Gangsters in Blue

• This is a good thing. Not the killing, but that it was captured on camera.
• The New Professionalism, Clayton County, Georgia edition.
• A brief history of branding.
• Michael Bloomberg says government’s highest priority is to stop you from making bad decisions. Like, say, voting for Michael Bloomberg.
• Man convicted by Texas DA and Perry forensics commission appointee John Bradley freed after 25 years in prison.
• How the FDA is killing people.

• Massachusetts high court okays a $70 administrative fee to fight a $100 traffic ticket.
• Steven Pinker: “Why Violence Is Vanishing.”
• After a half million wrongful arrests, NYPD commissioner tells cops to stop tricking pot smokers into breaking the law.
• How state lawmakers pump up their own pensions.
• Girl cuts herself. School makes her sign a pledge she isn’t cutting herself.
• Man with Down Syndrome beaten by cops, who apparently were concerned about a bulge in his waistband. It was a colostomy bag.

• Interesting study on power and corruption.
• Libertarianism happens to people: foodie edition.
• Why pro-death penalty and anti-government are incompatible.
• Ugandans beaten, forcibly removed from land to make way for carbon credit forests.
• “Professional courtesy” in Houston. Nice to see the meting out of some discipline, though.
• And here’s another example of a police chief showing some courage.
• Interview with a man who did 18 years for a crime he didn’t commit.

• The state of Georgia executed Troy Davis last night. Here’s a rundown of the witnesses who recanted. I honestly didn’t think they’d go through with it. Which only goes to show that however low your expectations of government may be, they probably aren’t low enough.
• California city is demanding couple purchase a permit to host Bible study sessions.
• The cops who beat University of Maryland student John McKenna have been indicted. This would never have happened were it not for social media and cell phone video.
• Telling stats on marijuana arrests.
• The McGurk Effect.
• Cops in the Kelly Thomas case charged with murder, manslaughter.
• RAND study: No connection between medical pot dispensaries, crime.
• Here’s a delightful shredding of Thomas Friedman.
• Government paternalism and overreaction trumped by government in competence.

• The war on e-cigarettes. I’ve written this before, but because e-cigarettes are harmless, and because they can help people quit actual cigarettes, these attempts to prohibit them are an excellent example of paternalistic regulations that actually kill people.
• Connecticut Supreme Court justice apologizes to Suzette Kelo for ruling against her.
• Given the numerous times a story I first reported was re-reported by a bigger news outlet without credit (something that also happens pretty frequently to other bloggers, and especially to alt weeklies), I find it kind of amusing that reporters at larger news outlets are now complaining when it happens to them.
• L.A. Times: Here are two statistics that have nothing to do with one another. But we’re going to juxtapose them anyway.
• David Rittgers: Abolish the Department of Homeland Security.
• Man gets life sentence for shoplifting.
• New Jersey cop attacks woman who was filming him at a DWI checkpoint.

• 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.