What separates us from the Islamofascists, we're told, is that we support free expression and they don't. They get violently exercised by cartoons; we're above that.

Yeah, about that . . .

The Renton, Washington Police Department and Renton Chief Prosecutor Shawn Arthur aren't breaking windows or throwing firebombs or stoning anyone. At least not yet. However, they are using a kind of violence — the coercive power of the state — to retaliate against a cartoonist. Their methods may not involve overt force, but their motives are repugnant to American values of freedom of expression.

KIRO investigative reporter Chris Halsne broke the story. He learned that the Renton P.D. is butthurt over a series of YouTube animated cartoons poking fun at issues in their ranks — including, apparently, officers having "dating relationships" with suspects. The videos — apparently created on xtranormal.com — have unidentified cops and city officials engaging in discussions lampooning departmental scandals.

In America, that's no harm, no foul, right? We have a First Amendment. You can make fun of people, even if it hurts their feelings. You can speak, forcefully and satirically, about the conduct of government business. If you make false statements about someone, you might be in for a libel suit, but you're not going to go to jail for cartoons in America, right?

Well, there's America, and there's Shawn Arthur's Renton.

Now, cops will want to do stupid, stupid, lawless things. Prosecutors are supposed to exercise some judgment and haul them back from the precipice of unconstitutional thuggery. But some prosecutors — because they're political hacks who owe their position to the police, because they're strictly fourth-rate lawyers, or because they're thugs themselves — fail to provide that check and balance. Renton Chief Prosecutor Shawn Arthur is such a lawyer. He sought and obtained a a search warrant directed at Google to find the identity of the author of the YouTube videos, using the pretext that the Washington state law against "cyberstalking." That ludicrously overbroad law provides as follows:

(1) A person is guilty of cyberstalking if he or she, with intent to harass, intimidate, torment, or embarrass any other person, and under circumstances not constituting telephone harassment, makes an electronic communication to such other person or a third party:

(a) Using any lewd, lascivious, indecent, or obscene words, images, or language, or suggesting the commission of any lewd or lascivious act;

(b) Anonymously or repeatedly whether or not conversation occurs; or

(c) Threatening to inflict injury on the person or property of the person called or any member of his or her family or household.

Shawn Arthur and his affiant, Renton Police Officer Ryan Rutledge, asserts that the cartoonist, by his cartoons, has violated this section by using lewd and indecent words with intent to embarrass officers of the Renton Police Department:

It is my belief that the targets made in these videos target specific members of the City of Renton and Renton Police Department with the intent to embarrass and emotionally torment the victims by use of electronic communications to such persons or to a third party.

Perhaps the City of Renton and the Renton Police Department is made up of weepy weaklings who are easily hurt and tormented. If so, perhaps they should move to Canada. I understand they're quite solicitous of hurt feelings there.

But wait, you say. Cops will be cops, and hack lawyers will hack lawyers, but what about the judiciary? Surely no judge will sign a search warrant based on a theory that so patently violates the First Amendment?

Isn't it pretty to think so. But meet Kings County Judge James D. Cayce, who rubberstamped a search warrant seeking to unveil a cartoonist on the theory that be committed "cyberstalking" by posting cartoons making fun of police officers and city officials. That, in my experience, is how state judges act. They are no bulwark at all.

I'll watch this case from here. Will Google fight evil and challenge this search warrant? If not, will Shawn Arthur attempt to bring charges against the cartoonist? Does he realize that though he has absolute immunity for lawless prosecutions, he does not have absolute immunity for seeking a search warrant based on protected expression? Time will tell.

For now, thanks to the Streisand Effect, Shawn Arthur and Ryan Rutledge have assured that many thousands more viewers will enjoy the cartoons about their police department than would have without their censorious crusade.

It occurs to me that, in this post, I have, with the intent to embarrass censorious and thuggish public officials, used obscene language to make electronic communications to them or to third parties. Under their ludicrously unconstitutional interpretation of Washington's silly statute, I am guilty of a crime.

Come get me, fuckers.

Hat tip to Balko.

On June 15, 2006, Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court held a fascinating discussion with Justice Stephen Breyer on the "New Professionalism" of the American policeman:

Another development over the past half-century that deters civil-rights violations is the increasing professionalism of police forces, including a new emphasis on internal police discipline. Even as long ago as 1980 we felt it proper to assume that unlawful police behavior would be dealt with appropriately by the authorities, but we now have increasing evidence that police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously. There have been wide-ranging reforms in the education, training, and supervision of police officers. Numerous sources are now available to teach officers and their supervisors what is required of them under this Court's cases, how to respect constitutional guarantees in various situations, and how to craft an effective regime for internal discipline. Failure to teach and enforce constitutional requirements exposes municipalities to financial liability. Moreover, modern police forces are staffed with professionals; it is not credible to assert that internal discipline, which can limit successful careers, will not have a deterrent effect. There is also evidence that the increasing use of various forms of citizen review can enhance police accountability. [Citations omitted].

At 12:03 a.m. on June 22, 2011, North Carolina Highway Patrol Troopers Edward Wyrick, Jr. and Andrew Smith held an equally fascinating discussion of the New Professionalism, as they texted one another on their mobile computers:

Wyrick: THIS WOMAN REFUSED ALL ROADSIDE TESTING, AND BLEW .00. HER HUSBAND IS A TRIAL LAWYER AND TOLD ME I SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF MYSELF.

Smith: HAHAHAHA FUCK HER AND FUCK HIM. SHE SAY HOW MUCH SHE'D HAD TO DRINK?

Wyrick: SHE SAID 1 DRINK AT 7PM.

Smith: FUCK HER.

At 12:31 a.m., after Trooper Smith had stopped Hoyt Tessener's car behind that of Trooper Wyrick, who was fleeing Tessener in a high speed cruiser after promising that Tessener could follow him to the jail where Wyrick was taking Tessener's wife Gina for the crime of blowing 0.00 on a breathalyzer, Smith resumed his conversation on the New Professionalism:

Smith: TELL HIM IF HE WANTS TO COP AN ATTITUDE TO FEEL FREE AND COME BACK AND ILL STROKE HIM THAT SPEED.

As Justice Scalia tells us, "we now have increasing evidence that police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously."  Just ask Troopers Edward Wyrick and Andrew Smith of the North Carolina Highway Patrol.

Troopers of the North Carolina Highway Patrol would never assume, based simply on the fact that a pretty woman is wearing an evening gown and high heels and driving a Lexus in a beach town and no other evidence at all, that she'd been drinking.  And they'd never make up a story about smelling alcohol on her when she had no alcohol in her system whatsoever, and despite that fact that a machine whose sole purpose is to detect alcohol, a machine we're told by judges just like Antonin Scalia is infallible and part of the New Professionalism, cannot detect any alcohol whatsoever.

It must have been the wine all those other people she was around had been drinking, which somehow migrated onto her clothing, and into her car, and all the way with her as she drove across town.  Though French parfumiers, though Sri Lankan tea brokers, though (to borrow the language of the New Police Professionalism) FUCKING BLOODHOUNDS couldn't have smelled alcohol on Gina Tessener, Trooper Edward Wyrick is a man of his word.  And his nose.

And it was completely unprofessional of Tessener's husband, Hoyt Tessener, to demand an apology from Wyrick when it turned out that Wyrick's nose is more keen than a FUCKING MACHINE WHOSE SOLE PURPOSE IS TO DETECT ALCOHOL.  For dragging Hoyt Tessener's wife out of her car, even though the FUCKING ALCOHOL MACHINE SAID SHE'D DONE NOTHING WRONG, handcuffing her, and driving her away, a strange man, against her will, to a cage.

Of course if a non-policeman had handcuffed and kidnapped Tessener's wife, he'd go straight to jail.  No jury would convict Tessener for beating the hell out of such a man. But civilians who handcuff women and abduct them, for no good reason, are not part of the police. They lack the New Professionalism.  Which is why we send them to jail in the first place.  So Tessener shouldn't have gotten so upset, told Trooper Wyrick that he should be ashamed of himself, and then complained to the Governor after he was stopped by another trooper, who was merely adhering to the New Professionalism as he texted his fucking messages to Trooper Wyrick.

Because that's all part of the New Police Professionalism.

Jesus wept.

Wearing high heels in a gravel parking lot?  That'll be a blood test, ma'am. Embarrassed a North Carolina State Highway Patrol trooper? That'll be a trip straight to jail. Remember how the North Carolina Highway Patrol treats dogs? Imagine how they treat suspects.

As an aside, and since I blog pseudonymously this isn't worth much, I have tried a case against the aggrieved attorney in this story. I found him to be an honest man in a hotly contested trial, which is more than I can say for many patrol troopers.

Sure, a cat can look at a king. But a person is not a cat, and a cop is not (exactly) a king, and a camera is not a look, so the epigram is non-operative when its application might threaten national security — for instance, when a citizen wants to photograph an ongoing traffic stop from the safety of her own property.

That's what Emily Good of Rochester, New York found out when she concluded, incorrectly, that she had any rights that the policeman is bound to respect. When she saw a traffic stop in front of her house, she stood on her lawn filming it. The cop — one Mario Masic — ordered her into her house. Good — who was on her own property, observing a public servant undertaking a public function — refused. She was arrested for her trouble. Carlos Miller — a photographer and tireless commenter on law enforcement's reflexive hostility to photographers and willful ignorance or defiance of their rights — has the story and the video. There's also an eyewitness account. The Rochester police department has started the process of framing a justification.

Law enforcement hostility to being photographed or recorded is nothing new. Radley Balko and Carlos Miller have done important work on the subject, and here at Popehat Patrick has talked about how the criminal justice system retaliates against citizens who use modern technology to document police misconduct.

What's different about the encounter between Officer Mario Masic and citizen Emily Good? In a way, nothing — it's a banal application of the general rule that police officers are either ignorant or contemptuous of citizen rights, and feel entitled to prevent citizens from recording their public functions. In another way, this incident is a rather pure distillation of the issue. Law enforcement arguments in favor of prohibiting photography usually involve an invocation of the thin blue line — the proposition that civilians simply cannot comprehend the barbarism that cops are protecting them from, and cannot understand the unique stresses and challenges and dangers of The Job. When Officer Mario Masic justified ordering Emily Good off of her own property, and ordering her to desist recording a public function in a public place, he did so on the basis that she made him feel threatened — a subjective "feeling" allegedly caused by an unarmed civilian on her own property doing nothing objectively threatening. Law enforcement wants citizens to accept such subjective feelings and hunches and suspicions uncritically, without dispute, as justifications to stop us and search us and detain us and order us to stop doing things we have the right to do. They assert that they can't protect us unless we respect and yield to these unilateral subjective feelings. But the core proposition of limited government power is that the state must have a specific, articulable, fact-based, and legally sufficient basis to impede citizens from exercising rights. If we cede that by yielding to claims that law enforcement officers have special abilities to feel danger, we let law enforcement order us about at will. Make no mistake that they will take that opportunity, particularly where recording them is concerned: perhaps the greatest threat to law enforcement's entrenched traditional privilege to abuse citizens and then lie about it is modern technology that produces irrefutable evidence of perjury and violations of rights. State officials do not give up privileges easily.

The DEA's investigations produce a huge volume of wiretaps and other monitored conversations. Many are in other languages. Back when I was a fed, the DEA agents were free to pick whichever professional translator they wanted to produce English-language transcripts. Many translators advertised to the DEA agents. In the late 1990s, the criminal defense bar managed to get copies of some of those advertisements, and used them to devastating effect in cross-examinations. See, some translators would pitch their services by suggesting that they would skew the translations to support the government's theory of the case, saying things like "pick the right translator, because one word can mean the difference between guilty or not guilty."

This produced unpleasant tension between federal prosecutors and the DEA. The AUSAs didn't want to try cases based on tainted translations, and the DEA agents were loyal to their pet translators and saw nothing wrong with translators as advocates. Sometimes the federal prosecutors were obligated to pay with their own budget to have the tapes re-translated by a translator without such baggage.

That's always going to be a hazard when cops and prosecutors seek expert services in cases, whether those services are linguistic or forensic. So when I saw that Radley Balko was using his new platform at HufPo to suggest privatization of crime labs, I was skeptical. Balko has done great work on crime lab issues at Reason for years, but how could privatization work?

Fortunately his proposal is structured to prevent the sort of incentives and biases I'm concerned about. Balko is advocating a system suggested by Reason Foundation writer Roger Koppl:

Instead, Koppl's plan would use competition to remedy the incentive and cognitive bias problems that occur when analysts who are supposed to be objective work for and report to the same government agencies that then use their results to try to put defendants in prison.

Under Koppl's plan, a city or state would create a position of "evidence handler." The evidence handler's job would be to distribute the testable evidence in a case to the appropriate crime lab. Under a fully privatized system, the evidence handler would distribute it to one of a rotating series of private labs. Under a partially-privatized system, there would still be a state lab, but under both systems, in every third case or so, the evidence would be sumbitted to a second or third lab for verification. The original lab would not know when it was being checked by other labs.

This system, which Koppl calls "rivalrous redundancy," flips the incentive problem upside down. For the individual crime lab worker, the incentive is no longer to please prosecutors or police, but to do the most thorough, sound, objective analysis possible. For the private labs, the incentive is to catch the state labs — or another private lab — making a mistake. When there's conflict over test results, a third or fourth lab could come into the mix.

I think it's a start. The key would be to expose the private lab selection process to exacting scrutiny, to avoid selection based on promises of "helpful" results. We'd also need to ensure that when private labs expose shoddy work by state labs, there would be real consequences for state lab workers — no easy task when those workers belong to government employee unions. We'd have to watch for revolving-door systems where "helpful" performance at a private lab can lead to a job at a public one, or vice-versa — the sort of rewards system that taints Congress and our federal agencies.

Mostly, we'd have to continue to work to change public attitudes about the role of law enforcement, hardened by two generations of insipid law-and-order rhetoric. The glut of forensic shows on television only encourage the public to view lab workers as righteous advocates, actively involved in investigations and questing for information that will confirm their suspicions about defendants. The public is still far more upset about crime labs that fail to catch criminals — as in the cases of untested rape kits — than they are about crime labs that bungle, stretch, or falsify results to produce questionable convictions. In short, for now, too few people give a shit.

When the relatively few Americans who care discuss the slow erosion of Fourth Amendment rights, we often focus on how Congress and the courts have weakened the warrant clause by purporting to increase the array of circumstances in which law enforcement can conduct warrantless searches.

But ultimately a warrant is just a piece of paper. When it's issued without meaningful review, or executed in an unreasonable manner, it offers only the appearance of compliance with our Fourth Amendment rights.

Let's look at two examples from this week's news.

You Already Knew That I Was Going To Write About This

There's no kind way to say this: many of the judges and magistrates who sign off on search warrants just suck. They're not the legal varsity, they kowtow to cops, they're too spineless to challenge the adequacy of probable cause, and they don't think about what probable cause means.

That's how you get cops asking for, and getting, search warrants when anonymous psychics tell them that somebody's house is hiding a mass grave of children.

The police in East Texas were led on a fruitless search on Tuesday evening when a woman, claiming to be a psychic, called in a sensational tip, saying she knew of a mass grave where dozens of dismembered bodies were buried.

Equipped with a search warrant and cadaver-sniffing dogs, deputies from the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office converged on a home on a narrow country road near Hardin — about an hour outside Houston — in search of a macabre crime scene. The news of a mass grave in rural Texas set off a news media frenzy: throngs of reporters camped outside the home, two news helicopters circled above, and cable news stations flashed alerts that up to 30 bodies had been found.

But in the end, there was no grave, there were no bodies and there was no sign that any crime had been committed — except, perhaps, the misleading call that created the spectacle in the first place.

Now, an anonymous tip can form part of the basis for probable cause supporting a search warrant — but only if that tip is meaningfully corroborated. Meaningful corroboration doesn't mean corroboration of innocent facts. For instance, if the police get an anonymous tip that I am running a vast marijuana farm in my red house on Oak Street, and they check and I do have a red house on Oak street, that's not corroboration. If the police get the same tip and determine that my electrical bills are $10,000 per month and that I have a greenhouse with the windows covered and that I buy two cases of Doritos per week, that's meaningful corroboration.

The degree of corroboration required varies with the nature of the anonymous tip. Here, an extraordinary anonymous tip — that the tipster knew of a mass grave because of psychic powers — should have required extraordinary corroboration. That's because, while we as a nation hold Jesus and the angels in high esteem, we tend to view their tips with skepticism when routed through 48-year-old Texas grandmothers named "Angel." Since we don't have the warrant affidavit — and, indeed, police may not have prepared a written one — we don't know exactly what corroboration police cited. Though some reports suggest police saw dried blood on a porch (itself inadequate, in my opinion, to corroborate a psychic's tip), others suggest that police relied on the fact that the psychic correctly described innocent details like the location, appearance, and layout of the house.

The point is this: when judges will issue search warrants based on transparent flights of fancy, and when other judges will (1) out of deference to law enforcement, be reluctant to throw out evidence derived from such flights of fancy, and (2) hold cops immune from lawsuits, then the warrant requirement is but a paper shield.

Your Worst Nightmare: An Educator With A Gun

Anton Chekov (no, not the Star Trek guy) said of writing drama, "one must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."

Law enforcement training and procurement follows a similar ethos: supply creates its own demand. If you buy fancy toys for cops of any stripe, and train them to use them, then they're going to use them. Once law enforcement is equipped and trained to wield the hammer of paramilitary raids, then every search looks like a nail.

That's how the Department of Education's Office of the Inspector General came to execute a SWAT-style paramilitary raid on a homeowner to find evidence of his estranged wife's student loan fraud. We know that the DOE-OIG wasn't investigating dangerous or violent crimes, because we know what the warrant was for, and because they lack the power to do so — they investigate white-collar fraud crimes involving federal loans and programs. But DOE-OIG had procured Chekov's gun, and it couldn't just sit peacefully on the mantle in the third act. It — and their agent's paramilitary training existed, and had to be used. (I suspect there's a Napoleonic phenomenon going on as well: in my experience as a former fed and current defense lawyer, the more petty an officer's power, and the narrower his patch, the more he itches to exercise force and authority.) That's how they get to the place where they think it's appropriate to use this much force against an innocent citizen with no criminal record, and his family, because his ex was committing fraud:

"They surrounded the house; it was like a task force or S.W.A.T team," across the street neighbor Becky said. "They all had guns. They dragged him out in his boxer shorts, threw him to the ground and handcuffed him." [...]

Her young daughter, Valerie, said she counted 13 agents and one Stockton police officer outside Wright's home.

"I felt really bad for those kids," said Becky about agents when they brought out Wright's three children. "They were crying really loud."

Searches can be unreasonable not just in their purpose or in their supporting probable cause, but in their execution. A paramilitary raid is a grotesquely disproportionate approach to the investigation of a non-violent crime. It poses a grave risk of accidental death. It terrorizes innocents. And it conditions both police and citizens to view any law enforcement inquiry as justifying overwhelming force. Things like loan fraud and illegal milk sales should not require shock and awe.

The bottom line: we need to be vigilant for government abuse of the application for and execution of search warrants as well as erosion of the use of search warrants.

Congress passed the PATRIOT ACT — a long, badly written, insanely complicated piece of legislation — without reading it. No surprise — they all had rage boners, and Americans love big, grand gestures of we're-really-a-gonna-do-something-now, like voting for 342 pages of prolix government-empowering drivel without reading past the big shiny PATRIOT label.

If the people who voted on it never read it and don't understand it, then it shouldn't surprise us that the rest of America doesn't know what the hell is in it, either.

This fundamental ignorance is reflected in two trends. The first trend is for the media to blame government actions on the PATRIOT ACT, even when the particular law enforcement behavior at issue actually has nothing in particular to do with it. See, the government already had all sorts of scary-ass powers before 9/11, and in many cases the PATRIOT ACT left them alone or barely tweaked them. But the media — and people who like talking to the media — enjoy promoting ignorance by attributing all law enforcement excesses to post-9/11 fervor.

The second trend is an outgrowth of the first. "Because of the PATRIOT ACT" has become a popular alternative among cops to "because I said so, motherfucker. How does the pavement taste?" Case in point:

In a YouTube posting, Christopher Fussell left the camera rolling when he was confronted by three MTA officers for taking pictures at the Baltimore Cultural Light Rail Station.

“It is my understanding that I am free to take pictures as long as it’s not for commercial purposes but for personal use,” Fussell said in the video.

“Not on state property, not without proper authorization,” an officer said.

Fussell: “From who?”

Officer: “Nobody’s allowed to take pictures.”

The MTA admits the officers were in error.

“They can most certainly take photos of our system,” Ralign Wells, the MTA Administrator, said.

In addition to being wrong about MTA and state policy, the officer incorrectly cites the Patriot Act.

“Listen, listen to what I’m saying. The Patriot Act says that critical infrastructure, trains, train stations, all those things require certain oversight to take pictures, whether you say they are for personal use or whatever, that’s your story,” the officer said.

Now, cops have always vaguely referred to bodies of law to justify telling people not to do things they have a protected right to do. But the PATRIOT ACT gives them undreamed-of street cred when they do so. See, (1) hardly anyone knows what is in it, (2) the media blindly pushes the narrative that the PATRIOT ACT actually does let cops do all sorts of stuff they've always done, and (3) the culture blindly pushes the narrative that we need to yield to authority whenever that authority can forge a connection, however tenuous, to OMG 9/11. Hence ignorance — both our own, and that of the people we look to for information — is one of the chains that binds us.

Few people stand up and question it like Christopher Fussell did in this case. Most people cave. Good for Christopher Fussell.

Thugs defy or ignore the rule of law, and instead follow the rule that the strong and the politically powerful should prevail over the weak and the powerless. In theory, the government should pursue the rule of law, rather than the rule of thuggery. But reality bears little relation to theory or aspiration, least of all when police officers are involved.

Today's example: Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams, who is pursuing the rule of thuggery over the rule of law.

Radley Balko knocks this story out of the park, so I will be brief (for me). Philadelphia resident Mark Fiorino carried a firearm openly in a manner that was fully legal — at least under the rule of law. But Mark Fiorino erred in disregarding the law of thuggery, not bearing in mind that the police are frequently ignorant of applicable gun laws, frequently have strong opinions of what gun laws ought to be, and are frequently and violently outraged that citizens think they are bound by the former (the rule of law) rather than the later (the law of thuggery). Mark Fiorino found himself confronted by screaming police with guns drawn and threatened with death:

Fiorino offered to show Dougherty his driver's and firearms licenses. The cop told him to get on his knees.

"Excuse me?" Fiorino said.

"Get down on your knees. Just obey what I'm saying," Dougherty said.

"Sir," Fiorino replied, "I'm more than happy to stand here -"

"If you make a move, I'm going to f—— shoot you," Dougherty snapped. "I'm telling you right now, you make a move, and you're going down!"

"Is this necessary?" Fiorino said.

It went on like that for a little while, until other officers responded to Dougherty's calls for backup.

Fiorino was forced to the ground and shouted at as he tried to explain that he had a firearms license and was legally allowed to openly carry his weapon.

"You f—— come here looking for f—— problems? Where do you live?" yelled one officer.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen," Fiorino said. "If I'm under arrest, I have nothing left to say."

"F—— a——, shut the f— up!" the cop hollered.

Fiorino lived that day. He was in the right, legally, but he was also very lucky not to be shot, or tased, or beaten into a coma, or sodomized with a broom handle, or arrested immediately for some invented offense.

But Fiorino's experience was not over. He had taped the encounter. He put the tapes on YouTube.

And — as we well know — embarrassing the police is a sure way to get prosecuted by their lapdog prosecutors.

Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams has allowed his office to file charges against Fiorino for “reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct” — two charges frequently employed because there's no explicit law on the books for "contempt of cop." Apparently the government's theory is that Fiorino was "belligerent and hostile” to the investigating police, and that his persistence in asserting his rights required many police to race to the scene to confront him, threatening public order. The police theory of the case sounds similar:

Police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers said the department believes that Fiorino wanted to get into a confrontation with cops, that he wanted to see them lose their cool so he later could file a lawsuit.

The District Attorney and the police, ostensibly guardians of the rule of law, have thus retreated into thuggish wife-beater logic: "you know that you provoke me when you mouth off like that, so why did you make me hit you and make a scene?"

Fiorino walked down a street carrying a firearm in compliance with all applicable laws. Confronted by out-of-control police, he responded by asserting his rights. The YouTube videos put the lie to the government's claim that he was "belligerent and hostile" — at least as free people would define those terms. Assertion of rights is only "belligerent" or "hostile" if the government official hearing the assertion is thuggish, hostile to those rights, or pathologically entitled.

But remember: some cops, and some government officials, feel entitled not only to our adherence to the rule of law, but to unquestioning compliance with their every demand. They expect us to grovel.

The criminal charges pursued by Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams represent the thuggish fist of the government lashing out at a citizen who failed to grovel. Williams is a thug, and should be treated like one.

How often, when directed to do this or that by some government agency or official, do Americans ask this simple question?

"Why?"

Not often enough, I'd say.  Many of us are too apathetic to care.  Many are afraid to ask.  Others don't know how to phrase the question in a fashion that dumb brutes like, say, an agent of the Department of Homeland Security can understand.  Still others don't ask because they suspect they know the likely answer:

"Because I said so."

And the likely follow-up question:

"Are you refusing to obey a lawful command?"

For many of us, trained in government schools to be what the government considers good citizens, or worse, conditioned to fear our own government, it's difficult to ask questions of authority, no matter how petty.

Far easier just to show him the papers, even though we'd rather not.  We're afraid of what will happen if we refuse permission to open the trunk, even if we don't think he has any business back there.

So I'd like to congratulate the Mozilla Foundation, publishers of the Firefox web browser, for asking the Department of Homeland Security the hardest question: "Why?"

"Why should we de-list  a browser extension which, to our knowledge, is legal?"

Or to quote Harvey Anderson, Mozilla's lawyer, in response to a demand from the Department of Homeland Security to remove a browser add-on which re-directs traffic from domains seized by the government to the original owners' new domains:

• Have any courts determined that the Mafiaafire add-on is unlawful or illegal in any way? If so, on what basis? (Please provide any relevant rulings)
• Is Mozilla legally obligated to disable the add-on or is this request based on other reasons? If other reasons, can you please specify.
• Can you please provide a copy of the relevant seizure order upon which your request to Mozilla to take down the Mafiaafire  add-on is based?

Surprisingly, the Department has not answered the questions.  I suspect they never will, because the only answers they could give would ultimately boil down to:

"Because I said so.  Are you refusing to obey a lawful command?"

Except that DHS knows that answer won't fly.  By asking the question through its lawyer, and having the guts to tell the world it asked the question, Mozilla has already shown it won't be intimidated.

Which leaves DHS with the response that is to cops what kryptonite is to Superman, what the word "wrong" is to Fonzie:

"Gee, I don't know why."

So hats off to Mozilla.  By getting in front of DHS, and asking the questions publicly, the company shows a genuine concern for the interests of its customers, and frames the issue, correctly, as censorship by extra-legal threat, the sort of threat to which Mozilla's much larger competitors Google and Microsoft cave all too often. By asking the hardest question, in public, Mozilla will prevent DHS from playing the bottom card in its deck:

"You wouldn't want us to tell people you're a poor corporate citizen, would you?"

Let me tell you a story of a former client I'll call Jimmy Joe-Bob.

Jimmy Joe-Bob was a local politician of some ill repute. The DA and the cops had been gunning for him for years. Finally they came up with what they thought was a solid case against him.

DA investigators went to his house to serve the arrest warrant at 6 a.m. one Friday. (The DA and the cops favor Friday arrests because they can generally drag their heels and avoid bringing the defendant before a judge all day, thus ensuring that he stays in jail all weekend before getting bailed out). First, they tipped off a reporter from the Major Local Rag. But reporters don't like getting up that early. So when the reporter from the Major Local Rag showed up, cameraman in tow, the cops had already cuffed Jimmy Joe-Bob and put him in the back of their cruiser. The reporter protested. Where's my fucking perp-walk!

So the DA investigators pulled Jimmy Joe-Bob out of the back of their car and walked him back into his house. Then they turned around and perp-walked him back to the car so that the Major Local Rag's cameraman could get shots of him being led out of the house and put in the car. Major Local Rag ran those pics.

Major Local Rag did not report that the cops had staged a second perp walk for them. Major Local Rag would never do that. Major Local Rag doesn't report when cops break rules — including rules related to people's rights — to the benefit of Major Local Rag. That's typical. Rags have what they regard as a code of ethics — that even if someone broke the law to leak information to a Rag, then turned around and blamed someone else for that leak in a blatant attempt to obstruct justice, their help to the Rag is sacrosanct. Because otherwise the Rag wouldn't get leaks. Cops wouldn't stage perp walks so they could get good pictures.

I bring this up to explain why I am utterly unsurprised to learn that the media willingly participated in the appalling media circus described in Patrick's post earlier today. We expect journalists to be vigilant watchdogs over law enforcement abuses. They'll make a gesture now and then — when it makes a good headline.

But they'll dash past ten stories of police abuse to take advantage of one cop's leak about a politician, or athlete, or bimbo heiress in some petty scandal.

I suppose that explains why Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio chose to raid the home of Jesus Llovara, an unarmed animal cruelty suspect, using a tank.

And Steven Seagal.

Neighbor Debra Ross was so worried she called 911 and went outside where a nearby home had its windows blown out, was crawling with dozens of SWAT members in full gear, armored vehicles and a bomb robot.

“When the tank came in and pushed the wall over and you see what's in there, and all it is, is a bunch of chickens,” Ross said.

In other words, the taxpayers of Maricopa County paid thousands of dollars, Jesus Llovara and his neighbors were threatened with lethal force, and all Joe Arpaio got in return was chicken feed.

That and publicity:

[Llovara's defense attorney Robert] Campus said he believes the entire scene was basically a stage, to help actor Steven Seagal’s TV show, “Lawman.”

Seagal was riding in the tank.

No doubt because, although Llovara had only a misdemeanor record and owned no weapons, chickens are dangerous birds.

Of course, those who are concerned about animal cruelty can rest easy: All of Llovara's chickens were euthanized on the spot, thanks to Joe Arpaio and Steven Seagal.

Actually it was a bleeding head.

“Every time they come in, they say that the bleeding hasn’t stopped on the brain. She’s got no feeling or movement on her left side at all,” said [Takara] Davis’ mother Kellie Obong.

Davis is an 8th grader at Lawrence Junior High School, which is only a few blocks away from where the accident took place. Davis was issued a jaywalking citation. It was handed to her mother at the hospital.

“He said, ‘Takara was jaywalking. She has got to go to court on March 6th,’” said Obong. “If she was jaywalking, then she was jaywalking. But maybe you give it to me at a later time. Don’t give it to me when they are rushing her into the operating room.”

I have some pretty choice thoughts about an officer who visits a thirteen year old girl in the hospital to serve her with a summons for jaywalking.  I have some unflattering things to say about an officer who, on learning that the girl can't receive her ticket due to an open head wound, foists it on the grieving mother.

But Elie Mystal has done the work for me.

The Augusta Chronicle rationalizes a cop's wanton shooting of a family pet, in the family's own yard, thus:

Your dog may be the sweetest, cuddliest creature on the planet. He may never have harmed a flea. He might even be the kind that would lead a burglar to the family's fine silverware.

But until dogs learn to bark in the king's English, how can any of us know what your dog is capable of doing?

A policeman may be the most conscientious, honest man in the city.  He may never have fired a shot off the practice range.  He might even be the kind that helps cats down from trees, and returns lost children to their parents.

But until we begin firing cops who wantonly slay friendly dogs because they lack the common sense to distinguish threatening behavior from ordinary canine enthusiasm, how can any of us know whether that cop is a brutal thug?

The answer, of course, is that we can't. So when an unleashed dog is running at a stranger on the street, even if the little fellow is bounding happily toward a new friend, that stranger has to assume the worst: that the dog will bite. Some dogs will flat-out maul — and, like it or not, some breeds are infamous for it.

The answer to this assertion is that we're discussing a seven year old golden retriever named "Boomer".

A golden retriever is not a vicious or threatening breed.  The policeman, we're led to believe, is hired and selected for his good moral character and sound judgment.  His good moral character and sound judgment are supplemented by the best training our local, state, and federal governments can provide.

One would hope that training would include a measure of instruction in the art of forbearance.  Deliberation before shooting.  Because only a moron, or a hothead, or a sadist, would shoot a golden retriever in its own yard.  Morons, hotheads, and sadists have no business carrying guns for the state.  They should be employed in jobs where they can do little harm, such as writing editorials for third-tier city newspapers like the Augusta Chronicle.

In addition, sometimes a dog will do things its owner might never have seen or dreamed that it might — especially if another animal is involved. Regardless, a stranger doesn't know what is or isn't characteristic of a particular animal.

In addition, sometimes a cop will do things that citizens might never have dreamed that he might — especially one who's shown such poor judgment as the officer we're actually discussing.  He might shoot a taxpayer for carrying a water hose nozzle.  Regardless, it's safest to put down an officer so vicious as to shoot a golden retriever in its own yard, when it's the officer who's trespassing.

Or at least to take away his gun and badge.

So, occasionally the worst does happen. This past weekend, Boomer, a golden retriever owned by a Clayton County family, sprung off a porch and galloped, in full throat, toward a police officer who was responding to a call on foot. Tragically, the officer felt the need to shoot the animal, which died.

We simply don't know if the officer was justified or trigger-happy. The dog was still on the family lot, which reportedly had an electric fence. The fence, however, was not advertised, and the officer might not have had time to notice even if it had been.

Actually we do know.  We know that the officer was trigger-happy.  We know this because we know that officers are trained to shoot dogs first, and to ask questions later.

An ordinary citizen, in Georgia, has the right to carry a firearm.  An ordinary citizen who went around shooting his neighbors' dogs on the neighbors' property would be locked away as menace and a maniac.  He would be denounced in the pages of the Augusta Chronicle.  But give that ordinary citizen a badge, and the Augusta Chronicle will bend over backwards to give him the benefit of every doubt, and to defend him.  Because ordinary citizens must never know that, sadly, we fill the ranks of our police with the mediocre, the stupid, and the mean.

You also wonder if a non-fatal response, such as pepper spray or Mace, might have done the trick.

Actually, I wonder why the Augusta Chronicle waited seven paragraphs to ask this question.

What is clear is that the officer felt threatened — and no matter what the family says about Boomer's gentility, the officer had no way of being familiar with it.

What isn't clear is whether the officer was justified in feeling threatened, and whether he overreacted to the perceived threat.  And no matter what the Augusta Chronicle says about the officer's internal thought process, I've read too many stories about unjustified shootings of dogs by the police to take the Augusta Chronicle's word for it.

The lesson is clear: Dog owners have an absolute, air-tight and no-questions-asked responsibility to control their pets at all times.

Yet, so many don't do it.

Walkers, joggers and bicyclists, as well as delivery men and other workers, are wholly unimpressed with your dog's résumé. All they want is to be left alone, unencumbered by even the implied threat of a fang in an extremity.

Walkers, joggers and bicyclists, unlike the police, typically make accommodations for strange dogs.  They cross the street, or they keep walking.  They don't pull out a pistol and start firing.  Especially, as in this case, in the direction of a house that contains children. As this officer did.

And, oh by the way, they have a rock-solid legal right to that expectation: Augusta law says, for instance: "It shall be unlawful for any animal to be out of control and/or unattended off the premises of its owner, and/or upon the premises of another person without the permission of such other person."

Boomer was on his property when he was killed. And maybe the officer jumped the gun. But who's to say whether the dog wouldn't have jumped the fence?

Emphasis added.

And who's to say whether the officer won't start firing randomly at strangers in the mall?  According to Boomer's owners, he'd never bitten anyone.  We know that this officer will begin shooting at the slightest provocation.

Keeping your dog restrained on public property is the law.

Doing it on private property isn't a bad idea either.

Firing hotheaded, trigger-happy policemen is a good idea too.  Sadly, it isn't the law.

Joel Rosenberg is an odd duck.

Most Americans live lives of quiet desperation, working at jobs they're ambivalent about at best, waiting for the weekend, snatching a few hours for themselves when they can, and avoiding Trouble.

Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate it! But there's nothing I can do about it right now… And it's all such a long way from here.

Not Rosenberg.  Rosenberg lives, by any reasonable standard, a life that should be the envy of any American man.  He's written a series of remarkably good fantasy novels. He founded his own business, his dream job, in a field about which he's passionate (he's a firearms safety instructor).  He's married to a woman more formidable than he is ("She Who Must Be Obeyed").  And, where most of us would say we don't like the Empire; We hate it! But there's nothing we can do about it right now…

Joel Rosenberg fights the Empire. In this case, the Empire is the Minneapolis Police Department.

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