[ellery]

ping.

[Candor7]

Appealed and released pending appeal I hope.

If he had a Meth lab, he would have gotten 4 months.

[Tax-chick]

My husband is an orchid grower. I spend a few minutes being worried about it, maybe every other month.

Once in a while, though, the fit hits the ... and the SWAT teams show up. (Not here, yet.)

[ConservaTexan]

1776-2009

233 years was a long time to be free.

[Army Air Corps]

TX Ping.

[PLMerite]

“Kathy and George Norris...”

Good thing for the SWAT Team it wasn’t *Chuck* Norris.

[doc1019]

The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris’ longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.

If a SWAT team comes in and messes your house up and finds that they were wrong, they should, at the very least, be required to clean up the mess they made or compensate you for you time in the clean-up

[classified]

(Mr. Norris and the overseas shippers who had packaged the flowers had failed to properly navigate the many, often irrational, paperwork requirements the U.S. imposed when it implemented an arcane international treaty’s new restrictions on trade in flowers and other flora.)

Now if I understand this correctly, in order to ship orchids from another country, one has to file paperwork equivalent to unbelievable amounts of red tape with restrictions, but yet they were able to do so without filing for this unbelievable amount of restrictions and red tape, because they didn't know about them?

Whoa! Someone dropped the ball bigtime on this business venture....

[girlangler]

I can’t find, right now, the guy (Red Devil), who does the gardening ping list, but this should be a thread.

Heck, Home Depot, Lowes, etc., sells orchids. What is this about? I have tried to grow them and they need so much tender loving care I failed. Anyway, this is not an article from a publication — don’t know what to make of it.

Calpernia, you still on FR?

BTW, must brag — fellow gardeners. My new greenhouse is built (not quite finished). I have been away from home most of the summer, but came home and lit a fire under the butts of my hubby and brother, and got it built. When I get some time I will take pics of it and try to post them on FR.

[Cicero]

I dare them to raid Nero Wolfe.

[silentreignofheroes]

Did the dipsticks “Tiptoe thru the Tulips”?I’d laugh my ass off all the way to jail and court.Insane,pure insane.And we pay for this crap.

[JRandomFreeper]

In a case like that, the only potential benefit for a free society is for the victim to make the raid so devastatingly expensive to the State force that they re-think taking out the next guy. Freedom isn't free. 'Live free or die' means you have a 50:50 chance of seeing pearly gates.

I mean, seriously, the victim's life is trashed, so what does he have to lose?

Better living through chemistry.

/johnny

[sonofagun]

I'll reserve judgement on this.

The "Agitator"?

[DemforBush]

*shakes head*

I’m assuming the raid had something to do with the “endangered” status of a number of varieties of orchids in Africa (no, I’m not making that up).

It’s fine to look into these things, but an armed SWAT team? Ransacking someone’s home instead of just asking them to produce the required documents? Dragging them into court instead of fining them for the paperwork errors? Good lord, people, get some perspective!

[familyop]

Now you see one consequence for peasants of doing their own free trade. Free trade is only for the established business-education-government families.

[KoRn]

Why in God’s name does the Fish & Wildlife Service have a ‘SWAT team’? Why do we have a federal Fish & Wildlife Service?

[GeronL]

Government is run by idiots. Even the lawyers and bureaucrats don’t know the law.

[MtnClimber]

This SWAT team were amateurs. No dead pets?

[Fiddlstix]

Ping

[paul51]

The judge who sentenced Mr. Norris had some advice for him and his wife: “Life sometimes presents us with lemons.” Their job was, yes, to “turn lemons into lemonade.”

Like to see someone kick the judge's balls through the top of his head and then tell him the same thing