Easily the coolest thing I’ve ever seen . . . that involves sheep.

Light-Up Sheep Art – Watch more Funny Videos

Last week, I blogged about the Bush administration’s 300 percent tariff on Roquefort cheese, and the righteous Jeffersonian rant in response from Jill Erber, owner of the Cheesetique here in Alexandria.

Caleb Brown and Austin Bragg made a nice little video about it all.

The movie American Violet opens next month, and is based on the real-life experience of Regina Kelly, a waitress wrongly arrested and charged during a disastrous drug sweep in Hearne, Texas back in 2000. Kelly was one of 28 people arrested. Her refusal to accept a plea bargain eventually helped expose that District Attorney John Paschall case for the massive sweep was a sham, based almost entirely on the word of a pathological informant (who also claims he was beaten by police). Paschall promised his informant he’d drop the theft charges pending against him if the informant could produce information that would lead to 20 drug arrests.

Even after his case fell apart and Paschall had no choice to drop the charges against those who hadn’t alread plead guilty, he refused to exonerate anyone, telling the New York Times that of those charged, "I don’t doubt one minute their guilt in dealing drugs.” Paschall is still district attorney, and he’s not particularly happy about the movie. He told the Dallas Morning News, "The only way I’d watch it, I’d have to be handcuffed, tied to a chair and you’d have to tape my eyes open."

Like the series of wrongful drug arrests in Tulia, Texas, the Hearne scandal was largely attributable to the federal Byrne Grant program, which not only creates the unaccountable, multi-jurisdictional drug task forces like those responsible for Hearne and Tulia, but then also sets artificial, improper incentives by tying future funding to the number of arrests and drug seizures a task force makes. Oddly enough, the Bush administration actually phased out Byrne Grants. Obama and the Democrats in Congress are bringing them back.

I interviewed Regina Kelly a couple of years ago at an ACLU conference:

This is Joe the Plumber. He spoke at the Media Research Center’s annual “we hate the Em-Ess-Em” party this week. The Media Research Center’s founder is Brent Bozell III, who ostensibly gave the okay to have celebrity Joe come speak at the big gala. Bozell’s late father is L. Brent Bozell, Jr., an erudite, scholarly fellow who attended Yale with William F. Buckley, Jr. and ghost wrote Barry Goldwater’s classic tome The Conscience of a Conservative.

Though I’d have disagreed with Bozell’s father and Goldwater on a number of issues, I have to say, it’s too bad that the ideas-driven, intellectual old right lost its grip on the conservative movement. That Joe the Plumber is one of the right’s biggest celebrities and most in-demand speakers right now is a pretty sad commentary. It’s been a long, hard fall from “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice….and….moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” to, “God, all this love in the room and everything. I’m horny.”

The state of New Jersey wants to ban Brazilians. Not the people, but the style of bikini wax.

Spa owner Linda Orsuto, who owns 800 West Salon & Spa in Cherry Hill, estimates that most of 1,800 bikini waxes performed at her business last year were Brazilian-style.

“It’s huge,” she said, adding that her customers don’t think their bikini lines are anyone’s business but their own. “It’s just not right.”

She said many customers would likely travel across state lines to get it and some might even try to wax themselves.

Worse, when back-alley cosmetologists do get busted, the wax will probably test positive for marijuana.

Via the superbly-named blog, Popehat.

“Carmelita,” by the late, great Warren Zevon.

Listen here.

Another shining moment for government paternalism.

From the Philadelphia Daily News, this one will make your blood boil:

ON A SWELTERING July afternoon in 2007, Officer Jeffrey Cujdik and his narcotics squad members raided an Olney tobacco shop.

Then, with guns drawn, they did something bizarre: They smashed two surveillance cameras with a metal rod, said store owners David and Eunice Nam.

The five plainclothes officers yanked camera wires from the ceiling. They forced the slight, frail Korean couple to the vinyl floor and cuffed them with plastic wrist ties.

“I so scared,” said Eunice Nam, 56. “We were on floor. Handcuffs on me. I so, so scared, I wet my pants.”

The officers rifled through drawers, dumped cigarette cartons on the floor and took cash from the registers. Then they hauled the Nams to jail.

The Nams were arrested for selling tiny ziplock bags that police consider drug paraphernalia, but which the couple described as tobacco pouches.

When they later unlocked their store, the Nams allege, they discovered that a case of lighter fluid and handfuls of Zippo lighters were missing. The police said they seized $2,573 in the raid. The Nams say they actually had between $3,800 and $4,000 in the store.

The Nams’ story is strikingly similar to those told by other mom-and-pop store owners, from Dominicans in Hunting Park to Jordanians in South Philadelphia.

It goes on like that, detailing story after story in which this rogue squad of thugs raided an immigrant-owned grocery store, terrorized the shopkeepers, cut the wires to security cameras, then helped themselves to the inventory. In one case, a grocery owner says the same narcotics squad came back for a second raid, but not to look for drugs. They came to confiscate a surveillance video from the first raid, a video that apparently captured the likeness of one of the cops just before he cut the camera’s wires.

Also, is it really illegal to sell small plastic bags in Philadelphia? Even if that’s the case, it obviously wouldn’t justify these tactics. But as Jacob Sullum explained in the February issue or Reason, generally speaking, for an otherwise innocuous product to be considered illegal paraphernalia, it would need to be sold in close proximity to something related to illicit drugs, or found in conjunction with an actual illicit substance. Perhaps Philadelphia has a specific law prohibiting the bags, but if it does, that wasn’t mentioned in the article.

MORE: Per the comments, this isn’t the first time Officer Cujdik’s name has been in the news.

They’re pulling ads for the Angelina Jolie movie Wanted, because the ads “”could be seen to condone violence by glorifying or glamorizing the use of guns.”

You know, back when I was 13 or 14, I seem to remember having a dream about hundreds of hot, desperate models fighting one another.

I’m out the rest of the day.

So please feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

Some speaking engagements I have coming up:

Pretty strong performances all around tonight. Here’s how I’d rank them:

Adam Lambert

I’m sure Johnny Cash die-hards were aghast. I thought the sitar, Reznor-ification of “Ring of Fire” was incredible. Shades of Jeff Buckley and Robert Plant. There’s someone else his falsetto reminds me of, and it’s driving me nuts that I can’t put my finger on it. The guy has amazing, amazing range, and in terms of artistry, is miles ahead of everyone else right now.

Allison Iraheta

Love that gruff voice. And she oozes confidence, especially for her age. Little worried that she won’t get the votes to match her skills. Ideally, she’ll bow out in the final three or four, so she can put out a better album.

Matt Giraud

I like this guy a lot. You can see the piano bar history in him. I just wish he’d stop singing songs made famous by women. Of all the great country songs that would have shown off his bluesy vibe, he goes with a schmaltzy Carrie Underwood song.

Danny Gokly

Probably the co-favorite with Lambert right now. Another one I wish would pick better songs. The guy really does have some soul, but he–again–needs to stop picking songs first recorded by women. And please, nothing more that you’d hear on an adult contemporary station.

Anoop Desai

I don’t know that he has the talent to last too much longer, but he did very well tonight.

Kris Allen

He did well, I’m just not a fan. Something about his stage presence irks me. He has John Mayer mannerisms. And I’m really not a John Mayer fan. He’ll probably do well, though. He seems to be the teen girl favorite right now.

Alexis Grace

She’s fallen pretty fast. “Jolene” is one of my favorite songs. She just didn’t sell it. The song drips with vulnerability. She’s still playing up her sexuality to get votes. That’s smart (and she can sing, too), but it just didn’t click with this particular song.

Lil Rounds

Not a great week for her, but for an R&B singer trying country, she passed. Will be interesting to see how the vote comes down tomorrow. She might be in trouble, and if so, could be an early candidate for the new “judges’ save” option.

Megan Joy

Just too quirky for me. Her song tonight was okay, but every time she sings, it feels like a gimmick.

Scott MacIntyre

The guy has a nice story, but I think he might be in trouble. He could have a fine career as the second coming of Bruce Hornsby. But right now, all of his songs sounds the same (come to think of it, so do Bruce Hornsby’s). I’ve actually been a little surprised the last couple weeks at how much I don’t like his voice. I thought he’d be one of my favorites coming out of Hollywood.

Michael Sarver

He’s a likable guy, and country-oriented contestants tend to last through the early rounds on this show. But I thought he and MacIntyre were the two worst of the night.

If I had to guess, I’d say Lil Rounds and Megan Joy get the boot tomorrow. And the judges may well give Rounds the pass.

I know I speak for many when I say, I wish there was some way I could get instructions from America’s top TV blowhard on how to properly perform cunnilingus. Or on how to seduce a woman by grabbing her by the breasts. I’ve also always wondered what it might be like to hear Papa Bear O’Reilly exclaim those forbidden words we’ve all uttered to ourselves from time to time: “I wish I were a lesbian.”

I know I’m not alone. And I have good news, friends.

Our day has finally arrived.

Abe Pafford and Ben Vernia, two members of Cory Maye’s defense team, will join us at 8pm ET tonight for a live chat.

Stop by with your questions about Cory’s case and his appeal, now pending at the Mississippi Court of Appeals.

Here are the briefs for Maye’s appeal:

• Maye’s appellate brief.

• The state’s answer.

• Maye’s reply.

Here’s the award-winning Reason.tv documentary on Cory Maye’s case:

Last month in the Weekly Standard, Harvard criminologist William Stuntz made the case for a “surge”-like movement of law enforcement personnel into inner-city neighborhoods.

The war in Iraq bears more than a passing resemblance to the battle against violent street gangs in the roughest parts of American cities. The tactics Petraeus used to win that war are eerily similar to the tactics the best police chiefs use to rein in gang violence. But better tactics alone cannot do the job. In Boston as in Baghdad, those tactics work only if the police forces that use them have enough personnel: lots of police boots on the most violent ground.

Today, that condition is not satisfied. Most American cities are underpoliced, many of them seriously so. Instead of following the Bush/Petraeus strategy, the United States has sought to control crime by using small police forces to punish as many criminals as possible. As all those who have even a passing familiarity with contemporary crime statistics know, that approach–call it “efficient punishment”–does not work. Like the Army in pre-surge Iraq, the nation’s criminal justice system is in a state of crisis. America needs another surge, this one on home territory.

I don’t entirely disagree with Stuntz. There is some academic support for the idea that more cops on the streets can lead to a reduction in crime. And I’m certainly with him when he argues that throwing astronomically high numbers of people in prison isn’t a healthy way to deal with crime.

But if we’re going to put more cops on the streets, we need to emphasizing the right kind of policing, where cops become an active part of their communities. The problem with policing today isn’t so much a lack of personnel, it’s that it’s plagued by a structure of perverse incentives and a lack of accountability and transparency, problems driven by 40 years of get-tough-on-crime rhetoric and war imagery from politicians and law-and-order activists. Police departments have become driven by statistics (a mentality exacerbated by competitive federal grants, like Byrne Grants, that hinge on arrest and seizure data). Stuntz doesn’t mention the drug war, which I’d argue is not only a huge contributor to inner city violence, but the driving force behind most of these improper incentives. But let’s put that aside. My intent here isn’t necessarily to debate drug prohibition, though it lurks behind much of the discussion.

The problems accompanying the fact that there are entire communities who no longer trust the police charged with protecting them aren’t going to go away once we put more cops in the neighborhood. That will likely only make things worse. We first need a major overhaul in the way police interact with the communities they serve. Policing has become too reactionary, too aggressive, too us-versus-them. Bad cops are in the minority, but good cops cover for them. And far too many officers subscribe to a soldier’s mentality, and take too literally the idea that theyr’e fighting a “war” on drugs or crime. It’s a toxic state of mind that older officers will tell you (and have told me) is more and more common, even as violent crime and the number of officers killed in the line of duty have plummeted.

Incentives matter. Ideas matter. And all of this war rhetoric and anything-goes policies from elected officials has undoubtedly affected officer psychology, and poisoned the relationships between many police departments and their communities.

This is where Stuntz’s own rhetoric is unhelpful. Chicago isn’t Baghdad. U.S. cities aren’t battlefields, and the cops who patrol city streets aren’t soldiers. Residents of high-crime areas aren’t potential insurgents or enemy combatants. They’re American citizens with constitutional rights. Cops and soldiers have decidedly different missions, and it’s dangerous to conflate them.

The oddest (and, frankly, most revealing) part of Stuntz’s piece is his choice of anecdotes to illustrate his point: Cheye Calvo.

The Washington Post Magazine recently ran a story about the mayor of Berwyn Heights, a small town in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The county police executed a drug raid on the mayor’s house; the raid turned up no evidence but left Mayor Calvo and his wife traumatized; among other things, the police shot and killed the couple’s two dogs. Even the best police forces sometimes act on bad tips. But those mistakes are fewer when officers are numerous enough to know the communities in which they work. And the errors that remain are less costly when the police force is sufficiently well staffed that an ordinary house search does not resemble a military action. Nationwide, the number of local police officers per 100,000 population stands at 245; in New York City at its peak size in 1999, the NYPD employed 561 officers per 100,000. In Prince George’s County, the number is 195. Given a larger police force, Calvo’s dogs might still live. So might his trust in the decency of his community’s law enforcement personnel.

I don’t think Stuntz fully understands what happened to Calvo. The Prince George’s County police department has a long and troubled history when it comes to misconduct, corruption, and improper use of force. Up until earlier this year, the department had been monitored by the U.S. Department of Justice for more than a decade. Officers who break the law in PG County are routinely given third and fourth and fifth chances. PG County police are notorious for being quick on the draw, quick with the use of force, and quick to clear fellow officers of any wrongdoing.

These problems, and the problems with the raid on Calvo’s home, have nothing to do with being short-staffed. If you have the personnel to scope out Calvo’s house for hours, to intercept a package at a shipping warehouse, to send an undercover cop dressed a delivery man to put it on a Calvo’s doorstep, and then to send a SWAT team storming into his home, you have the personnel to do the minimal investigation it would have required to discover that there was a high likelihood that the mayor and his family weren’t dealing drugs. They didn’t even bother to notify the police chief of Berwyn Heights before conducting the raid, as they were required to do by law. That small step alone, which would taken all of five minutes, would have prevented the raid.

Instead, they pounced. Though they were aware of a scheme involving sending packages of drugs to innucous addresses, they still commenced with a full-on, no-knock, door-busting, guns blazing drug raid immediately after Calvo’s mother-in-law accepted the package. The maximum possible use of force was the first option, not the last. Calvo and his mother-in-law were treated with contempt, even after it should have been abundantly clear to police that they had made a mistake. When the PG County cops finally got around to contacting the Berwyn Heights police chief, the head narcotics officer blatantly lied to him, telling the local chief that Clavo himself came to the door, then quickly slammed it shut when he saw the cops were coming. None of that was true.

Contrast this to Calvo’s own cops in Berwyn Heights, who take a community policing approach to law enforcement. Calvo makes his officers attend neighborhood meetings and little league games. They know the community they serve. One of his officers showed up on the scene and immediately recognized that the mayor’s house had been raided, and that something was terribly wrong. He tried to inform the PG County cops that they’d made a mistake. They brushed him off.

In the ensuing weeks, officials in Prince George’s County absurdly praised the “restraint” and “compassion” in how Calvo was treated. They defended their tactics, from the lack of any significant investigation before raiding, to the quick use of maximum force, to their failure to notify local authorities, to the quick dispatch of Calvo’s pets. To this day, they haven’t apologized for the senseless slaughter of Calvo’s dogs. In fact, they said if they had to do it all again, they’d do it the same way. County Executive Jack Johnson perversely said that everyone inovlved in the raid deserves “a pat on the back.” At the same time, they have stonewalled Calvo’s attempts to access information about his case.

These problems don’t originate from being short-staffed. They’re fundamentally flawed notions of a police department’s proper relationship with the community it serves. They’re borne of a policing mentality that looks at potential drug offenders as combatants with no rights, not citizens who are innocent until proven guilty. Killing Calvo’s dogs wasn’t a safety precaution. The position of the dogs’ bodies and the location of their wounds puts the lie to the cops’ contention that the dogs engaged them. In any case, these cops were dressed in tactical gear. Killing Calvo’s pets was part terror tactic and part callous disregard for the humanity of suspected drug offenders.

Cheye Calvo’s case doesn’t illlustrate Stuntz’ argument for more cops. It does, however, pretty clearly illustrate the end result of this continuing problem of using war imagery and tactics in domestic law enforcement.

Finally, this point from Stuntz is worth addressing:

Even the best police forces sometimes act on bad tips. But those mistakes are fewer when officers are numerous enough to know the communities in which they work. And the errors that remain are less costly when the police force is sufficiently well staffed that an ordinary house search does not resemble a military action. Nationwide, the number of local police officers per 100,000 population stands at 245; in New York City at its peak size in 1999, the NYPD employed 561 officers per 100,000.

That’s simply not true. When police departments are better staffed, they merely conduct more raids. They don’t serve warrants with less aggressive tactics, nor is there much evidence that they’re less likely to make mistakes. From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, while NYPD was at what Stuntz calls its “peak size,” there was a flury of stories in the city’s newspapers about mistaken drug raids. Here’s a typical article, from May 1998 in the New York Times:

As Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s administration has stepped up its anti-drug initiatives, forcing many low-level dealers off the sidewalks and into apartments, the Police Department has doubled the number of narcotics search warrants it executes each year, to 2,977 last year from 1,447 in 1994.

Most of these are no-knock warrants, which authorize the police to break down doors without warning. The police say that a vast majority of raids yield drugs. But in a number of recent cases, the police have broken down doors and searched homes only to find terrified, confused families.

In at least a half-dozen cases in the last year alone, people who say that the police wrongly raided their homes have filed or announced plans to file multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the city. In each case, the search warrants were based largely, if not solely, on the word of confidential informers, who are criminals seeking to trade what they know for reduced charges, shorter sentences or cash.

The Times piece barely scratched the surface. Five years later, we’d learn of many more botched raids over this period in the aftermath of the mistaken raid that killed 57-year-old Alberta Spruill.

From a 2003 Village Voice piece after Spruill’s death:

Until Spruill’s death, the NYPD had done nothing to stem the number of incidents, despite receiving a memo from the Citizen’s Complaint Review Board (CCRB) in January noting the high number of raid complaints. Last March, the NAACP also approached NYPD commissioner Raymond W. Kelly about the raids…

Just 24 hours after the City Council meeting . . . [d]ozens of black and Latino victims—nurses, secretaries, and former officers—packed her chambers airing tales, one more horrifying than the next. Most were unable to hold back tears as they described police ransacking their homes, handcuffing children and grandparents, putting guns to their heads, and being verbally (and often physically) abusive. In many cases, victims had received no follow-up from the NYPD, even to fix busted doors or other physical damage.

All of this was happening over a period in which NYPD had a historically high ratio of cops to residents. So again, the problem isn’t staffing, it’s the drug war mentality, and the fact that the complete disregard for the humanity of drug suspects is turning cops against their communities, and communities against their cops.  From the same Voice piece:

“What guarantees that even if new procedures are followed, there is going to be a sense of humanity and sensitivity in how you respond to innocent victims?” she asked. In an alarming percentage of stories, victims complained of police laughing at them while they were face down with guns to their heads—and some described nasty debasements, including one officer allegedly urinating in a pitcher of iced tea in a victim’s refrigerator…

In the meantime, victims are becoming increasingly agitated. One raid victim, Orlando Russell, said he “used to be an upstanding citizen,” but now “any cop walking in without an invitation better have a body bag.”

By the way, shortly after Spruill’s death, activists in New York City pushed for a drug raid sunshine law somewhwat similar to the one Cheye Calvo is now pushing for in Maryland. The city initially agreed, then renegged a couple of years later. The botched raids continued.

So because there’s some heart disease in my family, and my last checkup showed some mildly high blood pressure and cholesterol, I’ve been taking a fish oil Omega 3 supplement.

The other day at Costco, they were handing out samples of an Omega 3 supplement made from an extract from the seeds of cranberries. The stuff was delicious (you only take a fluid ounce per day), and has the advantage of not making my mouth taste like fish for half the day.

But something about it set off my scam alarm. Anyone out there know if the stuff is legit? The first 10 or so pages of Google seem to be from companies selling some version of the stuff.

Last week, I posted a story about how the state of Pennsylvania is spending $170,000 in taxpayer money to train the employees of its state-owned wine and liquor stores to be nice to their customers. It’s a relatively tiny amount of money, but still a bizarre expenditure given the state’s massive deficit, and the fact Pennsylvania has a government monopoly on the sale of wine and spirits.

New development: The president of the consulting firm that won the contract is married to a high-ranking official with the state’s liquor control board (his wife is one of the state’s three regional managers). Liquor board officials insist there’s nothing improper about the contract.

Show your work in the comments section.

My answer, by the way, is the Ninth and the Fourteenth. It’s the only proper interpretation of what a Constitution does: It delegates certain powers to the government that first belonged to the people. The people retain the full range of rights and freedoms save for those necessary to allow the government to function with the boundaries set forth by the Constitution.

As for the Tenth, I’m all for federalism, but a state or local government shouldn’t be permitted to violate the fundamental rights of its citizens.