Essentially, legalizing pot is opens the door for government to dictate everything about the industry. They’ve gone from no control when it was illegal to wanting to micromanage everything about it. And you can bet the regulations will continue to become increasingly complex. Jacob Sullum, over at reason.com, explains.
Police, Protest, and Militarism in Boston
This week Radley Balko will be writing on the history of Boston:
Boston — often called the Cradle of Liberty — has often been the scene of political protest, political violence, and heavy-handed government crackdowns — military, paramilitary, and otherwise. As a result, throughout American history the city has been at the center of contentious, often furious debate over how best to balance public safety, crime fighting, and national defense with liberty and individual rights.
He will cover Boston history from the Colonial period right up to the present day, using that as a context in which to examine the roles played by the city, state, and federal governments in the manhunt for the two Boston Marathon bombers.
The Biggest Source of Corruption in Afghanistan
According to a Sunday New Your Times article, The C.I.A. has been delivering bags of cash to the office of Afghan President, Hamid Karzai. They call it “Ghost Money”.
From the article:
“The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan,” one American official said, “was the United States.”
The article points out that the Iranians were also dumping cash on them, a fact that attracted the ire of American officials. How dare the Iranians try to buy influence with bags of cash!
Like the Iranian cash, much of the C.I.A.’s money goes to paying off warlords and politicians, many of whom have ties to the drug trade and, in some cases, the Taliban. The result, American and Afghan officials said, is that the agency has greased the wheels of the same patronage networks that American diplomats and law enforcement agents have struggled unsuccessfully to dismantle, leaving the government in the grips of what are basically organized crime syndicates.
Your tax dollars at work. It seems like the capture and killing of bin Laden has washed away decades of history wherein the C.I.A. was one of the most hated “intelligence” agencies on the planet, at least in the eyes of the American public.
Assault with intent to destroy: The Central Park 5
I just finished watching a 2012 PBS/Ken Burns documentary called “The Central Park Five“. The Central Park Five are five black teens who were arrested, convicted, and served prison time for the rape and beating of a white female jogger in New York’s Central Park on April 19th, 1989. The single most striking aspect of the case, aside from the fact that the teens didn’t do it, is that they confessed to having done it and the confessions served as the sole basis for the convictions.
One thing the establishment media seems to steer away from is naming the people who are actually responsible for justice system failures. After all, they were just trying to do their jobs to the best of their ability, right? Below is a brief list of some of the characters in this story. If you ask the cops and prosecutors, I’m sure not a one will take any responsibility for this miscarriage of justice.
Trisha Ellen Meili. The victim. Not only was she white, but she was a 28 year old Solomon Brothers investment banker and daughter of a Westinghouse executive. She was one of 3254 rapes reported in New York City that year and one of 28 first degree rapes that week.
Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise and Yusef Salaam. The accused, aged 14-16. They were also victims. Victims of over-zealous investigators and prosecutors.
Matias Reyes. The guy who really raped and beat the Central Park Jogger. He was arrested for rape and murder less than 4 months later in August 1989. The cops were already so focused on The Central Park Five, they never checked Reyes DNA to see if he did it even after being told that the DNA excluded the five kids they had locked up.
Ed Koch. Mayor of New York City and vocal supporter of the prosecution of the Central Park Five.
Robert M. Morgenthau. New York County District Attorney.
Linda Fairstein. head of the sex-crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Fairstein managed the prosecution of the Central Park Five.
Elizabeth Lederer. Prosecutor in The Central Park Five case.
Benjamin Ward. NYC Police Commissioner (until Oct 1989)
John Hartigan. NYPD Detective in the Central Park Jogging Case.
Michael Sheehan. NYPD Detective in the Central Park Jogging Case.
Robert Nugent. NYPD Detective in the Central Park Jogging Case.
August Jonza. NYPD Detective in the Central Park Jogging Case.
Carlos Gonzalez. NYPD Detective in the Central Park Jogging Case.
Harry Hildebrandt. NYPD Detective in the Central Park Jogging Case.
Tom McKenna. NYPD Detective in the Central Park Jogging Case.
Police and prosecutors controlled the story from the beginning and the establishment press, with the ritualistic predictability they are known for, repeated everything they said as if it had been delivered directly from the lips of God. While they protected the name of the victim, the mainstream media readily broadcast the names of the five juveniles accused of the crime. The media fueled fervor became so intense that the public outcry became a referendum on the death penalty.
There was absolutely no physical evidence attaching The Five to the crime scene. DNA evidence excluded them from the rape. There were serious time line conflicts that placed the kids in a different area of the park at the time of the rape. The only case against them was their confessions and the people who elicited those confessions sending those kids to prison, never got so much as a slap on the wrist.
Two days before this event, there was another assault in the park. The woman escaped and reported to police that the perpetrator had a scar on his chin that had stitches. A resourceful police officer went to all the local hospitals and came up with the name Matias Reyes as a possible suspect. Had the NYPD followed up on that lead, if they had compared his DNA to the DNA collected from the Central Park Jogger, they would have found the real rapist, instead of pinning the crime on whomever was handy. Reyes escaped justice long enough to rape and murder another woman, this one 24 years old and pregnant.
The bottom line is that investigators and prosecutors decided to pin this crime on five kids who knew nothing about the rape and, through intimidation, deceit, and coaching actually got them to confess to it in enough detail to sound convincing. Only the most naive of idiots could believe that was an innocent mistake and only the most naive of idiots could possibly think that case was an anomaly rather than a result of ingrained police and prosecutorial culture that values convictions over justice.
Even after Reyes confessed and his DNA proved he was the rapist, Linda Fairstein opposed the recommendation to vacate the convictions of the Central Park Five. New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, instituted an internal investigation back in 2003 clearing NYPD officers of any misconduct in the case (what a surprise!) and stands by the convictions saying that the Central Park Five assaulted Meili before Reyes or simultaneously. He is still NYC Police Commissioner today, helping to perpetuate that same level of ineptitude and delusion. After all, if nothing is broken, there’s nothing to fix.
The PBS Central Park Five documentary is based on a book by Sarah Burns, daughter of Ken Burns. Nepotism reigns supreme in the media business. New York City officials have condemned the documentary as advocacy rather than journalism. I won’t argue against that claim because it may be true. Anyone who looks to a single source of information expecting to find truth is deluding themselves. Truth usually comes only by examining many sources and adding a heavy dose of skepticism and commons sense. I don’t think Burns is above bias. He would be a real rarity if he were. Objectivity doesn’t usually breed that kind of success. Nevertheless, any confession by an adolescent elicited during the course of 14-30 hours of intense interrogation by people who routinely use deceit, threats, and intimidation, all without benefit of a lawyer or parent, can’t be considered reliable. And, since this is all the prosecutors had on these kids, the convictions can only be seen as a travesty.
The movie is about two hours long and is available to buy, rent, or watch for fee on line.
Moyers interviews Greenwald
In an interview with Bill Moyers that is scheduled to air on PBS this evening, Glenn Greenwald explains what motivates terrorist attacks against the U.S. (and it’s not because “they hate us for our freedom”). He discusses reactions to the Boston bombings.
With regard to privacy, Greenwald says that citizens are supposed to know almost everything about their government, which is why it’s called the “public sector”, and government should know very little about citizens (unless they commit a crime), which is why it’s called the private sector. Instead this has been turned on its head. Government has become exceedingly secretive and it tries to know everything about citizens.
The belief that the more the government knows about us, the safer we’ll be is false. The fact is that, the more the government knows about us, the more likely they will be to abuse their powers. As I have said numerous times before, the biggest threat to liberty almost invariably comes from our own government.
GE stops lending to gun shops
Apparently General Electric Capital will no longer provide financial services to U.S. gun stores. General electric will however, continue to develop and sell powerful weapons systems to the U.S. government for delivering peace to citizens of other countries.
Public Defender Humor
Man tased for acting suspiciously around is own car
From the Santa Barbara Independent:
Santa Barbara police arrested — and attempted to tase — a 54-year-old man whom they thought was acting suspiciously near what turned out to be his own car. The incident took place on upper De la Vina Street Monday morning as an officer on a coffee break spied Jerry Cox peering into the windows of a car across the street as if casing it for a burglary. When confronted by officers, Cox reportedly refused to stop and to sit down — as instructed — and attempted to walk by. Efforts to tase Cox failed, said public information officer Sgt. Harwood, so he was wrestled to the ground by numerous officers. At no time prior to the use of force, Harwood said, did Cox notify officers that the car in question was his. Cox was charged with resisting arrest.
Of course, unless there is video, we will never know for sure what happened, but given law enforcement’s record of self-serving embellishment, there certainly is reason to doubt the accuracy of the story given by Sgt. Harwood. In order for Cox to be resisting arrest, the cops must have been trying to arrest him, which raises the question of why they were arresting him if he wasn’t committing a crime. I also wonder why they told him to sit down instead of just asking him if that was his car. In fact, nothing in the story suggests cops ever asked him if the car was his. Stories about confrontations with police often seem to have elements that defy rationality and yet the media rarely question anything cops say.
No more pressure cookers for Massachusetts
From the Dedham Patch:
Williams-Sonoma, the specialty retailer of home furnishings and gourmet cookware with over 250 stores in the United States, has pulled pressure cookers from their shelves following the Boston Marathon bombing.
“It’s a temporary thing out of respect,” said Kent, who is the Store Manager of the Williams-Sonoma at the Natick Mall.
No, Kent. It’s more like an irrational thing out of idiocy (and an example of really poor taste in attempting to capture a little free advertising).
If Boston bombers had WMDs, then so did Saddam Hussein
Reason.com, quoting 18 USC § 921, explains what constitutes a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) these days. The term “weapon of mass destruction” means destructive device.
The term “destructive device” means—
(A) any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas—
(i) bomb,
(ii) grenade,
(iii) rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces,
(iv) missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce,
(v) mine, or
(vi) device similar to any of the devices described in the preceding clauses;
So, anything that you can throw that contains more than a quarter ounce of explosive is a WMD. Eventually, the terrorism label will be so over-used as to be essentially meaningless. This is a common form of categorical inflation. If you have laws that criminalize everyone, the concept of crime becomes meaningless. If everyone is declared a hero, then the concept of heroism is meaningless.
Defining a quarter ounce of explosive as a WMD makes the concept of WMDs into a joke. I mean, even a bigger joke than what Bush made out of it when he used it to fabricate an excuse to start a war with Iraq.