It’s been a crazy week. Las Vegas to Philly to, this weekend, Clarksville, Indiana. On Saturday, I’ll be giving the keynote address at the joint convention of the Indiana and Kentucky State Libertarian Parties.

Here are the details.

Remember when the Boy Scouts were merely about helping old ladies across the street, learning how to tie a decent knot, and excluding gay people?

Meet the post-9/11 Scouts.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

This is really despicable stuff.

Hey, some good news! Obama is dropping Chuck Hurley to head up the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. But not for the right reasons.

Although neither the White House nor Charles Hurley’s MADD men (and women) are saying Jack about the decision, it appears Hurley ran afoul of . . . environmentalists. “His potential nomination had been criticized by environmentalists such as Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign. Becker cited Hurley’s work at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in the 1990s, when he said Hurley backed car companies that were fighting attempts to reduce vehicle size to improve fuel economy.”

Hey, I’ll take it. But here are the reasons Hurley should have been dropped.

My Reason feature from last May “Guilty Before Proven Innocent: How police harassment, jailhouse Snitches, and a runaway war on drugs imprisoned an innocent family” is a finalist for a Los Angeles Press Club Award (PDF).

The same story is also a finalist in the Western Publication Association’s Maggie Awards.

Once again, I’ll be speaking at Drexel University tonight on the topic of police militarization.

Details:

Tuesday, May 12 – 9-11 pm.

Campbell Auditorium, 113 Stratton Hall

3201 Chestnut Street

Philadelphia, PA

Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-Mass.) online gambling bill appears to be gaining some momentum.

It’s unfortunate that it takes the promise of tax revenue for the federal government to respect individual freedom. But I suppose that’s the reality of things.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s (R-Horseracing) quote in the article is bizarre. Somehow, we shouldn’t legalize Internet gambling because . . . Tim Geithner didn’t pay his taxes. Sure, Bob. When I debated Goodlatte about online gambling on CNBC a few years ago, he weirdly tried to tie the issue to Jack Abramoff (weird because Goodlatte and the GOP leadership ended up passing the very bill Abramoff lobbied for).

The guy pretty obviously knows he has a losing argument. Which is why he’d rather invoke bogeymen and lame partisan zingers than actually discuss the issue.

It’s a "Well gee, you’d hope so" sort of victory, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that using a SWAT team to conduct an administrative or regulatory search is a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The case stems from what was clearly a drug raid conducted on a bar in Louisiana by the Rapides Parrish Sheriff’s Department. But the raid was conducted under the auspices of an alcohol inspection, which allowed the department to get around the need for a criminal search warrant.

The Fifth Circuit ruled such a raid violates the Fourth Amendment, and is allowing a civil rights suit against the officers involved to go forward. From the opinion:

Taking plaintiffs’ factual allegations as true, defendants did not enter Club Retro as would a typical patron; instead, they chose to project official authority by entering with weapons drawn in a S.W.A.T. team raid. They lacked any particularized suspicion or probable cause when they subsequently searched Club Retro, its attic, and the separate apartment and seized and searched all of its patrons and employees. Thus, defendants’ entry and search was not a reasonable acceptance of Club Retro’s invitation to the public. Any other conclusion would be an invitation for S.W.A.T. team raids by law enforcement officers of any business that is open to the public and would severely undermine the Fourth Amendment protections afforded to owners of commercial premises.

We are likewise not convinced by defendants’ second argument that they conducted a permissible administrative inspection. Although Louisiana statutes and Rapides Parish ordinances authorizing administrative inspections may have provided justification for an entry and inspection of Club Retro, no such law permits the scope and manner of the raid that plaintiffs allege occurred here…

Administrative inspections, by their very nature, require more limited, less intrusive conduct than is alleged to have occurred here. We thus conclude that defendants’ S.W.A.T. team entries and extensive searches, as described in the amended complaint, unreasonably exceeded the scope of Louisiana and Rapides Parish administrative inspection laws. Any other conclusion would allow the administrative inspection exception to swallow the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement for searches of private property.

The court also cited a similar opinion from the 11th Circuit:

In Swint v. City of Wadley, 51 F.3d 988 (11th Cir. 1995), the Eleventh Circuit relied on existing Supreme Court precedent to reject qualified immunity as a defense for officers who conducted two raids of a nightclub that were comparable in relevant respects to the raid here. There, a S.W.A.T. team of thirty to forty officers, wearing ski masks, swarmed a club after receiving a signal from an undercover officer who had probable cause to arrest one patron for an illegal drug transaction. Id. at 993. The officers pointed their weapons at many of the club’s patrons and employees; prohibited the owners, employees, and patrons from moving or leaving; searched all individuals; refused patrons’ and employees’ requests to use the restrooms; searched the club, its cash registers, and door receipts; and maintained control of the premises and persons for between one and one and one-half hours. Id. The court concluded that the officers could point to "no authority that even suggests that the search and seizure of one suspect in a public place can be bootstrapped into probable cause for a broad-based search of the business establishment and its patrons."

For a few years now, I’ve been covering the ongoing saga of David Ruttenberg, a former pool hall owner in Virginia whose business was raided by a massive police force in 2004. The mix of SWAT, undercover, and uniformed officers stormed Ruttenberg’s bar on ladies’ night. Like the cases above, the search on Ruttenberg’s bar was also clearly a criminal search disguised as an alcohol inspection, though in Ruttenberg’s case, it was really only one of numerous violations of his civil rights by the police and political establishment in Manassas Park, Virginia. The police had tried to obtain a search warrant against Ruttenberg for the 2004 raid, but couldn’t convince a judge they had probable cause he’d committed a crime. So the merely brought along some representatives from the Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control, and called it an inspection.

So far, Ruttenberg hasn’t had much luck in his own federal civil rights suit. His case was rejected outright the first time he appeared in federal court. Last July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit gave Ruttenberg a small glimmer of hope, affirming the lower court’s dismissal of every claim, save for one—that the use of SWAT tactics to enforce a regulatory inspection was a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Last month, the same circuit court judge once again threw out that claim, too.

But Ruttenberg is appealing, and given how the similar the facts are to his own case, one would think this latest ruling from the Fifth Circuit could only help his cause. If it doesn’t, the split between the Fifth Circuit and the Fourth and 11th Circuits would seem to make the case ripe for the Supreme Court.

It’s pretty remarkable that we’re even discussing this. We’re talking about using SWAT teams to conduct regulatory inspections on businesses. That there would even be a debate shows just how tolerant we’ve become of the government using this sort of force.

Here’s surveillance video of the raid on Ruttenberg’s bar. Keep in mind, this was done other the auspices of an alcohol inspection. And a federal judge has now twice ruled that he sees nothing excessive about it.

The American Conservative has an appreciation of Isabel Paterson, namesake of one of my pooches.

Think of her as a better-written, less creepy and cultish, less contradictory Ayn Rand.

Headline: Eco-Sailors Rescued by Oil Tanker.

Cato has put out a good short film laying out what’s at stake in the case.

It’s unfortunate such an obvious restriction on political speech was able to get this far.

Sorry I’ve been AWOL. A man’s first trip to Las Vegas tends to pull him away from the computer.

I didn’t think I’d like Vegas. I expected it to be excessive, ostentatious, contrived, and ridiculous. It is all of those things, but in a really wonderful way. I actually love it, and have had a great time. More on that later.

In the meantime, I had a piece up at Reason on Friday reviewing the new movie American Violet and the new TV series, Dallas DNA.

For now, I’m off to see Penn & Teller’s show here at the Rio.

Here are the details on my speech at Drexel in Philly next week:

Tuesday, May 12 – 9-11 pm.

Campbell Auditorium, 113 Stratton Hall

3201 Chestnut Street

Philadelphia, PA

Police raid the wrong house in Baltimore. Weeks later, the guy still can’t get the city to repair his door. Their explanation is that because the address written on the warrant is the address the police raided, there was no mistake. Even though the guy they were actually after lived and was eventually arrested two doors down.

Ah, but it gets worse. If it’s not the cops, it’s the bureaucrats. The guy stored his old door in his backyard, hoping the city would eventually repair it. When it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, he called the city’s special trash pick-up to come and get it. They never did. But a city code inspector did come, and fined the guy $50 for having a broken door in his backyard.

A couple of weeks ago over at Hit & Run, Jacob Sullum blogged about a case in Kansas where the government seems to be targeting not only Stephen Schneider, a physician specializing in pain treatment and his wife Linda, but also Siobhan Reynolds, who heads up the pain patient advocacy group the Pain Relief Network.

Reynolds has become a sort of shoestring-budgeted PR machine for doctors under investigation whom she believes are getting railroaded. She educates local media on pain treatment, including the sometimes very high doses of medication needed to treat patients who have built up a tolerance to opiods. Her efforts in the Schneider case have resulted in some refreshingly balanced coverage. And that apparently has Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway steaming.

As Sullum noted, last year Treadway tried to impose a gag order on Reynolds. She was denied. Several of Schneider’s patients who had spoken out on his behalf say shortly after, federal agents forced their way into their homes, in one case confiscating a letter Schneider had written from prison.

So Treadway is now calling Reynolds the “subject” of a grand jury investigation into possible obstruction of justice. Treadway has asked Reynolds to turn over all of her correspondence with pain patients, attorneys, the Schneiders, and just about everyone else in any way associated with the case. Reynolds is fighting the subpoena, and is now represented by the ACLU.

Last year, Treadway also attempted to bar the Schneiders from obtaining court-appointed counsel, citing their considerable wealth. The problem is that everything the Schneiders own is subject to forfeiture, meaning any attorney who agreed to take their case would do so knowing there would be a pretty good chance he’d never get paid. The government essentially argued that the accused couple should have no counsel in court (unless they could find someone to take the case pro bono), and be barred by law from having anyone defend them in public. When all of that failed, they asked for a change in venue, claiming that patients and Reynolds speaking out for the Schneiders had tainted the jury pool.

Treadway’s efforts are particularly egregious given that it has become pretty standard practice for U.S. attorneys to issue press releases and sometimes even call press conferences to announce when a physician has been indicted for over-prescribing painkillers—as they did in the Schneider case. The government can work the media and jury pool all it likes. But when a suspect gets an advocate who knows how to work the media, they first try to shut her up with a gag order, then intimidate her with a grand jury investigation.

But Treadway’s aggressiveness may well come back to bite her. Her office originally tried to link the Schneiders’ practice to 56 alleged patient overdose deaths. U.S. District Judge Monti Belot balked, and threw out all of the deaths but four. He then sternly warned Treadway not to appeal his decision. Belot also instructed the government not to use inflammatory descriptions like “pill mill” in front of the jury, another common tactic in these cases.

Treadway appealed anyway, delaying the Schneiders’ trial by months. The interesting thing is that her appeal allowed the defense to file a cross-appeal that will challenge not only Treadway’s attempt to link the Schneiders to the four remaining deaths, but also the government’s entire methodology of using “red flags” and questionable links to patient deaths to prosecute pain doctors. Reynolds, who has seen a lot of these cases, says it’s the first case she can recall where a federal appeals court will hear arguments on whether the government’s system of identifying what it says are drug diverting physicians is scientifically sound enough to be admitted into evidence.

One red flag the government uses, for example, is to look for physicians who simply prescribe a raw number of pills that investigators say is too high, a practice pain advocates say has made doctors afraid of engaging in the high-dose opiate therapy course of chronic pain treatment that’s been so effective. Other red flags include doctors who spend what investigators say is too little time with patients to make an accurate diagnosis, a problem pain advocates say has become increasingly common not because more doctors are selling scripts to addicts and drug dealers, but because the few doctors who do still treat chronic pain are overwhelmed with patients whose former doctors have been arrested, stripped of their licenses, or run out of business by investigations.

The Schneiders’ brief also argues that the government’s practice of linking deaths to opioids is problematic because such deaths often include patients who merely had high concentrations of opiates in their systems and died unexpectedly. Several of the patients who died of heart attacks, for example, weren’t checked for signs of heart disease. The heart attack plus a high concentration of opiods in their system was enough for the government to link the opiods to the heart attack.

The government’s argument that the Schneiders were causing a disproportionately high number of deaths also rests on comparing the number of clinic patients who died to the population at large, instead of to the number of patients undergoing treatment at a clinic not suspected of any wrongdoing. It isn’t all that difficult to see how patients undergoing treatment for chronic pain might have a higher mortality rate than the general population.

The federal government has been using these arguments to prosecute doctors for years, but to this point, there has never been a formal hearing to determine if there’s any actual science behind them. Pain specialists are skeptical. The general consensus is that red flags are fine for identifying potentially problematic doctors by, say, a medical board, but they’re simply not enough to find a doctor guilty of criminal wrongdoing. Pain specialist and pain organizations have also long decried the arbitrariness with which the red flags and ambiguous links to patient deaths are applied. Today, the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear their complaints.

There would be some poetic justice here if Treadway’s aggressive tactics in the Schneider case were to result not only in a fatal blow to her own cause, but in the Tenth Circuit becoming the first federal appeals court to call into question the very foundation of how the government builds its case against pain physicians.

My prior coverage of the pain issue here.

I’d humbly submit that Gene Weingarten is the best writer working at a newspaper anywhere in the country right now. And he may be the all-time winner in the “writing about dogs” genre.

His column this week is great.

Also, I recommend his recent book Old Dogs Are the Best Dogs, particularly if you have a aging pooch.

The student pulled a gun out of his backpack, fatally wounded one attacker, and drove the other off.

The Brady Campaign says that when it comes to campus shootings, “It’s ridiculous to say someone with a gun” could “save the day.”

No, not all that ridiculous, actually.

Jim Geraghty captures the absurdity: Obama praises actual, law-breaking tax cheats Tim Geithner and Charlie Rangel for their efforts to rein in “tax cheats” who actually followed the law, but took advantage of perfectly legal tax loopholes.

Rock night with the final four.

I don’t have time for a longer write-up, but I completely disagreed with the judges. I’d put Alison Iraheta at the top. I thought Kris Allen’s version of “Come Together” was really good. Adam Lambert probably gave his worst show of the competition. Way too much screeching, way too little soul. And Danny Gokey’s venture outside of adult contemporary was a disaster.

The duets were a much more interesting idea than they were in execution.

All I know about this case is what’s in the news report below. But it sounds pretty outrageous.