Daffy gets drafted.
Some beautiful night photography. Favorite night photos taken by your humble Agitator here, here, here, here, and here.
If you’re wondering, yes, Obama is spending a hell of a lot worse than Bush. And Bush was the biggest spender since LBJ–by some estimates since FDR.
California judge orders police to return confiscated marijuana to medical marijuana patient.
Terrific editorial in the Wall Street Journal on red light and speed cameras, traffic safety, and motorist freedom.
Vermont may legalize “sexting” to prevent teens from being prosecuted as sex offenders for “exploiting” themselves. Seems odd to pass a law explicitly allowing minors to send around nude photos of themselves. But when police and prosecutors can’t be trusted to show proper discretion and restraint in these cases, laws like this one become necessary.
Walter Olson has more on the Food Safety Modernization Act of Food,” which some are calling the “CSPIA for food.” In other words, your local farmer’s market, artisinal food boutique, and bake sale may soon be subject to expensive new federal regulations.
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on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 8:59 am by Radley Balko
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The Looney Tunes cartoon shows the extent and power of the federal government, no? Probably have to pay taxes in Hell as well. I wonder if pitchforks are deductible….
I like the photos, Radley… I didn’t realize that you dabbled in photography. I’m surprised I don’t see more “police harass guy taking pictures” articles here, because they happen quite frequently.
/Not a photographer, but support freedom to take pictures in public
The head of wiredsafety.org, says minors can be charged with child pornography, so parents need to call police if an explicit picture of your child is on the Internet. If you don’t get action, contact your attorney general’s office.
I can not think of a worse thing to do if you find pics of your kid on the internet. Awesome idea: make them a sex offender for the rest of their lives.
Farking retards.
“But when police and prosecutors can’t be trusted to show proper discretion and restraint in these cases, laws like this one become necessary. “
Prosecutors can’t be trusted, period. But more importantly, legislators shouldn’t be writing laws that assume they can be trusted when they have repeatedly and consistently shown that the majority of them don’t have the integrity of an amoeba.
The link to the CA judge forcing the police to return the marijuana is broken
Roger X, I think the logic goes something like this:
Terrorists take pictures, therefore people who take pictures are probably terrorists.
It’s especially true of you have a big obvious camera with all kinds of equipment and are being particularly slow and meticulous in finding a unique and interesting angle and carefully bracing the camera against a light pole so you can use a slow shutter speed. That’s precisely what terrorists do because they would hate to stand out like the thousands of anonymous tourists who shoot with tiny digital high resolution pocket cameras.
They harass me sometimes, but that might be because my camera looks like a tripod-mounted rocket launcher (another favorite tool terrorists like to stole around with over their shoulder).
It didn’t sink in for me until I read Ben’s comment above. If I find a picture of my child on the Internet (child naked in the picture), then I have child pornography. I’m not likely going to find pornographic pictures of my child unless I’m looking for them, and in that case I would likely have to sift through images of other children.
Can’t you just imagine how the police report is going to read from there?
Were you looking for child pornography, sir?
That’s right; I don’t want to be too technical, but the focal length of the lens is directly correlated with hatred of America. It goes something like this:
You have a a cell phone camera, point and shoot, or 20mm wide angle lens: you are a red blooded American who wants to celebrate our national heritage by taking pictures of popular tourist locations.
A 50mm lens: you are also, by and large, a good American, but you have a disturbing interest in “understanding” the terrorists and why they attack us.
An 85mm lens: you loath your own country and secretly admire the 9/11 hijackers for giving us our come-up-ins. You are not a terrorist, but your camera should probably be confiscated and your pictures deleted, lest they find their way to al Jazeera message boards. Your middle name may be Hussein.
A 200mm lens: you are an al Qaeda henchman actively scouting for security vulnerabilities.
A 300mm lens: you ARE bin Laden!
And yes, every tripod is suitable for launching RPGs, but you need a ball head to attach heat seeking missiles.
I have a 400mm lens…what does that make me?
Hitler? :-)
I went to see my daughter argue a child porn appeal before the 9th Circuit several years ago. It only involved a single picture, but the judges wanted to see it, but the appeal didn’t hinge on the content of the picture since both sides agreed it met the definition of child porn. As a result, the picture wasn’t really part of the case and wasn’t readily available. What was funny is the discussion of how the prosecutor danced around the issue of getting the picture to the judge because if she sent it through the mail it could constitute a violation of child porn laws and she sure as heck wasn’t going to put it in an email.
There is no common sense when it comes to the justice system and they know it.
The Antichrist.
Excellent! My dad should be sending me a hellhound any day now.
The link for Obama’s spending is infuriating. Madoff is a petty pick pocket compared to our overlords.
#7 | Wayne | April 17th, 2009 at 10:25 am If I find a picture of my child on the Internet (child naked in the picture), then I have child pornography. I’m not likely going to find pornographic pictures of my child unless I’m looking for them, and in that case I would likely have to sift through images of other children.
Not necessarily. Child pr0n doesn’t mean there is a sex act occuring in the photo. Or even nakedness. A girl in her underwear, reclining on her bed with her legs slightly apart would be considered CP. That’s something that MySpace would allow, to the best of my knowledge.
#14 Matt
You couldn’t be more on target with that. The MSM have used Madoff as “this is what is wrong about capitalism” while ignoring Obama’s massive spending. This is the biggest blow job I’ve seen since the advent of free porno.
Wayne: Not necessarily. A naked 17 year old girl doesn’t look that much different from a naked 18 year old girl (well, if my memories from being 16 are accurate, anyway) and there are quite a few “amateurs” sites out on the ‘net that post pics taken with, erm, “consumer grade” photographic equipment, in non-studio settings.
So, it’s not exceedingly implausible that one might be browsing such photographs, and then experience the sudden chill of “Holy crap, that’s my daughter!” Thus, not specifically browsing for kiddie pr0n, and yet still suddenly in possession of it. And pretty much everyone else out there looking at it won’t know any better, either.
Child nudity doesn’t necessarily constitute child porn, although it will almost certainly result in a long drawn out court battle that one may or may not win depending on the societal winds at the time of the trial.
The federal case against Jock Sturges that was ultimately dropped because they didn’t think they could win in court. There was also an Alabama case against Barnes & Noble for selling books by Sturges (by then famous because of the federal case) which was dropped when B&N decided to fight it.
Jock Sturges took pictures with an 8×10 view camera at nudist resorts in France and California and has pictorial histories of people from their birth until they themselves gave birth. In the U.S., nudity and porn are thought of as one and the same by many.
Given the hysteria that nothing exceeds the harm caused by nudity, I think it’s only a matter of time before the law requires that children be born with their clothes on.
Personally, I don’t believe it’s a government responsibility to punish a child for publishing a nude picture of themselves. It’s more indisputable evidence that child porn laws have nothing to do with the welfare of children and everything to do with the prejudices of adults.
Daffy – yeah, some of the cartoons from that time period are definitely propaganda, war-effort type stuff. I’d have to pull out some DVDs to check this out in more detail, but I do remember one that had the pledge of allegiance in it (possibly Porky Pig saying it). Interestingly, this was before “under God” was put in!
“If you’re wondering, yes, Obama is spending a hell of a lot worse than Bush. And Bush was the biggest spender since LBJ–by some estimates since FDR.”
I was hoping the graph would allow me to compare Bush’s spending vs Obama’s, but this doesn’t look like it does that.
#1. It’s a debt graph, not a spending graph.
#2. The fiscal year starts on Oct 1. By the time 2009 had rolled around, the debt for the current fiscal year was already 485.2 Billion. Which makes me think that Obama’s probably burning money at about the same rate as Bush.
I guess I’ll go looking for budget projections.
The only way I can see the trend issuing from Vermont going is that the ubiquity of now-taboo images will come to have the same effect on passions – namely nil – that bare ankles came to have after the Victorian era.
I leave it for wiser heads to decide whether this trend is good or bad.
Thanks, I understand the points made by Ben, Dave, and Sharpton Fan, but I’m not confident that “I was looking for adult porn and I found my 17 year old daughter” isn’t going to turn ugly. It almost sounds like the gubmint is too lazy to conduct their own sting operations and wants people to conduct them themselves.
And as we all know, we should never ever talk to the police — I just re-reviewed those two videos by the law professor and the cop over on another website. If you haven’t seen them, look them up, I’m sure they are on youtube — “don’t talk to cops,” part 1 is 27 minutes part two is 21 minutes.
Speaking of food safety… didn’t you just link to this Reason article on homemade goods being sold at church bake sales, and “licensed kitchen facilities”?
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/132833.html
#2, #6, #8…
In high school I used to take photos of planes down at the airport with one of my friends (like what you see at airliners.net). I eventually had to give it up due to constant police harassment. I would get questioned at length almost every time I went down there. Another Matt’s post about lenses is hilarious because you need really big lenses to get good shots of airliners, I was in the “Al Qaeda henchman” category I think.
One cop said he had received a report of “guys running around in trenchcoats with guns” and threatened to arrest me if I ever came back (what for I have no idea). I wish I had a better understanding of my rights back then, I was really scared of being arrested for being a terrorist or something like that.
On a related note nighttime photos of airliners landing or taking off are really cool, it looks like someone has hung up some christmas lights in a completely impossible way.
Return of medical marijuana (maybe a different link):
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12157601
Here’s a more thorough article about him asking for it back:
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/crime/story/1330684.html
#22 Wayne,
Thanks for posting that youtube suggestion about not talking to cops. I hadn’t seen that before and really enjoyed it. In fact, I’ll send the link to my daughter as well. She’s a public defender and I’d like to get her take on it. She told me once she’d like to hand out T-shirts that said, “Nobody Talks, Everybody Walks”. :)
I love the night shots. Radley, you have to get flickr. The amount of mindblowing photos will amaze you.
[...] a comment referring to the Gestapo harassing photographers: That’s right; I don’t want to be too [...]
Re: lenses (#8): Hey, I’ve been stopped by the police for carrying suspicious electronic equipment. Seriously. It was a 70s-era transistor radio. Though I don’t think the (I was about to say idiot, but that would not be nice) was convinced that I wasn’t a terrorist.
I suspect quite a few people carrying big lenses have had problems.
I quite disagree with the point of view that “spending more” is the same as “spending worse”.
Just the raw amount of debt incurred is pretty worthless.