Elizabeth Becton is the gatekeeper for Rep. Jim McDermott. You want to see him, you go through her. Normally, she’s a dutiful public servant.

Just don’t call her “Liz,” or she’ll hack off chunks of your face with a rusty spoon.

Here’s the second installment of my interview with Conor Fridersdorf of The Atlantic’s new Ideas blog.

You can read part one here.

Got a good response to the message inquiring about a meetup tomorrow evening, so I’m trying to find a good spot.

Right now, I’m leaning toward Randolph’s in the Warwick Hotel. But if any Denverites (is that right?) have other suggestions in the same general vicinity, I’m open to other suggestions.

Out on the water near Homer, Alaska. Waterscapes are usually pretty boring, but I learned that a polarizing filter can make them lots more fun.

Sadly, public acceptance of gay marriage has given yet another conservative politician no choice but to cheat on his wife.

Won’t someone please think of the hypocrites?

Another blow to transparency:

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn’t have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions. Despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com’s request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present.

Cool footage of a Belgian soccer player who collapses of a heart attack on the field, then jolts back to consciousness thanks to an internal defibrillator he’d had installed due to a heart condition. He’s doing okay, now.

Ain’t technology grand?

Conor Friedersdorf was kind of enough to interview me for my thoughts on criminal justice reform for his new Ideas blog at The Atlantic.

Here’s part one.

It’s only Monday evening, but I’m officially designating this my favorite news story of the week.

Hawkins was a felon, convicted of second-degree murder and assault, and a heroin addict who spent most of his adult life in and out of prison and on and off parole. The system lost track of him one day in July 2007, after he had been out on parole for about two years and failed a drug test at his rehab center. Although parole officers spent countless hours making more than 340 attempts to find him — phone calls to relatives and friends, certified letters, arrest record checks, visits to his last place of employment (Goodwill) and his last known address (the Samaritan Inn), sometimes with police officers in tow — they never found him.

Hawkins died one year later, in July 2008, at 54, of metastatic lung cancer. His family has the death certificate and certificate of cremation to prove it.

The system still hasn’t found him.

But it’s still trying…

The case is still active, Len Sipes said yesterday. Sipes is the spokesman for the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, or CSOSA, the federal agency that took over the D.C. parole office nine years ago when the federal government assumed responsibility for the city’s prison system. According to its records, a warrant for Hawkins’s arrest, issued in April 2008, is still outstanding. He is to be supervised on parole until April 27, 2016.

Last month, Hawkins’s parole officer called one of his sisters to ask whether she had seen him lately.

“They said they were trying to get in touch with him because he’d been violating parole and they needed a number for him,” said Maria Watson, Hawkins’s younger sister. “I said, ‘Well, you can call 1-800-G-O-D.’ “

…The phone call was only the latest frustrating twist for Hawkins’s family. Parole officers have called other siblings for the past several months, they said, and they have all told the officers the same thing: Edward is dead.

I can see how the parole officers might have had some difficulty piecing together such puzzling, ambiguous hints about Hawkins’ whereabouts. If only the family had been more cooperative.

Oh, and here’s the punchline…

CSOSA’s 344 or so community supervision officers, or parole officers, are responsible for keeping track of 15,000 parolees at any one time. The most potentially dangerous — currently about 800 — are fitted with ankle bracelets equipped with GPS tracking devices. Officers keep tabs on the rest through the Supervision and Management Automated Recording — or SMART — system.

But the system must be smart, right? I mean, it says so right there in the acronym.

Some incredible photos from Iran.

Entrance to Halibut Cove, Alaska.

Incredible story from Orlando, where police and prosecutors were apparently convicting people of violent crimes based almost exclusively on the “testimony” of a police dog whose handler claimed has extraordinary powers.

Last weekend, we looked at the case of Bill Dillon, the Brevard County resident imprisoned for 27 years before DNA tests set him free…

At least two other men suffered the same fate — and another shared link: a dog.

Not just any dog. A wonder dog helped convict all three men: a German shepherd named Harass II, who wowed juries with his amazing ability to place suspects at the scenes of crimes.

Harass could supposedly do things no other dog could: tracking scents months later and even across water, according to his handler, John Preston.

Judges and juries apparently bought this crap for years. It finally came to an end when Judge Gilbert Goshorn ordered the dog to perform a basic tracking test after Preston claimed the dog had alerted to a suspect’s scent at a crime scene six months after the murder. The dog failed.

So far, three people have been cleared after collectively spending more than 50 years in prison, all of whom were convicted primarily due to the dog’s alerts, despite other evidence exculpating them. Florida criminal justice activists say there may be as 60 more people wrongly convicted thanks to Preston and his dog.

Yet Florida officials don’t seem to care, and have no plans to proactively look for other people who may have been wrongly imprisoned.

In a statement, [Florida State's Attorney] Wolfinger’s office said it didn’t have a list of the cases in which Preston testified — nor even the records that would allow the office to compile such a list.

Essentially, Wolfinger contends it’s up to defendants to raise questions about these decades-old cases.

“Defendants have had rights in Florida to challenge their convictions through a well established post-conviction process,” the statement said.

A similar response came from Crist’s office, which said: “We believe this is a judicial issue and should be handled on a case-by-case analysis through the judicial system.”

A spokeswoman for the state’s top cop, Attorney General Bill McCollum, simply declared the matter beyond her boss’s “jurisdiction.”

Just curious to see how lopsided the breakdown actually is, here.

I’m going to predict 70-30, men.

Another one from the archives…

Villa La Angostura, Argentina.

I’ll be in Denver for a speaking engagement next weekend, but I’m free Thursday evening.

Any Agitator readers in the area interested in a meet-up?

If we get a quorum, we can set a time and place, but just wanted to see if there’s some interest, first.

Pike Place Market, Seattle. One of my favorite spots anywhere in the country.

Amusing reaction to the Time covers piece:

I think it’s really cool that you get paid to sit around and mock other people’s journalism. Good for you. Clearly you put a lot of time and research into this.

I agree that many of the stories you cite were hyperbolic.

But shouldn’t you have at least acknowledged the minimal possibility that many of the social problems cited in the TIME stories were solved, or at least minimized, precisely because the issues eventually drew the attention of policymakers and concerned citizens? School violence and drugs being two examples.

And that maybe, just maybe, TIME’s journalism may have played a small part in that greater public awareness?

It’s great that you can sit in your cubicle in 2009 and so cavalierly dismiss that anyone 20 years ago (when you and I were in grade school) was ever worried about crack babies. And I know it’s sooooo en vogue right now to rip mainstream media outlets. But it’s just a little bit of a cheap shot, isn’t it?

sincerely,
Brian

A Reason reader emailed to note that John Wayne died 30 years ago today. Not sure what to do with that, other than point to my favorite John Wayne quote:

“It rankles me when somebody tries to force somebody to do something.”