Poisoning the Food and Water

Who needs all this pesky environmentalism stuff, anyway? We're not even talking global warming climate change anymore. We're talking about all the poison within 100 miles of home.



And for the poison just outside that circle, there's still oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. But don't worry, BP assures us it has nothing to do with them.



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ENOUGH

Volunteers in London take a stand against the rioters. As it always has been, and God willing, will forever be.

"As I watched those white fires flame up and die down, watched the yellow blazes grow up and disappear, I thought, what a puny effort is this, to burn a great city."



- Edward R. Murrow, October 10, 1940

We are reminded, at times like these, not to confuse thuggery like this with civil disobedience. We should also remember that riots or looting has not been a problem in other places often accused of being riot and looting-prone.



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Religion of Peace

Anybody care to take a guess at what religion the perpetrators of this crime identify with?



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Guilty

The list of charges.

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Convicting the Victim

(HT: Alli)

At least there was enough intelligence from the bench to allow a retrial in this case: a mother convicted of vehicular homicide because someone else ran down and killed her 4 year old with their car.

People looking at this case will say "but, Pat, she was jaywalking with her 4 year old." I guess that's the conclusion you'd reach if you only read the AJC, the Wall Street Journal, or watched CNN. There's more to this story, and yes, city planning is just as culpable if not moreso.

This is what people are talking about when they say roads are not safe for pedestrians.

She was jaywalking. Correct. And, Lord knows, I ain't no fan of jaywalking moms with kids on busy roads. But I "jaywalked" every time I went to a friend's house growing up on St. Simons Island, because their house was on the other side of the road from the bike path. I grew up in a small town, but people still got hit crossing Frederica Road, to be sure. Two lanes are easier to cross than 5, after all, but when resurfacing came through Island City, they installed a half dozen new pedestrian crossings. Why would they do that? Why would a place like Glynn County consider pedestrian crossings important enough to spend money on them?

The answer is simple: St. Simons prioritizes pedestrian and bicycle safety as part of its design as a tourist destination. Cobb County prioritizes cars to move people quickly from one exurb to the next. Such decisions have real world, sometimes life-and-death consequences.

She was jaywalking because she was traveling by foot in a car dominated area.

That's because her bus stop lets her out on the other side of Austell Road from her apartment complex, where the closest crosswalk is 3/10ths of a mile away. That's more than half a mile round trip, on foot, with three kids carrying full shopping bags, at night, after already waiting an hour for the bus. Not everybody owns a car. Not everybody can park that car in a garage or a driveway and watch the kids pile out into the house.

Half a mile in the dark with kids next to a busy highway or cross five lanes (75 feet?) of highway? What's your choice, tired mother of three? There aren't any good ones available.

And that's before you add in the driver, allegedly inebriated because in a car-centric world, the bars are located in "commercially zoned" areas and linked to "residential areas" by roads with no pedestrian or bicycle infrastructure.

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Death Penalty Incentives

Another death penalty case where a conviction was overturned because the prosecutors weren't forthcoming with the defense. And rightly so.

But that prosecutor doesn't need to worry. It isn't like the guy who erroneously spent 10 years on death row can sue for his lost time.

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Admitting Failure

If you asked New Orleans homeowners to agree to a $200 - $250 a year increase in their property taxes, and put it to a referendum, it would likely fail. Charge the same homeowners that money to pay for a "security district" of NOPD officers, and they pony up.

I'm not worried about the arrest and incident quotas brought up in the article, no matter how problematic they may be.

What concerns me is the idea that certain areas feel the need to pay extra because they accept that normal police coverage isn't enough in this city. To me, that sets a dangerous precedent. My problem is with the entire concept, and I don't care if this is how they do it wherever else.

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Caylee's Law?

Get ready for the cable-news-personality-driven push to enact "Caylee's Law" all over the country. They're entertaining one in the State of Georgia, and the usually diverse commentary at Peach Pundit presented a nearly united front against.

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Know Your Rights

I make a habit out of watching the show COPS, and counting all the things that are done wrong by (sometimes) the police and (most of the time) by the suspects. I really have always found it amazing how many people will let the police search their car during a traffic stop because they asked to.

Darnell Dockett of the Arizona Cardinals, however, refuses to be played in such a way. (HT: EDSBS)

I remember the first time I refused a search during a traffic stop, even the officer was like "Really? Wow. Well, you're within your rights to refuse."

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Systems Failure

Patrick Appel at the Daily Dish ponders how little protections are afforded at-risk populations.

Looking at the story as is, this seems like a case of many patholgies that are crushing our society these days under weight of our own making.

The race and economic status of the guy thrown in jail. The bank incompetently refusing to honor its own check, and its inability to verify that check's accuracy in house. The inability of a criminal justice system to work swiftly while the parking police can sweep down and impound a car in a matter of hours. The litigation for the damage this has done to one man's life is dragging along. For want of a nail...


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Real Crime-Fighting

NOPD finally comes up with an effective crime-fighting initiative. Bait bikes for opportunistic thieves to steal.

Every district should dedicate at least one team to do something like this every day for the next year, at least. While some folks will poo-poo the idea that going after bike thieves will cut down on other crimes, you have to remember that bike theft is a huge problem in this city in its own right. High profile initiatives to leave bikes unlocked and then arrest the thieves may make a few scoundrels think twice about a crime of opportunity, and that's a good thing.

Just wait until they figure out they could follow the thief for less than an hour and probably come across additional criminal activity.

And hopefully, this will work so well that NOPD will figure out how to use undercover officers as "mugger bait" in areas experiencing upticks in robberies. It is easier to catch a thief when you've got them on camera in front of officers specifically on the lookout.

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Criminal Justice 101

Essential reading from Radley Balko at Huffington Post:

Criminal Justice Myths 1
Criminal Justice Myths 2
Criminal Justice Myths 3

I would say that these items need to be read by every individual in the American criminal justice system, but I know they won't be. Further, I understand that many individuals in the criminal justice system will find ways to rationalize each and every one of these examples.

So, instead of that, these items need to be read by every American likely voter. And every American likely to spend any time on a jury, anywhere.

Though the traditional criminal justice system response to juries behaving such ways would likely lead to the end of the American trial-by-jury system, and authoritarian advocates would define such behavior as "turning criminals loose" as opposed to seeing the widespread lack of confidence in the system we have.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance," - Thomas Jefferson, and he was talking about more than just paying attention to possible terrorists and criminals in the area around you. It is time civil libertarians started going to Police Academy en masse instead of law school.

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Excellent Police Work

At least this Police Officer was polite when he arrested a woman in her own front yard for videotaping a traffic stop.

I do not believe that this is what we maintain a police force for in this country.

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Professionalism

Or not. I'll leave this here without further comment.

Because, really, what can I say?

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Heckuva Job Moment

This massive Federal blunder belongs to the higher-ups at the ATF and the Department of Justice. Folks have stuck the Obama administration with a lot of BS over the years, but they're going to have to own this one, hard.

I know they were trying to do something bigger, but you have to pull the plug before it gets out of control on this level. This is stunning in scope and breadth of failure, on a scale with Michael Brown's leadership of FEMA in August and September of 2005.

And now that Weiner is out of the news, I expect we'll hear about this in a big way.

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An Interesting Concept

Georgia governor Nathan Deal is trying to address two problems facing his state.

Georgia's new illegal immigration law goes after employers who hire illegally. While this is one of the only steps available to curb the number of illegals in the state, this means there are employers who previously leaned heavily on the illegal labor pool who are now searching for laborers.

And while you'd think in this economy, people would be willing to find a paycheck wherever they could, agriculture is apparently facing a labor shortage.

So the governor wants to hook employers up with Georgia's significant number of probationers. While this appears a "back to the fields" solution at first glance, there are some things that need to be considered:

Once you have a conviction on your record, it is more difficult to get a job. If you already come from an at-risk population (undereducated, rural, born in poverty, minority), the level of difficulty increases exceptionally. And without some form of gainful employment, the liklihood of recidivism increases.

Then there is the fear that employers will have incredible power over probationer employees in a right to work state. This is definitely a valid criticism of the idea. However, laborers who are on probation would have a more equitable relationship than either incarcerated laborers or illegal immigrants (relationships with such power inequalities that encourage the historical abuse we have witnessed, especially in the South).

Finally, look at the demographics and socio-economic status of Georgia's probation population. What percentage of that population directly overlaps the population most likely to participate in agricultural fields previously staffed by illegal labor? That's a Freakonomics style question, to be sure.

While this won't be a magic solution to all of Georgia's problems, it might actually turn out to have some positive, reality-accepting results in regards to at least two big issues - illegal immigration and criminal justice costs.

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Losing the Drug War

I don't agree with a lot of what Bob Barr says, but the man is an honest civil libertarian and has not wavered much from that stance. I'm glad one of the things he talks about negative impact of the Drug War on America, and America's need to lead the world out of this mess.

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The Police State

Another reason people have trouble trusting the police.

More than anything else going on in our society right now, unaccounted police misbehavior and the associated lack of public trust in the justice system is what I find the most ominous.

(HT: Andrew Sullivan and Balko.)

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Getting Rid of Red-Light Cameras

And using the law to do it.

Option 1: Legally require municipalities to increase the amount of time a light spends on yellow. Cameras then become more of a drain on city budgets as their costs outpace their revenue generation.

Option 2: A judge in Florida just ruled that red light tickets violate the Equal Protection Clause because they allow two distinct punishments for the same crime. I can only believe this is the case here in Louisiana.

Though that one may backfire, as this state might make the cameras deliver the more punishing offense of getting points on your license.

Option 3: Have the state legislature ban the devices.

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Body Counts in the Drug War

DADvocate makes note of the police killing of Jose Guerena in Pima County, Arizona.

The war on drugs has become a war on the freedom in America. Too many police departments have taken on the cowboy/Dirty Harry mentality and are terrorizing the populace.

At least in Arizona, the police are still using the drug war as an excuse to terrorize the population. Some police departments have a bar far, far lower. Once you accept that the police can violate your rights for one reason or another, you'll have to defend everywhere else.

For those keeping score at home, Guerena was a United States Marine, a veteran of the Iraq War, and members of his family had recently been killed in a home invasion. So the SWAT team comes pouring into his yard in military garb, as part of a marijuana investigation. In the confusion, he takes up a weapon - who wouldn't, with armed men invading your home - and is killed in a hail of 77 bullets.

The police initially claimed that he had shot at them, and that illegal drugs were found on the property. This would justify their actions. Of course they feared for their life, as Guerena feared for his. Why do we put our police and citizens in such situations?

Of course, it is now coming to light that this might be a CYA story, that Guerena never got the safety off the weapon, and nothing illegal was found in the house. Nothing really connected him to the marijuana investigation at all other than the word of a secret, confidential informant. An informant that provided information into a home where nothing illegal was found. Why am I not surprised?

When I grew up, I remember hearing stories about despotic governments, where the thought police would keep track of people, and report on them to the government. In such places (thought to be the Third World, the Asian Tyrannies, and the Eastern Bloc) secret informants could destroy your life with a few words. The informed-upon would be "disappeared" to a camp or a mass grave, leaving the family only wondering.

The drug war has already been like that for a long, long time.

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