One item that was left out of the conference committee version of the stimulus bill: the Van Hollen-Platts amendment from the House bill. That amendment would have granted whistleblower protection to federal workers and contractors, including those who report fraud and waste in—you guessed it—how the government spends stimulus money.

Zachary Roth at Talking Points Memo blames Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) for watering down the amendment in conference until it was eventually abandoned altogether. She apparently objected to the protection of whistleblowers who divulge classified information, though that language could easily have been removed.

If that’s true, Collins deserves a lot of blame. But I’m also fairly certain that the Democrats have large majorities in both houses of Congress. If protecting federal whistleblowers who expose waste and abuse is any sort of priority for them, they had more than enough votes to keep the amendment in the bill.

A jury in Colorado has acquitted a man who organized poker tournaments at a local bar on charges of illegal gambling, apparently agreeing with his defense that poker is primarily a game of skill, not chance.  Last month, a judge in Pennsylvania came to the same conclusion, exonerating a man of gambling charges for running $1-$2 Texas Hold ‘Em games out of his garage.

I’d rather see states do away with gambling prohibitions altogether (or, more accurately, to lift the states’ monopoly on gambling), but the outcomes in these cases are exactly right. The fact that professional poker players even exist (as opposed to, say, professional slots or roulette players) is proof that the game is driven more by strategy and skill than by luck.

This month, another state judge in South Carolina will rule on the same question. In that case, Police sent a wired informant with marked bills to break up the $20 buy-in game run by Mount Pleasant resident Bob Chimento and his college buddies. Generally speaking, such games are legal so long as the host doesn’t take a cut of the prize money. Police and prosecutors determined that Chimento’s collection for pizza and beer qualified as a "rake," making the game illegal.

"The typical police raid of these games … is to literally burst into a home in SWAT gear with guns drawn and treat poker players like a bunch of high-level drug dealers," says Jeff Phillips, a Greenville attorney representing Chimento’s group. "Using the taxpayers’ resources for such useless Gestapo-like tactics is more of a crime than is playing of the game."

Chimento and his friends aren’t alone. The Washington-based Poker Players Alliance says it has received so many calls about poker-related arrests that it’s created a national network of attorneys – many of them poker players themselves – to serve as a legal brain trust for its membership.

Reason.tv and Drew Carey highlighted one of those cases last year, in which a paramilitary vice squad in Dallas raided a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament held at local VFW post.

I was just informed today that Fox is doing away with the opinion section on its website. They’re moving it entirely to the bloggier Fox Forum format.

So it looks like my column over there is done.

I have my issues with the Fox News Channel. I do think it serves an important niche, I just happen to find it unbearable at times.  But I have to give props to the website.  Over the last seven years, I’ve written some harsh critiques of the right, President Bush, and the GOP, and I can only think of a couple columns that they didn’t run. And even those weren’t for political reasons.

The opinion section was getting increasingly buried on the website, so today’s news isn’t terribly surprising. It was probably close to time to start looking for another column gig with a new audience, anyway.

Still, Fox was the first national outlet to publish me, back in early 2002.  Soon after, they gave me the regular column. They also agreed to link to this site at the bottom of each column, which is how I initially was able to build up a regular readership.

So I’m really grateful for the opportunity.

Sigh.

Harvard Law Dean Elena Kagan, President Obama’s choice to represent his administration before the Supreme Court, told a key Republican senator Tuesday that she believed the government could hold suspected terrorists without trial as war prisoners.

She echoed comments by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. during his confirmation hearing last month. Both agreed that the United States was at war with Al Qaeda and suggested the law of war allows the government to capture and hold alleged terrorists without charges…

Last year, the Supreme Court dealt the Bush administration a setback when it ruled that these alleged “enemy combatants” had a right to be heard by a judge and to plead for their freedom. But the high court left unanswered the question of whether accused terrorists and others with suspected ties to Al Qaeda could be held for years without trial.

That issue is now before the Obama administration.

Just to be clear, what they’re saying here is that the federal government can declare someone an “enemy combatant,” then detain them “indefintely,” or for the remainder of the “war on terror.” Which essentially means forever (you don’t honestly think a U.S. president is ever going to declare terrorism defeated, do you?). No charges. No trial. Just, “Trust us, these people are guilty.”

And of course we’re now learning that way too many of them aren’t.

Closing Guantanamo had some symbolic value, but it doesn’t mean a thing if we’re just going to do the same thing in another facility.

New York criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield has some cogent but depressing thoughts on the issue.

Who’s going to be the one to shut down prosecution witnesses spouting all the traditional junk science nonsense that has put tens of thousands of people in prison for the last few generations?

For those of us who spend a bit of time monitoring the decisions on new “science” in the courtroom, and watch with incredulity as judges shrug and take the word of very official sounding pseudo-experts who proclaim the infallibility of whatever scientific tripe they are selling, writing about or spent the last months learning at the Government School for Expert Witnesses, one thing is painfully clear. Judges have no more clue what good science is then we do, and when asked to pass on the accuracy of expert testimony in some scientific endeavor, invariably turn to the research to see if some other judge has already allowed it. If so, it comes in. If rejected, it doesn’t. If truly novel, God help us…

This report could blow the roof off junk forensic science. But only if judges across the country chose to care. The report itself will never find its way before a jury. Sure, we’ll question witnesses about it, just as we do now to challenge the actual scientific underpinnings of their “expertise”. And the judges will let these pseudo-experts testify anyway, just as they do now, because they feel that there’s no other choice. Once one judge opens the gate, it’s open forever. That’s how science in the courtroom works.

The use of dubious science is so routine in courtrooms that experts are frequently avoided by having a cop testify that he took a course at the Academy and can now testify on all manner of forensics. The beauty of this testimony is that it’s purely conclusory, the cop either explaining that he doesn’t know why something happens, but that he knows that it’s 100% reliable. The judge just nods. That’s all it takes to get something in front of a jury. I’ve seen judges allow expert testimony from agents with all of 37 minutes of experience come in as if he’s a professor emeritus from MIT. Over objection, naturally…

I applaud the National Academy of Sciences for having done this study, and for having overcome the government’s opposition to anyone challenging their self-serving insular control over what constitutes valid scientific evidence. But this report alone won’t do anything if judges, each and every one of them, won’t take the responsibility to put an end to witnesses spouting nonsense in the name of science and for the goal of convictions in front of a jury.

As I wrote in the Fox column, and have written before, I think the solution here is legislative. It’s too much to ask judges to be able to distinguish real expertise from quackery, and credible professional organizations from certification mills. The quacks who get online certifications and are then allowed to testify in court as “scientists” aren’t publishing in respected, peer-reviewed journals or held in high esteem by other scientists. We need to apply the scientific method to the courtroom. That means double-blind testing, peer review, and statistical analysis. If an expert routinely used by the state is shown by other labs to be wrong on a consistent basis, a judge then has the evidence he needs to disqualify the guy as an expert. Or, if not, the defense can cite the guy’s track record in its appeal.

The secret is to convince state legislatures that (a) this is a problem, and (b) they’re going to save money in the long run in the number of wrongful convictions better science is going to prevent.

…foxes jumping on a trampoline.

Surprising even a judge at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a lawyer for the Obama administration embraced the Bush administration’s position in the first state secrets case since Obama took power. The case involves five accused terrorist detainees who are attempting to sue a subsidiary of Boeing for arranging flights to accommodate the Bush administration’s “extraordinary rendition” program, which flew them off to be tortured by other governments.

Though it’s now well-known that the practice went on and the details even of these particular cases have been well-documented, just as it did in the horrifying case of Khalen Masri the Bush administration invoked states secrets privilege to prevent the suit from coming to trial.  State secrets is a judge-made law (based entirely on a lie, by the way) allowing the executive branch to exclude evidence in a case merely by stating it would be contrary to the interests of national security to allow the evidence to be admitted. Bush administration officials claimed judges are obligated to show the president “utmost deference” on state secrets claims, provoking a federal judge in a domestic spying/wiretapping case to ask if that means “the king can do no wrong,” and that judges are supposed to “bow” before the president in such claims.

According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the state secrets privilege was invoked about 55 times from 1954 to 2001.  In the first four years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Bush administration invoked it 23 times.

Obama has promised to review Bush’s invocation of state secrets privilege, including voicing his support for a reform bill working its way through Congress. But the case this week was his first opportunity to do something about it. He didn’t. From the New York Times:

In the case, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian native, and four other detainees filed suit against a subsidiary of Boeing for arranging flights for the Bush administration’s “extraordinary rendition” program, in which terrorism suspects were secretly taken to other countries, where they say they were tortured. The Bush administration argued that the case should be dismissed because even discussing it in court could threaten national security and relations with other nations…

Douglas N. Letter, made the same state-secrets argument on Monday, startling several judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

“Is there anything material that has happened” that might have caused the Justice Department to shift its views, asked Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, coyly referring to the recent election.

“No, your honor,” Mr. Letter replied.

Judge Schroeder asked, “The change in administration has no bearing?”

Once more, he said, “No, Your Honor.” The position he was taking in court on behalf of the government had been “thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration,” and “these are the authorized positions,” he said.”

Lefty blogger hilzoy quotes from the ACLU brief that details Mohamed’s account of what happened to him:

Early on the morning of July 22, 2002, a Gulfstream V aircraft, then registered with the FAA as N379P, flew Mohamed to Rabat, Morocco where he was interrogated and tortured for 18 months. In Morocco his interrogators routinely beat him, sometimes to the point of losing consciousness, and he suffered multiple broken bones. During one incident, Mohamed was cut 20 to 30 times on his genitals. On another occasion, a hot stinging liquid was poured into open wounds on his penis as he was being cut. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death. He was forced to listen to loud music day and night, placed in a room with open sewage for a month at a time and drugged repeatedly.

But let’s not lose too much sleep over Mohamed. He’s probably one of those “worst of the worst” we’re always hearing about, right?

Mohamed’s lawyers say he was turned over to the CIA and shipped to Guantanamo after admitting to Pakistani officials, while being tortured, that he had visited an Internet article with instructions on “how to build an H-bomb.” Except the article was satire. It was written by labor advocate and food writer Barbara Ehrenreich. You can read it here (if you dare).

The U.S. has denied the evidence against Mohamed was obtained by torture, but the BBC is reporting today that U.S. officials have actually threatened to stop sharing information with British intelligence about terror threats to the U.K. if Britain allows the details of Mohamed’s alleged torture to be made public. The Independent reported last month that Mohamed was soon to be released from Guantanamo Bay, but that report seems to be based on what Mohamed told his lawyers. He’s still in Guantanamo now, though all of the terrorism charges against him have been dropped.

To their credit, many Obama supporters are livid. Glenn Grenwald writes that Obama has failed his first major civil liberties test “resoundingly and disgracefully.” Andrew Sullivan writes that, “with each decision to cover for their predecessors, the Obamaites become retroactively complicit in them.” Hilzoy implores Obama, “you screwed this one up in a major, major way. Stop it. Stop it now.”

…this week is on forensics and the criminal justice system, drawing on a forthcoming National Academy of Sciences report that’s expected to be extremely critical of how science is used in the courtroom.

Fox seems to have redesigned its website, so opinion pieces now allow for comments. I would suggest not reading them. I think my eyes may be bleeding.

Just received the following email from the Illinois Republican Liberty Caucus:

We have the evidence right here of your hacking. Cease and desist immediately. Hacking is a crime.

They’re referring of course to my replacing their hotlinked image of me with an Obama dildo.

MORE: “Puma” has erased the embarrassing errors (I saved screen caps, see below). But before doing so, whoever Puma is was dumb enough to cut and paste them at Free Republic.

(UPDATE : Looks like they gave up. They took down the “exposed” post and the image they hotlinked.)

(UPDATE 2: The stupid continues here.)

My new friends in the Illinois chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus have apparently caught me embellishing my resume.

Their post reads:

Liberal (and ersatz libertarian) blogger and wanna-be pundit Radley Balko claims on his bio on his blog that he is a bi-weekly columnist for Forbes.com. But an investigation by the RLCIL demonstrates that Mr. Balko has taken extreme liberties — perhaps even license — with the term “bi-weekly.”

He makes his claim at, http://www.theagitator.com/about/, indicating, that, in addition to laboring over his poorly written blog, “I’m also a biweekly columnist with FoxNews.com.”

However, the claim is not bourne out by the evidence. We searched through the Forbes.com site, and could find only two URLs, from the summer of 2005, authored by Mr. Balko.

See,

http://search.forbes.com/search/find?MT=Radley+Balko&tab=searchtabgeneral

In the Reign of Cotton Mather | Story
May 09, 2005
Our laws are being rewritten by puritans, prigs and busybodies.
Hot Times For Online Gaming | Story
July 19, 2006
As the Justice Department cracks down, Congress has its own ideas.

You can check this out for yourself, dear reader. It is accurate as of 4:40 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, 10 February, 2009. We are sure he will remove the false claim momentarily.

Now, we wonder, can you take anything Radley Balko writes or says seriously, when he lies about his own resume? Wonder if his employers know about this?

Yes, it was quite bold of me to claim a bi-weekly column for FoxNews.com when only two search results for my name turn up at Forbes.com. That’s some fine detective work, there, “Puma.”

Here’s the screen cap:

Also, y’all should know better to hotlink from my site in the same post in which you’re attacking me. Enjoy your Obama dildo.

Here’s the screen cap for that one, on the off-chance they’re smart enough to realize what just happened to them:

MORE: Puma’s still digging. The post “exposing” me has since been edited to read:

Liberal (and ersatz libertarian) blogger and wanna-be pundit Radley Balko claims on his bio on his blog that he is a bi-weekly columnist for Forbes.com. But an investigation by the RLCIL demonstrates that Mr. Balko has taken extreme liberties — perhaps even license — with the term “bi-weekly.”

He makes his claim at, http://www.theagitator.com/about/, indicating, that, in addition to laboring over his poorly written blog, “I’m also a biweekly columnist with FoxNews.com.”

However, the claim is not bourne out by the evidence. We searched through the Fsite [sic], and could find only three URLs, authored by Mr. Balko.

I’m guessing “Fsite” is a typo for “Fox site,” because the post then lists the last three columns I’ve written for Fox, apparently as returned by the FoxNews.com search engine. Which I guess is somehow supposed to prove that I’m exaggerating my “bi-weekly” status.

Except that a Google search for my name on the FoxNews.com domain turns up about 4,400 hits. Which makes sense, given that I have actually been writing a bi-weekly column there for the better part of seven years.

At this point, I almost feel bad for them.

Here’s the screen cap:

Appeals Court says Heller doesn’t apply to the states.

It’ll be interesting to see how traditionally anti-incorporation conservatives and pro-incorporation lefties line up on this one.

Yesterday, I poked fun at a silly post on the website of the Illinois Republican Liberty Caucus.

Here is their almost intelligible response.

A few years ago, Virginia’s power-tripping alcohol control board cracked down on state bars and pubs that sponsored drinking games like beer pong. Naturally, young bargoers in Northern Virginia started playing the games in their backyards. So naturally, the city of Arlington may now ban them on private property, too.

Bluemont resident James Thorne said that, since the Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) board banned drinking games (such as “beer pong”) from bars and eateries, they have gravitated toward outdoor areas, such as outside local homes.

“It affects our quality of life,” Thorne said of the resulting noise.

Thorne asked board members to consider an ordinance change that would give county police the ability to request that such drinking games be moved indoors.

Board members said the matter should be investigated.

“What people do in the privacy of their own homes is their business,” board member Walter Tejada said. “When it spills out and affects the quality of the neighborhood . . . we have to take a look.”

County Manager Ron Carlee said his staff would look into the matter, coordinate with police and come back with a report to board members.

Reader Patrick Semmens sent the story, and adds via email:

As far as I can tell, this is being pushed by just one person, my next door neighbor, who is the sole proponent quoted in the Sun Gazette’s article.

For the past two years he has called the cops on my well-attended annual St.Patrick’s Day party (and last year also the Virginia Alcohol Bureau), but much to his dismay drinking beer outside during the middle of the day (and playing drinking games) is not against the law.  So he is trying to change that by imposing a law on the 200,000 citizens of Arlington County.

Now an elected member of the Arlington County Board says they are looking into it, and the county manager is wasting time and money having his staff “investigate.” A police captain was even dispatched to my house to talk about the proposed law.

The city already has noise ordinances to deal with any disturbance Semmens’ parties may have caused Thorne. Banning drinking games on private property seems a bit ridiculous. Then again, so does the idea of banning them in bars.

Semmens has set up a website to prevent the idea from gaining momentum.

In Las Vegas:

“Coco” was a good dog. Almost embarrassingly so.

When Jose Fernandez would have friends over, he would brag that he had a pit bull. He’d take his friends into the backyard to see Coco and the 6-year-old pit bull would lick their feet.

“I’d say, ‘Come on! Put on a mean face or something!’” Fernandez, 40, said.

But that’s all Coco would do, he said. Lick them, or put his paw on their laps for attention.

Around 5 a.m. Friday, Coco was shot and killed in his backyard by a Las Vegas police officer.

The officer was one of several who were searching for a DUI suspect who fled on foot from a traffic stop near Nellis Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, according to department spokesman Bill Cassell.

Police searched a nearby neighborhood with a helicopter equipped with a heat detecting device and spotted a large mass in a shed behind a home at 4880 Welter Ave., Cassell said.

Cassell said the dog, which was inside the shed, confronted officers. But he said he didn’t know how the dog displayed aggressiveness.

“The officer did everything he could to avoid shooting at the dog. Ultimately he was forced to fire in self-defense,” Cassell said.

Two shots rang out. Coco had a bullet wound in his back and in his chest, according to Fernandez and his girlfriend, Yurisel De La Torre. Both were at work at the time.

The suspect, whose name and charges were not released, was arrested a few doors away.

Cassell said the dog’s death was a mistake and the department offered apologies to the family.

“This is an extra unfortunate incident,” he said. “All cops are animal lovers and it hurts us deeply when something like this occurs.”

A next-door neighbor said she never heard Coco bark or growl at the officers.

Sorry, but this is bullshit. If “all cops” were “animal lovers,” they’d learn how to subdue a dog without killing it. This is happening way too often.

CLARIFICATION: Via the comments:

The Mass. Supreme Court is allowing discovery of statutory rape statistics so the defendant can make a defense of vindictive prosecution and possibly have the charges dismissed. This is not civil action against the prosecutor.

Noted.

Looks like it.

A Toledo man says he was wrongfully arrested after Toledo police barged into his home.

A Toledo man says he was wrongfully arrested after Toledo police barged into his home.

Lloyd Williams, 56, has a clean record, except for a few traffic tickets. He admits he was at a friend’s house and had a couple of beers, but says he’s not involved in TPD’s investigation.

Williams says Toledo Vice detectives arrested him for no reason. The Vice and SWAT team raided a home at 1722 Washington last night. Williams lives next door. He says he was coming in the house when he heard the back gate rattle.

He claims vice detectives beat him up, and they handcuffed him. Police charged him with three crimes, including obstructing official business. Police declined to talk about the case because it’s an ongoing investigation.

Williams says he feels the officers violated his rights and his family plans to do something about it. Williams wants the charges against him dropped. He contacted TPD’s Internal Affairs and plans to file a complaint.

This happened 11 days ago. I haven’t seen any follow-up.

Asset forfeiture outrages have been generating great copy for 20 years. The public gets angry, and maybe a few people spotlighted in the local newspaper investigation get some portion of the property back.  But then it’s back to business as usual, at least until the next report.

The latest investigation comes from the San Antonio Express-News, which looked into the lucrative forfeiture practices of the town of Tenaha, Texas. The paper found that though the tiny town of 1,000 seized property from 140 motorists between 2006 and 2008, less than half were charged with an actual crime.

…David Guillory calls the roadside stops and seizures in Tenaha “highway piracy,” undertaken by a couple of law enforcement officers whose agencies get to keep most of what was seized.

Guillory is suing officials in Tenaha and Shelby County on behalf of Dorman and nine other clients whose property was confiscated. All were African-Americans driving either rentals or vehicles with out-of-state plates.

Guillory alleges in the lawsuit that while his clients were detained, they were presented with an ultimatum: waive your rights to your property in exchange for a promise to be released and not be criminally charged.

In one case, they threatened to toss a great-grandmother in a jail cell on drug charges unless she signed over the $4,000 she says were her life savings that police found in her car. According to the Express-News, court records make no mention of any evidence she committed a crime.

It’s not difficult to see why someone would sign such an agreement, given that fighting even bogus charges could end up costing more than the value of the property the government is seizing.

Tenaha’s mayor makes no apologies:

Tenaha Mayor George Bowers, 80, defended the seizures, saying they allowed a cash-poor city the means to add a second police car in a two-policeman town and help pay for a new police station.

“It’s always helpful to have any kind of income to expand your police force,” Bowers said.

Apparently even if you have to steal it at gunpoint.

I’ve always found the “Republican Liberty Caucus” to be a little lacking in the “liberty” department. The gist of the group was to form a coalition of Republicans who differentiated themselves from the fundie wing of the party, and would nudge the party leadership in a direction less obsessed with the culture war.

Several years ago, I took myself off their mailing list after getting a letter from the then-chairman (can’t remember his name) that was mailed to me with an Ayn Rand postage stamp. The letter opened with an appreciate of Rand’s legacy and noted the irony of her being honored with a stamp by a government agency she’d likely have wanted to abolish. But the letter then spent a considerable amount of space denouncing Rand for her godlessness. I’m not a huge fan of Rand, nor do I expect everyone to share my views on religion. I just thought it was an odd way to use the organization’s funds, given its stated mission.

All of which is a roundabout way of pointing out this laughably over-the-top blog post from the RLC’s Illinois chapter website:

President Barack Hussein Obama Jr. continues to nominate persons of ill-repute to his Cabinet and Sub-Cabinet, including a pornography defender and a woman who covered up for her tax cheat husband by lying about the financial obligations to Congress. The lack of ethics of this budding administration is astounding — kind of like a 21st Century version of Roman Emperor Caligula. An orgy of spending, lying and strange sex.

David Ogden is the second person in command in the U.S. office of the Attorney General. Ogden must be confirmed by the Senate.

According to a number of reports, as an attorney in private practice, Ogden filed court briefs:

• Pushing for gays in the military.
• Defending obscenity and pornography cases on behalf of clients like Playboy, Penthouse, and the largest distributor of hardcore pornographic movies.

In various cases, he has also filed briefs opposing:

• Parental notification before a minor’s abortion
• Spousal notification before an abortion
• The military’s policy against public homosexuals serving in uniform
• The Children’s Internet Protection Act and the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act.

This man is a cultural radical. Contrary to liberal dogma, pornography is not a free speech issue. Pornography is degrading to women, and child porno is a crime. Ogden should not be confirmed.

I don’t believe I read the report describing how Ogden wrote a brief in defense of “child porno.”

And Playboy? Really?

Over at Bloomberg, Betsy McCaughey writes about a particularly odious provision slipped into the stimulus bill:

One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis. According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

The bill is vague about what sort of penalties will be imposed on doctors who don’t abide by the recommendations, as well defining the minimum threshold of participation in federal programs that would require a doctor to abide by them. McCaughey says that was intentional, writing that, “In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the ‘tough’ decisions elected politicians won’t make.”

Worse yet…

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Daschle won’t be around to implement his vision, but it apparently lives on for Obama’s next HHS nominee.

It is backdoor but massively intrusive provisions like this one that make the Obama administration’s “there’s no time to debate” push to silence critics and prevent a thorough analysis of this bill all the more troubling.

Reason contributor Trey Garrison looks at the stimulus wish lists of cities in Texas, and finds lots of toys for cops:

• Frisco wants $125,000 for an armored vehicle and $200,000 for a mobile command vehicle. You know, for all that gang tank warfare going on up in Frisco.

• McKinney wants $5 million for SWAT toys and stuff.

• North Richland Hills wants $51,000 for volunteer patrol volunteers. Let’s throw in $10 for a dictionary so they can look up the word “volunteer.”

• Irving wants $5 million for biometric scanners, digital cameras, RFID scanners — nothing Big Brother there.

• Grand Prairie wants $1.25 million for nicer landscaping around the public safety building.

• And finally, Arlington is really gearing up for urban warfare. Arlington wants $1.6 million for SWAT toys like military grade carbines, $625,000 for unmanned aerial surveillance drones, and $130,000 for “covert ops”…more equipment for those deadly but camera-friendly no-knock raids…

It isn’t just in Texas. For example, I’m thinking the last thing Frank “Worst Mayor in America” Melton of Jackson, Mississippi needs is a Bearcat armored tactical vehicle.

Other examples:

• Sparks, Nevada wants $600,000 to purchase a “live fire” house its SWAT team can shoot up, and another $420,000 for a SWAT armored vehicle.

• Pleasanton, California wants $250,000 to buy a vehicle for its SWAT team.

• Gary, Indiana wants $750,000 for a host of “modernization” upgrades to its police department, including “sub-automatic machine guns” and an “armored vehicl” [sic].

• Hampton, Virginia wants a whopping $3.5 million for “Air Tactical Unit Support and Equipment,” which I’m pretty sure means they want a sweet helicopter for the SWAT team.

• Ottawa, Illinois (population: 18,307) wants $60,000 to purchase, among other things, five “tactical entry rifles.”

• Glendale Heights, Illinois wants $96,000 to purchase red light cameras, and another $67,000 to hire someone to monitor them.

• Toward a more Orwellian America!  The following cities requested stimulus funds to supplement, initiate, or upgrade public surveillance camera systems: Brockton, Massachusetts; Buffalo, New York; Burnsville, Minnesota; Caguas, Puerto Rico; Cerritos, California; Columbia, South Carolina; Compton, California; Homestead, Florida; Hormigueros, Puerto Rico; Indianapolis, Indiana; Inglewood, California; Lewiston, Maine; Lorain, Ohio; Lynn, Massachusetts; Marion, Ohio; Merced, California; New Rochelle, New York; North Richland Hills, Texas; Oakland, California; Orange, New Jersey; Orem, Utah; Orlando, Florida; Pembroke Pines, Florida; Ponce, Puerto Rico; Riverdale, Illinois; Shreveport, Louisiana; Silver City, New Mexico; Sumter, South Carolina; Tallahassee, Florida; Warren, Ohio; and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Winston-Salem, North Carolina requested just under $85 million in security-related stimulation. But top prize goes to Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is asking the rest of the country to stimulte its economy with a whopping $135 million in public safety-related requests.

All in all, America’s mayors asking for a little over $5.5 billion in public safety “stimulus.”

So I do appreciate that there are people out there who want to get libertarian ideas into the Internet zeitgest. I also appreciate that some of those people consider this site a good source of material.

But if you’re going to quote me word for word, at least link back here, or note that you’re quoting me.

I’ve noticed this several times at Digg and Reddit over the last six months or so.

The Reason.tv video Mississippi Drug War Blues: The Case of Cory Maye took top prize in the Best Documentary Short category at the Oxford Film Fest. Congratulations to Paul Feine, Roger Richards, and Dan Hayes for their hard work. And of course, props to Drew Carey for making the video possible. You can watch it below.