The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions regarding police powers were mixed, thus offering a reminder to civil libertarians that they cannot depend upon the high court to protect the public from unwarranted government intrusions.
“The U.S. Supreme Court handed police one victory and one loss on Tuesday,” reported National Public Radio. “In one decision, the justices limited the power of police to detain people who are away from their homes when police conduct a search. And in a second case, the justices ruled that drug-sniffing dogs don’t have to get every sniff right in order for a search to be valid.” Continue reading →
…There are 331 million cellphone subscriptions—about 20 million more than there are residents—in the United States. Nearly 90 percent of adult Americans carry at least one phone. The phones communicate via a nationwide network of nearly 300,000 cell towers and 600,000 micro sites, which perform the same function as towers. When they are turned on, they ping these nodes once every seven seconds or so, registering their locations, usually within a radius of 150 feet. By 2018 new Federal Communications Commission regulations will require that cellphone location information be even more precise: within 50 feet. Newer cellphones also are equipped with GPS technology, which uses satellites to locate the user more precisely than tower signals can. Cellphone companies retain location data for at least a year. AT&T has information going all the way back to 2008. Continue reading →
…”Everybody in this country has the right to say what they think and feel and what best represents them. The people at Chick-fil-A have the absolute right to say and do what they want. It doesn’t matter that all of these people disagree with their opinion. The question was how would the people that agree with what that man said do to support the company and how would the ones against his anti-gay remarks protest.
“The supporters have been showing up in droves, to spend money at the restaurants and peacefully assemble. But there has obviously been so many people who have gone out and boycotted the company. I think it’s great. That’s our right here. What you’re seeing here are the elements of the American Constitution in all of their glory. It’s a wonderful thing to see happening and talk about and the fact that everyone is discussing the gay rights issue is great.”
Before our interview ended, Halford wanted to be clear about his stance on the anti-gay marriage issue: “I don’t think that man thought too much about the business consequences of what he said, but I think he was standing for what he believes in. I don’t agree with him at all, but God bless the man. It’s as simple as that.”
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told CNN’s Piers Morgan last night that he doesn’t “understand why police officers across this country don’t stand up collectively and say we’re going to go on strike, we’re not going to protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what’s required to keep us safe.”
We’ve been hearing a lot of that recently. Earlier this year, The New York Times reprinted a Department of Justice press release and slapped this lede on top of it: “As violent crime has decreased across the country, a disturbing trend has emerged: Rising numbers of police officers are being killed.”
Bloomberg and The New York Times are both wrong:
In 2008, ten times more civilians regular people were killed by cops than cops were killed by perps.
In 2011, 72 cops were shot and killed in the entire U.S.; in L.A. County alone, cops shot and killed 54 suspects the same year–22 percent of those people were unarmed.
As Scott Reeder reported at Reason this morning, “Farmers, ranchers, commercial fishermen, loggers, garbage collectors, truck drivers, construction workers, pilots, steel workers, roofers, and others are far more likely to face death on the jobs than police or firefighters, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
And as Choire Sicha wrote earlier this year, “2008 was the ten-year low for police officers being killed, and 2012 is, so far, year-to-date, down 49% from last year.” Continue reading →
I first met farmer, author, entrepreneur, thinker, and self-described “Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic” Joel Salatin at his rural Virginia farm, Polyface, in 2009. We sat in rocking chairs in his home office and talked about everything from food and agriculture to law, regulations, and the Bill of Rights.
I’ve seen Salatin several times since—in Washington, DC, and Little Rock, Arkansas and, most recently, back at his farm—and have even invoked his unsubsidized farming practices to argue that he and farmers like him should serve as the model for supporters of sustainable agriculture—meaning farming that eschews government subsidies while both minimizing environmental impacts and also turning a profit. Continue reading →
…The prevention of such a grotesque outrage is written into the Constitution – in Article I, Section 9, which prohibits suspending the right of habeas corpus except in cases of rebellion or invasion. Nevertheless, earlier this year Congress passed, and President Obama signed, the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes the indefinite detention, without charge or trial, of American citizens by the U.S. military.
Taking a page out of George W. Bush’s book, Obama included a signing statement indicating that he would disregard the parts of the law he does not like, including the detention provision. But his forbearance, while welcome, does not constrain future presidents. (It does not even constrain him, for that matter; he can change his mind at any time.)… via Reason
…The federal government has spent over $80 billion on aviation security in the past 10 years. Yet “your chance of dying in a bathtub is about one in a million, and from terrorism is about one in 3.5 million,” says Ohio State political scientist John Mueller.
Mueller and his co-author Mark G. Stewart argue in their new book, “Terror, Security, and Money: Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs of Homeland Security ,” that cost-benefit analysis needs to be applied to security expenditures. The authors calculate for current spending levels to be cost-effective, the U.S. government would “have to prevent four Time Square-type attacks every single day.” So why are we spending so much for so little added safety?..
…There are 331 million cellphone subscriptions—about 20 million more than there are residents—in the United States. Nearly 90 percent of adult Americans carry at least one phone. The phones communicate via a nationwide network of nearly 300,000 cell towers and 600,000 micro sites, which perform the same function as towers. When they are turned on, they ping these nodes once every seven seconds or so, registering their locations, usually within a radius of 150 feet. By 2018 new Federal Communications Commission regulations will require that cellphone location information be even more precise: within 50 feet. Newer cellphones also are equipped with GPS technology, which uses satellites to locate the user more precisely than tower signals can. Cellphone companies retain location data for at least a year. AT&T has information going all the way back to 2008. Continue reading …”Everybody in this country has the right to say what they think and feel and what best represents them. The people at Chick-fil-A have the absolute right to say and do what they want. It doesn’t matter that all of these people disagree with their opinion. The question was how would the people that agree with what that man said do to support the company and how would the ones against his anti-gay remarks protest.
I’ve seen Salatin several times since—in Washington, DC, and Little Rock, Arkansas and, most recently, back at his farm—and have even invoked his unsubsidized farming practices to argue that he and farmers like him should serve as the model for supporters of sustainable agriculture—meaning farming that eschews government subsidies while both minimizing environmental impacts and also turning a profit. Continue reading 
The Grey Enigma 