Taking on Obama over the NDAA and indefinite detention.

Five months ago George’s, a New York City diner, got an “A” on its city health inspection. But after an inspection a month ago that he thought was unfair, the owner decided to record his most recent inspection with his cell phone.

From the New York Post:

When the inspector spotted owner Bill Koulmentas’ cellphone scheme, he quickly hit George’s with a slew of violations — totaling 65 points.

Koulmentas was accused of everything from having cracked eggs to keeping cold food too hot and hot food too cold.

. . . just wait until you read what labor activist/journalist Mike Elk has in mind for TSA.

Elk thinks TSA agents should have arrest powers  due to the “dangerous” nature of their work. He also describes the TSA’s working conditions as “brutal.”

The brutality, Elk believes, stems from the low morale among TSA employees. Rather than direct his ire at the cause of that low morale—that they’re enforcing policies that hassle, degrade, humiliate and inconvenience the flying public for no discernible security benefit—Elk scolds TSA critics, questions their motives, blames the media for giving critics a voice, and demands more compliance with government demands, less scrutiny and more pay for government workers, more power for government employees to use force, and less accountability for them when they do.

Ken at Popehat delivers some appropriate ridicule.

The odd thing is, if Elk is worried about TSA’s poor public image causing low morale, his proposals are only going to make all of that worse. When TSA agents start arresting travelers who mouth off, or the public learns they’re now paid like New York/New Jersey toll collectors, I can’t imagine that’s going to help travelers warm up to them.

MORE: On Twitter, Mike Elk sends me this:

 can u read? I never said TSA should have arrest power. I said not having it made their job risky at times. Ur a liar

And looking back over his piece, it seems he’s right. He does (a) point out the dangerous working environment of TSA, (b) spends a few paragraphs discussing how they aren’t allowed to arrest people, and (c) suggests their job would be much easier and safer if they could arrest people, but he never (d) explicitly argues they should have arrest powers. Of course, he never (E) explains why giving them arrest powers would be a bad idea. Which, if he believes it would be, would make some sense to include for clarification after just after he’s made points A, B, and C.  I’m also not not really sure how you can go to the trouble of making points A, B, and C, omit E, and then be angry that someone would reach conclusion D. I guess he believes collective bargaining rights will somehow compensate for the horrific and brutal work environment that is America’s airports (we have to eat Sbarro!), best expressed by the TSA worker who—in a completely non-melodramatic way, I’m sure—lamented to Elk that, “any bag I open could be my last.”

ICE mistakenly deports a 14-year-old U.S. citizen to Colombia.

Turner has been searching for Jakadrien since the fall of 2010, when she ran away from home. She was 14 years old and distraught over the loss of her grandfather and her parents’ divorce.

Turner searched for months for a clue.

“God just kept leading me,” she said. “I wake up in the middle of the night and do whatever God told me to do, and I found her.”

Turner said with the help of Dallas Police, she found her granddaughter in the most unexpected place – Colombia.

Where she had mistakenly been deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in April of 2011.

“They didn’t do their work,” Turner said. “How do you deport a teenager and send her to Colombia without a passport, without anything?”

News 8 learned that Jakadrien somehow ended up in Houston, where she was arrested by Houston police for theft. She gave Houston police a fake name. When police in Houston ran that name, it belonged to a 22-year-old illegal immigrant from Columbia, who had warrants for her arrest.

So ICE officials stepped in.

News 8 has learned ICE took the girl’s fingerprints, but somehow didn’t confirm her identity and deported her to Colombia, where the Colombian government gave her a work card and released her.

She doesn’t speak Spanish, and has no ties to Colombia whatsoever. The Colombian government is now refusing to release her from a detention center.

This is some Hall of Fame-level incompetence. Want to bet that no one gets fired?

Sorry. I couldn’t resist.

In all seriousness, that Santorum is the big story tonight shows just how ephemeral campaign coverage can be. If I had predicted two years ago that a warmongering, evangelical, career politician would win the 2012 Iowa GOP Caucuses, you’d have shrugged a meh. That’s about what you’d have expected would happen (see: Huckabee, Mike).

But if I had predicted that a stridently anti-war politician—who also wants to end the drug war, and who won a higher ACLU rating than any other candidate running in either of the two major parties—would finish third, and was four percentage points from winning, you’d likely have told me I was nuts. Yet because Paul began his ascent a few weeks ago, his showing is tonight is already old news.

Paul’s showing tonight wasn’t about racist newsletters, 9/11 trutherism, or take your pick of nutty Alex Jones conspiracy theories. Paul won strong support from young people, independents, and traditional conservatives tonight. Some like him on the drug war. Some like him for attempting to hold the Federal Reserve more transparent and accountable. (Paul would abolish it entirely, of course. But he’s shooting for transparent and accountable for now.) All of the aforementioned groups seem to like him on cleaving the debt and bringing U.S. troops home from overseas. The GOP establishment wants none of him. But now they have to deal with him, and they have to deal with his arguments. They can’t just assume perpetual war as a given. There’s a small but emerging faction in the party that finds the idea offensive. That’s largely because of Ron Paul. And that’s a healthy thing.

Paul has also pushed all of these issues beyond the GOP and into the national discussion. He deserves a ton of credit for that, too. I still prefer Gary Johnson to Paul, for reasons I’ll explain in the next few days. But you could make a strong argument that tonight’s results represent the most significant contribution a libertarian has ever made to presidential politics. Ron Paul is the man who made it. And both the country and libertarianism are better for it.

Beautiful, vivid time lapse videos from Moscow.

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)

So I ordered a 16×24 canvas print of this photo I took in New Orleans, and for some reason they sent me two. So if you want one, send me an email and I’ll ship it to you gratis. Preference goes to someone who lives or lived in New Orleans. It is a Radley Balko original! Which means it probably has a market value of approximately what you’ll be paying for it.

Another important case from the Institute for Justice shows how laws passed under the guise of disclosure and clean elections quickly become a barrier to free speech and civic engagement.

Vance Justice, Sharon Bynum, Matt Johnson, Alison Kinnaman and Stan O’Dell are Mississippi citizens that simply want to join together and speak out in favor of Initiative 31—an effort that would provide Mississippi citizens with greater protection from eminent domain abuse. But if they spend just $200 on signs, buttons and flyers without first registering with the government and navigating a complex web of regulations, they would be subject to fines and possible criminal penalties . . .

Like many Americans, the Plaintiffs in this case—Dr. Stan O’Dell, Sharon Bynum, Matt Johnson, Vance Justice, and Alison Kinnaman—care deeply about the direction of the country, its laws, and its political leaders. For several years, the group has been meeting informally near their homes in Oxford, Mississippi to discuss political and legal issues of the day. Occasionally, they have engaged in activism, organizing rallies and passing out copies of the Constitution on Constitution Day . . .

One issue the Plaintiffs have discussed often is private property rights, and, specifically, the impact on property rights of the power of eminent domain. They, like many Americans, were outraged over the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London, that upheld the use of eminent domain for economic development. As a result, they were quite happy when eminent domain reform made it onto the ballot this year, in the form of Initiative 31 . . .

The Plaintiffs support Initiative 31 and would like to convince their neighbors to vote for it as well. Unfortunately, they face a stumbling block that all too many Americans face when they wish to speak out about political issues—the campaign finance laws.

Most people think laws affect only those running for office. Few are aware that the laws restrict the ability of ordinary Americans to advocate for or against ballot issues. These laws impose serious burdens on First Amendment rights and can result in crushing legal costs and penalties when they are violated. The regulations in Mississippi and other states starkly illustrate how campaign finance laws strangle citizen speech.

Under Mississippi law, any time two or more people join together to spend more than $200 to support or oppose a ballot issue, they become a fully regulated political committee.[3] At today’s prices, even a quarter-page advertisement in the local newspaper, or just a handful of signs and flyers can cost over $200.

Thus, just for trying to speak effectively, the Plaintiffs would have to register with the state, appoint a Director and Treasurer, and file monthly, annual, and other periodic reports of their activities. These reports require the Plaintiffs to keep track of every single dollar that is spent or contributed, and from whom that dollar came. If one of the Plaintiffs just drives to a copy shop to pick up flyers, the value of the gas has to be reported as a contribution.

The reports also require the Plaintiffs to keep track of a great deal of personal information about themselves and their supporters. They have to keep track of each contributor’s name, street address, occupation and employer, together with the amounts and dates of their contributions. Even individuals who wish to spend more than $200 of their own money must report their personal information and activities to the state.

To make matters worse, all the personal information they have to report is made public on the internet for all the world to see. This gives strangers—and potentially political opponents or even identity thieves—access to names, addresses, telephone numbers, occupations, employers, and political views.

Yet another area of public life where you now need to hire an attorney merely to keep yourself out of jail.  Or at least from being fined. Some 24 states have laws like the one in Mississippi.  Justice v. Hosemann is part of a broader IJ campaign to overturn similarly burdensome campaign finance laws around the country.

Comment of the day, in response to this post:

I want to commend the vast majority of the denizens of this blog for your relentless hostility and poor taste. I had seen the linked article elsewhere and noted it as nothing more than a typical liberal cheapshot. Your disdain for tradition is inspiring! Inspiring those in the middle to move to the right and inspiring those on the right to fight harder for the soul of our country. Keep up the good work! I know you will because you can’t help it.

Also, in the same thread, regular commenter CyniCAL makes a heartfelt plea to cease use of the phrase “assless chaps.”

• Company that made TSA-confiscated cupcake spins a t-shirt out of the episode. I love it.
• The world’s strangest toys.
• 2011, as seen from space.
• Harris County ADA pleads the 5th in criminal investigation of cover-up of botched DWI cases, remains on the job.
• Meanwhile, a defense attorney in Ohio Michigan is found in contempt, jailed for advising his client to take the 5th.
• Russia’s anti-Putin protests grow.
• City birds and country birds may no longer speak the same language.
• The perils of opening a bar in Baghdad.

• A Christmas pun.
• Christmas wish list: 1975.
• Vengeful Christmas card.
• A very Portal Christmas.
• Photo collection of unexpected Santa sightings.
• Sweden’s bizarre Donald Duck Christmas tradition.
• Amusing kids’ Christmas letters.

Well done.

The gay and lesbian community of Minnesota has issued a letter of apology to recently resigned Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch for ruining the institution of marriage and causing her to stray from her husband and engage in an “inappropriate relationship.”

“On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community’s successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage,” reads the letter from John Medeiros. “We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry.”

Because I’m in a giving, holiday mood.

• I called. It works.
• Drone operators report severe stress.
• A reminder that governments can be startlingly efficient when they set their sights on killing.
• The FDA vs. commercial speech. And patients.
• Cop fires off a nice rant in defense of cops who criticize the drug war.
• That videographer who was arrested while shooting b-roll outside a building, and was then preposterously charged with making a terroristic bomb threat . . . has been acquitted.

Today’s revolting defense of a murderous communist regime comes by way of the Times of London.

The State’s founder, Kim Il Sung, claimed that all he wanted for North Korea was to be socialist, and to be left alone. In that regard, the national philosophy of self-reliance known in North Korea as “Juche” is little different from India’s Gandhian version known as “swadeshi”. Just let us get on with it, they said, and without interference, please.

India’s attempt to go it alone failed. So, it seems, has Burma’s. Perhaps inevitably, North Korea’s attempt appears to be tottering. But seeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.

That’s prolific author Simon Winchester, standing athwart the tide of history and yelling, “Starve!”

The actual column is behind a paywall. (Via Libertarian Samizdata.)

Dear God, this is funny.

Other candidates get the same treatment here. And yes, Ron Paul will haunt your prostate.

(Via Hit & Run)

Here are the 20 most-read posts of the past year. The first one went viral in both conservative/limited government circles and organic food/locavore circiles. Consequently, it is far and away the most trafficked post of all-time. By a factor of about five. Guest blogger Dave Kruger also cracked the top 20.

Here’s the list:

1. Does Michelle Obama Know About This?

2. We’re Going To Molest You. And Then We’re Going To Make You Pay for It.

3. The Trial of Tiawanda Moore

4. He Won

5. Video of the Pima County SWAT Raid

6. So How Is This Different From Armed Robbery?

7. First Circuit Panel Says There’s a Clear Constitutional Right To Openly Record Cops.

8. Short But Sweet

9. Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams Should Be Arrested

10. Ignornace of the Law Is No . . . You Know the Drill.

11. L.A. Teen Charged With “Attempted Lynching” Now Raided by Police

12. It’s His Party, and He’ll Cry If He Wants To

13. MSNBC Marches Ahead With Its Own Set of Facts

14. When Donald Trump Didn’t Need Proof

15. Petty Thuggishness in Rochester

16. Police: Man Killed by Police During Paramilitary Police Raid Shows Danger of Paramilitary Police Raids Dangers Police Must Face Everyday

17. Email From a Cop

18. Dildos for Justice

19. Why Is Rick Perry the Poster Boy for Limited Government?

20. Indiana Court: You have no right to keep cops out of your house

I have a new post at the Nashville blog profiling Manuel, the tailor to the music industry. He has dressed five presidents, is the one who talked Johnny Cash into wearing black, and can claim credit for the Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones (maybe) logos.

His studio is right down the road from me, so I walked over to have a chat with him.

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.

. . . 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.)

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.)

• 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.