Recently in Law & Justice Category

Larry Kudlow asks where's Madoff's money?

Yet while everyone can now cheer that the greatest crook in financial history will die in jail, Madoff also may die keeping his secrets with him. So far, prosecutors have come up with very little about this case. And under the tutelage of the clever lawyer Ike Sorkin, Madoff has given almost nothing up. No singing in jail. (Maybe he should have been waterboarded.) We don’t know if his wife or two sons were part of the scam. Nor do we know where most of the money -- estimated up to $65 billion -- has gone. There’s a number being used that bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard has recovered $1.2 billion of the $13.2 billion in estimated net losses. But the strength of those numbers is somewhat in doubt.

Where’s the money? Who are the accomplices? And what about some of these big-time fat cats who invested with Madoff, people we thought were victims but may turn out to be the real winners in the story?

There are several reports about Jeffry Picower and Stanley Chais, two rich businessmen who may have taken $6.1 billion in returns from the Madoff fraudulent funds -- more than they put in. There’s also businessman Carl Shapiro, a close Madoff pal. And while there is yet no number as to what he took out of the funds, years ago the guy sold his garment business for $20 million and grew that sum to nearly $1 billion -- most of it from investing with Madoff.

Madoff is obviously keeping quiet because his former partners-in-crime have threatened to kill him and his family if he talks.

Lots of outrage over a firefighter who killed his two dogs to save on boarding costs:

A Columbus firefighter admits that he took his two dogs to the basement, tied them up and blasted them with a rifle so he and a girlfriend could vacation without paying to board the animals. ...

He was convicted of "needlessly killing ... a companion animal" on Dec. 3, according to the charges filed 10 minutes before the hearing in Municipal Court. One dog was shot six times in the head.

Santuomo, who did not give a statement in court, will spend 90 days in jail, pay $4,500 to cover the cost of his investigation and serve five years' probation, Judge Harland H. Hale ruled.

"This is a travesty and abhorrent behavior to those in this community who work to save the lives of animals," said Jodi Buckman, executive director of the Capital Area Humane Society.

And yet killing unborn babies for the sake of convenience is a "right". The people who evince the most outrage over animal abuse tend to be the most vociferous supporters of abortion.

I mocked President Obama's "clarification" of Sotomayor's racist comments a few days ago, but unsurprisingly Thomas Sowell skewers the judge even more effectively.

In Washington, the clearer a statement, the more certain it is to be followed by a "clarification" when people realize what was said.

The clearly racist comments by Judge Sonia Sotomayor at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001 have forced the spinmasters to resort to their last-ditch excuse, that it was "taken out of context."

If that line is used during Judge Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearings, someone should ask her to explain just what those words mean when taken in context.

Exactly. In what context is it ok to say:"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life."? The only context I can think of is when you're surrounded by a bunch of fellow racists.

Sowell goes on to demolish "empathy" as a basis for judging:

It is dangerous because citizens are supposed to obey the law, which means they must know what the law is in advance - and nobody can know in advance what the "life experiences" of whatever judge hears a case will happen to be.

If judges are to be making law rather than interpreting it, then anyone who appears in their courtroom should be protected from their rulings by the ex post facto clause(s) of our Constitution.

It's hard for me to interpret what President Obama is saying in defense of Sonia Sotomayor:

President Barack Obama on Friday personally sought to deflect criticism of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who finds herself under intensifying scrutiny for saying in 2001 that a female Hispanic judge would often reach a better decision than a white male judge. "I'm sure she would have restated it," Obama flatly told NBC News, without indicating how he knew that.

There are several ways this could be interpreted, and I think the President was intentionally ambiguous so that we can each believe in the way that makes Sotomayor look the best in our own minds.

1. Sotomayor didn't mean what she said. She meant to convey an entirely different meaning, and she would have restated herself to convey that meaning if she had the opportunity. (Which she didn't?)

2. Sotomayor meant what she said, but if she had known that she would be nominated to the Supreme Court eight years later she would have phrased it more ambiguously so that her beliefs couldn't be so easily held against her.

3. Sotomayor meant what she said but now wishes she could take it back because she has changed her mind.

4. Sotomayor meant what she said but now wishes she could take it back because she thinks it will hurt her chances of being confirmed.

Is there another option? Which of these really speaks well of a person who could very well get a life-long appointment to the Supreme Court?

A couple is claiming that a San Diego County official has threatened to shut down their home Bible study unless they apply for a permit. Please.

Attorney Dean Broyles of The Western Center For Law & Policy was shocked with what happened to the pastor and his wife.

Broyles said, "The county asked, 'Do you have a regular meeting in your home?' She said, 'Yes.' 'Do you say amen?' 'Yes.' 'Do you pray?' 'Yes.' 'Do you say praise the Lord?' 'Yes.'"

The county employee notified the couple that the small Bible study, with an average of 15 people attending, was in violation of County regulations, according to Broyles.

Broyles said a few days later the couple received a written warning that listed "unlawful use of land" and told them to "stop religious assembly or apply for a major use permit" -- a process that could cost tens of thousands of dollars.

If this happened (I smell a hoax) there's no way their Bible study will ultimately be stopped. It's ludicrous.

Why do I smell a hoax? Saying "amen" and "praise the Lord" cannot possibly be on any list of questions that the county uses to determine whether or not a religious use permit is required for anything. I just find it hard to believe that any government employee would ask those kinds of questions, even if a permit were legitimately required.

I don't think the CIA interrogation memos should have been released by the Administration, but former Vice President Dick Cheney is right when he says that they only tell part of the story.

"One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort," Cheney said.

Cheney said he's asked that the documents be declassified because he has remained silent on the confidential information, but he knows how successful the interrogation process was and wants the rest of the country to understand.

"I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country," Cheney said. "I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was."

Obama is in perpetual campaign mode and doesn't seem to know what it means to actually be President. When you're a candidate you can play up information that supports you and leave it to your detractors mention anything contrary. You're not (realistically) expected to be a responsible, neutral dispenser of information because you're speaking for yourself and you're trying to win political office. However, once you've won, when you're actually President, you don't just speak for yourself anymore. You can't wield the levers of government power to manipulate information in your favor.

Most Americans understand that there's a trade-off between liberty and safety. It's a clever turn of phrase that "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." but as with most absolutes it cannot be quite right. There are trade-offs in everything, and though it is noble for one man to die for a cause it is absurd for an entire civilization to do the same. People desire both liberty and safety, but when they are obtained they are both temporary and must be constantly defended. Despite Franklin's implication, however, you can never escape the slippery slope between them.

This is the discussion that Candidate Obama doesn't want to have, but President Obama is responsible for leading. Candidate Obama doesn't want to tell people "this much 'torture' bought you this much safety" because he's afraid that the verdict of the American people at large will be different from the verdict of the groups that put him in power. To avoid the discussion, he "leaked" memos that help his cause as if he were a whistleblower rather than The Man. As President he has a responsibility to all Americans and not only his supporters. When he begins to realize that he will perhaps begin to grow into the Office he already occupies.

(Cross-posted at 24th State.)

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has written an incredibly myopic piece that tries to tie gun rights proponents to mass murders (also ).

After each horrific shooting, some leaders in Washington have said the solution is to do nothing, simply continue to enforce the existing laws, just as we have been doing. The gun lobby, meanwhile, calls for weakening our already paltry laws to get more guns to more people in more places. It is time for the gun lobby to stop stoking fear among gun owners with false claims about the government. It is time for the gun industry to stop capitalizing on those ginned-up fears to spread weapons of war among the public.

The gun lobby's rhetoric has consequences. We have seen how profound those consequences can be.

We have a gun crisis in America. As important as the economic crisis is, the right to be safe at home and work and play needs at least as much attention from our policymakers as the right to economic security. It is time for leaders in Washington to drop empty platitudes after each horrific shooting, and instead do what they're paid to do: show backbone, and enact reasonable laws to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people.

Helmke's argument is completely disingenuous: does he really think psychos who want to murder dozens of people will be stopped by yet another law? No, I don't think he does. Is the Brady Campaign only in favor of "reasonable laws" that "keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people"? No, they favor banning all guns. (As does President Obama.)

Let's turn the tables: how many people have died because of anti-gun nuts? How many murders could have been prevented if the victim were armed instead of helpless? How many rapes? How many kidnappings? How many robberies? How many millions? Guns are used in self-defense every day.

And of course, what's the difference between a citizen and a peasant? A gun.

More kids being charged with child porn offenses for taking pictures of themselves.

Police in Holbrook are investigating charges against three minors who allegedly created a video of two of them having sexual intercourse while the third recorded it, then distributed the video to junior high students.

"The video depicts two minors engaging in sexual intercourse," Holbrook police officer Keysha Mitchell said. She said the person recording the scene was also a minor.

"Some of the kids involved could be looking at possession of child pornography, dissemination of child pornography. There's also the possibility of statutory rape and if there's any audio discovered on the video there's also the possible charge of wiretapping," Mitchell said.

So the fact that the junior high girl was having sex with two junior high boys is fine, but making a video of it gets you years in jail.

Police said the video was taken at a home, not at the school. The alleged victim, a girl under 16, told them she did not realize she was being captured on cell phone. She went to police with her parents when she realized the video was circulating.

I'm not sure that a girl having sex with two boys has much of an expectation of privacy. Just based on the details given in the story, it's hard for me to view the girl here as a "victim". Am I wrong? Was she any more in the right than the boys?

A 14-year-old girl has been charged with distributing child pornography for posting naked pictures of herself on the internet.

A 14-year-old girl faces child pornography charges after she allegedly posted nearly 30 nude pictures of herself on a social networking site, authorities said. ...

Following a month-long investigation, detectives discovered that the person posting the pictures was the same person featured in them — the 14-year-old girl. Anyone who was “friends” with the girl through MySpace or knew her full name could have accessed the photos.

The teen was charged with one count of possession of child pornography and one count of distribution of child pornography. She was released into her mother’s custody, Maer said.

You can't fix stupid, and you can't outlaw it either.

Charging the girl seems like a waste of law enforcement resources. She's apparently old enough to get an abortion without parental consent in New Jersey, and if she's capable of making that decision then can't law enforcement officers and prosecutors find something better to do?

Of course, I don't think 14-year-old girls should be allowed to get abortions without parental consent -- I'm just illustrating the absurdity of the system. Other than our heritage of Judeo-Christian morality, there's no reason that it should be illegal for a person to publish pictures of herself when there is no coercion or exploitation involved. The "no one gets hurt" standard of modern secular morality would appear to be satisfied since the girl posted these pictures of her own volition, so what's the problem?

Secularists who reject Christianity as a basis for morality will no doubt be quick to employ hand-waving arguments to explain why teenage girls shouldn't be allowed to distribute naked pictures of themselves. The most common such argument is that pictures of naked children encourage pedophiles to abuse children. I don't know if that's true or not, but even if it is, should we outlaw banks because they encourage bank robbers? Should we outlaw violent video games because they (possibly) encourage violence? Should we outlaw images or movies that portray crimes other than sexual abuse? ("Jackass" has inspired idiots to do all sorts of stupid and illegal things.)

Without Christianity or some other revelatory source of morality, there's no way to justify the prohibition of possession of child pornography by a person who has not herself abused a child.

Full Disclosure reports that attorney Richard Fine has been sentenced to indefinite incarceration by a judge who refused to recuse himself when it was revealed that he had illegally accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the other party in Fine's case.

The hearing involved the case of Marina Strand Colony II Homeowners Association vs County of Los Angeles and was prompted by attorneys representing the Del Rey Shores Development who sought to collect legal fees awarded to them. Richard Fine challenged the credentials of the Debtor Court Referee and Judge Yaffe who he claimed had been receiving illegal payments, estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars from the County Board of Supervisors since 1988. ...

This extraordinary judicial action of ordering the indefinite incarceration of such a prominent attorney whose long and distinguished career included service in the U. S. Department of Justice in Washington D. C. followed an intensive exchange where attorney Fine objected to Judge Yaffe's failure to disqualify himself. According to Richard Fine, Judge Yaffe along with all of the Los Angeles County judges have each been accepting up to hundreds of thousands of illegal dollars from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, that is specifically prohibited by the California Constitution and the Canons of Judicial Ethics. ...

In concluding his argument before Judge Yaffee's ruling, Richard Fine noted on the record that the California Legislature, the Governor and Judicial Council, all have admitted and recognized the illegal and criminal acts committed by Judge Yaffe and all Los Angeles Superior Court Judges and Supervisors when the Governor signed into law the State Budget legislation this February. Inserted into the budget bill was a provision granting Judges and elected officials immunity for criminal acts specifically prohibited by the State Constitution.

Obviously, if Judge Yaffe had recused himself he would have implicitly been admitting that no Superior Court Judges could preside over any case involving the County of Los Angeles.

Only a crazy man would behead a random stranger and eat the corpse on a public bus. But crazy men can't be punished, because their insanity requires treatment not punishment. Therefore, beheading random strangers and eating their corpses is no longer a crime in Canada.

WINNIPEG, Manitoba – A Canadian judge ruled Thursday that a man accused of beheading and cannibalizing a fellow Greyhound bus passenger is not criminally responsible due to mental illness. The decision means Chinese immigrant Vince Li will be treated in a mental institution instead of going to prison. The family of victim Tim McLean said Li got away with murder.

It's great that Belkis Gonzalez is facing jail time, but it should be for murder not bogus sop charges.

Belkis Gonzalez, 42, was arrested Tuesday and charged with practicing medicine without a license and tampering with evidence, both felonies, said Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's office. If found guilty, Gonzalez would face at least a year in prison and up to 15 years.

The teenage mother, Sycloria Williams, has filed a lawsuit alleging that Gonzalez knocked the infant off the chair where she had given birth, and then scooped the baby, placenta and afterbirth into a red plastic biohazard bag, and threw it out.

The charges are bogus because they're politically-based. If Gonzales weren't charged at all there would be an uproar from common-sense Americans who know a baby when they see one; if Gonzales were charged with murder though, the abortion industry would foam at the mouth over the bad/truthful publicity.

The Miami District Attorney is trying straddle the fence by charging Gonzales with felonies that don't address the most significant matter at hand: she murdered a baby. Despicable, all around.

My wife just sent me this story and it makes me absolutely furious. As if abortion isn't bad enough, now babies that manage to survive abortions are being murdered.

Eighteen and pregnant, Sycloria Williams went to an abortion clinic outside Miami and paid $1,200 for Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique to terminate her 23-week pregnancy.

Three days later, she sat in a reclining chair, medicated to dilate her cervix and otherwise get her ready for the procedure.

Only Renelique didn't arrive in time. According to Williams and the Florida Department of Health, she went into labor and delivered a live baby girl.

What Williams and the Health Department say happened next has shocked people on both sides of the abortion debate: One of the clinic's owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant's umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

Police recovered the decomposing remains in a cardboard box a week later after getting anonymous tips.

First off, how often do you think this sort of thing happens? I bet it happens a lot without anonymous tipsters raising an alarm.

Secondly, this is exactly the kind of murder that Barack Obama refused to criminalize when was an Illinois state legislator.

The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) both in the Illinois and Federal legislatures was meant to make illegal death by neglect of born but unwanted infants. These bills were opposed by the bulk of the Democrat Party because of the fact that the original bills could have been construed to say that a pre-birth fetus was a "person" that was protected by law. So, the bill in Congress was altered to address that concern by adding a "neutrality clause" that made it clear that the bill would not protect a fetus in utero.

As Obama continues to tell the tale, as a State Senator he said he voted against the Illinois bill because the Federal "neutrality clause" was not included and that therefore he could not support the Illinois bill. Turns out he is not telling the truth about this fact. Even worse, he knows better because he was part of the legislative committee that added that very "neutrality clause" to the very bill he voted against in 2003.

Revolting. Renelique and Belkis Gonzalez, the clinic's owner, should both be executed.

Leftists have been telling us for years that legalizing gay marriage won't open the floodgates and lead to acceptance of polygamy, beastiality, pederasty, and so forth. Maybe they're right! But in Canada at least, some polygamists think otherwise.

Canada’s decision to legalize gay marriage has paved the way for polygamy to be legal as well, a defense lawyer said Wednesday as the two leaders of rival polygamous communities made their first court appearance. ...

“If (homosexuals) can marry, what is the reason that public policy says one person can’t marry more than one person?” said Suffredine, a former provincial lawmaker. Canada’s Parliament extended full marriage rights to same-sex couples in 2005.

Yes. Someone who supports gay marriage please explain to me why polygamy should remain illegal.

It appears that ADA lawsuits are out of control in California due to a poorly designed law, and some disabled people are taking advantage.

Mundy is trolling for barriers to his patronage -- a threshold too high for his wheelchair, a parking lot with blue-striped access lanes narrower than eight feet, a public restroom where the coat hook on the back of the door, if there is one, is above his reach.

One fighter in a burgeoning army of crusaders for disabled access, Mundy says he has filed more than 150 lawsuits in 18 months demanding damages from small businesses in violation of the exacting requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Suing for ADA noncompliance has become a cottage industry for dozens of disabled Californians who have taken on the role of freelance enforcers of an often ignored federal statute. They secure piecemeal correction of offending premises and often enrich themselves and their lawyers in the process. ...

Divorced and jobless except for the self-assigned ADA work, Mundy won't say how much he has earned by filing lawsuits demanding five-figure sums then settling out of court with business owners keen to escape a costlier defense. Attorneys representing those he has sued estimate Mundy's proceeds at about $300,000 in little more than a year, and a similar sum for his attorney, Morse Mehrban, from Mundy's cases alone.

The problem isn't the Americans with Disabilities Act, its with California's implementation. Instead of complaints resulting first in a warning and only later imposing a fine if access is not provided, California lets "victims" recover thousands of dollars of damages immediately after the complaint.

"Confined to a wheelchair in California?" Mehrban asks potential clients on his website. "You may be entitled to $1,000 each time you can't use something at a business because of your disability."

If someone in a wheelchair has been doing laundry once a month for a year at a laundromat where the paper-towel dispenser is too high, "you're entitled to $12,000," the lawyer advertises. ...

Long Beach attorney Ted Batsakis has had four clients sued for ADA infractions over the past few months. He calls the litigation "an old Chicago-style shakedown." Like his clients, Batsakis said the law would be more just if it gave businesses 30 or 60 days to fix the problems.

No one has the right to make a living by extortion, even in the name of a good cause.

Wife lights husband's genitals on fire, kills husband, burns down house. A "tragedy".

A MAN whose wife allegedly set fire to his genitals while he slept has died.

Satish Narayan, 47, an engineer, lost his battle to survive at the Royal Adelaide Hospital yesterday, 20 days after sustaining burns to most of his body.

The incident has now been declared a major crime by police and it is likely his wife, Rajini, will face a charge of manslaughter or murder.

Police have alleged Mr Narayan's wife doused his genitals with methylated spirit and then set him on fire about 5.30am on December 7. ...

A neighbour told the Sunday Mail she had visited Mrs Narayan in the Adelaide Women's Prison yesterday, before she had been told of her husband's death.

She said she was providing support to her friend over what she said was a "terrible tragedy".

She said the pair had held hands and prayed during her visit. "She wanted him to live, more than anything," she said.

She wanted nothing more than for him to live... except to light his balls on fire.

(HT: RD.)

Some diabolically brilliant pranksters are turning traffic ticket cameras to an even more evil purpose than that for which they are intended.

Originating from Wootton High School, the parent said, students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that "mimic" those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera, the parent said. The victim then receives a citation in the mail days later.

Students are even obtaining vehicles from their friends that are similar or identical to the make and model of the car owned by the targeted victim, according to the parent.

"This game is very disturbing," the parent said. "Especially since unsuspecting parents will also be victimized through receipt of unwarranted photo speed tickets.

My hat's off to these students for revealing the pernicious flaw behind the concept of camera-issued traffic tickets. I'm saving this article to use in court in case I ever get such a ticket.

In yet another overreach in the War on Drugs, Missouri police and sheriffs are pushing for a law banning non-prescription sales of pseudoephederine because it is an essential ingredient of meth.

If you live in Missouri, you could soon be forced to get a prescription to buy certain cold medicines.

A group of police officers wants over-the-counter drugs that contain pseudoephederine to be made prescription medications.

Pseudoephederine is a popular decongestant.

But it is also often abused, used as a key ingredient to make the dangerous, addictive, and illegal drug, meth.

"No longer do people have to worry that the house next door to them, or that the trailer home next door to them, is going to explode, " says Franklin County Sheriff's Sergeant Jason Grellner.

Seriously? Seriously. I'm supposed to waste time and money seeing a doctor when I've got a cold because some people live in fear of exploding trailers.

As TDS points out, this isn't law enforcement, it's a farce.

The police can't always protect you, which is why it is the responsibility of every mentally and physically capable adult to provide for his own protection.

A city alderman frustrated with the police response to rising crime called Tuesday on residents to arm themselves to protect their lives and property.

Alderman Charles Quincy Troupe said police are ineffective, outnumbered or don't care about the increase in crime in his north St. Louis ward. St. Louis has had 157 homicides in 2008, 33 more than last year at this time.

"The community has to be ready to defend itself, because it's clear the economy is going to get worse, and criminals are getting more bold," Troupe, 72, said Tuesday.

Troupe said that when he and residents approached a district police commander last year, they were told "there was nothing he could do to protect us and the community ... that he didn't have the manpower."

Even the best police can't be everywhere. Usually the only people attending a violent crime are the perpetrator and the victim... and the police show up later to draw chalk outlines. You can bet that the perpetrator will be armed.

Police did not immediately return requests for comment. Chief Dan Isom wrote Tuesday in a department blog that citizens arming themselves will lead to more danger, not less, he said.

Neighborhood watch groups, and the hard work of helping to eradicate poverty and other social ills, are better crime-prevention tools, he said. ...

"Much of the problem is free and easy access to guns," Rosenfeld said. "This hope that by putting guns in the right hands will have an influence on criminals is a false hope. There's no evidence for that."

The evidence shows that crime goes down when law-abiding citizens carry weapons.

For the first time, researchers analyzed crime statistics for all 3,054 counties in the United Sates between 1977 and 1992, according to one of the authors of the unpublished study, Professor John Lott. After adjusting for a general fall in crime rates, the study found that:

* In the 31 states that now have "concealed right to carry" laws, murders were down, on average, by 8.5 percent.

* Rapes were down 5 percent and serious assaults by 7 percent.

* In cities with populations of more than 250,000, murder rates dropped after the passage of such laws by an average of 13.5 percent.

Either St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and Police Chief Dan Isom are ignorant of the data, or they're purposefully putting citizens in danger to make their own lives easier.

Mumbai has been hit by a coordinated set of distributed terrorist attacks involving the use of machine guns against crowds of people in at least nine locations throughout the city. Three of the city's top law enforcement officers were apparently targets and have been killed.

Gunmen have opened fire at a number of sites in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay), killing at least 78 people and injuring about 200 more.

Police said shooting was continuing and that the incidents were co-ordinated terrorist attacks. Gunmen have taken hostages at two luxury hotels. ...

On Wednesday, gunmen opened fire at about 2300 local time at sites in southern Mumbai including a train station, two five-star hotels, a hospital and a restaurant popular with tourists.

Police said the gunmen had fired indiscriminately.

"The terrorists have used automatic weapons and in some places grenades have been lobbed," said AN Roy, police commissioner of Maharashtra state.

Much easier than building a bomb, but these are the first attacks of this kind I've heard of. Pray for India and her people.

Ever since reading about the Salem witch trials I've been fascinated with the idea. (Last night my wife and I were watching heretics being burned on The Tudors, which is what brought the topic to mind.)

For the sake of discussion, a definition: a witch is a woman with a connection to evil supernatural beings that grant her the power to afflict others with sickness, death, and misfortune without leaving any tangible evidence.

So let's set aside the question of whether or not there were or are real witches. Hypothetically, what would you do if you believed there were, and if you thought someone was a witch?

If someone were hurting others and it could be proven with tangible evidence, then you'd use that evidence in court to charge, convict, and sentence her according to law.

But if the person you believed to be causing the illegal harm were doing it via witchcraft -- and therefore leaving no tangible evidence -- what do you do? I can only see two options.

1. You appease the witch. There's no tangible evidence, and you won't act outside the law. The witch runs free, afflicting and extorting anyone she desires. (And remember, we're assuming she really is a witch.) Give her what she wants and maybe she'll go away (or at least bother someone else).

2. In collaboration with your fellow citizens -- who are all threatened by the witch -- you create some sort of extra-judicial proceeding designed to discover and neutralize the witch. You're very interested in justice, but since the crimes are being committed by witchcraft that leaves no tangible evidence your judgment will have to rely on testimony by witnesses. These witnesses will testify about what they've seen the witch do, and about her character. (Character is especially relevant since the witch derives her powers from evil supernatural beings.)

In modern times such circumstantial evidence is often used to convict criminals even when there is scant tangible physical evidence. People have been convicted of murder without even a dead body in evidence! So maybe your proceedings wouldn't even have to be that far outside the law.

Choice (3) is basically what the citizens of Salem chose to do. It's hard for me to argue that I'd have done any different, if I had been in their place.

The conviction on corruption charges does little more than emphasize what has been apparent for many years: Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens is an embarrassment to the United States, to Alaska, and to the Republican Party. I'd say he's an embarrassment to the Senate, but he probably fits right in.

The verdict, coming barely a week before Election Day, increased Stevens' difficulty in winning what already was a difficult race against Democratic challenger Mark Begich. Democrats hope to seize the once reliably Republican seat as part of their bid for a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Stevens, 84, was convicted of all the felony charges he faced of lying about free home renovations and other gifts from a wealthy oil contractor.

Because this kind of corruption is so often overlooked in our government, I'm sure Stevens is shocked to be facing jail time for these bribes.

Chris Dodd should be worried, and I'd be pleased if this investigation is the first of many.

Two teens in the Netherlands have been convicted of stealing virtual property. First such case I've heard of.

A Dutch court has convicted two youths of theft for stealing virtual items in a computer game and sentenced them to community service.

Only a handful of such cases have been heard in the world, and they have reached varying conclusions about the legal status of "virtual goods."

The Leeuwarden District Court says the culprits, 15 and 14 years old, coerced a 13-year-old boy into transferring a "virtual amulet and a virtual mask" from the online adventure game RuneScape to their game accounts.

"These virtual goods are goods (under Dutch law), so this is theft," the court said Tuesday in a summary of its ruling.

How would such a case play out in America?

Thinking about the election in a few weeks has really highlighted just how chaotic our Supreme Court Justice appointment process is. I think the intention of the Founding Fathers was to make the Supreme Court less responsive to political pressure by giving the justices lifelong appointments, but this has had at least one very strange consequence: Supreme Court judicial philosophy is chaotic in the sense that it's future has very little relationship to its present.

Voters have short attention spans. Decisions on whom to vote for are often made in the last few weeks before an election and are based on policy preferences that take into account little more than the past year... maybe less. This short time frame is fine for electing officials who serve two-, four-, or even six-year terms, but should e.g. the state of the war in Afghanistan really have a strong influence on a capital punishment case 30 years from now? Should the financial crisis influence abortion law? Should preference for one energy independence plan over another affect free speech law?

When our immediate political concerns are juxtaposed with the kinds of cases the next Supreme Court justices will probably be deciding over the coming decades, the chaotic nature of the system is revealed. If voters support Barack Obama because he wants to pull our troops out of Iraq, they might also get stuck with mandatory "equal pay" for women when he puts Hillary Clinton on the Supreme Court. Or, flip it: voting for John McCain because he was right on the surge doesn't necessarily mean that you'll agree when his appointee overturns Roe v. Wade.

It doesn't make sense for matters that are so unrelated to be tied together politically. I'm not sure I've got a better system in mind, but I bet we can come up with something. Here are some options, but each has problems of its own:

• Shorter terms. Back when the Constitution was written lifespans were much less anyway, so why not limit justices to a single 20-year term?
• Elect justices directly.
• Elect justices regionally. The states in each circuit get to elect one justice together.

I think I like the first the best, what about you?

Instead of yet another press conference, how about some executives, lobbyists, bureaucrats, Congressmen, and Senators in handcuffs? I bet the market would respond well to that. This is exactly the type of scenario that cries out for a special independent prosecutor, and I think investigations need to start while emotions are still running high.

I don't know about you, but I want to see some perp-walks. i want to see Chris Dodd and Barney Frank in orange jumpsuits answering questions under oath. I want to see executives from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Countrywide, AIG, and all the others dragged out of their mansions and arraigned without bail.

These characters played it fast and loose for decades, and I'm inclined to believe that their trials, convictions, and sentences should be handled similarly.

For the first time in 13 years the Juice is not loose. In the years since his acquittal OJ Simpson has basically convinced everyone of his guilt, and everyone (but him) seems willing to accept that this trial is society's second chance to get the verdict right. Not sure if that's "justice", but it feels like it.

What happened? O.J. happened. He has been bitten by the very source of his support at the beginning, and the reason he could afford those lawyers and sway those jurors: his celebrity.

We kept watching O.J. He revealed himself to be who prosecutors said he was.

A civil jury found him responsible for the murders. Simpson said he would spend the rest of his life searching for the "real killers" and has made no effort to do so. ...

Recently, Simpson wrote a book called "If I Did It," in which he tells the world how he could have killed his ex-wife and her friend hypothetically, of course. (The book was eventually published by Ronald Goldman's family.)

These are not the actions of an innocent man. If the world thought you had killed two people, including your ex-spouse, and you hadn't done it ... well, come on. In a thousand years, you would never write a book about how you might have done it.

The charges and punishment he's facing will probably be disproportionate to his recent actions, but will certainly be justified based on his past. Of course, our justice system is supposed to preclude this sort of double jeopardy, and OJ will probably make a convincing appeal.

What do you think should happen?

Despite the announcement on Sunday that a bailout deal had been reached, I was pleased to see yesterday that the deal fell through. Good. The markets were down because people realized that the government wasn't about to pay $1 for assets that are probably only worth 50 cents. That's bad for the people who own those assets, but good for the taxpayers who were about to buy them at inflated prices.

Harvard professor Jeffrey A. Miron has written the best prescription that I've seen so far: the solution is bankruptcy, not bailout. I've been saying the exact same thing for weeks. Maybe I should be an economics professor?

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.

Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.

Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.

Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street's hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.

Just go read the whole thing. It's concise and exactly right on every point.

Good morning, fellow AIG shareholders! If you're an American, you now own a chunk of the country's "largest" insurance company... not counting the debt obligations that make it insolvent.

The U.S. government seized control of American International Group Inc. -- one of the world's biggest insurers -- in an $85 billion deal that signaled the intensity of its concerns about the danger a collapse could pose to the financial system.

The step marks a dramatic turnabout for the federal government, which had been strongly resisting overtures from AIG for an emergency loan or some intervention that would prevent the insurer from falling into bankruptcy. Just last weekend, the government essentially pulled the plug on Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., allowing the big investment bank to go under instead of giving it financial support. This time, the government decided AIG truly was too big to fail.

The U.S. negotiators drove a hard bargain. Under terms hammered out Tuesday night, the Fed will lend up to $85 billion to AIG, and the U.S. government will effectively get a 79.9% equity stake in the insurer in the form of warrants called equity participation notes. The two-year loan will carry an interest rate of Libor plus 8.5 percentage points. (Libor, the London interbank offered rate, is a common short-term lending benchmark.)

First, I say let these companies fail. Oh, I know, it'll be the end of the world! Really? One day after Lehman Brothers went bust Barclays wants to buy them. The financial system won't go poof if these companies fail... but a lot of our elites will be out on the street.

Second, that's exactly what should happen. Here's my suggestion for a bailout law: if your company is SO important that we have to bail you out to avoid a total collapse of the world economy (*cough*), then when we do so the top 1% of all earners go to jail. The CEOs get life sentences, and we can work our way down from there.

Way to go, Missouri.

Not only were our political masters getting favorable interest rates from Countrywide, but the mortgage giant they were supposed to be regulating also made it a practice to waive the "junk" fees they stick to the rest of us.

According to Feinberg and company documents, V.I.P.’s nearly always received better deals than those available to most borrowers. Countrywide often waived up to two points and eliminated fees amounting to hundreds of dollars for underwriting, processing, and document preparation. Internal company emails often referred to these fees as “junk” or “garbage.” If interest rates fell while a V.I.P. loan was pending, Countrywide provided a free float-down to the lower rate, eschewing its usual charge of half a point. Some V.I.P.’s who bought or refinanced investment properties were given the lower interest rate reserved for primary residences. Because Mozilo informally preapproved his F.O.A.’s, many of them barely bothered to document their assets and enjoyed exceptions to normal procedures or shortcuts around them.

If you're a homeowner and that doesn't make your blood boil, you may already be in a cool homicidal rage. There's no way that this special treatment isn't bribery of the most pernicious kind, and every, every "friend of Angelo" of either party who participated should be thrown in prison. Pleading ignorance doesn't keep us peasants out of jail, and the people who make the laws should be held to at least as high a standard.

(HT: Instapundit.)

Pilot Patrick Smith mocks the Transportation Security Administration. As he points out, everyone who flies knows he's right, but none of the interested parties will stick their necks out to fix the problem.

At this point, the Transportation Security Administration's policies in general are wrong on so many levels that it's hard to get one's arms around them. My apologies to those who've tired of my harping on this subject in column after column, but here again are the bullet points:

* Sharp, potentially dangerous objects can be fashioned from virtually anything, including no shortage of materials found on board any jetliner -- to say nothing of the fact that a copycat takeover in the style of Sept. 11 would be almost impossible for terrorists to pull off, regardless of what weapons they possess. Yet we insist on wasting huge amounts of time digging through people's belongings, looking for what are effectively benign items.

* Almost as senseless are the liquids and gels restrictions. Experts have pointed out the futility of these measures, yet they remain in place. (Still more from TSA's you-can't-make-this-up list of airport contraband: gel shoe inserts.)

* TSA's approach is fundamentally flawed in that it treats everybody -- from employees to passengers, old and young, domestic and foreign -- as a potential threat. We are all suspects. Together with a preposterous zero-tolerance approach to weapons, be they real or perceived, this has created a colossal apparatus that strives for the impossible.

I can't disagree that some level of screening will always be important. Explosives and firearms, for instance, need to be kept off airplanes. But the existing rules are so heavy-handed, absolute and illogical as to be ultimately unenforceable.

You would think, nearly seven years after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, that TSA would have gotten its act together. Not just tactically, but functionally. Take a look at the typical checkpoint. There are people yelling, bags falling, trash bins overflowing with water bottles. There's nowhere to stand, nowhere to move. It's a jury-rigged circus. ...

Except there is no fuss. Serious protest has been all but nil. The airlines, biggest losers in all of this, remain strangely quiet. More and more people are choosing not to fly, and checkpoint hassles are one of the reasons. Yet the industry appears to have little concern while an out-of-control agency delays and aggravates its customers.

Any public officeholder or official who complains or attempts to change the broken system will be pilloried when there's another successful terrorist attack against an airliner. The facade of security isn't worth the cost, and more people need to stand up and say so.

I read stories like this one from the UK about a women using mild force to protect a war memorial from disruptive "youths" and I wonder if adults should be given a presumption of justification for stand-alone instances of violence against kids.

Julie Lake, 50, believed the 15-year-old was one of a number of youths who had damaged the remembrance garden in her village dedicated to those killed fighting for Britain.

But Mrs Lake was arrested after giving a boy, whom she believed to be the ringleader, a talking-to and a 'cuff round the ear'.

She tackled him after she saw at least one youth riding a BMX bike through freshly-laid flower beds.

Magistrates heard that when she grabbed his shirt collar, he said: 'That's assault'.

Mrs Lake claimed she was performing a 'moral obligation' following months of anti-social behaviour and vandalism at the memorial.

But weeks later she was arrested and yesterday was convicted of assault, criminal damage and a public order offence at North Avon Magistrates Court in Yate, near Bristol.

I don't think that repeated patterns of violence against children by an adult should be tolerated of course, but I do think that kids should be scared of adults, and especially of strangers. Children and teenagers should be afraid to act disruptively and abusively in public, and if it takes a "cuff round the ear" to make it so, I'm fine with that.

I'm not exactly sure how the law should be crafted, but the case against Mrs. Lake should have been laughed out of court and the "youths" should have been punished (further). The new law would need to punish domestic child abuse, but shouldn't prevent adults from keeping strange kids in line in public places.

She told how the gang surrounded her, pushed her and shouted: 'You can't touch us, we're 15, we can do what the f*** we like.'

When the 15-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was questioned in court about the war memorial, he replied: ''It means nothing to me, I guess it's for some people who died in the war.'

If the system weren't so stacked in their favor, I don't think it would take long for kids to realize that they'd better shut up and keep a low profile around adults. I doubt much actual force would need to be used if the threat of force were once again widespread.

(HT: Rachel Lucas.)

The Reconquista continues, now on Catalina Island:

AVALON, Calif. - It seems even 22 miles of open ocean might not be keeping gangs off Catalina Island, a mist-shrouded outpost of Los Angeles County best known for its Hollywood history and crystal-clear harbors.

Deputies on the isle say a fledgling gang called the Brown Pride Locos has gotten a foothold among the beaches, coves and tourist shops. A stabbing, burglaries and graffiti are being blamed on the gang, and deputies last month surprised teenagers practicing moves with knives on a dark bluff above Avalon's crescent-shaped bay.

A swift crackdown has netted at least six arrests and led to a pair of police raids — but it has also caused an uproar in the tiny community, where residents leave their doors unlocked and putt around in golf carts.

Today's SCOTUS ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller was a strong statement protecting one of our most valuable civil rights: the right to self-defense. The reactions from various politicians are especially interesting considering that while an expected 100% of Republicans quoted approve of the decision, so do three out of five Democrats.

It's disturbing to me that the Supreme Court won't distinguish between mere criminals and enemy combatants captured on the battlefield fighting against American troops.

In a stinging rebuke to President Bush's anti-terror policies, a deeply divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign detainees held for years at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have the right to appeal to U.S. civilian courts to challenge their indefinite imprisonment without charges. ...

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the 5-4 high court majority, acknowledged the terrorism threat the U.S. faces - the administration's justification for the detentions - but he declared, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times." ...

Chief Justice John Roberts, in his own dissent to Thursday's ruling, criticized the majority for striking down what he called "the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants."

I hate to say it, but the majority opinion is just silly. It may be practical to give the 200 detainees currently imprisoned at Guantanamo an appearance before a civilian judge, but what if in the future we capture 1,000 enemy combatants in the mountains of Afghanistan? We have to fly them all back to America for trials? What if we capture 10,000? What if we get into a major war and capture 100,000 guerrillas? The policy doesn't scale well.

Furthermore, it just isn't logical to treat enemies caught on a battlefield the same way we treat domestic criminals, even murderers. Crime-fighting and war-fighting are very different endeavors, with different objectives and different methods. The Constitution recognizes this by granting the power to prosecute a war to the President. Processing imprisoned enemy combatants while the war is ongoing falls under the President's purview as Commander-in-Chief.

And it's the doctor who goes to jail?

Violence broke out at the gas pumps in Orange County. Police say a La Palma doctor waiting in line to buy gas at the Costco warehouse store in Cypress grabbed a tire iron and confronted a motorist who cut into the line.

Sgt. Tom Bruce said the doctor was arrested and booked for investigation of brandishing a deadly weapon in a rude, angry or threatening manner, a misdemeanor.

Witnesses told police the doctor was in line at the pumps Monday evening when another vehicle cut in front of him. When the doctor confronted the motorist with a tire iron, the other driver locked himself in his car and called police.

Who in their right mind would be willing to confront a line-cutting stranger at a gas station without some sort of weapon? This sort of thing is why we left California.

Last week I wrote that that local governments should have broader authority than the federal government, and this example of a federal court striking down a local anti-illegal-immigration law demonstrates my underlying point exactly.

FARMERS BRANCH, Texas (AP) -- A Dallas suburb's ban on apartment rentals to illegal immigrants, an ordinance passed by city leaders and later endorsed in a vote by its residents, is unconstitutional, a federal judge found Wednesday.

Only the federal government can regulate immigration, U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay concluded in his decision.

The city didn't defer to the federal government on the matter, violating the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which allows for the federal government to pre-empt local laws, Lindsay said.

The citizens of the city have essentially no recourse. The apparently large majority who favored the law will go ignored in their own home, subjected to the politics and whims of a distant authority. They could appeal to the courts or to their political representatives, but everyone knows their pleas would go unheard.

On the other hand, when municipalities enact "sanctuary city" policies that explicitly thwart federal immigration laws, the courts are nowhere to be found. I wouldn't object to sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants so vehemently if we citizens were allowed to have sanctuaries of our own. But the almighty courts say no.

You don't hear much good news on the illegal immigration front these days, but here's a very encouraging story that also contains some great economic developments:

IRAPUATO, Mexico - Antonio Martinez used to pay smugglers thousands of dollars each year to sneak him into the United States to manage farm crews. Now, the work comes to him.

Supervising lettuce pickers in central Mexico, Martinez earns just half of the $1,100 a week he made in the U.S. But the job has its advantages, including working without fear of immigration raids.

Martinez, now a legal employee of U.S.-owned VegPacker de Mexico, is exactly the kind of worker more American farm companies are seeking. Many have moved their fields to Mexico, where they can find qualified people, often with U.S. experience, who can't be deported.

"Because I never moved my family to the U.S., I was always alone there," said Martinez, 45, who could never get a work permit, even after 16 years in agriculture in California and Arizona. "When I got the opportunity to be close to my family, doing similar work, I didn't even have to think about it."

Sounds good to me! Everyone wins. The "work Americans won't do" is still done by Mexicans, but legally and in their own country. America gets to buy cheap food but doesn't have to deal with the expense and secondary crime associated with illegal immigration. Mexican workers are able to make a living, live with their families, and invest in their own country's infrastructure, including education and health care.

The only losers are the drug cartels who smuggle people and contraband across the border, the Mexican government which exploits illegal emigration as a way to rid itself of poor people, and perhaps some American farmers who are too slow to keep up with the changes. Some farmers seem to be adapting quite profitably, however.

American companies now farm more than 45,000 acres of land in three Mexican states, employing about 11,000 people, a 2007 survey by the U.S. farm group Western Growers shows.

There were no earlier studies to document how much the acreage has grown. But U.S. direct investment in Mexican agriculture, which includes both American companies moving their operations to Mexico and setting up Mexican partnerships, has swelled sevenfold to $60 million since 2000, Mexico's Economy Department told The Associated Press.

Major corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Bunge have invested across Latin America for decades, particularly in countries like Brazil, where agribusiness is booming.

45,000 acres and $60 million are minuscule figures, but they're sure to grow over time as resources are reallocated due to legal and economic forces. Hopefully those who argue that we "need" illegal immigration will take note of these developments. If they don't, they'll end up on the losing end of the stick as well.

Child pornography is obviously a disgusting evil, but the Supreme Court's 7-2 decision to uphold a ban on virtual child pornography seems troubling on the face. Consider the nuances of the ruling:

The ruling upheld part of a 2003 law that also prohibits possession of child porn. It replaced an earlier law against child pornography that the court struck down as unconstitutional. The law sets a five-year mandatory prison term for promoting, or pandering, child porn. It does not require that someone actually possess child pornography. Opponents have said the law could apply to movies like “Traffic” or “Titanic” that depict adolescent sex.

Emphasis mine. Few would object to tossing creators, distributors, or even possessors of child pornography in jail, but it seems a bit of a stretch to punish someone for distributing images that aren't child pornography but are merely claimed to be. On the other hand, it's illegal to commission a murder-for-hire, even if the murder doesn't end up taking place. Few people object to that law.

(HT: The Pirate and Outside the Beltway.)

You'd think that by now most people would be quick to recognize that immigrants and illegal immigrants are very different, but you'd be wrong. Writes Ruben Navarrette Jr.:

Finally, I said, there is an unfortunate double standard in how Americans feel about foreign flags and those who wave them. A couple of years ago, Jewish Americans marched on Washington to declare support for Israel. Guess what flag many of them waved? And no one said a critical word. This wasn’t a cultural event like St. Patrick’s Day. This was a political gesture, like, say, a march for immigrants’ rights. Yet, some will insist, those who marched on Washington waving the Israeli flag were probably U.S. citizens and those who marched last week on May Day were, in all likelihood, immigrants. And that makes a difference. But wait. We know from media reports that many of the pro-immigrant marchers were U.S. citizens, including the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

As Bill Quick responds at the first link:

I don’t think most Americans have any real problem with other Americans who wave the banners of their former countries in celebrations here. Yet it is certainly understandable that Americans might resent the brazen sense of unearned entitlement demonstrated by those who live here in a state of illegality and who thrust the flags of their current nation (the only one in which they hold legal residency or citizenship) while demanding “rights” that are beyond their legal status in the first place.

I agree with everything Mr. Navarrette says about those immigrants who have followed the rules, waited their turn, and live in the United States in full compliance with our laws. But when he conflates legal immigrants with illegals under the general rubric of “immigrants,” he practices a pernicious form of dishonesty that poisons all his arguments and, indeed, the discussion itself. And, strangely enough, his position even shows great respect to those who legally emigrated into the country from Mexico, often waiting for years while patiently working their way through the endless convolutions of U.S. immigration procedures. To make the claim that such folks are no different — that they are all part of some vast, amorphous group of “immigrants” that includes all those who didn’t endure the same hardships — is to render their patience, their respect for the law, and the goals they have worked so hard to reach a sad joke. More fools them, for obeying the law.

The purposeful conflation of legal immigrants with illegal immigrants is intended to confuse and prevent the important debate on immigration. Any writer who refuses to recognize the difference between the two groups has nothing meaningful to contribute to the discussion.

Unlike many law-and-order conservatives, I'm tentatively in favor of mounting cameras on police weapons if the civilian political leaders think it would improve law enforcement.

New York police officers could carry mini-cameras on their guns under a proposal to bolster public confidence following a spate of controversial shootings.

The device, whose introduction is gaining support among state politicians, would create a visual and audio recording of police shootings for use in court.

Officers would not be able to tamper with the five-ounce camera which works by shooting out a bright red laser light at whatever is in the gun barrel’s path within two seconds of the weapon being drawn. The camera would continue to operate for up to an hour.

The laser light could only be switched off if might expose the officer to danger in a dark area. The camera footage could also be used to identify suspects.

I am a big supporter of police, and think they do a wonderful job 99% of the time, but I also realize that some jurisdictions have social/political considerations that put police in as much danger as criminals do. These cameras could exonerate police who are harassed by trouble-makers for justified uses of force.

Furthermore, I think the trend towards paramilitary police units is dangerous, and these sorts of cameras could encourage more careful police work.

Everyone hates red-light traffic cameras, and someone in Arizona decided to do something about them by re-aiming cameras at the ground.

Someone in Tucson isn't happy about the city's red-light cameras.

A vandal re-aimed most of the traffic cameras at collision-prone intersections over the weekend in an apparent attempt to keep them from snapping photos of speeders and red-light runners, an official said.

This doesn't strike me as "vandalism" since there was no damage or defacement. What this looks like to me is civil disobedience.

It would be more efficient, though, to use some sort of spraying device to shoot paint at the camera lens from the ground or from a car. Not that I'd advocate such a thing.

(HT: Instapundit.)

No doubt Barack Obama is poised to announce either a more diplomatic approach or a total withdrawal from his home city:

Fifty-four shootings in two weekends. Shot-up bodies recovered in groups of three and five. Is this Ramadi? Basra? No.

Welcome to Chicago.

After a recent outbreak of gun-related violence, Mayor Richard Daley is now pushed into supporting a plan by new Police Superintendent Jody Weis to arm 13,000 Chicago police officers with assault rifles. Depending on how many weapons are eventually deployed, this may develop into the largest militarization of police patrol officers in United States history. If the department arms 10,000 of their officers with M4s, the police will have 9,900 more assault rifles in Chicago than the U.S. Marines presently have in Fallujah, Iraq.

Advice to Senator Obama as he aspires to run a whole country: Physician, heal thyself.

(HT: Instapundit.)

BBC North American editor Justin Webb reports from Missouri on the tranquility and safety of gun-toting America:

Wait till you get to London Texas, or Glasgow Montana, or Oxford Mississippi or Virgin Utah, for that matter, where every household is required by local ordinance to possess a gun.

Folks will have guns in all of these places and if you break into their homes they will probably kill you.

They will occasionally kill each other in anger or by mistake, but you never feel as unsafe as you can feel in south London.

It is a paradox. Along with the guns there is a tranquility and civility about American life of which most British people can only dream.

What surprises the British tourists is that, in areas of the US that look and feel like suburban Britain, there is simply less crime and much less violent crime.

Doors are left unlocked, public telephones unbroken.

One reason - perhaps the overriding reason - is that there is no public drunkenness in polite America, simply none.

I have never seen a group of drunk young people in the entire six years I have lived here. I travel a lot and not always to the better parts of town.

It is an odd fact that a nation we associate - quite properly - with violence is also so serene, so unscarred by petty crime, so innocent of brawling.

That's the difference between American citizens and British subjects. A free and armed population can police itself.

(HT: Instapundit.)

The FBI sure seem to have a loose definition of "terrorism":

The car was reported stolen last week. After the theft, the car’s owner was fueling his motorcycle when he spotted his stolen car.

“While he was refueling his motorcycle, low and behold, the vehicle that he had reported stolen that belongs to him happened to pull into the gas station area also,” said Los Lunas Police Captain Charles Nuanes.

The car’s owner pulled the keys out of the ignition of his stolen car and the people in the car fled.

When police arrived, they found the explosive device and less than $1,000 worth of Iraqi cash.

“We don’t know what their intentions were,” said Nuanes. “We don’t know what they were planning on doing with any of this.” ...

FBI agents say that they have ruled out terrorism.

Uh... I can't imagine how the FBI managed to rule out terrorism. Explosives... Iraqi money... stolen vehicle... there's nowhere to go from there except terrorism. Maybe the FBI and/or the reporter meant that there's no indication of terrorism, or that there's no indication of a connection to al Qaeda, but a claim to have ruled terrorism completely out begs credulity.

Furthermore, does anyone want to hazard a guess about how the Iraqi cash and explosives got to Los Lunas, New Mexico? Maybe over our porous southern border?

(HT: GatewayPundit.)

I like this mom's determination to punish her son for sabotaging the vacuum to get out of doing chores, but I'm not sure her method was optimal.

For your consideration: a 13-year-old boy in Virginia decided that it was a good idea to break the family vacuum cleaner in order to get out of his chores around the house and play video games. Not so fast whippersnapper. It looks like your mom won this round.

She has decided to sell her kid's Xbox 360 on eBay. But the story continues. It turns out that while his mom was going through his computer, she checked out the cookies and found that her innocent little boy was frequently checking out porn sites. So she decided to hack into his My Space page. The mom talks about the incident and states:

"My 13 year old managed to break the vacuum....thinking it would release him from that duty. He also has a list of other chores that were TYPED up for him to do Friday afternoon....one thing on the list was done...mind you these are simple things...empty the trash, clean your room, etc.

"Then I go thru the cookies on his computer and find out he has been checking out porn sites. Now there is a password so he can't even get on and his my-space page has a picture of snoopy on it now. Apparently I'm the meanest mom in the world, were his words.

"I'm a single mom. I can't let them walk over me or I might never get up ."

The mom could really maximize her own economic interests here by taking the Xbox and games and forcing the kid to buy them back from her at retail price... she'd get more than via an eBay auction, unless she really needs the cash immediately for a vacuum.

Still, that's all nitpicky (my specialty!). Good for mom! Video games are obviously corrupting our youth.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa thinks Immigration and Customs Enforcement should spend its time protecting illegal immigrants rather than deporting them.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is asking federal officials to rethink their policy on workplace immigration crackdowns that involve established businesses and to focus on employers that mistreat workers instead. ...

He said ICE should spend its limited resources targeting employers who exploit wage and hour laws.

Unless I'm mistaken, labor law enforcement isn't under ICE's purview.

Chertoff has not responded to the mayor's letter, but Homeland Security spokeswoman Laura Keehner said the department believes its priorities are correct.

She said work-site investigations focus on national security and public safety and that the agency also investigates companies it believes may have committed visa fraud, money laundering, and other violations.

It's obvious that you can't deport all of the tens of millions of illegal immigrants that are in America, but this sort of work-site enforcement is a critical component of the attrition strategy that is most likely to make a dent in the problem. When you punish one employer and deport a dozen of his employees, hundreds of other people are put on notice. Other employers will tighten their employment practices, and illegal immigrants will self-deport when the environment is no longer conducive to their presence.

Black Los Angeleans made a scene at this morning's City Council meeting demanding the reversal of Special Order 40 -- the rule that prohibits law enforcement officers from inquiring about an arrestee's legal residency status.

Woo-whee, the testimony was riveting this morning before the Los Angeles City Council when a group of black residents pleaded with the 15 elected council members to rescind Special Order 40, the longtime local rule protecting illegal immigrants from arrest by the LAPD.

The black residents are seeking a decision by the council to enact the so-called Jamiel's Law, named after Jamiel Shaw, a promising and law-abiding 17-year-old high school student allegedly shot by an illegal immigrant, 18th Street Gang member Pedro Espinoza. The noxious Espinoza, who has a massively long rap sheet, was arrested by cops in Culver City, and then released by Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department jailers, shortly before he allegedly murdered Jamiel.

Jamiel's family members cried openly in the ornate Council Chambers, asking the council to allow cops to check on the illegal status of people like Espinoza so they can be deported rather than released.

Council President Eric Garcetti couldn't change the subject fast enough -- to a plan to force even more obnoxious billboards on Angelenos.

Leftist racial politics coming home to roost. (My thoughts on Special Order 40.)

(HT: Mockey Kaus.)

Several years ago I wrote a short series of posts about our society's despicable tolerance of prison rape, and this editorial by Ezra Klein presents a good opportunity to raise the matter again: "There's nothing funny about prison rape".

These hearings are held annually. This year's transcripts aren't online yet, but in 2006 you could have heard a man named Clinton explain, "I had no choice but to enter into a relationship with another inmate in my dorm in order to keep the rest of them off of me. In exchange for his protection from other inmates, I had to be with him sexually any time he demanded it. It was so humiliating, and I often cried silently at night in my bed ... but dealing with one is better than having 10 or more men demanding sex from you at any given time."

Clinton's testimony wasn't very funny, and it wasn't for entertainment. Nor was the 2001 report by Human Rights Watch, "No Escape," which included a letter from an inmate confessing that "I have no more feelings physically. I have been raped by up to five black men and two white men at a time. I've had knifes at my head and throat. I had fought and been beat so hard that I didn't ever think I'd see straight again."

Prison rape occupies a fairly odd space in our culture. It is, all at once, a cherished source of humor, a tacitly accepted form of punishment and a broadly understood human rights abuse. We pass legislation called the Prison Rape Elimination Act at the same time that we produce films meant to explore the funny side of inmate sexual brutality.

If we as a culture really want to subject our criminals to this sort of torture then let's do it explicitly, not with a wink and a nudge. I'm abstractly in favor of corporal punishment, but this sort of sexual abuse is clearly beyond the pale and should be loudly condemned and quickly eliminated.

NPR has an interesting take on why burglaries have been declining for decades:

"I was a salesman. I could sell anything," Mathis says, as he waits to see his probation officer at a city building in Washington, D.C. "Go get me some toilet paper, and I could sell it."

For almost 20 years, Mathis burglarized homes to support a drug habit. He only got caught a few times. Mathis says he stopped breaking into homes because there's just no money in it anymore.

"If you're going to do a burglary, you need to have some buyers," Mathis says. "Everybody has everything now."

Mathis says there's just too much on the street already. Everyone he knows already has a digital camera, iPod knockoffs and pirated DVDs shipped in from China.

"And if it's not new, a lot of people don't even want to fool with it," Mathis says.

Forget about last year's video games and old laptops, Mathis says. And don't even bring a VCR or boxy TV to the street.

"You can get a TV for nothing almost," he says. "People are giving them away now."

How's this for a definition of what it means to be a "wealthy" nation: legal commerce puts the black market out of business.

Perhaps most interesting is that private enterprise isn't just attacking burglaries from beneath, but also from above.

The program and the street economy may have turned Mathis' life around, but criminologists say there are other reasons behind the 30-year drop in burglaries — such as the 1 million private police and security guards at work in residential communities.

Two years ago, Steve Southworth, a private police investigator for the Wintergreen Resort in central Virginia, spent six months tracking the movements of a burglar who traveled along the Appalachian trail. ...

In the past, remote communities like this one were ripe for thieves. But since residents started paying for their own private officers, crime has dropped 70 percent.

Maybe a wealthy free market can provide solutions to problems that even many libertarians often believe require government intervention?

Of course, the flip side is that gadget robberies are up.

(HT: Marginal Revolution.)

The title above is controversial in many ways. Defense attorneys didn't step forward to exonerate an innocent man sentenced to live in prison for the crime they knew their client committed. Outrageous on the face, but the issue is more complex than it may appear at first glance. (I'll try to excerpt the important points, but you may want to read the whole thing.)

Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a McDonald's in Chicago in 1982. Police arrested him after a tip and got three eyewitnesses to identify him. Logan, his mother and brother all testified he was at home asleep when the murder occurred. But a jury found him guilty of first degree murder. ...

Logan, who maintains he didn't commit the murder, thought they were "crazy" when he was arrested for the crime.

Attorneys Dale Coventry and Jamie Kunz knew Logan had good reason to think that, because they knew he was innocent. And they knew that because their client, Andrew Wilson, who they were defending for killing two policemen, confessed to them that he had also killed the security guard at McDonald's - the crime Logan was charged with committing. ...

The problem was the killer was their client. So, legally, they had to keep his secret even though an innocent man was about to be tried for murder.

"I know a lot of people who would say, 'Hey if the guy's innocent you've got to say so. You can't let him rot because of that,'" Simon remarked.

"Well, the vast majority of the public apparently believes that, but if you check with attorneys or ethics committees or you know anybody who knows the rules of conduct for attorneys, it’s very, very clear-it's not morally clear-but we're in a position to where we have to maintain client confidentiality, just as a priest would or a doctor would. It's just a requirement of the law. The system wouldn't work without it," Coventry explained.

Even if Coventry and Simon had been willing to betray their client, their testimony would not have been admissible in court. The attorney-client privilege belongs to the client, and even if the attorneys published a book their information could never be considered at trial. Coventry and Simon could probably have found some way to exonerate Logan, but they took their duty to their own client very seriously.

Were they right to? Is a system that requires these kinds of decisions really interested in "justice"? In the end, I think so. Commenter Malvolio at The Volokh Conspiracy has the most significant point in my opinion:

If you pay attention, you'll notice that attorney-client confidentiality didn't make the unfortunate Mr Logan any worse off. If no confidentiality existed, Wilson would simply not have confessed to his lawyers. Wilson would have gotten a worse defense, but Logan would not have gotten a better one.

If attorneys were allowed to break privilege (or did anyway) when the stakes were "high enough", then their clients simply wouldn't share their secrets. The clients would lose the benefits of expert legal advice, and the "victims" of the secrets would still suffer.

Additionally, in a world without attorney-client privilege it's non-lawyers who would suffer the most. Lawyers who go on trial would be able to represent themselves and hold all their secrets in their minds, but non-lawyers would be forced to rely on another person who could not be trusted to the degree one trusts oneself.

As difficult as the situation is to reconcile with simple morality, I believe it is true that the legal system as a whole is more fair and ethical than it would otherwise be precisely because some of its participants are allowed/required to behave in a way that would be considered immoral in another context.

A Missouri man was threatened with jail for not paying a red-light camera ticket, but when he got a lawyer the city of Arnold dropped the ticket.

The lawsuit by Fenton residents James and Kara Hoekstra alleges that the ticketing process is illegal and unconstitutional, collecting fines through fraud and extortion to benefit the city and its red-light camera contractor. It seeks unspecified damages from the city, several city officials, and the contractor, American Traffic Solutions Inc.

The couple received a ticket in the mail from Arnold on Aug. 15, accusing them of running a red light in a 2005 Jeep on July 29. It demanded a payment of $94.50. City records show it was one of 13,921 citations issued between October 2005 and Jan. 24, 2008.

The lawsuit said James Hoekstra was threatened with arrest when he refused to pay, but that the city dropped the ticket after he got a lawyer.

There's a possibility that the red-light cameras violate state law, and the allegation is that the city dropped the ticket so it wouldn't have to defend its cameras in court and risk losing the system entirely.

Former LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman is at it again, this time trying to frame The Juice for beating up on his girlfriend.

O.J. Simpson's girlfriend, Christie Prody, was hospitalized with head injuries this week and those injuries are consistent with assault, not a fall, the National Enquirer is reporting. They were the ones that first broke the news of the hospitalization.

Simpson contends that Prody was drunk and fell, causing her injuries, but cops aren't convinced and insiders are saying otherwise.

Christie may be facing brain surgery.

The cops "aren't convinced" because they're trying to set OJ up again! They'll never be happy as long as The Juice is loose.

(HT: The Wife.)

Everyone knows the Congressional "investigation" into steroid use in baseball is a ridiculous joke. However, I'm in favor of it! In fact, I think every Congressional committee should spend the rest of the year holding hearings, getting autographs, and investigating whether or not grown men are cheating at a ball game.

Why? Because Congress is largely incompetent. They're like an anti-King Midas: everything they touch turns to crap. Sure, there are hundreds of problems in our country with vastly more import than whether or not ball players cheat, but that's all the more reason to keep Congress distracted by celebrities and inanity. Every day they spend investigating baseball is a day they aren't raising taxes, writing earmarks, wasting money on social engineering, restricting our liberties, humiliating us in the eyes of our enemies, and undermining the War on Terror.

So I say, on with the hearings! This way, our prosecutors and judges can spend their valuable time pursuing important crimes.

Despite recent cries by at least one Missouri state legislator for a repeal of our state's liberal concealed-carry law, it's pretty obvious that concealed weapons would have saved lives at Kirkwood City Hall last week.

Thornton fired all six rounds from the revolver and an unspecified number of shots from the .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol he took after killing police Sgt. William Biggs near City Hall, Panus said. There were some shots still left in the police weapon.

Thorton killed the two police officers on the scene first, because he knew they had guns. They were carrying their guns in plain view, so he knew they were threats. If any of the other people present had been carrying a concealed weapon, Thorton likely could have been stopped long before he killed half-a-dozen more people.

St. Louis County police Officer Tracy Panus said Wednesday that it remained unclear whether Thornton owned the large-caliber revolver he took to the scene. "If it had been stolen, I bet we would have heard by now," she said.

There was no indication whether Thornton had a concealed-carry permit, which is not a public record in Missouri.

I'll bet you $100 that Thorton didn't have a CCW. CCW holders are 300 times less likely to commit crimes than people without permits. Not 300% less likely, 300 times less likely. That's 30,000%. Repealing the CCW law wouldn't have stopped Thorton, but it would guarantee that the would-be victims of such massacres will be unable to defend themselves.

Citizens, except for the council-members themselves, are prohibited from carrying concealed weapons in city government buildings by state law, and that regulation set the stage for this tragedy. The recent Tinley Park shootings could also have been stopped if one or more of the five murdered women had been carrying a concealed weapon. The only people stopped by gun restrictions are law-abiding citizens. The psychos manage to get weapons despite the laws. "Gun-free zones" seem to be some of the most dangerous places.

(HT: St. Louis CofCC Blog.)

Here's a lawsuit that could create a form of school vouchers through tax deductions if the plaintiffs are successful.

A Jewish couple's bid to take a tax deduction they say the IRS reserves only for members of the Church of Scientology is getting a friendly reception from a federal appeals court, increasing the possibility of a ruling that could create a tax break for taxpayers of many religions who pay tuition to religious schools.

During arguments on the case this week, three judges who ride the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals expressed deep skepticism of the IRS's position that the way the agency treats Scientologists is irrelevant to the deductions the Orthodox Jews, Michael and Marla Sklar, took for part of their children's day school tuition and for after-school classes in Jewish law.

"The view of the IRS is it can unconstitutionally violate the Constitution by establishing religion, by treating one religion more favorably than other religions in terms of what is allowed as deductions, and there can never be any judicial review of that?" Judge Kim Wardlaw asked at the court session Monday in Pasadena, Calif.

Basically the IRS has been allowing scientolgists to deduct the cost of their "education" from their taxes since at least 1994, but refusing to treat Christians, Jews, Muslims, or any other religion the same way. Apparently there's quite a history between the IRS and Scientology, and the IRS agreed to this special treatment in exchange for the Church of Scientology dropping thousands of lawsuits against the agency in 1993.

A policy of tax-deductible private school tuition would be superior to any form of distributivist school voucher scheme I've yet seen. Let's hope this case continues to play out favorably.

(HT: TaxProf Blog.)

It's sad that police detective Jarrod Shivers was killed during a drug raid, but the responsibility for his death lays with his police department and not with the man who shot him.

Portlock residents who saw a deadly police shooting unfold on their “quiet street” are finding it difficult to return to normalcy. The man accused of killing Detective Jarrod Shivers said he had no idea the man he shot was a police officer until it was too late. ...

Shivers, a 34-year-old father, was shot as was trying to enter at the house in the street’s 900 block around 8:30 p.m. He and several other officers were there with a search warrant as part of a drug investigation, police said. ...

Police arrested 28-year-old Ryan David Frederick, who lived at the home, and charged him with first-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. He is being held in the Chesapeake City Jail.

Frederick said in a jailhouse interview Friday he had no idea a police officer was on the other side of the door when he opened fire.

“No, sir,” he told WAVY-TV. “I just wish I knew who they were,” he said. “I didn’t want any trouble.”

Frederick said he was in bed when he heard someone trying to come into the home.

“I thought it was the person who had broken into my house the other day,” he said.

Frederick said his home had been burglarized two or three days earlier.

Frederick has no criminal record, and the police won't reveal any information about the investigation that led to this drug raid.

Police did not say whom they were investigating when they executed the search warrant. Other than a few misdemeanor traffic violations, Frederick has not been convicted of any felony crimes in Chesapeake, according to online court records.

Chesapeake police spokeswoman Christi Golden said she could not comment on specifics of the incident, including whether the officers who tried to serve the narcotics warrant were in uniform.

Sounds to me like the police screwed up and one of their officers is the victim. The tragedy will only get worse if Ryan David Frederick is prosecuted for this killing, apparently done in self-defense in his own home in the middle of the night.

(HT: The Agitator.)

In addition to the excitement of the election season, I'm also very keen to observe how Arizona's plan to punish the employers of illegal immigrants works out for the state. One of the great benefits of our federal system of government is that one state can try out a concept before the rest of us buy into it.

As you know, I'm a strong advocate for controlled and reduced immigration. A lot of people claim that it's impossible to stem the tide of illegal immigrants to our country without mass deportations, and that even if we could reduce the flow it would destroy our economy. Well, Arizona is poised to find out.

The law, passed days after a federal immigration overhaul died in the U.S. Senate in June, punishes first-time violators who knowingly hire undocumented workers with a 10-day suspension of their business licenses.

A second offense means they lose it.

The measure also requires employers to use an online federal database, dubbed "E-Verify," to check the employment eligibility of new hires in the border state, which is home to an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants.

Many employers like Bailey say they are pruning their workforce of illegal immigrants to avoid prosecution, or have outsourced some operations to neighboring states and even over the border to Mexico.

Other businesses have put a freeze on expansion in Arizona out of fear they will face prosecution should they inadvertently hire an illegal immigrant.

That's the main wrinkle in Arizona's plan: going off illegal immigrant labor cold-turkey might reduce the state's competitiveness in relation to other American states. National enforcement of immigration laws would ensure that all states are playing on an even field. This factor might distort the results of this experiment, but there's still a lot we will learn despite this headwind.

For example, not mentioned in the article is the enormous amount of money that Arizonans will save by not having to educate and care for illegal immigrants and their children. The theory is that though illegal immigrants do provide some benefits for an economy, they're a net drain and Arizona should reap benefits from their disappearance. If the theory is wrong, we should be able to see it in the Arizona data in a few years.

In either event, the most significant result of this experiment can already be seen: illegal immigrants are already leaving the state. If it turns out that Arizona needs their cheap labor to survive, then the solution isn't to re-enable illegal immigration, but to set up a tightly controlled framework for legal immigration and temporary workers. We might be willing to trust the federal government with this responsibility once it demonstrates to us that it's serious about ejecting the people who are already here illegally and opening our doors to aspiring immigrants in a fair and controllable manner.

Encouraging news that illegal immigrants are self-deporting as the climate in America becomes less welcoming.

In the past year, U.S. immigration police have stepped up workplace sweeps across the country and teamed up with a growing number of local forces to train officers to enforce immigration laws.

Meanwhile, a bill seeking to offer many of the 12 million illegal immigrants a path to legal status was tossed by the U.S. Congress, spurring many state and local authorities to pass their own measures targeting illegal immigrants.

The toughening environment has been coupled with a turndown in the U.S. economy, which has tipped the balance toward self deportation for many illegal immigrants left struggling to find work.

Except for the pointless jab at the economy, that's good news. (Got any evidence of a "downturn"? Construction jobs, often done by illegal immigrants, are down because of the housing slump, but the economy as a whole is doing quite well.) There's no need for mass deportations by government officials. If we fix the system, the illegal immigrants will return on their own. Hopefully the gang members and violent criminals among them will be the first to go. Then maybe we'll be able to build an enforcible and fair system to admit new immigrants who love our country and respect our laws.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is facing a budget crisis and is planning to release thousands of prisoners early to help save money -- and it sounds like the prisoners are mostly criminals who shouldn't (ideally) have been in jail in the first place.

In what may be the largest early release of inmates in U.S. history, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is proposing to open the prison gates next year for some 22,000 low-risk offenders.

According to details of a budget proposal made available to The Bee, the administration will ask the Legislature to authorize the release of certain non-serious, nonviolent, non-sex offenders who are in the final 20 months of their terms.

The proposal would cut the prison population by 22,159 inmates and save the cash-strapped state an estimated $256 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1 and more than $780 million through June 30, 2010. The proposal also calls for a reduction of more than 4,000 prison jobs, most of them involving correctional officers.

The only reason "non-serious, nonviolent, non-sex offenders" are in prison is because our society has for whatever reason forbidden almost every other form of punishment. In my opinion, non-violent criminals should generally not be imprisoned at all, but should instead be made to suffer "alternative" punishments like fines, public humiliation, community service, hard labor, and various forms of non-maiming physical punishment. It's hard for people to accept, but sometimes the human animal needs a good beating to learn a lesson.

In any event, since there aren't many alternative punishments available I expect this prisoner release program to lead to an uptick in crime and a reduced respect for law and order.

Also significant is the huge cut in jobs for correctional officers. Non-Californians may not be aware, but the correctional officer union is the most powerful public sector union in the state and donates massive amounts of money to the Democrats. This indicates to me that Schwarzenegger is trying to strike a political blow for his party while simultaneously saving the state money. Very devious/convenient.

I'm not a big Michael Savage fan, but I completely support his suit against the Council on American-Islamic Relations for stealing his material for fund-raising purposes. CAIR is the domestic political wing of our violent jihadist enemies -- they're not merely American Muslims, but Muslims in America with an anti-American agenda.

The lawsuit further accuses CAIR, "which is self anointed as the representative of the civil rights of Muslim Americans," of being "a political organization that advocates a specific political agenda."

"The CAIR misappropriation [of the talk show excerpts] was done for political purposes unrelated to civil rights … [but instead] to raise funds for CAIR so that it could self perpetuate and continue to the (sic) disseminate of propaganda on behalf of foreign interests that are opposed to the continued existence of the United States of America as a free nation."

The "repackaged" material suggests a hatred for Islam, but in fact, the lawsuit said, "Michael Savage has presented various views and various perspectives. The purpose of his show (among other purposes) is to present uncensored, genuine points of view that force listeners to both think and feel in ways that normal polite discourse may not allow," said the lawsuit.

"Just as all religions are free to practice in the United States, Michael Savage is free to exercise his beliefs without having someone in the opposition steal his property and convert it for their own use. The violation of the copyright and the desecration of that copyright material is a violation of the freedoms of Michael Savage to express his views," said the action.

I think Michael Savage and I are on the same side, the American side, even though I don't line up with all this thoughts. The courts are typically the forum the Left chooses when it can't enact its will democratically, but this sort of suit might be beneficial if it raises awareness of CAIR's nefarious activities.

Scroll down a little bit to section "[1]" of this page to read a letter from a couple of Harvard law professors telling the RIAA to "take a hike".

This Spring, 1,200 pre-litigation letters arrived unannounced at universities across the country. The RIAA promises more will follow. These letters tell the university which students the RIAA plans on suing, identifying the students only by their IP addresses, the "license plates" of Internet connections. Because the RIAA does not know the names behind the IP addresses, the letters ask the universities to deliver the notices to the proper students, rather than relying upon the ordinary legal mechanisms.

Universities should have no part in this extraordinary process. The RIAA's charter is to promote the financial interests of its corporate members – even if that means preserving an obsolete business model for its members. The university's charter is quite different. Harvard's charter reflects the purposes for which it was founded in 1636: "The advancement of all good literature, arts, and sciences; the advancement and education of youth in all manner of good literature, arts, and sciences; and all other necessary provisions that may conduce to the education of the ... youth of this country...."

The university strives to create knowledge, to open the minds of students to that knowledge, and to enable students to take best advantage of their educational opportunities. The university has no legal obligation to deliver the RIAA's messages. It should do so only if it believes that's consonant with the university's mission.

We believe it is not.

They rightly point out that the RIAA's business model has been outdated by technology and that legal bullying will only extend its lifespan for a limited time. I'm often hard on our "elite" universities, but good for Harvard.

(HT: Recording Industry vs. The People, p2pnet.net, and Instapundit.)

More interesting than whether or not you need a permit to land on the moon is the question of who would prosecute (or define) crimes committed on the moon? If a non-military member of a lunar expedition decides to steal another's watch, what legal recourse is there?

(HT: GeekPress.)

Ok, so you're on the new OJury and need to make a decision about his current case. Let's say that all the evidence suggests to you that OJ did everything that's alleged, but there's no proof beyond a reasonable doubt that there were guns present, and the items being "stolen" may have actually belonged to the Juice. You're also pretty confident that a different defendant in similar circumstances would have been prosecuted very differently, and in particular the kidnapping charges seem to you like overreaching.

So...

I just learned something that's completely logical but still incredibly funny. Here's the set-up: you buy a house for $200,000, but its value drops to $150,000 as the housing bubble bursts. Your variable interest rate mortgage payments continue to grow making your house unaffordable, so you default. The bank takes your house and writes off the $50,000 you still owe them. The punchline? The $50,000 that the bank writes off counts as taxable income for you! Have fun paying your top marginal rate on $50,000, Mr. Homeless!

(HT: Instapundit.)

One unfortunate side effect of our convoluted legal system is that even the police don't know how to follow the law. In summary:

Michael Righi was arrested in Ohio over the weekend after refusing to show his receipt when leaving Circuit City. When the manger and 'loss prevention' employee physically prevented the vehicle he was a passenger in from leaving the parking lot, he called the police, who arrived, searched his bag and found he hadn't stolen anything. The officer then asked for Michael's driver's license, which he declined to provide since he wasn't operating a motor vehicle. The officer then arrested him, and upon finding out Michael was legally right about not having to provide a license, went ahead and charged him with 'obstructing official business' anyways.

I always refuse to show my receipt when leaving a store. It's a matter of principle, and I salute Michael Righi for taking a stand.

(HT: Nick and Slashdot.)

From near my old hometown: a Torrence, CA, man gets sentenced to six months in jail for repairing a city-owned fence. Yes, California is completely insane.

He built a fence, a retaining wall, a patio and a few concrete columns to decorate his driveway, and now Francisco Linares is going to jail for it.

Linares had been given six months to get final permits for the offending structures or remove them as part of a plea agreement reached in January, when he pleaded no contest to five misdemeanor counts of violating the Rolling Hills Estates building code.

If he failed to do one or the other, Linares faced six months in county jail. ...

Richard Hamar, Linares' attorney, said he has never heard of anything like this.

"We're talking about fixing a fence that was on city property," he said. "He didn't build a Las Vegas casino. You put a guy in jail for six months because he repaired the city fence?"

The 51-year-old bought the nearly 1-acre property in the 4600 block of Palos Verdes Drive North in 1998. After tearing down an adobe house on the site and building a 3,000-square-foot French-style home, he began landscaping.

When Linares asked the city to repair the white three-railed fence behind his house, he was told it was on his property and his responsibility. So he replaced the termite-infested planks. Then the city reversed itself and said Linares had illegally built the fence on city property.

In October 2004, the city charged Linares with three misdemeanors: for not taking down the fence, having a retaining wall built higher than a 2-foot restriction and for erecting stone columns without a neighborhood compatibility analysis. Later inspections found eight other violations, including a lack of permits for plumbing and grading.

Having lived in Southern California and had occasion to deal with the various city bureaucracies, I can only imagine the headaches Mr. Linares went through trying to comply with the regulations.

At the sentencing, Hamar said his client was a good Christian man who has never committed a crime and who worked diligently - 142 hours - to try to resolve the issues with the city.

And the only reason he was not able to complete the stipulations of the plea agreement, he said, was because of the city's confusing building codes and negligence in rendering a decision on his permit applications.

Jailing this guy is a severe injustice, not to mention all the legal fees he's racking up. Repairing a fence has essentially ruined Mr. Linares' life, and no just society should tolerate such capricious and pointless prosecution.

I don't normally link to TMZ because it's often not safe for work, but they're reporting that Mexico may drop its extradition of Dog the Bounty Hunter because the statute of limitations has passed.

The group had been charged by a Mexican court with deprivation of liberty, after their 2003 capture of convicted serial rapist Andrew Luster in Puerto Vallarta. Chapman had traveled to Mexico to retrieve the Max Factor cosmetics heir, who was wanted in the U.S. on rape charges. Luster is now in jail, serving a 124-year term.

The Chapman crew was jailed for a brief time after the incident as bounty hunting is considered a crime in Mexico. While TMZ could not immediately confirm the ruling (because nosotros hablamos espanol only a little), Dog's attorney told us he "has received a favorable ruling from the people in Puerto Vallarta. The extent of that ruling is unknown as we are still in the process of translating it."

The Mexican prosecutors may appeal that ruling, but I pray they don't.

Ward Farnsworth writes about the difference between those who build and those who bicker.

The idea, to oversimplify only a little, is that there are two general ways to increase your wealth: by creating things people want, or by fighting over prizes that already exist — things other people have created or found. Either strategy might be more successful than the other, and perfectly rational to pursue; it depends on the circumstances. Which do you prefer as your own method of choice? Which do you spend more time doing? Why does it matter?

The difference between these methods of gaining wealth — between, say, competing to build a better restaurant and competing to get to the treasure first (rent seeking) — is that the first one creates wealth, or better-offness, for the world. Customers are made happy, and restaurants gradually get better. Fighting over who gets the treasure isn’t like that. The treasure doesn’t get bigger as a result. In a sense it gets smaller because wealth is eaten up in the effort to lay hold of it.

Think of this on a larger scale and you can see that the more a society spends on rent seeking — on quarrels over who gets what — the poorer it becomes. If that’s all that anyone did, everyone would starve in due course.

As Eric at Classical Values points out, this sort of fighting over treasure is why many people hate lawyers.

This reminded me of a life changing event. After spending years running a very popular but commercially unsuccessful nightclub, I was advised (by some attorneys who meant well) that the ideal career change for me would be to sue business owners for non-compliance with the ADA.

"Attorneys fees are there by statute!" I was told.

Great. Now that I was out of business, I could be born again as a despicable parasite and help ensure that other business owners would be put out of business. It struck me that if I became a homeless derelict, I'd be doing more for the world than if I helped ruin other people's businesses. (It didn't help much that one of the many reasons my business failed was that the building was cited by the fire marshall for inadequate handicapped access, and there was no way to remedy this without major alterations to the building, which I did not own, for patrons in wheelchairs who never came.)

However, it's important to note that competition among builders is not similarly wasteful. Yes, some businesses will fail, but when they do it's because their products were inferior to the others in the same niche The wealth of the losers is lost, but the wealth of the winners is multiplied and society benefits. This phenomenon is known as "creative destruction" in capitalist economies.

What is to be avoided is competition over existing treasure; it is much more efficient for competitors to work together, as cheaply as possible, and distribute the treasure amongst them.

(HT: Instapundit.)

Two parents played video games while their children starved and some people are worried about "addiction" to video games.

RENO, Nev. - A couple authorities say were so obsessed with the Internet and video games that they left their babies starving and suffering other health problems have pleaded guilty to child neglect.

The children of Michael and Iana Straw, a boy age 22 months and a girl age 11 months, were severely malnourished and near death last month when doctors saw them after social workers took them to a hospital, authorities said. Both children are doing well and gaining weight in foster care, prosecutor Kelli Ann Viloria told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Michael Straw, 25, and Iana Straw, 23, pleaded guilty Friday to two counts each of child neglect. Each faces a maximum 12-year prison sentence.

They'll spend 1-2 years in prison, after which they'll get the kids back, just watch. Even more outrageous:

“They had food; they just chose not to give it to their kids because they were too busy playing video games,” Viloria told the Reno Gazette-Journal. ...

Michael Straw is an unemployed cashier, and his wife worked for a temporary staffing agency doing warehouse work, according to court records. He received a $50,000 inheritance that he spent on computer equipment and a large plasma television, authorities said.

What's wrong with just just calling this neglect the evil it is and dismissing these people from civilized society? But no, there must be a way to cast the abusers as victims themselves.

Patrick Killen, spokesman for Nevada Child Abuse Prevention, said video game addiction’s correlation to child abuse is “a new spin on an old problem.”

“As we become more technologically advanced, there’s more distractions,” Killen said. “It’s easy for someone to get addicted to something and neglect their children. Whether it’s video games or meth, it’s a serious issue, and (we) need to become more aware of it.”

If "addiction" means "I'd rather do something fun than take care of my responsibilities" then hey, we're all addicts! The term becomes meaningless when it can be used to describe anything and everything under the sun.