My coverage of the pain issue here. When I worked for Cato, I edited a good primer on the issue, which you can download here.

I have post up over at Reason on this lame new meme from the left that tries to smear supporters of the Tenth Amendment by equating them with 9/11 truthers and Obama citizenship deniers.

On the water near Homer, Alaska.

My crime column this week looks at how shifting consensus among medical researchers may call into question thousands of “shaken baby syndrome” convictions.

If the new research is correct, it’s devastating. Imagine the innocent parent who first has to endure losing an infant, then gets wrongly charged, convicted, and imprisoned for killing the child.

New Orleans.

We had a beautifully autumny weekend here in the Mid-Atlantic. Excellent dog park weather. And yeah, Daisy is getting large. She’s four months old, now. No idea how big she’ll get.

#4 in our hair metal countdown is Poison’s “Valley of Lost Souls.” I was never much of a Poison fan. But I do remember buying the “Unskinny Bop” cassette single in maybe my freshman year in high school, and finding this song on the B-side. It rocks rather hard.

This is one of the more moving blog posts I’ve read in a long time.

The pictures are just crushing.

Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo has an op-ed in the Washington Post about his experience trying to get some accountability for the violent, mistaken 2008 raid on his home.

Let me give you three specific concerns underscored by our case.

First, the Prince George’s Police Department’s internal affairs function is broken. When the Justice Department released the county police from federal supervision in February, internal affairs was the one area that was not cleared. Internal affairs division (IAD) investigations were required to take no longer than 90 days. More than a year after our ordeal, my family awaits the IAD report on what happened at our home. The statute of limitations for officer misconduct is 12 months, which means that any wrongdoers are off the hook.

Next, there is significant evidence that the county is broadly violating the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. After initially claiming that they had a “no-knock” warrant to forcibly enter our home, county police acknowledged that they did not have one. But they went on to contend that there is no such thing as a “no-knock” warrant in Maryland. But this isn’t true. A statewide “no-knock” warrant statute was passed in 2005. Effectively, the county is denying the existence of state law. We can’t get the county to say whether it has ever followed the law or, at a minimum, even acknowledges it.

Finally, and perhaps most disturbing of all, county police may be lying to cover up their civil rights violations. A county officer on the scene told Berwyn Heights police a fabricated tale to justify the warrantless entry into our home. The lie disappeared after police learned that I was the mayor. Charges of a police coverup are hardly unusual, but there is significant evidence that county law enforcement engaged in a conspiracy on our lawn to justify an illegal entry. Nothing strikes at the heart of police credibility like creative report writing and false testimony to cover up a lie or even put innocent people behind bars.

Calvo is really an impressive guy. I’ve never talked to him whether he’d ever consider running for higher office, but there’d be some poetic justice in seeing him become the next Prince George’s county executive.

More child porn hysteria.

An Arizona couple accused of sexual abuse after taking bath-time photos of their children and then trying to have them developed at Walmart are suing the state and the retail giant.

Lisa and Anthony “A.J.” Demaree’s three young daughters were taken away by Arizona Child Protective Services last fall when a Walmart employee found partially nude pictures of the girls on a camera memory stick taken to the store for processing, according to the suit.

The Peoria couple’s attorney said Walmart turned the photos over to police and the Demarees were not allowed to see their children for several days and didn’t regain custody for a month while the state investigated.

Neither parent was charged with sexual abuse and they regained custody of their children — then ages 1 1/2, 4 and 5 — but the Demarees claim the incident inflicted lasting harm.

Given how some previous cases like this one have gone, the Demarees should probably consider themselves lucky.

Yesterday’s post on insulting politicians reminds me of a conversation I had a couple years ago shortly after I testified before Congress on the online gambling issue.

I can’t remember if it was a Capitol Hill staffer or a former staffer who was then working for the Poker Players Alliance, but a guy came up afterward and complimented me on my testimony. He said he’d never heard someone be so direct with Congress while giving testimony. I responded that I’d never really bought into the sanctimony of Congress—the idea that congressmen by default deserve reverence because they hold a political office.

That apparently went too far. The guy was offended, even though he was on my side on the poker issue. He said something to the effect of, “But you have to respect the office and the institution.”

I don’t see why. Members of Congress sure as hell don’t respect the office or the institution. They regularly pass laws that aren’t authorized by the Constitution. And that’s just the stuff they do proudly. Never mind the corruption, exempting themselves from the laws they pass, pork spending, and . . . the list goes on.

I don’t agree with Sen. Jim Webb on much when it comes to economic policy. But the guy became a hero in my book when he refused to shake then-President George W. Bush’s hand at a White House ceremony a few years ago. Bush had sent Webb’s son off to fight in what Webb thought was a feeble excuse for a war. If anything, a politician who uses his power to achieve ignoble ends ought to be held in higher contempt than the rest of us. He certainly isn’t entitled to genuflection simply by virtue of his position.

I was talking about all of this a couple of weeks ago with some D.C. folks. What would happen if someone came to testify before Congress, and just ripped into the members present with a richly-deserved, profanity-laced tirade? There is such thing as “contempt of Congress,” but as far as I know it concerns not showing up for testimony, not insulting an individual congressman, or not showing the appropriate deference to political power.

I’m sure our ranter would be subject to thorough tongue-lashings by David Brooks, David Broder, David Gergen and the phalanx of Washington’s other crusty guardians of decorum not named David. But could you be arrested? Just wondering.

So a man can’t be punished for a crime once a jury acquits him of it, right?

Actually, wrong.

Familia Zucardi Winery in Mendoza, Argentina.

I linked to a story a few days ago about Tony Feller, an old fraternity brother of mine who was battling cancer. He passed away Tuesday night.

Tony was a few years ahead of me, so we weren’t close friends. What I do remember is that he was a musically talented guy, he had an ingratiating half-smile, and he walked with a cocky swagger that didn’t quite fit his personality. That is, he was a warm, lovely guy, happy to dispense advice and hand over a beer. Even to a lowly freshman pledge. That people who hadn’t seen him in years came back to Indiana from all over the country to help out with his family’s medical bills says quite a bit about the guy.

The story below is obviously sad, given that Tony was just 37 and leaves behind a family. But it’s also moving and pretty uplifting to see the effect the guy had on the people around him.

Reader Steven Haver points to two stories from yesterday’s Reading Eagle that apparently ran on opposing pages:

The first story is about Jeffrey Madeira, who was convicted and served time for taking explicit photos of a then-17-year-old woman. The woman is now his wife. Madeira failed to notify local authorities when he moved, as he’s required to do as a registrant on Pennsylvania’s sex offender list. After he was convicted of the failure to notify, a judge went “easy” on Madeira, sentencing him to one to three years in prison. An appeals court overruled, and said the judge was mandated by law to sentence Madeira to a minimum of three additional years in prison.

The other story is about Jason Wink, a police officer who was fired after wagging his penis at a superior and in front of another officer. I’m not familiar with Pennsylvania law, but I would think that exposing yourself to co-workers in an office environment would qualify as some sort of crime, likely a sex offense. But Wink was never charged, only fired. This week, an arbitrator ruled Wink must be reinstated with full back pay and seniority. Despite the fact that Wink had prior disciplinary problems, the arbitrator found that “officials did not meet the progressive disciplinary guidelines, which involve a series of verbal and written warnings.” Apparently, the first and possibly second penis-waggings are free.

I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about what these two cases say about proportionality, justice, and equal administration of the law.

Memphis.

My former colleague Kerry Howley slaps David Brooks around for the columnist’s fallacy of drawing the Big Lesson out of a couple of vaguely related recent events—in this case, Kanye West and Rep. Joe “You Lie!” Wilson.

David Brooks alerts us to the fact that a congressman said something rude at a presidential speech, and a musician interrupted an awards show. “This isn’t the death of the West,” he reassures us. Good to know! But what is it? Why, it’s the death of all that is good and humble in this world, and the subsequent rise of “expressive individualism.” At some point between 1945 and today, we have crossed “a sort of narcissism line.”…

This may be the product of blinkered, post-1945 reasoning, but it seems to me that West’s sideshow and Wilson’s outburst together signify . . . nothing. There is nothing telling, interesting, or indicative about two men acting out at a couple of awkwardly staged performances. The way millions of people react to them, on the other hand, matters very much. And if you’re like David Brooks, you’ll see the attacks on West and Wilson as a collective outcry against the vulgar monstrosity that is our culture. If you’re like me, you’ll see this reaction as a collective insistence on deference to authority, a pathetic inability to tolerate the meekest of incivilities. Either way, whatever it might mean when 270 representatives spend valuable time excoriating a single man for a two-word declarative statement, it probably doesn’t have much to do with the triumph of individualism over conformity.

Brooks and the Washington Post‘s Michael Gerson hammer out about a dozen columns a year with this formula. Find an event or two from recent headlines, one of which generally involves pop-culture, connect them, then earnestly explain how they’re symbolic of how far we’ve strayed from A Better Time.

Me, I think America would be a better place if more people were more rude to more politicians more often.

Just received an exciting freelance opportunity from a site that covers poker. Their offer: I write articles for them on the fight to legalize online poker, for no pay. In exchange, I agree to regularly link to their site from this one.

That’s quite an offer! Wouldn’t want to play poker with them.

Charleston, South Carolina. Took this one with my cell phone camera.