Gangsters in Blue

• I think that if I were a death penalty supporter, I’d be fighting like hell to make sure Troy Davis isn’t executed.
• Write your own caption.
• A police department that gets it. Although you should be able to record someone else’s interaction with cops as well, so long as you aren’t physically interfering.
• Study: People with delusions of grandeur tend to become very successful. Other study: But subtler, reality-based optimism may actually hinder success. This totally explains politics.
• A defense of Lochner.
• The cop who killed former NFL player Deacon Turner in that case with the mysterious non-functioning security camera has shot another man.
• Signs that the DA may back down in the Kelly Thomas beating death.
• Feds spend $3.4 billion on anti-terror program for food supply, have little to show for it.
• Rick Perry vs. the lap dance lobby.

• Lawsuit: Man contends he was arrested for contempt for not standing on his leg. Which the arresting officer had just broken.
• Another arrest in Austin for providing free rides home from bars. And from the discussion of that post over at Reddit: “I am personally involved in the lobbying effort to keep these guys off the street and honestly the reason is simply to restrict competition.”
• Nice photo of a runway model.
• Good roundup of great journalism on the death penalty.
• Anonymous releases hacked emails from Texas police department. Disturbingness ensues.
• Dustup of the day: Cato’s Tad DeHaven vs. Lloyd Chapman, head of the American Small Business League.
• How U.S. companies profited from torture flights.

Stuff you should read that I don’t have time to write more about . . . .

• Another ignorant, ill-informed rant against libertarians. Good responses here and here. Lind’s rant is so riddled with errors, it both isn’t really worthy of a thorough response, and would take a book-length response to address them all.
• Bullying prevention as an unfunded mandate.
• Law enforcement and the “Holy Shit!” rule.
• Tim Carney has more on how Warren Buffet has benefited financially from the big government programs he supports. (Note: I don’t doubt that Buffet earnestly supports these programs and is sincere in his political beliefs, anyway. But free market people who get involved in politics and policy certainly don’t get the same benefit of the doubt.)
• Good question for libertarian discussion. At what point do claims like those made by homeopathy become fraud?
• California bill, among other things, would mandate breaks for babysitters.
• Controversial claim!: Americans should be free to sell things without a permit.
• Anti-abortion activist says cops beat him, arrested him, and accused him of terrorism for handing out pamphlets.

• Tennessee woman threatened with arrest for allowing her daughter to ride her bike to school.
• Rob Delaney is funny. (Possibly NSFW.)
• Last three speakers of the Massachusetts House have felony convictions.
•  Gawker says Bill O’Reilly pulled some strings to have his his wife’s boyfriend investigated by cops.
• D.C. cop who shot at a car full of people had prior history of alcohol-related incidents. He had also pulled a gun on one of the victims earlier the same night, but was given a pass when another cop determined he was an off-duty cop.
• Steven Seagal sued for driving tank into house, killing puppy and more than a hundred chickens.
• Headline of the day.
• State of Illinois runs a dating services for pedophiles.

• More towns take aim at food trucks.
• Poor saps.
• It’s so hot, the dog is melting.
• Best take yet on the anti-Muslim right’s response to Oslo.
• Puppycide. (NOTE: As pointed out by a couple commenters, this one seems pretty justified. The earlier version of the article did not indicate that the dog belonged to the suspect. Or if it did, I misread it.)
• How campaign finance restrictions empower the media.
• Time lapse video of the NY Times homepage.
• Headline of the day.
• The moral failing of the CIA’s vaccination scam in Pakistan.
• Jacob Sullum absolutely obliterates Mark Bittman.

• No rest in the war on lemonade stands.
• Pittsburgh police commissioner orders cops to make at least 10 traffic stops per month in predominantly black district.
• Hope you have a permit for that imaginary gun.
• Another lefty activist group that’s demanding transparency from free market groups . . . but won’t disclose its own donors.
• When al-Qaeda is defeated, will we get our civil liberties back? (This is a rhetorical question.)
• Photo of Pete Eyre with one of the jurors who acquitted him yesterday.
• More on that study of Alabama judges who override juries in death penalty cases: Not only do they overwhelmingly override juries in favor of sentencing defendants to death, they’re more likely to do so in an election year.
• Prosecutor still on the job after two DWI arrests in two weeks.
• Utah woman pulled over for driving too slow,  then arrested for recording the stop.

• No rest in the war on lemonade stands.
• Pittsburgh police commissioner orders cops to make at least 10 traffic stops per month in predominantly black district.
• Hope you have a permit for that imaginary gun.
• Another lefty activist group that’s demanding transparency from free market groups . . . but won’t disclose its own donors.
• When al-Qaeda is defeated, will we get our civil liberties back? (This is a rhetorical question.)
• Photo of Pete Eyre with one of the jurors who acquitted him yesterday.
• More on that study of Alabama judges who override juries in death penalty cases: Not only do they overwhelmingly override juries in favor of sentencing defendants to death, they’re more likely to do so in an election year.
• Prosecutor still on the job after two DWI arrests in two weeks.
• Utah woman pulled over for driving too slow,  then arrested for recording the stop.

• Another public relations triumph for TSA.
• Good point.
• Cops disciplined, but not fired, for locking teenagers in a van for more than 12 hours. We aren’t allowed to know how they were discipline . . . due to regulations protecting their privacy.
• Another argument for federalism.
• Taxpayers continue to pay for former Maricopa County Prosecutor Andrew Thomas’s defense against ethics charges.
• Washington state will more aggressively snoop on its citizens’ health records. All in the name of protecting them from themselves.
• Speaking of wholesale failure at public relations . . .
• Ken at Popehat gives the proper reaction to Hillary Clinton’s insulting “Whose side are you on?” comment.
• Jerry Seinfeld takes over the world.

• Good Dahlia Lithwick piece on the role of empathy in Supreme Court decisions.
• Why is this woman facing criminal charges? (MORE: Looks like they’ve decided not to press charges, and the story is more complicated than the prior linked article conveys.)
• Noted without comment.
• Former spy says Bush administration tried to dig up personal dirt on critic Juan Cole.
• “Ghost Ships of the Mothball Fleet”
• Interesting discussion of libertarianism and parental rights.
• It isn’t officially summer until the first petty bureaucrat shuts down a kids’ lemonade stand.
• Jimmy Carter: Call off the global drug war. Hey, this is the man we can thank for good beer.

• Mayor says Detroit police chief won’t be disciplined for crime lab fiasco, which may have tainted evidence in thousands of cases.
• Italian seismologists charged with manslaughter for not predicting earthquake.
• Long but important post from Julian Sanchez on location tracking and the PATRIOT Act renewal.
• Public health fanatics take aim at hookah bars. The last quote in the article is especially rich.
• Miami police confiscate, destroy cell phones of people who recorded officer-involved shootings.
• Tennessee’s troubled history with medical examiners. At least they do care enough to investigate the bad ones, here.
• Thank God this monster is off the streets.