Pun Salad

• Jacob Sullum notes a report that Surgeon General Richard Carmona gave out inaccurate and misleading statements on the harmfulness of secondhand smoke, unsupported by evidence.

• Radley Balko points out a story in the Nashua (NH) Telegraph that shows, at best, that the Nashua police force seems to have an unconscious hunger for bad publicity:

  A city man is charged with violating state wiretap laws by recording a detective on his home security camera, while the detective was investigating the man's sons.

  Radley terms this "nauseating;" it's tough to disagree. Jay Tea at WizBang is slightly less agitated, though. The story has also made it onto Slashdot, where the comments are the usual mix of wisdom and windbaggery with a signal/noise ratio in the basement.

• But it's not all police thuggery down there in Nashua; the Telegraph also reports on a local man who was recently granted a "Worst name of all time" award at collegehumor.com. (Via my close personal friend Dave.)

Although this has gotten very good reviews, I suspect it's mainly because of the foreign film mystique; put it in English, set it in America, nobody'd be too impressed. It's supposedly a "thriller", but the thrills are pretty far apart and mild.

John Leguizamo plays a reporter for a Spanish-speaking TV schlock-news show in Miami. He and his crew have gone down to Ecuador to cover a string of child murders. Before you know it, they get in too deep; while trying to maintain their story, they keep secrets from an honest cop. The movie is too arty and self-serious to have a thrilling climax: it just ends at a certain point.