Gangsters in Blue

• USA Today tracks the remarkable recent progress toward the legalization of marijuana.
• The Catholic church can’t bring itself to defrock priests who diddle little boys, but it’s perfectly willing to expel a little girl from private school because her parents are lesbians. (Standard libertarian disclaimer: The church is free to make its own policies about its schools. And I’m free to criticize it for those policies.)
• Sean Penn not only continues to defend tyrant Hugo Chavez, but suggests imprisoning American journalists who criticize Chavez.
• D.C. councilman who pushed smoking ban now asks for exemptions for his favorite events.
• This is just a damned nice story. Conan is great.
• Panel recommends D.C. cop who brought gun to a snowball fight get a 10-day suspension.

• Much as it pains me to admit it, I think Haley Barbour has a point, here. Not sure I trust the federal government to make the right decisions in this Toyota mess when it’s also a majority shareholder in one of Toyota’s biggest competitors.
• Note to media: Taking food, water, and clothing from open or vacant storefronts after a catastrophe isn’t “looting.” It’s surviving. Especially when there are no legitimate ways of accessing essential needs, as is currently the case in much of Chile. If people were taking TVs and iPods, we could talk about looting.
• This is one of the more depressing stories I’ve seen in the last week.
• Charlotte police officer resigns after he’s accused of influencing victims in line-ups. This is a good reason while lineups should be conducted by officers who have no knowledge of the case.
• Norway fighting infection by cutting down on use of antibiotics.
• Great commercial. Unfortunately, the commercial does nothing about the fact that Old Spice still smells like grandpas.
• U.K. government bill aimed at protecting copyright will essentially outlaw open WiFi networks.
• I think we’ve reached a tipping point in the public consciousness when the innocent recipients of a mistaken drug shipment say the first thing that crossed their mind was that a SWAT team may be on the way, and they feared for the safety of their dog.

• Via the comments, a sheriff says of a dog shooting: “I want to stress that this dog was inside of a fenced-in yard when it was shot and killed. Anyone who would do something like this is cruel, cold-hearted and a coward to boot.” Wish police officials were as blunt when cops fire at leashed or fenced-in dogs.
• Tobias Funke would be proud.
• The Washington Post profiles libertarian Tom Palmer, who’s suing for the right to open carry in Washington, D.C. Palmer says a gun saved his life in the early 1980s when he was able to fend off a couple of homophobes intent on killing him.
• There’s a headline writer at Stars and Stripes with a bawdy sense of humor.
• The ever-reaching scope of the Plain View Doctrine.
• DEA raids another medical marijuana dispensary.
• …which of course would mean it isn’t all that bad at all.
• The first and only skateboard park in East Africa.

My crime column this week looks at the deaths of Tarika Wilson, Jonathan Ayers, and Gonzalo Guizan.

All three are drug war collateral damage.

Someone should send him a copy of Overkill.

Reminds me of the time Michael Ledeen attempted to illustrate how evil the ruling government in Iran is because, holy crap!, their narco cops wear masks when they conduct drug raids. Imagine!

Ryan Frederick’s appeal has been denied.

That’s sad for Frederick. It also seems likely now that we’ll never get that investigation into whether Chesapeake police were sending drug informants to break into private homes to get probable cause for search warrants.