So after looking at the videos several times, I have to dissent from the chorus calling for the head of Johannes Mehserle, the cop who shot and killed Oscar Grant at an Oakland BART station two weeks ago.

Mehserle’s body language after he fires the shot to me indicates panic and confusion, not satisfaction at having just carried out a deliberate execution, as some local politicians have portrayed it. I find the explanation that Mehserle thought he he had grabbed his taser to be not only plausible, but likely.

That doesn’t mean Mehserle should get off.  He’s clearly at fault. Whatever line of work he finds next, a portion of his paycheck should go to Oscar Grant’s family for the rest of Mehserle’s life. That should probably go for the people who trained him, too (though that isn’t going to happen).  Moreover, Mehserle should never wear a badge again. Oscar Grant’s death will either haunt him for the rest of his life, or it won’t. In either case, it disqualifies him from being a cop. If it’s determined that there was no reason for Mehserle to draw his taser (Grant appears to be handcuffed and on his stomach in the videos), then he’s guilty of excessive force, and a manslaughter charge might be appropriate.

The police should be held to a higher standard than those of us without a badge. As Glenn Reynolds points out in the New York Post today, the courts unfortunately seem to hold them to a lower one. The doctrine of qualified immunity, which affords police officers (and other government employees) protection from negligence not afforded to those of us who don’t get a government paycheck, is another example.

That said, there seems to be a mob-fueled rush to pin a murder charge on this guy. Given the videos, it just doesn’t seem warranted to me. Speaking as a journalist who has reported on plenty of aggravating stories where bad cops got off scot-free, Mehserle shouldn’t have to suffer the accumulated anger of all of those stories. He should be charged for what he did, nothing more.

At the same time, I’d pose this question to the Mehserle defenders I’ve seen on police forums and bulletin boards: I’m sympathetic to the argument that in the heat of the moment, Mehserle inadvertently reached for the wrong weapon. But Mehserle had training. He had other cops there backing him up. If we’re going to be sympathetic to him, where’s the sympathy for people like Cory Maye or Ryan Frederick?

Why should we assume good intentions when a cop with training, wide awake and conscious, with other cops all around him makes a mistake that ends with a fatality, but assume the worst when a civilian is awoken by the sound of police breaking into his home, and in the heat of the moment, fires a gun after mistaking them for criminal intruders?

Seems to me you can’t simultaneously argue that trained police officers should be forgiven for nervous mistakes made in the heat of the moment, but ordinary people should be expected to show impeccable judgment and restraint, even under unimaginably volatile and confrontational circumstances.

Photo posted to Twitter moments ago of the plane that just landed on the Hudson River.

Good news is, there appear to be no injuries or deaths.

“I certainly respect the Constitution, but we have some issues that are much bigger than the Constitution.”

That’s the “worst mayor in America,” Jackson, Mississippi’s Frank Melton. Guess what issue he’s talking about, then click through to see if you were right.

I have a longish piece up at Culture11 on the drug war’s collateral damage.

It’s part of a drug war symposium they’re running today. I have to say, I took perverse pleasure writing a biting drug war critique for a website founded in part by William Bennett.

I also did a Bloggingheads.tv debate on the drug war with National Review’s David Fredoso, but it doesn’t seem to be up yet. Fredoso wrote in defense of the drug war for the symposium.

MORE: Here’s the debate with Fredoso:

In celebration of a new federal tax on cigars that takes effect today, Action on Smoking Health (ASH), an organization run by anti-smoking zealot John Banzhaf, apparently hotlinked to an image of a cigar hosted by The Stogie Guys, a website run by cigar aficionados Patrick Ashby and Patrick Seemens.

As you might guess, hijinx ensued.

Clearwater, Florida businessman Herb Quintero spent $500,000 renovating his bait and tackle shop and the property it’s on, including commissioning a fish mural on the side of the building.  Though the mural contains no text, the city of Clearwater determined he needed a billboard permit, because the subject matter is related to his business. They began fining him $130 for each day he left the mural uncovered.

So Quintero responded (rather awesomely) by covering the mural with a banner depicting the First Amendment.  All of which sets up this beautiful line from a local news report of the dustup:

Meanwhile, the city’s legal department is looking to see what, if anything, it can do about the First Amendment banner.

Thanks to Dick Nimmons for the link.

One-time Agitator guest blogger Ryan Grim’s book comes out in late June.  It’s called This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America. You can pre-order it now at Amazon.com.

Also, Ryan tells me that you, Agitator readers, are thanked in the acknowledgments for your suggestions when Ryan posted excerpts of the book on this site last August.

So nice work!

I’m trying to paste a bunch of web articles into a big Word document.

Problem is, when you cut and paste from the web into Word on a Mac, it strips out all the formatting. Paragraphs still look good, but hyperlinks, italics, bold, etc. disappear.

Anyone know a good workaround?

America’s three richest counties are now in the Washington suburbs, as are nine of the richest 20. In my Fox column this week, I explain why it’s problematic when the wealthiest (and only growing wealthier) region of the country is one where the only major industry is government.

The new professionalism in action:

Chattanooga Police Det. Kenneth Freeman will not face charges in an incident in which he shoved a 71-year-old greeter at the Wal-Mart in Collegedale to the floor after he tried to stop him while doing a receipts check.

Collegedale Police declined to bring charges, then the employee, Bill Walker, filled out a complaint himself. Collegedale Judge Kevin Wilson has reviewed the complaint and did not issue an assault charge.

In the incident on Christmas Eve, Mr. Walker said an alarm went off when Det. Freeman and another city police officer, Edwin McPherson, were leaving the store.

He said he reached to try to stop Det. Freeman and he was pushed against a soft drink machine and to the floor. He said the officer then hovered over him as he lay on the floor.

A police report says a customer then told Det. Freeman, “You can’t push down an old man” and began struggling with him. It says Det. Freeman then shoved that man, Gholom Ghassedi, through a glass door. Officers found Mr. Ghassedi with blood on his neck, but he declined medical treatment.

As for those new internal safeguards and barriers against police abuse Justice Scalia is always talking about:

Cpl. Larry Robbins Jr. of the Collegedale Police said he decided not to bring assault charges against Det. Freeman, saying the incident was a misdemeanor not committed in the presence of an officer, there were no injuries requiring medical attention, the suspect is not a flight risk, and “there were no other crimes committed along with the possible simple assault.”

He said the investigation would be ongoing, but he said he “was unable to determine at the scene that there was any intent to commit an assault.”

Collegedale Officer Paul Crosby said when he arrived at the scene he found a large group of people gathered outside the door of the store. He said some “were obviously angry and were pointing fingers and yelling.”

He said one man was “livid” and was pointing his finger at Det. Freeman while saying, “You are a police officer? Shame on you.”

It’s apparently this particular officer’s second scuffle in two years.

Derrick Foster was sentenced last week to five years in prison. With good behavior, he’ll be out in four.  He ended up pleading guilty to two counts of felonious assault.

Meanwhile, the military-style drug raids continue. A 19-year-old Missouri woman could get 30 years after shooting at police on a marijuana raid (her parents were apparently dealers) last month. She too says she thought the home was being robbed. In one I missed from last November, police in Woodhaven, Michigan raided and trashed the wrong home while looking for a narcotics suspect, finding instead a 25-year-old woman who had just gotten out of the shower.  And in Las Vegas, 32-year-old Emmanuel Dozier is in jail and faces felony charges after shooting and wounding three police officers, also during a narcotics raid. Dozier also says he thought his home was being robbed.  His girlfriend, Belinda Saavedra, was on the phone with 911 at the time of the raid.

Police insist they had the right house (Dozier has a prior arrest record in California), but found no drugs in the home. They did, however, find Saavedra’s children. The Las Vegas Review-Journal ran a spot-on editorial about the last raid:

Does a raid timed for 9:30 Sunday evening — more than four hours after nightfall, at this time of year — make it more likely residents will understand the men at the door are police? Police say the raid was staged by SWAT officers: Does that mean they did not display standard, easily recognizable uniforms and chest badges? Were they, in fact, dressed in black to make them less visible?

Pardon us if we doubt the officers waited even two or three minutes for residents to pull on clothes (if necessary), come to the door, ascertain who was there and ask to read the officers’ warrant.

For that matter, wouldn’t the chance of violence have been reduced — in a home where police should have known young children were present — if someone had simply telephoned the home, explaining police were approaching the door with a warrant … preferably during daylight hours?

Some will say such a procedure would be naive — drug dealers could use the time to flush their product down the toilet.

But no cocaine was found — and a dealer who can eliminate all his product in one toilet flush isn’t really very big-time, is he?

If Mr. Dozier is prosecuted on drug-trafficking charges it will be based on the testimony of the undercover officers who say they bought from him in the past.

The drug war has taught us to accept as “normal” police procedures — even in the case of a man alleged to have dealt quantities of drugs worth only a few hundred dollars — which increase the risk of violence and death in our neighborhoods.

Just as in cases where some jurisdictions have found overall fatalities could be reduced by having ambulances obey stoplights, it is those “standard” procedures that are in need of a serious new review.

For all of the “wrong-house” raids I write about on this site, even when police get the right house, these raids force a volatile confrontation with a high potential for error. There have been about a half dozen cases of police officers getting killed or wounded on drug raids in just the last few months. These tactics make warrant service more dangerous for everyone, including cops.

This week, I’ll be cross-posting what I do here and at Hit & Run over at Ed Brayton’s blog, Dispatches From the Culture Wars. You might remember that Ed guest-blogged for me while I was in Alaska last summer.

Ed runs a great site, and touches on many of the same issues we hit here, only with a bit more emphasis on science and skepticism.

Recently-elected Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) recently conducted an odd stunt to promote some electric car technology apparently being developed in his district. He wanted to drive an electric car from his district to his swearing-in at the Capitol in D.C. Problem is, the distance between those two points is out of Massa’s range. So here’s what he did:

Massa drove one fuel cell car while a hybrid SUV towing an additional SUV followed along. Once he got half way, he switched to new fuel cell car. The empty fuel cell was then towed back by the first SUV. As he continued on his journey, the second SUV followed. Once Massa arrived in DC, the second SUV then towed the second fuel cell car back to NY.

So Massa wasted several times the amount of energy he needed for 300-mile trip . . . in order to make a point about the importance of conservation and alternative energy.

I predict Rep. Massa will find quite a bit of success in his career as a congressman.

Watch CBS Videos Online

So you’ve probably heard that some studies show obese people have a greater chance of dying from some forms of cancer. Those studies are often cited as evidence that we need more state control over what people eat.

As it turns out, the higher mortality rates may in part be because medical professionals don’t factor in the added weight when dosing obese people with chemotherapy.

My pooch Harper actually did the very same thing when she was a pup, only the book was The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Raising Your Dog.

The first tip on the first page should have been, “When you aren’t around, keep this book out of reach of your dog.”

(Thanks to the Agitatrix for the tip.)

The latest from Playmobil:

The woman traveler stops by the security checkpoint. After placing her luggage on the screening machine, the airport employee checks her baggage. The traveler hands her spare change and watch to the security guard and proceeds through the metal detector. With no time to spare, she picks up her luggage and hurries to board her flight!

The customer reviews are priceless.  Save on shipping by ordering it with the Playmobil Police Checkpoint and Playmobil SWAT playsets in time for your favorite little authoritarian’s birthday!

I’ve never really understood the evangelical atheists’ obsession with removing the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.

Seems to me that the real problem here—whether you’re atheist, agnostic, or devout—is the idea that we’re forcing school kids to take a loyalty oath to a swatch of cloth. If the argument is that they’re pledging allegiance to the country the cloth represents, that’s pretty creepy, too. I think the American experiment is far from perfect. And it will always be tainted by the slavery and Native American genocide that corresponded with its founding (and the enduring legacies of both).  That said, I also think the American experiment is best thing that’s ever happened to mankind. At least so far.

But pledging allegiance to “America” carries a “my country, right or wrong” connotation that’s, frankly, un-American. At least if you’re defining “American” by the principles the country was founded upon.

It’s also odd that the Pledge has become such a touchstone issue for the right, given its origins (Tom Bell’s version of the Pledge is much better).

Anyway, back to my original point: Why are atheists appalled by forcing school kids to utter the phrase “under God,” but seemingly unbothered by requiring them to pledge a loyalty oath to their government?

(Disclosure: I’m an agnostic.)