Writing about the Koch confab referenced in today’s morning links, my friend Dave Weigel points out that Mother Jones has published profiles of some top donors to various Koch organizations. Dave comments:

And it’s just a disgrace that this information is smuggled out of a meeting like a heroin shipment, instead of being disclosed. The Tea Party movement, the GOP, etc — no one who benefits from this disagrees with the goals of these people in making more money. Why hide it?

First, I wouldn’t assume that everyone who donates to these causes does so to enact policies that will make them more money. The Kochs themselves, for example, spend money advocating for an end to ethanol subsidies, even though their business benefits from those subsidies. You could certainly call that hypocrisy. But it doesn’t fit the narrative that their political activism is all about enriching themselves. The easier explanation is simply that they’re free market ideologues. And if you’re not a free market ideologue, that’s a fine reason to criticize them.

But I also want to address Dave’s point about disclosure. I can think of lots of reasons why someone wouldn’t want their donations to political causes to be made public. For example, there’s a bi-partisan history in this country of using the IRS to target the political opponents of the party in the White House. I could also see a business executive not necessarily wanting a regulatory agency to know that he’s donating money to groups that would like to dismantle or diminish that agency’s power.

I suppose those two examples aren’t going to win much sympathy from Koch critics. So let me offer a couple more: I could also see why a progressive-minded businessman in, say, Salt Lake City, would want to keep secret his donation to a group advocating for gay marriage in California. Or why the trust fund kid of a Raytheon executive may not want his family to know he gives to anti-war organizations.

But the best example of what I’m getting at here may come from Mother Jones itself. Mother Jones is published by a non-profit organization called the Foundation for National Progress, which “exists to publish and support Mother Jones.” Which means that the magazine is mostly funded by donors. So who donates to Mother Jones? Good question. They won’t say!

From the magazine’s privacy policy:

We do not share your name, address, email address, or any other personally identifiable information about your donation with anyone else.

So like quite a few other progressive organizations, Mother Jones doesn’t release the names of its donors, even as they criticize free market groups (often falsely) for the same thing. Put another way, the magazine reserves the right to protect the anonymity of the people who fund the magazine’s investigative journalism, which this week included exposing the identity of donors to political causes—who wished to remain anonymous.

I can certainly conceive of reasons why a donor to Mother Jones’ (often excellent) investigative journalism may want to donate anonymously. I can also see why Mother Jones would want to offer them the option of anonymity. I also support the legal right of both to do so. (I oppose mandatory disclosure laws.) What I don’t quite understand is why anonymous giving to politically-minded organizations only becomes a threat to democracy (or substitute your own favorite hyperbole) when it’s done by free market organizations.

One final point, which I’ve made before. The fun irony here is that the most well-known Koch-funded groups actually are quite transparent. Cato, the Reason Foundation, and Heritage, for example, are all much more forthcoming with donor names than the progressive organizations who criticize free market groups for their secrecy. Better yet, not only do all three of those free market organizations disclose voluntarily, they also oppose mandatory disclosure laws that would force an organization like Mother Jones to disclose the names of its donors. That strikes me as a pretty principled (and self-handicapping) position.

These progressive groups, on the other hand, are exactly the opposite. They’re demanding transparency from their political opponents while keeping the identities of their own donors a secret.

Last April, journalist Amy Alkon reported on her blog that she had been sexually assaulted by a TSA agent, albeit under the implicit authority of the federal government.

Nearing the end of this violation, I sobbed even louder as the woman, FOUR TIMES, stuck the side of her gloved hand INTO my vagina, through my pants. Between my labia. She really got up there. Four times. Back right and left, and front right and left. In my vagina. Between my labia. I was shocked — utterly unprepared for how she got the side of her hand up there. It was government-sanctioned sexual assault.

Upon leaving, still sobbing, I yelled to the woman, “YOU RAPED ME.” And I took her name to see if I could file sexual assault charges on my return. This woman, and all of those who support this system deserve no less than this sort of unpleasant experience, and from all of us.

That TSA agent is now demanding 500,000 for the distress she claims to have suffered from Alkon’s words. The Popehat link has much, much more.

Meanwhile, in New Mexico:

A woman in the state of New Mexico is asking cops to cover her medical bill after she was ordered by the Metro Narcotics Agency of Las Cruces, NM to undergo a costly cavity search — at her own expense.

The woman, whose name is being withheld, was apprehended by authorities earlier this summer. Acting on “credible information from a reliable source,” Metro Sgt. Mike Alba obtained a search warrant from Magistrate Court to send the woman into Memorial Medical Center to undergo a forcible and thorough body cavity search.

Not only did the probe come up fruitless, however, but the woman was footed with a medical bill for $1,122 for something she never wanted or asked for.

• Mother Jones suggested that Charles Koch compared Barack Obama to Saddam Hussein. It’s pretty likely that he didn’t.
• Interesting photo from space of the India-Pakistin border.
• Federal court rules that a traffic stop does not justify forced entry into a home. You’d kind of hope we wouldn’t need court decisions to tell us that.
• “November Rain,” the comic book.
• I doubt these numbers will come as much of a shock to regular readers of this site. But they’re worth passing on.
• Mother of 22-year-old who drowned after getting drunk on Everclear wants a law to . . . I’m sure you can guess what comes next.
• “The Secret History of Guns”
• Travel guru Rick Steves talks to Reason.tv about legalizing pot. I used Steves’ guides pretty regularly for my vacation in May. Thought I detected a bit of a libertarian streak in them.

Budapest.

Via theJuly/August issue of Cato Policy Report, three stories that appeared on the same day, in the same newspaper:

Critics in Congress also have questioned Amtrak’s management, asking, for example, how an employee with a $21,000 salary earned $149,000 in over- time last fiscal year.
—Washington Post, May 15, 2011

The federal government’s largest housing construction program for the poor has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on stalled or abandoned projects and routinely failed to crack down on derelict developers or the local housing agencies that funded them. —Washington Post, May 15, 2011

The main thing learned in the hearings so far is that [D.C. mayor Vincent] Gray showed bad judgment in allowing [three close aides] to guide so much of the hiring for patronage jobs just below the cabinet rank. Although all three advisers were longtime personnel executives, they blundered repeatedly by overpaying people, doing inadequate vetting and hiring children of officials.
—Robert McCartney, Washington Post, May 15, 2011

Cops in Philadelphia still can’t bring themselves to abide by the law. And their supervisors don’t seem all that interested in asking them to.

TAMERA MEDLEY begged the police officer to stop slamming her head – over and over – into the hood of a police cruiser.

Thinking they were helping, passers-by Shakir Riley and Melissa Hurling both turned their cellphone video cameras toward the melee that had erupted on Jefferson Street in Wynnefield, they said.

But then the cops turned on them.

Riley had started to walk away when at least five baton-wielding cops followed him, he said, and they beat him, poured a soda on his face and stomped on his phone, destroying the video he had just taken.

Meanwhile, two officers approached Hurling, urged her to leave and, after exchanging a few words, slammed her against a police cruiser, Hurling said. They pulled her by her hair before tossing her into the back of a cop car, she said.

Although it’s legal to record Philadelphia police performing official  duties in public, all three were charged with disorderly conduct and related offenses, and officers destroyed Hurling and Riley’s cellphones, erasing any record of Medley’s violent arrest, the pair said.

Charges against Hurling and Riley were dismissed, but Medley was found guilty last month of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, harassment and related offenses. She was fined $500 but has filed an appeal.

Echoes of the incident, which was corroborated by a half-dozen witnesses, have been reverberating nationwide in recent years as the combination of cellphone video and police officers has simmered into what is an increasingly explosive formula . . .

In another case last month, police allegedly began beating Darrell Holloway, who is legally blind, with flashlights and batons during a narcotics investigation on a West Philly street. There wasn’t much his cousin Jamal Holloway could do but record the incident on his phone.

Jamal, 33, said that when officers spotted him filming, he was detained and taken to a police station at 55th and Pine streets. Before he was brought inside, an officer told him to delete the video.

“One female cop told me to delete the stuff and then I can walk,” Jamal recalled, adding that the cop said she would confiscate his phone. “I was there close up. I can’t believe it happened like – they beating my cousin like that and he’s in the situation he’s in.”

Jamal said he opted to erase the footage. . .

Then in July, Zanberle Sheppard, 24, said neighbors told her that police were beating her handcuffed boyfriend, Tayvon Eure, in an alley behind their home on 65th Street near Chester.

Sheppard said she peered out her back window and began to film the arrest. After officers saw her, she said, they banged on her neighbor’s door. Sheppard ran outside and around to the alley with her cellphone, she said, and that’s when a cop told other officers to grab her phone.

She claims that when she pulled away from the cops, one officer grabbed her by her hair and she dropped her phone. Neighbor Robin Artis, 17, said she saw a cop punch Sheppard in the face and stomp her. Sheppard had a black eye and a bruised lip.

The next time she saw her phone was when the cop who allegedly beat her boyfriend came into the police station where Sheppard was and threw it at her, she said. The back of her phone was broken, the battery was missing and the video was gone.

These are crimes. The cops in these cases destroyed evidence. And the courts have been clear on the right to record on-duty police in Pennsylvania. Of course, when the city DA himself has no respect for the constitutional rights of his constituents, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised when street-level cops follow his example. Especially when there are no consequences when they break the law.

. . . talking about Michael West and the Leigh Stubbs case on The Alyona Show.

I thought I’d commemorate this blog’s 10th blog-a-versary by publishing an e-book collection of posts. I have no idea if anyone would want to buy an edited e-book of posts that are already available for free, but the e-book services out there are pretty inexpensive, so I figure I’ll do it anyway, and sell them for a couple bucks.

So if you have a favorite post or two from over the years that you think should be included, leave a link in the comments section. I’m thinking I’ll also include a chapter called “Regrets” comprised of posts I’d like to take back. (Like this one!) Feel free to include those, too. Also include favorite headlines, favorite posts from commenters, and anything else that makes sense.

Budapest.

• In defense of tax havens.
• Attempted puppycide in D.C.
• Head of charity group says charity groups are exploiting Somali famine for donations.
• Arizona will charge visitors to see incarcerated family and friends.
• Libyan rebel “freedom fighters” turn wrath on dark-skinned people. Meanwhile, the rebels uncover documents showing that the CIA and MI-6 were working with Ghadaffi’s intelligence unit, including turning suspects over for torture. But remember. This was a great moral victory for America. Or at least that’s what ThinkProgress tells me.
• Roger Clemens goes back to court, judge scolds prosecutors.
• Colorado lawmakers can’t agree on limit for per se driving-while-high convictions. I guess the good news is that they’re at least trying to look at the science.
• Texas bans cockfighting paraphernalia, allows for arrests of people caught watching cockfights . . . but formally legalizes shooting pigs from helicopters.
• Mexican teacher’s Tweets about a school shooting, which turned out to be repeating false rumors, could get her 30 years in prison.

A strong op-ed from the Instapundit in the Examiner.

In an era when government feels free to record citizens whenever they’re out in public, government officials need to recognize that this recording business works both ways.  Want a surveillance society?  Be prepared to live in it.

Of course, the efforts to intimidate citizens via prosecutions and arrests are doomed to fail in the long run.  Pretty much every cellphone now is a video camera, a still camera, and an audio recorder.   There are even smartphone apps specifically designed for recording police encounters and uploading them to the Web so that confiscating the phone doesn’t do any good. Tiny video cameras abound nowadays, including cameras that fit in the frames of sunglasses for added inconspicuousness.  And they keep getting smaller and cheaper.

You can’t arrest everyone with a camera, especially when you don’t even know they’ve got a camera.  But that’s not really the issue.

Technology may be winning, but the real problem is that America has a class of government workers who believe that they are above citizen scrutiny, and who are prepared to abuse their powers to avoid that scrutiny.  The only solution for this is to punish offenders severely enough that others learn their lesson.

Fascinating post from renegade historian Thaddeus Russel on the real  history of Labor Day.

• Frying pans that resemble moons and planets.
• Ten sweaty movies.
• Alternate headline: Survey shows Ohio men least likely to lie in surveys.
• Lawsuit: First graders were handcuffed, threatened with prison for talking in class.
• The great Tony Woodlief on Christianity and immigration.
• More on our new “allies” in Libya. Head of new military order there is former accused terrorist who says he was tortured by the CIA.
• The “Waffle House Index” of disaster preparedness.
• Jacob Sullum on how the “Pill Mill” hysteria in Florida is harming people in pain.
• Physicists create a hole in time.
• Feds won’t led Alabama towns keep $500K storm shelters, but will pay to have them destroyed.

Budapest.

Well this made my afternoon.

 I was recently pulled over, and in the course of the stop, the officer started doing several tactics to try to get into my car to search for drugs. Even though I had no drugs in the vehicle at the moment or at all prior to the stop, I was able to exert my rights and not consent to a search. He, typically, proceeded to do the usual trick of “If there isn’t anything in the vehicle, why would you be so nervous about a search? If it were me, I’d just say, go for it.” To this, I was able to respond that I respected my rights living in the country that I was born in. Tactics changed, and I adapted to what I knew was coming down the pike.

If it weren’t for your work and the work of many like you, I would not have had the knowledge and ambition to do this, and it saved me a ton of time and energy dealing with an unreasonable search unrelated to a simple speeding violation. What also helped me tremendously to have the guts to do so was my cell phone in my pocket that I knew was recording the conversation the whole time. I can’t respect and thank you for your diligence on these topics enough.

A few more thoughts on the new GOP front runner and the death penalty and criminal justice reform:

First, conservative columnist Debra Saunders provides the strangest defense of Perry and the death penalty I’ve seen so far. Saunders makes three unconvincing arguments. First, she defends Perry from criticism for the sheer number of executions (234) carried out since he has been in office, noting that states with a tiny percentage of the homicides Texas does execute a higher percentage of convicted killers.  I don’t know that that’s a convincing argument, but it’s also a response to a criticism few are making. The sheer number of executions carried out during Perry’s 11 years in the governor’s mansion may be a criticism of Texas in general, but it isn’t something over which Perry has much control.

Perry is mostly being criticized for trying to prevent an investigation into the execution of a possibly innocent man. I’ve also criticized him for his opposition to post-conviction DNA testing in another death penalty case, that of Hank Skinner. (The Texas Tribune also describes a number of other questionable executions since Perry’s been in office.) Saunders gives the Willingham case all of one paragraph, and doesn’t mention his replacing three members of the state forensics commission with pro-prosecution appointments, just before they were about to begin their investigation. (Perry’s new appointments included one prosecutor who is now accused of misconduct in a DNA exoneration, and who once suggested another prosecutor destroy evidence in order to prevent an innocence claim down the road.) After casually mentioning Willingham, Saunders then weirdly pivots to point out that Perry has commuted three other death sentences.

Saunders second defense of Perry is that Americans overwhelmingly support the death penalty. Which isn’t really a defense at all. I don’t think anyone has argued that the Willingham case could harm Perry in the election. I wish it would. But mostly, I’ve seen quite a bit of lament about the fact that it likely won’t harm him, and could even help him with GOP primary voters. The case against Perry’s actions in the Willingham case is a moral one. And one that calls into question the consistency of his limited-government credentials. Framing the issue in a horse race context ignores the more important question, one I’d like to hear Saunders (who can be pretty thoughtful on criminal justice issues) answer: Was Perry wrong to scuttle the investigation into the Willingham case?

Saunders last point is that if any candidate is likely to face voter backlash over the death penalty, it’s Obama, for his administration’s opposition to Texas’ execution of a Mexican citizen, and for the DEA’s raids of state death chambers that were procuring black-market sodium thiopental for lethal injections. This again is a horse race framing of the issue that ignores the hard questions. If Texas did in fact execute an innocent man, and Perry is trying to prevent the truth about that from coming out, does Saunders find that at all problematic? Does Saunders think Perry is correct to oppose post-conviction DNA testing for Hank Skinner, when such testing could cast serious doubt on his guilt?

Oddly, the criminal justice reform activist Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast actually provides a much more convincing defense of Perry’s record on criminal justice issues. Henson rattles off a long list of reforms Perry has backed and signed into law, and concludes:

So I don’t agree with Perry on every subject, by a longshot, and he’s probably used the threat of the veto to scuttle as much good legislation as actually passed during his time in office. But Perry’s record on criminal justice is more moderate and complex than his fire breathing pronouncements on the death penalty might lead one to expect. If you’re reading this from another state, there’s a good chance your Governor can’t match Perry’s record on criminal-justice reform.

Henson’s list is certainly worth considering, and it’s an important contribution to the discourse about Perry among those of us with an interest in these issues.

Still, while Perry’s record is better than most, I still think his actions in the Willingham case should disqualify him from the White House, for a reason that goes beyond crime and the death penalty: Faced with the prospect that the state of Texas may have done the worst thing a state government can possibly do to one of its citizens, Perry has expressed resolute faith that the government got it right, refused to even consider the strong evidence indicating otherwise, and has spent the years since trying to prevent the public from knowing what happened. Again, this goes beyond capital punishment. When you consider what we’ve seen from the last two administrations on issues like torture, rendition, black sites, state secrets, the innocent detainees in Gitmo, and a host of other issues, Perry’s demonstrated instincts in the Willingham case are disturbing. And they certainly aren’t the instincts you’d hope to find in a guy claiming to run as the limited government candidate.

Murder victim’s mother blames “bath salts” drugs for her daughter’s death. New Jersey rushes to pass a ban on bath salts, names law after victim.

Now: Tests show accused killer had no bath salts in his system.

This is a lot of fun. Via Kurt Loder’s Twitter feed.

• Lawsuit: Man contends he was arrested for contempt for not standing on his leg. Which the arresting officer had just broken.
• Another arrest in Austin for providing free rides home from bars. And from the discussion of that post over at Reddit: “I am personally involved in the lobbying effort to keep these guys off the street and honestly the reason is simply to restrict competition.”
• Nice photo of a runway model.
• Good roundup of great journalism on the death penalty.
• Anonymous releases hacked emails from Texas police department. Disturbingness ensues.
• Dustup of the day: Cato’s Tad DeHaven vs. Lloyd Chapman, head of the American Small Business League.
• How U.S. companies profited from torture flights.

We’ll go with “Falling Down,” the Redwalls tribute to the FCC’s obscenity rules. I don’t know about the accompanying drawings. This was the only non-live version I could find on YouTube.

Light posting today because my Wifi has been down most of the day. I happened to be watching the Frontline episode on John O’Neill when the repair guy arrived. (Highly recommend the Frontline episode, by the way.) This led to the repair guy not only fixing my Wifi, but also explaining to me how there’s no possible way a plane could have crashed into the Pentagon on September 11. Apparently, it’s all in the skid marks.

You know, journalists on my beat don’t often get invited on junkets.

Dear Journalist,

We would like you to attend the new service “Mile High sex Flight”, offered by our Amsterdam escort agency.

Please find the press release, logo and picture attached.

If you require any further information whatsoever, please do not hesitate to contact us.

 

Best Regards,

Wouter van der Heijden

Girls Company Amsterdam

My article on the latest Michael West video is now up.

• This looks like a case we’ll be hearing more about. From the article, it isn’t clear why a 20-man SWAT team (allegedly) would have been necessary.
• Woman punches bear in the face, saves dog.
• I’ll be giving a “webinar” for the Students for Liberty on Wednesday, September 14th.
• Will Saletan wants to know how anyone could possibly oppose Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I don’t even know where to begin.
• Good piece on Jon Huntsman, who I’m starting to think would be someone worth rooting for should the GOP nominate him to run against Obama. Which of course is a good sign that the GOP will never nominate him.
• Feds tell trucking company they aren’t allowed to fire an alcoholic driver. But they’re still liable if he drives drunk and kills someone.

Budapest.