The Present in Plain Text

It's a Good Thing Tasers Aren't Lethal

Otherwise I'd have to add CBS to that nefarious list of those who are undermining the security of Amerika by reporting the contrary.  From the LRC blog:

CBS' "Early Show" reported this morning that more than 11,000 police departments are now equipped with tasers, compared to only 700 six years ago. They're probably funded from the "Homeland Security" pork barrel. The show interviewed a young woman who got drunk at a wedding and ended up with 32 taser burns in her pants. The video showed a cop kicking her while she was already on the ground. She tries to stand up and he tasers/electrocutes her again, causing her to fall and hit her head on the side of her car.

Our local serve-and-protect tax collector/bureaucrats have killed 200 of us by taser electrocution in the past five years according to CBS. [emphasis mine]

Thanks to Tom DiLorenzo for blogging this heretical statistic this morning.  He can now safely have his place on the Gov't list for eventual re-education revalidated.

"....you have nowhere to go." -- Robot Cop from THX-1138

Ta,

Let Me Guess, the Snake's Still Alive

This story just sucks all around. A 5-year-old boy in Oklahoma was killed Friday night when a police officer's bullet hit him in the head as the officer was trying to shoot a snake in a tree.

Austin Haley was fishing with his grandfather, Jack Tracy, Friday evening when Tracy said he heard a shot and saw a bullet hit the water just a few feet in front of the boat dock where he was standing.

Moments later, a second shot was fired that hit Austin in the head.

There aren't a lot of details yet, but I do have some questions:

Was the snake immediately threatening anyone? If not, why was a police officer shooting at it? This is no PETA-type complaint, but if there was no immediate danger, couldn't the cops have contacted animal control or someone else who could have captured the snake?

Even if there was no time to call for additional assistance, why did the cop decide that shooting at a snake in a residential neighborhood was a good idea? Assuming it's illegal for citizens to discharge a firearm within residential limits, why is it OK for a police officer to do it? And even if the community is sparsely populated, with a good deal of open space between houses, wouldn't that just suggest that the snake wasn't posing enough immediate danger to anyone to prevent the officers from doing something other than opening fire?

Perhaps the most important question is, what would happen to you or me if we shot at a snake in a tree, missed, and mistakenly killed a 5-year-old boy? Would the government just chalk it up to an unfortunate accident resulting from a justified act, as it's almost certain to do in this case, and refrain from pressing charges?

I'm not suggesting that the officer responsible for shooting Austin won't be ruined for life knowing he killed an innocent little boy, or that he even deserves to be charged with a crime. I don't know enough about the incident yet to make any determinations. What I do want to know, however, is that he will be treated no differently than you or I would in this situation, whether or not he was actually negligent. Unfortunately, though, it's not too likely that will be the case, especially if he was.

Above the Law

Most people realize that government agents are above the laws they enforce on the rest us. If you don't believe that, you're probably a police officer.

On Thursday, my wife and I drove to Towson, Md., for an ultrasound appointment and I lost count of how many unmarked police cars flew past me on the beltway (sans lights and sirens), traveling well over 15 mph above the speed limit. Of course, I also saw a handful of motorists pulled over on the side of the road, likely for doing the very same thing.

Well, courtesy of Radley Balko, sometimes it's nice to see a cop get what's coming to him.

I should point out for the record that I’m not necessarily "anti-cop," at least in any absolute sense. I do, however, oppose any cop who tickets or arrests others for doing something he knows he can get away with himself, be it speeding, carrying a legal firearm, drinking and driving, what have you. Agents of the State can abuse their power and authority; private security contractors, on the other hand, must be accountable to their employers and genuinely concerned about actually protecting and serving them if they want to remain employed.

I left my post as a public school teacher after three and a half years primarily because I woke up and realized it's vastly immoral for the government to compel people to pay for the education of kids that aren't theirs and for services they may not even want or use, or to tax our property so heavily that many people essentially have no choice but to send their own kids to schools owned and operated by the State. I basically figured that if I wasn't part of the solution, I was part of the problem. Therefore, same goes for police officers who believe it's appropriate to enforce the many immoral restrictions the government imposes on the rest of us.

'Nifonged' in Oregon?

My latest article runs today in the Washington Examiner and discusses the impropriety of D.A. Bradley Berry for prosecuting two 13-year-old boys for doing little more than acting like kids.

Are We Criminalizing Childhood?

Two Oregon boys are scheduled to go on trial Aug. 20 to face charges of sexual abuse for slapping the butts of female classmates.

The two boys tore down the hall of Patton Middle School after lunch, swatting the bottoms of girls as they ran -- what some kids later said was a common form of greeting.

But bottom-slapping is against policy in McMinnville Public Schools. So a teacher's aide sent the gawky seventh-graders to the office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school soon interrogated them.

After hours of interviews with students the day of the February incident, the officer read the boys their Miranda rights and hauled them off in handcuffs to juvenile jail, where they spent the next five days.

Now, Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, face the prospect of 10 years in juvenile detention and a lifetime on the sex offender registry in a case that poses a fundamental question: When is horseplay a crime?

Bradley Berry, the McMinnville district attorney, said his office "aggressively" pursues sex crimes that involve children. "These cases are devastating to children," he said. "They are life-altering cases."

Mashburn's and Cornelison's behavior admittedly was inappropriate, but the McMinnville D.A. is charging them as if they'd dragged girls into a bathroom stall and felt them up or asked them to perform sexual favors. In short, intent matters, and from what I've read so far there's virtually nothing to suggest these boys engaged in anything other than childish antics (it should also be noted that some girls apparently were in on these stunts, as well).

If anyone deserves to be on trial here, it's Bradley Berry, who initially charged Mashburn and Cornelison with felony sexual abuse (as if the boys had actually raped the girls). The boys' defense attorneys have rightly filed prosecutorial misconduct charges with the court, alleging that Berry unfairly selected Mashburn and Cornelison for prosecution and added charges when the boys refused to plea bargain.

When Berry states that his office "aggressively" pursues sex crimes that involve children, one has to believe he's referring to laws that were written primarily to protect children from predatory adults, not from other children. This certainly isn't to say these laws can't apply to children who commit crimes against their peers in proportion to those committed by adults, but one would be hard pressed to argue this is the case here. And one would think a district attorney, of all people, should know the difference.

Militarizing America

How can I not link to this testimony by Radley Balko to the House Subcommittee on Crime? It's an outstanding speech that addresses one of America's growing problems -- the increasing paramilitarization of police forces and misuse of SWAT teams to serve routine warrants for otherwise non-violent transgressions the government deems unacceptable (for gambling, drugs, and the like).

Here's only part of the chilling testimony:

I’d estimate I find news reports of mistaken raids on Americans homes about once a week. If you’re wondering, yes, there was one just this week. This past Saturday, in Durango, Colorado, police raided the home of 77-year-old Virginia Herrick. Ms. Herrick, who takes oxygen, was forced to the ground and handcuffed at gunpoint while officers ravaged through her home.

They had the wrong address. In just the last month, there have been mistaken raids in New York City; Annapolis, Maryland; Hendersonville, North Carolina; Bonner County, Idaho; and Stockton, California.

In each case, innocent American citizens had the sanctity of their homes invaded by agents of the government behaving more like soldiers at war than peace officers upholding and protecting our constitutional rights.

For those who aren't familiar with Radley Balko, I'll put it this way: you need to be. Former Cato analyst and proprietor of the outstanding The Agitator blog, Balko is currently a senior editor at Reason magazine. He wrote one of the best position papers in Overkill that I've ever read, and you and I can both be thankful that it's been noticed and referenced by many jurists and politicians who are concerned about the erosion of civil liberties and freedoms at the hands of the states and the federal government.

Many people in this country -- myself included -- have fallen victim to the notion that some restrictions on liberty are of little concern if they don't immediately affect us or cause us too much inconvenience. Too many people are convinced that if you're not a criminal, you have nothing to worry about. These are extremely dangerous misconceptions.

I knew I wasn't a criminal in the summer of 2004 when out of the blue I received a criminal summons from the state of Maryland, accusing me of driving off from a gas station without paying for gas. This is a story for another day, but suffice it to say, I didn't need to be a criminal for the police to neglect to investigate this allegation fully, or to stop one of them from lying in his police report about trying to contact me before going ahead with the charge.

If I didn't have a personal friend who happened to be a lawyer, this entire fiasco would have cost me much, much more to resolve than a mere bottle of Grey Goose vodka and a dinner at Outback. As it stood, I paid the monetary and mental costs associated with this ordeal while the state paid absolutely nothing, even though it frivolously accused an innocent person of a crime it didn't even bother to investigate in any meaningful capacity.

Afghanistan war veteran James Emerick Dean wasn't a criminal, either, when the Maryland State Police and several county police forces decided to antagonize him to the point where they could justify killing him after Dean had barricaded himself alone in a house to contemplate suicide upon receiving deployment orders to Iraq.

These are but two examples of abusive government overreach that could impact just about anyone, and Radley Balko is one journalist who deserves a debt of our gratitude for fighting the good fight -- even from those of us who may not realize that the more freedoms we surrender to the government, the more likely we will all eventually fall victim to its immense powers and abuses of authority.

Sharpton Only Now Realizing Our "Justice System" Is Unjust?

At the time of this writing (3:32), Drudge is reporting that Al Sharpton is livid over Paris Hilton's early release from jail for "medical issues."

"Though I have nothing but empathy for Ms. Hilton whom I have met and appeared with on Saturday Night Live the night I hosted in 2003, this early release gives all of the appearances of economic and racial favoritism that is constantly cited by poor people and people of color. There are any number of cases of people who handle being incarcerated badly and even have health conditions that are not released.

I have served several sentences for civil rights and civil disobedience actions and I even fasted which caused health concerns to prison authorities who paid for a doctor to come see me daily rather than release me. ..."

Sharpton obviously has a point -- I'm sure not going to argue that economic and racial factors don't tend to play a part in the administration of so-called justice in this country. However, I'll still bet most discriminatory practices exist between those who are agents of the State and those who aren't.

You'll note that most cops and government attorneys usually get away with speeding and drinking and driving while they persecute the rest of us for doing the same thing.

But back to Al. Would it still be racial favoritism if a rich black celebrity was released early from prison? Or would that just count as economic favoritism then? Or would rich black celebrities just not be released early? So many questions...

Ironically enough, Hilton's early release is the most just development in this entire fiasco so far, given that she shouldn't have even gone to jail in the first place.

PPT at LRC Again

James Emrick Dean: Executed by the Police State

Congratz go to our Trevor Bothwell for his great article at LRC this morning detailing the slaughter of a depressed and suicidal Afghan vet by the Maryland State Police.  Stories like this one make me physically ill while reading them and I'd like to thank Trevor for having the intestinal fortitude to work through the details with diligence and dispassion.  I know I couldn't do it. 

On the heels of my screed against the Florida Highway Patrol coming in #8 on the LRC's Top 10 list for most viewed stories of last week, let's hope the good readers at LRC see the same value in the story of Jamie Dean.

Ta,

Eight Years Too Late

After eight years of imprisonment for helping terminally ill, suffering patients end their own lives peacefully and on their own terms, Dr. Jack Kevorkian is finally a free man.

Welcome back, Jack. We need you on the outside fighting the good fight, helping to convince the holier-than-thou that the most precious property right we all possess is the right to own our bodies.

LRC: The Trouble With Speed Limits

This morning's edition of Lewrockwell.com features an article by yours truly on my frustration with and hatred of speed limits and the highwaymen who enforce them... intermittently.

It's long and painful and not my best work but was something that definitely needed to get off my chest.  The incident in recounted there literally had me on the verge of hysteria by the side of the road as I could see myself without any recourse to taking care of the beaurucratic nonsense without massive intervention by either my wife or one of my co-workers. 

I think all of that pleading did get the cops who dealt with me to allow my vehicle to be towed to my choice of destination and not to the impound yard.  At least they had that amount of humanity left in their hearts.  The tow from Ft. Pierce to my apartment in Palm City was over $140 dollars.  $207.50 for the speeding ticket, $76 for the expired license, $35 dollars for traffic school and $15 dollars for the license renewal.  All for sitting around and getting fat and diabetic.

BTW, I literally walked in my apartment, sat down in front of my computer and renewed by license less than 60 seconds after I unlocked the door.  One of the e-mails I've received today couldn't have sympathy for my expired license... whatever.  The response by the State of Florida is wholly inappropriate to the level of infraction.  By that same logic, they should pull over everyone with a headlight out b/c they are, as well, knowingly allowing that driver to commit a crime, the justification for taking my keys and having my car towed.

People call us libertarians kooky over things like road privitization but if those same people would just stop and think of the mechanisms unleashed by the system currently in place and the potential for abuse it represents it seems to me kooky not to want to dismantle it.

Ta,