Part two of my three-part series for Huffington Post is now online.

It takes a skeptical look at the new overdose/abuse figures the federal government is touting, and points out that the problems we’re seeing today with pill mills and strip-mall clinics are the result of overly protective drug control policies. And they’re the same sorts of policies opioid critics are now saying need to be expanded and strengthened in response to the latest panic.

On the one hand, my default position would be that no one should lose her job, her reputation, or her freedom over marijuana. I’d also imagine most people would be sympathetic to someone who recently lost a spouse in a car accident. It would also appear that in this case, the police found the pot after entering this particular woman’s home illegally.

On the other hand . . . according to the source in the story, if this had happened to your average resident of Tennessee, they at the very least would be subject to a criminal investigation.

But there was no investigation. Which is likely because this woman was—and still is—the director of the Tennessee state agency “whose mission is to eradicate marijuana.”

• Photography Is Not a Crime blogger Carlos Miller was recently arrested at an Occupy Miami rally. The police deleted the videos on his camera. He has since recovered them. So who at the police department will now be charged with a crime for attempting to destroy Miller’s videos?
• NYPD’s shooting of Ramarley Graham is looking more and more like a murder.
• Headline of the day.
• Arizona. Just. Arizona.
• That “Detroit Comeback” commercial from the Super Bowl wasn’t actually filmed in Detroit.
• Anonymous Obama administration official suggests the journalist who broke the “double tap” drone story probably supports al-Qaeda.
• Former prosecutor, frequent fabricator, and serial slanderer Wendy Murphy, best known for going on cable news and making shit up . . . apparently teaches journalism seminars at Poynter.
• Congressman duped by The Onion.
• Woman stopped, searched, arrested, convicted, and now faces a year in jail after driving from Mississippi to Alabama to buy cold medicine.

Story here.

After they killed him, they then went after his grandmother.

After a police officer fatally shot an 18-year-old man in his Bronx apartment on Thursday, the man’s grandmother, a witness to the shooting, was taken into custody and held against her will for several hours, a friend of the family said on Saturday.

An officer confronted the man, Ramarley Graham, who was in the bathroom possibly trying to flush some marijuana down the toilet. A moment later, a shot rang out, killing the teenager.

While officers had trailed Mr. Graham to the apartment thinking he was armed, no gun was found, making the grandmother, Patricia Hartley, 58, a critical witness . . .

At this juncture little is known of precisely what Ms. Hartley saw and what of that she has told detectives.

But her treatment by the police in the hours after her grandson was killed could become a sticking point in an investigation that Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said would be presented to a grand jury.

After Mr. Graham was killed, Ms. Hartley was taken to the 47th Precinct station house on Laconia Avenue and held for seven hours, according to Carlton Berkley, a friend of Ms. Hartley’s who said he had retired from the police force as a detective in the 30th Precinct in upper Manhattan. Mr. Berkley added that Ms. Hartley was forced to give a statement about what happened.

“She gave it against her will,” Mr. Berkley said. “She didn’t want to speak to the police.”

Mr. Berkley, speaking on Saturday outside the Graham family home on East 229th Street in Wakefield, said: “We’re going to fight that statement.”

But let’s not lose sight of what’s important, here. Thanks to the good work of these undercover narcotics cops, the pot Ramarley Graham allegedly flushed down the toilet just before he was killed is no longer on the streets of New York. No children will get high on that pot. And that’s really all that matters.

• Maiz Szalavitz takes questions from Reddit about “tough love” anti-drug boot camps for teens.
• Seems like this would be the ideal situation for the Taser. Instead, the dog-walking guy gets the Taser, and this kid gets a bullet.
• San Francisco man who was wrongly convicted and spent 18 years in prison sues over the use of perjured testimony in his case.
• Another TSA agent arrested for stealing from passengers.
• Facebook is the new heroin.
• The fruit fly chuckles at your inadequacy.
• Surveillance drone industry wants to “paint a more positive picture” of government spying on its citizens.
• Guy loses a bunch of weight, no longer diabetic. Starts a website to help others do the same. He’s now under criminal investigation for providing nutritional advice without a license. This is in North Carolina, the same state that went after a guy last year for practicing engineering without a license when he did some math for a citizens’ reports requesting a couple traffic lights.

• Your latest Hollywood-colluding-with-government copyright outrage.
• Amazing photos from an abandoned New York leper colony.
• British court rules that composing a photo the way someone else has could be a violation of copyright.
• Here is a dog jumping on a trampoline.
• Red State founder and CNN commenter tells radio audience that watching someone he disagrees with politically writhe in pain until the guy requires hospitalization is “made of awesome.”
• Despite promises from politicians, NYC continues with its ridiculous pot arrests.
• “Why more than a dozen teenage girls are exhibiting Tourette’s-like symptoms.”
• Headline of the day.
• Dahlia Lithwich on how Illinois awful recording cops law might affect this year’s G8 summit in Chicago.
• Good post on leash law Tasering: “‘Protect and Serve’ does not mean “you have to win every argument ever.’”

The Indiana legislature was considering a bill sponsored by state Rep. Jud McMillin to require drug testing for welfare recipients. But then my new favorite state-level politician (hey, it’s a low bar!) Rep. Ryan Dvorak engaged in some top-shelf legislative trolling.

Apparently running with the notion that taxpayer dollars shouldn’t go to abusers of drugs and alcohol, Rep. Dvorak’s amendment requires legislators to submit to drug tests and a random breathalyzer test. They would have to reimburse the legislative council for the costs of these tests. If the legislator refused or failed the test, he or she would be subject to discipline or an assessed penalty by his or her chamber.

And it passed! Here’s the punchline:

I’m hearing that, with this amendment, Rep. McMillin is no longer so enthusiastic about the bill and will not be moving it forward.

Well of course it won’t. If anything, there’s a much stronger argument for drug testing the people who write and vote on laws than there your average welfare recipient.

(Thanks to Zach Wendling for the tip.)

Excerpts are from a recent news story. You make the call.

The problem is that they broke into the wrong house . . . Attorney Michael J. Balskus, pointed out.

“They put guns to their heads and threatened to kill them if they did not turn over marijuana,” Balskus said . . .

Judge Barbara Key cited . . the emotional trauma . . .caused [to] the occupants of the house . .

“These were innocent college students going about their business with guns held to their heads thinking they were going to die,” Hart said. “They will suffer the trauma all the rest of their lives.”

Click here to see how you did.

• Weird.
• Son of New York City police commissioner is accused of rape.
• “We have little hard evidence for this, but we’re pretty sure your kids might be hooked on heroin.“
• Our human rights victory in Libya.
• Headline of the day.
• U.S. drops to 47th in world press freedom index.
• Dear Tennessee Tea Party: What the hell are you doing?
• Obama promised in the 2008 campaign that he’d post every bill to the web five days before signing them. Three years later, he’s running at about 50 percent.
• Criminal justice outrage of the day.

• Sniffing oxytocin could turn you into an extrovert. (That’s tocin, not contin.)
• Judge seals all the search warrants in that fatal Ogden drug raid.
• It’s astounding that after all the DNA exonerations we’ve seen in recent years, politicians will still grandstand about limiting death penalty appeals.
• The latest example of how preventing the “abuse” of controlled drugs often comes at the expense of people who need them.
•  Moronic libertarian-bashing of the day.
• Skip Oliva tells me that a former architect of Plan Columbia now owns the company that runs this creepy service. Seems appropriate.
• Police officer who admitted to snorting hydrocodone on the job, including in his cruiser, won’t face criminal charges.

• Puppycide.
• Why GOP senators were more willing to jump ship on PIPA than Democrats.
• Loma Linda, California: Where there’s no alcohol, no tobacco, and the citizens are made of cardboard.
• Illinois ups the ante in the war on cold medicine: Any pseudoephedrine purchase will now put your name and address in a state police database.
• Like most everything else about the guy, Newt Gingrich’s war on the “media elite” is phony. See also here.
• A petition to investigate Chris Dodd for bribery.
• Police shoot a man dead after a bicycle violation.
• Asset forfeiture creep: How the DOJ is able to seize websites without a conviction.
• Here is a video of some guys rolling a giant tire into a lake.

• Fox News contributor: Newt Gingrich’s three marriages could mean he’ll be a great president. But what happens when he leaves us for a younger, prettier country?
• Who says the GOP opposes assisted suicide?
• Condensed version of Newt Gingrich’s victory speech last night: I’m a millionaire, lobbyist, book author, academic, ex-House speaker, wannabe historian, Pericles-like statesman who has enough power to move the planet. And I’m here to take on those bastard elites!
• Gary Johnson: It’s time to end the war on drugs.
• Chris Christie (kind of) agrees.
• In defense of Warren Harding.
• This is a great idea. But it’ll cost the city revenue, which is why if it catches on, it will probably be banned.

• ” . . . he reportedly told police he would hunt them down and eat them, their dogs and their entire families.”
• Perseverance.
• The federal government’s immigration and gay marriage policies have teamed up to bring you this ugly, heartbreaking story.
• Rick Ross, 1980s crack kingpin, says he’d have sold pot if he could have gotten his hands on any.
• “Hugo Chavez is starting to worry me . . . “
• Rep. Lamar Smith, author of SOPA, is a copyright violator.
• D.C. looks to kill off its thriving food truck scene once and for all.
• Ugly Renaissance Babies.

I haven’t had time to write about the awful drug raid in Ogden, Utah just yet. But the gist is that a veteran who apparently grew marijuana to self-medicate for anxiety and depression apparently shot and killed one cop and wounded several others during a nighttime raid on his home. This is the same narcotics task force, by the way, that shot and killed a man wielding a golf club five seconds after breaking down his door during a botched meth raid last year. That cop was forgiven for his mistake. Heat of battle, volatile situation, mistakes were made—you know the drill.

Perhaps we’ll soon learn that Matthew Stewart was a big-time drug dealer hell-bent on taking down a team of cops. We don’t know enough yet to say anything for certain. But from what we do know, it doesn’t appear that way. The guy had no prior criminal record. And the article below suggests that the authorities are already setting expectations for the possibility that Stewart was just a guy who grew for his own use.

Here’s a DEA flack defending the raid and pointing out the (very real, though not in the way he’d have you believe) dangers of pot smoking.

The head of Utah’s Drug Enforcement Administration spoke with FOX 13 about the recent Ogden shooting that left one officer dead and five other officers wounded. There has been evidence gathered that may point to the shooting suspect maintaining a marijuana grow operation.

DEA Special Agent in Charge Frank Smith has been involved in the war on drugs all over the globe. He is quick to dismiss any arguments about legalizing drugs like marijuana, especially after fellow officers were shot and killed, presumably trying to take down a so-called indoor marijuana grow operation.

“They’re heroes, they’re protecting the public!” said Smith . . .

Army veteran Matthew David Stewart, 37, is the suspected triggerman. Police will not say exactly why the strike force raided his home, but Stewart’s father says his son has issues and may have been growing marijuana in his home to “self-medicate.”

Smith says that, even if Stewart had allegedly used marijuana to only self-medicate, that his drug use is not a “victimless crime.”

“It’s not a legalization issue, it’s not an immigration issue, it’s a public safety issue. If someone is willing to shoot it out with police, who is self-medicating on marijuana, what’s to say he’s not willing to walk out his house and start shooting his neighbors?” Smith says.

Jesus. How about the fact that he hadn’t harmed a soul until armed government agents broke down his door? Reading these articles is like slamming your head against the wall. People keep dying. And the drug warriors keep taking that as confirmation that they need to double down on the policies that are exactly why people keep dying.

You wonder if Smith’s even capable of comprehending the possibility that it’s the tactics that caused this tragedy, not pot’s sinister—and completely unsupported by any scientific research—effect of turning unassuming veterans into cold-blooded killers. That is, I wonder if people like Smith really believe their own bullshit?

Smith says the shooting case will be reviewed and he hopes lessons will be learned to prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again.

Oh, there are lessons. But they won’t be what Smith and other drug warriors take from this awfulness. Which is why you aren’t going to “prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again.”

No. So long as we have people like Agent Smith in positions of power, the pile of bodies—both cop and citizen—will only get larger.

MORE: Stewart’s father is now speaking out. Here he criticizes the tactics used in the raid.

After four years in the military, Matthew returned to Ogden and got a job as a security officer for the IRS. But he began having problems with depression and anxiety. He didn’t want to use prescription drugs, his father said, and chose to self-medicate with marijuana that he grew.

He eventually left the IRS and got a warehouse job at Walmart, working graveyard shift. About two months ago, he broke up with his girlfriend.

“He was a good guy,” his father said. “He worked hard. He served his country. He tried to live his life his way. He didn’t think he was hurting anybody.”

The Stewarts say they know very little about the Wednesday shootout at their son’s Ogden residence at 3268 Jackson Ave.

“We’re devastated by this whole thing,” Michael Stewart said.

The Stewarts have not been allowed to see their son at an undisclosed hospital. And they don’t know what happened when the Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force entered the house with a search warrant.

Michael Stewart said his son kept a handgun for protection. But he said that his son’s shotgun had been in his parents’ possession for years and he didn’t have any automatic weapons.

Michael and Sonja Stewart say they can’t understand why the strike force would execute a search warrant the way that it did, knocking down the door and rushing into the residence….

If Matthew Stewart was sleeping or listening to music in his back room, there is a good chance they would not have heard police announce their arrival.

“If they had done some research, why not arrest him at Walmart?” Michael Stewart said.

“I’m hoping the citizens of this state can look at what’s happened here and rethink the drug war,” he added. “Are we losing the drug war?”

• Thomas Frank: Bush era represented “the golden years of libertarianism.”
• Sounds like a big sale.
• It isn’t zero tolerance if you call it something else.
• Horrible drug war death of the day.
• National Geographic photos of the year.
• Florida DOT covers up speed limit signs, then pays for extra state troopers to write speeding tickets.

• So this seems suspicious.
• New app lets you scan a bar code, then tells you if company that makes the product supports SOPA.
• The Mississippi woman locked up for eight years without a trial will be committed to a mental institution. That’s the right outcome, though it doesn’t address how this could have happened in the first place.
• Puppycide.
• Fraud, corruption in the Chicago public school system.
• Stephen Hawking, now 70, continues to baffle doctors with how long he has survived with ALS.
• The Washington Post looks at the dubious origins of all those college ranking lists.
• It was all just a misunderstanding! Memphis cop pleads guilty after shooting himself, blaming the shooting on a 17-year-old girl, having sex with the girl, illegally buying the girl Xanax, and having the girl’s house shot up.

Asset forfeiture strikes again. From an editorial in the Washington Post:

VICTOR RAMOS GUZMAN and his brother-in-law noticed a Virginia state trooper pull up beside them as they traveled on Interstate 95 near Emporia, Va., in November. “A police car drove by in parallel, looked at our faces and on no more than that decided to stop us,” Mr. Guzman said in a sworn affidavit.

Virginia State Police say the men were speeding, driving 86 mph in a 70 mph zone and “following too closely.” But the trooper did not issue a ticket that morning despite the allegedly excessive speed nor did he charge the men with any civil or criminal violations. He did, however, seize $28,500 in cash.

In a statement, Virginia State Police say that the “male driver” gave the trooper consent to search the car, but the driver — the brother-in-law — does not speak English. The police also claim the men were acting suspiciously because both “disclaimed ownership of the money” and provided “inconsistent and contradictory statements” about the money.

Misunderstandings cannot be discounted; English is a second language for Mr. Guzman. But there is also a simple explanation: The money wasn’t theirs. Mr. Guzman, an El Salvador native and lawful Northern Virginia resident, says he was transporting money for the church in which he serves as secretary. He told the officer he and his brother-in-law were taking $24,000 of the church’s cash to Atlanta to meet with the owner of a parcel of land in El Salvador, where the church hoped to build. He said $4,000 in his possession was set aside to buy a trailer for church-owned land in North Carolina, and $500 was earmarked to cover the trip’s expenses. A lawyer for the church confirms Mr. Guzman’s account.

After calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the trooper ordered the men to drive to a nearby police station, where he seized the cash and gave them a receipt. The money is being held by an arm of the immigration service, which is determining whether it should be returned. Mr. Guzman and the church have asked that the matter be referred to a federal court.

Americans for Forfeiture Reform has more details:

Trooper Murphy checked their papers, legal status, rental information, et cetera. Having found no violations, the trooper also called the FBI and ICE. The FBI declined involvement. The officer confiscated the cash and issued a receipt for it.

Guzman and Sorto were told by Trooper Murphy that the seizure was being executed “on order of ICE” but that no ICE agents were available because they were in a meeting. Guzman asked that they contact the church to verify their account of the currency trooper Murphy declined to do so and, apparently, told them to shut up. They were also told that they would be contacted by ICE Norfolk.

Having not been contacted by ICE or the Virginia State Patrol, the church contacted attorney Claudia Flower on November 4th. Flower contacted the state police and ICE. ICE, at that point, declined involvement.  Later that day, Flower was able to talk to CL Murphy.

My first thought here was that the state trooper was trying to get the feds involved in order to take advantage of the “adoption” program. Under adoption, police agencies in states with strong forfeiture laws (that is, laws that protect property owners) can get around state law if they ask a federal police agency to join in the investigation. The federal agency then is technically the agency that seizes the funds, making the investigation subject to more lenient federal forfeiture laws than those of more restrictive state. The feds then give as much as 80 percent of the seized property back to the local police agency.

But it turns out that Virginia has pretty awful civil forfeiture laws—probably worse than federal law, which was improved in 2000. So I don’t know what Cl. Murphy was doing. Perhaps he knew he couldn’t pin anything on these two at the scene, so he would tie them up in an immigration nightmare. But have a look at the factors that Murphy says justify the seizure:

Flower inquired of the probable cause for the seizure and was told . . .

1) The members stated that the cash was not theirs but belonged to the church.

2) The church was located in Baltimore MD, while the address of the individuals was in Virginia.

3) Guzman and Sorto appeared confused.

4) Guzman and Sorto did not know where they were going.

On those factors alone, the state of Virginia can  apparently take your cash on suspicion of criminal activity. It’s then up to you to find an attorney who knows how to get it back. They didn’t even go through the charade of prodding a drug dog to alert.

And it gets worse.

[Fowler told Murphy] Guzman and Sorto were driving south bound towards Fayettville, and then to Atlanta, GA as they had told the officer. They knew where they were going and why.

Murphy then stated to Flower, ”People lie to me all the time why do I need to listen to you? The money was seized on behalf of ICE, J.T. Slayton of ICE Norfolk, maybe the chain of command does not know because he has not had time to file a report.”

Murphy then yelled at Flower and hung up.

So many questions. Why would a Virginia state trooper seize $28,000 on behalf of ICE when no ICE agents were ever called to the scene to investigate? Can ICE really just order a property seizure after a traffic stop over the phone, based on nothing more than a state troopers assertion of the four factors above? Does ICE regularly interact with state police agencies in this way?

According to the Post, the “money is being held by an arm of the immigration service, which is determining whether it should be returned.” Think about that for a moment. The government pulled these guys over for driving 12 mph over the speed limit, took $28,000 in cash from them because they appeared confused and lived in a different (bordering) state than their church, and has now held that money for two months while it investigates whether the money was linked to a criminal enterprise (or, if you’re cynical, looks for a way to link it to a criminal enterprise)—and whether or not it will do Guzman, Sorto, and their church the favor of returning it.

As the Post points out, many immigrants don’t carry credit cards or checkbooks. These two were fortunate enough to have been hooked up with some excellent attorneys, who are handling the case pro bono. You wonder how many aren’t, and how many have had cash seized in small enough amounts that the cost of hiring an attorney to win it back wouldn’t be worth the effort.

• Seattle policy on dash cam videos: We will happily release the police dash cam videos you have requested for your lawsuit . . . just as soon as the statute of limitations expires.
• The historian Newt Gingrich is apparently unaware that Washington and Jefferson grew hemp. He also seems to think we had a drug war back then. That, or he thinks Washington and Jefferson were just shooting up pot smokers, vigilante-style.
• Utah cop is killed, several others are injured after a shootout during a drug raid. The suspect had no prior criminal record, save for a traffic misdemeanor. The police haven’t yet said if they found any drugs.
• Citing prosecutorial misconduct, a Texas judge has vacated the conviction of man who has served 31 years for rape.
• Illinois police officer writes woman a traffic ticket, then looks her up in the DMV database and asks her out on a date.
• Houston man arrested, jailed for 36 hours for photographing an arrest is looking for representation for a lawsuit.

• Fascinating look at map-making, and what’s being hailed as the greatest paper map ever made of the U.S.
• What Americans really think about drugs.
• It’s kinda’ fun to watch this Reddit thread struggle to mesh the perception that Cato is full of corporate shills with this excellent Julian Sanchez destruction of entertainment industry estimates about how many U.S. jobs are lost to infringements on intellectual property.
• Gordon Hirabayashi, a civil liberties hero, dies at 93. RIP.
• Iconic photos, re-imagined without their subjects.
• How meth hype undermines good medicine.
• Here’s a another good take on the problems with journalism’s blossoming “fact check” industry.

This is taken from the SWAT team page for the Barton County, Kansas Sheriff’s Department.

The glib sloganeering about how they apply violence is bad enough. But note that they chose the word use, instead of sell or deal.

Thanks to Eapen Thampy for the tip.

• Scott Greenfield rounds up the best criminal law blog posts of 2011.
• Roundups of funny/obnoxious Tweets and Facebook posts from the past year.
• And yet 90 percent of them will still get reelected in November.
• Here’s a video of a guy making iced tea. It’s better than it sounds.
• Mayan apocalypse watch: Hundreds of blackbirds drop dead from the sky in Arkansas; Ohio has an earthquake; Vanderbilt played in a bowl game.
• Obama says he won’t enforce detention provisions of defense bill he just signed. Funny thing is, he’s using a signing statement to get around enforcing them. Which he promised during the campaign he wouldn’t use. And of course now that the bill is law, future presidents won’t be bound by Obama’s signing statement.
• The DEA continues its obstinacy on the Adderall/Ritalin shortage. Sort of typical of them to fight “abuse” by limiting overall supply, which really just punishes the people who need the drugs. (I take Adderall w/ prescription. Yes, it’s a pain in the ass to find.)

• Headline of the day. Article is actually from September. But wow.
• More wine?
• This photo? Just the latest evidence that we’re really, really close to winning.
• Zero tolerance + anti-bullying hysteria + Internet = criminal charges for teen’s innocuous Facebook post.
• A Ron Paul-touted conspiracy that turned out to be true.
• One of the sadder year-end lists you’ll read.
• Back in 1956, you’d have needed one of these to store each of your iTunes songs.
• Some great space-related time-lapse videos from the past year.
• An undiscovered Ron Paul newsletter.

You’d think they’d be more careful. A totaled car isn’t going to bring back much revenue at the asset forfeiture auction.

When Pompton Lakes police seized Darren Richardson’s car on a rainy September afternoon, they told him it was headed for an impound lot. When they returned it three weeks later, he says, the 2004 BMW belonged in a junk yard.

The instrument cluster and leather dashboard were gone. The caramel-colored seats were torn up. The gear shift was ripped out and stray wires hung limp everywhere. Geico, Richardson’s insurance company estimated the damage at $12,636.42 — more than he paid for the car — and declared the vehicle a “total loss.”

According to police reports, the damage to the black BMW 325i came in the aftermath of a traffic stop during which officers detected a “strong odor of raw marijuana” inside the vehicle. Searching for a cache of drugs, members of three different police agencies and a detective from a federal drug task force spent two days tearing the car apart, the reports said.

So what did police find after their $12,000 search?

Absolutely nothing.

Two drug dogs allegedly alerted to the presence of illicit drugs. Richardson concedes he mouthed off to the cops, which probably explains their thoroughness. Richardson was initially charged with evidence tampering and resisting arrest, while his passenger was charged with “making terroristic threats.” They now face only petty disorderly conduct charges.

• The state of Florida wants to allow cops to bring drug-sniffing dogs to your door without a warrant.
• Cool map showing the geographical distribution of support for/opposition to SOPA.
• Gary Johnson announces his candidacy for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination.
• Headline of the day.
• This story seems dubious.
• Tyler Cowen’s Ted Talk on why he’s suspicious of stories.
• How Jamie Oliver, Eric Schlosser, and other “industrial food” critics may be making meat less safe to eat.
• Candidate Newt proving lucrative for Newt, Inc.

• My Huffington Post colleague Ryan Grim on how Ron Paul has been one of few politicians to talk about the racist origins of the drug war.
• Popehat is asking you to vote for the “Censorious Asshat of the Year.” So many nominees, so devoted to their cause.
• Sen. Chuck Schumer assails new caffeine product before it comes to market.
• L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has jailed hundreds of innocent people due to misidentification.
• “When Obama was sworn into office in 2009, the nation’s clandestine drone war was confined to a single country, Pakistan, where 44 strikes over five years had left about 400 people dead . . . The number of strikes has since soared to nearly 240, and the number of those killed, according to conservative estimates, has more than quadrupled.” These are estimates, because the government won’t say how many innocent people its drones have killed.
• Federal worker pay saw lowest increase in 10 years last year, but even with the Obama “freeze,”  it was still more than the increase in the private sector. According to USA Today, one in five federal employees now makes over $100,000 per year. The recession isn’t exactly crippling members of Congress, either.
• Comedienne-turned-conservative-activist Victoria Jackson serves up a hot plate of crazyburgers.
• Headline of the day.
• New York Times attempts to paint conceal carry permit owners as crazy gun nuts with an itchy trigger finger, accidentally publishes data suggesting they’re  far less likely to commit crimes than the general population, but runs with the narrative anyway.