arrested. Or hit by a bus. Or—” “I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Grady jumped in. “But… I think you’re also forgetting that Keefe’s not exactly safe around here.
”
”
Shannon Messenger (Stellarlune (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #9))
“
It really was a whole generation who were listening to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, James Moody, Fats Navarro and, a little bit later on, Mongo Santamaría and Chuck Berry, and these dozen or so guys gave them a voice. They led the way. They wrote what a whole generation wanted to read. The time was right and they seized the day by writing about their lives. They travelled, they got into scrapes, they got arrested, they got wasted … and they wrote about it.
Isn’t that something?
”
”
Karl Wiggins (Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe)
“
It was the right thing to do, no matter how wrong the law says it was. I couldn’t live with myself if I hadn’t done that. There’s natural laws that trump the ones you might get arrested over.
”
”
Cara McKenna (Hard Time)
“
Surely, though, I must have stolen into the future and landed in an H.G. Wells-style world - a horrific, fantastic society in which people's faces contained only eyes, millions of healthy young adults and children dropped dead from the flu, boys got transported out of the country to be blown to bits, and the government arrested citizens for speaking the wrong words. Such a place couldn't be real. And it couldn't be the United States of America, "the land of the free and the home of the brave."
But it was. I was on a train in my own country, in a year the devil designed. 1918.
”
”
Cat Winters (In the Shadow of Blackbirds)
“
A teenager doesn't know she's still a child. A teenager feels like an adult, I suppose primarily because her outside, her flesh and her face, her body, her size, her width and height, look like - and can function like, get pregnant like, can party like, get arrested like, and die just like - an adult. She thinks she's making decisions as a grown-up with a fully developed brain and, in a case like mine, a fully developed faith. She's wrong about both of those beliefs. But chances are, she will not realize what a child she was until, as a full-grown adult, she knows and loves a teenager.
”
”
Beth Moore (All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir)
“
Struggling, despairing, Klein fought with his demon. All the new understanding and sense of redemption this fateful time had yielded had surged, in the course of this past day, to such a wave of thought and clarity that he had felt he would remain forever on the crest even while he was beginning to drop down. Now he was in the trough again, still fighting, still secretly hoping, but gravely injured. For one brief, glowing day he had succeeded in practicing the simple art known to every blade of grass. For one scant day he had loved himself, felt himself to be unified and whole, not split into hostile parts; he had loved himself and the world and God in himself, and everywhere he went he had met nothing but love, approval, and joy. If a robber had attacked him yesterday, or a policeman had arrested him, that too would have been approval, harmony, the smile of fate. And now, in the midst of happiness, he had reversed course and was cutting himself down again. He sat in judgment on himself while his deepest self knew that all judgment was wrong and foolish. The world, which for the span of one day had been crystal clear and wholly filled with divinity, once more presented a harsh and painful face; every object had its own meaning and every meaning contradicted every other."
"He already knew that the choking feeling of dread would pass only if he stopped condemning and admonishing himself, if he stopped poking around in the old wounds. He knew that all pain, all stupidity, all evil became its opposite if he could recognize God in it, if he pursued it to its deepest roots, which extended far beyond weal and woe and good and evil. He knew that. But there was nothing to do about it; the evil spirit was in him, God was a word again, lovely but remote. He hated and despised himself, and this hatred came over him, when the time was ripe, as involuntary and inexorably as love and trustfulness at other times. And this was how it always must be. Again and again and again he would experience the grace and blessing, and again and again the accursed contrary.
”
”
Hermann Hesse (Klingsors letzter Sommer)
“
In a whodunnit, when a detective hears that Sir Somebody Smith has been stabbed thirty-six times on a train or decapitated, they accept it as a quite natural occurrence. They pack their bags and head off to ask questions, collect clues, ultimately to make an arrest. But I wasn't a detective. I was an editor—and, until a week ago, not a single one of my acquaintances had managed to die in an unusual and violent manner. Apart from my own parents and Alan, I hardly knew anyone who had died at all. It's strange when you think about it. There are hundreds and hundreds of murders in books and television. It would be hard for narrative fiction to survive without them. And yet there are almost none in real life, unless you happen to live in the wrong area. Why is it that we have such a need for murder mystery and what is it that attracts us—the crime or the solution? Do we have some primal need of bloodshed because our own lives are so safe, so comfortable? I made a mental note to check out Alan's sales figures in San Pedro Sula in Honduras (the murder capital of the world). It might be that they didn't read him at all.
”
”
Anthony Horowitz (Magpie Murders (Susan Ryeland, #1))
“
And so the land lay atomized, all in fear of all, in a miasma of dread, with no possibility of organized resistance because the terror struck at individuals, each instance of it a separate and personal experience—the knock on the door, the abrupt arrest, the sense of shocked disbelief, the certainty that an error had been made and would soon be corrected—and everyone thinking, Don’t look, don’t listen, don’t ask, how do I know, maybe he really was a spy, I’m not doing anything wrong, it won’t touch me.
”
”
Chaim Potok (The Gates of November)
“
We now dwelt in a very large prison, without walls, bounded by Canada, Mexico and two oceans. There were the jailers, the turnkeys, the informers, and somewhere in the Midwest the solitary confinement of the special internment camps. Most people did not appear to notice. Since there were no literal walls or barbed wire, since they had committed no crimes, had not been arrested or taken to court, they did not grasp the change, the dread transformation, of their situation. It was the classic case of a man kidnapped while standing still. Since they had been taken nowhere and since they themselves had voted the new tyranny into power, they could see nothing wrong. Anywho, a good third of them, had they known, would have thought it a good idea…Their freedom to do as they were told had been preserved.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (Radio Free Albemuth)
“
There is no excuse for bullying. Not even in schools. The parents should be arrested. But the most worrying thing is that authorities do it: politicians and journalists. They consider it part of their job. This world is wrong. It’s a crime: Causes traumas to vulnerable people.
”
”
Maria Karvouni
“
If you in fact had no gold, then your situation was hopeless. You would be beaten, burned, tortured, and steamed to the point of death or until they finally came to believe you. But if you had gold, you could determine the extent of your torture, the limits of your endurance, and your own fate. Psychologically, this situation was, incidentally, not easier but more difficult, because if you made an error
you would always be ridden by a guilty conscience. Of course, anyone who had already mastered the rules of the institution would yield and give up his gold—that was easier. But it was a mistake to give it up too readily. They would refuse to believe you had coughed it all up, and they would continue to hold you. But you'd be wrong, too, to wait too long before yielding: you'd end up kicking the bucket or they'd paste a term on you out of meanness. One of the Tatar draymen endured all the tortures: he had no gold! They imprisoned his wife, too, and tortured her, but the Tatar stuck to his story: no gold! Then they arrested his daughter: the Tatar couldn't take it any more. He coughed up 100,000 rubles. At this point they let his family go, but slapped a prison term on him.
”
”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago)
“
Yet what moved Our Blessed Lord to invective was not badness but just such self-righteousness as this…He said that the harlots and the Quislings would enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the self-righteous and the smug. Concerning all those who endowed hospitals and libraries and public works, in order to have their names graven in stone before their fellow men, He said, “Amen I say to you, they have received their reward” (Matt. 6:2). They wanted no more than human glory, and they got it. Never once is Our Blessed Lord indignant against those who are already, in the eyes of society, below the level of law and respectability. He attacked only the sham indignation of those who dwelt more on the sin than the sinner and who felt pleasantly virtuous, because they had found someone more vicious than they. He would not condemn those whom society condemned; his severe words were for those who had sinned and had not been found out…He would not add His burden of accusation to those that had already been hurled against the winebibbers and the thieves, the cheap revolutionists, the streetwalkers, and the traitors. They were everybody’s target, and everybody knew that they were wrong…And the people who chose to make war against Our Lord were never those whom society had labeled as sinners. Of those who sentenced Him to death, none had ever had a record in the police court, had ever been arrested, was ever commonly known to be fallen or weak. But among his friends, who sorrowed at His death, were coverts drawn from thieves and from prostitutes. Those who were aligned against Him were the nice people who stood high in the community—the worldly, prosperous people, the men of big business, the judges of law courts who governed by expediency, the “civic-minded” individuals whose true selfishness was veneered over with public generosity. Such men as these opposed him and sent Him to His death.
”
”
Fulton J. Sheen (Peace of Soul: Timeless Wisdom on Finding Serenity and Joy by the Century's Most Acclaimed Catholic Bishop)
“
What sort of adventures?” I ask him, astonished. “All sorts, Monsieur. Getting on the wrong train. Stopping in an unknown city. Losing your briefcase, being arrested by mistake, spending the night in prison. Monsieur, I believed the word adventure could be defined: an event out of the ordinary without being necessarily extraordinary
”
”
Jean-Paul Sartre (Nausea)
“
XII.
If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped, the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
All hope of greenness? Tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.
XIII.
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupified, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!
XIV.
Alive? he might be dead for aught I knew,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain.
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
XV.
I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart,
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier's art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.
XVI.
Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm to mine to fix me to the place,
The way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.
XVII.
Giles then, the soul of honour - there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first,
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
Good - but the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman hands
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!
XVIII.
Better this present than a past like that:
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.
XIX.
A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend's glowing hoof - to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.
XX.
So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
XXI.
Which, while I forded - good saints, how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,
Each step, of feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
- It may have been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.
XXII.
Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage -
XXIII.
The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque,
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No footprint leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.
”
”
Robert Browning
“
we won a lawsuit for police misconduct in New York City. The police had been arresting homeless people for sleeping in public, and charging them with disorderly conduct. Hundreds of folks rallied to bring attention to this situation, and many of us slept outside to express our feeling that it should not be a crime to sleep in public. I was arrested one night as I slept. Through a long legal process, I was found not guilty, and then I filed a civil suit of wrongful arrest, wrongful prosecution, and police misconduct. And we won, in addition to a legal precedent, around $10,000, though we felt the money didn’t belong to me or to the Simple Way but to the homeless in New York for all they endure. It was their victory. The second thing
”
”
Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution, Updated and Expanded: Living as an Ordinary Radical)
“
They plan to arrest all the Danish Jews. They plan to take them away. And we have been told that they may come tonight.” “I don’t understand! Take them where?” Her father shook his head. “We don’t know where, and we don’t really know why. They call it ‘relocation.’ We don’t even know what that means. We only know that it is wrong, and it is dangerous, and we must help.
”
”
Lois Lowry (Number the Stars)
“
While higher arrest and conviction rates, longer prison sentences, and the death penalty all reduce murders generally, none of these measures had a consistent impact on mass public shootings. Nor did any of the restrictive gun laws. Only one single policy was found to effectively reduce these attacks: the passage of right-to-carry laws, which permit law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns.
”
”
John R. Lott Jr. (The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong)
“
"You ever been arrested before?"
"No sir. This is my first time."
"The first time this week, you mean."
"Oh, I been arrested in Michigan. I thought you meant in Illinois. I never been arrested in Illinois. I never did no wrong in Illinois."
"What good does that do you?"
"It don't. It's just that I love my state so much I go to Michigan to steal," he explained with an expression almost beatific.
”
”
Nelson Algren (The Neon Wilderness)
“
Thieving was not a sheer absurdity. It was a form of human industry, perverse indeed, but still an industry exercised in an industrious world; it was work undertaken for the same reason as the work in potteries, in coal mines, in fields, in tool-grinding shops. It was labour, whose practical difference from the other forms of labour consisted in the nature of its risk, which did not lie in ankylosis, or lead poisoning, or fire-damp, or gritty dust, but in what may be briefly defined in its own special phraseology as "Seven years' hard". Chief Inspector Heat was, of course, not insensible to the gravity of moral differences. But neither were the thieves he had been looking after. They submitted to the severe sanction of a morality familiar to Chief Inspector Heat with a certain resignation. They were his fellow citizens gone wrong because of imperfect education, Chief Inspector Heat believed; but allowing for that difference, he could understand the mind of a burglar, because, as a matter of fact, the mind and the instincts of a burglar are of the same kind as the mind and the instincts of a police officer. Both recognize the same conventions, and have a working knowledge of each other's methods and of the routine of their respective trades. They understand each other, which is advantageous to both, and establishes a sort of amenity in their relations. Products of the same machine, one classed as useful and the other as noxious, they take the machine for granted in different ways, but with a seriousness essentially the same. The mind of Chief Inspector Heat was inaccessible to ideas of revolt. But his thieves were not rebels. His bodily vigour, his cool, inflexible manner, his courage, and his fairness, had secured for him much respect and some adulation in the sphere of his early successes. He had felt himself revered and admired. And Chief Inspector Heat, arrested within six paces of the anarchist nicknamed the Professor, gave a thought of regret to the world of thieves--sane, without morbid ideals, working by routine, respectful of constituted authorities, free from all taint of hate and despair.
”
”
Joseph Conrad (The Secret Agent)
“
We got a call from across the street that a black woman had broken into this house.”
“And you were going to arrest her without even knocking on the door?”
“We had to secure her first. Um. Are you okay, ma’am?”
“Of course I am. Don’t you see me?”
“Because we have her in custody. You don’t have to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid of my daughter-in-law, Mrs. Theon Pinkney. She’s the one who should be afraid. Four big men grabbing her and putting her in chains. What’s wrong with you?”
The police stood there, slightly confused. I could see that they felt justified, even righteous, for grabbing me in Marcia’s driveway. There was no question in their minds that I was a criminal and that they were on the side of the Law.
Marcia glanced at me then. We’d spent hours together but it was as if she hadn’t really gotten a good look at me until seeing the tableau in her driveway.
”
”
Walter Mosley (Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore)
“
See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God? Miserable man! Oh! Most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he touched a deck.
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby Dick)
“
Negroes were constantly being arrested in the city, for crimes they committed and for crimes they did not, for rudeness or talking back or looking at a white woman, for being in the wrong neighborhood or being suspected of being in the vicinity of the wrong neighborhood. Upon conviction, many of these men were, in the words of one historian, "literally sold to the highest bidders." Convicts were much in demand as workers, and the state, not the convict, got the wage.
”
”
Stephen L. Carter (Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster)
“
In 1633,” Ainslie explained, “Galileo was condemned for heresy and held under house arrest for the last eight years of his life—all because he showed that the earth revolves around the sun. That, of course, was contrary to Catholic doctrine, which said that the earth was the center of the universe and didn’t move. Only in 1992, after what the Vatican called ‘thirteen years of study,’ did Pope John Paul II admit the Church was wrong—something science had confirmed centuries before.
”
”
Arthur Hailey (Detective)
“
together with, along with. With in both expressions is a preposition, not a conjunction, and therefore does not govern the verb. This sentence is wrong: ‘They said the man, a motor mechanic, together with a 22-year-old arrested a day earlier, were being questioned’ (The Times). Make it ‘was being questioned’. A separate danger with such expressions is seen here: ‘Barbara Tuchman, the historian, gave $20,000 to the Democrats, along with her husband, Lester’ (The New York Times). How Lester felt about being given to the Democrats wasn’t recorded.
”
”
Bill Bryson (Troublesome Words)
“
Jacob, is something wrong? Is Isabella okay?”
“Probably. She is not well today. It could be a normal thing for a human female, but since she is usually as resistant to common ailments now as we are, she is nervous. I figured Gideon could ease her mind.”
Noah missed the wince that crossed his friend’s face that would have given away the indignant argument flying through the Enforcer’s thoughts. Jacob’s female counterpart huffily took umbrage to his claims of exactly who it was that was nervous and who had insisted on seeking Gideon, because it certainly had not been her.
“Tell her I hope she feels better,” Noah said, his fondness for Bella quite clear in his tone. “Bear with her, old friend. She’s breaking new ground. It can be pretty frightening to play Eve for an entire race.”
“Do not worry. When it comes to my Bella, I would do anything to see to her happiness. That includes making others do anything to see to her happiness,” Jacob said. He meant the words, of course, but he was hoping they’d help sooth someone’s bristling pride.
“I’m sure Gideon is going to love that,” Noah laughed.
Jacob grinned, altering gravity so that he began to float up from the floor.
“If you see Gideon before I do, will you tell him to come to Bella?”
“Of course. Tell her I said to start behaving like a real Druid or I—” Noah was cut off by a sharp hand motion and a warning expression from the Enforcer. It came a little too late, however, if Jacob’s pained expression was anything to judge by.
“There goes your invitation for our wedding,” Jacob muttered. “And I think I am close behind you.”
“I would believe that if I were not the one who is supposed to perform it and if you were not the father of her otherwise illegitimate child,” Noah countered loudly, clearly talking to the person beyond his immediate perception.
“Ow! Damn it, Noah!” Jacob grumbled, rubbing his temples as Bella’s scream of frustration echoed through him. “Do you remember I am the one who has to go home to her, would you?”
“Sorry, my friend,” Noah chuckled, not looking at all repentant. “Now get out of here, Enforcer. Find Gideon and tend to your beautiful and charming mate. Be sure to mention to her that I said she looks ravishing and that her pregnancy has made her shine like a precious jewel.”
“Noah, if you were not my King, I would kill you for this.”
“Yes, well, as your King I would have you arrested for treason just for saying that. Luckily for you, Jacob, you are the man who would arrest you, and the woman who also has the power to do so is sure to punish you far better than I can when you get home.”
“You are all heart, my liege,” Jacob said wryly.
“Thank you. Now leave, before I begin to expound on the disrespect that this mouthy little female of yours seems to have engendered my formerly loyal subjects.
”
”
Jacquelyn Frank (Gideon (Nightwalkers, #2))
“
The best antidote to the woes of the world is the right education! The world is full of several woes because education has not yet arrested them. The world is full of tricksters because education has not yet educated them. The world is full of ill health because education has not yet presented the best panacea. The world is full of depression because education is not entertaining the scholars. The world is full of several deviations because education is watching without taking action. When the right education arises with the right lessons, wrong education vanishes with wrong lessons!
”
”
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
“
Footsteps from the stairwell startle him out of the past. He turns around as Emma's mother takes the last step into the dining area, Emma right behind her.
Mrs. McIntosh glides over and puts her arm around him. The smile on her face is genuine, but Emma's smile is more like a straight line. And she's blushing.
"Galen, it's very nice to meet you," she says, ushering him into the kitchen. "Emma tells me you're taking her to the beach behind your house today. To swim?"
"Yes, ma'am." Her transformation makes him wary.
She smiles. "Well, good luck with getting her in the water. Since I'm a little pressed for time, I can't follow you over there, so I just need to see your driver's license while Emma runs outside to get your plate number."
Emma rolls her eyes as she shuffles through a drawer and pulls out a pen and paper. She slams the door behind her when she leaves, which shakes the dishes on the wall.
Galen nods, pulls out his wallet, and hands over the fake license. Mrs. McIntosh studies it and rummages through her purse until she produces a pen-which she uses to write on her hand. “Just need your license number in case we ever have any problems. But we’re not going to have any problems, are we, Galen? Because you’ll always have my daughter-my only daughter-home on time, isn’t that right?”
He nods, then swallows. She holds out his license. When he accepts it, she grabs his wrist, pulling him close. She glances at the garage door and back to him. “Tell me right now, Galen Forza. Are you or are you not dating my daughter?”
Great. She still doesn’t believe Emma. If she won’t believe them anyway, why keep trying to convince her? If she thinks they’re dating, the time he intends to spend with Emma will seem normal. But if they spend time together and tell her they’re not dating, she’ll be nothing but suspicious. Possibly even spy on them-which is less than ideal.
So, dating Emma is the only way to make sure she mates with Grom. Things just get better and better. “Yes,” he says. “We’re definitely dating.”
She narrows her eyes. “Why would she tell me you’re not?”
He shrugs. “Maybe she’s ashamed of me.”
To his surprise, she chuckles. “I seriously doubt that, Galen Forza.” Her humor is short lived. She grabs a fistful of his T-shirt. “Are you sleeping with her?”
Sleeping…Didn’t Rachel say sleeping and mating are the same thing? Dating and mating are similar. But sleeping and mating are the same exact same. He shakes his head. “No, ma’am.”
She raises a no-nonsense brow. “Why not? What’s wrong with my daughter?”
That is unexpected. He suspects this woman can sense a lie like Toraf can track Rayna. All she’s looking for is honesty, but the real truth would just get him arrested. I’m crazy about your daughter-I’m just saving her for my brother. So he seasons his answer with the frankness she seems to crave. “There’s nothing wrong with your daughter, Mrs. McIntosh. I said we’re not sleeping together. I didn’t say I didn’t want to.”
She inhales sharply and releases him. Clearing her throat, she smoothes out his wrinkled shirt with her hand, then pats his chest. “Good answer, Galen. Good answer.”
Emma flings open the garage door and stops short. “Mom, what are you doing?”
Mrs. McIntosh steps away and stalks to the counter. “Galen and I were just chitchatting. What took you so long?”
Galen guesses her ability to sense a lie probably has something to do with her ability to tell one. Emma shoots him a quizzical look, but he returns a casual shrug. Her mother grabs a set of keys from a hook by the refrigerator and nudges her daughter out of the way, but not before snatching the paper out of her hand.
”
”
Anna Banks (Of Poseidon (The Syrena Legacy, #1))
“
Evelyn?” one asked.
“Yeah,” I said, waving a hand dismissively and moving to walk past them. Lend always hung his keys on a ring near the door. I’d get those, and—”
“You’re under arrest for violating statute one point one of the International Paranormal Control Charter.”
I stopped. “Wait, seriously? Seriously? You guys are here to arrest me?” I started laughing. Wow, you so picked the wrong day. Come back next week, okay?”
Before I could move one of them shoved a shiny silver Taser at me; the last thought that went through my head before I collapsed, shaking on the ground, was that, bleep, being tased really sucked.
”
”
Kiersten White (Endlessly (Paranormalcy, #3))
“
OUR PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM SEES BLACK AND BROWN children as violent, disruptive, unpredictable future criminals. This may seem like the hyperbole of an angry black woman, but when I look at the way in which our black and brown students are treated in schools, it is the only conclusion I can come to. Black students make up only 16 percent of our school populations, and yet 31 percent of students who are suspended and 40 percent of students who are expelled are black. Black students are 3.5 times more likely to be suspended than white students. Seventy percent of students who are arrested in school and referred to law enforcement are black. In the 2011–2012 school year alone, 92,000 students were arrested.1 When I look at these numbers, there are two possible explanations. I can assume that our black and brown children are violent, disruptive, unpredictable future criminals who are not deserving of the same access to education as white children. I can assume that there is something fundamentally wrong with black and brown people, something fundamentally broken that is sending our kids out of school and into prison. Or, I can assume that the school system is marginalizing, criminalizing, and otherwise failing our black and brown kids in large numbers.
”
”
Ijeoma Oluo (So You Want to Talk About Race)
“
But what’s worse than that is the slaves who identified with their masters, as if the slaves’ value as human beings depended on what the masters were like. What they were like was evil! They were called “masters” because they owned human beings! And we slaves were ready to fight each other over which of the lowdown filthy dogs who owned us was the best! But it wasn’t the slaves’ fault. Like Douglass wrote, slaves are like other people. When you think about it, it’s a wonder more black folks didn’t fight with one another instead of fighting against the white man the way Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, David Walker, and a whole lot of others did. While you’re busy shaking your head thinking they were stupid, ask yourself this: are we any better today? Black people put on the uniform of the U.S. military, our masters, and go to Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and anywhere else Uncle Sam tells us to go, and fight and kill yellow-skinned folks and brown-skinned folks on behalf of the United States, our masters—just like slaves fighting other slaves. Meanwhile, back home, one out of every half-dozen blacks is locked up for committing the same drug crimes as white dudes who walk around free. What’s wrong with that picture? Then you’ve got blacks in police uniforms out there arresting other innocent blacks. Blacks in America really need to study the Jews in Germany. Those Jews never thought they were part of Hitler’s system, most of them never sided with the people oppressing them. We do. We go to war. What kind of abomination is that? How many blacks go to war because we can’t find a job, and are willing to kill or be killed just so we can feed ourselves and our families? But remember, our already-free Maroon ancestors risked all of that just to free others. Getting back to Frederick Douglass, it’s like he said: Slaves are like other people. Too many of us have that slave mentality. It can take a lot to get past that, but a lot of us have, and Frederick Douglass was one.
”
”
Dick Gregory (Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies)
“
There were a lot of botched kills throughout the eastern part of Kentucky when the work fell outside his control. Six or seven years ago, a man from Perry County was shot point blank in the head and left for dead in the middle of downtown. Problem was, the bullet had traveled between the man's scalp and his skull halfway across his head and exited the same way it had entered on the other side. The whole thing had left him with only fingernail-sized contusions on both sides of his head. He identified the guy who shot him and saw him arrested and convicted of attempted murder.
Now, it's true that a situation like that was a rare one, but part of doing a job right was minimizing the chance for something to go wrong.
”
”
Sheldon Lee Compton (Brown Bottle)
“
While there is widespread recognition that the War on Drugs is racist and that politicians have refused to invest in jobs or schools in their communities, parents of offenders and ex-offenders still feel intense shame—shame that their children have turned to crime despite the lack of obvious alternatives. One mother of an incarcerated teen, Constance, described her angst this way: “Regardless of what you feel like you’ve done for your kid, it still comes back on you, and you feel like, ‘Well, maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I messed up. You know, maybe if I had a did it this way, then it wouldn’t a happened that way.’” After her son’s arrest, she could not bring herself to tell friends and relatives and kept the family’s suffering private. Constance is not alone.
”
”
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
“
The former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu used to famously say, “We are prisoners of hope.” Such a statement might be taken as merely rhetorical or even eccentric if you hadn’t seen Bishop Tutu stare down the notorious South African Security Police when they broke into the Cathedral of St. George’s during his sermon at an ecumenical service. I was there and have preached about the dramatic story of his response more times than I can count. The incident taught me more about the power of hope than any other moment of my life. Desmond Tutu stopped preaching and just looked at the intruders as they lined the walls of his cathedral, wielding writing pads and tape recorders to record whatever he said and thereby threatening him with consequences for any bold prophetic utterances. They had already arrested Tutu and other church leaders just a few weeks before and kept them in jail for several days to make both a statement and a point: Religious leaders who take on leadership roles in the struggle against apartheid will be treated like any other opponents of the Pretoria regime. After meeting their eyes with his in a steely gaze, the church leader acknowledged their power (“You are powerful, very powerful”) but reminded them that he served a higher power greater than their political authority (“But I serve a God who cannot be mocked!”). Then, in the most extraordinary challenge to political tyranny I have ever witnessed, Archbishop Desmond Tutu told the representatives of South African apartheid, “Since you have already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side!” He said it with a smile on his face and enticing warmth in his invitation, but with a clarity and a boldness that took everyone’s breath away. The congregation’s response was electric. The crowd was literally transformed by the bishop’s challenge to power. From a cowering fear of the heavily armed security forces that surrounded the cathedral and greatly outnumbered the band of worshipers, we literally leaped to our feet, shouted the praises of God and began…dancing. (What is it about dancing that enacts and embodies the spirit of hope?) We danced out of the cathedral to meet the awaiting police and military forces of apartheid who hardly expected a confrontation with dancing worshipers. Not knowing what else to do, they backed up to provide the space for the people of faith to dance for freedom in the streets of South Africa.
”
”
Jim Wallis (God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It)
“
WHAT DO YOU THINK ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU WOULD do if tens of thousands of Israelis were being murdered by Palestinians? If heroin deaths in Israel suddenly tripled and 90 percent of the heroin was coming into Israel through the Palestinian territories—some of it through a tunnel the length of six football fields?1 If ISIS butchers were on Israel’s border? If you guessed, “Give them in-state college tuition, driver’s licenses, and free medical care,” you would be wrong. In 2012, Israel had sixty thousand illegal aliens, which would be the equivalent of a mere 2 million illegals in America. Warning that the illegals would overwhelm Israel and destroy the nature of the country, Netanyahu vowed to complete a border fence. Even opposition leader Yair Lapid supported a fence, as well as “the arrest and deportation of infiltrators.”2
”
”
Ann Coulter (¡Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole)
“
Put your glasses on mate ….. Come down from there, you’re gonna kill yourself …. Well, what does your Method Statement say? …. Right, let’s get you re-inducted. You need a reminder of site rules ….. Where are your outriggers, mate? ….. Put your glasses on ….. Put your glasses on …. Put your glasses on …. Oh, they steam up, do they? I’ve never heard that one before …. Where’s your mask? If you breathe this shit in you’re going to kill yourself. Silicosis is incurable ….. Right STOP! Do not reverse another inch without a banksman ….. Don’t put your glasses on just because you see me walk around the corner. They won’t protect MY eyes …. Hook yourself on, what’s the matter with you? Are all you scaffolders superhuman or something? ….. Put your glasses on ….. Oi! What stops me walking right in there? Where’s your barriers and signage? ….. Oi! I’m getting showered in fucking sparks here. And so is that can of petrol ….. Put your glasses on …. Where’s the flashback arrestor on this bottle of propane? ….. Hey, pal, stop welding until you’ve sheeted up ….. What are you doing climbing up there? Where’s your supervisor? What did he say about access in this morning’s Safe Start briefing? Nothing? Right, he can sit through another induction tomorrow ….. Where are the retaining pins to the joint clamps in this concrete pump line? SEAMUS! Fucking deal with this, will you? ….Put your glasses on …. Hey! Hey! Come here! Why have you got a nail instead of an ‘R’ clip to the quick-hitch system on your excavator bucket? NO! IT WON’T DO! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? If that bucket falls on someone they’re not going to get up again. And you trust a fucking nail to hold it in position! Take this machine out of service immediately until you’ve got the proper ‘R’ clip! ….. Put your glasses on …. Where’s the edge protection. Who removed the edge protection? Right, let me phone for a scaffolder ….. Put your glasses on ….. Oi! Get out from under there! Never, ever stand underneath a suspended load. Even if all the equipment’s been inspected, which it obviously has, you can never trust the crane driver. He can be taken ill suddenly ….. Come here, mate, let’s have a little chat. Why are you working on Fall Arrest? You’re supposed to be working on Fall Restraint (FR ‘restrains’ you going near the perimeter edge of the building, FA ‘arrests’ your fall if, well, if you fall. If you’re hanging off a building we’ve got less than ten minutes to reach you before you start going into toxic shock brought on by suspension trauma. In other words, we need a Rescue Plan, which is why we’d prefer people work on Fall Restraint)
”
”
Karl Wiggins (Dogshit Saved My Life)
“
Looking at a situation like the Israel-Palestine conflict, Americans are likely to react with puzzlement when they see ever more violent and provocative acts that target innocent civilians. We are tempted to ask: do the terrorists not realize that they will enrage the Israelis, and drive them to new acts of repression? The answer of course is that they know this very well, and this is exactly what they want. From our normal point of view, this seems incomprehensible. If we are doing something wrong, we do not want to invite the police to come in and try and stop us, especially if repression will result in the deaths or imprisonment of many of our followers. In a terrorist war, however, repression is often valuable because it escalates the growing war, and forces people to choose between the government and the terrorists. The terror/repression cycle makes it virtually impossible for anyone to remain a moderate. By increasing polarization within a society, terrorism makes the continuation of the existing order impossible.
Once again, let us take the suicide bombing example. After each new incident, Israeli authorities tightened restrictions on Palestinian communities, arrested new suspects, and undertook retaliatory strikes. As the crisis escalated, they occupied or reoccupied Palestinian cities, destroying Palestinian infrastructure. The result, naturally, was massive Palestinian hostility and anger, which made further attacks more likely in the future. The violence made it more difficult for moderate leaders on both sides to negotiate. In the long term, the continuing confrontation makes it more likely that ever more extreme leaders will be chosen on each side, pledged not to negotiate with the enemy. The process of polarization is all the more probably when terrorists deliberately choose targets that they know will cause outrage and revulsion, such as attacks on cherished national symbols, on civilians, and even children.
We can also think of this in individual terms. Imagine an ordinary Palestinian Arab who has little interest in politics and who disapproves of terrorist violence. However, after a suicide bombing, he finds that he is subject to all kinds of official repression, as the police and army hold him for long periods at security checkpoints, search his home for weapons, and perhaps arrest or interrogate him as a possible suspect. That process has the effect of making him see himself in more nationalistic (or Islamic) terms, stirs his hostility to the Israeli regime, and gives him a new sympathy for the militant or terrorist cause.
The Israeli response to terrorism is also valuable for the terrorists in global publicity terms, since the international media attack Israel for its repression of civilians. Hamas military commander Salah Sh’hadeh, quoted earlier, was killed in an Israeli raid on Gaza in 2002, an act which by any normal standards of warfare would represent a major Israeli victory. In this case though, the killing provoked ferocious criticism of Israel by the U.S. and western Europe, and made Israel’s diplomatic situation much more difficult. In short, a terrorist attack itself may or may not attract widespread publicity, but the official response to it very likely will. In saying this, I am not suggesting that governments should not respond to terrorism, or that retaliation is in any sense morally comparable to the original attacks. Many historical examples show that terrorism can be uprooted and defeated, and military action is often an essential part of the official response. But terrorism operates on a logic quite different from that of most conventional politics and law enforcement, and concepts like defeat and victory must be understood quite differently from in a regular war.
”
”
Philip Jenkins (Images of Terror: What We Can and Can't Know about Terrorism (Social Problems and Social Issues))
“
The Fairy Bride
The fairy bride picked the lock
And tiptoed through the summer wood
She gave no mind to life behind
Or shadows thrown by bad or good
She gave no mind to wrong or right
Or screeching call of owls at night
She listened for the haunting cries
That called her from her blushing bud
Ferns unfurl a tickled fronds
Laughing at her slightest brush
Dewdrops glisten with green eyes
Meadows sway with lightest hush
A captive note arrests her breath
Dreamers weave intricate maze
Lithe and quick she shines the light
Illuminating shadow glades
She gives no mind to life and limb
Or captor’s hiss from deep within
Her purity will seize the thread
Dangling loose from dreamer’s web
She spins a silver spool of light
To catch the rays of stars at night
Now innocence can spread its wings
Making haste for freedom flight
She gives no mind to where they fly
Or how tall grasses lift her high
She clicks the lock and in she glides
All nature hails the fairy bride
”
”
Collette O'Mahony (The Soul in Words: A collection of Poetry & Verse)
“
Oregon resident Gary Harrington was arrested for collecting rainwater and snow on his rural property. Authorities accused him of constructing three “illegal reservoirs” on his 170-acre property. Harrington said although the reservoirs are stocked with largemouth bass, they serve as a contingent against wildfires. “It’s totally committed to fire suppression,” he explained to the media. Initially the state allowed Harrington to collect water but reversed its decision in 2003, citing a 1925 law stating the nearby city of Medford has rights to Big Butte Creek and its tributaries. Harrington argued that his water came only from rainfall and snowmelt. The disagreement evolved into a protracted court battle over property rights and government bullying. “When something is wrong, you just, as an American citizen, you have to put your foot down and say, ‘This is wrong; you just can’t take away any more of my rights and from here on in, I’m going to fight it,’” explained Harrington. Nonetheless, he was found guilty.
”
”
Jim Marrs (Population Control: How Corporate Owners Are Killing Us)
“
They’re all okay, then?” I grin like an idiot. What is wrong with me?
She rises from her chair, fluid and vaguely shimmering. Her grace is legendary. I’m agile and strong, but I’d rather move like sunbeams on water, like Selena.
“In good health and arguing incessantly with Desma and Aetos. Those two are under the impression the Sintans abducted you.”
She’s asking a question. I owe her an answer. “They did. Sort of.”
Her sculpted lips purse. “Help me understand a ‘sort of’ abduction,” Selena says, pouring me a cup of water.
Well, it sounds stupid when you say it like that.
My throat is parched, so I drink before answering. “He’s Beta Sinta. He said he’d have you all arrested if I didn’t come.”
“And you believed him?”
It’s a loaded question coming from Selena. I nod. After nearly a month with him, I also know he would have done it because he felt he had to, not because he wanted to.
“He needs a powerful Magoi to help him and his precious Alpha sister, Egeria.” Egeria is no Alpha. She sounds more like a buttercup. Beta Sinta on the other hand, he’s Alpha material. Fierce on the battlefield, bloody, focused, ruthless…fair?
“Plus, he had a magic rope.”
Selena laughs, and the sound is like wind chimes on a spring breeze. “You? Caught by a magic rope?”
I flush. “Don’t remind me.”
She clears her throat, taming more laughter, and asks, “Will you help him?”
Selena may not know who I am, but I’m certain she knows what I am—the Kingmaker—even if we’ve never discussed it. “My abilities can be valuable in diplomatic situations,” I say carefully.
“He came here to save you. He looked like he cared.”
I shrug, glancing down. “I’m a weapon he doesn’t want to lose.”
“I think there’s more.”
My eyes snap back up. “Don’t infer something that isn’t there. We’re both monsters.”
Her dark-blue gaze flicks over me, unnerving. “Monsters still mate.”
I choke on my own spit and then cough.
A faint smile curves her lips. “Why didn’t you just escape?”
“The rope.” That stupid, infuriating enchanted rope that led me to make a binding vow to stay with Beta Sinta until his—or my, if it comes first—dying day.
She looks incredulous. “You couldn’t find a way out?”
“It was a bloody good rope!
”
”
Amanda Bouchet (A Promise of Fire (Kingmaker Chronicles, #1))
“
Reason, truth, innocence." Royce sat back against the wall and folded his arms. "Unicorns, pixies, and dragons. You're not that young to believe in such such things. How is it you fancy yourself a resident of a make believe world?"
"I told you, at this point it's a choice."
"It's not. It's fooling yourself.
"I can decide between eating fish or pork, but I can only pretend to eat unicorn meat. I can't actually eat a unicorn. The world is the world and you live in it with open eyes or choose to be blind. It's all the same to me but don't stand there pretending you're right."
Hadrian grimaced. _There are so many things wrong with that statement. Only Royce could think of a unicorn eating metaphor. Where do thoughts like that bubble up from?_
...
Hadrian had a point of his own. "You always wear black and gray. That's a choice too, and it says a lot about you."
"It says I don't like to be seen at night."
"It says you like to hide. And people who like to hide are usually up to no good. That's a message you declare to everyone you meet, and people receive it as you might expect. Then when others don't trust you; when they avoid you; hurt or arrest you for doing nothing, your worldview is justified.
"So, you're right. You can't eat unicorns in your world because they don't exist. But they do in mine. But they do in mine. Probably because in my world we don't eat them.
”
”
Michael J. Sullivan (The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (The Riyria Chronicles, #4))
“
...Me, I do not want to go to no suburbans not even Brooklyn. But Joyce wants to integrate. She says America has got two cultures, which should not he divided as they now is, so let's leave Harlem."
"Don't you agree that Joyce is right?"
"White is right," said Simple, "so I have always heard. But I never did believe it. White folks do so much wrong! Not only do they mistreat me, but they mistreats themselves. Right now, all they got their minds on is shooting off rockets and sending up atom bombs and poisoning the air and fighting wars and Jim Crowing the universe."
"Why do you say 'Jim Crowing the universe'?" "Because I have not heard tell of no Negro astronaughts nowhere in space yet. This is serious, because if one of them white Southerners gets to the moon first, COLORED NOT ADMITTED signs will go up all over heaven as sure as God made little green apples, and Dixiecrats will be asking the man in the moon, 'Do you want your daughter to marry a Nigra?' Meanwhile, the N.A.A.C.P. will have to go to the Supreme Court, as usual, to get an edict for Negroes to even set foot on the moon. By that time, Roy Wilkins will be too old to make the trip, and me, too."
"But perhaps the Freedom Riders will go into orbit on their own," I said. "Or Harlem might vote Adam Powell into the Moon Congress.''
"One thing I know," said Simple, "is that Martin Luther King will pray himself up there. The moon must be a halfway stop on the way to Glory, and King will probably be arrested. I wonder if them Southerners will take police dogs to the moon?
”
”
Langston Hughes (The Return of Simple)
“
Jim said she would go to prison for sure because of the amount she had stolen, and there was probably more. “I can bring over dinner if you want.” “I’m just going to pack and go to bed. I hate that early flight,” Tallie said, smiling back at her. And every time she did now, it felt false. She was used to getting up early to be on the set, so even that was a lie. Everything was now. Everything Tallie said to her felt wrong, and everything Brigitte had done had been worse. Brigitte gave her a hug as they left each other, and Tallie hugged her back, feeling her insides cringe when she did. “Give Max my love.” “Have fun in Mexico!” Tallie called out as she left. Brigitte had said she was going to Palmilla, but she hadn’t said with whom, and Tallie didn’t care. It made Tallie wonder, as she walked to her car, when and how she was going to fire her. She called Greg Thomas from the car. She wanted to discuss it with him, and she told him everything that had been happening, and that the FBI were going to make the arrest in the next week. “I’ve been waiting to fire her until they told me I could. The special agent in charge of the case called me today and told me. He’s coming by tonight. So what do I do about her?” “I’d like to notify her by letter and e-mail,” Greg said quietly. “I don’t want you doing it face-to-face. This could get nasty, or even dangerous for you. Do you think she could get violent?” He was worried about Tallie, especially since she was alone at the house now that Hunt was gone. “I don’t think so. I hope not.” Tallie hadn’t really thought about it. They had been so busy getting evidence
”
”
Danielle Steel (Betrayal)
“
No-knock entries are dangerous for everyone involved—cops, suspects, bystanders. The raids usually occur before dawn; the residents are usually asleep, and then disoriented by the sudden intrusion. There is no warning, and sleepy residents may not always understand that the men breaking down their door are police. At the same time, police procedures allow terribly little room for error. Stan Goff, a retired Special Forces sergeant and SWAT trainer, says that he teaches cops to “Look at hands. If there’s a weapon in their hands during a dynamic entry, it does not matter what that weapon is doing. If there’s a weapon in their hands, that person dies. It’s automatic.”
On September 13, 2000, the DEA, FBI, and local police conducted a series of raids throughout Modesto, California. By the end of the day, they had shot and killed an eleven-year-old boy, Alberto Sepulveda, as he was lying facedown on the floor with his arms outstretched, as ordered by police. In January 2011, police in Farmington, Massachusetts similarly shot Eurie Stamp, a sixty-eight-year-old grandfather, as he lay motionless on the floor according to police instructions.
In the course of a May 2014 raid in Cornelia, Georgia, a flash-bang grenade landed in the crib of a nineteen-month-old infant. The explosion blew a hole in the face and chest of Bounkham Phonesavanh (“Baby Bou Bou”), covering his body with third degree burns, and exposing part of his ribcage. No guns or drugs were found in the house, and no arrests were made.
Sometimes these raids go wrong before they even begin. Walter and Rose Martin, a perfectly innocent couple, both in their eighties, had their home raided by New York Police more than fifty times between 2002 and 2010. It turned out that their address had been entered as the default in the police database.
”
”
Kristian Williams (Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America)
“
Katherine couldn’t have cared less about furniture or ceramics at that moment, but she felt glad that she was not the only one in London appalled by what the Lord Mayor had unleashed. She took a deep breath, then quickly explained what she and Bevis had heard in the Engineerium about MEDUSA and the next step in Crome’s great plan, the attack on the Shield-Wall. “But that’s terrible!” they whispered when she had finished. “Shan Guo is a great and ancient culture, Anti-Traction League or no Anti-Traction League. Batmunkh Gompa can’t be blown up …!” “Think of all those temples!” “Ceramics!” “Prayer-wheels …” “Silk paintings …” “F-f-furniture!” “Think of the people!” said Katherine angrily. “We must do something!” “Yes! Yes!” they agreed, and then all looked sheepishly at her. After twenty years of Crome’s rule they had no idea how to stand up to the Guild of Engineers. “But what can we do?” asked Pomeroy at last. “Tell people what is happening!” urged Katherine. “You’re Acting Head Historian. Call a meeting of the Council! Make them see how wrong it is!” Pomeroy shook his head. “They won’t listen, Miss Valentine. You heard the cheering last night.” “But that was only because Panzerstadt-Bayreuth had been going to eat us! When they learn that Crome plans to turn his weapon on yet another city …” “They’ll just cheer all the louder,” sighed Pomeroy. “He has packed the other Guilds with his allies, anyway,” observed Dr. Karuna. “All the great old Guildsmen are gone; dead or retired or arrested on his orders. Even our own apprentices are as besotted with old-tech as the Engineers, especially since Crome foisted his man Valentine on us as Head Historian…. Oh, I mean no offense, Miss Katherine….” “Father isn’t Crome’s man,” said Katherine angrily. “I’m sure he’s not! If he knew what Crome was planning he would never have helped him. That’s probably why he was packed off on this reconnaissance mission, to get him out of the way. When he gets home and finds out he’ll do something to stop it. You see, it was he who found MEDUSA in the first place. He would be horrified to think of it killing
”
”
Philip Reeve (Mortal Engines (The Hungry City Chronicles, #1))
“
And then, with a shock like high-voltage coursing through me, the phone beside me started pealing thinly.
I just stood there and stared at it, blood draining from my face. A call to a tollbooth? It must, it must be a wrong number, somebody wanted the Information Booth or-! It must have been audible outside, with all I had the slide partly closed. One of the redcaps passing by turned, looked over, then started coming across toward where I was. To get rid of him I picked up the receiver, put it to my ear.
'You'd better come out now, time's up,' a flat, deadly voice said. 'They're calling your train, but you're not getting on that one - or any other.'
'Wh-where are talking from?'
'The next booth to yours,' the voice jeered. 'You forgot the glass inserts only reach halfway down.'
The connection broke and a man's looming figure was shadowing the glass in front of my eyes, before I could even get the receiver back on the hook. I dropped it full-length, tensed my right arm to pound it through his face as soon as I shoved the glass aside. He had a revolver-bore for a top vest-button, trained on me. Two more had shown up behind him, from which direction I hadn't noticed. It was very dark in the booth now, their collective silhouettes shut out all the daylight. The station and all its friendly bustle was blotted out, had receded into the far background, a thousand miles away for all the help it could give me. I slapped the glass wearily aside, came slowly out.
One of them flashed a badge - maybe Crow had loaned him his for the occasion. 'You're being arrested for putting slugs in that phone. It won't do any good to raise your voice and shriek for help, try to tell people different. But suit yourself.'
I knew that as well as he; heads turned to stare after us by the dozens as they started with me in their midst through the station's main-level. But not one in all that crowd would have dared interfere with what they mistook for a legitimate arrest in the line of duty. The one with the badge kept it conspicuously tilted in his upturned palm, at sight of which the frozen onlookers slowly parted, made way for us through their midst. I was being led to my doom in full view of scores of people. ("Graves For The Living")
”
”
Cornell Woolrich
“
The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose to commit crimes, and that’s why they are locked up or locked out, we are told. This feature makes the politics of responsibility particularly tempting, as it appears the system can be avoided with good behavior. But herein lies the trap. All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world. The notion that a vast gulf exists between “criminals” and those of us who have never served time in prison is a fiction created by the racial ideology that birthed mass incarceration, namely that there is something fundamentally wrong and morally inferior about “them.” The reality, though, is that all of us have done wrong. As noted earlier, studies suggest that most Americans violate drug laws in their lifetime. Indeed, most of us break the law not once but repeatedly throughout our lives. Yet only some of us will be arrested, charged, convicted of a crime, branded a criminal or felon, and ushered into a permanent undercaste. Who becomes a social pariah and excommunicated from civil society and who trots off to college bears scant relationship to the morality of crimes committed. Who is more blameworthy: the young black kid who hustles on the street corner, selling weed to help his momma pay the rent? Or the college kid who deals drugs out of his dorm room so that he’ll have cash to finance his spring break? Who should we fear? The kid in the ’hood who joined a gang and now carries a gun for security, because his neighborhood is frightening and unsafe? Or the suburban high school student who has a drinking problem but keeps getting behind the wheel? Our racially biased system of mass incarceration exploits the fact that all people break the law and make mistakes at various points in their lives and with varying degrees of justification. Screwing up—failing to live by one’s highest ideals and values—is part of what makes us human.
”
”
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
“
The violence became extreme to the point that failing to wear tricolor ribbons showing support for the Revolution or even using the wrong form of address—the outdated Madame or Monsieur instead of the new title, "Citizen,"—when speaking was justification for immediate arrest and execution.
”
”
Henry Freeman (French Revolution: A History from Beginning to End)
“
No one replied from inside. ‘Shit,’ she muttered. They were calling her bluff. They knew that getting a squad of officers out there with sniffer dogs to go through and dismantle fifty squats only for the inhabitants to be arrested and back out on the streets in a day — and for the tents to pop back up right after — was a huge waste of time and resources that DCI Smith would never approve. It looked like they were on their own for this one. Jamie set her jaw and inhaled. ‘Now what?’ Roper asked. She knelt down and double-knotted her laces. Eyes wide, Jamie. ‘Now we do it the old-fashioned way.’ She stretched her shoulders and shook out her feet, shrugging off the tension building in her chest and stepped into the muddy passageway between two tents. The pale November light died behind them. The low-hanging outer girders shielded the sky, the tarps strung up around them catching the rest. It was darkness inside and the claustrophobic feel of rustling top sheets and rattling breath compounded the sense of unease coiled around Jamie’s spine. They stepped carefully, Jamie at the vanguard and Roper behind. She didn’t know where she was going, and moving methodically through this place wasn’t possible. Every pathway led deeper into the labyrinth and most of the time dead-ended in a cul-de-sac of shelter entrances. There was no way she could systematically cross off the wrong turns. Roper was muttering and swearing behind her as he stepped in brown puddles and crunched syringes under his heels.
”
”
Morgan Greene (Bare Skin (DS Jamie Johansson, #1))
“
The core of Mr Bailey’s evidence was that gardaí had tried to frame him for the killing and that he should never have been arrested in 1997 and 1998, with his detentions amounting to wrongful arrests.
”
”
Ralph Riegel (A Dream of Death: How Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s Dream Became a Nightmare and a West Cork Village Became the Centre of Ireland’s Most Notorious Unsolved Murder)
“
When people go on the attack it’s usually because they feel (rightly or wrongly) that they’ve been treated poorly. That’s especially true if you’re dealing with angry and frustrated customers. Often such people feel hurt in many areas of life but save their “road rage” for outbursts that they believe won’t get them fired, divorced, or arrested—like kicking the dog or yelling at you.
”
”
Mark Goulston (Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone)
“
CNN reported: “An agent working for the FBI’s background check system, who was performing the review on Roof, failed to contact the Columbia, South Carolina, police department which arrested Roof — in part because of a clerical error in records, listing the wrong agency.”11 Most people know that any felony conviction, even a non-violent one, precludes you from ever legally owning a gun. Even a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction will ban you from having a gun. Just being charged with a state offense that could result in a prison term of two years is sufficient for you to lose your right to buy a gun.
”
”
John Lott (Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control)
“
A teenager doesn’t know she’s still a child. A teenager feels like an adult, I suppose primarily because her outside, her flesh and her face, her body, her size, her width and height, look like—and can function like, get pregnant like, can party like, get arrested like, and die just like—an adult. She thinks she’s making decisions as a grown-up with a fully developed brain and, in a case like mine, a fully developed faith. She’s wrong about both of those beliefs. But chances are, she will not realize what a child she was until, as a full-grown adult, she knows and loves a teenager.
”
”
Beth Moore (All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir)
“
Sasha sleeps as Richard and his companions goof around, play fighting. Sleeps as Richard’s cousin Lloyd bounds up and down the aisle flirting with a girl up front. Sleeps as Richard surreptitiously flicks a lighter and touches it to the hem of that gauzy white skirt. Wait. In a moment, Sasha will wake inside a ball of flame and begin to scream. In a moment, everything will be set in motion. Taken by ambulance to a San Francisco burn unit, Sasha will spend the next three and a half weeks undergoing multiple surgeries to treat second- and third-degree burns running from calf to thigh. Arrested at school the following day, Richard will be charged with two felonies, each with a hate-crime clause that will add time to his sentence if he is convicted. Citing the severity of the crime, the district attorney will charge him as an adult, stripping him of the protections normally given to juveniles. Before the week is out, he will be facing the possibility of life imprisonment. But none of that has happened yet. For now, both teenagers are just taking the bus home from school. Surely it’s not too late to stop things from going wrong. There must be some way to wake Sasha. Divert Richard. Get the driver to stop the bus. There must be something you can do.
”
”
Dashka Slater (The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives)
“
I head straight for the protein bars, wondering how in the hell my life has come to this. It’s not like it’s a big shocker that I’m stuck living at home with my absent father and ass of an older brother. When I graduated high school, no one was pointing at me and thinking, now there’s a girl that’s going places. Nope. If they were pointing at me, it was to say things like, Isn’t that the Rousseau girl? Didn’t her brother get arrested last week for beating the hell out of some guy? They weren’t wrong. The Rousseau name is synonymous with fighting, poverty, and a healthy dose of low-class.
”
”
Sonja Grey (Paved in Rage (Melnikov Bratva, #3))
“
The Georgina Shaw they knew wasn’t the kind of woman who got arrested for anything. She was the new face of Shipp, after all. She was a VP of the company. She was Andrew Shipp’s goddamned fiancée, and everything about this looked completely wrong.
”
”
Jennifer Hillier (Jar of Hearts)
“
In a country where those who are committing crime are supported, rewarded, applauded and promoted. In a country where no one is arrested for doing wrong or for breaking the law. No one is taking responsibility and accountability. It will make everyone in that country to voluntarily participate in committing crime. Everyone will eventually end up being corrupt or criminals including foreigners. It will be a competition or a dare for thieves on who steals more and who steals better. People everyday will ask themselves why should they bother being good and not committing a crime, when everyone is doing it. Crime stats will be so high and increasing everyday. It is a duty of the president and the cabinet ministers in making sure the law is followed .If not everyone in that country will commit crime and they will be ok with it. No one will see anything wrong. That includes the law enforcement or institution.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
Note: The first incident happened after the arrest by the Netherlands police in May 1980. I suffered from that, which destroyed my career, future, health, and life. I tried and tried to investigate that, but the police didn't even register the first information report (FIR). It stayed, refusing since 1980 until now, which creates suspicious questions about what the reasons are for not filing the case. It mirrors whether the Netherlands government victimised me or whether the hired ones of the international intelligence agencies have been a hindrance or the criminal groups. - The second incident happened in the shape of uncurable cancer; it was a deliberate mistake and ignorance of the Netherlands Urologists, who did not follow even the primary medical borderlines for the checkup during one year from 2016 to 2017. After the diagnosis, they are hiding the reality, and they still do not take it seriously. I still hope that the Netherlands' neutral and free media will awaken to help me investigate the incident. It will save millions of lives around the world. In God's name, take it seriously to protect me and others. I feel suspicious elements around me. I cry and pray day and night for God's protection since I do not exclude the Qadeyanis witches and magicians, who keep doing black magic continuously that the West does not understand.
My Real Story In A Poem
***
I never thought
I would suffer from cancer
The metastatic prostate gland
I still cannot decide that
It is natural or human-made
Since everything is possible
In the medical-criminal world
How it happened in Western society;
Civilized urologists ignored it deliberately
From 2016 to 2017
Telling that nothing was wrong
Whereas I was suffering from
Bleeding, burning, and pain
During urinating
I begged urologists for a wide-scale checkup
With MRI scans and other new technologies
But urologists stayed rejecting;
Whereas I was paying insurance for that
Consequently, at the beginning of 2017
The diagnosis became a time bomb that
I had metastatic prostate gland cancer,
Which was not curable,
They listed me on the death list,
Treating for longer life expectancy
However, they do tell not the truth
And stay suspicious
It confuses me and creates grave fear
Since then
I am bearing terrible side effects
Factually, I became victimized twice
By criminals, Intelligence Agencies
And underground-mafias
Which I am unable to trace alone
In this regard, I approached Western Media,
Ministries, police, courts, Euro Union
Unfortunately, none of those responded
Even my motherland media cruelly ignored
It seems as if I am in the grip of the demon
And The Prisoner Of The Hague
Everyone has left me alone in pain,
Stress, fear, depression
Even my children don't care
And realize my tears
Where resides sympathy, empathy,
And humanity?
I feel death before death
It is a silent cruelty
Ah, where should I ask and beg
For justice, help, and investigation
That civilized world should know
An innocent is under victimization
I believe God will help and protect
And someone from somewhere
Appear to hold my hands
To eliminate all criminals and demons
My cancer will be curable
With a longer life expectancy, in some ways
Amen, O' merciful God amen.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
My mother, in stark contrast to my husband, is absolutely convinced of my innocence. So much so that she thinks if they do arrest me, the police will have a wrongful arrest lawsuit on their hands. My mother is very into lawsuits. Last year, she got a pants suit she didn’t like from Saks Fifth Avenue and she called her lawyer to see if she could sue. (The answer was no. But she was able to return it. It’s unclear why she didn’t do that in the first place.)
”
”
Freida McFadden (The Surrogate Mother)
“
I should say that there is such a thing as arrested development in human things (and a very bad thing it is) when people refuse to think for themselves and look around for some human authority to tell them what to think. Such people are afraid of the responsibilities of growing up. They want to remain children for ever - like the loathsome Peter Pan. What is wrong with such people is that when they have an opportunity of thinking for themselves they refuse it and cling to their faith. They are offered a higher and more mature way of knowing, but they won't have it.
In divine things, however, this is not the situation. These are things that we cannot know any other way expect by having faith in the teacher, God, who tells us about them. They are not things we could find out for ourselves. They are not the kind of things we could naturally know. Our knowledge of them is super-natural. We are not refusing an offered opportunity, we are not avoiding a higher, more grown-up approach, because there is in this life no higher way available. The boy who refuses to have faith in the teacher may be acquiring a grown-up critical sense and beginning to think for himself, or he may be simply refusing to learn. I imagine it must be one of a teacher's most difficult jobs to decide which of these is happening.
”
”
Herbert McCabe (Faith Within Reason)
“
Ehsan Sehgal Quotes about Wikipedia
---
* If you are jobless, you do not have the proper ability, even if you can’t get a cleaning job, join Wikipedia, or become an editor. You may knock all the educated figures, lawyers, professional journalists, academics, and specialists of the various subjects down by the Wikipedia rules and policies that contradict each other. You have a useful weapon, which is called consensus. Your friends can support you in winning all disputes. You can change from wrong to right and right to wrong. You can decide the reliability and assessment of subjects; however, no matter whether you qualify for that or not, you have multiple tools for harassing others. That means Wikipedia.
* The duffer’s heaven is Wikipedia, where academic ones are the house arrested and used for their shelter of qualification.
* Wikipedia is the best place for poor grammar.
* If one desires to explore the unique idiots and fools, Wikipedia has that and such a place.
* The scholarly world rejects Wikipedia as a reliable website because most of the world’s silly clowns contribute their ignorance within the garbage of Wiki-Rules, which also, indeed, contradict each other.
* You cannot delete this, whether with due or undue weight. It is social media, not Wikipedia.
* One cannot trust Wikipedia since its articles have minute or continual variant content in all subjects, which demonstrates a lack of qualification and vision. One may find the most authentic and reliable articles on websites that even have no editorial board.
* Notability cannot prevail in any subject’s reality.
* Virtually, Wikipedia rules are not the law of the judiciary, approved by the majority of the parliament that applied accurately and precisely within its context. Conversely, Wikipedian rules, in other words, tools are only garbage of the frustrated and ignorant heads, which support the blackmailers for blackmailing and comfort for its founding architecture, and also fools who have to execute nothing other than fighting, wasting time. Consequently, every second Wikipedia, having no established and qualified paid editorial board, stays as an encyclopedia of Idiots-Pedia. Thus, it endorses itself as unreliable and untrustworthy an ordinary website, where educationally-unmatured children contribute and decide one’s notability, alongside ignorant ones as well.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
Don’t be fooled by their hypocrisy and double standards. They have no honor, moral standards, ethics, principles or integrity. It is never about right or wrong, but it is about which side they are on, who is paying them and who is also on the payroll. When it is one of their own who does wrong or who commits crime. They will never call them out. Prosecute, judge, arrest, cancel, confront, expose, seek answers or humiliate them. They wont comment or make any statements . They will be silent like nothing happened because they protect each other and protect their interests. When it is not one of their own. All hell will break lose. They would have 24/7 coverage on every news channel or newspaper, on the front pages. Having their own sketchy, bias headline, analysts, experts, professors, influences, investigators, journalists and witnesses. They would even blow it out of proposition. Making remarks and statement seeking answers. Challenging the court ,government and the people. They are all puppets and there is someone pulling the strings. They are all owned by the same master.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
For Putin, my worth was as a pawn. My arrest gave him leverage in his clash with the West. He was well aware of America’s long history of racial tensions, and he knew how to use that to his benefit. As the news sank in that morning, I cried because I’d let down my father. The Griner name was now stained around the globe: dopehead, drug dealer, dumb. I hurt because I knew I’d handed the world a weapon. When you’re Black, your behavior is never just about you. It’s about your entire community. You live with this responsibility to represent the best of us, to prove the haters wrong. Doesn’t matter if you actually want that job; how you act will be seen through that lens. If someone white messes up, most folks just shake their heads. But if a Black person makes the same mistake, it’s like, “See, I told you they were worthless.” I wear my Blackness with pride, just as my parents do. I cried not just because I’d failed Mom and Pops, but also because I felt I’d shamed my people.
”
”
Brittney Griner (Coming Home)
“
I was standing by the car when two police officers showed up in the alley, very interested in me and the BMW in an alley where car traffic was not allowed at all, sitting there with a Belgian plate tag in the middle of the coffeeshop district, with me, the Hungarian guy, leaning to it smoking a cigarette, obviously waiting for something to happen. They began to examine my IDs and started searching the car. They were looking for drugs, apparently. I had been dealing with them for a few minutes when Adam showed up at the end of the alley. I was the only one looking that way, seeing Adam walking to turn into the alley; the two officers were too busy to notice what I had witnessed. The moment Adam looked up and noticed the officers around me, the moment he was about to turn right towards us into the alley, he made a 180-degree turn, the way a bad kid would do when playing hide and seek. Catching his steps the way Mr. Bean or Benny Hill would do—I could almost hear the music too—was both very funny and very concerning. He was too stupid to be a criminal; he was such a lame criminal that he didn't even think of walking past the alley's entrance like nothing happened instead of turning around and acting so suspiciously and obviously being in the wrong. I began to wonder how the coffeeshop business would work out with this guy if he was suddenly on cocaine all the time before we even opened the club? How would not he get me in trouble when there would be kilograms of marijuana and tons of cash flying around? How could I ever quit this job even if we could manage to run the place and get rich over the next 2-3 years? How would I ever get rid of this embarrassing, childish, dangerously silly criminal guy?
By some miracle, in the car—which was used by these junkies and was usually full of smoking accessories—the cops didn't find a cigarette paper either, although they were very, very thorough. Belgian BMW wagon with a Hungarian guy, in an alley in the area full of marijuana clubs. They were sure they had me now, that they would be rewarded for such a catch. But there was nothing in the car.
I was able to show them Rachel's Belgian registration and everything, explaining that she was my girlfriend who was in Belgium at that time and we were both working for a company selling smoking accessories; I gave them my business card. I apologized for parking there and even driving into that alley with the car.
They fined me regardless. Before we started dealing with the marijuana behalf my name, we were collecting fines attributed to Adam on my name. Talk about being cheap. Apparently, he had started growing a lot of marijuana without my knowledge in a place he did not want me to find out about.
As I was driving back to Urgell, we were both very silent. I was calm but he was anxious and I could almost hear the gears spinning in his mind. Perhaps at the same moment, we both realized that if I got arrested for any reason and ended up in jail, Adam could keep the 33% profit of the coffeeshop which I had signed up for and which belonged to me.
‘Thinking quickly. Acting quicker.’
Never quick enough. The sneaker.
Adam was usually very slow,
whether he was high or low.
”
”
Tomas Adam Nyapi (BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA)
“
- So what do you want me to do, Adam? I cannot be everywhere at the same time. I already have to be in three places at once, not just two. My Spanish is much better than it was half a year ago, but I am not native, Adam - I am not Catalan, I am not Spanish.
- Alright, alright, alright. Jesus.
- What do you mean, Boss Jesus? I am Tomas, the king of the Goys, not the Jews.
- HAHAHA. Get serious now. This costs me money.
- You’re kidding. You don’t even pay me a salary and my girlfriend is crazy about it. How do you want me to make over 10,000 Euros in net traffic a month if you are sending me to the same Estanco stores that never order and barely have any traffic, just wasting my time, Adam?
- Mario made a lot of business with Estancos.
- Bullshit, Boss. Mario, Mister Jerk Twister made monkey-business with a handful of Estancos. He sold a set of twelve crumble-cards with a free display in 2012 Spring and he never showed up again, they said. Was he even in Spain, Adam?
- That’s not the point.
- OK. So what is the point?
- Mario made a lot of business.
- Would you like to show me the total sum of wholesale figures Mario allegedly made in 2012, Boss?
- No.
- Because Mario didn’t make 10 000 Euros traffic in an entire year, Boss. Monkey-business.
- You are spending 140 Euros on these two kids for the two catalogs and wasting time here with Rachel.
- So do you want Rachel to stay here all night to laminate all this by herself, or may I help her so that we can give the catalogs to the two kids and we at least triple our potential tomorrow, so they can do sales, Adam, so they could go and visit all the Estancos as you wish?
- Yeah, sure.
- Thank you. Adam the tiny Estancos are seasonal and some of them don’t even keep our kinds of products they rely soley on tobacco sales, elder Catalan people. Clubs are opening at every corner, Adam and they need us to supply them with products. They won’t be so seasonal, they cannot rely on the tourism by law they cannot register walk-ins.
- Cccc. They register anyone, what are you talking about?
- No. Which club?
- Club Alfalfa. The custom card client, Mario and Tom made in 2012.
- Yeah, the marijuana club where there were two Police razzias both found cocaine twice behind the booth, so far.
- But they are open again. Selling weed.
- For how long Adam? How many times can they re-open after the Police had shut the club down twice already because of cocaine? How many members or employees they arrested, Adam? Would you bail me out if I go inside the wrong door one day, representing you?
”
”
Tomas Adam Nyapi (BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA)
“
JADE: picture that this is all you have ever known of this story. the only way it would ever occur to you that the story could be understood by another.
JADE: and then, one day, you meet me.
JADE: you look me up and down, and regard me as the discrete, specific individual that i am.
JADE: and i decide to tell you this story again, using my own voice.
JADE: and it sounds exactly like this:
JADE: a martyr died and said fuck.
ARADIA: huh...
JADE: does this change the way you perceive the story you were originally familiar with?
ARADIA: i guess a little bit
ARADIA: it’s certainly a different way of hearing it
ARADIA: but at least you didnt change any words so i guess its not all that different
JADE: exactly.
JADE: i didn’t change any words.
JADE: but then, it was a very short story i told, wasn’t it?
ARADIA: sure was
JADE: now imagine it was much longer, and that was only the first line.
ARADIA: thats easy to imagine
ARADIA: his was a long story
JADE: quite true.
JADE: a story as short as the one we’ve been using cannot accomplish much when it comes to guiding and manipulating one’s awareness and emotions.
JADE: it is compact, ostensibly commanding a simple and meditative moment of reflection, as a short poem might.
JADE: the narrative it delivers is freighted with inference. it is a pattern imprinted upon the imagination consisting solely of cognitive dark matter, or a sort of notional negative space.
JADE: but longer stories have the power to draw consciousness into them. they possess arresting and hypnotic qualities which can be used by their tellers to alter the awareness of the listener.
JADE: again, i’d like you to imagine this is the only way you’ve ever known this story.
JADE: but then it continues...
JADE: a martyr died and said fuck.
JADE: his final howl of profanity reverberated through the ages.
JADE: it inspired his devotees during the darkest times of a brutal regime.
JADE: his lessons were guarded, kept secret, espoused in the shadows of tyranny.
JADE: a vision of peace would inspire those who’d never conceived of it.
JADE: and though his death was gruesome, it opened the world to a feeling of hope.
JADE: this hope echoed through the ages.
JADE: it gave his disciples the strength to persist as they perished in droves.
JADE: it was the only light to shine on a dark planet for millions of sweeps.
JADE: and if you are one so devoted to his teachings, who sees truth in his words,
JADE: it may be said with great authority that you are wrong.
JADE: you are foolish to believe his lies. his martyrdom is false, his sacrifice hollow.
JADE: repent for your adherence to this illusion now, and perhaps leniency will be your reward.
ARADIA: 0_0
ARADIA: what just happened there
JADE: i brought to your attention that the story you were listening to had a speaker with a specific identity.
JADE: and where there is an identity, there can also be an agenda.
JADE: i gained the power to bend your consciousness to become more amenable to my narrative agenda by lulling you into a more receptive state through the established rhythm of the story’s telling.
JADE: this was only possible because you were not initially questioning the identity of the teller, or even considering that there was an identity to consider.
ARADIA: i guess youre right
JADE: hence, we may view any story as speakerless, or spoken, so as to bring designations to the duality i have just presented.
”
”
Andrew Hussie
“
I did not move. I kept my hands to the sides where they could clearly see them. I had little idea what was happening here, but this was no time for sudden moves. I kept my eyes on Berleand’s. He approached our table, looked down at Terese, and said to both of us, “Will you please come with us?” “What’s this about?” I asked. “We can talk about that at the station.” “Are we under arrest?” I asked. “No.” “Then we’re not going anywhere until we know what this is about.” Berleand smiled. He looked at Lefebvre. Lefebvre smiled through the toothpick. I said, “What?” “Do you think this is America, Mr. Bolitar?” “No, but I think this is a modern democracy with certain inalienable rights. Or am I wrong?” “We don’t have Miranda rights in France. We don’t have to charge you to take you in. In fact, I can hold you both for forty-eight hours on little more than a whim.” Berleand got closer to me, pushed up the glasses again, wiped his hands on the sides of his pants. “Now again I ask: Will you please come with us?” “Love to,” I said.
”
”
Harlan Coben (Long Lost (Myron Bolitar, #9))
“
I have often wondered why grounding is so universally popular. I believe it is because it is easy. It doesn’t require on-going interaction. It does not require on-going discussion. It does not assess what is going on inside the child. It does not require patient instruction and entreaty. Grounding is quick, incisive, simple. “You’re grounded for a month. Go to your room.” Perhaps parents just don’t know anything more constructive to do. They feel frustrated. They realize that something is wrong with their child. They don’t know how to get to it. They feel they need to respond in some way. One thing is for sure. Grounding does not address the issues of the heart in a biblical way. The heart is being addressed, but it is addressed wrongly. The child will learn to cope with the grounding, but may never learn the things that a godly parent desires for him to learn. My 10-year-old friend is rather philosophical about it. “It’s not too bad,” he said to me, “I can play and watch TV in my room. If I don’t let it bother me, it isn’t that bad.” He has learned to live under house arrest.
”
”
Tedd Tripp (Shepherding a Child's Heart)
“
For the next hour or two, keeping up with Alessandro would be a task that would set the boy to breathing hard and make him think that something might be wrong with his heart, because he found it difficult to stay even with an old man who carried a cane and whose every step was a cross between an uncontrolled pivot and a barely arrested fall.
”
”
Mark Helprin (A Soldier of the Great War)
“
A Rationale for Violence At first, I thought I was merely witnessing the shocked aftermath of a shocking election. The Left did not expect Trump to win. As late as October 20, 2016, the American Prospect published an article, “Trump No Longer Really Running for President,” the theme of which was that Trump’s “real political goal is to make it impossible for Hillary Clinton to govern.” The election result was, in the words of columnist David Brooks, “the greatest shock of our lifetimes.”25 Trump won against virtually insurmountable odds, which included the mainstream media openly campaigning for Hillary and a civil war within the GOP with the entire intellectual wing of the conservative movement refusing to support him. Initially I interpreted the Left’s violent upheaval as a stunned, heat-of-the-moment response to the biggest come-from-behind victory in U.S. political history. Then I saw two things that made me realize I was wrong. First, the violence did not go away. There were the violent “Not My President’s Day” rallies across the country in February; the violent March 4 disruptions of Trump rallies in California, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Florida; the April anti-Trump tax rallies, supposedly aimed at forcing Trump to release his tax returns; the July impeachment rallies, seeking to build momentum for Trump’s removal from office; and the multiple eruptions at Berkeley.26 In Portland, leftists threw rocks, lead balls, soda cans, glass bottles, and incendiary devices until police dispersed them with the announcement, “May Day is now considered a riot.” Earlier, at the Minnesota State Capitol, leftists threw smoke bombs into the pro-Trump crowd while others set off fireworks in the building, sending people scrambling in fear of a bomb attack. Among those arrested was Linwood Kaine, the son of Hillary’s vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine.27 More of this, undoubtedly, is in store from the Left over the next four years. What this showed is that the Left was engaging in premeditated violence, violence not as outbreak of passion but violence as a political strategy.
”
”
Dinesh D'Souza (The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left)
“
There are very few reasons for identity theft, Ellie. One is to profit from the victim’s bank accounts. The other is to hide who you really are because who you really are is not lawful. Since Dr. Gunterson never suspected his identity was borrowed, I assume there was no theft. I bet our Arnie has priors. He’s done something wrong somewhere and needs to be someone else. And if he’s hiding, he’s probably hiding from the police. And if he’s hiding from the police, there are probably warrants. And if there are warrants, I believe it would serve our purpose to let him be arrested.” Brie lifted an eyebrow. “Hmm?” “Wow,” Ellie said. “I should have known. If he’s nothing but a criminal, shouldn’t I have known?” Brie shook her head. “I can’t answer that one for you, Ellie. I spent years in the district attorney’s office in Sacramento, prosecuting crimes like this. I met a lot of very intelligent women who were victimized by manipulative men, as well as perfectly sharp men taken for a wild ride by clever, dishonest women. It’s a con, and you were at a vulnerable time in your life. Cons can smell that a mile away. Sadly, it’s common in the world of criminal law.” “Can
”
”
Robyn Carr (Forbidden Falls)
“
It’s nay her fault, he thought fiercely. She’s done me nay wrong. They’d thought him dead—Marsali had told him so and told him that Lord John had wed Claire in haste following the news of Jamie’s death, in order to protect not only her but Fergus and Marsali as well, from imminent arrest. Aye, and then he took her to his bed! The knuckles of his left hand twinged as he curled his fist. “Never hit them in the face, lad.” Dougal had told him that a lifetime ago, as they watched a knockdown fight between two of Colum’s men in the courtyard at Leoch. “Hit them in the soft parts.
”
”
Diana Gabaldon (The Fiery Cross / A Breath of Snow and Ashes / An Echo in the Bone / Written in My Own Heart's Blood (Outlander #5-8))
“
• While a female flight attendant was serving food from the meal cart, a female passenger thrust a small bundle of trash toward her. “Take this,” the passenger demanded. Realizing that the trash was actually a used baby diaper, the attendant instructed the passenger to take it to the lavatory herself and dispose of it. “No,” the passenger replied. “You take it!” The attendant explained that she couldn’t dispose of the dirty diaper because she was serving food—handling the diaper would be unsanitary. But that wasn’t a good enough answer for the passenger. Angered by her refusal, the passenger hurled the diaper at the flight attendant. It struck her square in the head, depositing chunks of baby dung that clung like peanut butter to her hair. The two women ended up wrestling on the floor. They had to be separated by passengers. • Passengers on a flight from Miami to San Juan, Puerto Rico, were stunned by the actions of one deranged passenger. He walked to the rear of the plane, then charged up the aisle, slapping passengers’ heads along the way. Next, he kicked a pregnant flight attendant, who immediately fell to the ground. As if that weren’t enough, he bit a young boy on the arm. At this point the man was restrained and handcuffed by crew members. He was arrested upon arrival. • When bad weather closed the Dallas/Fort Worth airport for several hours, departing planes were stuck on the ground for the duration. One frustrated passenger, a young woman, walked up to a female flight attendant and said, “I’m sorry, but I have to do this.” The passenger then punched the flight attendant in the face, breaking her nose in the process. • A flight attendant returning to work after a double-mastectomy and a struggle with multiple sclerosis had a run-in with a disgruntled passenger. One of the last to board the plane, the passenger became enraged when there was no room in the overhead bin above his seat. He snatched the bags from the compartment, threw them to the floor and put his own bag in the space he had created. After hearing angry cries from passengers, the flight attendant appeared from the galley to see what the fuss was all about. When the passengers explained what happened, she turned to the offending passenger. “Sir, you can’t do that,” she said. The passenger stood up, cocked his arm and broke her jaw with one punch. • For some inexplicable reason, a passenger began throwing peanuts at a man across the aisle. The man was sitting with his wife, minding his own business. When the first peanut hit him in the face, he ignored it. After the second peanut struck him, he looked up to see who had thrown it. He threw a harsh glance at the perpetrator, expecting him to cease immediately. When a third peanut hit him in the eye, he’d had enough. “Do that again,” he warned, “and I’ll punch your lights out.” But the peanut-tossing passenger couldn’t resist. He tossed a salted Planter’s one last time. The victim got out of his seat and triple-punched the peanut-tosser so hard that witnesses heard his jaw break. The plane was diverted to the closest airport and the peanut-tosser was kicked off. • During a full flight between New York and London, a passenger noticed that the sleeping man in the window seat looked a bit pale. Sensing that something was wrong yet not wanting to wake him, the concerned passenger alerted flight attendants who soon determined that the sleeping man was dead. Apparently, he had died a few hours earlier because his body was already cold. Horrified by the prospect of sitting next to a dead man, the passenger demanded another seat. But the flight was completely full; every seat was occupied. Finally, one flight attendant had an inspiration. She approached a uniformed military officer who agreed to sit next to the dead man for the duration of the flight.
”
”
Elliott Hester (Plane Insanity)
“
While most of the town were settling down to their dinners that evening, Hannah, a raven-haired servant girl, hurried across the marketplace and up the path to the ordinary, where she knocked on the door. Candlelight gleamed through the cracks in the closed shutter after a second knock; the door opened and she slipped inside. Tears started down her cheeks as soon as she tried to speak.
“What is it?” said the widow Jennison, keeper of the establish¬ment. “What on earth is wrong?”
“Tobias is in trouble.” Hannah sat at one of the trestle tables. Sniffing back her tears, she told the story of her lover’s misadventure. They’d been planning for several months to break away from their servitude and look for a better situation in the West Indies. He’d taken to theft to raise money for the trip, but his master, the tallow chandler Aaron Tuck, discovered his transgressions, and Tobias went into hiding. “There’s men a-lookin’ for him now,” Hannah said as tears came to her eyes again. “We can’t stay here another week. People are sayin’ dreadful things about us that just ain’t true.”
“Where is Tobias now?” Nancy asked.
“On the neck somewheres. I’m supposed to meet him at midnight.”
The widow touched her friend’s hand. She herself had been in trouble years before, so she understood the errors to which the girl’s turbulent feelings were likely to bring her. “Yes, life must seem a prison to you. I can see why you want to leave.”
“We’ve gut to leave!” Hannah said. “Just tonight they arrested Marthy Hubbard. Mr. Ridley may want to use us for an example, too.”
Nancy went to the cupboard for a pitcher of cider. “I don’t like what’s happened to Martha either. I’ll help you, but you’ll have to promise to be patient and not make things worse.”
“What do you mean?” Hannah looked around the dusky room with a frightened glance. Experience had taught her that her elders often resorted to compromise when they meant to help.
“I’m going to talk with Governor Willoughby. Now don’t fret, child. He’ll be more sympathetic than you think. Besides, you don’t have any choice but to wait unless you want to live in the woods. There won’t be a ship headed south till next month.”
Hannah frowned and took a quick swallow of cider.
The two friends talked for a while longer by the light of an iron betty lamp, then Hannah went outside to look for Tobias. But all her hopes went for naught. The constable’s men found him just before midnight on the slender strip of marsh and pasture that connected the Botolph peninsula to the mainland.
Now happy that they would get to bed at a decent hour, the men in the search party brought Tobias to the guard-house on the edge of town, where he sat till dawn on a slat bench, dozing or clutching his head in his hands.
”
”
Richard French (The Pilhannaw)
“
Burns knew then that his ass was grass. He’d arrested the wrong man. As they originally thought, Lloyd was the one behind everything and they would have to let Trigga go once again. “Okay,
”
”
Leo Sullivan (Keisha & Trigga 3: A Gangster Love Story (Keisha & Trigga: A Gangster Love Story))
“
Drinks DUI expert group to help guide
However, the best men s and women s drunken food you like it petty crimes, other traffic violations on the wrong goal that seems to be the direction.
If you see that the light sentences and fines to get website traffic is violated, the citizen towards crime. When under the influence of a great interest behind the violation was due to more significant impact. Prison term effects were stuck down the back of people who are well, these licenses is likely that you want to deal with nutrition break and automated attacks can be, that s why. Yes it is expensive insurance, and other options in the outcome of the order of DUI, in everyday life, it affects people and the need to process, I love you.
An experienced legal drunk driving charges, and it was presented to a lawyer immediately after the contract has announced that although his own.
You are trying to remember the legal rights towards the maximum is very cool, you must be straight. The alternative thinking in any direction, does not encourage conservation officials as a record on suspicion of drunken driving after turning self, yourself simplest explanation, it may be possible to do so until is. His car really only answer whether the director should start by asking, encourages statement. A judgment is impaired, you probably have a file, you can use your account to say that the elements can get. When he finished, completely, their legal rights, and in a quiet warehouse to check their own direction and I will speak, and the optimal route is being used against itself. Most use a positive direction, you might think it accuses because your self, and also to examine the consequences of drinking have been able to rule out the presence of blood.
Of course, as long as you do not accept the claims are by drinking in the area, they are deprived of a lawyer. Additional measures will not fix it claims that his lawyer, the Czech-out you can. Therefore, it is also within the laws of their country to be aware of your car.
Owned independent certification system will be canceled. It can record their own and as an alternative to the paper license, driving license, was arrested for drunken driving, the licensee, are confiscated in accordance with the direction. License, for how long, but canceling function is based on the severity of their crime. But even apart from some a license, you completely lose its supply is proposed well motivated are not sure. Your sins, so not only is it important for your car can pass only confiscated. DUI price of any of the reception towards obtaining a driving license, DMV hearing is removed again, but the case was registered, although this aspect of themselves independently as a condition of. The court file, however, take care of yourself, as well as independent experts was chosen to listen to their constitution.
”
”
Amanda Flowers
“
Your men have all been arrested and the bombing was of no real consequence. While you may not get a reaction from the new President of the United States this time, someday you’ll attack at the wrong time and you will get a reaction from the United States government. Next time, I suggest you run your schemes to attack the United States through me or my grandson, Michael. Got it?” “What will you do if I don’t?” “All of your money is deposited in my bank. All I have to do is seize your fortune and you’ll be destitute within a matter of hours. Even if you attempt to take your money out of my bank, I have friends who run other banks. In less than half an hour, every bank in the world would know that I don’t want you to have your money, so they would follow suit. You don’t want that, do you?
”
”
Cliff Ball (Times of Turmoil)
“
When his teaching is more straightforward, it is no less baffling or challenging. Blessed are the meek (Mt 5:5); to look at a woman with lust is to commit adultery (Mt 5:28); forgive wrongs seventy times seven (Mt 18:22); you can't be my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions (Lk 14:33); no divorce (Mk 10:9); love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Mt 5:44). A passage that gives us the keys to the reign, or kingdom, of God is Matthew 25:31–46, the scene of the judgment of the nations: Then the king will say to those on his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” As Mother Teresa put it, we meet Christ in the distressing disguise of the poor. Jesus’ teaching and witness is obviously relevant to social, economic, and political issues. Indeed, the Jewish leaders and the Romans (the powers that be of the time) found his teaching and actions disturbing enough to arrest him and execute him. A scene from the life of Clarence Jordan drives home the radicalism and relevance of Jesus’ message. In the early 1950s Clarence approached his brother, Robert Jordan, a lawyer and future state senator and justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, to legally represent Koinonia Farm. Clarence, I can't do that. You know my political aspirations. Why if I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I've got. We might lose everything too, Bob. It's different for you. Why is it different? I remember, it seems to me, that you and I joined the church the same Sunday, as boys. I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question he did you. He asked me, “Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?” And I said, “Yes.” What did you say? I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point. Could that point by any chance be—the cross? That's right. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I'm not getting myself crucified. Then I don't believe you're a disciple. You're an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you're an admirer not a disciple. Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn't have a church, would we? The question, Clarence said, is, “Do you have a church?”25 The early Christian community tried to live according to the values of the reign of God that Jesus proclaimed, to be disciples. The Jerusalem community was characterized by unlimited liability and total availability for each other, sharing until everyone's needs were met (Acts 2:43–47; 4:32–37).26 Paul's exhortation to live a new life in Christ in his letter to the Romans, chapters 12 through 15, has remarkable parallels to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, chapters 5 through 7, and Luke 6:20–49.27 Both Jesus and Paul offer practical steps for conflict resolution and peacemaking. Similarly, the Epistle of James exhorts Christians to “be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves” (1:22), and warns against class divisions (2:1–13) and the greed and corruption of the wealthy (5:1–6).
”
”
J. Milburn Thompson (Introducing Catholic Social Thought)
“
Now you’ve brought him in for a burglary that, unless I’m mistaken, didn’t actually take place.” “He was in the process of breaking into the building,” she said. “We caught him in the act.” Somehow, his smile grew even broader. “Really? He was in the building? Was he even in the parking lot? One of your colleagues says he wasn’t.” “How did you—” “Did my client have any burglary tools in his possession? Lockpicks? A crowbar hidden up his sleeve, perhaps?” “No, but—” “So he had no way of accessing the property he was supposedly there to burglarize, and he wasn’t even apprehended on said property. Very disappointing, Agent Black. A rookie police officer on his first beat wouldn’t make that arrest, and you know it. Your zeal to imprison my client speaks to the prejudicial nature of your so-called ‘task force.’ This isn’t a lawful inquiry; it’s a witch hunt.” I could almost hear Harmony’s teeth grating. “You have two choices.” Perkins ticked them off on his fingers. “One, release my client at once, and we can pretend this never happened. Two, you can proceed with this travesty, I’ll have the case dismissed before you can say ‘wrongful arrest,’ and my next call will be to your deputy assistant director to discuss a lawsuit against you, her, and the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Harmony leaned against the table with one hand. Her shoulders sagged. “You want him?” she said. “Fine. Take him and leave.” Perkins opened the door, ushering me toward it with a grand sweep of his arm like he was rolling out a red carpet.
”
”
Craig Schaefer (A Plain-Dealing Villain (Daniel Faust, #4))
“
Staffers entered through the Old Executive Office Building (the Eisenhower Building), and it was a magnet for various and sundry weirdos. A polite, well-dressed, and impeccably groomed guy got in line. No problem. Secret Service checked his bag. A-okay. He chitchatted with the officers. All was normal. Yet the staffer was sockless on one foot. For some reason, he handed an officer the missing sock. “Oh, and I guess I give you this,” he said, shrugging and smiling as if he was hot shit, as if nothing were wrong. “Sure, do,” the officer said, taking the sock. The other officer instinctively drew his sidearm and issued orders: “Keep your hands where I can see them! Hands up!” Next I heard over the radio: “Officers have just apprehended a staffer trying to enter with a pistol!” That sock had a Glock pistol in it. The District of Columbia ranks among the nation’s most anti-gun locations in the country, and this new staffer was blatantly committing dozens of gun-related felonies just by possessing a handgun. He was fired, arrested, and prosecuted. He basically told UD that the rules didn’t apply to him. Idiot! But it takes one to hire one, I was learning. The incident was especially incredible knowing the Clintons’ anti–Second Amendment sentiment. “Beware the Glock in a sock,” we’d say to remind each other to keep an eye on staffers as much as anyone else.
”
”
Gary J. Byrne (Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate)
“
This law is even more significant when we put it in the context of other laws in the Mosaic covenant. In other cases in the Mosaic law where someone accidentally caused the death of another person, there was no requirement to give “life for life,” no capital punishment. Rather, the person who accidentally caused someone else’s death was required to flee to one of the “cities of refuge” until the death of the high priest (see Num. 35:9–15, 22–29). This was a kind of “house arrest,” although the person had to stay within a city rather than within a house for a limited period of time. It was a far lesser punishment than “life for life.” This means that God established for Israel a law code that placed a higher value on protecting the life of a pregnant woman and her preborn child than the life of anyone else in Israelite society. Far from treating the death of a preborn child as less significant than the death of others in society, this law treats the death of a preborn child or its mother as more significant and worthy of more severe punishment. And the law does not place any restriction on the number of months the woman was pregnant. Presumably it would apply from a very early stage in pregnancy, whenever it could be known that a miscarriage had occurred and her child or children had died as a result. Moreover, this law applies to a case of accidental killing of a preborn child. But if accidental killing of a preborn child is so serious in God’s eyes, then surely intentional killing of a preborn child must be an even worse crime. The conclusion from all of these verses is that the Bible teaches that we should think of the preborn child as a person from the moment of conception, and we should give to the preborn child legal protection at least equal to that of others in the society. Additional note: It is likely that many people reading this evidence from the Bible, perhaps for the first time, will already have had an abortion. Others reading this will have encouraged someone else to have an abortion. I cannot minimize or deny the moral wrong involved in this action, but I can point to the repeated offer of the Bible that God will give forgiveness of sins to those who repent of their sin and trust in Jesus Christ for forgiveness: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Although such sin, like all other sin, deserves God’s wrath, Jesus Christ took that wrath on himself as a substitute for all who would believe in him: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). b. Scientific
”
”
Wayne Grudem (Politics - According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture)
“
This law is even more significant when we put it in the context of other laws in the Mosaic covenant. In other cases in the Mosaic law where someone accidentally caused the death of another person, there was no requirement to give “life for life,” no capital punishment. Rather, the person who accidentally caused someone else’s death was required to flee to one of the “cities of refuge” until the death of the high priest (see Num. 35:9–15, 22–29). This was a kind of “house arrest,” although the person had to stay within a city rather than within a house for a limited period of time. It was a far lesser punishment than “life for life.” This means that God established for Israel a law code that placed a higher value on protecting the life of a pregnant woman and her preborn child than the life of anyone else in Israelite society. Far from treating the death of a preborn child as less significant than the death of others in society, this law treats the death of a preborn child or its mother as more significant and worthy of more severe punishment. And the law does not place any restriction on the number of months the woman was pregnant. Presumably it would apply from a very early stage in pregnancy, whenever it could be known that a miscarriage had occurred and her child or children had died as a result. Moreover, this law applies to a case of accidental killing of a preborn child. But if accidental killing of a preborn child is so serious in God’s eyes, then surely intentional killing of a preborn child must be an even worse crime. The conclusion from all of these verses is that the Bible teaches that we should think of the preborn child as a person from the moment of conception, and we should give to the preborn child legal protection at least equal to that of others in the society. Additional note: It is likely that many people reading this evidence from the Bible, perhaps for the first time, will already have had an abortion. Others reading this will have encouraged someone else to have an abortion. I cannot minimize or deny the moral wrong involved in this action, but I can point to the repeated offer of the Bible that God will give forgiveness of sins to those who repent of their sin and trust in Jesus Christ for forgiveness: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Although such sin, like all other sin, deserves God’s wrath, Jesus Christ took that wrath on himself as a substitute for all who would believe in him: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24).
”
”
Wayne Grudem (Politics - According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture)
“
Next time, I’m a be like, ‘What you stoppin’ me for?’ ” Buck went on. “ ’Cause you have a right to ask ’em….They gotta see, smell, hear, or something.”
“They ain’t gotta see nothing ,” Lamar replied.
“Yes they do, Pops! They teachin’ me this at schooool .”
“They teaching you wrong, then.”
DeMarcus laughed and put a cigarette lighter to a blunt he had just licked shut. He drew in and passed it. The game got under way—quick at first, then slower as players’ hands thinned. “When the police come up,” Buck persisted, “even if they pull you over, you ain’t even gotta let your window down. You just gotta roll it down a little bit.”
“It ain’t that sweet.” Lamar grinned.
“Na, Pops!”
“Don’t be trying to change things, man,” cut in DeMarcus, who had just been arrested—because of his “slick mouth,” according to Lamar. “A hard head makes a soft ass.
”
”
Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
“
Tad squeezed through the line of visitors in the White House corridor. He looked them over. Most were wounded soldiers, job seekers, and widows who had lost husbands in the Civil War. For a few hours every afternoon, Tad’s father, Abraham Lincoln, the president of the United States, would do his best to meet with them.
Tad dashed to the staircase, blocking the path of a young woman with a baby.
“Halt!” Tad ordered in his deepest voice. “Five cents to pass. The proceeds help wounded soldiers in the Union army.”
The woman burst into tears.
“What’s wrong?” Tad asked, startled.
“Recently I was very ill,” she explained, wiping her eyes. “My husband left his army post to come visit me. He went back, but they arrested him for desertion anyway.” Her lips trembled. “He’s to be shot tomorrow.”
Tad winced. “Oh, that’s dreadful sad, ma’am.”
“I pray the president will pardon him.”
“Oh, he will,” Tad said, his face brightening. “Pa’s a good man.”
“There are so many people ahead of me,” the woman said anxiously. “I’m afraid I’ll be too late.”
Suddenly there was a commotion on the stairway above. Tad looked around and noticed one of the president’s aides, his mouth tightly drawn, coming down toward him. “Your father wishes to see you,” the man said. “Immediately.”
Tad turned back to the woman. “What’s your name, ma’am?” he asked.
“Elizabeth Miller.”
Tad nodded and hurried up the stairs. As he rounded a corner he glanced over his shoulder. The hall was empty. By his father’s office, the table with the visitors’ calling cards stood unguarded. Tad quickly found Mrs. Miller’s and placed it at the top of the pile.
”
”
Gary Hines (Thanksgiving in the White House)
“
During the summer vacation of 1935, while I was with my Mother in the mountains, three girls from my class were arrested for illegal activities. One was my close friend L. The news hit me on my return home. My parents were struck by the news, as told by Sali. At the time, if a police informer caught somebody with a forbidden book, this constituted reason enough to arrest, beat and torture the suspect. By normal standards, reading books about Socialism or Communism does not constitute a crime against the state, but in Romania, in the 30s, if you looked the wrong way, you could be suspected of political illegality. If one's hair was curly and unruly, the teacher would call you a Communist. The term was used very loosely and in an accusatory manner. You could not question or doubt an opinion of a person in authority because that provoked a suspicion of Communism. Of course, there were Communists, in organized cells. When apprehended, they were beaten within an inch of their lives.
”
”
Pearl Fichman (Before Memories Fade)