This is cool. But you may want to refrain from paying off your student loans until they’re finished.

Capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it would be equivalent to the power received by the Earth from the sun focused onto a speck smaller than a tip of a pin, scientists claim it could allow them boil the very fabric of space – the vacuum.

Contrary to popular belief, a vacuum is not devoid of material but in fact fizzles with tiny mysterious particles that pop in and out of existence, but at speeds so fast that no one has been able to prove they exist.

The Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility would produce a laser so intense that scientists say it would allow them to reveal these particles for the first time by pulling this vacuum “fabric” apart.

Pretty spot-on depiction of how the media responds to tragedy.

Truck Accident That Killed Rafters in Canyon Sparks Truck-Canyon-Rafter Reform Debate

At some point you’d think someone—the store manager, the cops, a police supervisor—would have applied some perspective, here.

A Hawaii couple’s 3-year-old daughter was taken away from them for 18 hours after they were arrested for forgetting to a pay for two $5 sandwiches.

“This is unreal this could happen to a family like ours,” Nicole Leszczynski told Hawaii’s KHON.

The outing-turned-nightmare happened Wednesday while the family was shopping at a local Safeway.

“We walked a long way to the grocery store and I was feeling faint, dizzy, like I needed to eat something so we decided to pick up some sandwiches and eat them while we were shopping,” Leszczynski told the news station.

Leszczynski, who is 30-weeks pregnant, her husband, Marcin, and daughter Zophia bought $50 worth of groceries — but forgot about their two chicken salad sandwiches.

“It was a complete distraction, distracted parent moment,” Leszczynski told KHON.

As the family left, they were stopped by store security, who asked for their receipt.

“I offered to pay, we had the cash. We just bought the groceries,” Leszczynski told the station.

Instead, the expectant mother told KHON that the Safeway manager called police. They were taken to the main Honolulu police station where they were booked for fourth degree theft. Then Zophia was taken into custody by Child Protective Services.

“When they notified us that they would have to take her because we both would be arrested, I just couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe this was happening, because I forgot to pay for the sandwich and that she’s never been away from us this long,” Leszczynski told KHON.

Over the weekend, a journalist from the Nashville Scene alt-weekly was arrested while covering the Occupy Nashville protests here in town.

The Tennessee state trooper who arrested Scene reporter Jonathan Meador last night on Legislative Plaza during the THP’s second late-night crackdown on the Occupy Nashville protests was kind enough to slip the small video flip-cam Meador was carrying back into his pocket. Thanks to him, Meador was able to produce this unedited video of his own arrest — or to be more accurate, the audio, since with troopers slamming Meador to the ground from behind and rendering him helpless, the image isn’t so hot.

No matter. The sound speaks volumes.

What you will hear, very clearly, is a trooper telling another officer to book Meador for resisting arrest. You will also hear, very clearly, audio evidence of Meador’s contention: that he was simply doing his job as a reporter and tried to get off the plaza to comply with the law — but the troopers wouldn’t let him off that easy.

What you will not hear, in any form or fashion, is the slightest mention of public intoxication — the specious charge against Meador the THP has broadcast to the world. If that charge was made up later to discredit Meador — or even more appallingly, to divert attention from what a Metro Night Court judge last night told officers was a blatantly unconstitutional overstepping of government and police authority — nobody who cares about their First Amendment freedoms should sleep in Tennessee tonight.

The publisher is demanding an apology from Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam. Article also includes a quote from conservative blogger Bill Hobbs, who also says Meador didn’t appear at all intoxicated. Here’s the video. Or mostly audio:

Here’s my costume this year. I figure I didn’t really have a choice. It isn’t often that there’s a badass bald white guy in the zeitgeist.

• William Niskanen, RIP.
• Robbing the cradle.
• What could possibly go wrong?
• Winner of this week’s “Get Over Yourself” award.
• Runner-up.
• Bovine-cide.
• “Because this was a gathering of people invited to our farm for dinner, I had no idea that the Health Department would become involved.”
• Best “We the People” petition yet.
• Dog tucks himself in.

Daisy’s boyfriend Leo came over this evening. Cuteness ensued.

Going forward, I think “Your An Idiot” will be the running title for hate mail posts. It nicely captures the correlation between level of vitriol and concentration of spelling/grammatical errors you tend to find in hate mail/comments.

So to kick things off, my Huffington Post piece yesterday brought some fun hate mail from the right. Which is a refreshing change of pace from the Koch brothers-themed hate mail and nasty comments from the left over the last few months. Of course, nothing in the piece expressed any support for the ideology or the goals of the Occupy movement. It was just an article about how they’re using technology. But who cares! People like to be angry!

A sampling ([sics] all around):

Sir:

I am appalled by your lack of integrity. You quoted someone from the Cato Institute but didn’t reveal that you also worked for them. You also didn’t reveal that while they pretend to be conservatives, they are really George Soros peacenicks, homos, and potheads (your probably all three) who wear ties to disguise themselves.

Morale degenerate.

~

Sir;

I read your article with interest but I was waiting for the REASON the police had to act. You in the media have been trying your best to equate this rabble with the Tea Party so can you please name the times , dates and places were Tea Party “protesters” clashed with the police?

I no longer watch network TV nor read any newspapers and least of all this so-called “news” outlet. I read this one  to reassure myself that nothing has changed, you are all ideologues and left-leaning swine.

~

If you think cell phone snippets of “police brutality” accurately depict what is happening, you probably think Jurassic Park is a documentary of living dinosaurs on a real island, after all we actually saw dinosaurs killing people.

~

You’re kidding, right?

Will these rich kids, unionists, criminals and just-plain-nuts types show the footage of THEM-

- urinating on police cars

   Throwing glass and metal at police-

 defacating in people’s yards-

bullying, harrassing property[read taxpayers] owners?

These idiots scream against the rich-all the while shoving each other out of the way to stand next to fatass Michael Moore-

They rant against Wall St/business owners as being “too rich”.-Who do these idiots think supply jobs?

They whine about oil /petroleum companies-while they hold their plastic Starbucks cup-and text on their I phones/pads/blackberry’s.

This is the TYPICAL entitlement mentality of the Left.

And this is EXACTLY why you all will have a RUDE awakening Nov.12. Let me guess what YOU’RE doing right now………reading your article on your PETROLEUM- based unit-hoping you get noticed by the RICH Huff-HO herself.

You’re pathetic.

~

Then there is the phonys documented who stand there and yell and scream at the police like they are witnessing abuse that is not taking place so they can splice it into old tapes to make it LOOK like the police are mistreating them. All staged.

~

“Hey Mr. Soros, can you send more money and Twinkies? I love it down here man. By the way George, why aren’t we protesting on your front lawn. Oh, I get it! You’re one of the 99% like us.”

I have a new piece at Huffington Post looking at how personal technology and social networking are changing the face of protest, and shifting the balance of power.

Earlier this year, I wrote a long, two-part anti-drug war polemic or the Future of Freedom Foundation.

The first part is now online.

• Peter Schiff dialogues with Occupy Wall Street. I’d like to see more of this.
• An opera about collard greens.
• Headline of the day.
• This Harris County, Texas grand jury is going rogue. And that’s pretty great. Love this line: “If [DA] Lykos appears, she could be cross-examined by one of her own prosecutors.”
• Wonder if this will cause the Occupy folks to question their support for public service unions.
• Thought: The Tea Party groups, largely portrayed as anti-government, largely sought permits, paid fees, and followed protest regulations. The Occupy movement, largely portrayed as pro-government, has largely thumbed its nose at protest rules and regulations. Not passing judgment on either strategy. Just interesting.

They’re not even pretending anymore.

A three-year investigation into the police’s habit of fixing traffic and parking tickets in the Bronx ended in the unsealing of indictments on Friday and a stunning display of vitriol by hundreds of off-duty officers, who converged on the courthouse to applaud their accused colleagues and denounce their prosecution.

As 16 police officers were arraigned at State Supreme Court in the Bronx, incensed colleagues organized by their union cursed and taunted prosecutors and investigators, chanting “Down with the D.A.” and “Ray Kelly, hypocrite.”

As the defendants emerged from their morning court appearance, a swarm of officers formed a cordon in the hallway and clapped as they picked their way to the elevators. Members of the news media were prevented by court officers from walking down the hallway where more than 100 off-duty police officers had gathered outside the courtroom.

The assembled police officers blocked cameras from filming their colleagues, in one instance grabbing lenses and shoving television camera operators backward.

The unsealed indictments contained more than 1,600 criminal counts, the bulk of them misdemeanors having to do with making tickets disappear as favors for friends, relatives and others with clout. But they also outlined more serious crimes, related both to ticket-fixing and drugs, grand larceny and unrelated corruption. Four of the officers were charged with helping a man get away with assault….

Federal agents earlier in the week arrested eight current and former officers on accusations that they had brought illegal firearms, slot machines and black-market cigarettes into New York City. Recently, other officers have been charged in federal court with making false arrests, and there was testimony in a trial in Brooklyn that narcotics detectives planted drugs on innocent civilians.

Of the 16 officers arraigned on Friday, ranking as high as lieutenant, 11 were charged with crimes related to fixing tickets. All of them pleaded not guilty, and all but two were released without bail. Officer Ramos was held in $500,000 cash bail. Jennara Cobb, a lieutenant in the Internal Affairs Bureau, was released after posting a $20,000 bail bond. She was accused of leaking information about the investigation to other officers.

The inevitable union angle  . . .

Prosecutors said the bulk of the vanished tickets were arranged by officials of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the city’s largest police union. All the officers charged with fixing tickets are either current or past union delegates or trustees.

As the investigation unfurled, the union played down its significance and consistently referred to ticket-fixing as “professional courtesy” inscribed in the police culture.

Patrick J. Lynch, the union president, said in a news conference that the officers had been arrested on something “accepted at all ranks for decades.”

Well in that case . . .

Woman gets hit with stray bullet, heads to hospital. NYPD officers decide she’s lying about what happened, arrest her, detain her for five days . . . then release her with no charges.

Takesha Griffin, 35, said she was handcuffed to a bench in the squad room or locked in a filthy holding cell at the 73rd Precinct stationhouse during a spirit-shattering stretch last month. Cops asked her repeatedly if she was ready to cough up the real story.

“They wanted me to lie,” said Griffin, whose lawyer filed a notice of claim on Tuesday. “It was like ‘The Twilight Zone.’ ”

During her lengthy confinement, Griffin said she urinated on herself when no one was available to escort her to the bathroom. She was also denied a sanitary napkin.

The single mother of a 9-year-old boy said she was given a McDonald’s hamburger each day and ridiculed when she complained about the food. One cop sarcastically pointed out that she could order salmon or lasagna from a menu posted on the squad room wall.

• Cold equations.
• Cold (and cool!) technology.
• The article is much less interesting than the headline suggests. (I kid. Unlike most local news, Nashville’s News 5 does some terrific government watchdog journalism, and this piece is a good example. But the headline is still amusing.)
• It didn’t work out for him, but you have to give this guy credit for some quick thinking on his feet.
• This week in elk debauchery . . .
• This week in Knights of Columbus Hall sex parties . . .
• In which the Internet makes you cry.
• “Come on officer. Can you cut me some slack? You know how it is. You run in for a quick meeting with one of Severus’ prefects, you forget to feed the meter, you get to chatting, and next thing you know . . . “

Rovinj, Croatia.

Someone just sent me this beauty from the New York Times archive. Published in 1927.

And good on Google for refusing to do it.

TechCrunch still finds room to criticize the company, and I agree with most of that criticism. (It would be nice if they named the police agency.) Still, Google’s transparency report is in itself a pretty remarkable thing. Even as the company is facing pressure and investigations from governments all over the world, it continues to put out a report every six months documenting how many times various government asked for user information or that a video be censored, and how the company responded. Which means Google is not only risking the wrath of governments, it’s also giving civil liberties groups information they can use to criticize Google for the way it responds to these requests.

All of which I think deserves some praise.

Yesterday, we learned from the TSA blog that the employee who left the “get your freak on” note in the bag of a woman who was traveling with a vibrator was removed from the screening process, and that appropriate disciplinary action has been initiated.” How do we know the disciplinary action was appropriate? Well, because the TSA says it was. You’ll have to take their word for it, because they aren’t going to tell us what that discipline was.  We also won’t get to know the TSA employee’s identity.

This is pretty much par for the course at the agency. They never release the names of employees who violate policy, harass travelers, or, while they’re doing all that, let bombs and guns slip through screening during competency tests. I guess it’s good to know that while the agency is busy feeling us up, scanning or bodies, and digging through our bags, they do at least take someone’s privacy seriously.

• Ken Jennings, 99 percenter.
• I can’t see how this could possibly be abused.
• Seattle cops administer the full-SWAT treatment to medical marijuana patient with two pot plants.
• Man describes life under a seven-year PATRIOT Act gag order.
• Gene Healy on boomtown D.C.
• Ron Paul, walking the walk: Takes no federal money for his medical practice, instead treats Medicare/Medicaid patients for free.

Rovinj, Croatia.

Rovinj, Croatia.

So I’ve written a couple times about how Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has claimed that his office is “investigating” the forensic bite mark fraud Michael West. I also pointed out that that it’s odd that Hood would claim he’s conducting this investigation just as his election opponent began criticizing him about West and Steven Hayne, that Hood has never mentioned such an investigation before, and that when I asked his office for even the most basic of details about the alleged investigation, they refused to provide me with any information.

Tonight I spoke on a panel in Oxford, Mississippi, about the Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks cases, just after a screening of Mississippi Innocence, a documentary about the two men and what they endured. (It’s a wonderful film, by the way. And if you’re human, it will make you weep.) Just before the movie started, I got a call from Tucker Carrington, director of the Mississippi Innocence Project. Carrington was down state for a hearing in the Leigh Stubbs case, a case in which Hood’s office is (once again) defending a conviction won primarily due to West’s testimony. (But it’s okay! Because Hood is investigating West!)

Carrington and his organization are representing Stubbs. So this afternoon, they asked the judge to order the state to turn over all material related to Hood’s alleged investigation of West, citing his statement to a local TV station a couple of weeks ago. According to Carrington, an assistant district attorney from Hood’s office then stood up and told the judge that he was the one who was overseeing the West investigation. So what materials would he be handing over? What has this meticulous investigation turned up?  The ADA said that so far, well more than a decade after West has been exposed as a fraud, nearly eight years after Hood first took office, three-and-a-half years after Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks were exonerated after both were wrongly convicted of murder almost exclusively because of Steven Hayne and Michael West, 10 years after West was again revealed as a fraud in a sting conducted by a defense attorney—after all of that,  the guy overseeing the West investigation has so far . . . wait for it!  . . . done a Westlaw search on Michael West’s name.

That’s it. That’s the extent of the “investigation.” If you aren’t a lawyer, a Westlaw search is basically the legal-world equivalent of a Google search.

Let’s put this more bluntly: Jim Hood is full of shit. Meanwhile, the Mississippi press’s interest in the AG’s race and all of these issues apparently boils down to who bought dinner for whom at a steakhouse.Two years ago.

If, like me, you’ve ever wondered how the hell this scandal percolated for the better part of two decades, affected thousands of cases, sent innocent people to prison, allowed guilty people to remain free to commit more crimes, and no one gave a damn . . . well, I guess there’s your answer.

• Classic songs that were intended as jokes.
• You can’t tell by the pixels.
• Very little about the police version of this story makes sense.
• This is almost certainly illegal under Indianapolis v. Edmond.
• Two Illinois teachers union lobbyists teach for one day, get fat pensions for the rest of their lives. Bonus: One of them helped write the law that made them eligible.
• Attempted puppycide . . . by defenestration.
• Kanye’d by the Bell.

Rovinj, Croatia.

Republicans are criticizing Obama for saying that cash-strapped families shouldn’t blow their kids’ college funds in Vegas. Which means it’s apparently now the official position of the National Republican Senatorial Committee that struggling families should blow their kids’ college funds in Vegas.

Oh, and Obama also said it two years ago.

I say one of the strongest arguments for libertarianism is that this nonsense is how we pick the people who run the government. And this is how the people who want to run the government vie for our approval. By really just making shit up. Whatever sticks.  Why would you want to hand control of increasingly larger portions of your life over to these people? And yes, it’s on both sides. I’m sure it’s only a matter of days before we see something equally stupid from the Democrats.

Oh well. We only have, what, 54 or so more weeks of this?