I figure we’ll do a little gospel this week, given the holiday weekend. This song is one of my favorites. The problem is picking a favorite version of it. Greg Allman has a great version. So do the Staple Singers. As do June Carter Cash, Willie Nelson, and Loretta Lynn. Even the late Sen. Robert Byrd left behind a great recording of “Circle”. He sings and plays fiddle (really!).

But it’s hard to go wrong with the version below, which features Johnny Cash, Levon Helm, Emmylou Harris, Roy Acuff, Ricky Skaggs, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and quite a few others you’ve probably heard of.

• With FourLoko out of the way, State AGs are now shamelessly grandstanding about the next “irresponsible” alcohol product.
• Cops once again mistake tomato plants for marijuana. This business of getting probable cause for a search warrant based on purchases of perfectly legal products (like hydroponic equipment) has been going on for years. But it’s still creepy.
• I’m probably going to write my own review of this James Stewart book about white collar lying, but Scott Greenfield knocks it around pretty good here.
• Write your own caption.
• I have more on that Andrew Cohen blog post about online poker over at Hit & Run.
• Another death after a non-lethal Tasering.
• Here is an awesome video illusion.

Yesterday, a reader pointed to this unintentionally hilarious blog post from guy who is protesting that Whole Foods planned for the Jamaican Plains neighborhood in Boston. Chris Knighton is from “a white, middle class family” who “will soon be graduating from a private university in Boston.” He’s hopping mad about the gentrification of his neighborhood—which, by the way, he just moved into a few months ago.

It gets better. Knighton’s post attracted a number of comments from people who have actually lived in the neighborhood for years, including several Latinos who ridiculed Knighton for claiming to know what’s best for them—and for the pretense of speaking for a neighborhood he barely knows. The comments weren’t mean-spirited. They were pointed. And deservedly so.

Here’s what Knighton posted today:

UPDATE 4/22/11: I decided to disable the comments section to this blog post. I’ve received a ton of positive feedback on this article from a culturally, economically, and politically diverse group of people and to date it has been viewed over 1700 times. However, the comments left were entirely negative and I felt like they took away from the article while not providing anything constructive. Nobody who left a comment tried to address any of the points of my argument directly in a constructive way and instead just attacked my character and/or used wording which dismisses the article completely with very little or no explanation for their own viewpoint. Also, I got the impression that many of the commenters were not reading the article in full, if at all. For these reasons, I decided to disable comments to this blog in order to encourage people to read the article and come to their own decisions about this issue.

I’ll be talking about recording cops tonight on John Stossel’s show.

Airs on Fox Business Network at 10pm ET.

Cop shoots, kills unarmed Pace University student. Months later, he gets the police union’s “Cop of the Year” award:

The Police Benevolent Association of the Pleasantville Police Department said Wednesday it honored Officer Aaron Hess for his dignity and professionalism since the October shooting and throughout his career.

Hess fired at Henry’s car as Henry drove away from a disturbance that spilled out of a bar in Thornwood, just north of New York City, after Pace University’s homecoming game on Oct. 17, 2010. Hess was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by a Westchester County grand jury in February.

Autopsy results found Henry was above the legal limit for alcohol, but his family says he wasn’t drunk.

Hess, who suffered leg injuries, said he shot at Henry after Henry’s car hit him. Some witnesses disputed that.

The Henry family is seeking federal intervention, and the Department of Justice has said it will review the evidence to determine whether there were any civil rights crimes.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas:

Two Las Vegas police officers who shot and killed Erik Scott in the controversial Costco shooting last year have received honors in a national officer of the year award.

Officers William Mosher and Joshua Stark received honorable mention in the National Association of Police Organizations’ Top Cops awards.

A third officer involved in the shooting, Thomas Mendiola, was not honored. In January, Mendiola was charged with a felony for unlawfully giving a handgun to a two-time felon in an unrelated case. He has a preliminary hearing in May.

Chris Collins, executive director of the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, is a member of the NAPO board of directors. He said he nominated the two officers and officer Mike Madland, who was shot twice while chasing a robbery suspect in March 2010, for the Top Cop award. Madland nearly lost his leg from the shooting. He did not win a NAPO award.

Collins called the two incidents the “top two heroic events our officers participated in last year.”

“I don’t see it as a controversial shooting,” he said about the Costco shooting. “What potentially could have been a bad situation they brought to an end with no citizens being hurt.

“It was a heroic deed and enough of a heroic deed for the judges to give them an honorable mention.”

Scott’s father, Bill Scott, called the honor “incredible.”

“The arrogance of Chris Collins and the PPA in even nominating these two staggers the imagination,” he said.

He called the officers’ actions a “mistake” and added, “Now they’re being honored for their mistakes?”

Both of these shootings were high-profile, and in both cases witness accounts dispute officer accounts (though in the Scott case there are lots of discrepencies—other witnesses confirm portions of the police version of events).

In any case, it’s interesting that the cops who shot and killed Scott and Henry were honored, but not the cop who was shot while chasing a robbery suspect, but didn’t actually kill anyone.

• Great Slate piece on the rise of amateur photography.
• This article made my head hurt.
• If you haven’t yet, you should watch the amazing new AMC show, The Killing. Here’s an interview with the star, Mireille Enos.
• Tennessee Republicans are hard at work, tackling important issues like ensuring that public schools are only teaching heterosexuality, and proposing seven bills that would have the government do various punitive things to immigrants.
• If you’re wondering things like whether it’s “possible to be racist toward a race that does not actually exist”, you’re probably over-thinking things.

This piece from my colleague Michael Moynihan about a Whole Foods protest in Boston would be amusing if it weren’t so infuriating. Seems that a group of activists are trying to block a Whole Foods from opening in a gentrifying part of the city. The problem? As we’ve seen with similar efforts to stop Walmart from opening stores in urban areas, the people the activists claim they’re protecting actually want the store to open. Silly poor Latinos. Don’t they know what’s good for them?

I pointed out during the last backlash against Whole Foods (because CEO John Mackey dared to have non-leftist opinions about health care) that the evil corporate giant treats its employees far better than grocers with union labor, or in this case, the quaint neighborhood store everyone is trying to save.

So what’s the problem? I’d say the left’s hate of Whole Foods is pretty neatly summed up in this Alternet piece: It’s Mackey’s libertarian politics, the company’s opposition to unionization (which is quite different than how it treats its employees), and its general “bigness” and “multinational” status. In other words, it’s nothing that the company actually does. It’s more about what it represents. Everything big is bad. Except for government. Or something like that.

Of course, we’re also constantly hearing about how poor urban areas are nutrition-starved food deserts without access to fresh produce. (And this is true.) For a long time, corporations were criticized for ignoring minority groups in their advertising. But when they advertise to these groups, they’re exploiting them. We’re also supposed to be eating more organic food instead of food that is factory-farmed. But you can’t charge too much for it. Then you’re catering to the rich. Of course, Walmart charges too little. So they’re predatory.

All of which got me wondering. What would it take to run a grocery store that’s immune to progressive protest? I came up with this checklist:

• You must pay your employees a high wage and provide them with excellent health insurance. However, you may pay them crappy wages and offer fewer benefits so long as you let them unionize. Bonus points if they’re required to divert a portion of those crappy wages to union dues.
• You must offer organic food, and cater to alternative diets. You should probably also offer ethnic food. But don’t get too big.
• You must insist that your suppliers adhere to strict standards about the treatment of animals and the environment. You should buy local. You shouldn’t sell anything that can only be shipped by jet or tractor trailer. We don’t want our enjoyment of our shade-grown, fair-trade, organic morning roast with hints of chocolate, currant, and elderberry ruined by a giant-carbon-footprint finish. But remember, you still need to cater to a wide variety of diets. And have good selection. And not charge too much.
• You should be a good corporate citizen, and donate regularly to charity and political causes. But only those causes that disapprove of commercialism. A good rule of thumb: If the cause you’re considering doesn’t think you, a business, should be legally permitted to exist, it’s probably a safe donation.
• Just a reminder: You must do all of these things while keeping your prices low. But not so low that you might cause a rival locally-owned store to go out of business.
• Oh, you also must be locally-owned.
• You should invest in urban areas, but any profits should only come from suburban stores with predominantly white customers. Otherwise you’re taking advantage of people of color.
• Actually, strike that. Morally, you should really only be making just enough money to keep the lights on. Maybe enough to also provide yourself with a modest, progressive urban lifestyle. Anything more is greed. If you’re doing well enough to actually open another store, not only are you making too much money, you also are now a “chain”. And chains are inherently evil.
• You can’t advertise; all advertising is exploitation. It would be preferable if you didn’t have a logo. Actually, it would be preferable if you didn’t even have a sign. (Note: This will also give you a cool, underground vibe.)
• No trans-fats. No plastics. No high-fructose corn syrup. Don’t even think of selling tobacco, unless it’s that apple-flavored stuff we need for our Hookahs. You may sell alcohol, but only organic wine and micro-brewed beer. Nothing from Big Alcohol. Except PBR, of course. (But remember, keep those prices low!)
• Spirits are fine, so long the particular spirit you want to sell meets at least one of the following criteria:

(A) It is the native liquor of a developing country, or the favored liquor of a persecuted ethnic group.

(B) It is distilled in a monastery by the monks of a far eastern religion.

(C) It’s a variety of liquor we may need to replicate the awesome drink we tried last week at the speakeasy.

• You must foster a work environment that promotes tolerance and open-mindedness. This means no white trash.
• Don’t hire any Republicans, “blue-dog Democrats”, libertarians, or business majors, either. Those sorts of people promote intolerance.
• Even if you meet all of these conditions, no management for your store may at no time publicly express a political opinion that runs contrary to progressive values. This is betrayal, and the boycotts will commence.

Did I miss anything?

CNN recently obtained a list of the “behavioral indicators” that could subject you to an enhanced security screeing by TSA. Included on the list:

Passengers who display arrogance and verbally express contempt for security procedures.

Because terrorists are known for drawing attention to themselves by irritating security screeners? Seems doubtful.

The lesson here: Not only will you be subjected to a pointless, hassling, sometimes humiliating screening process every time you fly, but you’ll also now need to pretend like you’re enjoying it.

I guess it’s not surprising that 400 were doing it. But it is pretty surprising that up to 400 may face charges.

A major ticket fixing scandal is rocking the NYPD, and as many as 400 cops could face bribery and larceny charges for making tickets disappear in exchange for gifts, according to a report.

“This is huge,” a source told the New York Post. “That’s a lot of cops all in one shot. I’ve never heard of something like that before, this many police officers charged in one period.”

The investigation was reportedly started by accident. Apparently the owner of a barbershop not far from the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx called his police officer son to see about fixing a ticket. Unbeknownst to the officer, the telephone was being tapped by Internal Affairs officers who were investigating local drug trafficking.

Sources told CBS affiliate WCBS that union delegates were among those asked to fix the tickets. Among the cops under investigation, more than two dozen face potential felony charges, while another 10 could face lesser charges like obstruction of government administration.

Sources also told the station that although the case began in the Bronx, prosecutors in at least two other boroughs have pieces of the probe.

John Cole commits the Balloon Juice fallacy once again. Jason Kuznicki responds here.

I’d add a couple things. First, to say that what’s happening in one town in Michigan is “light years more egregious” than the widespread eminent domain cases that gave rise to the Kelo v. New London case shows a pretty astonishing indifference to (or ignorance of) just how often eminent domain is abused, and who tends to get abused by it. Of course, the fact that libertarians have been leading the fight against government efforts to take property from low- and middle-income people and hand it over to rich developers tends to get in the way of Cole efforts to portray “glibertarians” as corporate whores who eat poor families’ babies for breakfast. So it’s in his interest to play down its significance.

By the way, a search of Balloon Juice archives shows just two mentions of “eminent domain” since 2005, about the time John Cole converted from warmongering Bush hugger to blogging cheerleader/fundraiser for Democrats. There hasn’t been a single mention of the Atlantic Yards, Port Chester, National City, or Montgomery eminent domain outrages, all covered by Reason, and all of which involved governments taking land from poor people to give to wealthy developers. Applying the Balloon Juice fallacy, I hereby declare this silence “suspicious”! And I wonder: Why do John Cole and his Balloon Juice co-bloggers hate poor people?

Second, Cole weirdly lists Edmund Burke as some sort of libertarian influence. We’ll just add that to the pile of John Cole attacks on libertarianism that really only show how little John Cole knows about libertarianism.

I should disclose that I am among the many libertarians who have been suspiciously silent about Benton Harbor. This is entirely because I haven’t read enough about what’s going on there to have an informed opinion about it.

I took a birthday blog hiatus yesterday. Here are some morning links for you to munch on:

• The Onion vs. cable news punditry.
• The worst names in human history, featuring Mr. Fagley Dork.
• First world problems: There are too many songs available online. Also, cupcakes have too much frosting.
• L.A. Times starts a website to help the public with public records requests.
• Zebra bar code scanners.
• Self promotion: I’m quoted several times in John Stossel’s syndicated column this week.
• Horrifying headline of the day.
• Free porn from National Review.
• My favorite new viral marketing campaign.

I forgot to put up a five-star Friday post last week. So here’s some Tax Day blues for you. The song is “Governor”. The band is Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise.

…like this one, for a bizarre new book called Revelations and Dog…

Stunningly imagined and masterfully executed artwork populates this graphic story of end times with cute dogs, lions with snake tongues and beasts morphed from contemporary political figures like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Kim Jong Il.

Sound far-fetched? It shouldn’t writes Janette Platana in the book’s foreword: “If your understanding is that John, like Moses, was just another of Yahweh’s divine dictation assistants, taking down the ravings of a vengeful, tribal, warrior sky-god, then you must accept that Michael Caines’s illustrations are as holy as anything else: a talking bush that lights up but doesn’t burn, God’s backside as he moons Moses, the destruction of Sodom blamed forever on homo sex, and never on the casual offer by Lot of his daughters to the rapine crowd as surrogate victims, seven heads on the body of a leopard, a standard poodle whose gaze could turn a guy’s wife into a pillar of salt – then onward Christian soldiers.”

Okay, then.

The surprisingly high number of Americans who owe no federal income tax: 47 percent. (That’s the figure from 2009, it may well be higher this year).

It’s true, as a number of left-leaning commenters pointed out last year, that low-income people still pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, and that where applicable, they still pay state and local income tax. It’s also true that the super-duper rich can afford to hire accounts to exploit the tax code in ways that in some cases actually allow them to pay a lower percentage of their income than people in the next lowest tax bracket. That’s a problem of have an insanely complex, loophole-ridden tax code that lawmakers use to modify behavior.

But there’s a real danger when nearly half of income earners pay no federal income tax at all. A near-majority and growing portion of the population can now vote for politicians to enact expensive policies that are paid for by an increasingly small percentage of earners. You don’t have to be an apologist for the aristocracy to see the problem, here.

I’m not proposing we soak the poor. But instead of the earned income tax credit and various other standardized credits, it seems like Milton Friedman’s idea of a negative income tax would be the better way to go. (I’d actually prefer almost anything other than the income tax, which comes with significant compliance costs, invasions of privacy, and allows for easily abused federal laws like money laundering, but that’s a different argument). The tax code would still be progressive, and low income people would still get a net rebate on their federal taxes, but that rebate would also be tailored to their income. When the federal government grows, it would pull from all tax brackets, both those who pay (who would pay more), and those who don’t (who would get less money back). Everyone would at least feel the bite of new programs.

One other thing to keep in mind:  While it’s true that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans make nearly a quarter of the country’s income, they also pay 37 percent of federal income taxes. The wealthiest 10 percent pay nearly 70 percent of the taxes. We also have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. Which might, just might, be a big reason all those mean, unpatriotic corporations keep relocating overseas. My point here is that there seems to be a sentiment out there that the middle class shoulders the brunt of the country’s tax burden. That just isn’t true.

It is true that the tax burden for all Americans is the lowest it has been in a long time. But given the massive deficits we’re now facing at all levels of government, that isn’t going to last long. We’re all soon going to be giving a hell of a lot more, one way or another.

• I’m going to have to side with the right-wing culture warriors who are outraged over this J. Crew ad. That kid is way too young and impressionable to be wearing hipster eyeglasses.
• The regulatory issues here are interesting, but also, this article contains the phrase “the breast whisperer.”
• 12-year-old arrested over spilled milk in the school cafeteria.
• Two positive (sort of) stories about misbehaving cops being held accountable: here, and here.
• ACLU says Michigan State Police may be illegally collecting information from the cell phones of motorists stopped for traffic violations. Note that the MSP gave a quote of half a million dollars to comply with an open records request on five collection devices. Exorbitant cost estimates are a pretty common way to get around these requests. I’ve had it happen to me. And of course, it then costs money to challenge the quote they give you.
• The art of the police report.

I missed this story when it came out last December.

[NYPD Police Lt. Robert] Henderson, Lt. Robert Ortlieb and Sgt. Joseph Seminara identified [Shane] Rhooms as the gunman who started shooting after they spotted him smoking pot on Lenox Road in East Flatbush on Sept. 6.

Seminera later picked Rhooms out of a photo array and all three identified him in a lineup.

But the 22-year-old had an alibi: surveillance video caught him entering Webster Hall in Manhattan for a reggae concert.

Phone records also confirmed incoming and outgoing calls from Rhooms’ phone to a Manhattan transmission tower around the time of the shooting in Brooklyn.

“The fact they could all be so wrong in the identification suggests there was collusion by the three [cops],” Klein said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said investigators stand by the original identification and think Rhooms was the shooter regardless of what prosecutors say.

If Rhooms had been convicted of the crime, he would have faced 45 years in prison.

A bit more detail here.

The story goes on to note that Lt. Henderson has been named in eight lawsuits, costing New York City taxpayers more than $500,000. Shane Rhooms’ suit will be the ninth. And he certainly deserves some compensation. The guy spent 18 days in Rikers.

Let’s summarize: Three cops separately and totally without collusion identify this guy in a lineup. He is arrested and charged with attempted murder. Surveillance video and phone records later show he was at a concert miles away the incident happened. One of the cops has been named in eight other misconduct suits. Yet Commissioner Kelly and NYPD still stand behind their guys. Jesus.

Oh, and here’s the punchline:

NYPD Deputy Chief Michael Marino testified in a 2006 deposition that Henderson’s anti-crime unit in the 77th Precinct was receiving a lot of civilian complaints for “abuse of authority.”

Marino attributed the complaints to the officers “being too professional” during car stops.

Oy.

Here’s an enraging video in which NYPD cops pull over and cite a bicyclist for, according to the NYC the Blog, briefly riding on the sidewalk. Shortly after the stop, a passerby engages in some friendly jibes with the bicyclist. One of the cops apparently thought the passerby was talking to him (not that this would have excused the thuggery that follows). An ugly confrontation ensues, eventually leading to a full-blown “situation”, involving by my count six cops, two cruisers and a police van. All because of a joke. According to the person who posted the video to YouTube, the passerby was arrested and charged with “harassment, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest”, a trio of charges more commonly known as contempt of cop.

• I’d like to thank Maggie McNeil for adding me to her blogroll. I’d like to especially thank her for listing me as a “friend of whores”. I think I’m going to add that line to my bio.
• They look so innocent when they sleep.
• Not at all surprised to learn that an informant plea bargaining on his own charges is behind the online poker crackdown.
• Also on poker: D.C. announced it would be starting city-run online poker just a couple days before the indictments.
• One of the stranger blast-from-the-past stories I’ve seen in awhile.
• The guy who didn’t sing explicit songs to elementary school kids gets two months in jail, probation, and must stay 500 feet away from minors when he gets out.
• Let’s Not Be Judgmental About the Journalist Who Kept Quiet About Racist Murders by New Orleans Police
• Another isolated incident. It’s pretty rare to see victims of a wrong-door raid win actual damages.

The Obama Justice Department has indicted executives from the three largest online poker sites—Full Tilt, Absolute Poker, and PokerStars—on charges of money laundering and bank fraud.

This is the by far the most serious federal attack on online poker to date. I just checked my Full Tilt account. The site still appears to be up, but it isn’t accepting payments. Or at least it didn’t accept mine. The L.A. Times article linked above says Full Tilt’s website was down with an FBI seizure notice put up in its place. But as of this writing, it appears to be back up.

Good to know where the DOJ’s priorities lie. In this case, it’s preventing millions of people from consensually wagering money in online card games, an exchange that causes no harm to anyone else.

I predict this is going to prove to be a politically foolish move. Poker players are young, wealthy, and tend to be progressive on social issues. Reaction from the Poker Players Alliance here.

Reason on online gambling here.

• For the never-nude in your life.
• “This may be disappointing for libertarians, who I believe enjoy rumpy-pumpy as much as anyone.” Roger Ebert reviews Atlas Shrugged. “Rumpy-pumpy” is my new favorite euphemism.
• The Internet: It’s the new heroin!  (More “new heroins” here.)
• Reddit interviews Abed.
• Mea culpa. It turns out that porn really is dangerous.
• I’m not the only one who finds this kinda hot, right? Right?
• Hey, there’s no crying in . . . kindergarten?
• “There should be no expectation of privacy on the part of somebody with a driver’s license.”
• How the dinosaurs made rumpy-pumpy.

Manhattan.

Greenville, South Carolina.

• I’m dubious of this trend. Although the “A Phew Facts” sidebar made me laugh.
• Gary Johnson likely to announce for president this week.
• Somewhere, someone is probably masturbating to this.
• Dogboarding.
• Now: Hysteria over women becoming “addicted” to online porn. (Or as Chris Berez put it on Twitter, “Hottest article ever.”)

Manhattan.