You really don’t have any.

The case started four years ago when a married couple named Mike and Chantell Sackett received an EPA compliance order instructing them to stop construction on what was supposed to be their dream home near Priest Lake, Idaho. The government claimed their .63-acre lot was a federally-protected wetland, but that was news to the Sacketts, who had procured all the necessary local permits. Their lot, which is bordered by two roads and several other residential lots, was in fact zoned for residential use.

The Sacketts contend that the compliance order was issued erroneously and they would like the opportunity to make their case in court. Yet according to the terms of the Clean Water Act, they may not challenge the order until the EPA first seeks judicial enforcement of it, a process that could take years. In the meantime, the Sacketts risk $32,500 in fines per day if they fail to comply. And complying doesn’t just mean they have to stop building; they must also return the lot to its original condition at their own expense.

Moreover, if they did eventually prevail under the current law, the Sacketts would then need to start construction all over again. By that point they would have paid all of the necessary compliance costs plus double many of their original building expenses. And who knows how much time would have been lost. Where’s the due process in that? The Sacketts understandably want the right to challenge the government’s actions now, not after it’s become too late or too expensive for them to put their property to its intended use.

For its part, the EPA argues that old-fashioned judicial review would simply get in the way. As the agency states in the brief it submitted to the Supreme Court, “A rule that broadly authorized immediate judicial review of such agency communications would ultimately disserve the interests of both the government and regulated parties, by discouraging interactive processes that can obviate the need for judicial action.”

Of course, the whole point of due process is that people sometimes do have “the need for judicial action” against overreaching government officials. Why should those people have to give up that right to the EPA? More to the point, why should the Supreme Court allow it to happen?

Nick Gillespie has a a fine tribute up at Reason. The first of many we’ll see today, I’m sure.

More than anything, the world lost one of its most gifted writers last night. The guy could put words together in a way that could only inspire envy from those of us who do this for a living, even when we disagreed with him. I’ve also long admired Hitchens’ willingness to trample on the tradition of venerating the recently dead. Some people don’t deserve veneration. (Though I didn’t always agree with his assessments.) I imagine we’ll see some of Hitchens’ detractors attempt to out-Hitchens him on that front in the coming days. And I imagine he’d have appreciated a well-executed corpse-prodding as much as the glowing tributes.

Gillespie’s comment on Hitchens personal generosity resonates, too. The only time I drank with Hitchens, I remember being struck by his social awareness and graciousness. He didn’t need to, but he went out of his way to bring the fawning young journalists around him into the conversation, to probe and debate them. He then entertained us with dirty limericks. But the guy’s vocabulary and syntax were so beyond me, I really only know they were dirty because he said so. (That’s an exaggeration. But only a little.)

My only other personal Hitchens story comes from a few years ago, when Washington, D.C. was fist considering passing a ban on smoking in the city’s bars. I had gone to the city council hearing to speak against it, and was one in a long line of speakers. Hitchens showed up and sat down next those of us opposing the ban. He had a commitment later that afternoon, and the wait to speak was a few hours long. So I offered to switch slots with him. When he started to speak, he reminded Councilman Jim Graham, the sponsor of the smoking ban, that he lived in Graham’s district, and had actually hosted a fundraiser or two for him. Graham’s face lit up. Here was a titan of the left, come to praise him, Jim Graham!

Hitchens then lit into Graham with a tirade against paternalism that included the phrase, “you’re treating us as if we were helpless retarded children.” Graham was crestfallen. It was a beautiful thing.

• The most uplifting, faith-in-humanity-restoring thing you’ll read today.
• Tennessee dealing with fallout from judge’s “ignominious descent into drug addiction, criminality and professional impropriety.”
• State police in Massachusetts refuse to release information about Lt. Gov. Tim Murray’s car accident, even though they’re required to do so under state law.
• “Another officer used his Taser and made contact, but the man knocked one of the wires away with the light saber.”
• Federal report finds mass violations of civil rights by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
• An op-ed arguing to decriminalize marijuana in Missouri. There’s a petition drive underway to put the issue on the November ballot.

. . . says Obama as he reverses his position on indefinite detention.

. . . says the House as it debates a bill that would crush free expression on the Internet.

. . . says the Border Patrol, as it declares that giving a ride to an undocumented immigrant is illegal.

Cato’s Tim Lynch reviews the sorry state of the Bill of Rights.  And his list is of course by no means comprehensive.

• I predicted yesterday that if Ron Paul wins Iowa, the media will proclaim whoever comes in second the “real” winner. From CNN today: ” “If Paul wins, then whoever comes in second — assuming its Gingrich or Romney — will ‘win’ having beaten the other.”
• Also, Chris Wallace—who will be moderating the next GOP debate—says a Paul win “won’t count,” and would “discredit” Iowa voters.
• What political causes get the most money from the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent? You might be surprised.
• Breaking down the people who comment on year-end lists.
• Discussions like this one are why I like Reddit.
• The House debates SOPA today.
• Should you really change your oil every 3,000 miles? No, you really shouldn’t.
• Newt Gingrich, authoritarian.

As we get close to the holidays, I always get quite a few emails asking what organizations I give to, or for recommendations on where to donate to support the ideas and issues we cover on this site. So here are some suggestions:

Libertarianism

For general support of libertarian ideas, I’d recommend Reason and Cato. (Disclosure: I’ve worked for both.) There are obviously lots of different varieties of libertarianism out there, and there are lots of other libertarian think tanks and advocacy groups that do great work. But I subscribe to the Reason/Cato philosophy, both in the ideas, which ideas to emphasize, and how they advocate them.

I’ve recommended them a number of times before, but in terms of winning tangible results for your donated dollar, no one is better than the Institute for Justice. IJ consistently wins precedent-setting cases that codify new protections for economic freedom. Perhaps just as importantly, IJ is brilliant at choosing its cases. In fighting for the economic freedom of people who have been plowed over by rent-seeking corporations and burdensome regulations, IJ is the walking, talking, litigating rebuttal to the lie that libertarians don’t give a damn about the poor or the powerless.

For supporting/encouraging the next generation of libertarians, I recommend two organizations, Students for Liberty, and the Institute for Humane Studies (Disclosure: I’ve given speeches, paid and unpaid, for both organizations.) Students for Liberty is relatively new, started up just a few years ago by Alexander McCobin. The way the group has grown has been inspiring. It’s been a joy to watch the size of the conventions and groups I speak to grow each year. More importantly, they’re attracting smart, articulate, socially well-adjusted students. Also important: They’re bringing in women. I’m not being flip, here. Any non-mainstream ideology will inevitably attract cranks, conspiracy theorists, and other folks from the fringe. SFL has done a fantastic job of making libertarian ideas more mainstream on college campuses.

IHS has been around for a while. But I was a faculty member at their journalism seminar in June, and, again, was really impressed with the quality of the 75 or so students who attended. IHS has been sponsoring seminars, internships, and handing out scholarships to liberty-minded students for a long time.

As I say, there are lots of other great libertarian groups out there. My recommendation of the groups above isn’t meant to imply that other aren’t worthy of a donation.

Criminal Justice

First and foremost, the Innocence Project. There isn’t an organization on the planet that has done more to expose the inadequacies of the criminal justice system. They’ve almost single-handedly moved the criminal justice debate, on issues from forensics to prosecutorial misconduct to police misconduct to issues like false confessions and eyewitness testimony. Oh, and they also get innocent people out of prison.

I’d also highly recommend Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which has had great success in focusing public attention on the problems with taking sentencing discretion away from judges. They too have won some tangible policy changes. Like IJ, FAMM understands the value of a sympathetic story to change policy.

Friend of The Agitator Eapen Thampy has started a promising new organization called Americans for Forfeiture Reform, which works to raise awareness about forfeiture abuses, to change forfeiture laws to make them more fair, and to match victims of forfeiture abuse with attorneys or legal organizations who can help them out.

I have more disagreements with the American Civil Liberties Union than any group I’ve mentioned so far. But there’s no question that they’re an indispensable force for good on the drug war and, more than anyone else, in defending civil liberties in the war on terrorism.

Journalism

I’d also like to recommend supporting investigative journalism, in whatever way jibes with your politics. Though I just moved from a non-profit to a corporation, I think journalism on the whole is moving more toward a non-profit model. I think that’s great, and I think it will lead to a more honest kind of investigative journalism, where the biases of the reporter and publisher are clear up front.

That said, the non-profit model does require donors to keep it afloat. So if you’re a libertarian, I’d again recommend Reason. If your politics lean left, consider supporting publications like Mother Jones and The Nation. I don’t agree with everything they do, but both have done some great reporting on civil liberties and criminal justice abuses. New journalism non-profits like ProPublica (which has done some great work on forensic science) and the Center for Investigative Reporting are also worth supporting even if, again, libertarians may not be fond of everything they put out.

Unfortunately, the conservative political magazines don’t tend to do much investigative reporting. (And James O’Keefe is only marginally more of a journalist than Ashton Kutcher.) But there are some free market-oriented, non-profit investigative journalism programs. State free market think tanks like the Goldwater Institute are now starting their own journalism programs. And we’re seeing more organizations like CalWatch, which focuses on exposing government waste and abuse.

Other

The other advocacy group I gave to this year was the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the group currently fighting SOPA, that took on Righthaven, and is generally on the correct side of most web and privacy issues. (Even their position on “net neutrality” is refreshingly nuanced.) The Sunlight Foundation and Sunshine Review also do great work on government transparency.

These are all policy-oriented suggestions, of course. My only recommendations outside the policy world is that local is usually better than national, and to be wary of the big, well-known disease-fighting organizations, whose concept of prevention often leads to advocating legislation to ban or severely restrict the stuff they’ve decided is bad for you.

I’m sure I’ve left some good groups out. Feel free to make your own recommendations in the comments.

(One more disclosure: This year, I gave to Reason, Cato, IJ, SFL, EFF, and the Innocence Project.)

I guess this is national, not local. Which makes it all the more ridiculous. Note that no one is actually smoking anything.

Up next: “A warning for parents in these winter months. As your children exhale into the cold air, they could be pretending the resulting cloud of vapor is cigarette smoke!”

• This won’t end well.
• Norway is out of butter.
• Police union alleges commanders are misspending forfeiture money.
• Ron Paul could pull an upset in Iowa. I predict that if he does, whoever comes in second will be declared the winner.
• Militarization watch: “Texas now has its own Navy!”
• 15-year-old shot by cop posing as pizza delivery guy.
• Want to be a tour guide in New Orleans? You’ll first need to pass a drug test, provide a fingerprint, pass a criminal background check, and take a history exam.
• Columbia, Missouri police chief Ken Burton does the right thing by firing a cop caught slamming a prisoner into the wall. Naturally the police union is calling for Burton’s head.

Reason.tv reports from Cato’s big conference.

This seems noteworthy:

A former University of Northern Colorado student has settled his lawsuit against a county prosecutor who signed off on a criminal libel investigation into the student over writings the student posted on a satirical website.

The former student, Tom Mink, will receive $425,000 as part of the settlement, according to a news release put out today by the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Mink in the lawsuit. The agreement concludes a nearly 8-year legal fight that made three trips to the 10 Circuit Court of Appeals, one step below the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mink sued in early 2004 after Greeley police raided his home and took his computer while investigating things Mink wrote on “The Howling Pig” website. Mink posted satirical criticisms of university officials and a professor, which prompted a complaint to police of criminal libel.

Weld County prosecutor Susan Knox signed off on the warrant for the police search of Mink’s home. Mink sued both the City of Greeley and Knox, saying they violated his free-speech rights. Mink earlier reached a settlement with the city.

Earlier this year, after the 10th Circuit overturned a lower court ruling that Knox was entitled to immunity, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Babcock decided the case in favor of Mink. Knox appealed. The new settlement comes before that appeal was decided.

“It may be the first written ruling that expressly holds a prosecutor legally responsible for her role in approving an application for a search warrant that resulted in an illegal search,” Mark Silverstein, the ACLU of Colorado’s legal director, said in a statement. “This ruling, and this substantial monetary settlement, sends a forceful message that prosecutors cannot simply rubber-stamp a police officer’s request to invade the privacy of a person’s home.”

It’s great to see a prosecutor held accountable like this (sort of—taxpayers will of course be footing the bill). And it would be great to see more. But given its recent history with prosecutorial immunity, I’d be shocked if the Supreme Court were to find civil liability for a prosecutor who signs off on a bad search warrant. Seems more likely that this is a one-off.

Also, check out this passage, from Westword‘s coverage of the case:

In the beginning, Mink’s main goal was to get rid of the Colorado criminal libel statute, “but that fell by the wayside a few years ago,” he notes. “The court said I didn’t have standing on the First Amendment part of the case. And the Weld County DA’s office said, ‘Of course we would never have charged anybody under this terribly antiquated law — but it absolutely still needs to be there.’”

I don’t doubt that the DA’s office actually believes this. But it’s a bit surprising that they’d actually say as much on the record. Mink translates for us:

“It’s very hard to litigate, because they don’t usually charge people with it — they threaten to charge people with it, and they investigate people on it, and they serve search warrants and basically scare the shit out of you. It’s just obnoxious intimidation, which they unfortunately tend to use on loudmouth, obnoxious high school and college kids.”

Sounds a lot like the Illinois wiretapping law.

Brazen criminality masked as “code enforcement.”

A federal racketeering complaint accuses high-ranking Philadelphia code-enforcement officials of looting the residences of elderly and disabled citizens “under the fraudulent pretenses of needing to clear the homes of various code violations.”

The scheme, carried out as part of a purported anti-blight initiative called the Community Life Improvement Program (CLIP), “has so far resulted in at least nine felony convictions” on charges that include perjury, theft and gun running, according to Steven Tengood, a longtime civilian worker in the Armed Forces who says the home he’s lived in for nearly 45 years was plundered by CLIP workers.

Tengood says that when he tried to appeal the bogus violations through the city’s administrative review process, a deputy city solicitor “willfully supported defendants inspectors’ underlying plan to rob Mr. Tengood” and baselessly accused him of being a “hoarder.”

Accusing CLIP crews of committing a city-funded “crime wave” of “break-ins and thefts,” a Grand Jury in 2009 found that the crews “didn’t simply pocket stray knickknacks. They drove trucks to the houses and took everything …

“In several cases, the property owners were forced out or locked out of their houses, even though the CLIP crew had no legal authority to enter the properties or displace the occupants,” the Grand Jury found.

CLIP was designed to allow officials to respond quickly to property-code violations, by giving owners 20 days to remediate a violation or face unilateral action by city workers, who could cut weeds, remove trash or otherwise clean a property, then bill the owner for the services.

But what may have begun as a well-intentioned anti-blight program quickly transformed into something far more nefarious.

This isn’t the first time an “anti-blight” program has resulted in wholesale disregard for the property rights of (mostly poor, mostly minority) homeowners. Well-intentioned or not, anti-blight programs, asset forfeiture laws, and private-use eminent domain are all policies that assume the government has the power to co-opt private property on the flimsiest of pretexts. Just as asset forfeiture policies have resulted in margarita machines for prosecutors’ offices and tanning salons for the police chief’s wife, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that some of the public servants in this particular program might make the leap to out-and-out theft. Nor should it be surprising that city officials would back them up.

(Via Americans for Forfeiture Reform.)

• Another example of how when police know a suspect is actually armed and dangerous, they find other ways to apprehend them than to send in the SWAT team while the suspect is sleeping.
• America’s is losing its faith in government. If this brings some skepticism about giving government ever-more power (though it likely won’t), it’s a good thing. But it also means government is failing at its most basic and fundamental obligations.
• Mark Hemingway on how the fact-checking trend in journalism has evolved into a way for journalists to simply validate their own opinions.
• The Supreme Court may be on its way to authorizing medical patents. Tim Lee explains why this is something to worry about.
• Alabama: Where it’s illegal to brew your own beer, but it’s perfectly fine to drink while you’re serving on the jury in a death penalty case.
• The latest in the Michael Mermel saga: An Illinois court has reversed the conviction of Juan Rivera, the subject of the New York Times piece that led to prosecutor Mermel’s resignation.

• Headline of the day.
• Occupy groups on the west coast attempt to shut down ports.
• An actual war on Christmas.
• Louis C. K. visits Reddit.
• On second thought, maybe the Occupiers are on to something with this whole hating capitalism thing.
• Wanna’ guess which federal programs pay out the most money to the richest 1 percent?
• When politicians attempt novels . . .
• Welcome to the age of the six-figure-salaried toll collector.
• The Kremlin takes aim at Twitter.

Bill O’Reilly has a long history of sending his producers out with cameras to conduct surprise interviews on people Bill O’Reilly doesn’t like (including one producer who staked out a reporter in front of her home).

So what happens when someone ambushes Bill O’Reilly with a camera? Looks like O’Reilly smacks the guy with his umbrella, then asks the cops to arrest him.

Bad eyewitness testimony, NYPD incompetence leads to man getting arrested, arraigned on his wedding day, imprisoned for 6 months for a series of sexual assaults.

Yep, they had the wrong guy. He now has a mountain of legal bills. Oh, and while he was in jail, the actual “serial groper” struck again.

• Here’s a preview of the new Best Sex Writing of 2011 anthology. I have an article in the collection. I’m so good at it, they asked me to write about it. (Okay, so maybe that’s not why my piece was included.)
• Another minor is attacked by a police dog. Of course, since officer safety wasn’t threatened, the dog didn’t get the puppycide treatment.
• More indications that drones are become a part of domestic law enforcement.
• Scientists find a black hole the size of 21 billion suns.
• Oddly compelling photo series of suitcases left at an old New York psychiatric hospital. More explanation here.
• NIH paid a communications firm $1 million in stimulus money to promote how well NIH is spending stimulus money.
• From the archives of Newt Gingrich mendacity.
• Also, hipster Newt Gingrich.
• Aerial photos of the democracy protests in Russia.
• The International Development Ryan Gosling Tumblr.

This one will cost Minnesota taxpayers $1 million.

The Minneapolis City Council approved a $1 million settlement Friday after a botched drug raid in 2010 in which an officer threw a “flash-bang” grenade into a south Minneapolis apartment burning the flesh off a woman’s leg.

The payout to Rickia Russell, who suffered permanent injuries, was the third largest payout for alleged Minneapolis police misconduct on record.

Flash grenades are intended to distract and intimidate, not to injure people, but during the raid the device rolled under the legs of Russell, who was seated on a sofa, and exploded. The police were looking that day for a drug dealer, narcotics and a firearm, but found nothing.

Russell, now 31, suffered third- and fourth-degree burns that caused a deep indentation on the back of one leg, requiring skin grafts from her scalp. She is still undergoing physical therapy.

“What happened in this case was an accident,” Minneapolis city attorney Susan Segal said in a statement. “It’s very unfortunate that Ms. Russell suffered serious injuries, however, accidents like this are rare.”

Yet incidents of fires, injuries and even deaths caused by the devices have led to costly settlements and policy changes in cities nationwide, including Minneapolis, where a 1989 fire started by a police grenade killed two people.

My take on flash grenades here. No, they aren’t harmless. It’s probably inaccurate to even call them “non-lethal.”  They’re designed and intended to inflict injury on people who have yet to even be charged with a crime, much less convicted.

• Your WTF of the day.
• Occupy Wall Street protesters crash the set of a Law & Order taping. City revokes the show’s permit in response.
• New study debunks much-hyped study claiming a “viral” component to obesity. New study will get 1/100th of the coverage the original study received.
• This sounds great. Provide it works as advertised. Disposable razors are such a ripoff.
• The latest nasty bit of censorship masquerading as “campaign finance reform.” Expect newspaper editorials to demand an an amendment to protect their right to editorialize before an election—and then endorse the restrictions for everyone else.
• Puppycide.
• The “freakiest ads of 2011.”
• U.S. citizen gets 2 1/2 years for insulting Thailand’s king on the Internet. The State Department is outraged, and rightly so. But as I’ve pointed out before, it’s no different than our arrest and imprisonment of online gambling executives.

Nutmeg.

Jack Shafer pshawed at this one last year.

Feeding time in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Heard this band for the first time in Nashville last week. The rich, smoky, throwback voice belongs to Katie Robertson. The band is called Stagolee.

• New plan: Neutralize the terrorists with a bad case of ice cream headache.
• Interesting read: “How Doctors Die”
• After all the awfulness he has perpetrated, Joe Arpaio may finally be brought down for not investigating suspected criminals.
• Mark Judge attempts to publicly baptize an ailing Christopher Hitchens. Pretty shameless, really.
•  Virginia Postrel on the tie between student aid and rising tuition.
• Congress decides that the conference committee debate over whether the government should be able to detain American citizens indefinitely without a trial or formal charges . . . will be done in secret. The vote wasn’t close.

Lake County, Illinois’ DNA-denying prosecutor is stepping down.

Interestingly, the Tribune piece notes that in 2009 Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran—who last week called for Mermel’s resignation—praised Mermel as a “prosecutor’s prosecutor.” Which is a good indication that Sheriff Curran’s moment of principle had more to do with some unfavorable New York Times exposure than genuine outrage at Mermel. That, or Curran was more offended by what Mermel said to the Times than what he’s been doing as a prosecutor, which is just as bad. Given that Mermel’s boss State’s Attorney Michael Waller has defended Mermel through all of this, and has defended the preposterous arguments Mermel has made in court, it’s probably time for him to go, too.

The story has another strange twist. The Tribune article notes that Mermel is currently serving jury duty. Someone needs to fire his lawyer.

Terrific reporting by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Thousands of Florida officers remain on the job despite arrests or evidence implicating them in crimes that could have landed them in prison, a Herald-Tribune investigation has found.

Even those officers with multiple offenses have been given chance after chance through a disciplinary system that has been reshaped in their favor by the state’s politically influential police unions. As a result, officers around Florida carry personnel files that are anything but heroic.

Corrections officer Kurt Stout, already dogged by allegations he groped and had sex with prisoners, was arrested on allegations he raped two teenage girls. Nick Viaggio capped a string of violent outbursts at the Ocala Police Department by attacking his girlfriend in a crowded nightclub until bouncers dragged him away. Palm Beach County deputy Craig Knowles-Hiller, under investigation for sleeping with a 14-year old, had to explain why the girl’s DNA was found on one of his sex toys.

In each case, state law enforcement officials let the men keep their badges….

Among the Herald-Tribune’s findings:

•One in 20 active law enforcement officers in Florida has committed a moral character violation serious enough to jeopardize his or her career. Nearly 600 have two or more such acts of misconduct on their record and 30 current officers and prison guards continue to wear a badge despite four or more offenses.

•The number of officers with serious violations is much higher than state records show. State law calls for every moral character violation to be reviewed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. But local agencies fail to report cases and have faced no consequences for doing so. The Union County Sheriff’s Office has not reported a case of misconduct in 26 years.

It just gets worse from there. The whole series is pretty amazing. Perhaps not terribly surprising if you read this site regularly. But the depth and breadth of the problem in Florida is eye-opening. Over and over, the paper found that even when a department wanted to fire an officer (and they didn’t want to often enough), some clause from the collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the police union put the cop back on the job.

Again, lots of praise to the Herald-Tribune for taking this on. The relatively small paper not only plowed through thousands of pages of personnel files, they also put them online.  The report also emphasizes how important it is that the public have access to police personnel files. In jurisdictions where personnel files are considered private, this kind of investigation wouldn’t be possible. As this and countless investigations like it show, we simply can’t allow government agencies to police themselves, especially without transparency. And because of the powers we give to cops and prosecutors, it’s particularly important when it comes to law enforcement agencies.

Emo.