I have a piece at Reason that looks at Daniel Hauser, medical marijuana, pain treatment and the broader with letting politicians dictate medical policy.

In the April 2007 print edition of Reason, I wrote about a particularly egregious abuse of eminent domain in Port Chester, New York:

In 2003 Bart Didden set out to build a CVS drugstore on property he owned in Port Chester, New York. Unfortunately, a developer hired by the town had other plans for Didden’s land. The developer wanted to put up a Walgreens drugstore on the same property, so he demanded that Didden either pay $800,000 to “make him go away” or pony up a 50 percent stake in the CVS. Didden refused.

Just a day later, the Village of Port Chester condemned Didden’s land, which it planned to hand over to the developer. Didden sued, but last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled the condemnation was consistent with Kelo.

“It took me years of hard work to buy that property, pay off my mortgages and really feel like I own it,” Didden said in a December press release issued by his attorneys at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm that frequently handles eminent domain cases.

“Kelo did spark a massive public backlash,” says Institute for Justice attorney Dana Berliner, “but at the same time it emboldened local governments to further abuse of eminent domain for private purposes. And it emboldened courts to approve these abuses.”

Over at Forbes.com, Richard Epstein notes that Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was on the Second Circuit panel that upheld the condemnation. The panel’s entire analysis: “We agree with the district court that [Wasser's] voluntary attempt to resolve appellants’ demands was neither an unconstitutional exaction in the form of extortion nor an equal protection violation.”

“[V]oluntary attempt to resolve appellants’ demands” is one way of putting it. “State-sanctioned extortion” is another.

So in the several hours that we’ve known about the Sotomayor pick, Fox News’ Mike Huckabee put out a critical press release referring to her as “Maria,” the Politico referred to her as a “Latina single mother,” and NPR referred to her as “the daughter of immigrants.”

All three are wrong. Her first name is Sonia. She has no kids. And no, Puerto Rico isn’t a foreign country.

I don’t yet have an opinion on the merits of the pick. Need to read up on her a bit more.

Wine country, just outside of Mendoza, Argentina.

Minnesota District Attorney James Backstrom is making an impressive early run at the 2009 Worst Prosecutor of the Year award.  Backstrom, you may remember, is the prosecutor who sent threatening emails to his county medical examiner because she had the audacity to testify and let her staff testify for the defense in other jurisdictions (to my surprise, I see that last week he was publicly reprimanded for those emails).

Backstrom’s latest effort toward winning the award is this spectacularly awful op-ed arguing against a bill in Minnesota that would allow terminally ill patients to use medical marijuana to alleviate pain and suffering in their final days. The bill was so narrowly drawn, it even excluded from its list of acceptable users cancer patients who might use the drug to combat the nausea for chemotherapy.

That wasn’t enough for Backstrom, who argued that the bill still “sends a message to our children that [marijuana] is safe to use when it is clearly not.” The op-ed, which Backstrom wrote on behalf of several law enforcement agencies, employs all the usual drug warrior nonsense, including grossly overestimating the amount of usuable pot you can expect from a typical plant, repeated scare quotes around the word “medical,” and the circular reasoning that marijuana is dangerous and addictive because the government says it is.

The Minnesota Independent has a good refutation of Backstrom’s op-ed, though they appear to have misspelled his name.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed the bill this weekend, rather insultingly proclaiming his compassion and empathy for the sick in the process. Pawlenty cited law enforcement organization opposition to the bill as his primary reason for vetoing it.

Seems to be where lots of people are today:

Photo taken on a particularly hot day in Ocean City, New Jersey a couple of years ago. I wasn’t actually trying to get the bird. Just a happy accident.

I’ve been going back through old photos for the photo of the day feature, so the next several weeks of dog blogging will be of the “greatest hits” variety. Here’s one of my favorites of Isabel.

Scott Greenfield reflects on the pending execution of Troy Davis.

There’s been some nice press coverage the last couple of months on everyone’s favorite libertarian performance artists, Penn & Teller.

First, Teller explains the neuroscience of illusion in Wired, complete with video of a sleight-of-hand bit they do in their show.

Next, USA Today writes up the duo’s new trick mocking the Transportation Security Administration.

Finally, the Las Vegas Sun has a fun piece profiling Nathan Santucci, the guy who builds the sets and tricks, and whom Penn & Teller call their “Director of Covert Ops.” Excerpt:

When the guys were filming their “Magic and Mystery” world tour (travel is an occasional perk), they wanted to cut a live snake in half and restore it to its whole serpentine glory. Well, this is not an overly complicated trick, prop-wise — Santucci just needed to find condoms, paint, blood and offal. Stuff the condom, paint it to look like a bit of snake and the guys cut the condom, not the snake. Simple.

Well, first Santucci had to find condoms. In Egypt. And when he did find them, the condoms turned out not to be of the finest quality. So there’s Santucci, in the bathroom of a hotel that is of the finest quality, stuffing condoms with blood and offal, only to have them burst — over him, over the sink, the floor and the walls.

And Santucci had forgotten to hang the “Do Not Disturb” sign on his door.

Enter the maid. Exit the maid, screaming.

Enter security.

I got to meet Penn, Teller, and Santucci when I was in Vegas. All very smart, funny, and down-to-earth. And the show is spectacular.

The Donvonte McCoy Quartet at Washington, D.C.’s HR-57 jazz club in 2006.

Some drug warrior pwnage.

Chicago.

Click to enlarge. Email me if you’d like purchase a print.

Over at Reason, I and several people smarter than me wax on Obama’s choice to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court.

It’s great that this ridiculous abuse of civil liberties is getting some exposure. Looks like the cops deleted the video the guys took of the first few minutes of the stop. If that’s true, the cops themselves ought to be arrested and charged with obstruction of justice.

Funny how it works: The down economy means there are fewer jobs available. Fewer available jobs means we’re seeing fewer illegal immigrants willing to risk their lives to come here to work, because the work isn’t available.

Golly. Maybe Mexicans really were coming here to actually work and not merely drop “anchor babies” and collect welfare checks, after all.

Chinatown, San Francisco.

(Email me if you’re interested in a print.)

The Maryland SWAT transparency bill was signed into law today.

It’s a start.

This story is several months old, but it was just recently brought to my attention.

In October of last year, The New York Times ran a story about how some hedge funds that hold mortgage-backed securities were opposing efforts by Congress and several state attorneys general to modify the terms of mortgages in risk of foreclosure. The article mentioned that some firms may challenge new laws or politically brokered renegotations that would modify the terms of endangered mortgages.

That shouldn’t be surprising. Those funds risk losing money if the terms for large numbers of mortgages are arbitrarily reset, and hedge fund companies certainly have every right to pursue legal recourse and political activism to protect their investments.

The head of one such firm, William Frey told the Times exactly that:

William Frey, the president of one of the funds, Greenwich Financial Services of Greenwich, Conn., said that he was acting to protect the firm’s investments. “Any investor in mortgage-backed securities has the right to insist that their contract be enforced,” he said.

In letters sent to banks and others, Greenwich Financial said that it was particularly concerned about the impact of a relatively new government program, Hope for Homeowners. That plan, which Congress approved over the summer, allows some borrowers to refinance their mortgages into fixed-rate loans with terms up to 30 years.

Whatever you may think of hedge funds or mortgage-backed securities, Frey’s doing nothing illegal here, and is merely trying to protect his firm and its interests.

The day after the Times article ran, Frey received a threatening letter signed by six Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee. The letter reads:

Dear Mr. Frey:

We were outraged to read in today’s New york Times that you are actively opposing our efforts to achieve a diminution in foreclosures by voluntary efforts. Your decision is a serious threat to our efforts to respond to the current economic crisis, and we strongly urge you to reverse it. Given the importance of this to the economy and to what it means for future regulatory efforts, we have set a hearing for November 12, and we invite you to now testify. We believe it is essential for our policymaking function for you to appear at such a hearing, and if this can not be arranged on a vountary basis, then we will purse further steps.

For the hedge fund industry, which has flourished for much of the past decade, to take steps so actively in opposition to what is currently in the national economic interest is deeply troubling and will clearly have serious implications for the rules by which we operate in the future if this posture of obstruction of our efforts is maintained.

We very much hope you will be able to tell us very soon that you have reversed your position of trying to obstruct the operation of the bill that was overwhelmingly passed by Congress and signed by the President this summer, and we hope you will also affirm your presence at the hearing on November 12.

The letter is signed by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Penn.), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.).

Am I missing something here, or is this blatant intimidation by these members of Congress? Are they not threatening new laws, regulations, and embarrassment at a public hearing in retaliation for and specifically directed at a private citizen exercising his right to oppose and legally challenge a policy he believes violates his rights?

It looks like Frey went through with his legal challenge. Still looking into what actually happened at the hearing.