A few people have mentioned that Ferguson PD officer Wilson sustained serious injuries and that this would be a game-changer. It certainly would, if it’s true. Is it? I don’t know.

The origin of this story appears to be a rabid right-wing blogger, the sort of online space where “towel-heads”, “n*ggers” and “mud-people” is common and accepted parlance. The x-ray imagery included in his post appears to be stock image, deliberately doctored to remove such indications, perhaps to give the casual observer the impression that it was an actual x-ray from the actual Officer Wilson.

Consider also: video evidence does not appear to cast Wilson as a man who suffered a broken face (a fractured orbital is generally a serious injury). He did not call in the incident, nor mention it to dispatch in any account that I have seen. Timeline puts Wilson at the scene some 4 hours after allegedly sustaining the injury. The publicly available autopsy report specifically indicate that there were no outward signs of struggle (contusions, lacerations, broken hands/fingers, etc.) on Brown, which would likely be consistent with breaking someone’s face.

But then you have to ask: why was this not the VERY FIRST bit of information released with Wilson’s name, last Friday? Certainly from a PR/damage control perspective, if true, this would have been important to make public — certainly more important than the ham-fisted attempt to paint Brown as a criminal who had just robbed a liquor store, which was essentially character-assassination: Brown was not stopped on suspicion of any criminal activity, so even had he robbed that store, that fact would be basically irrelevant. So, why wait to release information about Wilson’s injuries? And release the information through some wack-job blogger?

Related: Fox News appears to have recently picked up this “story” citing anonymous sources within the department and/or DA’s office. Perhaps they do have such sources, and perhaps this is actually how it happened. Or perhaps, they simply ran with some nutjob’s blog in an effort to “scoop” the competition.

No other media outlet is reporting on Wilson’s “broken orbital” or that he was “badly beaten”, and CNN is now directly contradicting these stories.

Worth noting: Fox News is still reporting matter-of-factly that Brown “stole cigars”. Video taken at the scene and which has since been made public, does not seem to corroborate that, or at least lends possible alternatives. Brown’s friend, who would be an accomplice to that “theft” has not been charged with any crime. The store employees/owners did not call the police, and no stolen cigars have been reportedly recovered from Brown’s body.

I suppose time will tell.

The other night I noticed some people going door to door. Fortunately, we were out taking the dog for a walk. Turned out, it was our friends from the Census Bureau. They left me this:

Blargh. That means for the next “day or two” while they are trying to re-interview me, I would have to avoid them. And my dog likes barking at strange people knocking on our door. Yesterday, they returned. I just ignored them until they left, and then went outside to tend my garden. Apparently I should’ve waited a little longer, because seeing that I was outside, she returned.

Great.  They didn’t like the fact that I responded to only one question on the census form a few months ago.

Although the Census drone said that she was conducting “follow-up” interviews (not unreasonable, as a means of validating the integrity of data – we do it in market research industry all the time), I’m pretty sure she was there to “complete” (as the form indicates) an incomplete interview.  Supporting this claim, I noticed that she was not stopping at all houses, but the vacant ones (several old residents have passed or relocated leaving vacant houses behind) and the house across the street where the vagrants lived until a week ago.  So, judging by the sample of houses she stopped at, I don’t think she was doing follow-up interviews.  Maybe that’s what they told her. Or maybe that’s what they told her to tell people.  I don’t know.

I politely declined to answer any questions, stating that I had returned the form earlier this year, listing the number of occupants and that was all the information I was comfortable giving them. As a matter of fact, the only reason I returned even that much information is because I thought it would reduce the odds of them sending someone knocking.  I was mistaken.

Fortunately, she was pleasant enough not to press the issue, I get the sense she did not want to have the argument with me, because the first logic bomb I would’ve dropped on her would’ve been something about the atrocities the US government perpetrated against Japanese-Americans during the second world war, largely with information obtained from the Census Bureau.

The fact of the matter is that the government could, if they wanted to, obtain any bit of information that the Census asks for. But it’s easier and cheaper to persuade people to “voluntarily” submit these data. Well, I’m not giving it to them. If they want it, there’s nothing I can do to stop them, really. But I’m not willing to just hand it over.