Borrowing from this Hit & Run comment: It was easier for Obama to fire the CEO of a private company than it is to fire most federal employees.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Forrest Allgood had something to do with this case.

Thanks to “Gonzo” in the comment section for the link.

DNA Evidence Frees Black Man Convicted Of Bear Attack

Sometimes Agitator guest blogger Brooke Oberwetter has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Parks Police officer who arrested her last year. She was arrested while quietly dancing to her iPod during a planned celebration at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Here’s my initial post on the incident last April. And here’s Brooke’s complaint.

She’s represented by libertarian lawyer extraordinaire Alan Gura, a friend of this site, and one of the attorneys who brought the Heller Second Amendment case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

When government entities fail, they get more money and more responsibility. At least when corporations fail, they go out of business.

Oh, wait. Forgot for a sec that the government’s giving them more money too.

Which means’ we’ve reached the point where even jaded libertarian cliches present an inaccurately optimistic picture of what’s going on.

This is good news.

Delegates adopted a bill, on a 126 to 9 vote, that would require law enforcement agencies to report every six months on their use of SWAT teams, including what kinds of warrants the teams serve and whether any animals are killed during raids. The bill was prompted by the case of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo, whose two black Labrador retrievers were shot and killed during a botched raid by a Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team in July.

The Maryland Senate has already passed a similar bill, and there don’t seem to be any foreseeable problems merging the two.

I have to say, the video below is really encouraging. Former DEA chief Asa Hutchinson is the only person on CNBC’s (oddly enormous) panel arguing against legalization. These aren’t stoners or activists. They’re financial reporters and pundits. And they seem to be uniformly in favor of legalizing. This debate has come a long, long, way since the 1980s.

Great piece from former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper on Obama’s derisive dismissal of the marijuana question last week:

Having just returned from Minnesota whose state lawmakers are entertaining a conservative, highly restrictive medical marijuana law, I can tell you what’s not funny to Joni Whiting.

Ms. Whiting told the House’s Public Safety Policy and Oversight Committee of her 26-year-old daughter Stephanie’s two-year battle with facial melanoma that surfaced during the young woman’s third pregnancy. The packed hearing room was dead quiet as Ms. Whiting spoke of Stephanie’s face being cut off “one inch at a time, until there was nothing left to cut.” She spoke of her daughter’s severe nausea, her “continuous and uncontrollable pain.”

Stephanie moved back to her family’s home and “bravely began to make plans for the ending of her life.” The tumors continued to grow, invading the inside and outside of her mouth, as well as her throat and chest. Nausea was a constant companion. Zofran and (significantly) Marinol, the synthetic pill version of THC, did nothing to abate the symptoms. Stephanie began wasting away. She lost all hope of relief.

Joni’s other children approached their mother, begged her to let their sister use marijuana. But Ms. Whiting, a Vietnam veteran whose youngest son recently returned from 18 months in Iraq, was a law-abiding woman. And she was afraid of the authorities. There was no way she would allow the illicit substance in her house. As she held her ground, her grownup kids removed Stephanie from the family home.

Three days later, wracked by guilt, Joni welcomed her daughter back. “I called a number of family members and friends…and asked if they knew of anywhere we could purchase marijuana. The next morning someone had placed a package of it on our doorstep. I have never known whom to thank for it but I remain grateful beyond belief.” The marijuana restored Stephanie’s appetite. It allowed her to eat three meals a day, and to keep the food down. She regained energy and, in the words of her mother, “looked better than I had seen her in months.”

Stephanie survived another 89 days, celebrating both Thanksgiving and Christmas with her family.

Shortly after the holidays, Stephanie’s pain became “so severe that when she asked my husband and me to lie down on both sides of her and hold her, she couldn’t stand the pain of us touching her body.”

Stephanie died on January 14, 2003 in the room she grew up in, holding her mother’s hand. A mother who, as she told the legislative committee, would “have no problem going to jail for acquiring medical marijuana for my suffering child.”

This part was interesting, too:

When I finished my testimony, a local police chief, a member of the committee, angrily accused me of disrespecting the police officers in the room–who’d shown up in force, in uniform, to oppose medical marijuana. Wearing a bright yellow tie with the lettering “Police Line, Do Not Cross,” the chief charged me with placing more stock in the opinions of doctors than of Minnesota’s cops. Guilty, as charged. Who are we, I asked him, to substitute our judgment for that of medical professionals and their patients?

The hearing was about the law regarding the medical use of marijuana. You’re damned right we should put more stock in the opinions of doctors than of cops on that question. That the police chief and his cadre of uniformed officers would think otherwise, and that he would chastise a former cop for daring to suggest as much, shows an incredible amount of hubris.

Just realized I forgot to give you a song this week.

Let’s go with “Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation,” by the great Joe Henry. About halfway through, listen for an amazing solo by the late sax icon Ornette Coleman. The song is from Henry’s transfixing, genre-bending CD, Scar, which you can buy here.

MORE: Egad. Coleman is still alive! My apologies for burying him prematurely. And thanks to Evan in the comments for correcting me.

Let’s start on the left, where Keith Olbermann oddly named Twitter his “Worst Person in the World” for setting up a false account in his name (then somehow managed to blame Fox News for it all). Turns out, the account had been operated for months by . . . Olbermann’s employer, MSNBC.

Then there’s Bill O’Reilly, who sent one of his producers to creepily stake out, stalk, and harass ThinkProgress writer Amanda Terkel . . . at a conference for victims of rape. O’Reilly was apparently speaking at the conference, and ThinkProgress had the temerity to protest, given that O’Reilly in the past has made the “she was asking for it” argument about a rape victim or two (not to mention that he’s been subject to his own sexual harassment allegations). The stalking is particularly hypocritical given that . . . well, I’ll just let John Stewart explain:

Drug War Joe Biden’s daughter may have been caught on video snorting cocaine.

Can’t wait for Biden’s press conference on Monday, where he’ll call for all of the draconian laws he has sponsored over the years to be fully enforced against his kid, including the forfeiture of all of her property, and the use of the videotape as probable cause for a Byrne Grant-funded multi-jurisdictional SWAT team to raid her home in the middle of the night. At that point, Biden will call for the local cops will turn her case over to the feds, who, per Biden’s own favored policies over the years, will then liberally apply RICO and conspiracy statutes to find some way, any way, to rope her in on federal drug-related charges so she can then get hit with the applicable federal mandatory minimum prison sentence.

Chickens. Home. Roosting. All that.

Kidding, of course. Drug Czar Joe will probably just issue a press statement declaring that this is a “family” or “private” matter, and that he has no further comment. And his daughter will get preferential treatment. Just like all the other drug warriors who have had family caught breaking their precious drug laws.

Nothing like a little preventative police state.

Officers from numerous police departments charged into Wethersfield High School Thursday to hunt for drugs.

Armed with police dogs, officers from Wethersfield, Rocky Hill, Manchester and New Britain raided the high school at 411 Wolcott Hill Road.

Locker by locker and room by room, police and their dogs sniffed around to send the school district’s message that drugs will not be taken lightly.

Police also searched more than 100 cars in the school’s parking lot, which led to the arrest of one student for drug paraphernalia.

Police ended up not finding any drugs, and that lone arrest is something School Superintendent Michael  Kohlhagen is proud of…

Kohlhagen said Thursday’s raid proves that Wethersfield High School is safe and drug free.

That’s not all it proves.

Just when you think the right has out-dumbed itself, someone on the left writes something like this.

I’m all about ridiculously indulgent food, but this just looks disgusting.

This is so unbelievably stupid.

You can’t exploit yourself. And in what twisted world do you protect children from making bad decisions by arresting them and charging them with child pornography?

And here’s one where the girls weren’t even actually nude:

The picture that investigators from the office of District Attorney George P. Skumanick of Wyoming County had was taken two years earlier at a slumber party. It showed Marissa and a friend from the waist up. Both were wearing bras.

Mr. Skumanick said he considered the photo “provocative” enough to tell Marissa and the friend, Grace Kelly, that if they did not attend a 10-hour class dealing with pornography and sexual violence, he was considering filing a charge of sexual abuse of a minor against both girls. If convicted, they could serve time in prison and would probably have to register as sex offenders.

This shouldn’t be a law enforcement issue. It’s a parent issue. You aren’t protecting these kids by arresting them and threatening them. You’re damaging them.

Andrew Sullivan chides Obama for his churlish response to questions about decriminalizing marijuana earlier today. Sullivan writes that the issue is “deadly serious.”

James Poulous then mocks Sullivan for elevating pot prohibition to “deadly serious” status.

I like Poulous. But his derision is misplaced. There have been 7,000 homicides in Mexico over the last two years, the vast majority directly related to black market drug trade. Seventy percent of Mexico’s black market drug rade is marijuana.

If Poulous wants to stick closer to home, one of his commenters notes that had Cheye Calvo exercised his Second Amendment rights when Prince George’s County police wrongly raided his home last summer on the mistaken assumption he was dealing marijuana, he’d almost certainly be dead. Instead, he was merely terrorized, and his dogs were slaughtered. A couple of weeks ago, unarmed Grand Valley State student Derek Kopp was shot in the chest during a marijuana raid. He’s lucky to be alive.

But we don’t need to single out “almost” cases. Det. Jarrod Shivers is dead and Ryan Frederick’s life is ruined over the prohibition of pot. Officer Ron Jones is dead, and Cory Maye, once sentenced to be executed, now faces a life sentence because of marijuana prohibition. Cheryl Lynn Noel is dead because of pot prohibition. So are Jose Colon, Tony Martinez, 13-year-old Alberto Sepulveda, Willie Heard, Christie Green, Pedro Navarro, Barry Hodge, Salvador Hernandez, Donald Scott, Kenneth Baulch, Dep. John Bananola, Officer Tony Patterson, Vincent Hodgkiss, Anthony Diotaiuto, Clayton Helriggle, Jeffery Robinson, Troy Davis, Alexander “Rusty” Windle, John Hirko, Scott Bryant, Robert Lee Peters, Manuel Ramirez, and Bruce Lavoie. Deputies James Moulson and Phillip Anderson and suspect George Timothy Williams were all killed in a single marijuana raid in Idaho in 2001. Officer Arthur Parga and Manuel Ramirez (a different one) killed one another in another marijuana raid after a family friend suspected of dealing marijuana had incorrectly given police Ramirez’s address as his own.

These are just some of the deaths associated with marijuana raids (all summarized, with sources, here).  Then there is the domestic black market violence that comes with marijuana prohibition. And the unnecessary deaths of sick people (like Peter McWilliams) who might have lived if they’d had access to medical marijuana.

So yeah. I think “deadly serious” is about right, actually.

I just had a long conversation with Atlanta TV reporter Dale Russell about his report on Georgia State Medical Examiner Kris Sperry.

Russell contends that the gist of his report was that Sperry has been violating the terms of his contract with the state, which stipulate that he can’t ever contradict a local medical examiner while freelancing in other cases. He says the fact that Sperry signed the contract, then violated it, calls into question his credibility as an expert witness. Russell says he doesn’t necessarily disagree with me that the clause itself is a problem, or that medical examiners should be actually be encouraged to testify for the defense when appropriate, but that that wasn’t the focus of his story. Sperry violating the terms of his contract was the focus.

We both then civilly articulated our positions to one another, but I don’t think either of us walked away convinced. The story did mention Sperry’s contract several times. But I still think the overriding message you walk away with after viewing it is that there’s something inherently wrong with a state medical examiner contradicting another state medical examiner in a criminal case—a position repudiated by every major medical and forensic science organization. The statements from local officials in Mississippi and Tennessee to that effect went unchallenged (Russell says he had a difficult time finding a medical examiner who would repudiate those positions on camera).

I guess my other complaint is that Sperry’s violation of a clause in his contract seems like a relatively minor story when compared the transgressions of the medical examiners he violated his contract to testify against over the last 20 years (mainly Hayne, but there are others). I don’t know all of the facts of the two cases mentioned in the report. The way they were reported make it seem like Sperry’s opinions were a little out there. But who knows. I do know that I haven’t heard a bad word about Sperry from the doctors I’ve talked to over the last few years, both at the National Association of Medical Examiners and across the south.

I get the impression that there has long been a sort of casual acceptance at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that this was going on. That is, the clause may have always been there, but it was never really enforced. The real problem is that the state insists on including such clause in the first place.

In any case, I wanted to note that Russell called to emphasize that the intent of his story was to focus on Sperry’s contract violations, not the broader issues about medical examiners testifying for the defense.

Lovely exercise in community relations by one of Dallas’ finest.

So remember the Oklahoma sheriff’s deputy who killed a woman’s dog after stopping to ask for directions?

Here’s the video:

Not only wasn’t Deputy Sean Knight fired after that incident, he was actually promoted.

But it doesn’t end there. It turns out that another Sheriff’s Deupty named Michael Laffoon was moonlighting as a security manager at a local private golf club.  Laffoon got Knight a job working security at the club. Knight was later shown to have falsified his timesheets at that position. Meaning he was essentially stealing money from the golf club. Laffoon fired Knight from the secuirty gig, but took no disciplenary action against him as a sheriff’s deputy.

The kicker comes when the local newspaper asked the sheriff what he makes of all of this:

Sheriff Art Kell said, “I have enough to worry about with this other deputy stealing from the department to start an investigation over another deputy who may have falsified timesheets… until they break the law, I’m not going to get involved. I’ve had enough bad media press to deal with to start this up.”

Kell said that Winter Creek should have filed charges on Knight if they were concerned about stealing of company time, and added, “what my guys do on their own time is their own business, not mine, unless they break a policy or law.”

When asked if falsifying timesheets and stealing are against the law, Kell said, “Law, I don’t know of any law that says you can’t falsify time sheets at a golf course, so no. And if you (Reporter Mike Friend) want to keep asking me questions on this issue you’ll just damage any good relationship I have with the paper. You can’t tell me you don’t ever speed while you’re driving down the road, or that you don’t break the law and sin… so why is this such a big deal if the deputy was not working on department time? If I start calling you and asking you questions about your crimes and sins we’ll see how much you like it.”

The county is expected to settle with the owner of the dog in the video above for $15,000.

(Via Popehat)

Just a week after Attorney General Eric Hold announced he was calling off raids on medical marijuana dispensaries so long as the complied with state law . . . another medical marijuana raid:

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided Emmalyn’s California Cannabis Clinic at 1597 Howard St. in San Francisco’s South of Market district mid-afternoon.

They hauled out large plastic bins overflowing with marijuana plants and loaded several pickup trucks parked out front with grow lights and related equipment used to farm the plants indoors.

The dispensary had been operating with a temporary permit issued by the Department of Public Health.

“Based on our investigation, we believe there are not only violations of federal law, but state law as well,” DEA Special Agent in Charge Anthony Williams said in a prepared statement.

[...]

A source in San Francisco city government who was informed about the raid said the DEA’s action appeared to be prompted by alleged financial improprieties related to the payment of sales taxes. DEA Special Agent Casey McEnry, spokeswoman for the local office, would not comment on that information.

The clear implication of Holder’s statement last week was that the feds were going to defer to state medical marijuana laws. That doesn’t exactly jibe with sending in the DEA storm troopers because a medical marijuana dispensary underpaid or didn’t pay its state sales taxes.

Meanwhile, reader Cory Spicer emailed this afternoon:

I am watching Obama’s “online town hall” speech and I am thoroughly disgusted.

A couple days ago he opened up a forum for users to submit and vote on questions. Several of the categories had questions relating to marijuana/drug law reform as their leading vote-getters, including the most popular overall question (in terms of both total votes and yes/no spread). So how did he react?

Well, first he answered four questions that received fewer votes. Then, before the fifth question was asked, he mentioned as a somewhat snarky aside that the marijuana question was “very popular”. The audience laughed a bit, and Obama joked about how he wasn’t “sure what that says about the online community” (this got a big laugh).

Then, he gave an unequivocal “no, I don’t believe that legalizing marijuana would help our economy”, offering no elaboration or supporting facts. The audience then gave him the heartiest round of applause for the day, and he then moved on to other, less popular questions.

I didn’t see the Town Hall, but if true, this is pretty galling. Politicians regularly dismiss legalization arguments out of hand, but can never offer a good explanation for their position. Obama’s “explanation” seems to be to laugh it off, and hope it goes away. It isn’t just stoners making the case for legalization anymore. It’s the Economist, it’s Foreign Policy, it’s a sizable cadre of respected economists, it’s the former presidents of Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. If Obama’s going to continue the failed drug war, particularly the prohibition of marijuana, he ought to come up with a good reason why.