There have been some developments in the Mississippi case of Eddie Lee Howard, which I first wrote about here. I’ll have more on those developments in an upcoming column. But in the meantime Ican’t resist sharing a short passage from the Mississippi Innocence Project’s pleading in Howard’s case that relates to Mississippi District Attorney Forrest Allgood.

First some context. Allgood, remember, is the DA who wrongly convicted Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks. He’s also the DA who put Steven Hayne on the stand in the Tyler Edmonds case to deliver his infamous “I can tell by the bullet wounds that there were two hands on the gun” theory. The key to Eddie Lee Howard’s case, just as in the cases of Brewer and Brooks (and Jimmie Duncan), was bite mark testimony from our favorite forensic odontologist, Michael West.

Michael West is the man who claims to have invented  a method of bite mark analysis that only he can conduct, and that can’t be duplicated by anyone else. He’s the man who claimed he could trace the teeth marks in a half-eaten bologna sandwich found at a crime scene to the defendant, to the exclusion of everyone else on the planet. He’s the man who, in a sting orchestrated by a defense attorney, not only claimed that a dental mold made from the teeth of the defense attorney’s private investigator was a definite match to photos of bite marks on a corpse from a case ten years prior, but also claimed the odds that anyone else made those bite marks were “astronomical,” and sent back a 20-minute video in which he explained, step by step, how he was able to match the dental mold to the completely unrelated bite marks.

(I could go on.)

So here’s what Forrest Allgood told the jury about Michael West’s genius during Eddie Lee Howard’s murder trial:

“[W]hether we like to think so or not, the progress of mankind has been carried forward on the backs of people like Michael West. . . The church threatened to burn Copernicus because he dared to say that the planets didn’t revolve around the earth. So it was with Michael West.”

And so it was.

I believe Allgood meant to invoke Galileo, not Copernicus. But otherwise, bravo, Mr. Prosecutor. One day children all over the world will read in their textbooks about this humble dentist from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and how the wicked fate of history cursed him to be unappreciated in his own time.

An NYPD spokeswoman tells Gothamist that the guy who threatened to arrest a cell phone camera operator and told him, “Guys in jail are going to rape you,” (which I blogged about here) is not a member of NYPD.

The Gothamist post speculates he’s a cop with another police department, though at this point that isn’t exactly clear, either. More to come, I’m sure.

The Indianapolis Star investigation into how state law enforcement agencies get around restrictions on civil asset forfeiture is now online.

Kudos to  Tim Evans and Heather Gillers for a well-reported investigation.

• Sportswriter Mike Celizic has just a couple weeks to live, and he’s writing about the experience.
• Matthew Yglesias suggests that maybe heavy-handed licensing laws directed at barbers aren’t such a good idea, and might have some protectionist effects. His commenters cry “Judas!”
• A.P.: Obama administration filtering some FOIA requests through political channels, gathering information on those who make the requests and their motives.
• Woman accidentally gets t-shirt wet at an Orlando theme park. Police ask she cover up, then demand she give them personal information to enter into database. Having broke no law, she refuses. Naturally, they arrest her.
• California photojournalist wins settlement after an ugly confrontation with local police chief.  Pretty sure the fact that she was able to capture the incident on video had something to do with her winning a settlement—and the chief’s subsequent resignation.
• Kansas police unsure how they’re going to enforce bans on texting while driving. They’re right. It’s impossible to enfore. And some crazy blogger warned you this would be a problem.

I saw this trio live Monday. It’s sort of a Nashville singer-songwriter supergroup.

The band is Elle Macho. The song is called “Bombs.”

Stewart was brilliant last night. Eloquent, earnest (in a good way), and funny. He even showed some humility, pointing out his own inconsistency, and admitting he was wrong about the NRA-Columbine controversy.

I feel comfortable writing that, because I don’t plan to visit Valley Center, Kansas any time soon.

He was cuffed, fingerprinted, booked into the Sedgwick County Jail and released on bail. His crime: putting up a yard sign critical of the Valley Center city administrator.

Jarrod West is out on bail, facing criminal defamation charges for a sign he put in his front yard about persistent flooding issues he says cost him over $50,000 over the last three years. The sign says, “Dear Valley Center, I did not buy Lake Front Property! Fix this problem. This is what I pay taxes for. PS. Joel this means you!” Joel being City Administrator Joel Pile…

When City Administrator Joel Pile saw the sign, West was arrested and booked into the Sedgwick County Jail on a criminal charge of defamation. He spent the night behind bars and is now free on a $10,000 bond.

“I think it’s an ego trip for somebody and I think somebody’s abusing their ego and authority,” said West.

“We’ve advised him of the process to come through the City Council,” Pile told KSN.

Pile stands behind the criminal charge, saying West has acted with malice in criticizing him and he’s been told any action to alleviate flooding has to come from the City Council.

“People and individuals have an absolute right to free speech,” said Pile. “But however, when they do it and continue to do it within the realms of what we believe is actual malice for the purpose of holding me accountable to the public we believe that crosses a line.”

Pile says the city will drop the charges against West if he stops blaming Pile for the flooding issues on his property.

How kind of Mr. Pile. Never criticize him, and you won’t have to worry about him having you arrested.

• Muslims also facing backlash for proposed mosques on the hallowed ground of Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Antioch, Tennessee; Staten Island, New York; Temecula, California; Sheboygan, Wisconsin; and Bridgeport, Connecticut. But it has nothing to do with bigotry! These protesters are just protecting sacred sites.
• Frog legs for everyone.
• Child pornography, sextortion, and Chinese hymenoplasties: Jack Shafer’s roundup of bogus trend stories.
• Odd pairing: Conan O’Brien and Jack White. Jack White apparently lives within a few blocks of me. Haven’t seen him yet.
• Happy Neptune year!
• Jack London: Kind of an asshole.
• This reporter mostly gets the law right in her story about videotaping police in North Carolina. (The prosecutor she interviewed is flat wrong when he says it might be “technically illegal” to record an arrest. North Carolina is a one-party consent state. No way recording a public arrest could be illegal.). But that’s all ruined by a headline that gives a completely wrongheaded impression.

For 10 years, libertarian activist and scholar Peter Jaworski has thrown an annual summer seminar and party on the Clarington, Ontario property owned by his parents, Marta and Lech. The Liberty Summer Seminar typically features speeches from libertarian activists and scholars followed by live music and food. This year Peter’s parents, who fled to Canada from communist Poland in the 1980s, face a $50,000 fine for violating local zoning laws.

From the Toronto Star:

Peter Jaworski said the local health department called him a few days before the event and he thought he had addressed its concerns over food being served — he decided to cater — and the three portable toilets on site.

But the couple received a summons to provincial court on Sept. 28 on a charge of using land in an agricultural zone “for a commercial conference centre” contrary to a Clarington bylaw.

Marta Jaworski, 57, said she and her husband, also 57, are “devastated” by the charge, which she called a “taste” of the oppression they felt in Poland before fleeing in 1984 to Germany and later Canada.

“It is a feeling to be hunted. They come in uniforms . . . ,” she said, starting to cry.

Herman Leonard, the man who took iconic nighclub shots of jazz greats like Dexter Gordon, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday (above) has died.

Great Slate appreciation and slideshow here.

• The Maryland dog park shooter has been charged with two misdemeanors.
• “What We Own.”
• RIAA, NAB may ask the government to mandate FM receivers in portable electronics.
• Obama sticking with his DEA nominee Michele Leonhardt, even though she’s a proponent of federal raids on medical marijuana clinics.
• Good interview with Innocence Project co-founder Peter Neufeld.
• Hilarious Facebook controversy over photo illusion featuring Kylie Minogue, a microphone, and a giant stuffed bear.
• Smells Like a Rockin’ Robin.
• Feds say no charges against school officials in Pennsylvania laptop spying case.
• Kathryn Johnston’s family will get $4.9 million from the city of Atlanta.

An undercover New York City cop threatens a man taking cell phone video with arrest for being disrespectful. He then explains that an arrest means a weekend in jail, where he’ll probably be raped.

The confrontation appears to have occurred during an undercover bust of a suspected “illegal social club,” which judging by its use in other other raids appears to be a law that criminalizes weird artist types who freak out the neighbors.

The space that was raided was run by a group of activist independent filmmakers called the Glass Bead Collective.

Via Carlos Miller.

Over at Hit & Run, I’ve posted some thoughts on Muslim immigrants in America.

• Gene Healy: “By 2012, our national debt will be larger than the entire U.S. economy, according to the International Monetary Fund. So what’s on the front burner in Washington these days? Zoning issues in lower Manhattan!” Also, a closer look at the “hallowed” ground argument.
• Indianapolis cop plows into two motorcycles, killing one and critically injuring two. New professionalism angle: He had a history of car accidents, wasn’t tested for alcohol until two hours after the accident, tested at .19, and still wasn’t booked at the jail.
• The proper way to listen to Justin Bieber.
• Fretting that your Chinese or Japanese-language tattoo doesn’t say waht you think it does? This guy will translate it for you.
• Emily Bazelon finds a new twist in the Phoebe Prince bullying story. By the way, probably won’t surprise you to learn that our old friend Wendy Murphy is pretty gung ho about this prosecuting Prince’s bulliers with felonies nonsense.
• Signs that an asteroid the size of Chicago must be hurtling toward Earth.
• Jack Shafer throws cold water on the “all our roads are turning to gravel!” hysteria. Bonus appearance by my home county, Hancock County, Indiana.

In February I wrote a Reason feature about asset forfeiture law. In particular the piece looked at the law in Indiana, where private attorneys are often hired to sift through and argue forfeiture cases for a contingency, a practice forfeiture legal experts say is almost certainly unconstitutional, and at the very least bad policy.

The practice is even more egregious given that Indiana’s constitution requires that all forfeiture proceeds go to a fund for the state’s public schools. Now, an Indiana legal blogger and the Indianapolis Star have found that the law is routinely ignored. Over the last two years, just five of Indiana’s 92 counties have given any forfeiture money to the schools fund at all.

In fact one private attorney made more money from one case than the entire state contributed to the forfeiture fund over two years.

Read up here.

Good to know that members of Congress continue to give careful, thoughtful consideration to the way they spend our money. Jim Harper explains the strange tale of H.R. 1586.

As we noted here before, this is a “shell bill.” It was introduced as one thing (TARP taxes), became another thing (an aviation bill), and is now a batch of spending policies. (Cost: about $125 per family)

The most recent version of the bill was produced when the Senate passed a “substitute amendment.” That’s an amendment that clips out everything in the bill and puts in all new text.

In the House and Senate, they often publish amendments ahead of time, and it looks like someone was in a rush to get the amendment together, because they left blank lines where the new name of the bill should have been.

Take a look for yourself. Down toward the bottom of this page in the Congressional Record, it says, “SECTION 1. This Act may be cited as the “_______Act of______”. (The Library of Congress’ Thomas reporting system picked that up as the “XXXXXXAct ofXXXX,” so that’s how it shows up on our site.)

Well, THAT’s the amendment they brought up and passed, so the new name of the bill is the “_______Act of______.”

That’s right. A hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars spending bill made its way through Congress, and no one even noticed that the damn thing didn’t have a name. Which also means you can probably count on one hand the number of lawmakers who actually know what’s in the bill—and still have a finger left over to let them know what you think of this nonsense.

Between the Manhattan mosque, “terror babies,” Obama’s birth certificate, repealing part of the 14th Amendment, and whatever fake controversy Andrew Breitbart has dreamed up lately, the GOP and its loyal partisans have really lost their collective shit. I keep thinking the tone of the public discourse can’t get any lower. And then they prove me wrong. The sad thing is, on the issues that actually matter America is in dire need of a competent opposition party right now. But actually coming up with new ideas, as opposed to demagoguing to the base (a word that works in two ways here), well, it’s hard. It requires serious thinking from serious people. When members of the party like Rep. Paul Ryan actually do put forth serious policy proposals that address real issues, party leaders run like hell. Because a plan to eliminate the federal budget deficit in fifty years is too radical for them.

Instead, we get this….

Will Wilkinson on Bradley Manning and Wikileaks:

…one fact beyond dispute in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is this: they have killed people by the thousands. In fact, the two wars combined have produced well more than 100,000 corpses. If putting people in harm’s way is a damning criticism of Manning, then what are we to make of those who have cheered on, voted for, and managed America’s wars? Is all this killing justified or not? Is there a legitimate aim that will somehow redeem all this death? These questions are the backdrop against which we judge the deeds of Bradley Manning and the efforts of WikiLeaks….

This is a big part of the story, but not the only part. Private Manning and WikiLeaks have also created the possibility that millions of Americans will now come face to face with the same ugly truths that led Manning to conclude that he had obligations to humanity weightier than an oath to the state. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left Americans with blood on our hands, and on our wallets — a truth most of us prefer to avoid. Unfiltered facts and uncensored video about what has been done on our behalf, on our dime, are “dangerous” precisely because they lead to mortifying moral clarity when it is face-saving obfuscation that we crave. Secrets sold by a grasping turncoat would not threaten America’s wars. It is Manning’s idealistic exercise of conscience, and the faint possibility that we are as good as he thinks we are, that has agitated the lords of war.

• Journalism warning labels.
• It’s August in D.C. So this is news.
• FHA loans now going to needy upscale Manhattan condo owners.
• More on the filthy world of cable news booking.
• Very cool vintage promotional posters for U.S. national parks.
• How power affects us.
• Dogs improve office efficiency. I can vouch for this.
• “Car owners may not want to hear this, but we have way too much free parking.”

Righty: Property rights forever!*

(*Unless you want to build something on your property that I don’t like, at a location that offends me, even though I don’t own any property around where you’re planning to build.)

Lefty: First Amendment forever!*

(*Unless you’re a group of people who want to pool their money in order to criticize a politician around the time of an election, or you want to advertise a product I find distasteful, or you want to express ideas that I find offensive.)

New York criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield riffs on my post about Wendy Murphy yesterday and tells this amusing tale from the cable TV trenches:

Way back when MSNBC used to do 6 hours stints with lawyers doing the color commentary on the court case of the day, I was a regular doing the defense side.  Once an hour, we would be expected to sit at a desk and do a five minute stint, me and whoever was doing the “former prosecutor” job that day.  Our five minutes would consist of a two questions, each taking up about 90 second and including some mischaracterization of the nature of the legal issue, and concluding with the words “how do you feel?”  We had ten seconds to respond before the talking head turned elsewhere.

One slow day caught up with us.  The “former prosecutor” and I got bored playing cards, waiting for our next stint, and there was absolutely nothing worthwhile to say on the case du jour.  We had just finished our stint with Ashley Banfield (back when she was blond and didn’t wear her “interested” glasses), and some unknown kid in a peculiar Caribbean-green-colored shirt was the next hour’s anchor.  We decided to goof with the kid by switching sides.  I would take the prosecutor side and the former prosecutor would pretend to be the defense.

The anchor, Rick Sanchez, was very nice and solicitous, as they sat us at our desk, and we nodded nicely back, knowing that there would be someone else we didn’t know there in an hour.  He ran through his question and we responded.  Just backward.  Rick didn’t skip a beat, and we filled our five minutes like good little lawyers.  Just backward.  Nobody, not Sanchez, not a producer, nobody, even noticed.  Our sound bites were good.  Our time was filled.  And everybody was happy.  It meant absolutely nothing.

The Allman Brothers’ “Soulshine.”

Better than moonshine, and damn sure better than rain.