'Natural causes'? Ri-iiight

Not since Elvis died while under the care of "Dr. Nick" has any celebrity's death been so suspicious as that of 32-year-old Brittany Murphy:

A shocking number of strong prescription meds were found on Brittany Murphy's bedroom nightstand before her sudden Dec. 20 death, according to notes from an investigator with the Los Angeles coroner's office.
According to the notes (obtained by TMZ.com), the medications included Topamax (anti-seizure meds also to prevent migraines), Methylprednisolone (anti-inflammatory), Fluoxetine (depression med), Klonopin (anxiety med), Carbamazepine (treats Diabetic symptoms and is also a bipolar med), Ativan (anxiety med), Vicoprofen (pain reliever), Propranolol (hypertension, used to prevent heart attacks), Biaxin (antibiotic), Hydrocodone (pain med) and miscellaneous vitamins. . . .
The notes state Murphy "had been complaining of shortness of breath and severe abdominal pain" for 7 to 10 days prior to her death. . . .

"Death by medicine" is not as rare as some would have you believe. A pill for this, a pill for that, pills to deal with side effects of other pills -- pretty soon, your system becomes so distorted by the chemical intake that it's hard to tell what's really wrong with you, if anything.

The question now is whether Brittany Murphy had any disease other than hypochondria.

Sometimes you have to wonder . . .

. . . about the Sullivanesque lack of self-awareness over at Little Green Footballs, where Charles Johnson reacts to Dan Rieh's post and my link to Dan by declaring that I'm "right on board with the 'ghey child predator' murder theories," provoking classic LGF comments like these:

5 Sharmuta
Sat, Oct 3, 2009 5:12:55pm
Riehl needs professional help. This is beyond depraved.

6 Cathypop
Sat, Oct 3, 2009 5:14:46pm
How dare this POS do this to an innocent man.
Pay-back is hell and I hope Riehl enjoys hell. . . .

9 Guanxi88
Sat, Oct 3, 2009 5:18:32pm
I said before - this fellow, and guys like him, will do anything in their desperation to remove the blood they see on their hands. Anything.

14 Killgore Trout
Sat, Oct 3, 2009 5:19:43pm
re: #7 Conservative Moonbat
I'm guessing that story might not be true. I think it's just an effort to discredit him.

At which point, the overwhelming irony caused my eyes to roll completely out of my head. Readers who've followed the story of the Little Green Meltdown can only laugh at the thought of Killgore Trout pretending to be appalled by "an effort to discredit" someone.

Dan Riehl is a friend I've worked with often, and disagreed with from time to time. I linked his original "child predator" post last weekend, but of course, I linked Sully's "Southern populist terrorism" post, too. If I only linked things I agreed with 100%, I'd mostly be linking myself. Blogospheric onanism is not a productive commercial traffic-enhancement strategy.

Remember that Dan's done a lot of true-crime blogging (he made a big splash with the Natalie Holloway case) so he's not a rookie in this regard. His flame-baiting with Pandagon might have been unnecessarily provocative, but I don't tell Dan Riehl what to do. (In case you haven't figured it out yet, nobody tells Dan Riehl what to do.)

There is no evidence of any child predation by Bill Sparkman, but Dan's interest in that angle caused him to spot a Tampa Tribune story crammed with gaydar-tingling hints that "Fe Fe" -- the nickname Sparkman picked up in his native Florida -- was gay. And so I linked Dan's post and the Tampa story and said:

[T]he speculation that Sparkman was gay has been bouncing around all over the 'sphere for days. Dan e-mailed to mention this to me, and I replied that many people in Clay and Laurel counties suspected that, at the very least, Sparkman had homosexual tendencies. NTTAWWT.
As I told Dan, the problem is that we have no idea whether Sparkman's sexuality (whatever it was, and all I know is what people in Kentucky told me) had anything to do with his disappearance and death. It might be relevant or not.

Because a good reporter doesn't burn his sources, I'm not going to get any further into what I heard in Kentucky or who I heard it from. But if the Associated Press or some Kentucky media outlet decides to jump on that angle, I've done enough background preparation that I'm not going to be scooped too bad or for very long.

What fascinates me is the intense desire to control the "narrative frame" of this story in terms of political symbolism. Left-wingers like MyDD's David Empsall pushed so hard to turn Sparkman's death into "Lynching in Lower Glennbeckistan" -- some kind of feral right-wing madness unleashed by Michelle Bachmann, Eric Cantor, talk radio and Fox News -- that I was inspired to drive more than 500 miles to Clay County and spend three days checking it out.

As a result of that trip, I can report that what might be called the consensus view of well-informed area residents is that some local drug operator -- a pot grower, a meth cooker or a dealer -- was most likely to have killed Sparkman.

At the hotel in London, Ky., where I stayed (after checking out of the Best Western in Manchester because I couldn't get the Wi-Fi connection to work), there were two marked Kentucky State Police patrol cars in the parking lot, as well as an unmarked SUV with government tags and all kinds of radio aerials.

The night clerk at the hotel was himself a former law-enforcement official, retired on medical disability, who explained to me that these KSP officers weren't in town for the murder investigation. Rather, they were participating in the annual crackdown on the local marijuana harvest. (See this 2007 USA Today article for background.) KSP brings in officers from other parts of the state, so that local officers don't have to bust their friends, relatives and neighbors.

Meanwhile, in August, a big undercover investigation ("Operation Borrowed Time") headed up by Clay County Sheriff Clay Johnson and Manchester Police Chief Jeff Culver resulted in more than 50 drug arrests in Clay County.

Which is to say, Sparkman turned up dead at a time when illegal drug operations in Clay County were coming under some very heavy law-enforcement pressure. It's very easy to understand why a dope grower or meth cooker might have been paranoid about somebody with a federal ID asking a bunch of questions. And if that somebody was Bill Sparkman, the motive for his death isn't a big mystery.

Where do the rumors about Sparkman's sexuality fit into this story? I don't know that they do. If it's a 75% chance that Sparkman was killed just because he "knocked on the wrong door," as one Kentucky source put it, then his sexuality is irrelevant.

I'm trying to get to the facts here, and don't have a lot of patience with idiots wasting my time by pointing fingers at Dan Riehl (or Michelle Malkin or Glenn Beck) and screaming hysterically about "blood on their hands." For myself, you can go ask Kelsee Brown what a horrible homophobic hatemonger I am.

Whoever killed Bill Sparkman -- and I agree with Sparkman's son Josh that suicide and accident can be practically ruled out -- the killer or killers are still on the loose. Until they're brought to justice, this politicized finger-pointing is just a waste of time.

UPDATE: In regard to the shortage of people willing to do actual reporting, Patrick at Alexandria writes:

The harvest is vast, but the laborers are few.

Exactly. While I was checking out the story in Kentucky last week, I had an interesting conversation with Andrew Marcus of Founding Bloggers who asked me, Where are all these laid-off journalists who've lost their jobs in the Great Newspaper Meltdown of the past few years?

There is clearly an opportunity for entrepreneurial online journalism by resourceful reporters who can find a way to operate indepedently on a shoestring budget. And yet it's hard to see where any of the people laid off from the big metropolitan papers have actually taken advantage of this opportunity.

UPDATE II: You've got to laugh at the mind-numbing idiocy of "Cato the Elder," a damned fool who doesn't even get my Cousin Brian's jest about "the new black," a pop culture reference which means that something is the latest vogue, e.g., "taupe is the new black."

The Fool Cato construes Brian's remark as a "whine," when in fact it was a shrug of indifference, a dry acknowledgement of contemporary reality. The Fool Cato is so inextricably wedded to the liberal victimhood narrative -- where every problem ever suffered by anyone who isn't white can be understood only as a result of white racism -- that he can't even realize what's happening when his game is busted by an Atlanta bar bouncer.

Here you see how The Vision of the Anointed blinds people to reality. It's "The Irrelevance of Evidence," as Sowell called it. Envisioning the world categorically, with prefabricated explanations for every phenomenon, the anointed loudly proclaim their open-mindedness and tolerance while fanatically pursuing vendettas of narrow-minded zealotry.

When the anointed encounter anomalous phenomena that don't fit their rigid mental molds, they become frustrated. When you try to explain that they might have stumbled onto evidence that their categories and prefab explanations are invalid, this provokes a vengeful rage. And that's when you realize that you're not actually arguing about whatever it was that provoked the argument.

Their own infallibilty -- the awe-inspiring authority of their opinions -- is the actual subject of their argument. The anointed worldview is an incomprehensible mish-mash of self-contradiction and error, which is why the liberal furiously denounces as guilty of bad faith (mala fides) anyone who persistently criticizes the validity of the worldview.

No person of good faith could fail to agree with liberalism, you see. Therefore, when you disagree with the liberal, you are not merely mistaken, but evil.

The Fool Cato doesn't need to know anything about my Cousin Brian in order to conclude that Brian is inferior. And Brian's inferiority -- his status as some hick on whom Cato is qualified to pronounce judgment -- is the entire point of what Cato calls a "Socratic" rant.

Grab a cup of hemlock, Socrates. Cheers!

Let the Andrew Sullivan Double-Entendre Sweeptstakes Begin!

Dan Riehl offers the first entry:

Obama's Immigration Department now has Andrew by the proverbial ballz. Okay, he might actually like that. But ....

Yeah, when Sully gets busted for dope and faces deportation, there's a lot of comedic raw material to work with:

I understand the inmates at Leavenworth are drawing straws to determine who will be Sully's cellmate. Condolences to the unfortunate loser who draws the short straw. Doing 20 to life is bad enough without having to listen to Sully go on and on about Sarah Palin's uterus.

Or how about this?

When the policeman busted Sully, his defense was: "It's all a misunderstanding, officer! I thought that guy asked me if I wanted to smoke his joint . . ."

Or . . .

When they booked Sully for drug possession, he didn't complain about the cuffs. He did complain that he didn't get the dog-collar and blindfold, too.

Come on, everybody, give us your most vicious anti-Sully snark! And remember to join the Concerned Patriotic Americans Committee to Deport Andrew Sullivan.

UPDATE: Professor Glenn Reynolds:

It’s probably also fair to point out that Andrew would no doubt make a big deal out of any special treatment afforded to a member of the Palin family under similar circumstances. . . .

True, but not snarky enough. The basic idea here is to laugh Sully all the way to Heathrow, to heighten his laughingstock status to the point that even Levi "Ricky Hollywood" Johnston can take him seriously.

And really, who has ever deserved derision more than Dr. Andrew M. Sullivan, M.D., OB-GYN, Chief Resident of Republican Obstetric Research at the Atlantic Monthly Memorial Hospital?

UPDATE II: Some people don't get it. The idea here is to turn Sully into a running gag on the late-night standup routines, a punchline for Jon Stewart. Instead, we get thoughtful analysis from a serious historian like Ron Radosh:

The question, then is simple: Why did Andrew Sullivan get special treatment from the U.S. Attorney? . . .
Andrew Sullivan has moved from the stance of a fierce conservative to that of a liberal supporter of the Obama administration. . . .
Now, more than ever, it appears that the United States Attorney is repaying a debt to Sullivan for his support to the administration. Why else would he be singled out for exclusive treatment? And doesn’t it also mean that Sullivan now will be more careful than ever to continue giving the administration his approval, at least until after he becomes a citizen? A debt paid leads to a debt owed. . . .

Read the whole thing, but I've got to warn you, it's very thoughtful and serious. And if you wanted thoughtful and serious, why are you hanging out here on a Friday afternoon?

We're bloggers. Being serious and thoughtful is easy. Being funny takes hard work, and our job is to treat Sully as the butt of a joke.

The pale, hairy, middle-aged butt of a joke . . .

Andrew Sullivan: Dopehead foreigner

Deport this outlaw immigrant drug addict!

Political commentator, author and writer for The Atlantic magazine Andrew M. Sullivan won’t have to face charges stemming from a recent pot bust at the Cape Cod National Seashore — but a federal judge isn't happy about it.
U. S. Magistrate Judge Robert B. Collings says in his decision that the case is an example of how sometimes "small cases raise issues of fundamental importance in our system of justice."
While marijuana possession may have been decriminalized, Sullivan, who owns a home in Provincetown, made the mistake of being caught by a park ranger with a controlled substance on National Park Service lands, a federal misdemeanor.
The ranger issued Sullivan a citation, which required him either to appear in U.S. District Court or, in essence, pay a $125 fine.
But the U.S. Attorney’s Office sought to dismiss the case. Both the federal prosecutor and Sullivan’s attorney said it would have resulted in an "adverse effect" on an unspecified "immigration status" that Sullivan, a British citizen, is applying for.
At the hearing, Collings observed that Sullivan would still have to state on his application that he had been charged with a crime, and he asked both the prosecutor and Sullivan’s attorney, Robert Delahunt Jr. (cousin of U. S. Rep. William D. Delahunt), for more information about why paying the $125 would have "any additional adverse effect." . . .
Collings says he expressed his concern that "a dismissal would result in persons in similar situations being treated unequally before the law. … persons charged with the same offense on the Cape Cod National Seashore were routinely given violation notices, and if they did not agree to [pay the fine] were prosecuted by the United States Attorney … there was no apparent reason for treating Mr. Sullivan differently from other persons charged with the same offense." . . .

Forget about the Mexican drug cartels -- save us from the AIDS-Infected British Dope Menace!

UPDATE: Via Memeorandum, I see that my buddy Dan Riehl beat me to it:

Chill out folks, it's only pot. It isn't like he was caught using caffeine.

Notorious martini addict VodkaPundit observes:

Make point about the media feeding frenzy if, say, George Will had been busted for pot

.As a former teenage hoodlum who used to deal dope in felony weights, allow me to offer my Darwinian/draconian case for strict enforcement: Anybody stupid enough to get busted for dope is a danger to himself and others and should be locked up for the good of society. Dude, if you can't outsmart a narc . . .

Also, you put all the stupid stoners in prison, think of the positive impact on American culture. To begin with, nobody would ever again listen to The Grateful Dead . . .

UPDATE II: Thanks to VodkaPundit for the link-back, and to Freeper ABB for the linkage. Also, my libertarian friend Jacob Sullum now has a post at Reason magazine.

Though I consider myself in most senses a libertarian (priding myself on being a "top Hayekian public intellectual"), in the eternal struggle between law enforcement and hoodlums, I side with law enforcement, based on extensive personal experience as teenage hoodlum. And it's not just because I'm more than two decades past the statute of limitations that I feel the need to speak out about this.

Juvenile delinquency can be a valuable learning experience. Most journalists and intellectuals we goody-two-shoes in their youth, and therefore they don't even get my full meaning when I say that I dealt felony weight.

If you're a nickel-and-dime dopehead, occasionally selling a quarter-ounce of weed to your dope buddies in order to support your habit, maybe you can afford to be stupid and sloppy. But when you are selling by the quarter-pound, it's a different story altogether.

Since the '70s, the law has distinguished marijuana possession as misdemeanor (an ounce or less) or felony (more than an ounce). When you are buying dope by the pound, your stash constitutes irrefutable evidence not only of felony possession, but also of possession with intent to distribute, a felony in its own right.

Because you don't want to be caught holding, a smart dealer moves the merchandise fast -- and I was the Sam Walton of Weed: Deep discounts, undersell the competition, make the profit on volume. So if I bought a pound of weed, I'd first get one of my trusted buddies to buy a quarter-pound at 20% above cost. That way, I quickly recouped 30% of my capital investment and only had to sell another 12 ounces (at a higher mark-up, but still slightly below the going rate) to be dope-free, once more an upstanding "legit" citizen with nothing to fear from the law.

Well, if you sell someone a quarter-pound, your customer is also automatically holding evidence of a felony possession, you see? If he gets busted, he's going to be under serious pressure to rat you out, and personal loyalty has its limits. Therefore, don't sell large quantities to stupid people. And you never, ever, sell dope to people you don't know.

While I won't explain the entire rulebook of smart dope-dealing here on the blog -- that might aid law-breakers, who should be locked up immediately -- my experience means that I have zero sympathy for an idiot like Sully.

Sully is no better than those moronic losers you see on the TV show COPS, pulled over for a broken turn signal and busted for a roach in the ashtray, a dime-bag in their pocket, or a crack-pipe the glove compartment. A smart doper doesn't do stuff like that, and however Sully got caught, he is a "victim" of nothing but his own stupidity -- just another dumb hoodlum who ought to be in jail.

Never give a hoodlum an even break, or he will become arrogant and thus more dangerous, both to himself and to society. Read more about my hoodlum past in my blog memoir All Girls Named Tonya (a work in progress).

And somebody hit the tip jar -- this kind of valuable ex-hoodlum insight ought to be worth something, even if no sane book publisher would ever buy it.

UPDATE III: You're invited to join the Concerned Patriotic Americans Committee to Deport Andrew Sullivan. Join now -- it's for the children!

UPDATE IV: Dan Collins:

You know, The Atlantic can’t fire him, because that would have an adverse impact on his immigration status, and besides, he’s gay.

And you knew Ace of Spades would have a field day. It's sort of like the AOSHQ Fitzmas.

Freeberg nails it again

by Smitty

  You'd think that "it" would get tired of being nailed. If you followed the Rule 5 URL yesterday to Freeberg's Ten Terraces, number 5 in the taxonomy raised hackles for being as enthusiastic about marijuana (and other drug) legalization as Carrie Prejean and this blog are about the destruction of marriage.
  Freeberg doubles down on his point, and draws a comparison with lotteries. The comparison is a high-level one, and the point made is one about sapping the human spirit.
  Back in the day, there was a string of dope comedy flicks by Cheech and Chong. One of them, and it's really not important enough to research, had a character smoking something which had been urinated upon by an iguana or something. Over the course of the movie, the character transforms into a lizard. Hah, hah, ain't that a hoot? Even though I was yet a teenager when I saw flick, I recall finding the point profound: you will eventually become that which you smoke.
  Too many relatives in my extended family are basket cases and drains on society as a result of body chemistry experimentation. Caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine receive, to varying degrees, a pass. Their effects are not seen in the same debilitating light. Good news, bad news, who can say?
  To have the government consider legalizing any currently banned substances, particularly when ideas of health care legislation are in play, is an entry into paradise engineering, indeed.

Of Course Drugs Will Be Legalized

by Smitty
Let's review a short list of "obvious" points:

1. Government is responsible for making us all happy.
2. Crushing deficits loom.
3. Recreational drug use is a zero-guilt way to create new revenue streams for the government.
4. Universal health care is an imperative.
5. As HotMES notes: "Legalizing drugs would put the Mexican drug gangs out of business a lot quicker and a lot more effectively than anything our two governments can come up with."

Your attention is drawn to #2 and #4. The funding profile for universal health care will be greatly improved if people
a) die earlier while hopped up on whatever
b) curtail their golden years because of the side effects of that youthful hellraising.
In the future, staying blotto will be your patriotic duty. A Kieth Richards constitution will be the only Constitutional requirement for office.

Rule -5: I see an image and I want to paint it black...

---

A related bit here. (H/T: Instapundit)

"The answer is no, I don't think [legalizing marijuana] is a good strategy to grow the economy.--BHO"

His ability to count to 5 days of sunshine on the Porkulus Bill is all we need to know about how far ahead of the curve the good POTUS is on this growth strategy.