• Kid drops portable video game system into gorilla cage. Photos ensue.
• The Nation profiles Alyssa Peterson, the U.S. soldier who committed suicide after refusing to participate in the torture of Iraqi prisoners.
• Michigan lawmaker wants to give cops the power to draw blood for roadside drug tests.
• My colleague Jesse Walker aptly sums up my feelings on the Tea Party.
• The state of Missouri now informs judges of the cost of a potential prison term before they issue a sentence. It’s an interesting idea. Would be even better if we were required to tell jurors of potential sentences before the deliberate on a verdict.
• Two aides to Sheriff Joe Arpaio—including his second in command—are under investigation for misconduct.

Saturday was Dog Day, a little canine fest at Nashville’s Centennial Park. Daisy and I were there. Here are some photos. And yes, that dog is carrying his own poop bag. Awesome.

Washed-up basketball star Shaquille O’Neal has made no secret about his wish to become a cop after he retires. And he’s been made an honorary deputy at several police departments around the country. Radar Online now reports that he may already be well-acquainted with the custom of professional courtesy.

NBA star Shaquille O’Neal is at the center of an explosive new lawsuit accusing him of computer hacking, destroying evidence and indicating that he attempted to frame an employee by planting child pornography on his computer, RadarOnline.com is reporting exclusively…

Here are some of the explosive allegations:

• Shaq hacked into the voicemails and phone systems of Darling and Vanessa Lopez, a mistress who is currently suing O’Neal. He deleted Lopez’s messages and changed her password.
• O’Neal used his law enforcement contacts, both active and retired, to obtain restricted information about one of his mistresses, Alexis Miller, while he was involved in a legal battle with her.
• Shaq threw a personal computer holding much of this evidence in the lake behind his home.
• Shaq conspired with active law enforcement as well as ex-members of law enforcement to frame Darling for a criminal offense and destroy any evidence that Darling might have against O’Neal.

Darling says there is proof in the form of emails, text messages and photos that Shaq had multiple affairs while married and tried to keep that information from going public.

This is one half of a lawsuit, so digest the allegations with that in mind.

Back in 2007, I wrote a short item for Reason about Shaq’s participation in a botched SWAT raid in, of all places, Bedford County, Virginia. Of all the bizarre SWAT stories I’ve reported over the years, that one is among the most surreal. Imagine you’re A.J. Nuckols or his wife. You’ve just been thrown to the ground at gunpoint by a SWAT team on a mistaken search for child porn. Terrified, you then look up to see that among the officers rummaging about your rural Virginia home . . . is Shaquille O’Neal.

But Shaq had the post-raid script down pat:

“It ain’t no story,” he said. “We did everything right, went to the judge, got a warrant. You know, they make it seem like we beat him up, and that never happened. We went in, talked to him, took some stuff, returned it—bada bam, bada bing.”

• Matthew Yglesias continues his liberaltarian streak, and his commenters continue to berate him for it.
• This seems like a good sign: A new Pew poll finds most Americans “…believe a strong public safety system is possible while reducing the size and cost of the prison system.”
• Wisconsin DA sends sexual text messages to sex abuse victim whose case he was working on. It doesn’t appear that he’s going to face any serious sanction.
• A look at the problems associated with Virginia’s aging prison population. This is going to become more and more of a problem in coming years.
• Parking enforcement cop issues ticket to a dead man.
• Forrest Allgood defends himself. To be fair, his transgressions in this particular case probably fall pretty low on the master list of reasons why this guy should never hold office again.

My college buddy Charlie Ransford’s band The 1900s has a new album coming out in the fall. Here’s a great Pointer Sisters cover they did for Playboy’s website.

I have a piece at Slate today looking at Montgomery, Alabama’s nefarious pattern of declaring a property blighted, demolishing the house that sits on the property, then billing the owner for the cost of the demolition. It’s basically a way around Alabama’s strict eminent domain law, which forbids eminent domain for the benefit of private interests. There are your usual cozy relationships between the city and developers, here, but there’s also something weirder going on. A high percentage of the homes, nearly all of them owned by blacks, lie along a federally-funded civil rights trail commemorating the 1965 marches between Selma and Montgomery.

The light blogging this week is due to various projects and deadlines I’m trying to finish up. Talk amongst yourselves.

• Cartoonist who started Everybody Draw Mohammed Day is forced to go into hiding.
• Amazing illustrated diary from a World War I soldier.
• The hilarious conservative crack-up over Christine O’Donnell.
• The Muppets start two web-based cooking shows. Somehow, I don’t think they’ll be doing a pig roast.
• A museum of Soviet arcade games.
• And now . . . deep-fried beer.
• The debate over Googling prospective jurors. And yes, I’m certain I’d never make it onto a jury.
• Another exoneration in Mississippi, though this one pre-dates our favorite forensic specialists.

• County harasses farmer for growing too much food.
• John Grisham: End the death penalty.
• This store is so 2011.
• Police respond with SWAT team after complaint about a man holding a gun . . . at a gun store.
• Time warp: William Burroughs interviews Jimmy Page.
• San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s Department forgets to check KnowYourMeme.com, issues warning about 4Chan’s Pedobear.

• In praise of processed food. This needs to be said more often. I love farmers markets. I enjoy eating local when possible. I like “slow food,” the kind of stuff you cook over low heat for hours. I also realize these are conceits of affluence. Processed food isn’t as good for us as whole food. But the industrialization of food is also why most of us no longer worry about starving to death. If we all only ate local, most of us wouldn’t be eating for much longer.
• “Why We’re Teaching The Wire at Harvard”
• What chefs don’t tell you.
• The New York Times looks at false confessions.
• If you live in the continental U.S., you’re never more than 115 miles from the nearest McDonald’s.
• There’s an old joke that men don’t pay prostitutes for sex, they pay so they don’t have to talk after sex. But in many cases, the opposite may be true.

I’m featured in this very good new Cato video on police, SWAT raids, and video cameras. Also featured are Cato’s David Rittgers and Clark Neily of the Institute for Justice.

That’s the subject of my crime column this week.

Over at Hit & Run, another round of puppycide stories.

I’ve been waiting a few months for the chance to snap this photo.

• Winners of the Astrononmy Photo of the Year competition.
• Personnel from five Ohio police agencies and a municipal court illegally snooped into American Idol runner-up Krystal Bowersox’s personal information.
• Kid goes to school after grieving for recently deceased father. School officials suspend him because red eyes are symptom of marijuana use. He was reinstated after passing a drug test. The school of course insists it did nothing wrong.
• TSA’s “Blogger Bob” responds to criticism of those posters telling people to be suspicious of photographers. I don’t find his response particularly convincing.
• Here’s a form you can fill out to report incidents with airport body scanners.

The Black Crowes are playing here in Nashville Sunday night. Here’s “Descending,” one of their best, lesser-known songs.

• Those clever heathens.
• Federal appeals court grants Obama the ability to use the state secrets doctrine to cover up Bush administration’s crimes. And the next president’s ability to cover up those of the Obama administration.
• Obama appoints an Asian Carp Czar.
• Via Reddit, possibly the best movie tag line ever written. I’d like to think the entire movie was made just for the tag line.
• Disguised weapons.
• Marines vs. Pirates sounds like an episode of Deadliest Warrior.

Incredible.

“We’ve been doing random searches for years. None have been in response to particular threats. It’s more to show force.”

– Amtrak spokesman Cliff Cole.

Good to know.

• Face vs. Watermelon.
• More on the Craigslist “Adult Services” shutdown, from my colleague Jacob Sullum, and from Slate’s Will Saletan.
• Wil Wheaton writes a short note to his 15-year-old self.
• Frat house for Jesus.
• City of Albuquerque deploying SWAT officers to deter property crime.
• Google rolls out Instant Search.

It’s not so much the fact that the police made a mistake. Mistakes happen. And I’m sure lots of guilty people say, “Hey, you’ve got the wrong person.”

It’s this part that that lodges in the ol’ craw:

Instead of suing Seminole, Shields should thank its employees for “doing a great job,” discovering the error and turning their findings over to a judge, who ordered her release April 25, 2002, the day after her arrest, Poulton said.

We wrongly arrested you, subjected you to a humiliating strip search, and kept you behind bars for 24 hours. But hey, you ought to be thanking us for catching the mistake.

My crime column this week looks at the case of Eddie Lee Howard, who is on death row in Mississippi. Howard is trying to get a new trial.  He was convicted mostly because of  testimony from disgraced bite mark expert Michael West. The office of Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is arguing that Howard is procedurally barred from raising West as an issue. That argument may or may not have legal merit, but it’s a pretty sleazy argument to make.

There’s a spot along the George Washington Memorial Parkway just outside of D.C. called Gravelly Point. It’s a picnic and recreation area a few hundred feet from one of the runways at Reagan National Airport. It’s a popular spot for photographers to snap shots of planes taking off and landing. It’s part of the National Park Service, and the proximity to the airport is a big reason why the spot is so popular. I bring up Gravelly Point because of the absurd TSA poster to your right, spotted by Carlos Miller.

What should we find suspicious about the figure in the picture? That’s he’s carrying a camera near an airport? Maybe it’s the hoodie. But then maybe it’s cold outside. Point is, TSA is putting in our heads that photographers are people we ought to view with suspicion.

No wonder law enforcement officials around the country, including TSA workers, wrongly assume that they can stop, detain, arrest, and otherwise harass people who take photos in Metro centers, on AMTRAK, at airports, or in other public places.

I thought this was funny….