Via Radley Balko I see that yesterday the ACLU released its much-anticipated report on police surveillance of (and interference with) protest activity. Read it and weep, as they say. It has dozens of examples from many states, and includes links to descriptions of each incident.

A few highlights:

LAPD Special Order #11, dated March 5, 2008 includes a list of 65 behaviors LAPD officers “shall” report. The list includes such innocuous, clearly subjective, and First Amendment‐protected activities as, taking measurements, using binoculars, taking pictures or video footage “with no apparent esthetic value,” drawing diagrams, taking notes, and espousing extremist views.

Ask Rodney King about the LAPD's sense of esthetics.

During the 2004 and 2005 Air‐Sea Shows, the Friends Meeting of Ft. Lauderdale distributed information about conscientious objection to recruiters and interested civilians and handed out peace literature. Peter Ackerman learned that this action had landed him on a government watchlist when, shortly after news broke about domestic surveillance by the Department of Defense, a local reporter called him and asked if he was a "credible threat".

Caitlin Childs was arrested after a peaceful protest on public property outside the Honey Baked Ham store on Buford Highway in DeKalb County for taking down the license plate number of the car belonging to the DHS agent who had been photographing the protestors all day.

A plain‐clothes Harvard University detective was caught photographing people at a peaceful protest for “intelligence gathering” purposes. Protesters who then photographed the officer were arrested.

The ACLU aggregates distinct problems: detaining or arresting people for extremely dubious reasons (like for photographing police), on the one hand, and surveillance of protected activities, on the other hand. Those are distinct problems, and require distinct responses. False arrests require vigorous defense and, where appropriate, lawsuits. Questionable surveillance, on the other hand, often doesn't ripen into a constitutional violation. Policing that sort of activity requires vigorous inquiry, tools like FOIA requests, good journalism, and halfway-decent executive oversight of law enforcement. Those are in regrettably short supply — and public tolerance for law enforcement surveillance of dissenters remains appallingly high.

The world dumps on me, my friends. The world dumps on me, and I dump on a select few other people. Associates. Certain clients. Opposing counsel. Stupid people on the internet. Over long periods of time, I ridicule them.

That may make me an outlaw in France now.

See, France just made "psychological violence" a crime:

Those found guilty face up to three years in jail and a fine of 75,000 euros, or about $90,000.
. . .
The law defines mental violence as “repeated acts that could be constituted by words,” including insults or repeated text messages that “degrade one’s quality of life and cause a change to one’s mental or physical state.”

There's no apparent exception permitting nagging. There's no savings clause if you complain about your in-laws a lot.

The French were apparently attempting to address domestic violence. [Note: I've seen varying reports, and haven't been able to find a copy of the law, so I'm not yet clear if it only applies to mental violence against spouses and domestic partners.] Domestic violence is a terrible thing. People who commit assault upon their purported loved ones should go to jail, just like people who commit assault upon strangers on the street.

But broad police discretion is, frankly, a terrible thing as well. So is government regulation of expression. And of relationships.

Should a free people let the government shoulder the burden of protecting them from mentally harmful speech?

Anna Chapman, a/k/a Аня Чaпмaна, who is accused of spying for the Russian federal security service, still has a Facebook page.  And it's going to hang her.

Chapman's extensive online presence, including more than 90 photographs posted to Facebook and an apparently glamorous lifestyle as a property millionaire, has made her the focus of much of the media coverage of the case. …

Chapman's CV also claimed that she worked for a hedge fund in London called Navigator. No record has yet emerged that such a fund existed, according to the specialist hedge-fund website, FINalternatives.

She is also said to have been married to a British citizen, but this has not been confirmed.

She probably wasn't.  In fact, it appears that most of Chapman's life is an invention, one thoroughly documented online.

In its way, this is a brilliant idea on the part of Chapman and her masters in the FSB.  Where Soviet agents in the cold war had to spend dull, dreary decades establishing an identity, it seems Chapman was able to invent herself out of whole cloth in a relatively short time.

But there's the rub.  Past deep cover agents such as Whittaker Chambers, Kim Philby, and Richard Sorge (the greatest spy in history) spent years establishing roots.  They were very difficult to uproot, and in some cases, such as Alger Hiss, to this day have gullible defenders despite overwhelming evidence of guilt.

Chapman appears to have unraveled in a very short time, in part because her online identity didn't check out.  And she can never testify in her own defense, because the very internet she used will destroy her on impeachment.

I wonder how many of Chapman's Facebook friends, 167 strong as of this writing, have removed the association.  And whether they know that their names are now forever in an FBI file as possible associates of a Russian agent, despite the removal.

Never write anything online that can be written on paper.

Never write anything on paper that can be spoken in private.

Never speak to two people if one will do.

If you do speak to two people, hunt down one and kill him in secret, to let the other know you're serious about your privacy.

Proving his point that judges are too ignorant to make reasoned decisions about gun control, Justice Stephen Breyer demonstrates his complete ignorance about guns:

Does the right to possess weapons for self-defense extend outside the home? To the car? To work? What sort of guns are necessary for self-defense? Handguns? Rifles? Semiautomatic weapons? When is a gun semi-automatic?

Any textualist would tell Justice Breyer to read a basic firearms manual. Any gun owner would tell Justice Breyer that a vast number of the guns owned in America are semiautomatic. A semiautomatic gun is one which dispenses precisely one round with each press of the trigger and loads the next round by mechanical pressure. Semiautomatic firearms are owned by millions of law-abiding hunters and homeowners, and even by policemen. God only knows what J-Dog would tell him.

Perhaps Justice Breyer, and his equally ignorant clerks, meant to raise the specter of fully automatic firearms, which dispense rounds in multiple bursts or until exhausted of ammunition, as with machine guns, squad automatic weapons, and the like. There is no reason to believe that the five Justices who held for the petitioners in McDonald v. Chicago, one of whom I have it on good authority hunts and knows the difference, will ever overturn the federal ban on civilian ownership of machine guns. At least not until they're made obsolete by blasters and phased plasma rifles, in forty watt range (which I'm assured are ideal for home defense).

Perhaps our most serious constitutional defect isn't the Second Amendment, but Article III, which grants astonishing power for life to highly educated men and women, even when those people prove, again and again, that their educations don't mean a damned thing.

But I doubt Justice Breyer would go that far.

Don't Tase my granny!

Police Tasered an 86-year-old disabled grandma in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she couldn't breathe, after her grandson called 911 seeking medical assistance, the woman and her grandson claim in Oklahoma City Federal Court. Though the grandson said, "Don't Taze my granny!" an El Reno police officer told another cop to "Taser her!" and wrote in his police report that he did so because the old woman "took a more aggressive posture in her bed," according to the complaint.

Now I know what you're thinking.  Did he fire six shots or only five?  Sorry, that's not what you're thinking.

You're thinking, dude's making this up.  This comes from The Onion. It's a parody of the spate of recent news stories on criminal assaults by the police against civilians.

But it isn't.  It comes from Courthouse News Service, which is a respectable web service quoting directly from lawsuits filed in federal court, in this case the western district of Oklahoma.

And from this, we know or can strongly suspect the following to be true:

1) Lonnie Tinsley found an attorney with the guts to make these allegations in federal court, so I assume there's some basis in fact for the allegations.  The lawyer on Seinfeld wouldn't invent a story like this;

2) Lonnie Tinsley's grandmother, Lona Varner of El Reno Oklahoma, is 86 years old and hooked to an oxygen tank;

3) Lonnie Tinsley became worried that his grandmother hadn't taken her medications, so he called 911 to ask for medical help;

4) Multiple El Reno Oklahoma police officers responded instead, and shot Lona Varner with a TASER;

5) There is an incident report, filed by an Officer Thomas Duran of the El Reno police department, which says this:

Instead, the apparent leader of the police [defendant Thomas Duran] instructed another policeman to 'Taser her!' He stated in his report that the 86 year-old plaintiff 'took a more aggressive posture in her bed,' and that he was fearful for his safety and the safety of others.

6) Lonnie Tinsley, who called 911 for medical help for his grandmother, was then arrested and thrown into the back of a police car.

I don't know anything about Varner's attorney, but I do know this: no sane lawyer would file a federal suit claiming that an officer had Tased an 86 year old woman in her bed, justifying it by claiming that grandma "took a more aggressive posture in her bed," without a document from which he could quote that actually said that.  And without an arrest report.

So it stands to reason that Lora Varner, 86 years old, probably demented, and hooked up to an oxygen tank, was Tased by officers fearful for their safety, because she took an "aggressive posture in her bed."

WTF?!?

Update: Thanks to our friend Jag for the police report, which we're posting here but originally comes from Carlos Miller: 33557136-Dallas-Org-El-Reno-Police-Report-on-Lona-Varner

I'd encourage you to read Miller's link, which has a photo of Ms. Varner.

To place things in context, the very obviously demented Varner, according to Duran, pulled a kitchen knife on Duran from under her pillow.  So she was shot with a Taser, placing her at risk of heart failure or (because a Taser needle can penetrate plastic tubing as easily as skin) exploding in a fiery holocaust of pure oxygen death.

On the other hand, I could disarm this lady, and so could you, and we're not ten police officers.

"If there's a gun I take the bullet.  If there's a knife I take the blade." — Mr. T.

Because Thomas Duran and his keystone cops couldn't disarm an 86 year old invalid grandmother, she was Tased, and her grandson who probably, for some irrational reason, objected to the Tasing was arrested.

If only Mr. T had been around, everyone would have settled their differences with a tall, icy glass of milk and a nice bowl of cereal, and the people watching on television would have learned a valuable lesson about sharing, friendship, and respect for one's elders.

But screw all of that.  I'm going to write about something important.

Do you want a puppy?  I have one, free to a good home.

Let's get a few things straight.  She's a stray.  She started living under my porch on Friday night, probably hiding from a thunderstorm.  She didn't have a collar.  I'm not going to bother checking for a microchip, because: a) most people who chip their dogs are responsible enough not to let them get away in the first place; and b) she's a  mixed breed, and only idiots (raises hand) chip their worthless mixed breeds.

She stank to high heaven when I brought her in.  She was malnourished.  Long a master of bathing stray dogs, that wasn't a problem for me.  She now smells like lavender, mixed with a healthy dog smell, not a bad smell at all, sort of like old leather.  She's been subsisting on a royal diet (for dogs) of Iams, milk, cheese, and raw eggs since I brought her in, and her coat now looks like life and health.

Surprisingly, she's semi-housetrained.  She scratches at the door to go out, though she's not so disciplined as to wait long.  That can be fixed quickly.

Now, the good parts.  She's as cute as the dickens.  She's very intelligent, and playful, but a little submissive.  She's good around dogs and cats and small children.  (All have been tested.)  Now that she's had a bath, she's attractive, a red pit mix with white diamonds and belly.  She has a long, hound-type body.  Basically she looks like a basset hound with a square head.  She'd make a great pet for a family.  She's in excellent health, with fine teeth.  I'd estimate she's three to five months old.  We're getting rabies and other shots today, and putting her on flea, tick, and parasite medication, because we're sure the asshat who last had her neglected these protections.

I already own four dogs and honestly can't keep a fifth.  Do you want a good dog?  I won't give her to the local shelter, which is a nice shelter but it does kill.  If you live in North Carolina or a surrounding state, have any interest and can pass my demanding character and fitness tests, comment here with a valid email address, and I'll get in touch.

I'll have a photo up later tonight.

UPDATE: She's definitely not chipped, (silly rude drive-by commenter who wants me to burn in Hell, did you really think I wouldn't have the dog scanned as a free courtesy when I took her to the veterinarian?) and in excellent health.

This is a facial glamor shot:

Again, if you live in, or are a reasonable distance from, North Carolina, or have a friend in such range in need of a really sweet puppy, leave a valid email address in comments and I'll get in touch.  We already like her a lot, but keeping her wouldn't be fair to our older dogs, especially the blind thirteen year old basset hound, who's set in her ways and has little tolerance for whippersnappers.

She now has all shots.  The veterinarian estimates her age at six months.

Today is "Take Your Dog To Work Day." If I had wished to do so, I could have taken one of my dogs to work.  I practice, by choice, in a small laid back insurance defense firm, having left a larger law firm (not Skadden by any means) because I could see myself dying of a heart attack at the age of fifty if I'd stayed with those backstabbing stuffed shirts.

The money isn't as good, but I have a stereo in my office, more unusual art than what I could have displayed at the big firm, and I can take my dog to work.

As a hobby, I write for a "Take Your Dog To Work" blog.  I can write about anything I wish.  I can cuss up a storm.  I can abuse and vilify anyone I choose, and I can write under a pseudonym, like the nameless coward that I am.

Dave Weigel found out, the hard way, that you can't take your dog to work at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher and Flom.

Weigel, long one of the more entertaining journalist / bloggers at Reason and later the Washington Independent, "resigned" today from his new gig as the Washington Post's blogger in chief on the conservative political movement.  Weigel, as anyone who can read could tell, is no conservative though he covers the movement well.  His resignation was prompted by the revelation of several emails he'd written, he thought in private, concerning Matt Drudge and the followers of Ron Paul.  As it turned out Weigel trusted the wrong people, and the emails were revealed.

Weigel, coming from a "Take Your Dog To Work" background at Reason, a "Take Your Dog To Work" political magazine if ever there was one, made the mistake of taking his dog to work at the Washington Post, which is Skadden Arps.

The dog promptly shit on the rug, humped an important client who was allergic to fur, knocked over the aquarium filled with rare Japanese koi, then vomited fish bones all over the managing partner's office.  And so Dave Weigel first apologized, then got to carry his belongings out of the office in a cardboard box.

It's as simple as that.  Some claim that Weigel was fired for "having an opinion". That's shit on the rug, and it won't come out.  Weigel was fired for forgetting that you can't take your dog to work at Skadden Arps, no matter what they tell new associates about the wonderful lifestyle they'll enjoy working at the world's most prestigious law firm.

No doubt Weigel will land on his feet.  He's talented and he's smart.  But he'd be better off at a "Take Your Dog To Work" magazine or blog.

I've wondered why some of Weigel's former colleagues, such as Radley Balko or Katherine Mangu Ward, aren't working for the Post or the Times.  "Shit man, Balko's a thousand times smarter than David Brooks, and a much better reporter than James Risen.  He should be in the big leagues."

But they probably enjoy taking their dogs to work now and then, around people who actually like dogs and won't be offended by the smell.

Today I caught myself reacting with enthusiasm to a case being assigned to a particular judge because I get good reception on my various wireless devices in that courtroom.

Fred Astaire, and our friend Windypundit, have said it was the Nicholas Brothers in Stormy Weather.  I beg to differ.

It was the Berry Brothers, perhaps not as technically perfect as the Nicholas Brothers (with whom they were rivals), but far more athletic, in the relatively obscure film Panama Hattie.  Feast your eyes and ears on this.

They're like Jedi in tophats, tails, and canes.

Courtesy of Adam Kissel of The FIRE, I see that the Institute for Justice has started a new First Amendment blog, Congress Shall Make No Law. Regular Popehat readers know that free speech is one of our favorite topics. "Congress Shall Make No Law" looks like one to add to your feed reader.

Things I've wanted to write about this week, but haven't been able to hit.  Fortunately, they've been well handled by other bloggers:

• Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Sharon Keller, whose neglect of her responsibilities killed a man, had her removal hearing.  Grits for Breakfast covered it.
• We ignored the case of James Dave, the Chattanooga officer who arrested Eric Wright for having the gall to ignore Dave's lawful command that Wright stop trying to save his new bride's life.
• The University of Texas is allowing police to conduct experiments on mentally ill prisoners.  Some doctors should lose their licenses.
• This is what the tax return for a small corporation looks like. I'm surprised they could find a camera with a lens wide enough to take in the whole monstrosity.
• And finally, from Kids Prefer Cheese, an old post about the worst Mexican restaurant on earth.  Or at least Germany. It made me laugh.

Just thought you'd like to know.

You thought the recession had caused hideous human misery so far? You thought the rampant foreclosures, the persistent high unemployment, the collapse of venerable companies, the evisceration of public confidence in whole segments of the economy, the conversion of economic titans into welfare cases was disturbing?

Friends, you ain't seen nothing yet. You want disturbing? I'll give you disturbing:

Ongoing efforts to freeze or cut federal pay to help control U.S. spending are demoralizing and bad for recruitment, according to Democratic lawmakers and unions.

I read that lede and had to check to see whether maybe it was the Washington Times rather than the Washington Post, wielding sharp-edged satire.

Nope.

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), whose Northern Virginia district is home to at least 70,000 federal workers, called the Republican proposals [to freeze federal employee salaries] "a cheap shot."

"Every time that happens, it has a demoralizing impact on the federal workforce and frankly discourages young people from joining the federal workforce," Connolly said in an interview. "Treating them like a punching bag may make for a good story back home, but it's really a long-term cost to the very people we're trying to serve."

Gerry, I'm sure that the experienced attorneys who are blowing up my fax line scrambling for jobs as paralegals feel just terrible about federal employees not getting raises or bonuses. It's a national tragedy.

And how much are federal employees hurting, really? Well . . . .

Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.

Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.

The highest-paid federal employees are doing best of all on salary increases. Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more increased from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009, the most recent figure available.

When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.

The trend to six-figure salaries is occurring throughout the federal government, in agencies big and small, high-tech and low-tech.

So the two million federal employees have not exactly been subjected to extreme belt-tightening.

Do some federal employees make less than what they could in the private sector? Yes. My starting salary with the feds was pitiful. But salaries have been steadily trending up. The benefits are excellent. The job security is unparalleled in the private sector — it's very difficult to get fired, thanks to unions and civil service rules. It's a trade-off. And frankly, I'm skeptical that 1700 people from Transportation could make more than $170k in the private sector if they tried.

But two million people is a big voting block. Their unions, through political contributions, wield mighty influence. So the mere notion that federal employees, like everyone else, ought to cut back during a national recession can generate an angry response like the one above.

California is discovering the economic effects of having public employee unions run rampant — our criminal justice system is driven by the prison guards' unions, and public educator benefits are bankrupting us for questionable returns. To the feds, handing out sinecures for political support seems like chump change compared to Social Security and Medicare, so it gets less attention. But brother, those billions can add up.

Anton Ukhanov presents this gallery of Russian airbrushed car art, from the "Aerography" auto show, taken at the Khodynka field in Moscow, June 19, 2010.

The word is … awesome!

The gallery features dozens of cars just as impressive.

Expect to read in coming months of an exodus of American rednecks, all applying for visas to Russia.  Clearly, we have an airbrush gap!

Iowahawk take note!

Found thanks to Tim Blair.

It's time for the Road to Popehat the feature in which we check out the traffic logs, look at the searches that brought you here, and wonder whether universal suffrage is really such a realistic idea.

This month's theme: life's unanswerable questions.

[approximately 30 searches, differently phrased, asking for the page number in Anne Frank's diary that mentions her hoo-ha]: You're seriously creeping us out here, people.

why haven't the aliens interfered more in our latest development: They're lulling us into a false sense of complacency.

what doesn't the navy tell you: That ain't grog.

What wards off stupid people? So far as we can tell, absolutely nothing.

when did prostitution become a federal crime in Chicago, Illinois? Almost certainly before you did whatever it is you did.

When will people be required to have microchips [and two variations thereon]: That depends on whether the aliens start interfering with the implantation program.

what state do people stomp on pigeons? I'm thinking that would be a state of anger.

do really wolff man exist? [sic] Yes. But in real life they don't have good abs. They're built like me.

Who does Debbie Schlussel like? Absolutely nobody.

how to handle foolish client/what to do if you have a crazy client/what does the bar say about suing a delusional client: Hey, if you find the answer to those, please drop me an email.

roommate has schizophrenia and didn't tell me — legal? No. But only his dominant personality is liable.

how do you properly use hyperbole You beat your worthless fucking opponents bloody with it. You crush their skulls like grapes with it. You turn their pets into small wet stains with it.

what makes orly taitz a good candidate: Entertainment value.

Last year I covered the games nominated for the most prestigious prize in boardgames, the Spiel des Jahres. I went over the basics of the prize – decided on by a jury, heavily weighted towards family games – in that post, and gave some back ground on the award. Of course, the prediction in that post were severely hampered by coming out two weeks after the prize was announced. This year, I am ahead (slightly) of the game. The prize is due to be announced next Monday. This years candidates are a curious bunch. I have actually played all 5 games, and they are all over the place. Let's take a look.

Continue Reading »