• The Bright Young People. A Tumblr blog of young, socialite, 1920s London.
• Banking customers angry over entirely predictable consequence of federal “consumer protection” legislation.
• Mark Draughn lays out the basics of that University of Wisconsin poster controversy. When a university statement begins with some language about the school’s commitment to free expression and the the First Amendment, you can bet what follows is inconsistent with free expression and the First Amendment. And when the statement ends with an assertion that the actions the statement is addressing aren’t censorship, it’s also a pretty safe bet that they are.
• When sending your kid to a better school is a crime.
• America’s most beautiful college campuses. Makes me miss Bloomington.
• Amazing photo of Yemenis praying in a billboard.
• Bear wanders into backyard where children are playing. Father kills bear. Father charged with felony.

MORE: The bear story is a bit dated. Via the comments, it looks like the bear shooter was fined $1,000. Also, the father was initially charged with a misdemeanor, not a felony, though it was punishable by up to a year in jail and a $50,000 fine.

• 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.

• 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.

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.

• 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.

Stuff you should read that I don’t have time to write more about . . . .

• Another ignorant, ill-informed rant against libertarians. Good responses here and here. Lind’s rant is so riddled with errors, it both isn’t really worthy of a thorough response, and would take a book-length response to address them all.
• Bullying prevention as an unfunded mandate.
• Law enforcement and the “Holy Shit!” rule.
• Tim Carney has more on how Warren Buffet has benefited financially from the big government programs he supports. (Note: I don’t doubt that Buffet earnestly supports these programs and is sincere in his political beliefs, anyway. But free market people who get involved in politics and policy certainly don’t get the same benefit of the doubt.)
• Good question for libertarian discussion. At what point do claims like those made by homeopathy become fraud?
• California bill, among other things, would mandate breaks for babysitters.
• Controversial claim!: Americans should be free to sell things without a permit.
• Anti-abortion activist says cops beat him, arrested him, and accused him of terrorism for handing out pamphlets.

• From Germany, a story made for Pixar.
• Via Fark, your (unintentional) headline of the day.
• MSNBC and Fox have signed these two to become full-time commentators.
• Anyone looking for work?
• Dallas looks ripe for the next crime lab scandal.
• Columbia, Missouri police (along with the DEA) raid a man’s home because of “synthetic marijuana.” Less than 24 hours earlier, state law took effect making  the substance illegal.
• Another vague law named after a crime victim.

• Come on, you guys. You’re totally ruining my “brave weatherman in the hurricane” shot!
• The new rules of college sex.
• Judge blocks Missouri’s reactionary Facebook law. Note that this stinker passed the Missouri legislature unanimously.
• Prosecutor criminally charges 10-year-old boy who accidentally shot his sister because . . . it will help him get counseling.
• More good news: New Jersey Supreme Court orders overhaul of eyewitness ID process.
• Photos of an empty Grand Central Station.

• Touching video of two Louisiana men who became friends in prison, were both exonerated by DNA testing, now reuniting as free men.
• Related: Federal judge under fire for letting habeas petitions linger for years. One inmate died while waiting. The same judge was removed from another case after an appeals court questioned his impartiality.
• New Jersey cop assaults man recording him.
• National debt jumps $4 trillion under Obama.
• Mother Jones has assembled a database of U.S. terrorism informants and trials of suspected terrorists.
• Missouri teacher says new law banning online contact with students means she can’t communicate online with her own kids.
• Obama administration encourages health care providers to organize, then sues them for doing so.
• New Gallup poll: Hypothetical matchup puts unelectable Ron Paul within two points of Barack Obama.
• More problems for the Fullerton, California, police department.

(CORRECTION: Both Media Matters and Cato’s Dan Mitchell say the CBS article linked above gets it wrong: The 2009 fiscal year was set by the Bush administration, not Obama.)

Got them authoritarian local gub’mint blues:

A woman fighting a terminal form of bone cancer is trying to raise money to help pay bills with a few weekend garage sales, but the city of Salem says she’s breaking the law and is shutting her down.

Jan Cline had no idea, but the city of Salem has a clear law that states a person can only have three yard sales a year.

Cline has been selling her stuff in the backyard for a few weekends and said she thought she’d be fine by keeping the sale out of everyone’s way.

“It’s a struggle,” Cline says. “It’s a struggle for me because I’m very independent, used to taking care of myself.”

She’s run businesses and supported herself for years but this summer she was diagnosed with bone cancer.

“It’s a bone marrow cancer that eats through the bones and causes holes in the bones so that just by walking I can break a bone,” she says.

In one day she lost her independence, her ability to work and earn an income that could pay for all those medical bills.

So she decided to sell what she owned. The sale was bringing in several hundred dollars each weekend until one neighbor complained and she got a visit from the city.

“He said, ‘I’m sorry. Rules are rules.’”

• Agitator guest blogger alum Alyona Minkovsky does a Q&A with Brian Lamb tonight on C-SPAN.
• LAPD officers allege ticket quotas.
• More laws named after dead people.
• Next in line for a bailout: the U.S. Postal Service.
• Ken at Popehat has been on a rampage lately—a delightfully entertaining rampage of truth, light, and goodness.
• DOJ files secret brief in wiretapping case that plaintiff’s attorneys aren’t permitted to see.
• Anonymous claims to have hacked 70 law enforcement websites, says big information dump is coming.
•  Up next: the higher education bubble.

• Puppycide in Birmingham, Michigan.
• Immigrant family says ICE agents raided the wrong house.
• There oughtta be a law.
• Looking at the effects of the Adam Walsh Act, five years later.
• The family of William Cooper, the Hampton, Virginia, man killed in a drug raid in June, plans to sue.
• It’s great that this officer was finally suspended, but there ought to also be some discipline for her colleagues who pulled over, suspected she had be drinking, but granted her “professional courtesy.”
• The return of violent rhetoric!
• Headline of the day.
• These drugs have soul.
• “It takes balls to execute an innocent man.”

• Man jailed for shingling his own roof.
• Woman threatened with fines, jail because her daughter saved an endangered woodpecker from being eaten by a cat.
• Allegedly extremist budget deal doesn’t actually cut government spending.
• Caylee Anthony’s useful idiots.
• Another successful government operation.
• “Child protection official” for the Catholic church caught with child porn.

• Horrifying police brutality story of the day.
• Trying, and failing, to count the number of federal crimes.
• This week in the erosion of protections for the accused.
• More bad legislating in wake of the Casey Anthony verdict.
• Jury nullification pamphleteer sentenced for “indirect criminal contempt.”
• Puppy fakes her own death.

Good dissection of the Tennessee version of the law from the Nashville Scene:

Such slapdash legislating is no way to build a sensible legal structure, says Terry Maroney, a criminal law professor at Vanderbilt University whose areas of expertise include the role of emotion in law. She says that, while she understands the instinct behind this and similar movements, it’s not a tendency she supports.

“I think the problem with this kind of approach to criminal law is that it’s shortsighted,” she says. “It takes something about a particular case, takes it out of context, and then builds this new legal rule around it and patches it onto the pre-existing legal framework.”

Ketron didn’t respond to a request for comment. In a recent Tennessean op-ed, he summoned the public frustration to prove a point no one is arguing: When it comes to reporting a child missing, time is of the essence.

To those who doubt the prudence of “Caylee’s Law,” that’s precisely the problem: What attentive parent would intentionally wait to report their child missing? And on the flip side, would a negligent parent — or one with murderous intent — be deterred by the threat of a Class E felony?

“It’s never a good idea to build rules around the exceptions,” Maroney says. “In the vast majority of cases, parents are going to report their children missing. What upsets people about the Casey Anthony case is that she didn’t for so long, but that’s extraordinarily aberrant.”

• I know my tray table is in its locked, upright position. If you know what I mean.
• After two deaths, Charlotte police department shelves tasers pending a safety review.
• Some good perspective on “Leiby’s Law.”
• Amazing how the verbiage changes in these stories when the home invaders who shoot the dog aren’t wearing badges.
• Massachusetts plans to use high-speed license plate scanners to create massive database to indefinitely store driver whereabouts. Sure. This isn’t creepy at all!
• Newark cop arrests, puts choke hold on TV camera man, then charges him with “disorderly conduct.”
• Republicans for limited government.

When I’ve pointed out some hypothetical situations where an innocent parent or caretaker could be unjustly charged with the death of a child—cases where a parent may be guilty of poor decisions or bad parenting, but hasn’t broken any laws—the response is usually that prosecutors would never a grieving parent or caretaker under those scenarios. If you’re a regular reader of this site, you’re probably already darkly chuckling at the naivete of that assumption. There already seems to be a rush to find criminal culpability when a child dies. This ProPublica investigation, which coincidentally came out just before the Casey Anthony verdict, documents a number of child death cases in which law enforcement officials have pressed for and won criminal convictions when the evidence strongly indicated that the death was an accident.

Enter the Marietta, Georgia, case of 30-year-old Raquel Nelson, which has been bandied about in the comments section the last few days. Last April, Nelson was crossing a street with her three children when her 4-year-old was struck and killed by a car. She was crossing at an intersection, but was apparently not in a designated crosswalk. The driver who killed her had been drinking, taking painkillers, and was blind in one eye. He also has two prior hit-and-run convictions. Nelson and her daughter were also struck and injured. Residents of Nelson’s apartment building have complained to the city about the intersection. The nearest crosswalk is a half mile away.

If we have as little to fear from overly aggressive prosecutors as supporters of Caylee’s Law claim, we could expect the prosecutor in this case to show some discretion and mercy for Nelson, right? Yes, she admits to jaywalking. Yes, she erred, and subjected her kids to unnecessary risk. But she just lost her son. It’s hard to fathom a more punishing, heartbreaking sentence. Moreover, the underlying “crime” here was a misdemeanor, one most of us commit every day. So mercy, right?

Of course not. Nelson was charged with second-degree vehicular homicide. Which is insane. She was convicted last week. When she’s sentenced later this month, she could spend more time in jail than the man who struck and killed her son. The prosecutor will say he was just enforcing the law. The jury will say they were just applying it. Both are excuses to duck responsibility (prosecutors can decline to bring charges, juries can nullify). But if both are true, then the time to prevent unjust the unjust application of well-intentioned laws is to anticipate those applications while the laws are being written and proposed. That means interpreting the most ridiculous, merciless, farfetched possible applications of the law, then assuming that somewhere, some prosecutor will attempt to apply the law in exactly those ways.

This morning, I debated Caylee’s Law on Oregon Public Radio with the legislator proposing the law in that state. He said prosecutors need another “tool in their toolbox” to go after bad parents like Casey Anthony. At the same time, he also acknowledge tha cases where the law would be necessary were probably extremely rare. (Challenge to supporters of this law: Find me three other cases where a parent failed to report a missing child for days on end, was widely suspected of killing that child, but was acquitted of murder charges in court.) But just because legislators intend for the law to be used in very limited circumstances doesn’t mean prosecutors won’t attempt to use the law more frequently.

Prosecutors don’t need more “tools” in these cases. They have plenty. They need more discretion. And empathy. And a more complete understanding of justice.

• It’s gonna’ be this kind of week in Nashville.
• Gould, Arkansas city council attempts to ban a civic organization from existence.
• Great photo of Jimi Hendrix.
• Google may be altering your memory.
• Steve Chapman on Caylee’s Law.
• Media helps government bury a story about a secret CIA prison in Somalia.
• Jesus story of the day.

• San Francisco may try to outlaw circumcision.
• Headline of the day.
• A rare photo of the Koch family dog.
• I don’t know what this is from, but I want to see the whole thing.
• ATF “Fast and Furious” scandal may have had a sister operation in Florida.
• U.S. formally recognizes rebel group as the official government of Libya that we’ll be bombing again in 10 years.
• “Nice prisons you have here. Be a shame if they were to break out into riots.
• “They’re considered among the top SWAT teams in the nation.” This video would seem to contradict that.
• Noble public servants continue to protect us from unlicensed lemonade stands run by children.

• Comparing corporate vs. state funding of the arts.
• I was hoping someone would throw some cold water on The Filter Bubble. My former colleague Jesse Walker does here.
• In which the Internet answers your important questions, and offers you a dress emblazoned with Steve Buscemi’s face.
• This seems like a slight overreaction, doesn’t it? I mean, haven’t there been about a thousand beer commercials in which men are portrayed as infantile morons? And (some of) those are funny, too.
• Hey, the Fourth Amendment is all but dead. Let’s see if we can’t get to work on the Fifth Amendment, too.
• Smart editorial from a Florida paper cautions against Caylee’s Law. And it’s not just smart because it quotes me. It’s smart because it agrees with me! Here’s another dissent from the mob from a former Bronx prosecutor. (Last link via Mark Draughn.)
• Speaking of which, I was on the CBC last night to discuss the law. You can watch here. I come on at about the 8:15 mark.
• The perils of one-size-fits-all regulation: ” . . . so basically I’m responsible for periodically surprising myself with a random drug test.”

From a Washington Post article about Caylee’s Law:

[Michelle] Crowder said in a phone interview that she had not spoken to any law enforcement officials before coming up with the proposal — she relied on a quick Google search and the belief that lawmakers would look into the details.

This was a frequent response to my Huffington Post piece as well. Sure, the law may be flawed. But we can count on our careful, thoughtful lawmakers to sort out the details. That’s democracy!

Here in Tennessee, the Caylee’s Law bill is sponsored by state Sen. Bill Ketron. Here’s what Ketron wrote on Twitter yesterday:

Ketron didn’t Tweet, “I look forward to holding hearings on whether or not such a law is necessary in Tennessee.” No, he wants to get this done “quickly,” while outrage over the Casey Anthony verdict is still hot. And, presumably, while he can still claim the mantle of the politician who “speaks for children who can’t speak for themselves” or some similar self-aggrandizing nonsense.

And Ketron has a history of negligent lawmaking. A few highlights:

• He introduced an immigration bill that would make Arizona look like a sanctuary state. Ketron’s bill would require Tennessee law enforcement to demand papers from anyone they stop who looks or sounds “foreign”,  regardless of whether any laws were broken. It would also allow any resident of Tennessee to sue any government official they believe is inadequately enforcing the law.
• Ketron’s “Cyber Bullying” law has on-point lessons to Caylee’s Law. Ketron introduced the bill after hearing a story in Texas about a mother who tormented one of her daughter’s rivals for the cheerleading team until the rival killed herself. The problem? Ketron’s bill, which is now law in Tennessee, makes it a felony to post any image online that causes “emotional distress” to anyone else. It is clearly unconstitutional.
• Ketron also introduced Tennessee’s asinine, headline-grabbing bill that would make it a felony to “practice Sharia law” in the state. Ketron later had to rewrite the bill when it became clear that hadn’t the slightest idea what “Sharia law” actually means. (The bulk of the bill was written by a guy who thinks there’s merit in denying blacks and women the right to vote.)

By the way, Ketron isn’t on the fringes of Tennessee politics. He heads up the state senate’s GOP caucus.

If your plan is to rely on politicians to “sort out the details” and temper the hysteria with calm, thoughtful legislating, you’re making a huge mistake.

I chatted with Alyona Minkovski about “Caylee’s Law” yesterday. Here’s the video.

I have a new piece up at Huffington Post explaining why.

We really need to stop naming laws after dead kids.

Oak Park, Michigan:

Their front yard was torn up after replacing a sewer line, so instead of replacing the dirt with grass, one Oak Park woman put in a vegetable garden and now the city is seeing green.

The list goes on: fresh basil, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, cumbers and more all filling five large planter boxes that fill the Bass family’s front yard.

Julie Bass says, “We thought we’re minding our own business, doing something not ostentatious and certainly not obnoxious or nothing that is a blight on the neighborhood, so we didn’t think people would care very much.”

But some cared very much and called the city. The city then sent out code enforcement.

“They warned us at first that we had to move the vegetables from the front, that no vegetables were allowed in the front yard. We didn’t move them because we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong, even according to city code we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong. So they ticketed us and charged me with a misdemeanor,” Bass said . . .

City code says that all unpaved portions of the site shall be planted with grass or ground cover or shrubbery or other suitable live plant material. Tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are what Basses see as suitable.

However, Oak Park’s Planning and Technology Director Kevin Rulkowski says the city disagrees. He says, “If you look at the dictionary, suitable means common. You can look all throughout the city and you’ll never find another vegetable garden that consumes the entire front yard.”

So what is suitable? From another local news report:

 . . .  we asked Rulkowski why it’s not suitable.

“If you look at the definition of what suitable is in Webster’s dictionary, it will say common. So, if you look around and you look in any other community, what’s common to a front yard is a nice, grass yard with beautiful trees and bushes and flowers,” he said.

God forbid your yard doesn’t include beautiful trees, bushes and flowers. It’s your job, Oak Park citizens, to give Kevin Rulkowski pretty things to look at. According to Bass’s blog, she’s demanding her right to a jury trial. So the city plans to throw the book at her.

our attorney spoke to the prosecutor today. (for the record, my crush on him is totally finished after today.)

his position: they are going to take this all the way.

officially, this means i am facing 93 days in jail if they win.

no joke.

• This is cool.
• The tiny “stampede” of white supremacist candidates for political office.
• Madison County, MS cops respond to assault call, show up at the wrong house, go ahead and Tase a couple people anyway.
• More time-lapse goodness. Makes want to get back to Chicago for a visit.
• So I guess this was inevitable.
• Atlanta public schools caught cheating on standardized tests, too.
• Mother charged with murder after accidentally leaving her son in a hot van. It’s our old friend Paul Ebert again.
• Indiana teen charged with a felony for school sex doll prank.