Is it really so difficult to believe that there is widespread wrongdoing, and widespread lying about it, among U.S. law-enforcement agencies, particularly those in big, Democrat-run cities infamous for the corruption of their other municipal institutions? Why do conservatives find it so plausible — obvious, even — that the IRS and the EPA and the Atlanta public schools are corrupt and self-serving, but somehow believe that the Baltimore police department isn’t?

It is possible that what is really at play here is an emotional response to protest culture. Seeing the Black Lives Matters miscreants and Baltimore rioters on one side of the line, conservatives instinctively want to be on the other side of the line. The same thing happened with the Iraq-war protests: When the dirty hippies take to the barricades, conservatives are drawn to the other side. That led to some bad thinking and poor decision-making about Iraq. Are we making the same mistake with regard to police misconduct and allegations of police misconduct?

Let him with eyes see.

Why conservatives and Republicans should be defensive about the fact that Baltimore, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Honolulu are misgoverned to various degrees of criminality is a mystery. Conservatives with real political power in those cities are as scarce as hen’s teeth. Could it really be something so simple as the fact that we do not feel comfortable standing on the same side of a bright red line as the malefactors in Ferguson and such opportunists as DeRay Mckesson, now a Baltimore mayoral candidate, and Al Sharpton? Sharpton is a grotesque and one of the most dishonest men in American public life, but that does not mean that the people running Baltimore and its police department aren’t also crooked. Some police officers are indeed heroes. Some are villains. Most are ordinary, time-serving municipal employees like any other, and telling ourselves otherwise is sentimental rubbish.

These Are Not the Good Guys: The Right is deluding itself about law enforcement. By Kevin Williamson

See Radley Balko’s column for more examples.

Police Misconduct

“Why do you people love the state so much? It doesn’t love you.”
Michael Munger

We have one network in the world today. Either we build our communications infrastructure for surveillance, or we build it for security. Either everyone gets to spy, or no one gets to spy. That’s our choice, with the Internet, with cell phone networks, with everything.

Bruce Schneier

When a governor can be indicted for vetoing a bill, when a university regent can be threatened with criminal prosecution for exposing corruption, and when you have armed men kicking down your door because you signed the wrong petition, you don’t live in a free society—you live in a police state.

Kevin Williamson

Continue reading ‘Police State’ »

In Habersham County, Ga., police looking for a drug dealer — at a home in which he did not reside — broke down the doors thinking they’d find drugs and guns, which of course they didn’t. But they did manage to toss a flash grenade into a baby’s playpen, burning part of the child’s face off. The family was left with nearly $1 million in medical bills, and the kid will need surgery every few years until he stops growing. The police insist they did nothing wrong. And as in New Haven, when they found the drug dealer for whom they were searching, the Georgia authorities brought him in without incident, without kicking down any doors or throwing any stun grenades.
. . .
Even in medieval times, the distinction between lords and serfs was not so pronounced.

Meet the New Serfs: You

The Police State, cheered on by the Clerisy

Continue reading ‘Meet the New Serfs: You’ »

Five rules I learned from 7 years of coaching Launch Festival & TechCrunch50

Dormi Turns Old Android Phones into Internet-Connected Baby Monitors

Rand Paul’s Republican revolution

Oh yeah, this will work out well….

The “War on Drugs” has attracted numerous rent seekers, including the DEA, police, prosecutors, brewers, distillers, prison guards, and more. Prohibition didn’t work in the 1920s and 30s, and it isn’t working today.

Federalism appears to be on the rise. About time.

But in the meantime, we just don’t have enough no-knock raids.

Continue reading ‘Misc Stuff’ »

The sycophants are lining up and using time-tested bigotry to distract as many people as possible from the growing police state.

Does Stiehm know that nuns are celibate and therefore don’t require birth control, free or otherwise? And that they clearly don’t want birth-control coverage? A mandate that requires nuns to sign a waiver that facilitates coverage of birth control is farcical on its face. Talk about imposing beliefs. The nuns (and other plaintiffs against the mandate with stronger cases) aren’t attempting to prevent employers from providing birth control; they’re trying to stop the government from forcing them to distribute and pay for it, directly or indirectly.
. . .

Yes, [Thomas Jefferson], like a lot of the Framers, did “think of pernicious Rome” in his writings, but that was the Roman Empire they warned of, not the much later Vatican Rome. This author doesn’t seem to know the difference between the Rome of Christ’s time and that which came centuries later. Anyway, when Jefferson developed his ideas of separation of church and state he was far more troubled by the Anglican Church imposing its will in Virginia–not by the Catholics, who were a tiny minority there.

US News: Catholics have taken over the Supreme Court, or something

I stopped being a Democrat when it became clear that I was expected to vacate any of my own thoughts and opinions in order to fall in line with the party, or be called moronic or hateful or bigoted or even evil. There was no way the party could be wrong on anything, therefore dissent indicated a problem originating with me. “I” had the problem; not the party.

Don’t snigger, conservatives, you have your narrow-minded purists, too. Perhaps you’ve never marched in lockstep with quite the same precision as the Democrats, but you’ve run your own purges, and handily. Because whom the godlings of ideologies would destroy, they first make mad.

Fisking Stiehm’s Bigotry at US News

Nancy Pelosi has not spent her career seeking to impose her views on others? Hilarious! Ms. Stiehm has no problem with people imposing their views on others apparently, so long as Ms. Stiehm agrees with the views being imposed. Raising this argument about imposition of views in regard to the Contraceptive Mandate imposed by the government is truly an Orwellian touch by Ms. Stiehm.
. . .
With “liberals” like you Ms. Stiehm, who needs the Klan?

Jamie Stiehm: Anti-Catholic Bigot

Jamie Stiehm is a rube tool and a 21st century Know Nothing.

Although I am not a Catholic (surprised?) it was not that difficult for this Jew to determine that the rant by Jamie Stiehm in today’s US News, was both anti-Catholic and to be quite honest, kind of ridiculous.

OY! Now The Left Complains The Supreme Court is Too Catholic (And They Hate Women)

Most if not all of the writers critiques of it express some shock at the vehemence, the near 19th century quality of this anti-papist screed. That should not be a surprise. Given the attitudes of the press, the media coverage of the church for nearly 20 years and the corresponding shared opinions in public academia, particularly at the highest levels this attitude toward the Catholic church by a member of the MSM is pedantic.

Mr. Potemra opinion not withstanding there is a great hatred of the church among the press elites. The church that stands firm as more liberal protestant denominations bend to the media’s will. The church that dares give up its services in Massachusetts rather than embrace the new morality. The church that is now standing in front of Barack Obama saying: Stop!

The press given a chance would not let a day pass without an attack on the Catholic Church.

But with Francis’ election as pope suddenly the left doesn’t dare attack. You have the very first Latin American Pope, beloved by all of the groups they need. Speaking mercy, showing mercy, they don’t dare say boo, cripes they even covered his initiation mass.

The Missing Word in Jamie Stiehm’s Rant

Continue reading ‘NSA, IRS, Obamacare, Ad Nauseum – Oh, look! A squirrel! Er, Jamie Stiehm!’ »

Obamaphone

Teddy Roosevelt busted Standard Oil. The Obama administration? It’s making the world safe from rapacious piano teachers.

Every month, it seems, brings a new story of this presidency leveling the intimidating powers of the federal government against some law-abiding citizen. Now comes a terrifying tale of how the Federal Trade Commission, a governmental Goliath, crushes an average David—because it can.

In March of this year, a small nonprofit in Cincinnati—the Music Teachers National Association—received a letter from the FTC. The agency was investigating whether the association was engaged in, uh, anticompetitive practices.
. . .
While this abuse of power has received no national attention, it has riled the music community. Brian Majeski, the editor of the journal Music Trades, lambasted the FTC in a December editorial, noting that “a consumer watchdog that sees piano teachers as a threat either has too much time on its hands, or badly misplaced priorities.”
. . .
Whether it is the IRS targeting conservatives, the Justice Department hounding Gibson Guitar, or the EPA conducting an armed raid on an Alaskan mine—this administration has a tendency toward abuse of power.

Strassel: Piano Sonata in FTC Minor

Bill Elliot was a cancer patient who lost his insurance due to ObamaCare and couldn’t pay the expensive new premiums. He was talking about paying the ObamaCare fine, going without health insurance and “letting nature take its course.”

He went on FOX News where his story was picked up by C. Steven Tucker, a health insurance broker who helped him keep his insurance.

Now suddenly Bill Elliot is being audited for 2009 with an interview only scheduled in April 2014. Assuming he lives that long. That might be a coincidence, but Tucker is being audited back to 2003.

That’s a rather strange coincidence.
. . .
The United States desperately needs to restore the rule of law and confidence in its institutions otherwise we are facing a serious crisis in which Americans begin viewing government agencies as tools of political repression.

Cancer Patient Who Spoke Out Against ObamaCare Now Being Audited

“Why do you people love the state so much? It doesn’t love you.”
– Michael Munger

Forward!

We’ve now reached a point where a flailing president, desperate to deflect the opprobrium heaped upon him for the false promise that you could keep your health plan if you wanted to, calls a hasty news conference urging both insurers and the states to reinstate millions of such plans.

Except that he is asking them to break the law. His own law. Under Obamacare, no insurer may issue a policy after 2013 that does not meet the law’s minimum coverage requirements. These plans were canceled because they do not.

The law remains unchanged. The regulations governing that law remain unchanged. Nothing is changed except for a president proposing to unilaterally change his own law from the White House press room.

That’s banana republic stuff, except that there the dictator proclaims from the presidential balcony.

An outbreak of lawlessness

Continue reading ‘Police State Banana Republic’ »

A couple of weeks ago, I was scheduled to take a trip from New York (JFK) to Los Angeles on JetBlue. Every year, my family goes on a one-week pilgrimage, where we put our work on hold and spend time visiting temples, praying, and spending time with family and friends. To my Jewish friends, I often explain this trip as vaguely similar to the Sabbath, except we take one week of rest per year, rather than one day per week.

Our family is not Muslim, but by coincidence, this year, our trip happened to be during the last week of Ramadan.
. . .
The onslaught of NYPD agents was broken when a South Asian man with a Homeland Security badge walked in and said something that sounded unintelligible. After a second, I realized he was speaking Hindi.

“Sorry, I don’t speak Hindi.”

“Oh!” he said, noticeably surprised at how “Americanized” this suspect was. We chatted for a few moments, during which time I learned that his family was Pakistani, and that he was Muslim, though he was not fasting for Ramadan. He asked me the standard repertoire of questions that I had been answering for other agents all day.

Finally, the FBI agent returned.

“How are you feeling right now?” he asked. I wasn’t sure if he was expressing genuine concern or interrogating me further, but by this point, I had very little energy left.

“A bit nauseous, and very thirsty.”

“You’ll have to understand, when a person of your… background walks into here, travelling alone, and sets off our alarms, people start to get a bit nervous. I’m sure you’ve been following what’s been going on in the news recently. You’ve got people from five different branches of government all in here – we don’t do this just for fun.”

Continue reading ‘Security Theater and the Police State’ »

Too much law enforcement in America has lost all sense of proportion: If you need six armed officers to police a nonagenarian in an old folks’ home, seven armed officers to police a 20-year-old female you suspect might have a beer in her shopping bag, thirteen armed officers to terminate Giggles the baby doe, you’re doing it wrong — and you’re the real threat to public order.

Death Panel

A resident in DeKalb County, Georgia decided to grab his camera when police started banging on his door at 1:30 in the morning. He says he even called 911 to find out what the cops wanted but they didn’t tell him. Police say they had a warrant to enter the home based on a civil fine.
. . .
Forget A-Rod, maybe it’s time to start testing cops for steroids? [Ed. Or at least testing for a minimum IQ, like 80 or 90?]

Cops Caught on Camera in Late Night Home Entry: “Imma tase the shit out your big ass”

Forward!

Rise of the Warrior Cop – Forward!

Continue reading ‘Police State, Cont’d’ »

I agree with Mark [Stoval] that the United States is turning into a police state. It’s a police state that is not benevolent, but is mostly benign for most of those who dwell within it. Its power is backed by the truncheon, the machine-gun-armed EPA team, the local suburban police department with the Lenco BearCat off-road SWAT vehicle with .50BMG protection and dog-killing SWAT ninjas, but it does not deploy the truncheon and the rest the vast majority of the time. No, the vast majority of the time, the United States is a slightly frustrating uncle who provides nice birthday checks and stops you from buying a soda that’s too big to be healthy (even as he subsidizes tobacco farmers).

So, I agree with Mark that the United States is turning into a police state.

. . . but I disagree with him that it’s doing so “for a reason”.

Forever

Continue reading ‘Police State’ »