On Friday, I’ll be giving the libertarian perspective on a panel about the drug war and law enforcement at this years Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh. Details:

Establishment support for the drug war is eroding on the left and the right. On the left, the Netroots has pushed liberals to reconsider hardline policies forged in the ’80s. On the right, a shrinking Republican party is returning to small government roots. On the ground, cities such as High Point, N.C. are experimenting with pragmatic approaches. What will a new drug policy look like, and how can the Netroots help bring it about? This panel addresses it from four perspectives: academic, liberal, libertarian and law enforcement, highlighting the unusual new political convergence.

The Whole Foods CEO lays out his plan for improving health care coverage and quality in the U.S.

It’s spot-on.

Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia.

There’s a thread for short jokes up at Reddit right now. The two shortest jokes I know:

First…

Masochist: Hurt me!

Sadist: No.

And the second:

Pretentious? Moi?

According to the Cardinal Newman Society, the EEOC is forcing a small, private Catholic college to pay for oral contraception as part of its health care plan.

If true, that’s mighty troubling. And I say that as someone who has no moral problem whatsoever with birth control.

The Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, in Chicago.

Someone in the comments asked if the I shot all of the Photo of the Day pictures. Yes!

Someone else asked what I shoot with. I use a Canon Digital Rebel XTi. Although only for the last year or so. Older pictures (including this one) were taken with the variety of automatic digital cameras I’ve used over the last few years.

My crime column this week is on the Melendez-Diaz case, and its uncertain future.

The Supreme Court ruled last term that prosecutors must make forensic experts available for cross examination if they’re going to admit the experts’ reports into evidence.

The ruling was important, but it may already be in trouble.

…there doesn’t seem to be much at work in this story.

When Donald Ross’s sister passed, more than 100 people attended her funeral mass in Spokane.

The burial was scheduled for a nearby cemetery, but Ross and his family only made it a quarter of a mile when flashing lights forced them to the side of the road.

“Harold, his (my husband’s) brother, said, ‘You pulled us out of a funeral procession,’” said wife Shirley Ross.

But the deputy kept them there, writing up five citations because the driver and the passengers were not wearing a seat belts…

Those five tickets took 12 minutes to write. By the time Ross and his family members got back on the road, the burial was over.

The police department has apologized and reprimanded the officer. Just kidding!

…the sheriff’s department says [the deputy] had every right.

“We’re out here trying to prevent funerals, not disrupt them,” said Dave Reagan of Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.

Police officers don’t have rights, they have powers. And the fact that they have them doesn’t mean they always have to use them, even in those situations where the law allows them.  Seems to me that making a woman miss her brother’s burial in order to write her a ticket—not for endangering others, but for not buckling her own seat belt—would be one of those times when some discretion might be in order.

Thanks to reader Judy for the tip.

Last week, Mississippi Circuit Court Judge Bobby DeLaughter pled guilty to lying to FBI agents investigating him for corruption.

Before he became a judge, DaLaughter was the prosecutor who hid exclupatory evidence from the jury in the murder and robbery case against Cedric Willis. Willis did 12 years at Parchman Penitentiary before he was exonerated and released in 2007.

Pool, lake, mountains from the Hotel Llao Llao in Bariloche, Argentina.

The D.C. Examiner asked me to name my favorite spots in the Washington area.

Here are my picks.

It reads like a guide to Washington by someone who hates Washington. I didn’t mean for it to sound quite that curmudgeonly. If it weren’t for the weather and the people, D.C. would be great!

The feds this time:

An east Charlotte woman who’s going through cancer treatment said she was startled early Wednesday morning when federal agents burst into her apartment searching for suspects in a drug trafficking ring.

“It was a case of mistaken identity,” Rosie Lee Bright told Eyewitness News.

But Federal Bureau of Investigation agents didn’t figure that out before they ordered her to lie on the floor and handcuffed her…

A spokeswoman for the FBI told Eyewitness News that the address mix-up appears to have been an honest mistake since agents had been working on the assumption they were targeting the right apartment.

Oh, well in that case…

You sort of hope they wouldn’t intentionally target the wrong apartment. There is at least this:

Bright said once they realized their mistake, agents apologized and offered to pay any medical bills she might have because of the raid.

#9: We’ll go with Whitesnake’s “Still of the Night.” The power ballad “Here I Go Again” was the band’s bigger hit. But I prefer this one, mostly because it’s such an obvious rip-off of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog,” thus reaffirming David Coverdale’s image as the poor man’s Robert Plant. It’s a perception he clearly didn’t seem to mind, given that he’d go on to make an album with Jimmy Page. I might be the only person on the planet who still listens to that album. Also, “Still of the Night” has the neat trick where Steve Vai plays his guitar with a violin bow.

NOTE: Autoplay fixed! Sorry if I inadvertently rocked your office a little too hard this afternoon.

NOTE II: Via the comments, I was wrong. That isn’t Steve Vai on guitar, but Adrian Vandenburg. And the guitarist on the studio recording of the song is John Sykes. I will now bang, er, hang my head in shame.

Denali National Park, Alaska.

I’ll be on Supertalk Mississippi tomorrow morning at 8:05 ET. You can listen here.

Topic: My report on the Mississippi coroners trying to bring back Dr. Hayne.

The article has gotten some nice play down there. It was picked up by several TV stations across the state, and was also reprinted in the Jackson Free Press, Jackson’s alternative weekly.

Chicago.

I’m headed to the Jersey shore for a couple of days.

I might take the time to catch up on some blog posts. Or I might decide not to blog at all. Blogging output will also depend on how I do at the Atlantic City poker tables.

The way I’ve played lately, you probably won’t even notice I’m gone!

Cato’s David Boaz catches a Naderite speaking the truth:

“…the amount spent on lobbying . . . is related entirely to how much the federal government intervenes in the private economy.”

It’s a fairly obvious point, yet it flies in the face of two consistent leftist policy goals (or at least stated leftist policy goals): more federal involvement in the economy, and less influence on the federal government by lobbyists. Not surprisingly, health care interests are doing the most active lobbying right now, just as Congress and Obama are pushing a major overhaul of the health care system. As Boaz notes, lobbying firms are already salivating at the coming windfall over the climate change debate.

All this money the private sector is spending to influence how the laws are written is money not spent on developing new business plans, R&D, or otherwise contributing to the broader economy (though it does contribute to D.C.’s). It’s part of the cost of major new government initiatives that isn’t generally considered.

I think lobbyists get a bad rap. Sure, most of them are spineless and unprincipled. That doesn’t make them any different than most people in Washington. But I can’t begrudge anyone who wants to spend $1 million to prevent the government from enacting laws or regulations that are going to cost his business $10 million. Everyone wants to denigrate lobbyists. But they’re really only conduits between the governing and the governed. If there’s something sleazy about what they do, it’s because politicians and policymakers apparently respond to sleaziness. Lobbyists exist because the government has put power on the table to be divvied up in the first place. The way to reduce the influence of lobbyists in government is to reduce the influence of government everywhere else. Nothing else is going to work.

Of course, that’s never going to happen. So instead, the solution from both parties, though it’s generally more supported by Democrats, is to restrict the right of individuals, groups, or businesses to have a say in how the government operates, be it through campaign finance restrictions or stricter lobbying rules. Put another way, they want to pass unconstitutional laws limiting political speech so they can better pass unconstitutional expansions of government power that aren’t tainted by the appearance of impropriety.

A little over two weeks ago, I wrote:

The behemoth companies love regulation, because the compliance costs tend to kill off upstarts and smaller competitors.

It’s only a matter of time before we’re going to see one or more big restaurant chains join the menu labeling crusade. In fact, I’m surprised we haven’t seen it already. It makes good business sense. A federal law seems inevitable now. Jump on board early, and you’ll have a say in how the regulations are written–specifically, exactly who will be required to abide by it.

Ta-da!

…more than a dozen fast-food and pizza chains have linked up with several health groups that believe the legislation should include as many establishments as possible.

The bill, they say, has gaps big enough to let a milk tanker drive through. As written, the bill applies only to chains with 20 or more restaurants operating under the same name. They must post calories on menus and provide more detailed written information, such as fat and sodium content, on request…

Yum and the other companies say the regulations should apply to individual restaurants with $1 million or more in annual sales and chains with three or more locations.

My soothsaying powers are in fine form. Or, this was just blindingly obvious.

Bariloche, Argentina.