Rock ‘n’ Roll:

President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor against terrorism suspects. With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the “war on terror,” as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless.

While Obama says he has no plans to diminish counterterrorism operations abroad, the notion that a president can circumvent long-standing U.S. laws simply by declaring war was halted by executive order in the Oval Office.

Key components of the secret structure developed under Bush are being swept away: The military’s Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility, where the rights of habeas corpus and due process had been denied detainees, will close, and the CIA is now prohibited from maintaining its own overseas prisons. And in a broad swipe at the Bush administration’s lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001.

It’s worth emphasizing again here these steps Obama’s taking effectively limit his own power. That’s extraordinary.

I suspect that not everything John Yoo & Co. wrote was flat-out nuts. Some of the legal opinions issued over the last seven-plus years may come back in some form. This move looks like Obama wanting to send a very clear message that the executive branch will be returning to some semblance of the rule of law, and not governance by executive fiat.

In that regard, if I may borrow a phrase: mission accomplished.

Ryan Frederick is the 28-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing murder charges for killing a police officer during a drug raid (see this wiki for more on Frederick’s case). My coverage of the first two days of his trial here.

I should note in these updates that I’m not actually in Chesapeake for the trial. My analysis of what’s happening is contingent on reporting from the trial from the Virginian-Pilot newspaper and from local blogger Don Tabor, who is writing up reports from notes he’s taking in the courtroom (and whom I’ve found to be pretty fair in his prior coverage of the case).

Yesterday began with the state calling Jarrond Shivers’ widow to the stand. I found this odd, and a couple of criminal defense attorneys I spoke with (both not related to the case) confirmed my suspicions. I don’t doubt Nicole Shivers’ grief, but her tearful testimony added nothing substantive to what’s at issue in this case: whether Ryan Frederick knew or should have known that the men breaking into his home were police officers. Shivers testified about her first date with her husband, about their relationship, and about the last time she saw him. This sort of testimony at least makes some sense during a sentencing hearing, but during the guilt phase of a criminal trial, it’s inappropriate. It’s only purpose is to spark juror emotions—to put in their head that a "not guilty" verdict may only inflame the widows’ grief.

According to Tabor, Frederick attorney James Broccoletti didn’t object to Shivers taking the stand, though it’s possible that he objected to her inclusion as a witness at an earlier hearing. Broccoletti didn’t respond to an email query (understandably, given that he’s in the middle of a trial). It’s possible that Broccoletti calculated that objecting to allowing Shivers to have her say would lose him sympathy with the jury, particularly if he thought he’d be overruled, anyway. I’d be interested in what readers with a criminal law background think of Nicole Shivers taking the stand.

The rest of the day was taken up by testimony from police officers involved in the raid. They reiterated the claim that they knocked and announced themselves repeatedly. Tabor found their testimony believable. I’ve heard from others at the trail who found them less credible.  But I’m not sure their credibility matters. Even taking the officers’ testimony at face value, from the first knock until the battering ram took out the lower panel of his front door, Frederick had at most 25 seconds to wake up, gauge what was going on outside his home, and determine what to do about it. This, while his dogs were going nuts, and after he’d been burglarized days earlier (by the police department’s own informant).

A few other items that came out yesterday that are worth noting:

•  On the day of the raid, Frederick bought two dead bolt locks for his door. A relatively minor point, but it helps establish his state of mind the night of the raid.

•  Broccoletti conceded that Frederick did at some point grow marijuana plants for personal use, but Frederick adamantly denies ever selling any. The police had no evidence at the time to suggest otherwise. (I don’t know what the state has in store for the trial.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they trotted out a jailhouse snitch claiming to have bought marijuana from Frederick). They attempted no controlled buys from Frederick. They surveilled his home and found nothing unusual. The affidavit mentions no complaints from neighbors (the neighbors I’ve spoken to speak highly of him). This raid wasn’t conducted on a community menace. It was conducted on a guy who smoked and sometimes grew pot in his own home, for his own use.

• Indeed, the police officers who testified yesterday conceded that the only evidence they had on Frederick was the word of their informant, Steven Wright. Wright at the time was being held on felony charges related to credit card theft. According to the officers who testified, Wright had helped them on one prior case, and was paid $50. 

I should first add that this testimony conflicts with what Renaldo Turnbull (the other man who broke into Frederick’s house with Wright) told me in June, and with what he told the Virginian-Pilot last February. Turnbull said both he and Wright had been working with the police for months, and that the police had encouraged them to illegally break into private homes to obtain probably cause for search warrants.

But let’s assume the police officers are telling the truth. If so, that means they broke into Frederick’s house after nightfall, using a battering ram, based solely on the word of a shady informant who at the time was facing his own felony charges. Not only that, but he didn’t even have the marijuana plants he claimed to have taken. Those plants, if they even exist, have never been in police possession.

• From the Virginian-Pilot:

Roberts, Shivers’ partner in the Frederick case, testified at length about the history of the investigation, the informant used and the surveillance conducted.

He described how they pulled up to the house that night in an unmarked van with the lights off. A second group was in an unmarked car, and a marked patrol unit rolled up past the house.

Dressed mostly in black, they “approached in a stealth manor,” [sic] Roberts said. Shivers was to be the first through the door.

They started pounding on the door, shouting and then trying to break it down with a battering ram.

“I wanted, without a doubt, Mr. Frederick to know that we were the police outside,” Detective Sgt. Scott Chambers said.

This doesn’t make sense. If they wanted Frederick to know there were police outside "without a doubt," why approach the house in a "stealth-like manner"?  Why dress in black, and pull up silently in black, unmarked cars? If they wanted Frederick to know "without a doubt" that the police were outside his home, they should have used lights and sirens.  Perhaps a bullhorn.

This is the typical position the police take in these cases. They simultaneously maintain that the ninja tactics are necessary to take the suspect by surprise—and that the suspect should have known it was the police who were breaking into his home. The only way to resolve those two positions is to say that the police want to be stealth until they get to the door, at which point they want to be loud and boisterous.  That is, they want to take the suspect by surprise until just before entry, at which point they want to make it clear who they are. That puts an incredible amount of pressure on, in this case and others, a sleeping person to wake up and correctly ascertain what’s going on.

(I’d encourage readers to experiment sometime.  Lay down in a bedroom and have a friend pound on your front door and yell.  See if you can decipher what they’re saying, even while awake.)

• As I discussed yesterday, the other gaping hole in the prosecution’s case is that they’re maintaining that even though Steven Wright told them Frederick’s home was broken into three nights before the raid, and even though they knew that Wright was in Frederick’s home the same night it was burglarized, they didn’t know until months later that it was actually Wright who conducted the burglary, and that he conducted it specifically (and illegally) to obtain probable cause for the search warrant.

Again from the Virginian-Pilot:

Roberts’ testimony drew the most intense cross-examination after he named the informant – Steven Wright, whose full name is Steven Rene Wright. The police have refused until the trial to name him.

Also for the first time, Wright was identified as the person who alerted police to a break-in at Frederick’s house days before the raid.

Wright failed, however, to tell police that it was he who broke into Frederick’s garage and stole several marijuana plants, despite being asked “15 times,” Roberts said. Police didn’t learn that until about three months ago, he said.

Again, lots of problems, here. If they had to ask Wright "15 times," might that speak to his trustworthiness as an informant—particularly one on whose word would be the sole reason you conduct a home invasion raid?

Moreover, why would Wright possibly implicate himself by telling the police about the burglary in the first place? Did the police think Frederick invited him in?  Did they ask Wright how he was able to take several plants without Frederick noticing?

The state seems to be arguing that Wright came to the police that night and said something to the effect of, "Okay, I found several marijuana plants in the guy’s garage tonight.  I took a few. Don’t ask me how I got them. Also, I don’t have the actual plants anymore. Must have lost them. But I’m sure they were marijuana. Trust me on that. Also, somebody broke into his garage tonight. But it wasn’t me."

And they bought it?  In fact, they not only bought it, they bought it enough that they didn’t feel they needed to do any further investigation before conducting a raid?

Seems to be that what Turnbull told me and the Virginia-Pilot is a far more plausible explanation. The cops had an arrangement with these guys. The cops looked the other way while their informants illegally broke into homes to get probable cause. That would explain why the cops knew on the night of the raid that Frederick’s house had been burglarized three nights earlier (and were recorded saying as much).

Finally, we still don’t know if Turnbull and Wright been charged for burglarizing Ryan Frederick’s home. If not, why not?

Forget extraordinary rendition or arresting Internet gambling executives, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston argues in Mother Jones that if the laws of another country conflict with those of the U.S., we should just invade them.

Okay, so he’s talking about the Cayman Islands. Still, it’s a pretty astonishing proposal.

In 1983 just 10 percent of America’s corporate profits were funneled through places that charge little or no corporate income tax; today more than 25 percent of profits go through tax havens. The Obama administration could tell the Caymans—now fifth in the world in bank deposits—to repeal its bank secrecy laws or be invaded; since the island nation’s total armed forces consists of about 300 police officers, it shouldn’t be hard for technicians and auditors, accompanied by a few Marines, to fly in and seize all the records. Bermuda, which relies on the Royal Navy for its military, could be next, and so on. Long before we get to Switzerland and Luxembourg, their governments should have gotten the message.

Johnston then seems to get an inkling of just how preposterous his idea is and backs down a bit, just before proposing more bad ideas:

Barring gunboat diplomacy (tempting as it is), there is no reason we cannot pass laws to block financial transactions with tax havens or even, Cuba-style, make it a crime for Americans to visit or do business with them without special permission. Congress could declare the hiding of funds a threat to national security and require that anyone with offshore assets disclose them to the IRS within 30 days and pay taxes, interest, and penalties within 180 days. For the holdouts, temporary special teams in the IRS and Justice Department could speedily pursue civil or criminal charges.

Thanks to Chris Muir for the tip.

Via email, Johnston responds:

Wow, what reactions—many of them full of venom and personal attack, but without any substance on the issues in my article. BTW, for those who make wild guesses and get it wrong, I am a registered Republican and chairman of a corporation I founded with one of my sons.

The issue: our federal government forces employees to pay taxes on their wages through a rigorous withholding regime, but Congress lets people with non-wage income and corporations assess themselves with little or no verification and then lets them defer paying their income taxes for decades (with inflation reducing the value collected) and to outright evade taxes, a crime. We have two income tax systems, separate and unequal in their enforcement and reporting regimes. And of course in my Mother Jones piece I am jesting about actually invading the Caymans, as Radley sort of notes, but I am joking not about the need to enforce the law and stop helping calculated cheats get away with their felonies.

I apologize for getting Johnston’s political leanings wrong. I’m not sure the jest of his invasion proposal was all that apparent, particularly given the severity of his actual proposals, which include a possible Cuba-like trade embargo on a country like Switzerland.

I happen to think countries that offer secret banking and tax shelters serve an important function. Their value may not be as apparent to everyone in the U.S., but I’d imagine even a skeptic like Johnston might see things differently if he lived in a country where the government was more callous about how it appropriated its citizens’ possessions (which isn’t to say there’s nothing callous about taking money from taxpayers and, for example, using it to help failed financial houses pay out bonuses to their executives).

It’s also pretty arrogant to think the U.S. government should simply impose its own laws on the rest of the world, be it with military force or by restricting the ability of its own citizens to engage in voluntary trade with the citizens of other countries.

Garland, Texas police officer responds to a noise complaint. Instead of knocking on the front door, he walks around to the back of the house. There, he claims the leashed dog, while in its own yard, “attacked” him, so he shot and killed it. The police department now says the officer wasn’t aware that the dog was on a leash.

I wonder if that excuse would fly if someone other than a police officer shot and killed someone’s leashed dog while on their property. By going around to the back, the cop didn’t really give the owners a chance to notify him of the dog, or to call the dog to restrain it.

Also, when we’ve seen these sorts of stories in the past, the police department is quick to point out that the dog wasn’t properly leashed. This time, we get this:

When it comes to aggressive canines, Officer Joe Harn said that Garland officers “are allowed to do what they feel is necessary at the time.”

Harn also said that according to city code, an animal is not allowed to be leashed to a “stationary object,” which could endanger the animal or any people.

Seems like a strange law. It makes sense if it’s referring to public areas (you can’t tie your dog to a telephone pole while you run into the post office, for example). It makes much less sense if it applies to private residences, too.

Via Trey Garrison.

The Reason.tv documentary about Cory Maye’s case will be shown at the Oxford Film Festival next month. Hope it does well.

Of course, you can watch the video right here:

Barack Obama has appointed Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman to be deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.

Lederman was a harsh, outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s executive power grabs, specifically its positions on torture, surveillance, and secrecy, and the absurd lengths to which the OLC went to justify those positions.

The beautiful part: Lederman will be occupying the very position formerly held by John Yoo.

Today is the third day in the trial of Ryan Frederick, the 28-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing murder charges for killing a police officer during a drug raid (see this wiki for more on Frederick’s case). Tuesday primarily consisted of jury selection. Yesterday featured the opening statements.

I’m really in awe of the prosecution’s brazen strategy. According to the Virginian-Pilot, prosecutor James Willett argued in his opening that Frederick was “stoned out of his mind,” and “in a blind rage” at the time of the raid. Willett is apparently confident that no one on the jury has ever smoked marijuana. Frederic attorney James Broccoletti then asked the judge to admit into evidence a video in which a police detective flat-out says that Frederick didn’t appear high at the time of the raid. Moreover, in a recorded conversation taken shortly after the raid, Frederic says he didn’t know the men breaking into his home were the police. And he’s weeping.

As I suspected, the prosecution’s case is going to rely not just on the word of criminal informants, but of jailhouse snitches, too. Again from the Virginian-Pilot:

[Frederick] later told a jail inmate that if he had more ammunition, “he would have taken them all down,” a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday.

“He’s over there” in jail “bragging about it. He thinks he’s going to beat this charge,” James Willett, one of three prosecutors, told the jury during opening statements.

This is just absurd. Frederick was on suicide watch shortly after the raid. He surrendered after discovering the men breaking into his home were the police. Everyone I’ve spoken to who knows Frederick describes him as meek, shy, and introverted. It isn’t surprising that the prosecution could find a felon willing to say Frederick confessed to him in exchange for help with his own sentence. What will be surprising is if the jury is made aware of the deal he cut with prosecutors.

One other huge inconsistency in the state’s case came out in opening arguments. From the Tidewater Liberty blog:

[Willett] went on to describe how the police carefully planned how to serve the warrant and of the necessity of serving it with overwhelming force because they knew Frederick’s home had been burglarized and he would be wary.

Let’s set aside for a moment the incredibly dumb calculation that it would be a good idea to launch an aggressive, forced-entry, after-dark raid on a man the police knew would be “wary” because his home had just been burglarized. (A man who had no prior record and no history of violent behavior, by the way.)

We now know that the police informants were the ones who broke into Frederick’s home, and that this is how they obtained probable cause for the raid. Yet the police didn’t explain on their affidavit for the warrant that their probable cause had been obtained illegally, as is required by law. The state says this is because the police weren’t aware of that fact until months later. Yet they’re now arguing that the police knew on the night of the raid that Frederick’s house had been broken into three nights earlier, even though Frederick never reported the break-in.

So the state is arguing the following:

• The police knew on the night of the raid that Frederick’s home had been burglarized three nights before the raid.

• The police learned of the break-in through their informant, Steven Wright. Frederick never reported the break-in.

• The police mention on the warrant that Wright was in Frederick’s home “72 hours” prior to the raid.

• Despite all of this, the police never made the connection that, despite his criminal record, and that he was desperate to get help on the felony charges he was facing at the time, their informant could possibly have been the one who committed the break in.

The Chesapeake police involved in this raid were either corrupt or stupid. They either lied on the warrant, or they were incredibly ignorant of what their informants were doing. The prosecution has apparently calculated that their case against Frederick is better served by “stupid.”

Frederick’s defense is moving for a mistrial given these inconsistencies in police and prosecution statements regarding the informants.

Credit where it’s due: Well done, Mr. Obama. I’m sure we’ll have our differences, but afer your first 40+ hours on the job, this libertarian couldn’t be happier.

The tally:

Over at the Weekly Standard (motto: Palin was our idea!), Fred Barnes has penned a laughable early Valentine our most recent ex-president, ticking off W’s top ten (“at least”!) “achievements,” all of which, according to Barnes, were driven by the man’s unflinching courage. Included on Barnes’ list:

• Unlike most politicians, Bush had the courage to significantly increase the federal government’s role in the public schools. Ballsy!

• Bush had the courage to torture people!

• Bush courageously pandered to seniors by signing the prescription drug benefit, the largest new federal entitlement program in 40 years. Hey, it takes guts to tell the most active and politically powerful voting age group that you want to give them free stuff.

• Bush bravely fought to vastly expand his own power, and to govern in secrecy. Unheard of!

• When his disastrous war in Iraq began to implode, Bush fought to save his reputation by calling for more troops and more money. What fortitude!

Bush was an opportunist. “Courageous” is about the last word I’d use to describe him. One of his first major policy announcements was to ditch his free trade principles in favor of steel tariffs–payback to the blue-collar voters who helped him carry West Virginia. He likes to credit himself for fighting for private Social Security accounts, but he dropped the plan the moment it became politically unpopular. He cut taxes. He fought wars. He spent ungodly amounts of money. Those are all about the most popular things a president can do. Yes, Bush stuck to the war in Iraq well after it become politically unpopular, but only because the alternative was to go down in history as one of the few presidents to lose a war.

Is it too late for Bush to give Barnes some sort of medal?

"….to be a servant to our president?"

The creep factor climaxes at the 3:54 mark.

Via Will Wilkinson.

Also, who’s writing the headlines at Reuters?

President Bush has been the stingiest president in modern history when it comes to his use of presidential pardon and commutation powers. Yeseterday, he threw a bone to the Lou Dobbs wing of the GOP by commuting the sentences of the two border agents who shot an unarmed man in the back, then lied and attempted to cover it up.

I don’t often agree with NRO’s Andy McCarthy, but his 2007 column on these two thugs was spot on. Of all the people in federal prison who actually deserve a commutation or pardon, Bush picks these two.

By some estimates, the price tag on President-Elect Obama’s three-day inauguration celebration may hit $170 million. That’s at least as much as President Bush’s inaugural festivities in 2005, though just how much more expensive depends on how you’re measuring public vs. private contributions, and how you’re factoring in the cost of security.

Leftist critics were livid at the cost and security presence at Bush’s swearing in 2005, juxtaposing the gilded balls and black limos next to the slumping economy and the festering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But they’ve been conspicuously silent about Obamarama, even though the festivities are both pricier and draped with an even heavier security presence.

Here’s Eric Boehlert, writing at Salon in 2005:

This week’s inauguration story came ready with two interesting news angles: the huge cost (in contrast with the dire situation in Iraq) and the unprecedented security. And in both cases, the political press corps, as has been its habit under the Bush administration, showed little interest in prying. In the days and weeks leading up to the event, the press has largely treated inauguration criticism as partisan and silly, making sure to give Bush backers lots of time and room to defend the unmatched pomp and circumstance.

[...]

And it might have been helpful in the limited media debate that did take place about the inauguration’s costs to point out that if the $40 million to $50 million raised for the GOP’s parties had been donated to the war effort, as some have suggested, the money would have covered only about six hours of the U.S. military’s operations in Iraq.

[...]

Nonetheless, like butter on a humid summer day in Washington, reporters have simply melted away from asking pointed questions about the costly security overkill (nearly 9,000 police officers and military personnel will be deployed) — a buildup that clearly plays to Bush’s political advantage by keeping terrorist threats at the top of people’s minds.

This year’s inauguration will feature more than 25,000 security personnel. The city’s decked out in Hummers, APVs, snipers, and every bridge between D.C. and Virginia is closed (unless you’re in a limo—they’re permitted). We still have two wars going on. The economy’s more in the tank now than it was then. But this time around, Boehlert has no criticism for Obama, only for Obama’s critics, who Boehlert says are underestimating the cost of Bush’s inauguration in 2005.

In 2005, the Center for American Progress excoriated the Bush inauguration with a series of “Harper’s Index”-like statistics under the headline “Lifestyles of the Rich and Heartless.” This year? The only article I could find is a piece praising Obama for keeping his big party environmentally friendly.

Finally, the A.P. reports:

In 2005, Reps. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., and Jim McDermott, D-Wash., asked Bush to show a little less pomp and be a little more circumspect at his party.

“President Roosevelt held his 1945 inaugural at the White House, making a short speech and serving guests cold chicken salad and plain pound cake,” the two lawmakers wrote in a letter. “During World War I, President Wilson did not have any parties at his 1917 inaugural, saying that such festivities would be undignified.”

Weiner actually went the extra step of asking President Bush to skip inauguration, and donate all of the money he raised to the troops, instead. Doesn’t look like he’s demanding the same gesture from Obama. McDermott doesn’t seem to have much criticism for Obama, either.

For his obvious attempt at misdirection, Boehlert gets an 8 out of 10 on the somewhat arbitrary Hackery Index. Because their hackery comes by way of omission, the Center for American Progress and Reps. Weiner and McDermot get a 6 out of 10.

If you see an example of a pundit, politician, major blogger, or other Beltway creature who’s done a 180 on this or another issue, please send it here, with links, and “HackWatch” in the subject line. Previous editions of HackWatch here.

This, from the Virginian-Pilot’s latest article on the upcoming Ryan Frederick trial, actually threw a chill down my spine:

Also subpoenaed for the trial were five jail inmates who evidently had conversations with Frederick about the shooting. One of them is Marlon Reed, a Norfolk gang leader who already got one break on his sentence after testifying against co-defendants in his federal racketeering case.

I’ll make a prediction: At trial, we’ll hear about how the slight guy who has wept at nearly every public appearance since his arrest (one year ago yesterday, by the way) was openly boasting to other inmates about the cop he bagged. Or maybe they’ll say he tried to sell them marijuana.

To retrofit a phrase, once the state has determined you’re a nail in need of smashing, there’s really no limit to the number of hammers at its disposal.

A jury has found that officers with the Prince George’s County, Maryland (where else?) police department used excessive force when they apprehended and arrested a TV reporter who was investigating possible improper use of public resources. I don’t know the much about the case other than what’s in the article, and from the article, it sound like the jury got it right–too much force, though the decision to puller her over may not have been out of bounds.

But it’s the last sentence of the article I found particularly interesting:

In all, nine police cars from Prince George’s and Cheverly responded. Although most of the squad cars were equipped with video cameras, police said none of them were working that day, Pavsner said.

So “most” squad cars in PG County have video cameras. Yet at the scene of a controversial arrest, with nine cars at the scene, not a single squad car camera was “working that day?”

This is more important than it might first appear:

Despite legal and security hurdles, president-elect Barack Obama says he has a plan to retain his beloved Blackberry once he moves into the White House next week.

Interviewed by CNN Friday, Obama said the smartphone was among the tools that he would use to stay in touch with real Americans and avoid becoming trapped inside the presidential “bubble.”

“I think we’re going to be able to hang on to one of these. My working assumption, and this is not new, is that anything I write on an email could end up being on CNN,” he said.

“So I make sure to think before I press ‘send’,” he said of his Blackberry, which was an ever-present fixture on his belt or in his hand on the campaign trail.

Obama did not divulge just how he will overcome legal constraints, given the requirement of the post-Watergate Presidential Records Act of 1978 to keep a record of every White House communication.

Nor did he say how he would persuade his Secret Service protectors that the Blackberry does not pose a security risk, for instance if it is hacked over the air.

But Obama, who succeeds the unpopular George W. Bush on Tuesday, said the phone was a valuable part of a wider strategy to escape the White House fishbowl.

“It’s just one tool among a number of tools that I’m trying to use, to break out of the bubble, to make sure that people can still reach me,” he said.

“If I’m doing something stupid, somebody in Chicago can send me an email and say, ‘What are you doing?’

“I want to be able to have voices, other than the people who are immediately working for me, be able to reach out and send me a message about what’s happening in America.”

Gene Healy gets into the problems of a president isolated on an island in an ocean of yes-men in his book The Cult of the Presidency. It’s good that Obama recognizes the problems presented by the presidential bubble, and is at least trying to take some steps to mitigate them.

The Pentagon spent $46,790 of your money–about the median household income in the U.S.–to commission a painted portrait of Donald Rumsfeld.

….is “snarge,” which NPR helpfully describes as, “the bird goo that is wiped off an aircraft after it hits a bird.”

I just started getting into the TV show House about a month ago, and have been obsessively going through the first four seasons since. So this week’s song is the show’s trippy theme song, Massive Attack’s “Teardrop.”

President-Elect Obama’s stimulus package calls for $3 billion in new Byrne Grants, and $1 billion in COPS grants—both are federal block grant programs for local police departments. For some reason, Democrats seem to love these grants. The Bush administration and Republicans in Congress had begun phasing them out.

As I explained in a piece for Slate last October, studies have shown both programs to be ineffective at fighting crime. Worse, there’s good evidence that they actually cause harm. While designated for community policing efforts, COPS grants have actually been used by many departments to start or outfit SWAT teams, a point I explicitly made in July 2007 to Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), when I testified before the House Subcommittee on Crime he chairs. Scott seemed surprised when I told him.  But apparently, it didn’t affect him enough to prevent him from restarting the program.

Byrne Grants, meanwhile, are often tied directly to drug arrests, warping police department priorities by encouraging low-level drug busts to juke up department arrest statistics . . . so they can apply for more grants. We have Byrne grants to thank for the civil rights disasters in Tulia and Hearne, Texas, and for the continuing problem of out of control multijurisdictional drug task forces.

I guess the important thing is that individual congressmen can once again send out self-congratulatory press releases announcing the big pile of pork they’ve just procured for the local police department.

The iconic artist died today. We have this one hanging in our bedroom.