It just so happens that tonight's episode of "The Simpsons" featured a climactic ending predicated on the explosive power yielded by combining Mentos and diet soda. Next time, those items will surely be listed on the one-size-fits-all search warrants.

And MacGyver aficionados, of which I am not one, can tell you all about how an ordinary sharpened #2 pencil and a tube of toothpaste can be fashioned into a projectile launcher than can penetrate solid steel, etc.

How ready one is to attribute violent intent to those in possession of the putative paraphernalia of violence is much more a function of the observer's mind-set than the inherent properties of the items. This is a corollary of the maxim that when all one has is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.

But even apart from the sinister implications of ordinary household items, the mere mention of the presence of slingshots or even guns proves absolutely nothing in and of itself. I'm not an attorney, defense or otherwise, but my mind-set inclines toward skepticism when it comes to revelations by law enforcement authorities to justify their own sinister and dubious overreaching.

A gun on the premises? In a nation in which firearms are venerated and aggressively marketed as practically an essential household possession, rather like cooking utensils? Was it smoking?

And those slingshots, which as LWM has noted, are legal and sold in stores from coast to coast, and on the Internet-- not a thing I'd want to own. Israeli settlers have certainly demonstrated that these can be nasty offensive, even lethal, weapons-- no doubt about it.

But it's just as likely that the slingshot may turn out to have been laying around the house ever since it was given to an 11-year old kid as a birthday gift, or picked up at a yard sale. And don't they still offer archery at summer camp, or the YMCA?

We've already heard an innocuous explanation for those glorified pee jars-- I used to ride with a co-worker who had small boys, and more than once what turned out to be an emergency pee jar rolled out from under the seat and bumped my heels. Usually it was empty, I'm glad to say. (He's from a Quaker family, though, so he's probably on The List.)

Understand, I'm not taking the opposite extreme and insisting that all of this initially-reported "evidence" must be innocuous. I am saying that one must be willing to make a lot of presumptions about possession, motive, intent, and opportunity to ascribe criminal behavior to persons arrested in premises containing actual or potential weapons.

All that said, I wouldn't be terribly shocked if it turns out that some protestors chose to arm themselves for defensive purposes. I'm too chickenshit to countenance armed resistance, but I can understand the questionable impulse to risk becoming a "street-fighting (wo)man" if police goons initiate violent acts of crowd control. (Which is why I don't assess "terrorist" points for the mere possession of a gas mask; again, if they're legal to buy and own, one might come in handy in response to clouds of CS gas and pepper spray launched by aggressive police. Why shouldn't protestors carry them?)

But even that is a far cry from presuming that mere possession of such items establishes that the possessor intended to initiate criminal violence, as the repressive authorities would like us all to believe-- or justifies the pre-emptive and constitutionally problematic execution of these police raids.

I normally don't comment on the fatuous and imbecilic drivel posted by the resident reactionary trolls, but the latest reeking portion of Elephant meat served upon The Plate merits an observation.

"Surely no one expects us to believe that these police officers picked Amy Goodman out of a crowd to arrest her."

This is the usual mantra of credulous law and order true believers, a simple variation of the predjudice that if X wasn't doing something wrong in the first place, the nice policemen wouldn't bother them.

Moreover, it's a nice illustration of the troglodytic Amerikan complacency that made P.T. Barnum rich and famous.

To anyone with two brain cells to rub together, and even a modicum of experience of Amerikan life, it's entirely possible that "these police officers picked Amy Goodman out of a crowd to arrest her".

"Unlikely", perhaps-- but even that's just a guess.

It's just these sorts of pachydermic sheep, and observers like The Plate ready to authoritatively extrapolate and expound from his own limited observations, that allow agents of the Security State to perpetrate atrocities from rousting citizens to assassinations in plain sight, confident that even the most brazen and heinous ruthless lawlessness will be obscured by denial and cognitive dissonance.

The realization that I'll wake up tomorrow morning with the knowledge that I've lost the respect of The Plate and Martin Gifford... well, I just don't know how I can face anyone ever again.

But all I can do is try, and take it a day at a time.

The political conventions affect me as many are affected by the holiday season, and for the same reasons; I become overwhelmingly depressed and alienated. And though it's obvious that both Maverick McCain and Calamity Sarah are monsters, I find the hysterically furious reaction to the latter, nowhere more than at Salon (see Gary Kamiya et al) repellent. Focusing on the flaws in the candidates of the Party of (Mc)Cain exults those who support the candidates of the Party of Judas, but doesn't do much for those of us who don't.

Glenn is an exception, as always; I'm just noting that he remains the exception that tests the rule, and explaining why I've been estivating, and am likely to remain scarce-- an answer to a question nobody asked, I fully realize.

But I still want to be of some small service, and Glenn appreciates editorial queries, so:

"By start contrast, Palin is a blank slate"

Did you mean "stark contrast"? Seems so.