• Photos from Chile’s earthquake.
• British man jailed for six months for allowing people to smoke on his privately-owned property.
• Man quarantined after testing positive for TB. Naturally, he uses his time in isolation to make a charming, funny, self-produced rap video.
• NYU business prof sends complaining student a masterful dressing-down email.
• Some great selections from National Geographic‘s international photography competition.
• ATF seizes shipment of toy guns.
• There’s really no part of your day-to-day life that politicians don’t feel they should be able to control.

SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family’s pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on.

They found a “small amount” of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment.

So smoking pot = “child endangerment.” Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on = necessary police procedures to ensure everyone’s safety.

Just so we’re clear.

Various jurisdictions in Texas have made news over the last several years for sending vice squads into bars and arresting patrons for drinking. Not drinking and driving, mind you. Just drinking. In a bar.

In a scary piece for Mother Jones, Adam Weinstein delves into just how ridiculously broad and vague the state’s public intoxication laws really are. Exceprt:

The public intoxication standard, backed by the Texas-based Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is so broad that you can be arrested on just a police officer’s hunch, without being given a Breathalyzer or field sobriety test. State courts have not only upheld the practice but expanded the definition of public intoxication to cover pretty much any situation, says Robert Guest, a criminal defense attorney in Dallas. “Having no standard allows the police to arrest whoever pisses them off and call it PI,” he says, adding, “If you have a violent, homophobic, or just an asshole of a cop and you give him the arbitrary power to arrest anyone for PI, you can expect violent, homophobic, and asshole-ic behavior.”

For some officers, PI has provided a ready-made reason for detaining minorities. A Houston defense attorney, who asks to be unnamed since he specializes in misdemeanors such as PI, puts it this way: “If you’re brown and you’re around—you’re going down.” Nick Novello, a 27-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department, blew the whistle on three colleagues who he claims filled their arrest quotas by picking up people, mostly minorities, for PI. “They were illegally arrested,” Novello says. “It’s an absolute perversion.” (Two were removed from the force.)

According to a recent report by sociology and law professors at the University of California-Berkeley, the Dallas suburb of Irving has used “discretionary” public intoxication arrests to fish for undocumented immigrants.

Anthony Smelley was the subject of my February feature in Reason about asset forfeiture abuse. In January of last year, Smelley was pulled over in Putnam County, Indiana for an unsafe lane change and an obscured license plate. After a drug dog alerted to Smelley’s car, police seized $17,320 in cash Smelley had brought with him. According to court records, Smelley says he was en route from Michigan to St. Louis, where he planned to use the money to purchase a car for his aunt. Even though Smelley later produced a letter from a Detroit law firm confirming that the money was part of a settlement from a recent car accident, Putnam County moved forward to keep the money, on the absurd theory that Smelley could have used the money to purchase drugs at some point in the future.

To make matters worse, the county was represented not by an elected public official, but by Christopher Gambill, an attorney in private practice who handles several Indiana counties’ forfeiture cases on a contingency basis, earning 25-33 percent of what he wins in court, a system stacked with twisted incentives.

I don’t know that you could call it a victory, but last week, some 13 months after Putnam County took his money, Anthony Smelley learned he will finally get it back. Putnam County Circuit Court Special Judge David Polk ruled that the stop, detainment, and drug dog search of Smelley and his car were all legal. But Polk also determined that because the police found no drugs in Smelley’s possession and because the county presented no other evidence of illegal activity, it is obligated to return Smelley’s money.

Under Indiana law, Smelley will not be reimbursed for his time, interest on the money, court costs or attorney’s fees.

This is obviously preferable to a decision allowing the county to keep Smelley’s money. But it shows just what a rigged game the forfeiture racket is that it took 13 months, two judges, and a hell of a lot of hassle for Smelley to reach the same outcome he should have been granted the moment the police failed to find any contraband in his car.

You can read Polk’s decision here.

“Stay With Me,” by the Faces.

Believe it or not, there was a time, a long time ago, when Rod Stewart rocked pretty hard.

• They ordered 14 condoms for every athlete in the Olympic Village . . . and they’re running out! Who has time to train?
• Mall Sharks sounds like a pretty awesome camp horror movie.
• Puppet decolletage: too hot for Colorado Springs.
• Sheriff who intimidated college professor apologizes.
• More from Barack Obama’s Facebook page.
• Speaking of Facebook, guards investigated for boasting on the site about beating prisoners.
• UK introduces vague law that could land you in prison for 10 years for photographing a cop.
• J.D.’s looking great post-surgery.

• NYPD officer faces threats for reporting fellow officer to Internal Affairs.
• Another Maricopa County deputy caught snooping in a defense attorney’s files.
• Quiet libertarian victories.
• More than 70 percent of congressional offices violate OSHA standards. And that’s apparently a big improvement over last year.
• Mark Cuban spanks Al Franken. Rhetorically, I mean.
• “In a study of 1,600 babies born between 1997 and 2001, the Danes had smaller testicles than the Finns.”
• Maryland teacher has 13-year-old escorted out of class by police for failing to say the Pledge.
• Eat your heart out, Carrie Prejean.

H.R. 57 jazz club, Washington, D.C.

So the men are terrible. They’re miles behind the women this year. It’s not really even worth going through the entire lineup. So many lost, nervy, forgettable performances. I’m not sure most of them are even capable of stepping it up. It’s Casey James, then Andrew Garcia, then everyone else.

James was great, and I can’t wait for him to try something more upbeat. Eager to see more bluesy guitar licks from him, too. But judges and Idol producers, please, stop playing up Kara Dioguardi’s crush on the guy. It was silly when she had him take his shirt off during his audition. Last night was just embarrassing.

I thought Garcia was very good too, despite what the judges said. Maybe his on-stage insularity was more apparent in the studio than it was on TV. But he sounded fantastic, and it’s a bit confusing for the judges to constantly be telling the contestants to “make the song yours,” then criticize this guy because they didn’t like how he altered the song.

Of the rest, Tyler Grady stands out as the biggest disappointment. I actually like the 70s shtick. But Grady was listless. If you’re going to invoke Jagger and Morrison, fuel up on the Adderall before you take the stage. I’m a huge fan of the Guess Who. That was one limp impersonation. I hoped for bigger things from this guy. Maybe it was nerves. I’ve thought Michael Lynche has been way overrated and overexposed through the preliminary rounds, and he confirmed that last night. Also, he’s the least healthy-looking personal trainer I’ve ever seen. Lee Dewyze has some promise, but I hate what he did to that Snow Patrol song. That song’s appeal is its hypnotic, shoegaze pull. Rasping it up and adding rock inflections completely killed the vibe.

Prediction: Tim Urban and John Park brought up the ass-end of a really mediocre lineup.

Lazy-man blogging continues…

• Motorhome Diaries crew files intent to sue for arrests in Jones County, Mississippi.
• This is pretty stunning news.
• Arizona judge finds Andrew Thomas and Joe Arpaio are abusing legal system to attack political opponents.
• Poll: Canadians prefer bacon to sex. Better not step foot in Canada, Tim Love.
• New York City public school system has 55,000 teachers. They’ve managed to fire just three in two years for incompetence.
• Copyright Nazis kill original Rickroll.
• Italy sentences Google execs to prison after user posts abusive video to YouTube.

• More Blackwater shenanigans. How is this company still getting federal contracts?
• The good news about this repugnant screed is just how anachronistic it reads. Comes off like the last angry death rattle of terminal worldview, doesn’t it? Also, do the scare quotes around the phrase radical regime mean that Cliff Kincaid sees nothing radical about Uganda’s plan to exterminate homosexuals?
• A gallery of old breakfast cereal ads.
• Toll collectors gone wild!
• Obama exercises his SOTU-promised “belt-tightening” with plans for a new, $1 billion U.S. embassy in London. Also, a friggin’ moat?
• So much going on in this photo.

I thought the judges were pretty harsh tonight. Seems like they’re a bit jaded, or forgetting that they’re judging the first round, not the finals. Overall, not a bad round of performances for these girls’ first time before a massive national audience.

Here’s how I’d rank them:

Lilly Scott
Sang: Fixin’ a Hole
Should Have Sung: I have no complaints.
Performance: Best of the night. Not sure what Simon’s talking about. She has plenty of star power. She’s confident, poised, and has her own sound. Don’t know how far her retro vocals will go with Idol voters, though.

Michelle Delamor
Sang: Fallen
Should Have Sung: Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer”
Performance: I’m not an Alicia Keyes fan, but she was great. Polished and confident. “Too commercial” was a strange criticism from the judges. To come out that strong and seemingly nerve-free this early was an accomplishment.

Katelyn Epperly
Sang: Oh Darlin’
Should Have Sung: This was a great choice.
Performance: Fantastic. Sexy, sultry, terrific stage presence. Kara was right about her knowing her voice, wrong about her look. I thought it fit the song rather well.

Didi Benami
Sang: The Way I Am
Should Have Sung: “What I Am,” by Edie Brickell.
Performance: The judges were way too hard on her. This was a great first performance. Different than the others, and a stripped-down arrangement. The arrangement smartly put lots of focus on her voice, which is pretty unique.

Crystal Bowersox
Sang: Hand in my Pocket
Should Have Sung: Bob Dylan’s “Shelter From the Storm”
Performance: I like Bowersox quite a bit, but this was a little disappointing. Song choice was too predictable. Also, the harmonica’s a nice touch, but if she’s going to play it, she needs to play it correctly. It was off last night. Her terrific voice, phrasing, and inflection overcame both, but I figured she’d have been one of the front runners after the first week. She came up a bit short of that.

Siobhan Magnus
Sang: Wicked Game
Should Have Sung: Pretty good choice.
Performance: Had some doubts when she first came out. Lower register was off key (I think she had a mic problem, too). But recovered really nicely. Strongest finish of the night. But I’m also a big Chris Isaac fan.

Ashley Rodriguez
Sang: Happy
Should Have Sang: John Hiatt’s “Have a Little Faith in Me”
Performance: She was good, if a little boring. She has a very good, but very generic voice. Needs to pick some unconventional songs to stand out. It’ll probably help that she’s hot.

Janell Wheeler
Sang: What About Love
Should Have Sung: Alanah Miles’ “Black Velvet”
Performance: Verses sounded great, but she didn’t have the chops to bring home the big chorus. Both the song and the band got away from her. I like her, though. And like Rodriguez, her looks will help her through if she breaks off a couple weak performances early on.

Katie Stevens
Sang: Feelin’ Good
Should Have Sung: Maybe some Dusty Springfield?
Performance: She’s good. Another contestant the judges were way too hard on. They’re probably right that she needs to go younger and more playful next time around, though.

Paige Miles
Sang: All Right Now
Should Have Sung: I thought the song choice was pleasantly quirky, but she should have slowed it down, or quieted the band for a more stripped-down arrangement.
Performance: Not very memorable. She didn’t enunciate the lyrics well, and her voice was drowned out by the band. Seems like a common problem in the early rounds with people who pick songs with a strong guitar line. Strong finish, though. Still, she may be gone.

Haeley Vaughan
Sang: I Want To Hold Your Hand
Should Have Sung: Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”
Performance: I’ve been perplexed by the judges’ fascination with her up to this point. Is it the novelty of a black teenage girl who wants to be a country star? I find her annoying, and Simon’s description of her last night as a smiling wind-up doll was spot-on. I’m sure she’s a nice kid. I just don’t get the appeal.

Lacey Brown
Sang: Landslide
Should Have Sung: Anything else.
Performance: I think these last two were the only really bad performances. This one was all over the place. The choice to sing parts in duet with a male backup singer was a terrible one. She also lost her place, and was off-key throughout the song. Too bad. She had some good moments in the preliminary rounds.

Prediction: Brown and Vaughan should be gone. But Vaughan got so much publicity in the early rounds, she’s probably established enough of a fan base to get through. So I think Brown and Miles go home Thursday.

More than 18 months after he was fired, medical examiner Steven Hayne is still testifying in Mississippi’s courtrooms.

More on Hayne here.

Denver Post columnist Susan Greene details what looks to be a railroading in progress.

Residents were alarmed last summer by a rash of thefts, trespasses and burglaries in Stonegate, a neighborhood in Douglas County.

Fear turned to panic in July after an intruder reportedly climbed into a second- story window and groped an 8-year-old girl in her bed.

A sicko was on the loose and pressure was on to catch him.

Soon enough, they found their man. Police arrested Tyler Sanchez, a 19-year-old who is both hearing impaired and mentally disabled. After 17 hours of questioning over a 38-hour period, Sanchez confessed, though according to Greene, his confession consisted of no more than the details of the crime the police revealed to him during interrogation. In announcing their success, prosecutors noted Sanchez’s “pattern of escalating behavior,” by which they meant he had been arrested as a juvenile for graffiti, then violated his probation by consuming alcohol. If only they had locked up this monster sooner.

Unfortunately, the state’s case then took a hit when DNA testing on evidence culled from the 8-year-old’s underwear pointed to an unknown male, but excluded Sanchez as that male. No matter. District Attorney Carol Chambers insists she still has the right guy. How can she be so sure? Well, because kids can be such sluts these days.

“With the low-cut jeans that girls wear, she could have picked up anyone’s DNA off any surface her panties touched while they may have been riding up above her pants. I hate those low-cut pants,” Chambers said…

“Depending on how long she had been wearing those panties and where, they could have rubbed up against the back of her chair at school, a restaurant, the couch at home that someone else had been sitting on, a bus seat, someone’s toilet seat if she did not pull them down far enough — there are many ways to get unknown DNA on clothing. Another kid could have snapped the elastic on her underwear — kids do that sort of thing.”

Don’t be too hard on Chambers, though. She probably knows that in Colorado, sending potentially innocent people to prison is how prosecutors become judges.

…is my kind of conservative.

• Man arrested for using publicly-owned equipment to make polka videos.
• Next up: an animal abuse registry.
• Respected journalists take money from Church of Scientology to investigate newspaper that has been investigating Scientology.
• Twitter feed turns into TV series.
• Speaking of Twitter, all credit to PJ Doland, who hosts this site, for the greatest Tweet tweeted to date. I’m amused that the Dalai Lama is now on Twitter. I picture him sitting on a rock, lotus-style, high atop a Tibetan mountain, giggling as he re-tweets stuff Ashton Kutcher and Shaquille O’Neal write, perhaps adding the occasional “QFT!”.
• Today on Judge Judy: the case of the cat-killing hipster.

My crime column this week looks at the pending executing of Hank Skinner.

The frightening thing is not only that the answer to the question above may be yes, but that Texas officials don’t seem to have much interest in finding out.

ABC News reports on the case of Koua Fong Lee, a Laotian immigrant serving eight years in a Minnesota prison for vehicular manslaughter. Lee was driving a 1996 Toyota Camry, when he accelerated to 70-90 mph, ran two stop signs, then struck another car, killing three of its occupants. Lee says the car accelerated on its own, and testified that he exclaimed to his family that the car’s brakes weren’t working in the run-up to the crash. The family’s of the victims are joining the effort to win Lee’s release:

“I was angry for a moment, but when I came to my senses and thought about it, I didn’t understand it,” said Quincy Adams whose son and grandson were among those killed. “I can’t believe that a guy with his pregnant wife, a kid in a car seat, his father-in-law and a brother-in-law in the car, would purposely be speeding up this ramp like that,” said Bridgette Trice, whose seven-year old daughter later died from injuries suffered in the accident.

She said the news stories about Toyota’s problems led her to reconsider what happened in the accident that killed her daughter.

“Maybe there is something to what Mr. Lee said was going on with him in his car, that he couldn’t stop, that he tried his hardest, and the brakes, that his car wouldn’t stop,” said Ms. Trice.

“He’s never wavered on his story that his brakes were bad,” she added.

The 1996 Camry isn’t part of Toyota’s recent massive recall, but it was subject to a separate recall in the 1990s due to sudden acceleration related to the cruise control feature. That recall was not introduced at Lee’s trial. The article notes that there have been 17 acceleration complaints about the model Lee wasdriving, though it doesn’t say if that’s an unusually high number in comparison to other makes and models.

If the car was defective, Lee was of course wrongly convicted and imprisoned, and deserves not only release, but a hefty payout from both Toyota and the state of Minnesota. He was convicted in 2006, and we’re now learning that both Toyota and federal regulators knew about the acceleration problem as early as 2003.

But it’s also worth asking why prosecutors decided to hit Lee with such a severe charge in the first place. He wasn’t under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash. He wasn’t drag racing or showing signs of road rage. As noted, he was driving his family—including his pregnant wife and child—home from church when the accident occurred. The article doesn’t indicate any theory from the prosecution as to why Lee would have suddenly, willfully driven so recklessly, but under Minnesota law they didn’t have to. This is the problem with felony crimes that don’t require the state to show intent. The Minnesota law requires only  a show of”reckless disregard for the rights and safety of others,” which could likely have been satisfied merely by showing how fast Lee was driving.

Cultural bias may have also had something to do with it, too. Lee is Hmong. As a commenter at the ABC News site notes, Lee’s trial came months after the highly-publicized trial of a Hmong man who massacred three Wisconsin hunters in 2004. Now one state over, you have a Hmong man who took out three people while driving well in excess of the speed limit. Lee also testified through a translator, and according to the ABC article his trial judge expressed doubt about Lee’s remorse. Maybe Lee really wasunremorseful , though it also seems possible that an emotion like remorse could be expressed differently in different cultures or be lost in translation.

Whatever their reasons, the prosecutors seemed set on making Lee pay a heavy price for the three deaths, and paid too little consideration to his actual level of criminal culpability.

Two more take-downs of the myth that immigration leads to increases in violent crime:

The first is from Steve Chapman. The second, surprisingly enough, comes from The American Conservative.

My take here.

• Via the comments, a sheriff says of a dog shooting: “I want to stress that this dog was inside of a fenced-in yard when it was shot and killed. Anyone who would do something like this is cruel, cold-hearted and a coward to boot.” Wish police officials were as blunt when cops fire at leashed or fenced-in dogs.
• Tobias Funke would be proud.
• The Washington Post profiles libertarian Tom Palmer, who’s suing for the right to open carry in Washington, D.C. Palmer says a gun saved his life in the early 1980s when he was able to fend off a couple of homophobes intent on killing him.
• There’s a headline writer at Stars and Stripes with a bawdy sense of humor.
• The ever-reaching scope of the Plain View Doctrine.
• DEA raids another medical marijuana dispensary.
• …which of course would mean it isn’t all that bad at all.
• The first and only skateboard park in East Africa.

Halibut Cove, Alaska.

So how long until this idiot gets caught in a public bathroom with a male prostitute?

I give it five years. It’s encouraging that he was booed, though. That wouldn’t have happened ten years ago. Or even five.

The rights theory babble is incomprehensible. Natural rights theory says we all own our own bodies, and own the product of our own labor. Not sure how you get from that to an argument that the government should be allowed to discriminate against you based on whom you allow to access your body.

(Note of explanation: The clip in the link is from a panel at this week’s Conservative Political Action Committee, the annual gathering of the righty acitvists in D.C.)