Prague. I had my first taste of real Absinthe at this comic book-themed bar. Did the whole ritual with the fire and the sugar cube. It was disgusting.

You now have your very own SWAT team.

“The purpose for creating the UNCC SWAT Team is to protect the community and prevent the loss of life,” said Lieutenant Josh Huffman of Campus Police. “We must be prepared to respond to high risk situations such as those tragedies that occurred at Virginia Tech and Columbine.” . . .

With all this training it would seem these men would be anxious to use it, but they’re not. Considering the conditions needed for the men to utilize their past training, many, including Baker, never hope to see that day.

“I would be the first to admit that I hope we are never placed into action,” Baker said. “However, it is critical to be prepared to respond to a variety of serious/high risk incidents that have occurred on campuses throughout the nation.”

Yes. Virginia Tech and Columbine. Now, let’s look at the numbers: Any given middle school, high school, or college in America can expect to have exactly one homicide on its campus every 12,000 years. So how long before the UNC-Charlotte SWAT team feels the need to justify its existence by expanding its mission? I predict they’re serving drug warrants and raiding frat houses within a year.

• 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.’”

Prague.

The FBI takes the isolated incident into horror-film territory.

It’s going to be a while before things get back to normal for Judy Sanchez and her three-year-old daughter.

Last Thursday, a team of FBI agents swarmed her apartment building as part of a massive citywide drug and weapons gang raid.

Trouble is, Sanchez lives in apartment 2R.

The suspect they were after is in 2F.

At 6:04 last Thursday morning, just before Sanchez’ alarm was set to go off, she heard a pounding outside her second floor apartment.

“I just happened to glance over and saw this huge chainsaw ripping down the side of my door,” she explains. “And I was freaking out. I didn’t know what was going on.”

Within moments, the chainsaw had cut through most of her door, and someone on the FBI’s arrest team kicked the rest of it in.

“That’s when I heard the clicking of a gun and I heard ‘FBI, get down!’, so I laid right on down.

If the purpose of these raids is to take dangerous people by surprise before they can shoot back at police, how exactly does taking the door down with a chainsaw fit that strategy?

• Breaking Bad as a retro video game.
• FDA monitored the personal email accounts of suspected whistleblowers.
• Gary Johnson gets a standing ovation after speaking to an ACLU convention.
• TSA agents get a case of the Mondays, accidentally leave some suspected pipe bombs lying around.
•  . . . so it only makes sense to expand the agency to start policing “cruise ships, at NASCAR races, on buses, and at train stations.“
• Federal judge in Oregon rules that recording police is protected by the First Amendment.
• Similarities between SOPA and Europe’s proposed “right to be forgotten.”

Prague.

We did another “Songs From My Couch” session last night, this time with the Nashville band Stagolee. They were fantastic.  It’ll be a couple weeks before the sound and video are mixed and edited. But in the meantime, here’s a little preview from what I’ll call the “drum cam.”

Man gets the stun gun treatment for walking his dogs off-leash.

A Montara man walking two lapdogs off leash was hit with an electric-shock gun by a National Park Service ranger after allegedly giving a false name and trying to walk away, authorities said Monday.

The park ranger encountered Gary Hesterberg with his two small dogs Sunday afternoon at Rancho Corral de Tierra, which was recently incorporated into the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, said Howard Levitt, a spokesman for the park service.

Hesterberg, who said he didn’t have identification with him, allegedly gave the ranger a false name, Levitt said.

The ranger, who wasn’t identified, asked Hesterberg to remain at the scene, Levitt said. He tried several times to leave, and finally the ranger “pursued him a little bit and she did deploy her” electric-shock weapon, Levitt said. “That did stop him.” . . .

Witnesses said the use of a stun gun and the arrest seemed excessive for someone walking two small dogs off leash.

“It was really scary,” said Michelle Babcock, who said she had seen the incident as she and her husband were walking their two border collies. “I just felt so bad for him.”

Babcock said Hesterberg had repeatedly asked the ranger why he was being detained. She didn’t answer him, Babcock said.

After shocking him, the ranger did at least call paramedics. Then she arrested him. The park only recently started requiring dogs to be on a leash. Apparently, the ranger was merely trying to provide the man a service.

The ranger was trying to educate residents of the rule, Levitt said.

Lesson learned, I guess. Note too that the ranger is the only person in the story not mentioned by name.

Prague.

This week at Huffington Post, I’ll be posting a three-part series on the latest outbreak of prescription painkiller panic.

The first part is up today.

• Interesting question: Should federally-funded research at private organizations be available to the public for free? I’m inclined to say yes. But I’d be interested to hear if there’s an argument for no.
• Photos from London during the 1939 blackout.
• Nice story about actress Sonja Sohn’s volunteer work in Baltimore after The Wire.
• George Will on Obama’s penchant for martial rhetoric.
• Woman injured during Ogden puppycide on a pit bull.
• Your “Newt Gingrich is a hypocritical phony” story of the day.
• Related: Seven million dead Ukrainians call facile comparisons of petty election-year politics to the crimes of murderous authoritarian dictators “Palin-Esque.”

So my friend Matt Klokel has started a cool little business in which you send him your script for a comic book, pick an artist from the roster he has on staff, and he turns your script into a comic. (Just the graphics. As yet, he doesn’t offer actual printing.) It’s called C-BAD, or Comic Book Artists on Demand.

To kick off the business, he asked if I wanted to do a free five-page comic. Sounds like fun. But I feel like the opportunity would be wasted on my limited comic book experience. So I’m going to let you, Agitator readers, write the script. Here’s how it will work:

I’ll put up a post asking for ideas for the first page. You’ll post your manuscripts in the comments section. I’ll pick four or five (assuming there are at least that many), and we’ll then vote on which one wins. The next week, I’ll take ideas for the second page, which of course would need to begin where the first page plot left off. We’ll do this until we have a five-page comic book written and approved by Agitator readers. It will be posted to the web when it’s done. If there’s interest, maybe we’ll figure out a way to make printed copies available.

No real rules about plot or content. Just don’t be an asshole. And you don’t need to make me a character. In fact, from what I know of some of your twisted minds, I’d rather you didn’t! But whatever we end up with, well, that’s what we’ll end up with. This could be pretty great. Or it could go horribly off the rails. Which I guess is part of the fun.

Check here for manuscript guidelines, and here for suggestions on how to write a better one.

I’ll put up a post calling for scripts for the first page later this week. But first, we need to vote on an artist. You can check out samples of each artist’s work here.

Prague.

• Ian Fleming couldn’t have invented a villain like this guy. “As head of the military’s chemical and biological warfare division, he is accused of creating viruses that would only attack black people.”
• Study says size doesn’t matter.
• Orwellian headline of the day.
• As I was reading this, I kept thinking, “There’s no way this is going where it seems to be going.” But that’s exactly where it goes. And then beyond.
• EFF’s Jillian York explains why the Twitter backlash is misguided.
• Old photos of people who look like their pets.
• No free speech on Bourbon Street.

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.

• We have rules.
• Someone was mean to a politician on the Internet. So the politician wants to break the Internet.
• Some top-notch detective work reveals that Ice Cube’s “Good Day” was January 20, 1992.
• Art and The Simpsons.
• You aren’t good enough to own this homeless dog.
• The EU contemplates an absurd new “right to be forgotten online.” 
• So here’s my question about the Twitter boycott: Is it better for Twitter to censor Tweets in countries that require it, but be open and transparent about the censorship, or to refuse to censor Tweets, and have those countries ban Twitter entirely?

You may remember Gwinnett County, Georgia from such hits as “Where Did the Coke Go?,”  “Smothered, Covered, and Tasered,”   “The I Accidentally Entered the Wrong House and Killed a Dalmatian Blues”  “Disabled Guy and a SWAT Team,”  “No-Knock, Wrong Wouse,”  and the follow-up just a few months later, “Sorry We Pointed Our Guns at Your Baby (We Got the Wrong House Again.)”

Now, Sheriff Butch Conway has entered the world of web video, teaming up with a Bail Bonds outfit to bring you a video roundup of Northeast Metro Atlanta’s biggest dirtbags*, complete with a bitchin’ guitar soundtrack and bad-ass crime reenactments. Enjoy!

(*Note: All suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty. You pussy.)

Great bit of reporting by my HuffPost colleague Elise Foley:

 On a single day this past fall, the United States government held 13,185 people in immigration detention who had not been convicted of a crime, some of whom will not be charged with one, according to information The Huffington Post obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Instead, at a cost of roughly 2 million taxpayer dollars per day, the men and women were detained while immigration authorities sorted out their fates.

This case stands in stark contrast to the stated goal of immigration policy under the administration of President Barack Obama: to detain and deport unauthorized immigrants who’ve been convicted of crimes.

“ICE is focused on smart, effective immigration enforcement that prioritizes the removal of convicted criminal aliens, fugitives, recent illegal border crossers and egregious immigration law violators, such as those who have been previously removed from the United States,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Nicole Navas said in a statement. “ICE’s enforcement approach is enhancing public safety in communities around the country.”

The FOIA request for information on all immigrants in detention on Oct. 3, 2011, turned up a list of nearly 32,300. Forty percent of those held by ICE had not been convicted of a crime, nor were they awaiting criminal trial. Despite what the term “illegal immigration” implies, simply being in the country without status is a civil, not a criminal, offense.

Rapists and murderers, frequently cited as the main unauthorized immigrants ICE is trying to remove, made up a far smaller percentage of those held that day than the innocent, traffic violators or low-level drug offenders, according to ICE’s crime breakdown.

“The fact is, we’re not deporting huge numbers of rapists and murderers,” said Emily Tucker, director of policy and advocacy for the Detention Watch Network, which pushes for limiting detention and deportation. “They would like us to think that, but that isn’t what is going on.”

Locking people up is big business. The Corrections Corporation of America, which gives heavily to both parties, is explicit about the connection between immigrant detention policy and the private prison company’s bottom line. “[T]he demand for our correctional and detention facilities and services … could be adversely affected by changes in existing criminal or immigration laws, crime rates in jurisdictions in which we operate, the relaxation of criminal or immigration enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction, sentencing or deportation practices, and the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by criminal laws or the loosening of immigration laws,” the company wrote in an analysis for investors filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “Immigration reform laws which are currently a focus for legislators and politicians at the federal, state and local level also could materially adversely impact us.”

I’ve poked fun at the HuffPost commenters for faulting private prisons for nearly everything that’s wrong with the criminal justice system. But the connection between private prisons, detention policy, and the odious immigration laws in states like Arizona is pretty hard to deny. I’ve never really been comfortable with private prisons. Whether they’re more efficient or cost effective is less important to me than the fact that I don’t like having a government-created industry whose bottom line is dependent on keeping as many people behind bars as possible. (I have similar feelings about defense contractors, though there are some important differences.) They also tend to be less transparent, and in many cases aren’t covered by open records laws.

Last July’s criminal justice issue of Reason also had  a good feature by Jesse James deConto explaining the odd legal space occupied by immigration detention centers.

The great Warren Zevon would have been 65 this week. Here’s my favorite:

• Stephen Colbert is making an important point with his Super PAC, but not the point he thinks he’s making.
• Cops on the Internet.
• Man gets Tasered, beaten despite having committed no crime. Federal judge finds that the force was excessive, and orders damages for pain and suffering in the amount of . . . one dollar.
• Guy Fieri, eating things in reverse.
• Permanent moon bases, bringing dinosaurs back to life, and pondering the possibilities of space sex: Just another glimpse into the ideas-cluttered mind of Newt Gingrich.
• Thanks to collective bargaining, public school teachers in Buffalo get free plastic surgery.
• Nickelback has had enough.

Prague.

I eagerly await an FTC investigation.

Mayor Bloomberg’s New York City health department has come in for repeated criticism in this space and elsewhere for crusading against salty and fattening foods through ad campaigns that manipulate viewer reactions in ways that border on the misleading and deceptive (“What can we get away with?” famously asked one official). They’re at it again. On January 9, Gotham’s for-your-own-good crew unveiled a new ad warning “Portions have grown. So has Type 2 diabetes, which can lead to amputations,” dramatically illustrated with a photo of an obese man with a stump where his leg had been. But as the New York Times reports, city officials “did not let on that the man shown — whose photo came from a company that supplies stock images to advertising firms and others — was not an amputee and may not have had diabetes.” Instead, they just Photoshopped his leg off, which certainly got the effect they were looking for, albeit at the cost of photographic reality.