What a dick.

A politician in a New York suburb called police on two 13-year-old boys for selling cupcakes and other baked goods without a permit, according to a report Monday.

The Journal News in Westchester County said the boys, Andrew DeMarchis and Kevin Graff, had a brisk business selling cupcakes, cookies, brownies and Rice Krispie treats for $1 each in a Chappaqua park.

However, New Castle Councilman Michael Wolfensohn called the police after discovering the sale was not for charity, the newspaper said.

Kevin’s mother, Laura Graff, said the teens were “good kids” who were scared by the police call.

“I am shocked and sad for the boys. It was such a great idea, and they worked hard at it,” Laura Graff, Kevin’s mother, told The Journal News. “But then some Town Board member decided to get on his high horse and wreck their dreams.”…

“All vendors selling on town property have to have a license, whether it’s boys selling baked goods or a hot dog vendor,” Wolfensohn said.

He said “in hindsight” he perhaps should have told the boys they needed a license rather than calling the cops. “The police are trained to deal with these sorts of issues,” he told The Journal News.

A permit to sell things in the park costs $150 to $350 for two hours and a $1 million insurance certificate is also required, the paper said…

Andrew DeMarchis told The Journal News of his disappointment.

“We were being entrepreneurs,” he said, “but now I feel a little defeated.”

I think I’ve changed my mind about these stories. If the point of having your kid start a lemonade stand, cupcake stand, or some other little venture is for him to learn what it’s like to be an entrepreneur, he might as well learn early on that part of being an entrepreneur is dealing with asshole politicians, petty bureaucrats, and rivals willing to use the law to shut you down rather than compete with you. It also means understanding that the costs of complying with all the bullshit hurdles the government puts in the way of starting up a business may mean you can never get your business off the ground, no matter how good your idea.

The cupcake kids will at least now grow up with a healthy distaste for politicians, and probably some newfound respect for the people who do actually manage to start a business in hostile environments that include requirements for million-dollar insurance policies and political slime like Michael Wolfensohn.

And that’s actually a pretty valuable lesson.

I’ve got nothing here. Call it outrage fatigue, I guess.

It’s just sad.

My crime column this week is about Brian Aitken, a guy with no prior record now serving a seven-year prison sentence for violating New Jersey’s gun laws, despite the fact that by any reasonable interpretation of the evidence, he didn’t actually violate them.

• PolitiFact thinks it’s dishonest to include benefits when comparing compensation for federal workers to the private sector. Guess PolitiFact writers won’t mind signing all their benefits over to me, then.
• The U.S. government gave safe haven to Nazis.
• A seven-year-old explains the police militarization trend.
• Incredible images, recordings from Mecca taken in the 1880s.
• “Overfutured”
• If you suffer from scopophobia, now is probably not the time to consult Wikipedia for the definition of scopophobia.

Columbia, Missouri.

Daisy blew my mind this week. I guess she ate something bad on our walk Tuesday morning, because she was throwing up all morning. I promptly cleaned it up the first two times, but the third time, I was finishing up a blog post, so I didn’t get to it for a few minutes. She tried to get my attention, wearing that look of doggie shame. I blew her off to finish typing. Next came the amazing part: She walked to the back of my apartment, picked up a rag in her mouth, took it to her mess, covered the mess with the rag, then started patting it with her paw.

Now, she actually made the mess worse by patting it into the carpet. But still. I mean, wow.

Here’s a little trick I’ve taught my last three dogs.

• The Washington Wealth Boom continues. Four of the top five, and seven of the top 10, richest counties in America are now in the D.C. suburbs. This trend isn’t healthy.
• Kansas City police open fire on a backfiring van.
• The world’s coziest prison.
• I am (not really) shocked that Thomas Frank would write something misleading. I mean, he’s never done it before.
• Stop smearing federalism. While we’re at it, let’s stop calling it “states’ rights.” States don’t have rights. States have powers. People have rights. It’s no coincidence that this point was lost the people who used the “states’ rights” mantra to deny people—mostly black people—their rights.
• Glenn Beck (further) beclowns himself with a staggeringly stupid attack on George Soros. Matt Welch corrects Beck here. Commentary corrects him here. When Commentary is defending Soros from your unfair attacks, it’s time to pack it up.

• Prince George’s County, Maryland Executive Jack Johnson arrested on corruption charges. Given Johnson’s callous response to the Cheye Calvo raid, I’m feeling a bit of schadenfreude this morning.
• Motorist charged with DWI blames the Easter Bunny.
• Reddit’s altruism.
• Video of a terrified three-year-old getting groped by TSA.
• Great 1960s photo series of the Hell’s Angels.
• I believe it was a commenter here who pointed this out: The great thing about Bush’s claim that he nearly dropped Cheney from the ticket in 2004 to show that he, Bush, was still in charge . . . is that it as Cheney’s idea.

I’d estimate that about 40 percent of my adolescent sex education came from the aisles of the Spencer’s Gifts at Washington Square Mall in Indianapolis. So this story hit close to the . . . heart.

Spencer Gifts LLC could face criminal charges in the coming days because the city says the national retailer is operating an unlicensed adult-oriented business at Rushmore Mall.

On Monday, the Rapid City Police Department seized more than 2,000 sex-related products from Spencer’s as possible evidence that the store meets the definition of an adult-oriented business.

City Attorney Jason Green said Tuesday he anticipated filing charges within a week based on the information gathered from Monday’s search warrant.

“We’ll get the reports from the police department and determine what charges to file,” Green said.

Under city ordinance, operating an adult-oriented business without a license is punishable by a $200 fine and 30 days in jail for every day a business fails to register. Businesses can sell adult merchandise without a license as long as it does not make up a “substantial or significant portion of its stock.”…

During Monday’s raid, police officers entered Spencer’s about 9 p.m. and did not start loading the boxed merchandise into police vehicles until after midnight.

On multiple occasions, officers brought in more cardboard boxes, and police Lt. Tom Vlieger, who oversaw the search warrant’s execution, confirmed there was more merchandise affected than they had anticipated.

The search warrant, which was signed by Magistrate Judge Scott Bogue, allowed officers to seize all merchandise designed for use during sexual activity, books, films or other visual representations of sexual activity or anatomical areas, novelty items depicting genitals or exposed female breasts and packaging of items depicting sexual activity or anatomical areas, according to court documents.

An inventory of all of the seized merchandise included in the court documents listed more than 2,000 items.

Someone at the Rapid City Police Department is going to get a hell of a retirement party.

Earlier this week I posted about Kenny Hulshof, the former Missouri prosecutor whose misconduct helped convict two innocent men of murder, and whose conduct has been questioned in anet least five other cases. I noted that not only will Hulshof never have to compensate the two men he wrongly convicted, he is also unlikely to be disciplined, meaning he’ll probably continue to earn his fat salary as a lobbyist, a salary in part due to him riding his tough on crime credentials to six terms in Congress.

Yesterday, a reader sent this story about Josh Kezer, one of the men Hulshof wrongly put in jail. It turns out that under Missouri law, only those who are exonerated by DNA testing are eligible for compensation for a wrongful conviction. Kezer was freed by a judge. So after 15 years in prison, not only will he get nothing from the prosecutor who broke the rules to convict him, he’ll get nothing from the state, either. Oddly enough, if Kezer had been guilty but then paroled after 15 years, he’d be eligible for a variety of state assistance programs aimed at integrated freed inmates back into society. Because he’s actually innocent, he doesn’t get to participate in those, either.

Meanwhile, Eapen Thampy of Americans for Forfeiture Reform sends a story about yet another Hulshof murder conviction now under review.

• Headline of the week.
• Red State blogger: “In a similar vein, five key election-day agenda items supported by radical leftist billionaire George Soros failed including marijuana legalization inCalifornia, showing that our nation indeed is on the road to recovery from the influence of socialist extremism.” The name “George Soros” turns the right into spittle-flecking idiots. Sort of the way the Koch family does with the left. (Also, this should cause exploding heads on both sides.)
• Highway fatalities continue to decline to record lows.
• This is kind of awesome. Also, “Big Mother Shucker.”
• What TSA public servants really think of you.
• I’d probably vote for her. She at least appears to be good about transparency. (NSFW)
• A pretty good goal: Be more like C. Dale Petersen.

• Pakistan court sentences Christian woman to death for blasphemy.
• Dick Van Dyke saved by porpoises.
• Good profile of Gary Johnson in The New Republic. I am pro-Gary Johnson.
• So this exists.
• Judge prevents police department from firing officer accused of shooting, killing an unarmed man.
• Will Saletan argues that the Democrats actually won the last two years. I think he and I disagree about the health care bill, but I think his general point is correct. Elections are temporary. Massive new government programs are forever. Even the temporary ones.
• Debt commission says it’s time for American to eat its vegetables. Pundits throw a tantrum.

Hard to fathom how “protecting” poor people by giving them no choice but loan sharks or eviction or bankruptcy helps them in the long run.

Also, check out my colleague Katherine Mangu-Ward on payday loans here.

Last week, Missouri Circuit Court Judge Judge Warren McElwain declared Dale Helmig innocent of killing his mother in 1993. Helmig was convicted in 1996. In his ruling, McElwain declared Helmig to be “the victim of a fundamental miscarriage of justice.”

Many factors contributed to Helmig’s conviction, including an inept public defender, false police testimony, and snitch testimony from inmates. But McElwain went out of his way to criticize the behavior of former Missouri prosecutor Kenny Hulshoff.

In his opinion, McElwain cited numerous instances where either Hulshof or Schollmeyer presented testimony that was later shown to be false and that they should have known was false. One section is titled “Kenny Hulshof knew or should have known that the testimony presented was false that Dale Helmig tacitly admitted killing his mother.”

In another section, McElwain states that Hulshof made improper use of unsupported testimony that Dale Helmig and his mother had been in a fight in which Helmig allegedly threw hot coffee in his mother’s face. That altercation, at a restaurant, actually involved Norma Helmig and Ted Helmig, her estranged husband.

“Even though the prosecution could not find a witness to substantiate this allegation, that did not stop them from trying to put the unproven and very inflammatory fact before the jury,” McElwain wrote.

This is the second case in two years in which Hulshoff has been cited by a judge for misconduct that helped convict an innocent person. In February 2009, Missouri Circuit Court Judge Richard Callahan declared Joshua Kezer innocent of the 1992 murder of college student Angela Mischelle Lawless. Kezer was convicted in 1994. From the A.P. report last year:

[Callahan's] 44-page decision included a stinging rebuke of Hulshof, saying he withheld key evidence from defense attorneys and embellished details in his closing arguments.

Other than a statement Tuesday in which he affirmed his belief that Kezer is guilty, Hulshof has declined to comment.

The state’s prosecution was based on the testimony of another suspect in Lawless’ death who said he saw Kezer at a nearby convenience store on the night of the killing. But he gave conflicting testimony and three jail inmates who claimed Kezer had confessed to the killing later acknowledged lying in hopes of getting reduced sentences.

Back in 2008, the A.P. found five other cases in which Hulshoff was accused of prosecutorial misconduct. So what has happened to Hulshoff? For starters, he parlayed his tough-on-crime record as a prosecutor into a run for Congress, where he served for six terms. In 2008, he was the GOP nominee for governor of Missouri. He nearly became the president of the University of Missouri at Columbia. Currently, he has offices in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. as a lobbyist for the white shoe law firm Polsinelli Shughart.

A couple weeks ago, a Reason commenter wrote that convicting an innocent person of murder ought have a similar effect on a prosecutor’s career that, say, amputating the wrong limb would have on a doctor’s. That sounds about right. At minimum it demonstrates a degree of negligence that ought to bar a prosecutor from ever prosecuting a case again. He has destroyed an innocent person’s life, prolonged suffering for the victim’s family and, of coruse, allowed the actual murderer to get away with the crime. If it can be shown that a prosecutor’s deliberate misconduct contributed to a wrongful conviction, he should lose his license to practice law.

Hulshoff has done it twice. That we know of. And it’s not like no one in Missouri knew about his aggressiveness. Yet he not only gets to continue practicing law as a jet-setting lobbyist, thanks to absolute immunity he’ll never have to pay a dime of the fat salary those aggressive tactics won him to Joshua Kezer or Dale Helmig.

• Fun review of George W. Bush’s forthcoming bio. We shouldn’t lose sight of what a truly awful president he was. The point about him citing botched photo ops as his biggest mistakes—as opposed to the actual decisions he made—is well taken. It’s also telling that his efforts to rehabilitate his image involve things like getting word out that he nearly dumped Cheney in 2004 to show he was still in charge. Rehabilitation isn’t about making up for his mistakes, it’s about showing that he really was the one who made them, and has no regrets about having made them.
• Cool article on an exhibit of 1920s German modernist sculptures hidden by the Nazis.
• Inspector General finds that our old friend Mary Beth Buchanan had a taste for fine hotels, and had no problem having taxpayers pick up the tab. The total she overbilled, about $4,000, isn’t much. But as the article points out, it’s sort of petty offense for which Mary Beth Buchanan had no problem prosecuting people.
• Jonathan Cohn wishes that Obama would make the case that “government serves a vital role, as champion and protector of the everyday American.”
• Officials in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania county take a couple’s children from them because the mother failed a drug test given shortly after she gave birth that was given without her consent. The reason she failed: She had eaten a poppy seed bagel. Champion and protector of the everyday American, indeed.
• While the federal, state, and city governments are increasingly bullying the food industry and micromanaging our diets, they’re also paying millions of taxpayer dollars to help fast food companies develop and market products dripping with cheese. In fact, the same agency running the federal government’s main anti-obesity campaign (the Department of Agriculture) is behind the cheese push. Champion and protector of the everyday American, indeed!
• Famous movie posters reimagined in Art Deco.

If you were wondering which poorly-named metaphor takes precedence when the government’s bumbling war on drugs butts up against its bumbling war on terrorism, here’s your answer.

American authorities sent David C. Headley, a small-time drug dealer and sometime informant, to work for them in Pakistan months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite a warning that he sympathized with radical Islamic groups, according to court records and interviews. Not long after Mr. Headley arrived there, he began training with terrorists, eventually playing a key role in the 2008 attacks that left 164 people dead in Mumbai.

The October 2001 warning was dismissed, the authorities said, as the ire of a jilted girlfriend and for lack of proof. Less than a month later, those concerns did not come up when a federal court in New York granted Mr. Headley an early release from probation so that he could be sent to work for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in Pakistan. It is unclear what Mr. Headley was supposed to do in Pakistan for the Americans.

“All I knew was the D.E.A. wanted him in Pakistan as fast as possible because they said they were close to making some big cases,” said Luis Caso, Mr. Headley’s former probation officer.

On Sunday, while President Obama was visiting India, he briefed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the status of his administration’s investigation of Mr. Headley, including the failure to act on repeated warnings that he might be a terrorist. A senior United States official said the inquiry has concluded that while the government received warnings, it did not have strong enough evidence at the time to act on them.

I’m sure Headley’s potential helpfulness to the DEA had nothing at all to do with how seriously the government took those tips that he was a possible terrorist. It’s not like the feds have ever sacrificed fighting terrorism for fighting drugs in the past.

Last month, John Cole complained after his local water company dug a hole in his backyard without his permission. They were installing an outdoor water meter. When Cole asked why he was never told, the workers blew him off, and said they had a right of way. Never one to miss a chance to take a cheap shot at libertarians, Cole wrote:

If libertarians would focus on crap like this instead of all the smug bullshit and contrarian economic analysis, they might actually be able to build their party.

At the time, Mark Thompson correctly observed that Cole’s conception of libertarians pretty clearly exists only in Cole’s mind. This is exactly the sort of thing libertarians care about, focus on, and obsess over. Most of the successes of the Libertarian Party and of libertarian activists in general have come at the local level.

In any case, jump forward to this week. A Tea Party group in Fountain Hills, Arizona is protesting the city council’s decision to eliminate the local market for trash collection. Instead, the town has contracted all garbage collection to a single company.

So here’s a tea party group rallying around a local issue. What’s more, they’re protesting the local government’s decision to grant a state-enforced monopoly to a private company. Seems like the sort of thing a good progressive like Cole could get behind, no?  Of course not. Instead, Cole mocks the protesters for their pettiness. Those stupid rubes! Look at them getting all excited over a local issue while there are pressing, national issues to address. Or as Cole put it, by way of a class-warfare non-sequitur, “This is how the American empire will end. With us rioting in the streets over the right to choose a trash collecter [sic], while the top 5% laugh all the way to the bank.”

It’s particularly amusing that Cole would evoke income inequality in this post. Perhaps he can explain how a  town taking business away from four trash collection companies in order to grant a city-wide monopoly to one brings us closer to his goal of an America where wealth is distributed more evenly. I’m having hard time figuring out how that would happen.

Cole weighed in again later:

Christ on a crutch. This was small “d” democracy in action, not nanny statism or “central planning” or whatever ludicrous term you want to bandy about. A local town council, elected by the citizens, sat around and viewed a bunch of bids for trash collection for their municipality, and then chose one private firm and outsourced it to them. This is not some faceless bureaucrat at the UN headquarters foisting his will on an unsuspecting population. This is not some slippery slope to the erosion of individual rights. This is subsidiarity in action, and if you find it too oppressive or too vulgar an imposition on your personal liberty, you can move, or you can work with like-minded people to elect new town council members and change the contract.

This is why no one with half a clue pays ANY attention to these abstract libertarian principles and the people willing to spend hours upon hours discussing them. The town council picked a company to pick up trash, and the teahadists freaked out and think it is socialism. End of story. The rest of us are pointing and laughing at them, and now you.

*** Update ***

My GAWD. I feel so violated. I’m going through my bills before the Steelers game and I just realized that Allied Waste is contracted to pick up my trash, so my personal liberties have been impinged by the creeping totalitarianism of nanny-statism. To show solidarity with the oppressed Fountain Hills trash protesters, I am going to dress up in my “Don’t Tread on Me” t-shirt, stand at the edge of my driveway at dawn during trash pick-up on Thursday, and throw pocket constitutions at the sanitation workers. We shall overcome, patriots!

Where to begin? First, this issue is a hell of a lot more important to the residents of Fountain Hills than “some faceless bureaucrat at the UN headquarters foisting his will on an unsuspecting population.” It affects them directly. They don’t like the decision their local elected officials made, so they’re protesting it. That too, is “small d democracy” in action. And it’s the exact sort of local involvement in which Cole wrongly claims libertarians don’t engage. (In Cole’s world, though not the real world, “libertarian” and “tea party” are interchangeable.)

E.D. Kain, the lone voice of sanity left at Balloon Juice, tried to point out the errors in Cole’s criticism. Most notably, if you think city officials customarily hand out contracts based solely on merit, considering only what’s best for their constituents, and only after carefully considering a variety of bids, especially when it comes to sanitation, well, there’s a man in a jumpsuit waiting at the diner who’d like to make you an offer that you can’t refuse.

Of course, Kain was roundly chastised by Balloon Juice bloggers and commenters for his quaint naivete. How silly of him to actually think through this particular debate; to actually consider things from the perspective of the citizens; to question the idea that the public good, not self-interest, always motivates elected officials when they’re granting contracts. This is Balloon Juice. You are to reflexively take the side that provides the most opportunity to mock libertarians and tea partiers. (By the way, my defense of this particular tea party group on this particular issue is in no way meant to imply my broad support for the tea party movement, or Arizona tea partiers in particular—a fallacy Cole regularly employs.)

Cole weighed in again in the comments to Kain’s post:

You completely missed the point of my post, then. I’m not opposed to having choice in trash collection.

My point is that it is absolutely insane to blow a fucking gasket over this issue like what is happening in that town in Arizona. They elected a group of people, they sat around and thought things through, and came to a decision. Don’t agree with it- fine! Elect someone to replace them and repeal the decision in a few years.

But what is insane is to riot about it.

There was no rioting. Go back and re-read the article from the Arizona Republic. There was organized protest. There was speaking out in a city council meeting. There were warnings that voters might hold Fountain Hills officials accountable for this decision next election. Yes, the protest has included some silly and overheated rhetoric. But certainly no sillier or more overheated than you’ll find in a typical Balloon Juice post. In general, the protesters seem concerned that granting a monopoly to a private utility company could disrupt the garbage removal service that the people of Fountain Hills apparently believed the free market was providing pretty efficiently.

I don’t want to put words in their mouths, but perhaps, perhaps, the Fountain Hills protesters are worried that the lack of competition in trash service could give rise to the sort of complacent service and disregard for customers that might cause, say, a water company with a government-granted monopoly to dig holes in a customer’s backyard without first getting his permission.

MORE:  I critiqued John with a long post that pointed out what I believe are inconsistencies in his criticism of tea partiers and libertarians, that explained why I think he should be opposed to enriching a single corporation at the expense of consumer choice, and that criticized him, though with a pretty light hand, for mocking the Fountain Hills protesters for engaging in the very sort of localized activism that he in the past has criticized limited government types for ignoring.

He has now responded with a short post that has nothing in the way of a substantive argument, but does misstate the points I made, makes a crack about Ayn Rand (note: I’m not a Randian), uses the junior high term “teabaggers”, uses all-caps to mock the people he disagrees with, and tags me as a glibertarian, a term that once had a specific definition, but now apparently means any libertarian who makes a point John Cole doesn’t like. (Seriously, John. If you’re going to call me a “glibertarian,” the term really has no meaning at all. I spend 90 percent of my time writing about issues and advocating positions that will never personally affect me.)

He also mocks me for taking 1,200 words to support my criticism of him with links, supporting arguments, and nuance. The horror. I’d have done better, I guess, to dismiss him with a one-paragraph string of penis-themed insults headlined with a caricature of his position spelled out in all caps. Also, lots of exclamation points, personal attacks, and inside jokes. That seems to be how you have “discussions” over there.

So as I noted in April and August, the IRS seems to be having a problem with my 2009 tax refund. It’s now November. And I still haven’t received it.

To recap: I filed well ahead of the deadline. But I e-filed, and a couple days later received a response that there was a problem with my Social Security number. So I called the IRS help line to figure out what I needed to do. They told me to print out the return and send it through the mail. So I did.

Months passed. Nothing happened. I called a couple times over the summer. They said my return was still being investigated, but they couldn’t give me any details. I asked if there was anything I could do to expedite the process. They said to call back if I haven’t heard anything in 90 days. Both times, I made sure the IRS knew that I have moved since I filed my return, and gave them my new address.

Fast forward to last month. I called a fourth time to see what’s happened to my return. The guy on the help line again said that it’s still being investigated. But this time, he also said the IRS did send me a notice about my account in early May, and that I ignored it. I told him I wouldn’t have done that. I was waiting for my refund. He asked if I’ve moved. I replied, with exasperation, that I had moved in late May, and that I have noted this and given my new address each time I’ve previously called. He said he had no record of my new address, but that he would change it in the system.

Of course, even they did send a notice, I didn’t move until the end of May. So I still should have received it. I also filed a change of address form with the U.S. Post Office. All of my other mail was forwarded (save, curiously, for a parking ticket notice from the D.C. government. But that’s another story). Anyway, IRS guy says he will generate a new letter telling me the status of my return (he again says he can’t tell me what’s wrong with my return over the phone). He says I should receive it within a week. I have him read back my new address and confirm that this is the address to which the notice will be sent. All is correct.

As of last week, the letter still hadn’t arrived. So last week, I called back. This time IRS lady finally told me the source of the original problem: Last March, someone else filed a return under my Social Security number. The IRS received that return before they received mine. She then said, “You should have sent proof of your identity and an identity theft form back in May, when we sent you a notice asking for it.” I replied, trying with all my might to avoid using profanity, “No one ever told me what the problem was. It is November. This is the first time I’ve been told that someone else filed under my Social Security number. I never received any letter in May. Which is what I told the guy I talked to last month, and everyone I talked to before that. I also never received the notice I was supposed to have received within a week of my last call.”

After much hemming, hawing, checking, and putting me on hold, here’s apparently what happened: Someone else filed a return using my Social Security number. So because there was already a return on file under my number, my return was rejected. According to the woman I spoke with today, when I called the help line to ask what to do after the initial rejection, they should have told me to send proof of identity when I sent my return by snail mail. But they didn’t. She also said there was no reason why they couldn’t have given me an explanation the multiple other times I called. I asked, “So why didn’t they?” She answered, “They should have.” Well, okay then.

So what about that letter last May, the one the IRS guy last month said I should have responded to, subtly implying that this was all my fault?

It seems that when more than one return is filed under the same Social Security number, the address on the return the IRS receives first is the address they associate with the account. That’s where all the notices go. Even when it makes no sense to send notices to that address.

So when I sent in my return via mail, and it didn’t have the proof of identity with it (because no one at the IRS help line told me to do so), they processed the letter as just another tax return, not a return re-filed because of a problem with a taxpayer ID problem. When they realized someone else had already filed under my number, they sent the response letter asking me to prove my ID to the address of the person who wrongly filed under my Social Security number. I asked the IRS lady why they would do this. I can understand sending a request for proof of ID to both addresses. But it’s rather stupid to send a response to my tax return to the address of the other person. Especially if it’s a response asking for proof of ID. She again replied, automaton-like, that all correspondence goes out to the address associated with the account. Even, I guess, when it makes absolutely no sense to do so.

As for the letter I should have received within a week of my call on October 6, I finally received it on Saturday, November 6. Good enough for government work.

So I now have to verify my identity by sending in copies of my driver’s license, passport, etc. I also have to send in another copy of my return, but also note (she said use a sharpie and write in all caps if necessary) that this is a copy of a return already filed, lest some dolt at the agency actually mistake it for a third, separate person trying to file under my Social Security number.

Even after I send all of this, I was told it could be 30 days before I get a response. And that’s just for the acknowledgment. It’ll likely be well past Tax Day 2011 before they sort this out and issue my 2009 refund. At this point I’ll be pleasantly surprised if I ever get it.

I keep pretty close track of my credit, and it doesn’t appear that anyone has stolen my identity. The most likely explanation is that someone with a Social Security number similar to mine accidentally transposed a couple numbers (for all I know, that person is fighting like hell to figure out what’s going on, too). I obviously don’t fault the IRS for the fact that someone else filed under my number. But I sure as hell fault them for everything that’s happened since. If someone had stolen my identity, and if I didn’t regularly check my credit, the thief could have done a hell of a lot of damage by now. The IRS could have warned me about it all last May.

The punchline is that as I was filling out my taxes this year, I got a “tip” suggesting that because I have multiple sources of income, some of which aren’t subject to withholding (speeches, freelance work, etc.), I should consider paying my taxes quarterly, and may suffer a penalty next year if I don’t. God forbid the government doesn’t get its money forthwith. But when they have your money? You’ll get it when they’re damned good and ready.

It’s not a huge amount of money. I try to adjust my withholding to come close to breaking even. But it’s enough to make me irritated that I still haven’t gotten it back. And yeah, it’s also the principle of it, knowing that not only is this incompetent bureaucracy making me jump through hoops to get back my money the government is holding, but my tax dollars are paying for my privilege of jumping through aforementioned hoops.

I’d rather a mugger have just taken the money from me. At least a mugger doesn’t bill you for his services.

In my feature on asset forfeiture for the February issue of Reason, I looked specifically at how civil forfeiture was being abused in the state of Indiana. Remember that Indiana’s constitution requires that any forfeiture proceeds go to the state’s public schools fund, though prosecutors can reimburse their own offices and police departments for the cost of conducting investigations. The schools fund requirement helps offset the perverse incentives when police departments and prosecutor offices directly benefit from the property they seize.

But Indiana law enforcement officials have gotten around the requirement by greatly overestimating the cost of investigations, or by settling with property owners out of court (meaning the property wasn’t officially “seized”). Worse, many Indiana counties have actually made the incentive problem worse by contracting forfeiture cases to private attorneys, who then get a cut of what they win in court. Delaware County Prosecutor Mark McKinney was actually prosecuting criminal drug cases while also representing the county as a private attorney in civil forfeiture cases, where he’d get a cut of what he won. The Indiana Supreme Court will soon determine McKinney’s punishment, though the county judge who oversaw the ensuing the investigation has recommended only a reprimand.

Over the last several months, the Indianapolis Star has been investigating the state’s forfeiture abuses. The paper published its second installment over the weekend. A few highlights:

Indianapolis law enforcement officials have a broader — and more lucrative — interpretation of law enforcement costs. They argue that the phrase simply means the cost of enforcing the law in Marion County, and thereby justify holding on to every dollar of the nearly $1.6 million the county received from state forfeiture cases in 2009.

“We don’t break it down on a case-by-case basis,” said Lawrence Brodeur, chief of Marion County’s strategic narcotics prosecution division. “That doesn’t make any sense. You could have one case where the officer makes a simple traffic stop, and there could be a quarter-million in cash that we seize. There could be months and months and months on another case, and we catch the guy with a lot of dope but not a lot of cash. Law enforcement, as you know, is more than one case at a time.”

Assets forfeited in Marion County flow into a designated law enforcement fund that benefits the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and the Marion County prosecutor’s office.

But even Brodeur’s definition of law enforcement costs is not as broad as the one endorsed by Putnam County Prosecutor Tim Bookwalter. In 2008, he made a $28,000 donation to fund spay/neuter services at the local Humane Society with forfeiture money. His argument: Stray dogs are a law enforcement problem.

Bookwalter and Putnam County were part of my story in February. Christopher Gambill, the private attorney who handles forfeiture cases for Putnam County, once made a $113,145.67 commission off a single case. That’s more than all 92 Indiana counties have paid into the schools fund over the last two years combined.

More from the Star:

In Knox County, after council members started trying to keep a closer watch on Sheriff Stephen Luce’s spending, Luce simply circumvented them.

“The sheriff at that time felt like it was his money and his slush fund,” County Council President Tim Ellerman said. “He was wanting to buy sniper rifles. Down here we don’t really need sniper rifles with lasers because very seldom do we have hostage situations. Once we started scrutinizing, then all of the sudden the money stopped coming in.”

But not really. A 2007 audit revealed that police had not stopped seizing forfeiture funds. Nor had Luce stopped spending them. He had simply begun funneling the money straight from law enforcement coffers into his creditors’ pockets, without ever depositing the money with the county or asking the permission of County Council members.

For example, the 2007 audit found that after a public sale of seized assets, the attorney handling forfeitures for the prosecutor’s office had written an $8,000 check — not to the county, but to Vincennes Ford, to pay for a vehicle. Kurt Webber, an attorney the council hired to sort out the mess, found that Luce had been buying police vehicles on credit, without council authorization, since 2003 and using forfeiture funds to pay them off.

Luce left the department during the investigation. He’s now head of the Indiana Sheriff’s Association. The entire Star report is worth reading. Particularly interesting are the broad definitions of what constitutes a settlement, for purposes of allowing forfeited property to go back to the department instead of the schools fund. Until 2008, for example, police officers in Putnam County could negotiate a “settlement” on the side of the road, giving motorists the option of either facing an arrest and drug charges, or simply forfeiting all of their cash, at which point they’d be sent on their way. Gambill helpfully explains how this policy was effective at separating drug mules from their ill-gotten cash. Of course, it would also be effective at getting cash out of anyone who’d rather fork over some money than face the prospect of arrest, detainment, and felony charges.

Putnam County says it no longer allows such shakedowns settlements, but the Star notes that there’s nothing in Indiana law preventing it from being used there or in other counties.

Jacob Sullum has the latest.

This case ought to outrage anyone who claims to give a damn about the First Amendment. It’s hard to think of a more dire example of government censorship than for it to (a) use the criminal justice system to harass someone who speaks out against what she believes to be government abuses, and then (b) use the same system to silence her and her advocates from publicly discussing the harassment.

Seems like there’s a parallel here with the state secrets cases. The Obama administration has gone beyond arguing that the initial acts are well within the government’s power. It’s also arguing that the government should have the power to prevent anyone from talking about or knowing about them.

• Fed bailout of state governments has already begun.
• Toughest Captcha yet.
• DA won’t turn over evidence in case of Pace University football player shot by police.
• Woman wrongly convicted of murder now an advocate for criminal justice reform.
• Woman utters line previously unrecorded in a police report (possibly NSFW).
• The tunnel people of Las Vegas.
• Orange County, Florida authorities conducting “raid-style inspections” of unlicensed barbershops. Seems pretty clear they’re looking for something other than unlicensed barbers. Conducting these under the auspices of a regulatory inspection lets them get around the need for a search warrant.

Snapped just outside of St. Louis.

Thanks to Stephanie Flakne for sending the photo.

• Philly cops twice arrest a man, confiscate his legally owned firearm for “insolence” and “defiance.” They say he was loitering . . . at a bus stop.  I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that he looked like this.
• Baby Kim Jong Il. He rules the nursery with a tiny iron fist.
• BART cop who shot Oscar Grant gets minimum two year sentence.
• The asinine, condescending logic of anti-pot “progressives”.
• Blogger arrested for filming at a public candidate forum.
• Arkansas Supreme Court orders a new evidentiary hearing for the West Memphis Three.

Once he recovers, a 72-year-old man will be charged with attempted murder after getting into a shootout with the SWAT team who raided the private poker game he was hosting. From the Pokerati blog:

A relatively routine raid of a low-stakes poker game in Greenville, South Carolina turned bloody yesterday night — as police tried to gain entry to a poker house. The game host, now known to be Aaron Awtry, 72, shot through the front door, striking sheriff’s deputy Matthew May with a bullet that went through his arm.

A vice squad in SWAT gear returned fire, hitting Awtry with multiple rounds in his arm and thumb … which was followed by a 20-minute standoff between cops and players, according to a spokesman for the Greenville County Sheriff’s Department. Both shooting victims were taken to the hospital where they are in stable condition.

There were 12 people and Awtry in the house at 502 Pine Knoll Drive when police arrived at about 9:20 pm last night. According to frontline witnesses, they had just finished a small buy-in dinnertime tourney … and a 1/2 cash game was just getting underway when someone saw 5-0 approaching on a security monitor. Before he could clearly vocalize an alert, a battery ram begin slamming the front door and players froze. Awtry, who players say has notoriously bad hearing in his senior years and presumably believed the game was being robbed, began shooting at the door with his pistol, firing “at least once” according to a player, “multiple shots” according to police. At least four officers returned fire at the door with at least 20 bullets from their higher-powered assault weapons.

As Awtry fell back into the poker room entryway, he balked, “Why didn’t you tell me it was the cops?”

Local news coverage of the raid here. Police seized about $5,000 in cash. Everyone but Awtry was issued a $100 fine. Ironically, both the South Carolina Supreme Court and state legislature may soon clarify the state’s confusing laws about private poker games.

This is far from the first time police have brought the SWAT team to a poker game. Reason.tv covered a similar raid at on a charity poker game hosted by an American Legion post in Dallas.