"A well-known Capitol protester was charged Wednesday with receiving stolen property for allegedly keeping a State Capitol police officer's jacket..."

We've reached a very late stage in the Wisconsin protests, which begin in February 2011:

The jacket belonged to Officer Tammy Torstenson, who said she had taken off her jacket during protests at the Capitol and put it behind her work station but later found that it was missing, according to the complaint.

The mother of Jeremy J. "Segway" Ryan, 24, of Madison, found the jacket in October while she was cleaning out Ryan's apartment....

Ryan said he never wore the jacket outside his apartment but would put it on as a joke when friends were over, "because being a Capitol Police officer is a joke to him and his friends"....

The Capitol Police were a joke to them? Here's something I wrote in September 2011:

In observing the protests nearly every day through the entire period of the protests, Meade and I often tried to figure out what the police were doing, including the Capitol police. There seemed to be a policy of facilitating the protesters, perhaps because it actually was the best strategy for maintaining order when the police were vastly outnumbered. I have video of protesters assuring me that "The police are on our side."

"Freedoms must not interfere with the freedoms of others," said Ahmadinejad.

"If someone insults, what would you do? ... Is insulting other people not a form of crime?"

In other words, it's irrelevant that the U.S. government didn't make the "Innocence of Muslims" video. In this frame of thinking, the government should be protecting people from infringement of their freedom not to be insulted.

Ahmadinejad also talked about Salman Rushdie: "Where is he now?... Is he in the United States? If he is, you shouldn't broadcast that for his own safety."

(Most of the linked article is about Ahmadinejad's opinion of Israel — it doesn't belong in the Middle East and will be removed.)

(By the way, in my home town, a man was arrested for what the news report characterizes as insulting journalists. If insulting people is going to be a crime, you'd think the least sympathetic victims would be journalists.)

The crime of insulting journalists.

As the Wisconsin State Journal puts it:

Jeremy Ryan, 24, of Madison is accused of hurling taunts and insults at journalists, including singing insulting songs about the death of a longtime journalist, Richard Wheeler. Wheeler died suddenly in November 2011, and the Capitol press room was named for him after his death.

Ryan also shouted derogatory names for news organizations, including the State Journal....

Paraprosdokian.

"I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long."

That's a Mitch Hedburg joke, and an example of paraprosdokian, "a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part." It's usually done for comic effect, but not always and not in the example that got me reading about paraprosdokian, "He ain't heavy, he's my brother."

"He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother," is the title of a song, which you probably know from the Hollies' 1969 recording. (The phrase itself seems to go back much further, perhaps to 1884.) I looked up "He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother" because I couldn't remember who recorded it. (I was thinking The Moody Blues, for some reason.) And the subject came up because, over at the Isthmus forum, they're talking about what's happened to the notorious Wisconsin protester Segway Jeremy. There were reports that he was on his deathbed, and then some confusing contradictions, and somebody linked to this inane montage — "nice tribute" — which uses "He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother" as the audio track.

It's mostly lefties over there in The Forum, though Meade likes to prod them with questions and jokes (which they either don't get or pretend not to get). Meade is skeptical of the beatification of Jeremy.

Trying to figure out what Moody Blues song I had confused with "He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother," Meade came up with "Legend of a Mind" — which most people probably think is titled "Timothy Leary's Dead," that being the familiar lyric. Timothy Leary was not dead at the time, but there seems to be some LSD-influenced connection between getting high and being dead, as noted in this morning's post about The Beatles' "She Said She Said."

And now Meade's done a "Legend of a Mind" parody about the mystery of Segway Jeremy.

Too much -pie: 3 Occupies in 6 days.

Occupy Lincoln, Occupy Denver, and Occupy Austin... experienced in less than a week.

The last couple seconds — which are not part of the protest — show something Meade and I call "an army of Jeremys."

At Occupy Madison, the occupation is accomplished not so much with human beings.

It's more... vegetables and corrugated cardboard:



Who knew you could claim an entire city park for yourself with litter? "Occupy Everything," indeed.



Later, there are a few more folks there, all male, for some reason...



... or maybe you can see the reason.



"This is CLASS WARFARE."