An off-duty cop was caught on video waving his gun around in a bar.

A Nassau County police officer has been suspended without pay and forced to surrender his weapons after pointing his gun at a worker inside a Farmingdale, N.Y. bar, according to a police statement.

I suppose another question might be whether he would even have been suspended had there not been any video.  Of course, his identity has not been released.  After all, it might turn out that he had a perfectly legitimate reason for his actions and was simply carrying out standard police procedures…

[Posted by Dave Krueger]

This has been an on-going story for the last 24 hours.   On CNN (TV version) they quoted someone complaining that they didn’t think it was appropriate for children to see pictures of a dead person on the front page of the local newspaper, as if our freedom of information must now be restricted to the level of a third grader.

So after killing the guy in a raid, they are concerned that releasing pictures might actually inflame tensions.  Excuse the hell out of me, but compared to  killing the guy, releasing the pictures seems pretty friggin’ trival from the moral perspective.

In a world where pictures of a naked women is considered the equivalent of rape, this fits in quite well.

What really galls me is the arrogant position permeating this debate that American’s need to be shielded from the gruesome truth for their own good.  In my humble opinion, if we don’t have the fortitude to see what they’ve done, then they probably had no business doing it.

[Posted by Dave Krueger]

This is a bit off topic for this blog, but it’s been on my mind lately…

Libertarians have a problem.  We are not taken seriously.   We don’t have the numbers, we’re seen as radical, and the two main parties are not going to permit any third party to even get close to threatening their cozy oligarchy.

There are certainly Democrats, Republicans, and especially independents who sympathize with libertarians on some issues, but when they vote, they tend to pick a candidate that represents their position on a broader spectrum of  issues, so they give their vote to one of the traditional mainstream party candidates.  And, the two parties are totally content with that situation.

The political status quo in the U.S. is ensured by the fact that voters have to pick between two political power groups and have almost no means to influence the government on any individual issue, which is why government can do what it pleases despite public sentiment.

This is where the Tea Party differs from tradition.  Yes, they are essentially a subdivision of the Republican Party, but their strategy of focusing on a single issue has magnified their power to the point where they can’t be ignored.  They have embarrassed the Republicans and done real injury to the arrogant foregone conclusion that the party is ruled from the top.

The Tea Party gave ordinary people a powerful voice on a single issue and it changed the course of both parties.  No small accomplishment.  It empowered freshmen Congressmen and set a precedent that the mainstream parties ruled by the old guard are vulnerable, something Libertarians have never been able to do.

So, just where the hell am I going with this?  What I’m wondering is whether the two party system will ultimately be subdued by single issue parties that each control enough votes to get the notice of the candidates of the mainstream parties.  Instead of a voter  belonging only to the Republican or Democratic parties, they could also belong to other parties each of which exists for the purpose of promoting a single issue.

As long as we have a political system with only two choices (which aren’t really that different from each other) we are going to continue to get the status quo.  And there is no way the two incumbent parties are ever going to permit a third party to grow into a real threat. What we need are a bunch of different grass-roots Tea Parties, each with a single focus that has the power of a  PAC or a lobbying group to advance the agenda of ending the drug war or the wars in Afghanistan and or balancing the budget or ending the death penalty or repealing laws against consensual “crime”.

Whether we like them or not, we may be seeing in the Tea Party, the beginning of the end of the two-party hegemony on political power in the U.S.   They commandeered a single issue and said to the world, we’re organized and we are really pissed off.  Ignore us at your peril.  And the key that makes it really attractive is that you don’t have to surrender your position on any other issue to be a member.  Add to that the power of the internet and it might not be as much of a fantasy as it might seem on the surface.

[Posted by Dave Krueger]

Here’s your generation gap story of the day: Yahoo reported earlier this week that 1 in 5 searches for “Osama bin Laden” were made by teenagers. Which makes sense, 9/11 was ten years ago, and today’s teenagers were little kids. I can barely remember world events like the Gulf war.  I could tell you even less about the end of the Cold War, aside from the old footage of David Hasselhoff on the Berlin Wall – which I saw on VH1′s I Love the 80s, natch.

Megan McArdle notes that many of the celebrants in DC and New York on Sunday night were college-age kids, and wonders if “for them, hearing that Bin Laden had been killed wasn’t a bit like hearing that we mowed down Satan, or the Grinch–not the death of a specific person, but striking down the personification of evil in the world.”

Perhaps that describes the sentiment in New York, a city known for its pride, whose self-regard is so high it can annoy midwesterners like myself (not that that pride isn’t justified. My home state’s claims to fame are the Mall of America and being home to Prince, with no national tragedies to speak of). But in a transient city like DC, which lacks the kind of shared identity New Yorkers exhibit, it’s likely that a lot of these college-age partiers weren’t even here during 9/11.

People, and young people especially, like to be where the party is, to feel like they’re a part of something, even if an event’s significance is beyond their comprehension. It makes me think of an unpopular kid in high school who unexpectedly dies, then overnight becomes the most popular kid in the school’s history (apologies if that analogy feels crass). That’s my pessimistic, misanthropic $0.02, anyhow. Were any of you there in front of the White House Sunday night? What was the general mood among the younger people? Generic patriotism? Pride in the US troops? Preoccupied their iPhones, live-tweeting the party, going on record to say “Dude, I was there.”?

–Libby

It what might be end of a long (and glorious?) Baltimore police tradition, two officers were convicted of misdemeanor for picking up two 15-year-old boys and dropping them off far from home, one of them barefoot. The officers were acquitted of far more serious kidnapping charges.

These officers were certain not the first police officers to pick up trouble-making youths, and, rather than dragging them through the juvenile justice system, decided a fearful two-hour walk home would be more effective punishment. (I never saw this first hand, but I heard many such second- and third-hand stories.) Such shenanigans certain fall under then category of “informal justice,” but it was never clear if it was illegal discipline. Is a long lost walk good punishment all of the time? Certainly not. But might it not be the right punishment some of the time?

I’m all for (legal) alternative sanctions. One time I guy in my squad caught two kids throwing and breaking bottle early in the morning. We were a few months out of the academy and the kids were “gigged” with push-ups (ironically that is what we learned in the academy). Was this punishment technically legal? Probably not, but I thought it was one of the smartest thing I ever saw this officer do. A little discretion can go a long way.

[--Peter Moskos]

Given my new status as guest blogger and to save Radley a huge buildup of comments when he gets back, I am going to screen a bunch of comments that are awaiting moderation and let them through.  I see there are also a bunch that look like spam, so if you posted something and it doesn’t show up today, I may have accidentally sent it to the spam folder.  Most of these comments are under the “He won” article.

One more thing:  I will not approve any posts meant for other guest bloggers unless they wish me to.  Also, I don’t plan to approve any ping backs.  I’ll let Radley deal with those.

[Posted by Dave Krueger]

Hi there, I’m Kate Klonick, the latest of the guest bloggers to check in.

I’m a former journalist (Talking Points Memo, True/Slant, among others) and current law student (Georgetown). It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged, so many thanks to Radley for giving me the opportunity to keep my hand in the honey-less pot of online commentary.

In the past, I’ve written about such varied topics as cross-dressing for Halloween, really awesome blenders, Bobby Jindal’s exorcisms, stingray retaliation, birth control and how to give yourself a financial makeover. Now I mostly just tweet bad puns, lament the decline of the Red Sox franchise, watch my turtle do yoga, and listen to Johnny Cash on repeat.

Needless to say, beyond my love of cute animal videos, privacy and, of course, nut punches, I’m a little unsure of quite what makes me fit to blog on The Agitator, but nevertheless I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks for reading.

….don’t know who Osama Bin Laden is.

Naturally the Al Qaeda godfather topped the search engines lists yesterday. On Yahoo, searches about him spiked %100,000.  Here’s the disturbing part:

The 5th most popular search question about Osama Bin Laden was, “Who is  Osama Bin Laden?”

According to Yahoo,” Nearly 1 in 5 searches for “osama bin laden” are by teenagers, many of who grew up during the war on terrorism”. And teens ages 13-17 made up 66% of searches for “who is osama bin laden?”

You can say it’s nitpicking, (or ask who still uses Yahoo), but I think this is depressing on many levels. Epecially if you read Radley’s excellent post the other day on how Bin Laden ultimately won, as he changed who we are as a country, and for the worse.

I’m sure these teens will one day find out who Bin Laden is (if Wikipedia didn’t already clear it up for them yesterday). But they may not know a world without a “war on terror”, including but not limited to:  Gitmo, torture, endless wars, a ruined reputation worldwide, Islamophobia, assassination lists that include American citizens, illegal government spying on US citizens, the TSA, an overall vanishing list of civil liberties, and again, endless wars. Not to mention who the hell knows what else is to come.

And I bet you their parents or teachers wont tell them that all of this was a reaction, and not what we had to do.

On a lighter note, teenagers these days will get to makeout with a robotic tongue.

[Posted by Alyona Minkovski]

OK, this isn’t a real post. I just always wanted to see this printed in The Agitator. Ha!

[--Peter Moskos]

I’d like to first start off by thanking Radley for allowing me to blog here. I’m an avid fan of his work, and a first time blogger, so I couldn’t think of a better place to start.

For those of you who don’t know me, I host a political commentary show 5 days a week at RT (Russia Today) called…..The Alyona Show. If you care to get a taste, you can check it out here.  Or follow me on twitter.

There are those in this world who can’t look past the name and funding of where I work and assume that I am a Russian propagandist who gets my scripts straight from the Kremlin, only after I finish our obligatory morning session of worshiping a bare chested picture of Putin.  None of which is true. Personally I think Ahmadinejad is way hotter(yes, I am kidding).

In reality, I was born in Moscow, raised in the US since I was 4 and consider myself an American. I dedicate my days to finding the stories I think the mainstream media doesn’t cover,  misconstrues, or flat out lies about.

I’ll probably be writing about civil liberties, torture, doing some media commentary and calling for an end to all of our wars that are doing more damage than good. You know, the fun stuff.

Anyway, didn’t mean to make this so serious, just wanted to say hello, I promise.

I look forward to blogging here and to meeting all of you. Hope you enjoy!

Two men were attacked in a bar for flashing signs. Not gang signs. Sign language, according to the AP:  “Two hearing-impaired South Florida men were stabbed at a bar when their sign language was mistaken for gang signs.” Man… I didn’t stab them till after I told them to stop. What?! I did. They wouldn’t listen.

There should be an award for such criminal stupidity. Not a standard Darwin Award, but something for idiots who demonstrate not only that they can hate and hurt, but even, by their own demented standards, hate the wrong stranger.

Reminds me of an old joke (or is it a movie line?) my dad liked to tell in which a Jew and a non-Jew are being taken away on the train to Auschwitz. The Jew says, “What a tragedy.” The goy replies, “For you it’s a tragedy. For me it’s a mistake!”

[-- Peter Moskos]

Hello Agitatortots! Much thanks to Radley for the opportunity to blog here. (I knew dog-sitting Daisy would result  in a favor to me one day… jk.)

I’m Libby, a self-proclaimed “bright young thing” living and working in Washington DC. I work in the PR/social media industry, where I’m slightly terrified that another dotcom bubble-burst will send me back into retail or bartending. (Side note: I promise, no shilling here). I frequently find myself getting caught up in the DC libertarian scene, which is how I was introduced to Mr. Balko – who, by the way, has legendary status among fresh-faced, bright-eyed interns.

My favored writing topics are pretty varied, although I tend to write often about my own (half-baked) brand of libertarian/individualist feminism at my blog. This has occasionally devolved into mild flame wars with certain disciples of “Game” (the seduction subculture popularized by Neil Strauss). But that’s neither here nor there. I also enjoy commenting on pop culture, posting ridiculous or absurd jpegs, and unleashing my snark on social media, particularly “the Tweeter.”

I’m really excited to be here, and I hope you all enjoy the show!

Hi, everyone.  First of all, I am very flattered to have an opportunity to post on theagitator.  In terms of subject knowledge and ability to make reasoned arguments, I don’t consider myself in the same league as Radley by any stretch, so the offer came as a great surprise.

Those of you who read the comments may know me.  I also have a blog called sexhysteria.com which is currently idle due to lack of available time (I have lots of hobbies).  My writing style differs from Radley’s in my enthusiastic use of sarcasm and hyperbole (and occasional use of “obscene” language).   I’m in my late 50s, an electrical engineer by profession, unwavering agnosto-atheist, live in northern Alabama, married for 38 years, and have two grown offspring (both of whom read and occasionally post comments on theagitator).  Whereas Radley’s specialty is justice system abuses, my primary area of interest is “consensual crime” (an oxymoron) and persecution motivated by irrational sexual paranoia.  But, that doesn’t stop me from obnoxiously voicing hard-headed opinions about everything else.

One more tiny fact.  Due to severe weather, I was without power for the last week.  It’s back now, but only tenuously, so we could lose it again.  If so, I will not be able to post.  I mention that because it’s presently raining and the lights have been flickering quite a bit as I type this.

Many thanks to Radley Balko for asking me to be a guest blogger here on The Agitator. You may be wondering, to borrow a quote, “Who am I and why am I here?”

I’m Peter Moskos, a professor of Law and Police Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. In some ways–as an ivy-league educated egghead, a tax-and-spend liberal, and a former police officer–I couldn’t be more of a miss-match for The Agitator. So extra kudos to Balko for asking me to write here!

Mostly, given my sociology background, I’m interested in issues of crime and punishment, but I usually focus on things police related. I wrote Cop in the Hood about Baltimore and the War on Drugs. As to the drug war, I’m against it (ahh… I knew Radley and I had something in common). I also have a blog and a new book coming out in a few weeks. But more on the latter, later.

In the meantime, I happy to be here and very pleased to meet you.

I need to start packing for my vacation, so I’ll sign off. I may pop in now and then over the next two weeks to post some photos, but my goal is to be away from a computer as often as possible. (Which probably means until I start to get the shakes.)

The good news is that I have an excellent crew of guest bloggers lined up to keep you entertained.

I’ll let them more formally introduce themselves tomorrow, but for now, warm thanks to Peter Moskos, Kate Klonick, Mike Riggs, Libby Jacobson, Alyona Minkovski, and, in a well-deserved promotion from the comments section, the great Dave Krueger for agreeing to fill in.

Comment on their posts, challenge them, interact with them, enjoy them. But also, please be polite to them.

In The Looming Tower, the Pulitzer-winning history of al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11, author Lawrence Wright lays out how Osama bin Laden’s motivation for the attacks that he planned in the 1990s, and then the September 11 attacks, was to draw the U.S. and the West into a prolonged war—an actual war in Afghanistan, and a broader global war with Islam.

Osama got both. And we gave him a prolonged war in Iraq to boot. By the end of Obama’s first term, we’ll probably top 6,000 dead U.S. troops in those two wars, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans. The cost for both wars is also now well over $1 trillion.

We have also fundamentally altered who we are. A partial, off-the-top-of-my-head list of how we’ve changed since September 11 . . .

• We’ve sent terrorist suspects to “black sites” to be detained without trial and tortured.
• We’ve turned terrorist suspects over to other regimes, knowing that they’d be tortured.
• In those cases when our government later learned it got the wrong guy, federal officials not only refused to apologize or compensate him, they went to court to argue he should be barred from using our courts to seek justice, and that the details of his abduction, torture, and detainment should be kept secret.
• We’ve abducted and imprisoned dozens, perhaps hundreds of men in Guantanamo who turned out to have been innocent. Again, the government felt no obligation to do right by them.
• The government launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign implying that people who smoke marijuana are complicit in the murder of nearly 3,000 of their fellow citizens.
• The government illegally spied and eavesdropped on thousands of American citizens.
• Presidents from both of the two major political parties have claimed the power to detain suspected terrorists and hold them indefinitely without trial, based solely on the president’s designation of them as an “enemy combatant,” essentially making the president prosecutor, judge, and jury. (I’d also argue that the treatment of someone like Bradley Manning wouldn’t have been tolerated before September 11.)
• The current president has also claimed the power to execute U.S. citizens, off the battlefield, without a trial, and to prevent anyone from knowing about it after the fact.
• The Congress approved, the president signed, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a broadly written law making it a crime to advocate for any organization the government deems sympathetic to terrorism. This includes challenging the “terrorist” designation in the first place.
• Flying in America now means enduring a humiliating and hassling ritual that does little if anything to actually make flying any safer. Every time the government fails to catch an attempt at terrorism, it punishes the public for its failure by adding to the ritual.
• American Muslims, a heartening story of success and assimilation, are now harassed and denigrated for merely trying to build houses of worship.
• Without a warrant, the government can search and seize indefinitely the laptops and other personal electronic devices of anyone entering the country.
• The Department of Homeland Security now gives terrorism-fighting grants for local police departments across the country to purchase military equipment, such as armored personnel carriers, which is then used against U.S. citizens, mostly to serve drug warrants.

I’m relieved that bin Laden is dead. And the Navy SEALs who carried out the harrowing raid that ended his life have my respect and admiration. And for all the massive waste and abuse our government has perpetrated in the name of fighting terrorism over the last decade, there’s something satisfying in knowing that he was killed in a limited, targeted operation based on specific intelligence.

But because of the actions of one guy, we allowed all the bullet points above to happen. That we managed to kill him a decade after the September 11 attacks is symbolically important, but hardly seems worth the celebrations we saw across the country last night. There was something unsettling about watching giddy crowds bounce around beach balls and climb telephone polls last night, as if they were in the lawn seats at a rock festival. Solemn and somber appreciation that an evil man is gone seemed like the more appropriate reaction.

Yes, bin Laden the man is dead. But he achieved all he set out to achieve, and a hell of a lot more. He forever changed who we are as a country, and for the worse. Mostly because we let him. That isn’t something a special ops team can fix.