We Need to Stop Executing Peoplel

Last night, the state of Georgia executed a man who was very likely innocent. Like PZ, I don't care whether he was guilty or innocent. I care that my country is one of the few countries in the world that executes people.

From Wikipedia

I used to be a strong death penalty supporter. Some crimes, I thought, could only be adequately punished by death. I didn't ever believe it acted as a general deterrent, but as former FBI agent John Douglas said in Mindhunter, it surely acts as a specific deterrent: that particular person will never commit a crime again. When you're talking about serial killers, that seems like an admirable thing.

But we kill too many innocent people. We come close to killing far more, before luck and persistence and the existence of DNA evidence, uncovered by tireless investigators, come to the rescue. Those are the lucky ones. Those are the ones who aren't denied the chance to prove their innocence. How many other people have gone to their deaths because no DNA evidence existed, or if it did was never found, or if found, never allowed to be presented? We don't know. And it's unbearable that we don't know.

So what about those cases in which evidence of guilt is undeniable? Where we definitely have the right person, and the crimes they committed are horrific?

I still don't support the death penalty. Not even for them. Oh, I may want them to die, and die horribly; that visceral emotional reaction, that righteous outrage, is certainly there. But a civilized society should restrain itself. All we gain is another dead person, another traumatized family, proof that we aren't able to rise above bronze age ideas of justice. We engage in violence to punish violence, and make our civilization just that much more violent.

Life in prison, no parole, is enough to keep society safe.

We spend an insane amount of money on killing people. That money would be far better spent on improving the conditions that lead people to violence in the first place. A society that takes care of its vulnerable members has less to fear from them, and so much to gain.

Troy Davis should be the last person to be put to death in this country. We're the last country in North America to execute people. It's time we joined Canada and Mexico in recognizing what justice truly is.

Ed Brayton Praises Police: Dana Hunter Taken to Hospital with Heart Failure

If you're a regular reader of Dispatches from the Culture Wars, you know that Ed Brayton gleefully exposes every bit of police corruption that comes his way.  He's merciless.  And so, this post rather took me by surprise.

It starts out normally enough:

Dozens of convictions for drunk driving are suspect now that a routine audit of a crime lab in Colorado Springs showed that the results of those tests were typically overstated by the lab's testing.

And so I read on for the smackdown.  Instead, I got this:

The good news is that the local police and prosecutors seem to be taking this seriously and looking to do the right thing:

"We're not going to be relying upon any questionable blood alcohol content results," he said. "The District Attorney's office and the Colorado Springs Police realize how serious it is and we're acting accordingly."

"We don't want to treat anybody as guilty if they're not," he added...

And then he gives them kudos.  Kudos!

I don't know if my world will ever be the same again.

Oh, and Colorado Springs?  Kudos to ye for caring more about truth than convictions.

Excellent Idea

Looks like the AMA's got its head on pretty straight (h/t):

The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research.

The nation's largest physicians organization, with about 250,000 member doctors, the AMA has maintained since 1997 that marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin and LSD.

In changing its policy, the group said its goal was to clear the way to conduct clinical research, develop cannabis-based medicines and devise alternative ways to deliver the drug.

Good on them. Marijuana deserves to be a Schedule I controlled substance just about as much as I deserve to win a Strongman competition (those in doubt, see photo in sidebar).  And for those, like me, who utterly cannot stand the smell, an alternate method of delivery would be a supremely awesome idea in case we should ever need to ingest it medically.

Let's hope the Powers that Be know a good idea when the AMA slaps them with it.

Driving While ESL

I don't even know what to say:

Of course, the local cops are calling it a "rookie mistake":

A Dallas rookie police officer erred when he cited a woman earlier this month for being a non-English speaking driver, police said.

Officer Gary Bromley issued a citation Oct. 2 to 48-year-old Ernestina Mondragon after stopping her for making an illegal U-turn in the 500 block of Easton Road, near East Northwest Highway, according to a copy of the citation.

"That's a charge that does not exist here in the city of Dallas," said department spokesman Sgt. Warren Mitchell. "Although we believe it was a sincere mistake ... there's no excuse for it."

And there was no excuse the other 39 times over the last 3 years, either.

I love cops.  I truly do.  The vast majority of them work hard, and they're good men and women who follow the law.  But it's time for Dallas to get rid of their bad apples, starting with the ones at the top of the basket.

Rick Perry Sez The Death Penalty Works Great, Thankyousoverymuch

Has no one told this man how to determine when it's a good time to put the fucking shovel down?

A little thing like being shown to have probably executed an innocent man isn't going to get in the way of continuing to put people to death, if Texas governor Rick Perry has anything to do with it.

Said Perry yesterday:

Our process works, and I don't see anything out there that would merit calling for a moratorium on the Texas death penalty. It's fair and appropriate, and we will continue with it.

Oh, he put the shovel down, all right.  He needed his hands free so he could light the dynamite.

This Is How Unhinged The Right's Getting

The Secret Service is so snowed under with threats (and not just against Obama, mind you) that they're considering giving up some of their other raisons d’être:

The threats against President Obama and other U.S. leaders are putting a strain on the Secret Service that's overwhelming the agency.

The unprecedented number of death threats against President Obama, a rise in racist hate groups, and a new wave of antigovernment fervor threaten to overwhelm the US Secret Service, according to government officials and reports, raising new questions about the 144-year-old agency's overall mission.

The Secret Service is tracking a far broader range of possible threats to the nation's leaders, the officials said, even as it also investigates financial crimes such as counterfeiting as part of its original mandate.

The new demands are leading some officials, both inside and outside the agency, to raise the possibility of the service curtailing or dropping its role in fighting financial crime to focus more on protecting leaders and their families from assassination attempts and thwarting terrorist plots aimed at high-profile events.

Even as the size of the Secret Service's staff and budget grow, the agency is struggling to keep up with demands on its time. On the one hand, the Secret Service is still in the business of investigating financial crimes, searching for missing and exploited children, and possibly even expanding its role in probing mortgage fraud. On the other, domestic threats against U.S. leaders, most notably the president, have escalated considerably.

Threatening language has also found its way into talk radio broadcasts and social networking websites, raising fears that individuals not normally considered threats to the president could be incited to violence.

Gee.  Whodathunk that Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter et al could've created such a perfect storm of stupidity, paranoia and fear that your common idiot might take up a gun and start shooting any and every evil librul they can lay lead on, eh? 

It's pretty fucking sad we as a country have come to this.  It really is.

Just When You Thought Perry Couldn't Get More Despicable

He goes and calls a very-likely-innocent dead man a monster:

Texas governor Rick Perry has defended his handling of a death penalty case that may have led to the execution of an innocent man -- and launched an extraordinary attack on the dead man himself.

The Chicago Tribune reports that Perry yesterday called Cameron Todd Wilingham a "monster," a "bad man," and "a guy who murdered his three children, who tried to beat his wife into an abortion so that she wouldn't have those kids."

Hey, Rick?  If he was bad as all that, if the evidence was airtight and he really did this and deserved to die, why are you so fucking intent on making sure there's no investigation?

Something tells me it's not the dead man who's the monster.

Perry's Situation Deteriorates

Rick, Rick, Rick.  Who've thought it could get any worse?

Things are looking worse and worse for Texas governor Rick Perry, accused of stifling a state panel's probe into that flawed arson investigation that may have led to the execution of an innocent man.

Sam Bassett, the former chair of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, has now told the Houston Chronicle that lawyers for Perry told him the case was inappropriate, and that the hiring of a nationally known fire expert was a "waste of state money."

Because the state sure as shit doesn't want to waste money ensuring it doesn't execute innocent people.

Gov. Perry Takes It Further

Criminally oblivious piece of shit, innit he?

But Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), who was governor when the state killed Willingham, was apparently afraid of what the truth might show. In the 11th hour, Perry fired some of the Forensic Science Commission's members, ensuring that the panel couldn't hold a meeting to discuss the case.

Publius explained this morning that Perry is still at it.

He's now removed a fourth member of the Texas commission responsible for investigating whether Texas (and Perry) executed an innocent man. It's whitewashing at its worst. [...]

What's amazing is not so much that Perry replaced the panel members, but that he felt secure enough to be so brazenly corrupt about it.... [H]is motive is fairly clear. Perry contributed to the execution of an innocent person. And the formal recognition that Texas executed an innocent man would trigger a massive political earthquake -- one that would clarify to an inattentive public the utter barbarity and immorality of Texas's criminal justice system.

So yes, I can understand Perry's motives. But it doesn't change the fact that he is acting in a profoundly immoral way. The whole thing reminds me of a banana republic dictator clumsily covering up his crimes.

[snip]

It's a genuine disgrace and an embarrassment to the country.

I hope Perry ends up in a Texas prison together with all those men he's condemned.  I truly do.

Perry Petrified of the Truth

That's the only conclusion you can come to when you look at the evidence.

If you read Pharyngula, you already know that Texas very likely executed an innocent man.  And instead of trying to find out the truth in order to prevent future travesties, Gov. Perry's been doing everything he can to ensure the truth never comes out.

And I do mean everything:

It's starting to look more and more like Texas governor Rick Perry orchestrated an effort to thwart a state probe into an arson investigation that may have led to the execution of an innocent man.

Sam Bassett -- the former chair of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, who Perry declined to reappoint last month -- is now saying that Perry's aides tried to pressure him over the direction of the inquiry his panel was conducting into the steps that led to the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham for arson. Perry, as governor, signed off on the execution, despite clear evidence that the investigation was flawed.

Bassett told the Chicago Tribune over the weekend that he twice was summoned to meetings with Perry's top attorneys, who said explicitly that they were unhappy with the how the panel's probe was being conducted. At one meeting, Perry's lawyers questioned how much it was costing, and asked why the panel had hired a nationally known arson expert -- rather than a Texas fire scientist -- to look into the case. Bassett added that after that meeting, a staffer from the Texas general counsel's office started attending commission meetings.

Said Bassett to the Tribune:

I was surprised that they were involving themselves in the commission's decision-making. I did feel some pressure from them, yes. There's no question about that.

I used to be a death penalty advocate.  But it's cases like this, together with other grievous miscarriages of justice and the general horrific unfairness in its application, that turned me against it.  Too many innocent people, too many mentally ill or incompetent people, get annihilated by the state's zeal to kill in the name of justice.

Some people aren't fit to live in civilized society, true.  Just look at Gov. Perry and you see the truth of that.

I hope this brings him down. 

At Last, Consequences

Let's hope this is just the beginning:

This criminal investigation probably isn't getting quite as much attention as it deserves.

The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her, according to officials in federal law enforcement and the Interior Department.

The criminal investigation centers on the Interior Department's 2006 decision to award three lucrative oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a Shell subsidiary. Over the years it would take to extract the oil, according to calculations from Shell and a Rand Corp. expert, the deal could net the company hundreds of billions of dollars.

[snip]

That emphasis on the first criminal investigation of a Bush official at the "Cabinet secretary level" is important, because there have been criminal probes of all kinds of Bush administration officials, just not usually this high-ranking.

But Norton's alleged crimes are of particular interest given what we know about her cabinet agency in the Bush era. As Tim Dickinson recently explained, "Under Bush, the Interior Department became a lawless bureaucracy that actively worked to enrich the nation's most powerful energy interests. Top-level officials secretly allowed oil companies to keep billions in royalties owed to taxpayers, opened up 26 million acres of federal land to oil and gas drilling, denied wilderness protection to another 220 million acres, rewrote scientific reports to eliminate safeguards for endangered species, and even snorted coke and had sex with the very oil interests they were supposed to be regulating."

That's not hyperbole; it's literally true. Indeed, Dickinson's description is soft-pedaling what was a spectacular national embarrassment.

One of many, I'm afraid. Hopefully, the Justice Department can use this investigation to acclimate itself to the idea of holding criminal members of the Bush regime accountable, and eventually work their way up to the fucktards who turned America into a nation of torturers.

Dept. of Irony: "Indian Muslim actor racially-profiled in U.S. while visiting to promote film about racial profiling of Muslims"

Way to prove the point, America:

This past Saturday, one of Bollywood’s most recognizable movie stars, Shah Rukh Khan, was detained because of his surname at Newark Liberty International Airport and questioned for over two hours before being released. The Wall Street Journal reports that Khan was in the U.S. to promote his new film about the racial profiling of Muslims...

Somewhere, an irony meter just exploded...

A Little More Tarnish for the Bush Legacy

I do believe that at the end of the day, the Bush regime will go down in American history as the most corrupt, dirty, rotten and downright disgusting administration ever. They're already the biggest bunch of scoundrels seen on our national stage, and the revelations just keep coming:

In an important new article from Murray Waas, writing at The Hill, we have at long last fresh news on the Rick Renzi corruption case in Arizona, and it turns out that officials in the Bush Administration improperly leaked out information compromising the investigation of Renzi, and did so for sheer political gain immediately prior to the 2006 elections.

In the fall of 2006, one day after the Justice Department granted permission to a U.S. attorney to place a wiretap on a Republican congressman suspected of corruption, existence of the investigation was leaked to the press — not only compromising the sensitive criminal probe but tipping the lawmaker off to the wiretap.

Career federal law enforcement officials who worked directly on a probe of former Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) said they believe that word of the investigation was leaked by senior Bush administration political appointees in the Justice Department in an improper and perhaps illegal effort to affect the outcome of an election.

At the time of the leak, Renzi was locked in a razor-thin bid for reelection and unconfirmed reports of a criminal probe could have become politically damaging. The leaked stories — appearing 10 days before the election — falsely suggested that the investigation of Renzi was in its initial stages and unlikely to lead to criminal charges.

As you will recall, Renzi's indictment (or lack thereof at the time) was a critical prong in the greater US Attorney firing scandal, specifically as to Arizona US Attorney Paul Charlton.

Read the rest of Bmaz's article, and you'll see this image in a whole new light:

Friends buy you birthday cake. Bush White House friends shield you from embarrassing corruption investigations and possible prosecution, then buy you a birthday cake while a city drowns.

We have a long way to go in scrubbing away the taint of that regime.

Feds Express a Decided Interest in Sean Hannity's Pal Hal

Quick, my darlings, to the wayback machine! Remember this bit o' drama last January?

We're already aware that the white-supremacist crowd is already creating a higher level of security concerns surrounding Barack Obama's inauguration.

So somehow it probably figures that Sean Hannity's old pal Hal Turner would be out there leading the parade of nutcases making threats around the events.

According to Mark Potok at the SPLC, Turner has gone public this week with his threats:

On Friday, neo-Nazi threatmeister Hal Turner, amplifying on an earlier posting suggesting that it would be a good thing to use an unmanned drone carrying explosives to attack the crowds, said a mass murder of those attending the festivities “would be a public service.” “I won’t say what may happen Tuesday but I will say this,” Turner wrote on his blog. “After Tuesday, the name Hal Turner may live in infamy. Let it be known that I saw what was necessary and decided to do what had to be done. I make no apology to those affected or their families.”

Earlier, on Jan. 11, Turner had posted photos to his blog, under the headline “My Inauguration Dream,” of a small, unmanned drone, an electronic guidance system and sticks of dynamite as he laid out one method of attack. He also discussed the possibility of sending up balloons filled with helium and a “payload” and fitted with fuses that would explode the balloons over the crowds. And he displayed a grainy video that purported to show that method being tested. “Too far fetched?” Turner asks of a possible balloon attack. “It got tested and it worked! … Watch the video and imagine what payload, other than the index cards taped to the outside of the test balloons, might be substituted? HMMMMMM. Might be something messy? Something contagious? Something deadly? Ahhhh, such possibilities!” Then, last Thursday, he posted an update, saying: “All the assets that need to be in-place for next week are now in-place; deep within the security perimeter. Everything is a ‘go.’ We have crossed the Rubicon; let history judge us well.”

Hal, you poor silly shit. You're too much of an assclown to pull of your dreams of wholesale death and destruction, and you made a ginormous ass of yourself blustering threats you couldn't follow through on. But hey, congratulations - if it was just attention you were seeking, boy, you sure got it:

Today, FBI agents went to the New Jersey home of white supremacist blogger/radio host Hal Turner and arrested him “on a federal complaint filed in Chicago alleging that he made internet postings threatening to assault and murder three federal appeals court judges in Chicago in retaliation for their recent ruling upholding handgun bans in Chicago and a suburb,” according to a statement released by the Justice Department. A summary of Turner’s dangerous tirade against the judges:

Internet postings on June 2 and 3 proclaimed “outrage” over the June 2, 2009, handgun decision by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer, of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, further stating, among other things: “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed.” The postings included photographs, phone numbers, work address and room numbers of these judges, along with a photo of the building in which they work and a map of its location.

Turner’s posts also “referred to the murder of the mother and husband of Chicago-based federal Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow in February 2005,” saying, “Apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court didn’t get the hint after those killings. It appears another lesson is needed.” In the Justice Department statement, U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald — who announced the charges — said, “We take threats to federal judges very seriously. Period.”

Oh, yes, they do, Hal - yes, they do. And they'll probably want words about your Inauguration Day threats, too - forms a pattern of escalating murderous ideations, y'see.

It's okay, Hal. I'm sure you'll only get a few years, considering all you've done so far is make terroristic threats. And I'll betcha your old pal Hannity'll be happy to come visit you in prison. No, really. I mean, he hasn't got a reputation to defend, and the Faux News audience is so far gone they'll probably rally round you like a martyr.

I mean, a right wing dumbfuck enough to say this about Sanford's little dereliction of duty...

The two silliest defensive responses from before he fessed up:

"It is refreshing that Mark Sanford is secure enough in himself and the people of South Carolina that he does not view himself as an indispensable man." (Erick Erickson)

And:

"Are [Cassie] and I married to the only real men left in the entire freakin' country? Do we only want Momma's boys or Daddy's girls in the White House from here on out? Teddy Roosevelt is doing backflips in his grave right now: apparently no one is allowed to go on a writing retreat, take a road trip, or hike, hunt, or fish if they have any political ambitions at all. Unbelievable." (Little Miss Attila)

...is certainly dumbfuck enough to make excuses for you. They'll probably write you in prison and everything.

Hell, you get enough of a following going, you might even get the Charlie Manson treatment. How would you like being seen as someone so likely to incite murder and mayhem that you have to be locked up for life, eh? That's fame, that is.

Couldn't have happened to a better racist asshole, I'd say.

Something to Keep in Mind

The next time someone yawps at you about the extraordinary accomplishments of the Bush regime, you might want to drop this little tidbit on them (h/t):

Former Congresswoman and prosecutor Liz Holtzman makes a good point:

The criminal justice system identified and convicted some of those involved in the 1993 World Trade Center attacks. By contrast, not one person has been prosecuted for the 9/11 attacks, although seven and a half years have gone by. Even Khalid Sheik Mohammed, one of the masterminds of 9/11, is unlikely ever to be convicted in US courts because he was repeatedly subjected to torture. Significantly, the cruel and torturous methods used on detainees never yielded enough information to capture Osama Bin Laden or his chief deputy. So much for the claims of torture's efficacy.

So what the fuck have we done for the last nearly 8 years? Oh. That's right. Invaded the wrong fucking country so that a bunch of pathetic losers could play out their War President fantasies.

Anyone who still thinks the Bush regime was good for this country after clicking these three links is so terminally stupid that further conversation is useless.

Advice for Bush & Co.: Don't Plan Any Trips Abroad

Because Spain's legal community's wanting to have a little chat about torture:

In some countries, they apparently take this sort of thing seriously:

In a ruling in Madrid today, Judge Baltasar Garzón has announced that an inquiry into the Bush administration’s torture policy makers now will proceed into a formal criminal investigation. The ruling came as a jolt following the recommendation of Spanish Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido against proceeding with a criminal inquiry, reported in The Daily Beast on April 16.

Judge Garzón previously initiated and handled investigations involving Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Argentine “Dirty War” strategist Adolfo Scilingo and Guatemalan strongman José Efraín Ríos-Montt, often over the objections of the Spanish attorney general. His case against Pinochet gained international attention when the Chilean general was apprehended in England on a Spanish arrest warrant. Scilingo was extradited to Spain and is now serving a sentence of 30 years for his role in the torture and murder of some thirty persons, several of whom were Spanish citizens.

Garzón's ruling today marks a decision to begin a formal criminal inquiry into the allegations of torture and inhumane treatment he has been collecting for several years now.

Looks like European vacations are out for the Bushies. If they don't end up in the Hague, they'll be spending plenty of quality time in a Spanish jail. This is all to the good.

Of course, Spain may be able to stop doing our jobs for us. It seems the opinion in some circles is that if the President admits the former administration committed war crimes, criminal investigations must necessarily follow:

First up: Dem Rep Jerrold Nadler, who just told me in an interview that Obama’s comments leave the administration only one legal option: Investigate, and if necessary, prosecute.

“President Obama said, `They used torture, I believe waterboarding is torture,’” Nadler said, speaking of Obama’s comments about his predecessors. “Once you concede that torture was committed, the law requires that there be an investigation, and if warranted, a prosecution.”

Nadler and other House Dems have already called on the Attorney General to appoint a special prosecutor to look into potential torture crimes. Yesterday’s comments from Obama, Nadler says, make it clearer still that this is the only legal path open to the administration — in part because Obama seemed to acknowledge that his predecessors had violated “international law.”

Ooo, that's gonna get some right-wing panties in a twist. But they have a defense! Nixon told them so:

There are all kinds of problems with the "Frost/Nixon" movie, but it's hard to miss the significance of the disgraced president saying, "[I]f the president does it, that means it's not illegal." It's one of those iconic phrases the political world recognizes as the height of abuses of power. Illegal acts are not made legal by virtue of a leader's whims.

It's the kind of thing former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should probably be aware of. And yet, there was Rice speaking with some students at Stanford University, when she was asked if waterboarding is, in her opinion, torture. Rice replied:

"[T]he United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture. And so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture."

I was especially impressed by Rice's use of the phrase "by definition," since it was literally the exact same phrase Nixon used to explain why presidents are incapable of committing crimes.

Digby expands on Steve's observation about Condi's comments, including more snippets of Condi's supposed wisdom. I'm sorry the students at Stanford had to be sprayed with hoses of bullshit, but that's what happens when Bushies are invited to talk about the law. I hope everybody got a good laugh.

Once we're done clutching our sides, perhaps we could upstage the Spaniards. Prosecutions. Now.

Haters Freak Over Hate Crimes Legislation

Hate crimes legislation is on the way to becoming a reality, and the right-wing haters are livid:

We're finally making progress on passing a federal hate-crimes bill: On Thursday, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Protection Act passed out of the House Judiciary Committee.

Sure enough, as Kyle at RightWingWatch predicted, the right-wing freakout has begun. Unsurprisingly, Glenn Beck is already leading the way.

He invited on wingnut talk-show host Sandi Rios, who promptly declared hate crimes "thought crimes" (uh-huh, right). She also attacked Debbie Wasserman-Schulz, who was defending the bill from Republican attempts to nullify it by adding categories or victims by claiming:

Rios: Well, she's saying that anybody that's killed or harmed is not a real victim -- unless they're homosexual or gay or Jewish. Then they're real victims. So you can murder more severely if they happen to homosexual or Jewish. It makes no sense.

Beck: Whatever happened to equal protection under the law? If you kill someone, you should go to jail!

Well, Glenn, that's true. And people do in fact go to jail for killing people - unless of course they're rich, powerful, and killing folks under the aegis of "national security" or poisonous corporations. What you fucktards don't seem to get is that under law, there are aggravating factors to a crime. Kill someone in legitimate self-defense, and you don't get treated the same way as someone who kills for monetary gain. Kill someone in a particularly heinous way, and you're likely to get a harsher sentence. What this legislation says is that there's another aggravating factor when you kill someone because you don't like their religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. The majority of us think that people who kill other people for those reasons are dangerous enough to be treated a little bit more harshly under the law. Society's also sending the message that certain crimes are more serious when they're used to terrorize people for those factors.

Not that you Cons are sane enough to understand this.

Phoenix PD Behaving Badly

Note to police departments that think intimidating bloggers will help cover up their corruption: you're only guaranteeing we all find out about your supreme dumbfuckitude.

This is becoming an old story. Blogger gets fed up with an out-of-control police department and starts exposing their actions to the public, police department proves the blogger right by trying to prosecute the blogger for vague crimes that really amount to "saying bad things about powerful people." But in this case, the police actually raided the blogger's home and seized virtually everything.

In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department.

Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging.

The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment - which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation.

[snip]

The warrant apparently listed "petty theft" and "computer tampering with the intent to harass" as the probable cause for the warrant, neither of which would justify seizing so much material. And the petty theft charge is truly absurd:

The allegation of "petty theft" against Pataky stem from photos he posted on his blog of police name plates that appear to have been taken from within the department. He said he actually made the plates himself.

Interestingly, almost everything he gets on the department comes from good cops within the department blowing the whistle:

"We were going to shut down the website after that but then all of a sudden all these good cops started hitting the site and sending us tips," he said.

He said they would also deliver all kinds of internal documents from within the department exposing everything from a cop with multiple DUIs to another cop whose son was a child molester and was trying to get on the force (and was eventually arrested).

"We have about 50 to 100 retired and active cops who provide us information," he said.

Phoenix has a serious problem. And now they've ensured their dirty laundry's aired far and wide. This may be news to them, but there's too many bloggers on the intertoobz to intimidate us all, or even enough.

To which all I can say is, good.

Eliot Spitzer Watches the Magicians' Hands

It's always nice to have a reminder that the smoke and mirrors are a distraction calculated to prevent us from seeing what's really going on (h/t):

Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG's bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

For the answer to this question, we need to go back to the very first decision to bail out AIG, made, we are told, by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last fall. Post-Lehman's collapse, they feared a systemic failure could be triggered by AIG's inability to pay the counterparties to all the sophisticated instruments AIG had sold. And who were AIG's trading partners? No shock here: Goldman, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and on it goes. So now we know for sure what we already surmised: The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.

[snip]

The appearance that this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason or explanation.

Eliot Spitzer, you may remember, knows Wall Street well. As a prosecutor, he made their lives hell. He's definitely a man worth listening to as these companies scramble for every last cent they can wring from taxpayers. He sees them for what they are.

Read the whole thing. Screw your outrage to the sticking place, and then start shouting before 10am Eastern. We can turn their smoke-and-mirrors into a conflagration. We can turn the magicians' tricks against them.

Sheriff Joe Will Look So Pretty In Pink

Good thing he's already measured himself up for some nice government-issue underwear, there. He's likely to need it soon:

Now, I know that Sheriff Joe told Glenn Beck he "welcomes" any investigation into his bordering-on-fascist rule in Arizona's Maricopa County. But I bet that nonetheless, he wasn't smiling yesterday:

The U.S. Justice Department has launched a civil-rights investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office after months of mounting complaints that deputies are discriminating in their enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Officials from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division notified Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Tuesday that they had begun the investigation, which will focus on whether deputies are engaging in "patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures."

An expert said it is the department's first civil-rights probe related to immigration enforcement.

... The Justice Department frequently receives racial-profiling complaints against police departments, but investigations are rare, said David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and racial-profiling expert.

"The fact that this has come to their attention and they have announced their intent to investigate is highly significant," Harris said. "It says there is enough there to be investigated. It's not an iffy case that (can be ignored)."

Harris said this is the first civil-rights investigation stemming from immigration enforcement. The probe could last several months.

You can read the notice here. [PDF file]

Sheriff Joe, of course, is a first-rate fucknugget. He won hard Arizona hearts with his tent city and his pink underwear, but he's way overstepped bounds by turning Maricopa County into his own little fascist fiefdom.

I do hope they consider throwing them in his own tent city. And I hope the investigation's wrapped up sometime this July.

Why, yes. Yes, I am evil. Whyever do you ask?