U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson recently awarded Barron Bowling $830,000 for the beating he suffered at the hands of DEA Agent Timothy McCue. McCue and Bowling got into an accident in Kansas City, Kansas, after which McCue emerged from his car, gun drawn, and beat the leaving hell out of Bowling. McCue, the DEA, and officers at the Kansas City police department then conspired to cover up the beating, leaving Bowling to face charges of leaving the scene of an accident (understandable, given that he was getting beaten at the time), and assaulting Agent McCue with his car. Witness statements incriminating McCue for both the accident and the beating were lost or destroyed, as were photos of the damage McCue did to Bowling’s face.

The good news: At least one of the Kansas City police officers has since been disciplined. He was investigated by Internal Affairs, forced into early retirement, lost his retirement health insurance, and lost part of his pension.

The bad news: Only one of them was disciplined. Oh, and he happens to be the cop who exposed the coverup.

Or something like that.

Laws banning texting while driving actually may prompt a slight increase in road crashes, research out today shows.

The findings, to be unveiled at a meeting here of 550 traffic safety professionals from around the USA, come amid a heightened national debate over distracted driving.

“Texting bans haven’t reduced crashes at all,” says Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, whose research arm studied the effectiveness of the laws.

Researchers at the Highway Loss Data Institute compared rates of collision insurance claims in four states — California, Louisiana, Minnesota and Washington — before and after they enacted texting bans. Crash rates rose in three of the states after bans were enacted.

The Highway Loss group theorizes that drivers try to evade police by lowering their phones when texting, increasing the risk by taking their eyes even further from the road and for a longer time.

The findings “call into question the way policymakers are trying to address the problem of distracted-driving crashes,” Lund says, calling for a strategy that goes beyond cellphones to hit other behaviors such as eating and putting on makeup. “They’re focusing on a single manifestation of distracted driving and banning it,” he says.

U.S. Transportation Secretary and anti-texting crusader Ray LaHood says the bans just aren’t being tightly enforced. The problem is, they’re pretty much unenforceable.

• Amanda Knox will now face slander charges for disparaging Italian police.
• Sexting DA will resign after more women come forward with allegations of unwanted sexual advances.
• Genius!
• Doctors doubt story of Arizona deputy who set off immigration furor by claiming he was shot by drug smugglers. The Phoenix New Times has been all over this story from the beginning.
• I am credulously linking to this science-ish article because it confirms my biases.
• FBI agents, supervisors cheated on an open-book exam. Oh, and it was an exam to test their knowledge of, among other things, your Fourth Amendment rights.

I don’t trot that word out lightly. But Jesus.

Here’s Glenn Greenwald:

In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki’s father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims.  That’s not surprising:  both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality.  But what’s most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is “state secrets”:  in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate their legality.

There are no mitigating factors, here. Obama is arguing the executive has the power to execute American citizens without a trial, without even so much as an airing of the charges against them, and that it can do so in complete secrecy, with no oversight from any court, and that the families of the executed have no legal recourse.

You can’t even make the weak argument that the executive at least has to claim this power in the course of protecting national security. Because it doesn’t matter. Obama is arguing that he has the right to keep everything about these executions secret—including the reasons they were orderedt—merely by uttering the magic phrase “state secrets.” In other words, that this power would only arise under a national security context is deemed irrelevant by the fact that not only is Obama claiming the president’s word on what qualifies as “national security” is final, he’s claiming the power in such a way that there’s no audience to whom he would ever need to make that connection.

So yeah. Tyranny. If there’s more tyrannical power a president could possibly claim than the power to execute the citizens of his country at his sole discretion, with no oversight, no due process, and no ability for anyone to question the execution even after the fact . . . I can’t think of it.

This is horrifying.

My crime column this week riffs on a USA Today investigation that found widespread prosecutorial misconduct among U.S. attorneys, with few if any consequences.

Graber is the Maryland motorcyclist who had his home raided, was arrested, jailed, and charged with two felonies for recording his traffic stop and posting it to the Internet.

Here’s Harford County, Maryland Circuit Court Judge Emory A Pitt Jr.:

“Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public. When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation.”

This is great news, and it’s an encouragingly direct repudiation of Harford County DA Joseph Casilly.

But let’s also note the double standard, here. This is a question of whether Maryland law prohibits the audio recording of police in public spaces. If Anthony Graber had been wrong on the law, what harm would he have caused? He would have violated the privacy of an on-duty government official acting in his official capacity along a public highway. Yes, could make a pretty good case that Trooper David Uhler suffered no real harm at all.

Contrast that with the harm Casilly and the police department’s ignorance of the law inflicted on Graber. Graber and his parents were wrongly raided, based on a warrant obtained through an incorrect interpretation of the law. Graber was wrongly incarcerated overnight, then had to endure the stress and expense of felony charges hanging over him for several months.

Moreover, if Pitts had ruled the other way, Graber would have violated an ambiguous law, broadly interpreted in a way that most everyone else in the state (and for that matter the country), including the attorney general, believed to be incorrect. That is, he would have had no reason to believe that what he was doing was illegal.

Now you could perhaps argue that Casilly and the police department violated Maryland law unknowingly. But given their positions, that their responsibility as public officials is to enforce Maryland law, and that there isn’t a single court case that interpreted the Maryland statute in the way they did to justify their pursuit of Graber, I find it far more persuasive that they either knew they were breaking the law, that they were willfully ignorant of the law, or that they were pretty severely negligent in their duties.

Now consider the consequences under each scenario:

Had Graber unknowingly violated state law in a manner that caused very little actual harm to anyone else, he at the very least would have had felony record. He could have gone to prison for several years.

Instead, we have public officials who violated the law, who should have known they were violating the law, and who caused significant harm to someone else in the process.

So what will be their punishment?

Via Walter Olson:

In Tampa, the Mons Venus strip club “is being sued for its alleged uninviting nature to people with disabilities.” Kendrick Duldulao, who uses a wheelchair, says there are no suitable ramps, “the hostess stand is too high, and the toilets and jukebox are inaccessible.”

Reached for comment, other Mons Venus patrons replied, “There’s a jukebox?”

In Spokane, Washington:

A pregnant, unarmed woman was shot during a drug raid in Spokane on Friday morning and she remained hospitalized late last night as investigators pieced together what happened in the county’s third officer-involved shooting in four weeks.

A Washington State Patrol detective sergeant shot the woman, who according to the sheriff’s spokesman is 39 weeks pregnant, while serving a search warrant at the Victoria Apartments, 1405 N. Lincoln St., according to the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.

The Sheriff’s Office is investigating the shooting along with members of the Spokane Police Department and the WSP.

Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Dave Reagan confirmed that officers found no weapons in the home but did find quantities of drugs during the execution of the search warrant.

“During the entry, a female suspect inside the apartment became non-compliant with officers’ instructions,” Reagan wrote in a news release. “When she attempted to flee out a bedroom window, officers attempted to restrain her. During efforts to prevent her escape, a shot was fired and the woman suffered a minor wound to her upper torso. She fell out the window and received first aid from containment officers stationed at the back of the apartments.”

He offered no further details about why the detective used deadly force, which law enforcement officers are trained to use if they believe their lives are in danger.

Reagan did not identify the woman but said she was a drug suspect and that a multiagency task force from the Moscow-Pullman area “had identified residents at the Spokane apartment complex as suppliers of crack cocaine sold in southeast Washington.”

• Amateur photographer harassed for taking photos of small town water tower.
• Virginia Postrel on the locavore dilemma.
• On forensics and biometrics: “”A lot of things possible on a TV series just don’t work that way in real life.”
• The Jerks Who Want to Tell You How to Raise Your Kids Because Your Kids are Obviously Too Stupid to Think for Themselves Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.
• Feds want to force Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. to enable them to spy on you. Then again, most of what’s written on those sites is completely illiterate.
• Owner of Segway company dies after riding Segway over a cliff.

Details:

Tuesday, September 28

The Militarization of America’s Police Departments

Hampden-Sydney College

7:30 pm in Crawley Forum.

Wednesday, September 29

Myths of the Criminal Justice System

University of Virginia

7:00 p.m. in the Commonwealth Room in Newcomb Hall.

Here’s a fun 1970s anti-cable TV propaganda ad from broadcast lobby. If the broadcasters had been more successful in their lobbying over the years, we’d have had no cable TV; no VCRs, DVDs or Blu-Ray; no recordable cassette tapes; no iPods; and certainly no satellite radio.

After setting out a promising agenda of government cuts and restoration of civil liberties (“a bonfire of unnecessary laws”!), then launching a website where Brits could make yet more suggestions on how to roll back the U.K. Nanny State, the Cameron-Clegg coalition government is moving toward actual implementation.

And how.

One hundred and seventy-seven taxpayer-funded bodies are to be abolished under Coalition plans seen by The Daily Telegraph.

A further 94 are still under threat of being scrapped, four will be privatised and 129 will be merged, according to a Cabinet Office list compiled this week, while 350 other bodies have won a reprieve.

The list discloses for the first time the extent of David Cameron’s plans for the “bonfire of the quangos”, designed to save the taxpayer billions of pounds. Thousands of jobs will go as part of the reforms…

However, ministers will point to the billions of pounds that are likely to be saved after the number of taxpayer-funded quangos soared under Labour to cost an estimated £65 billion a year and employ more than 100,000 people.

A senior Whitehall source said: “These reforms represent the most significant rolling back of bureaucracy and the state for decades. Our starting point has been that every quango must not only justify its existence but its reliance on public money.”

This is the closest thing we libertarians get to porn this side of . . . well . . . actual porn.

Hats off to David Cameron and Nick Clegg. The phrase “left and right setting aside their differences and coming together to get things done” usually forebodes a disastrous expansion of government reach and power. It’s almost miraculous to see the two sides embracing—rather than shedding—their limited government tendencies upon assuming power.

Anyone know where I can get a “Daniels-Feingold 2012″ bumper sticker?

• Weird case in Denver, where a woman ran over a process server with her car, and the server was charged with a felony misdemeanor.
• Dan Savage introduces the “It Gets Better” Project. It’s a touching, empowering idea. (Note: Changed this to a better link about the project.)
• Idiot Pennsylvania legislator is attempting to ban the use of synthetic marijuana in cancer research. Really sets a new bar in the “Better Dead Than High” meme.
• In which Charles Bronson sells cologne to the Japanese.
• Textbook protectionism: “Inside D.C.’s Food-Truck Wars.”
• The myth of income inequality.

Richard Ashcroft’s “C’mon People.”

• Interesting article about black churches in Harlem marketing themselves to curious tourists. I say more power to them. My favorite thing about religion has always been the music.
• Hadron Collider finds hints of the early universe.
• I actually once knew a guy like this, only with NBA players.
• The most interesting article about locusts that you’ll read today.
• With “Top Seven Cutest Feminists”, I think Spike just forever won the genre of traffic-generating, superficially provocative throwaway Internet lists. And I mean that as a complement.

Over at Hit & Run…..

It’s not uncommon for pro-labor activist groups to treat their own labor like dirt. This is a relatively minor example, played to beautiful effect by The Daily Show.

• Gene Healy offers some limited government-themed Jimmy Carter contrarianism.
• I’m honored to be named “Rebel of the Week.” Does this mean I need to get some sort of tattoo?
• Speaking of tattoos, this is really too horrifying and/or hilarious to keep to myself. But be warned, it isn’t remotely safe for work. If you’re curious, mouse over the URL before clicking. It tells you all you need to know.
• Jailed Iranian blogger may face the death penalty.
• Conservatives go nuts over an excerpt from Bob Woodward’s new book in which Obama says that “America can absorb another terrorist attack.” If he did indeed say it, it’s the most sensible, pro-America thing a politician has said about terrorism in recent memory.
• Other people named Sarah Palin.

No, it isn’t photoshopped. Here’s the story.

The song is okay. The dogs are awesome.

From Reason’s “Brickbats”:

Attorney Brittney Horstman was scheduled to visit a client in the Miami, Florida, Federal Detention Center. But when she went through the metal detector her underwire bra set it off, and guards refused to let her in. She reminded them that federal officials sent out a memo a few years ago specifically telling guards that they must allow attorneys wearing underwire bras in. But they wouldn’t relent. So she stepped into a restroom and removed her bra. They still refused to let her in. This time because prison dress code requires women to wear a bra.

• Office of Inspector General says FBI lied to Congress about spying on anti-war groups. As Dan Gillmour said in his Twitter feed, if the FBI were Major League Baseball, and the lying was about steroids, there would be a huge investigation, much grandstanding, and high-profile perjury indictments. But we’re talking about other government officials lying to Congress, and they lied about violations of civil liberties of mere citizens. So Congress will do nothing.
• Hotel tosses couple after a bad review on TripAdvisor. The resulting publicity isn’t going to help the hotel’s rating.
• Jack Shafer looks at a fascinating new bio of investigative journalist Jack Anderson.
• Drunk cop strikes pedestrian, causing injuries requiring brain surgery. Cop then flees the scene, returns later. He’s not arrested, but put on paid leave during the ensuing investigation. DA then announced the cop won’t face charges for fleeing the scene, because he later came back. They are at least charging him with DUI.
• One of the Mobile Home Diaries guys, now doing a project called Liberty on Tour, gets arrested in Las Vegas.
• Indianapolis city council considering some reasonable-sounding transparency and accountability measures for the city’s police department. Of course, the same article says the city also banned synthetic marijuana.

I’m posting this hoping that maybe someone can shed a little light on what’s going on. The local news report is pretty confusing, and raises far more questions than answers. But it appears that the reporter is being told he isn’t allowed to (a) dig more than six inches into the sand, or (b) use a video camera, on Florida beaches. But the video is rather confusing about whether the rule applies only to beaches in National Parks, or to public beaches in general, or to one or the other only in Florida. It’s also not clear if this is a temporary, BP-related rule or something broader.

I’m not sure it’s the reporter’s fault, either. The authorities in the video don’t seem particularly keen on elaboration.

It seems clear that there’s some sort of bullshit going on here. I’m just not clear from the report on the full extent and nature of the bullshit.

My column this week looks at the range of cameras, software, and other technology available for citizens interested in recording on-duty police officers.

One suggestion from the column that I think is worth repeating here:

…how about an ACLU or NAACP [smart phone] app designed specifically for recording police? The NAACP’s “All Alert“ project encourages people to report incidents of police abuse through a toll-free phone number, text messages, or Twitter. But the process for registering a complaint is pretty cumbersome, and the program doesn’t allow instant streaming and archiving.

Scott Morgan of Flex Your Rights, which educates people about their rights during police encounters, says his organization has been exploring the possibility of offering such a service. “I think it’s a great idea,” Morgan says. “We’ve talked to a couple developers about it. I think the problem for a small group like us is getting server space for videos and working out the networking issues.” Globally, it would make great sense for an organization like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch to develop a similar easy-to-use application, allowing people all over the world to emulate the instant documentation we saw during the protests in Iran.

The dizzying advancements in personal technology during the last decade have slipped a powerful government accountability tool into our pockets. But it happened mostly by accident. The technology was intended for other uses, and it still needs some fine tuning to work better as a protection against abuses of state power. It’s hard to think of a more worthy project for a civil liberties group.