The Philadelphia Daily News interviews nine men the city’s police department has arrested for carrying guns, even though all nine were carrying legally.

Eight of the men said that they were detained by police – two for 18 hours each. Two were hospitalized for diabetic issues while in custody, one of whom was handcuffed to a bed. Charges were filed against three of the men, only to be withdrawn by the District Attorney’s Office.

The civil-rights unit of the City Solicitor’s Office confirmed that it is handling eight such cases. Two of the men interviewed by the Daily News said that they rejected settlement offers from the city ranging from $3,500 to $7,500. One accepted a $5,000 offer.

Most of the cases hinge on what local authorities call the “Florida loophole,” under which a Pennsylvania resident can obtain a nonresident permit to carry a concealed weapon through the mail from another state, even without a permit in Pennsylvania.

The “loophole” is unpopular with Philadelphia cops, who say that it allows those denied a permit here or whose permits were revoked to circumvent Philadelphia authorities and obtain it elsewhere.

But proponents say that it’s necessary because Philadelphia has unusually strict criteria for obtaining a concealed-carry permit. Philadelphia, according to police and gun owners, relies heavily on a clause that allows denial of a permit based on “character and reputation” alone.

Agree or disagree with the law, it is the law, which the police are sworn to uphold. Some police officers in Philadelphia apparently feel they can simply ignore it. The department brass doesn’t seem particularly concerned.

Despite following the law, all of the men said that they were treated like criminals by city cops who either ignored their rights or didn’t know the laws.

Lt. Fran Healy, special adviser to the police commissioner, acknowledged that some city cops apparently are unfamiliar with some concealed-carry permits. But he said that it’s better for cops to “err on the side of caution.”

“Officers’ safety comes first, and not infringing on people’s rights comes second,” Healy said.

It doesn’t get more succint than that.

I hadn’t heard about this show:

In Martin Scorsese’s new HBO series Boardwalk Empire, Steve Buscemi plays the de facto political boss of Atlantic City during the dawn of Prohibition. He’s involved in everything: glad-handing, gaming, bootlegging, and the violence and women that come along with those things. Like almost every role Buscemi has ever played, his character is neither likable nor despicable. Like all his memorable characters, Buscemi plays the miserable hero. A guy so desperate, so uncomfortable, so disappointed in virtually everyone else around him that you can’t help but root for him — no matter how many people he orders killed, no matter how badly he treats his mistress.

Sounds fantastic. More here, including a promising-sounding new Will Arnett/Mitch Hurwitz joint.

Clip from Boardwalk Empire:

More here.

• Man falls, wife calls paramedics, man ends up tased three times.
• Fascinating article about an experiment in which Charles Darwin created a new ecosystem on a remote island.
• This little girl has an incredible voice. Caught her performance last night. It was even better.
• Man whittling in public confronted by police. Ends up dead.
• John McWhorter: Ending the drug war will do more to help black Americans than marching.
• The good news is that an online gambling legalization bill is slowly gaining momentum. The bad news comes in reading about how it’s happening, when you see just how ugly Washington sausage making really is.

My column this week was about the continuing secrecy of Virginia’s largest police departments and the way the state’s law enforcement community is opposing efforts to make the departments even marginally more transparent. The journalist sounding the alarm about all of this is Michael Pope, who writes for Northern Virginia’s Connection Newspapers, and contributes to D.C. NPR affiliate WAMU.

But Pope’s series of articles inspired this strange reaction from the editor of the Sun Gazette, another Northern Virginia regional paper (motto: “Reaching the most affluent audience in the Washington D.C. metro area”).

Stop Tilting at Windmills, Connectionerinos

The Connection newspaper chain, which is hanging in there by seemingly defying the laws of economics, has a new cause to champion.

The paper’s Arlington edition, and presumably others, ran a story this week about the ability of Virginia’s public-safety agencies to shield information from the view of the public and the press.

I think this whole folderol dates back to last year’s arrest of the Alexandria police chief on a DWI charge in Arlington. Let’s just say Arlington police weren’t as forthcoming as they might have been, going so far as to charge news outlets for costs related to providing some of the meager information they released.

The back story to this appears to be that the reporter involved with this story used to work in Florida (as did I!), where open-records laws are great for the press. Just about everything is open to public review down there.

But the article goes a bit too far with a sub-headline that says “Secret Police?” as if Northern Virginia was akin to East Germany, and terms what public-safety agencies do a “code of silence.”

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Nobody cares except some freedom-of-the-press types. Hey, I’m a freedom-of-the-press type, and even I don’t care all that much.

Actually, the “whole folderol” took off when Fairfax County police shot and killed an unarmed man during a traffic stop last year, and have since refused to release the police reports, dash cam footage, or even the officer’s name.

But, you know, dead citizen, cops not talking . . . blah blah blah blah. Better to devote precious newsroom resources to the important stuff, like the local mini-golf tournament, or how the local police department won an award for ticketing people who don’t wear their seatbelts.

My crime column this week is a follow-up on Northern Virginia’s extremely secretive police agencies. There’s a law in the state legislature that would require them to be marginally more forthcoming. Naturally, law enforcement officials across the state are fighting to defeat it.

• I don’t know about you, but the name “Wikileakileaks” makes me have to pee.
• Focus on the Family is concerned that anti-bullying efforts in public schools may prevent straight kids from calling gay kids faggots.
• Nerd jokes.
• Heavy drinkers outlive nondrinkers. Moderate drinkers live longest of all. Which means alcohol excise taxes may be killing you!
• Department of Transportation fines non-profit air ambulance service $30,000 for using the wrong pronoun.
• An armful of badgers.

From Paul Bloom’s terrific new book How Pleasure Works:

While people sometimes describe sex as their most pleasurable act, time-management studies find that the average American adult devotes just four minutes per day to sex—almost exactly the same time spent filling out tax forms for the government.

It’s that time. We have a few slots open in this year’s league.

Entry fee is $75, and we’ll be doing an online draft Wednesday night at 8:30pm ET.

Send me an email if you’ld like to play.

• Frank Rich links to a Reason post as an example of the sort of global warming denalism sponsored by the Koch family. Problem is, Reason’s science correspndent, Ron Bailey, isn’t a global warming denialist, and in fact candidly admitted he had been wrong about the issue a few years ago, something few opinion writers do on such a high-profile issue. I might add as an addendum to all this silliness about the Koch conspiracy (and yes, I’ve been just as critical of the right’s obsession with George Soros) that with its support of both Cato and Reason, the Koch family has been funding my right-wing, corporatist work on police misconduct and the criminal justice system for the last 5-6 years.
• Where oh where can I get a poster-sized version of this?
• Ron Paul: Where is the Tea Party’s limited government rhetoric on foreign policy?
• Pot growers get protectionist: “Nobody wants to see the McDonald’s-ization of cannabis.” Nobody?
• Woman says TSA employees rifled through her belongings, inquired about her finances, accused her of embezzlement.
• Politicians unhappy that media is increasingly calling them on their bullshit.
• Not sure where hipster jokes go from here.

So as I mentioned previously, I’m going to start a Nashville blog soon. The idea is to be sort of a “journalist explores the city” theme, with photos, interviews, interesting stories, etc. And of course lots of music.

Below are three photos I took around town that I’m thinking of as the blog’s header. I thought I’d see which one Agitator readers prefer.

Incidentally, the font is called “Nashville,” and is inspired by the legendary Hatch Show Print company. You can download it for free here.

1.

2.

3.

• Those airport scanners that can see you naked are also being sold to police departments. And they’re mobile.
• Salisbury, North Carolina citizens protest judge’s decision to convict woman who watched a traffic stop from her porch for “resisting arrest.” Good on them.
• Paul Allen: I actually invented everything you like about the Internet.
• NYPD cop says fellow NYPD cops beat him after his wife called 911.
• Remember those protests against the planned mosque on the hallowed ground of Murfreesboro, Tennessee? Someone set fire to the construction site.
• Journalist gives prepaid credit cards to panhandlers, documents the results.
• While visiting D.C., Scott Greenfield chatted up a man who attended the Glen Beck rally.

• You know, I’m kind of digging Vietnam’s pillars of foreign policy.
• Raytheon invents a device that makes torturing prisoners easy as playing a video game.
• Weird as this sounds, the theory behind it actually makes a lot of sense.
• A restaurant critic tries Nutraloaf.
• Sizing up the number one quadrillion.
• After police shoot and kill unarmed man, Las Vegas plans to make drug raids safer by . . . using more SWAT teams.
• This is one of the oddest lawsuits I’ve seen in a while. If the accusations in the complaint are true, I hope the guy ends up owning the hospital. And I don’t mean in the Interwebs sense of the word. I mean I hope the hospital has a big sign out front with his name on it.

“Fake Empire,” by The National.

Salisbury, North Carolina:

The resisting-arrest conviction last week of Felicia Gibson has left a lot of people wondering. Can a person be charged with resisting arrest while observing a traffic stop from his or her own front porch?

Salisbury Police Officer Mark Hunter thought so, and last week District Court Judge Beth Dixon agreed. Because Gibson did not at first comply when the officer told her and others to go inside, the judge found Gibson guilty of resisting, delaying or obstructing an officer.

Gibson wasn’t the only one watching the stop, and wasn’t the only one who refused to go inside. So why was she arrested and not the others? This might have had something to do with it:

She was the only one holding up a cell-phone video camera.

You have to wonder if Officer Hunter is fit for police work if he’s so easily distracted that merely observing him from a distance qualifies as obstructing him from performing his duties.

• Scientists bring a Steven Wright joke to life.
• Redesigning Addis Ababa.
• Somehow I missed that yesterday was National Dog Day. Here’s a gallery of photos.
• Montgomery, Alabama to poor people: We’re going to demolish your house, steal your property, and give the land to rich developers. Oh, and we’re going to bill you for the demolition costs. This isn’t even eminent domain. It’s much eviler.
• Shorter Eric Holder: It might be nice to do something about prison rape, but it’s just too darned expensive. I can see his point. Better that we pay wealthy people to get SUV’s with better gas mileage.
• Man arrested, falsely charged after filming police making an arrest, calling them “Nazis.” Yeah, he’s an asshole. Barring an actual crime, being an asshole shouldn’t get you arrested.

Reader Scott Milner writes:

Hi Radley,

Just a quick note to let you know that the drum you’ve been beating for awhile has had some affect on at least one of your readers.

I got called for jury duty this week.  The case involved cocaine (possession, delivery and trafficking).  Testimony took most of yesterday with closing arguments happening first thing this morning.  Shortly after a name was drawn out of a box to determine the alternate juror.  Sadly, that name was mine.  I would have acquitted via nullification on all counts and was absolutely looking forward to sharing the story with you…

The state’s case was interesting for a number of reasons but I won’t bore you with the details unless you ask.  For whatever it’s worth though I want to thank you for helping me develop some courage and convictions regarding the insane war on drugs and  hope that at least one of the other 12 of my peers shares similar sentiments.

Didn’t happen that way. Scott emailed me again this evening:

Well, I just got a call from the judge’s secretary.  The jury found the defendant guilty on the charge of trafficking.  I didn’t ask about the possession or delivery charges… my assumption is that The State was happy to get the trafficking charge and so didn’t request the jury to deliberate on the possession or delivery charges.  Or perhaps it’s simply that the trafficking charge was the big one and it became irrelevant as to whether or not a guilty verdict was returned on the other two charges.

I’m disappointed but not surprised.  Another person goes to prison despite not having hurt, stolen from or in any other way caused material damage to another.  Despite some conflicting and inconsistent testimony from the narcotics officers, and the inability of the state’s forensic examiner to explain some specifics.

As I left I told the bailiff that I’d be happy if the defense counsel contacted me because I want him to know that I was ready to acquit on all charges and why I was prepared to do so.

More people like this, please.