Let me start this post by stating I think Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell should be repealed, and that homosexuals should be free to serve openly in the military. I also think it’s shameful that people who have served their country honorably, and in some cases have risked their lives, have been discharged because of whom they choose to love. In cases like the linguists who were dismissed for their sexuality, DADT has also likely harmed national security.

That said, I find it interesting that military service became such a touchstone issue for gay rights. After gay marriage, it’s really the gay issue right now. I’m a white, straight male from suburban Indiana. So I haven’t suffered much discrimination in my life, save for rarely getting a foul call when I play pick-up basketball at the Y. (That’s a joke. It’s true. But it’s a joke.) But I’d think if I were a member of a group fighting for equal treatment, the right to go off to die in the pet war of whoever is currently occupying the White House would pretty low on my list of priorities. I’d think this would be especially true of the gay community which, if I may stereotype, I’d guess on average is less militaristic and gung-ho war than the general population. (If there’s data showing that I’m wrong here, I’m willing to be wrong here.)

Gay marriage is probably the only gay rights issue that gets more attention than DADT right now. And prioritizing gay marriage makes sense. But there’s comparably little coverage, debate, or discussion, for example, about laws against gay adoption, which it seems to me affect a much larger percentage of the gay community, deal with a much more basic right, and are quite a bit more damaging, both to gay parents who want kids and to the kids who legislators have decided are better off in a group home or rotating through foster homes than in stable homes with same sex parents. (Some of these laws bar adoption by unmarried parents gay or straight, but in states that forbid gay marriage, the effect is to bar gay people from adopting).

Or how about the fact that federal law basically bars private employers from offering the same health insurance benefits to domestic partners that they do to married hetero couples? Some companies do offer such benefits, but the employed partner is taxed at such an obscenely high rate for the partner’s benefit that the benefit becomes far more expensive than it’s worth. (I’m speaking from experience—I signed on for my ex-girlfriend’s former employer’s domestic partner health insurance benefit a few years ago, and we were surprised with a monster tax bill the next year. Even the company’s HR people weren’t aware of the penalty.). I should add here that I’d ideally like to see health insurance severed from employment. But if the tax benefit is there, it strikes me as patently unfair to give huge tax breaks to committed heterosexual couples, but effectively negate any efforts of private employers to offer committed homosexual couples the same benefit (domestic partners benefits are taxed as income on both the employer and employee side).

I guess my point is that there has been a lot of political capital spent on getting DADT repealed, and it seems to me that while the resulting benefit would be symbolic and obviously important to the gay servicemen and women who would be able to serve without being required to lie about who they are, the population of people directly effected seems to be comparably small.

This isn’t necessarily a criticism. I’m genuinely curious, and wondering if anyone has theories as to why this particular issue has become so heated.

MORE: Just to clarify, when I wrote “I’d think this would be especially true of the gay community which, if I may stereotype, I’d guess on average is less militaristic and gung-ho war than the general population,” I wasn’t referring to stereotypes about masculinity. I was referring to the fact (at least I think it’s a fact — a very cursory Google search seems to bear it out) that the gay community disproportionately aligns with the left, and gay activists with the far left, which I think would suggest that they’re more likely than the general population to be be both anti-war and generally anti-military. (If there are public opinion polls showing otherwise, show me!) My point is, given that, it seems counterintuitive that the right to openly serve in the military and fight in wars would become such a priority.

That said, I think the comments below about symbolism and the added insult of  discrimination coming directly from the federal government make sense.

It now looks like the security thugs working for Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller were active military.

Here’s Glenn Greenwald:

If it’s not completely intolerable to have active-duty soldiers handcuffing American journalists on U.S. soil while acting as private “guards” for Senate candidates, what would be?  This is the sort of thing that the U.S. State Department would readily condemn if it happened in Egypt or Iran or Venezuela or Cuba:  active-duty soldiers detaining journalists while they’re paid by politician candidates?

Greenwald suggests that this is illegal. If it isn’t, it should be. It isn’t difficult to see the problems that would come with active soldiers working private detail for politicians.

Miller should have apologized, fired his security, and acknowledged the handcuffing and threats to other journalists were out of line. Instead he’s defending the actions of his security and making excuses that aren’t true.

So to recap, a candidate for the U.S. Senate sees nothing wrong with active duty U.S. troops providing private security for a political candidate, then handcuffing and threatening journalists who ask the candidate tough questions.

Disturbing. But also probably to be expected of a guy who thinks we should adopt an East German model of border control.

Salon breaks a hot story…

The Guardian caught up with Sarah Palin on the campaign trail in Reno this week and posted some video of her working the crowd while singing the Tea Party’s praises. But look closely: At around the 1:30 mark, it appears that she’s handed an American flag by one of her fans — and that she signs it.

The evidence is imperfect, but if she did put her signature on Old Glory, it would be a clear violation of the Subsection 8, part (g) reads: “The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.”

Dear God, no!

I have no love for Sarah Palin. And yes, I’m sure she’s the sort of person who would call out someone else for not properly respecting the flag. And the right is probably more guilty of this kind of silliness than the left (see the dumb 2007 flap about Obama and the National Anthem).

But come on. Are we really going to scandalize the possibility that Palin may have violated Subsection 8, part (g) of the Flag Code? The answer is that it’s election season. So of course we are!

Speaking of Palin, a few people also owe her an apology for this.

When I last spoke with Jim Pasco, head of the Fraternal Order of Police, he said he objected to allowing citizens to videotape police because police officers have a right to privacy while on the job and because he feared video could be edited and manipulated to make cops look bad. “Police officers don’t check their civil rights at the station house door,” he said. He also implied that cops lying on the witness stand is as rare as DNA tests implicating the wrong person.

In USA Today, Pasco now appears to be employing a new strategy.

“The proliferation of cheap video equipment is presenting a whole new dynamic for law enforcement,” says Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union. “It has had a chilling effect on some officers who are now afraid to act for fear of retribution by video. This has become a serious safety issue. I’m afraid something terrible will happen.”

Over the last year I’ve received email and heard from a number of police officers on radio call-in shows who’ve said that citizen-shot video vindicated them in cases where they had been accused of misconduct. If video has been edited or manipulated, that’s pretty easy to discern should it become a key piece of evidence against a police officer.

We want cops second-guessing decisions that are second-guessable. If an abundance of video cameras helps that to happen, all the better.

But there’s no reason citizen video should make a good cop think twice before using appropriate force to apprehend someone who presents a threat to others. As noted above, he should welcome it, in case the suspect later claims the force was unwarranted. The problem is that when the head of the country’s largest police union says he fears video will make cops hesitate before using legitimate force—just after saying video can be manipulated to make good cops look bad—he’s really encouraging hesitation in these situations.

I don’t know if Pasco’s new line of attack will be more successful than his “cops have privacy rights” position. But it strikes me as irresponsible, and likely to encourage the very thing Pasco says he fears.

• NAACP will release report it says shows ties between Tea Party and racist/extremist groups.
• Another insane application of the felony murder rule: Florida teen faces murder charge after homeowner shoots his friend as the two were attempting to break-in.
• Twenty-year-old student named police chief of Mexican border town. No one else wanted the job.
• Toronto cop sues YouTube for defamation because of videos mocking him for arresting a girl who was blowing bubbles at the G20 protests.
• This is interesting: Box spreads DNA mist that marks robbers with identifiers tying them to the crime scene.
• Louisiana man gets five years for shooting two deputies during no-knock drug raid. He says he thought they were burglars, and actually called 911 during the raid.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca says that if Prop 19 if it passes, he won’t abide by it. He’ll keep arresting marijuana offenders anyway.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who reports to President Obama (man of the people!), says he has no intention of respecting the wishes of Californians, either: “We will vigorously enforce the [Controlled Substances Act] against those individuals and organizations that possess, manufacture or distribute marijuana for recreational use, even if such activities are permitted under state law.”

The official position of the Obama administration, then, that the states are free to pass laws that further restrict economic and personal freedom (see its support of California’s stringent environmental regulations, and its support for the rights of states to discriminate in gay marriage and gay adoption), but promises to crack down on any state that attempts to expand freedom.

This also means that if Sheriff Baca illegally arrests you and locks you up for violating an act a majority of Californians have deemed legal through a referendum (and as sheriff, his duty is to uphold state law, not federal law), you can probably forget about Holder holding Baca accountable for violating your civil rights.

It’ll be fascinating to see how this plays out in the courts. Would a California state judge hold Baca liable for deliberately and knowingly breaking California state law? Would Holder’s Justice Department defend him? Let’s say a sheriff like Baca arrests a Californian for an act that’s a violation of federal law, but legal under state law. Seems possible that with the right DA, someone like Baca could be convicted in state court for civil rights violations (or whatever it’s called under California law), while the arrestee could still be convicted for violating federal law. Then, maybe Baca protects himself by always bringing a federal agent along to perform the actual arrest.

Whatever happens, it’s clear that what the people of California want is irrelevant. Holder and Baca know what’s best for you. If Prop 19 passes and Baca and Holder stick to their positions, the idea that elected officials’ power and legitimacy comes from the consent of the people they govern will no longer apply in California, at least with respect to this particular issue.

My inattention to some story currently in the news should not be taken as an indication of my latent bias, endorsement of whatever terrible thing happened, secret political allegiance, or loyalty to the agenda of the people who sign my paycheck.

So to the emailers, Twitterers, and bloggers who are demanding that I and/or other libertarians register our indignation over the fact that Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller’s security detail handcuffed a journalist over the weekend . . . here is my indignation!

(Picture me typing those last four words really hard.)

However, my failure to do so within an acceptable time frame of your choosing is not because my Koch Foundation paymasters instructed me to ignore the story. It is not because I am secretly loyal to the Tea Party and don’t want to undermine Miller’s candidacy. It is not because I secretly want to privatize the police, and further publicizing this excessive use of force by a private security force undermines my cause and gives the free market a black eye. All of these were suggested in email.

It is because, unfortunately, there are way more stories on my beat that I can possibly cover, comment on, or link to. It’s because this one is already well covered, and by people who were actually there. It’s because I’ve had other things to do over the last 36 hours, and haven’t had time to fully read up on the Miller incident. And it’s because my distaste for politics swells as we get closer to the election, so I’m naturally averse to and uninterested in stories that are loaded with partisan politics. In short, with this story and others, there are lots of reasons why I may not post something about them—reasons that have nothing at all to do with a secret agenda.

I don’t mean to make light of this particular incident. I hope this is investigated, and if there’s criminal culpability, I hope the members of Miller’s detail who are responsible are arrested and charged. If Miller gave the order, I hope he is arrested and charged.

But this sort of your-silence-is-telling attack is a good way of identifying yourself as someone who isn’t worth taking seriously. A similar tactic we get from Reason critics (from both sides) is to hold up two vaguely similar stories (or dissimilar stories, it doesn’t matter)—one involving a Democrat, one involving a Republican—then to count the number of posts we devoted to each, or the number of hours it took us respond to either story. This is supposed to indicate our true loyalty. It’s silly and childish. There’s no end to the number of false tests you can set up to “prove” whatever smear you want to dump on your opponent.

Of course, ad hominem attacks are much easier than substantive arguments. Thinking is hard. “My opponent is wrong because he’s a shithead,” followed by a few quick examples recognizable to your tribe as telltale indicators of shitheadery, requires a hell of a lot less work than, “Here is a logical explanation backed by facts and empirical data showing why my opponent’s arguments are incorrect.”

So no, I feel no particular compunction to prove my lack of loyalty to either major party by making sure I have an equal number of posts attacking Republicans and Democrats, by making sure I comment on stories involving Democrats within the same number of hours of similar stories involving Republicans, or by weighing in on every story with political undertones to be sure, for example, that no one misconstrues my silence about the illegal handcuffing of a journalist . . . as an endorsement of the illegal handcuffing of journalists, so long as said illegal journalist handcuffing is carried out by the private security detail of a Republican/Tea Party-backed candidate for the U.S. Senate.

There’s an amusing absurdity to being accused of partisanship by people so blinded by partisanship that they’d actually suggest I might hold the italicized position above.

(NOTE: I realize that typing out this post has taken up more of my time than I would have spent actually responding to the Miller story. But I have a plan! I can now just send or post a link here when people levy similar charges in the future. And they will!)

Also, see the post from IJ’s Steve Simpson, “Who is this Publius character?”

So yesterday I posted a message on Twitter about Gmail’s crappy spam filter. It was just a general complaint that I click “Report Spam” a couple dozen times per day, only to have messages from the same spammers continually delivered to by inbox. Sometimes the same day.

I also have a list of about 60 people to whom I send a notification when my new column is posted. This morning, for the first time, Gmail will not allow me to send an email to that list. Apparently it triggers Gmail’s . . .  spam filter. I either know personally or have exchanged emails with everyone on the list. And to my knowledge, no one on the list has complained about getting a weekly email from me. (If they had, I’d have happily removed them from the list.)

I’m sure the timing is coincidence. I doubt I’m important enough that Gmail powers-that-be would have decided to retaliate against my Twitter complaint by tagging my own outgoing message as spam. Still, it’s frustrating. I get several dozen spam emails per day that I can’t get rid of. But Gmail now won’t let me send a weekly email to a small list of people I know.

I tried filling out a help form. I get the reply, “Sorry, we weren’t able to send your information.”

So I’m using my blog platform to publicly bitch about this. Because I can!

• Airline pilot stands up to TSA.
• Your right to photograph federal buildings is vindicated. Something tells me that federal agents who infringe on that right going forward still won’t be punished.
• More on D.C.’s recession boom. There’s something a little twisted about the seat of government thriving while the rest of the country suffers.
• Couple raided after neighbor users their WiFi to send child porn.
• LAPD cover-up may have kept innocent man in prison for 26 years.

My crime column this week looks at how police officials and politicians have failed to protect whistle-blowing cops.

I promised to share the hate mail responses to my column on abolishing drunk driving laws. I’m happy to say I actually haven’t received any. I have, however, received about a half-dozen emails from law enforcement officials like this one:

I spent 11 years in police work, from 1978 until 1989. The second most time-consuming thing I could do was arrest an intoxicated driver (second only to committing a mental person). Officers are taken off the street for hours at a time over someone who is barely, if at all, impaired. Meanwhile, grandma is driving the wrong way down a one-way street or driving 30 miles per hour on the freeway, and if you write her a ticket you’re accused of picking on old people….I’m with you all the way. Thanks.

I’ve also done three radio interviews on the column. All of the hosts were supportive. And only one caller was hostile. I’m really pleasantly surprised at the reception. Of course, there’s not a chance in hell that’s going to translate into policy changes any time soon. But still. Feels like public opinion might be turning just a little against MADD and the temperance crowd.

When it comes to its stated mission—keeping school-age children from trying illicit drugs—the D.A.R.E. program has been a failure. But D.A.R.E. does have a fun history of teaching kids to turn their pot-smoking parents in to the police.

It happened again last week:

The 11-year-old student is in 5th grade at a an elementary school in Matthews.  Police say he brought his parents’ marijuana cigarettes to school when he reported them.

Matthews Police say he reported his parents after a lesson about marijuana was delivered by a police officer who is part of the D.A.R.E. program, which teaches kids about the dangers of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.

“Even if it’s happening in their own home with their own parents, they understand that’s a dangerous situation because of what we’re teaching them,” said Matthews Officer Stason Tyrrell.  That’s what they’re told to do, to make us aware.”..

Police arrested the child’s 40-year-old father and 38-year-old mother on Thursday.

Both were charged with two misdemeanor counts each of marijuana possession and possession of drug paraphernalia.

They were not jailed and were released on a written promise to appear in court…

Police say both the 11-year old and a sibling have been removed from the parents’ house by social services.

Proving once again that pot ruins lives. Not because of the drug itself, but because of what the government will do to you if they catch you with it.

Last year I wrote a column about Nick Cheolas, a young guy from the Detroit suburbs who became interested in the criminal justice system after witnessing some appalling behavior from police and other local officials in a case involving his family. Cheolas went on to law school at the University of Michigan, where his experience at home spurred him to get involved with the school’s innocence clinic. There, he worked on a team that won the release of Dwayne Provience, a man who had spent nearly a decade in prison for a murder it’s pretty clear he didn’t commit. (After much hemming and hawing, prosecutors finally announced in March that they wouldn’t attempt to try Provience again.)

I’m sorry to say that Nick’s story has taken a bummer of a turn. Last July he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He has started a blog (Arrested Development fans: take note of the title) where he writes about his treatment, opines on legal issues, and discusses the various other topics about which we bloggers tend to bloviate. If you’d like to click over, I’m sure he’d appreciate knowing he has support out in libertarian land.

Also, if the idea of following an online diary of cancer treatment sounds morose—and it did to me when I was first sent the link—Nick’s sense of humor considerably lightens the experience. His blog’s tagline:

I don’t fight cancer because I fear death. I fight cancer because I fear Mitch Albom writing about me after death.

Get better, Nick. No one else wants to see that happen, either.

Snapped this in Midtown Nashville this morning. Made me laugh. Generally speaking, I think people would less hostile to graffiti if more of it were Wilfred Brimley-themed.

• Facebook photo may have saved toddler’s life.
• Horrifying product recall: Fisher-Price warns tricycles pose “risk of genital bleeding.”
• L.A. prosecutor encourages columnist to get high, drive around town test his driving skills on a driving course.
• Ever notice how much time, space, and energy libertarian-hating writers, bloggers, and pundits spend opining about how libertarians are irrelevant?
• Here’s a bit more on that Simpsons porn case. Including: “…my favorite part of the plea agreement is the ‘proof’ that Bart, Lisa, and Maggie are ‘minors’:  ’An internet search of the encyclopedia website www.wikipedia.org listed the three minor-aged Simpsons characters ages as ten, eight, and baby.’”
• Georgia court says laws requiring you to mow your laws are not akin to slavery.

Montgomery, Alabama:

“They could have at least apologized,” says LaKisha Dixon.

She just wants to hear Montgomery police officers say they’re sorry. Last month, officers entered her home without even knocking on the door. Dixon and two children were inside.

“It was three tall men with masks on and big oozie guns pointing at me like, “Get on the ground!  Get on the ground!”

Not only was the experience frightening, but Dixon says police had the wrong house.

When she tried to explain,”they told me to shut up and be quiet before they take me to jail.”

A Montgomery Police Department search warrant instructed officers to search 812 South Union Street.

Instead, they entered Dixon’s home–810 North Union Street.

The two addresses are a mile and a half apart.

“I feel violated. I feel like they trespassed,” says Dixon.

WSFA 12 News contacted the Montgomery Police Department.

Investigators told us they’re handling the matter internally by interviewing each officer involved.

Dixon says even though the incident is over, it still affects her kids.

“They’re scared of police officers. They said the police [are] going to get them, and it shouldn’t be like that. They should think of the police to help them.”

Right now the Montgomery Police Department isn’t admitting whether they did anything wrong or not.  Investigators say they’re still sorting out the facts.

This happened “last month.” So it’s taken at minimum two weeks and two days for them to figure out that the address on the warrant doesn’t match the address on the door?

Also, don’t read the comments. They’ll give you a soulache.

I’m mentioned in Bob Herbert’s New York Times column today.

Also, my column on drunk driving laws was picked up by the Dallas Morning News.

Man faces up to 10 years in prison for possession of Simpsons porn:

A former middle school teacher in Meridian has pleaded guilty to possession of visual representations of child sex abuse.

The U.S. Attorney’s office said Steven Kutzner, 33, had downloaded more than 70 animated cartoon pornographic images on his computer. Many of them depicted child characters from The Simpsons.

Kutzner was a former middle school teacher at Lake Hazel Middle School in Meridian. He resigned immediately after the search warrant was served at his home.

Kutzner will be sentenced Jan. 5, 2011. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000.

Didn’t Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition rule out these sorts of prosecutions?

MORE:  According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, though investigators only found the cartoons, as part of his plea bargain Kutzner “admitted installing two different cleaning programs on his computer and using them to erase child pornography files that he had downloaded.”

Tunku Varadarajan:

My first instinct as a libertarian is, of course, for Republican victories everywhere…

Of course?

No. I can see cheering for divided government on Election Night. I can see hoping for a GOP Congress to counter Obama’s historic expansion of the federal government. But there’s no reason a libertarian’s “first instinct” should be to root for Republicans (or Democrats, for that matter). And it’s certainly not obvious enough to merit an of course.

Varadarajan then writes:

The big-government Bush Republicans have already been punished; now it’s time to get rid of the big-government Democrats—i.e., all of them.

I’m fine with everything after the semicolon. The problem is that to “get rid of the big-government Democrats” inevitably means replacing them with Republicans. The label “big-government Bush Republicans” implies that there’s an alternative sort of Republican. Time and again, they’ve proven there isn’t. The Republican Party was and is filled with big-government Republicans, before, during, and after the eight years that Bush was president. There are some genuinely limited government Republicans, just as there are some Democrats who give a damn and are willing to fight for civil liberties. But they aren’t in the leadership, and they won’t be calling the shots in a new GOP-led Congress. Even now, in the minority, with public sentiment pretty solidly against Obama, all but assured of big gains this November, the GOP figureheads still don’t have the guts to name specific federal programs they’d target for spending cuts.

Varadarajan’s full column is about why he can’t support some of the crazier GOP candidates like Christine O’Donnell and Carl Paladino. I actually disagree there, too. And hell, in the spirit of bipartisanship I’ll go ahead and endorse Alvin Greene in addition to Paladino and O’Donnell. Politics is a ridiculous profession populated by ridiculous people. Maybe if we elect increasingly clownish candidates, the public will eventually come to realize this, and finally realize that it’s probably not a good idea to put larger and larger portions of our lives and livelihoods in the hands of people who have achieved success in a field that rewards character traits you spend your entire tenure as a parent trying to teach out of your kids.

I’m kidding about endorsing Greene, O’Donnell, and Paladino, but only because their election would give them actual power. But I see no particular reason to root for their opponents, either.  And I see no reason to instinctively cheer for Republicans over Democrats. Or vice versa. At least electing transparently crazy people will make us more cautious about how they use their power.

Me, I’m cheering for elections to matter less, and for politicians to have less impact on my life. I dream of waking up to find the results of the November 2 election on page A-10 of my November 3rd newspaper—because no one cared, because very little was at stake, because we stopped pinning our hopes and dreams on the results of a perverse process dominated by generally horrible people who have made a career of accumulating power for the sake of accumulating power.

Incidentally, this is also how you “get money out of politics.” You make politics and political outcomes less important. I’m amused by people who are surprised that as the power, scope, and influence of government grows, interest groups are correspondingly willing to spend increasingly more money to purchase a piece of that influence. I actually once heard a prominent lefty journalist express this very sentiment. They’re shocked by this!

It’s even cuter that they think they can continue to expand the size, scope, and influence government and prevent the government from being corrupted . . . by giving the same government yet more power, in this case to prevent itself from being corrupted. Inevitably, these new powers then manifest as new restrictions on our ability and freedom to criticize politicians. Because that’s the solution to the corruption of our politicians: Less criticism of politicians!

Anyway, I’m rambling a bit. So I’ll stop. But more, somewhat better organized rambling on these themes to come.

A Texas appeals court has ordered a halt to a district court’s inquiry into whether Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004 for setting a 1992 fire that killed his three daughters, was innocent. The stay was sought by Navarro County District Attorney R. Lowell Thompson. It’s merely the latest attempt by Texas officials (Thompson’s office prosecuted Willingham), including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, to stave off any formal inquiry into Willingham’s execution. Arson specialists now say Willingham was convicted based on flawed and outdated science, and there’s little forensic evidence to support the theory that the fire was set intentionally.

Meanwhile, Texas District Attorney Lynn Switzer told the U.S. Supreme Court this week that the state should be able to execute Hank Skinner without first turning over crime scene evidence for DNA testing that Skinner says will prove his innocence. The Court has already ruled that there’s no constitutional right to DNA testing in such cases. Skinner is arguing that the state is obligated to turn over the evidence under federal civil rights law. (I previously wrote about Skinner’s case here and here.)

The striking thing about both cases is that Texas government officials are staking out a position of ignorance. That is, they don’t want to know if either man is innocent. That’s not how they’d phrase it, of course. But in the Willingham case they’re thwarting efforts merely to investigate the possibility that the Wilingham might have been innocent. In the Skinner case they’re fighting a DNA test—which Skinner’s attorneys have offered to pay for themselves—that if prosecutors are correct would undeniably establish Skinner’s guilt. But there’s a chance it could implicate someone else, or complicate their case against Skinner. So they’d rather not test.

Of course in both cases they know that a finding of innocence would further undermine support for the death penalty (which is now under fire even from establishment conservatives). So it’s better just not to know.

Perry, Thompson, Switzer, and their cohorts should consider the possibility that their callous indifference in the face of considerable doubt about both men’s convictions—and that even after the Willingham fiasco they’re still fighting to execute Skinner without being absolutely sure of his guilt—only confirms suspicions that we have a flawed system stacked with perverse incentives, all of which not only encourages the pursuit of convictions at the expense of justice, but then pressures state actors to double down rather than admit to the possibility that they made mistakes.

Put another way, in fighting to keep us all in the dark about Skinner and Willingham’s actual guilt, these staunch capital punishment supporters are providing data points for the strongest arguments against the death penalty.

….over at Hit & Run.

• All I can say is that it’s about time Rich Whitey got some political power in this country.
• Hey, something else to worry about!
• In addition to all the other weirdness in this story, I’m trying to figure out why the reporter used the word ironic.
• Here is a picture of some dogs.
• New York City has paid out more than $1 billion to settle claims against NYPD.
• So who is most to blame in that story about the city fire department that let a man’s house burn down? Why, libertarians, of course!
• Supreme Court hears arguments in the Hank Skinner death penalty case. I’ve written about Skinner here and here.

Earlier this week, I posted on a settlement in the case of the Pennsylvania public school accused of illegally spying on its students. Noting that the bulk of the settlement will go the students’ attorney, I wrote:

So public school officials get caught illegally spy on students. But no one gets fired. And none of the offending parties will be fined. Instead, a municipal insurer (which will ultimately affect taxpayers) will pay a decent settlement to one student, a small settlement to another, and a small fortune to their lawyer.

After reading some analysis by Max Kennerly and Scott Greenfield, I’m persuaded that I was off-base with my snark (in other words, I was wrong).

Here’s Kennerly:

If the Lower Merion case had gone to trial, and the plaintiffs had won on any of those claims — and they definitely would have won on the first — then the school district would have been liable for all of the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees in litigating the case.

The settlement of the case reflects that eventual reality: if the School District had not paid the plaintiffs’ lawyer now, they were going to pay them later…

But why did this case, where liability was obvious, cost so much? There’s a simple answer for that: because the School District litigated the heck out of the case. Their own lawyers, as of the end of July, had already billed $743,000 to the school district. I bet the final bill will exceed $1 million.

Viewed through that lens, Mr. Haltzman was downright frugal in accepting less than half what his opponents charged to fight him.

And here’s Greenfield:

While the wrong in this particular case seemed abundantly clear, especially since it received broad attention and near-universal condemnation, the deprivation or violation of constitutional rights that seem so obvious to the victims often fails to get to trial.  Sure, getting your “day in court” is a fine platitude, just like so many that make us feel warm and comfy even though they defy reality in the trenches.  The hard fact is few civil rights cases are ever heard, and fewer still recover damages, whether for some variation of governmental immunity or some banal rationalization which makes the wrong “good enough for government work.”

That means that the efforts of a lawyer to pursue the violation of rights may not only fail to result in a payday, but leave the lawyer out of pocket for whatever unreimbursed expenses accrued in the process.  This can be a very risky business, trying to protect our constitutional rights by representing a person whose rights were deprived.

So Mark Haltzman “made” more money from this case than did his clients.  Was he supposed to eat the cost of this litigation, as if he, rather than the school administrators, committed the wrong?

These are all great points. As someone who would like to see a heck of a lot more civil rights suits against government officials who abuse their power, I was wrong to direct scorn at an attorney who actually brought one (even in an obvious case like this one). It would be even better if the responsible parties actually had to pay out for their actions, and not have the taxpayers bail them out. But that’s beside my point here, which is that Hatlzman shouldn’t be blamed for getting compensated for his time and expense in bringing this lawsuit.