Way, way back in 2007, I put up a short post about a scandal involving the Hoboken, New Jersey SWAT team, which claimed to have gone on a humanitarian aid trip to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, but ended up partying it up at Mardis Gras, with ensuing photos involving Hooters girls, Jello shots, and SWAT chief Lt. Angelo Andriani posing as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Andriani was later sued by five Hispanic police officers alleging him to be an “unabashed white supremacist.”

Andriani is back in the news, after apparently flashing his badge and berating some TSA employees for allowing a flight crew move ahead of him in a screening line.

Pick your poison in the “rogue cop vs. TSA” squabble. The story within the story linked above is the punishment Andriani received for his exploits in New Orleans: a two year paid suspension. Hoboken taxpayers are “punishing” Andriani by paying him $11,000 per month for 24 months to do absolutely nothing.

Got a nice email from the artist Andy Prieboy after I mentioned his song on Friday.

Thank you so much for your kind words regarding “Tomorrow Wendy.” I am very grateful that you would take the time to share those thoughts with others. Presently, I am trying to work out a deal with the song’s publishers, Universal Music Publishing, to get it on iTunes.

Reading your bio , I see we both originated from the state of Indiana . I come from industrial northwest corner . In case you don’t already know, this song is about a woman who worked and died in the red light district of Hammond, Indiana and nearby Calumet City, Illinois. The location shots you see in the video are from her area .

He was also nice enough to send me an MP3 of his version of the song.

So remember when, after the election but shortly before he took office, Obama said college football should go to a playoff system? Remember how Obama supporters said he was just stating an opinion, not indicating he’d actually have the federal government get involved?

Well, now he’s getting the federal government involved.

I wrote a piece for ESPN last year explaining why this is a bad idea.

Indiana boy, 12, and girl, 13, charged with felony child exploitation and possession of child pornography for sending one another naked pictures of themselves via cell phone.

The idiots charging them out to be tarred and feathered.

MORE: A commenter points to this passage, which is even scarier:

“Illinois legislation is pending to make it illegal to upload on the Internet or disseminate a video of someone without their consent or with the intent to cause harm.”

I really hope the law isn’t as vague as implied here.

I’ve never heard of Andy Prieboy (though he’s apparently a fellow Hoosier). And I had no idea he wrote “Tomorrow Wendy,” the sad, gorgeous song about an AIDS-infected prostitute that Concrete Blonde made famous. And until I discovered it poking around on YouTube earlier this week, I also had no idea that Prieboy recorded his own version of the song, with Concrete Blonde’s Johnette Napolitano on backup vocals.

But holy hell. What a stunning, beautiful rendition. Anyone know where you can buy or download a higher-quality version the song? It doesn’t seem to be available on iTunes. The 1990 album it’s from is going for $45 used on Amazon. Have to say, this cut alone is damn-near worth it.

Denali National Park, Alaska.

I have a fun post up at Hit & Run on pinball prohibition.

New Orleans.

What sort of qualifications would one need for this job?

International hotel chain Holiday Inn is offering a trial human bed-warming service at three hotels in Britain this month.

If requested, a willing staff-member at two of the chain’s London hotels and one in the northern English city of Manchester will dress in an all-in-one fleece sleeper suit before slipping between the sheets.

“The new Holiday Inn bed warmers service is a bit like having a giant hot water bottle in your bed,” Holiday Inn spokeswoman Jane Bednall said in an e-mailed statement.

It’s kind of like a giant hot water bottle. Only instead of rubber, it’s made of human skin. And instead of hot water, it’s filled with human blood and entrails. But other than that, yeah. Totally the same.

This might work for some clients if the “bed warmers” were cute, female, and didn’t leave the bed once you retired for the night. But that would be an entirely different sort of service.

Captioning photos from Dwell magazine, the Martha Stewart Living for hipsters.

I laughed.

I think the judgmental octopus was my favorite.

Chicago.

Let me be clear . . . they’re right.

Most of the rest of the staff of Reason, too.

A federal judge has thrown out Brooke Oberwetter’s lawsuit against the National Park Police, who arrested her in 2008 for quietly dancing at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.

I haven’t read the opinion yet, but the Washington Post write-up focuses on whether dancing can be prohibited at the Memorial. Seems to me Brooke was arrested in part merely for asking what law she had violated.

(Disclosure, Brooke is a friend. And I attended the “Thomas Jefferson Dance Party,” although I arrived after all the drama had happened.)

Capitol Hill residents David and Allyson Kitchel tell local TV station WJLA that MPDC police recently raided their home looking for a suspect wanted on weapons charges. They say the raid caused $3,000 in damage. THe Kitchels bought the home from the suspect’s family 18 months ago. Police apparently raided the home after getting an address from the suspect’s mother, but didn’t bother to check public records to see if the house had been sold.

The Kitchels say when they asked the city to compensate them for the damage, they were declined. The city explained that “the warrant was authorized and valid,” and that  “MPD officers determined there was sufficient probable cause.”

So I guess as long as all the proper procedures were followed, the physical damage to the house is all in the Kitchels’ imagination. Good thing they don’t have an imaginary dog, too.

I suspect that now that the Kitchels’ story has hit the media, they’ll eventually be compensated. But it makes you wonder how many times this sort of thing happens in less affluent parts of the city, where residents are less likely to have their stories covered by the local news.

I have an investigative piece in the February issue of Reason on asset forfeiture. The issue is on newsstands now, but the article itself is now online.

The article uses the case of Anthony Smelley—a Michigan man who had $17,500 taken from him from Putnam County, Indiana police while driving through the state en route to Missouri—to look at the larger issue of forfeiture abuses still going on at the state and local level.

The article also breaks some news. While looking into Smelley’s story, I discovered that Putnam County’s case against the man was being handled by a private attorney, not the prosecutor’s office. When I talked to that attorney, I learned some pretty incredible things. Excerpt:

Timothy Bookwalter, the elected chief prosecutor for Putnam County, Indiana, did not represent the county in its effort to keep Anthony Smelley’s money. Nor did anyone else in his office. Instead, the case was handled by Christopher Gambill, a local attorney in private practice. Gambill manages civil forfeiture cases for several Indiana counties, and he gets to keep a portion of what he wins in court. “My contingency for my own county is a quarter; for the others it’s a third,” Gambill says.

The concept is alarming. If allowing public prosecutors to benefit from forfeiture funds brushes up against due process, allowing an unaccountable private attorney to run forfeiture cases and keep a portion of the winnings rams a steamroller straight through the notion. “This is scandalous,” Kessler says. “It’s blatantly unconstitutional.”

Gambill not only argues and briefs Putnam County forfeiture cases; he also determines which cases the county pursues in the first place. That means nongovernmental forfeiture attorneys are making criminal justice decisions that directly bolster their incomes. “It’s really bad policy,” David Smith says. “I also don’t see how it could possibly be legal.”

Mark Rutherford, chairman of the Indiana Public Defender Commission, says he isn’t aware of any court challenges to the practice. “It’s just sort of accepted here that this is the way things are,” Rutherford says. “There are attorneys who have amassed fortunes off of these cases.”

I’ve yet to talk to a forfeiture expert who wasn’t blown away that this is going on. It’s almost certainly unconstitutional. Even the ACLU had never heard of anything like it.

And then there’s this:

On February 4, 2009, Anthony Smelley got his first hearing before an Indiana judge. Smelley’s attorney, David Kenninger, filed a motion asking for summary judgment against the county, citing a letter from a Detroit law firm stating that the seized money indeed came from an accident settlement, not a drug transaction. Kenninger also argued that because there were no drugs in Smelley’s car, the state had failed to show the required “nexus” between the cash and illegal activity. Putnam County Circuit Court Judge Matthew Headley seemed to agree, hitting Christopher Gambill, who represented Putnam County, with some tough questions. That’s when Gambill made an argument that was remarkable even for a forfeiture case.

“You have not alleged that this person was dealing in drugs, right?” Judge Headley said.

“No,” Gambill responded. “We alleged this money was being transported for the purpose of being used to be involved in a drug transaction.”

Incredibly, Gambill was arguing that the county could seize Smelley’s money for a crime that hadn’t yet been committed. Asked in a phone interview to clarify, Gambill stands by the general principle. “I can’t respond specifically to that case,” he says, “but yes, under the state forfeiture statute, we can seize money if we can show that it was intended for use in a drug transaction at a later date.” (Smelley himself refused to be interviewed for this article.)

The New York–based attorney Steven Kessler, author of the legal treatise Civil and Criminal Forfeiture: Federal and State Practice, says he has never heard the “future crimes” argument. “Can you imagine any judge in America allowing an argument like that to stand?” Kessler says. “It’s obscene. It’s like something out of that movie Minority Report. We don’t punish people for crimes they haven’t yet committed.”

Believe it or not, the case actually gets even stranger from there. In the next several days, I’ll report more details that didn’t make it into the article.

Memphis.

Jeff Woodhead compares two Supreme Court free speech cases, Citizens United and the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case, and finds that of the eight justices to hear both cases, only one took a consistent First Amendment position in both rulings. Unfortunately that justice, Steven Breyer, took the anti free speech position in both cases. Oddly enough, Breyer is also the justice who once cited an article written by your humble Agitator.

I guess it’s no surprise that there are no libertarians or, frankly, any justices with a consistent undergirding philosophy on the Court. Thomas is probably the closest to having an actual philosophy that he applies consistently (agree or disagree with it). It sometimes makes the whole exercise in writing opinions seem like a quaint formality.

While I’m at it, let me join others in putting in a plug for this Glenn Greenwald post. It’s a rare pundit who can concede that the Court ruled correctly even when he’s unhappy with the decision’s consequences.

My crime column this week looks at the boneheaded logic behind treating “sexting” teens as if they were child pornographers.

Given the headline, you’d be forgiven for thinking the offending entries were an affront to political correctness. Nope. Just good old-fashioned prudery.

After a parent complained about an elementary school student stumbling across “oral sex” in a classroom dictionary, Menifee Union School District officials decided to pull Merriam Webster’s 10th edition from all school shelves earlier this week.

School officials will review the dictionary to decide if it should be permanently banned because of the “sexually graphic” entry, said district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus. The dictionaries were initially purchased a few years ago for fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms districtwide, according to a memo to the superintendent.

“It’s just not age appropriate,” said Cadmus, adding that this is the first time a book has been removed from classrooms throughout the district.

“It’s hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we’ll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature,” Cadmus said.

Better that kids learn these things on the playground, I guess.

(Thanks to Chris Berez for the link.)