Well, maybe not for anyone else, but it is for me.

It was 1982. the Commodore 64 was the cool new thing, Britain and Argentina went to war over the Falkland islands, spymaster Yuri Andropov rose to power in the Soviet Union, and Vic Morrow and two chidren died in a helicopter accident while filming Twilight Zone. Disney opened EPCOT to the public, John De Lorean got busted for coke, the Unabomber narrowly missed killing people at Vanderbilt, and Larry Walters took his famous balloon flight in a lawn chair.

Ronald Reagan was president. I didn't like him because he was a conservative, and conservative pricks like Jerry Falwell were trying to destroy rock music. Us kids thought that was a scary thing at the time, but of course he never had a chance: MTV had just launched, the Biograph theater on Lincoln was staging midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the airwaves were filled with songs like Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero", Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger", the B52s' "Rock Lobster", and Golden Earring's other hit.

(Follow the "Eye of the Tiger" link to check out what music videos used to look like. Yikes.)

There was also a hardrocking band called Axe, and they had just released their third album, Offering. The first cut on the album was "Rock 'n' Roll Party In The Streets."

It was the end of my last year in high school. The hot summer was filled with good friends, fast driving, wild parties, and rock and roll. I was at the top of my game with the whole world ahead of me, and "Rock 'n' Roll Party In The Streets" was the sound of freedom.

It's a purely personal reaction, I'm sure. I don't know anyone else who had that reaction to it. Heck, I've never even met anyone else who remembers the song. But to this day it gives me a rush like no other.

It starts with a keyboard intro that I instantly recognize, then the guitars come in with power chords to punctuate the rhythm, and then the drums and Bobby Barth's strained voice: 

You know, I know, this ain't gonna last forever
Let's take advantage while we still can
I'm sure that you'll find the days couldn't get any longer
Day after day it's gettin' old fast

Let's have a knock down, drag out rock 'n' roll party in the street
Get all the boys together have them tell everybody that they meet
Friday night at midnight we're all gonna get what we need
Let's have a knock down, drag out rock 'n' roll party in the street

You know, I know, we ain't gonna show no mercy
To anyone that tries to get in our way
I'm sure that you'll find we got to put the word out for certain
Once the party gets started we're all here to stay

Let's have a knock down, drag out rock 'n' roll party in the street
Get all the boys together have them tell everybody that they meet
Friday night at midnight we're all gonna get what we need
Let's have a knock down, drag out rock 'n' roll party in the street

Axe broke up after guitarist Michael Osborne died in a car crash. Barth worked on other projects and then in 1997 he put the band back together and they recorded new versions of many of their songs for the album Twenty Years From Home. I think this was a work-around for a sticky rights issue or two, allowing the band to finally release CD versions of the songs.

In many ways, the newer version of "Rock 'n' Roll Party in the Streets" is a better song than the old one. Barth's voice seems clearer and richer than it was in 1982, the guitar work is more crisp, and the whole thing has a more professional sound.

But the original version will always be my favorite. For most of a year, I lived my life to that song.

Axe - Rock 'n' Roll Party In The Streets - on YouTube

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I'm fascinated by the idea of lock picking, but I wondered if it was actually legal to own lock picks here in Illinois. So I posted a question in Avvo Answers, an online service in which lawyers give out free advice, to see if anyone could or would tell me what the law was. I wasn't spectacularly impressed with the response.

Fortunately, I had a backup plan. In a blatant attempt to encourage more Chicago-oriented crimlaw blogging, I emailed my question to Denise Nalley, a local criminal defense lawyer whose Chicago Criminal Law Journal blog is getting off to a slow start. She was nice enough to provide an answer, which I'll repeat here in case anyone else is interested:

Regarding lock picks, it is important to note that many things can be construed as burglary tools under the statute, like screwdrivers.  Also that little stick pin that many parents have to open doors if their kids lock themselves in a room is also technically a lock pick.  So, it is not illegal to just own them, the State must also prove intent to enter AND intent to commit a theft therein.  The problem arises when what you own is a "lock bumping" device.  This refers to a device used to move the internal tumblers and I suspect is what you are interested in.  If a person is found in possession of one of these devices a Judge may infer intent and you will be screwed unless you are in a profession allowed to be possession of said device.  (See statute below)  If found guilty of Possession of Burglary Tools it is a Class 4 Felony punishable by 1-3 years in prison and it is a probation eligible crime.  I have no knowledge of any City statutes deviating from State statutes here.  I hope I answered your questioned.

Nalley also included the relevant statute:

Sec. 19 2. Possession of burglary tools.

(a) A person commits the offense of possession of burglary tools when he possesses any key, tool, instrument, device, or any explosive, suitable for use in breaking into a building, housetrailer, watercraft, aircraft, motor vehicle as defined in The Illinois Vehicle Code, railroad car, or any depository designed for the safekeeping of property, or any part thereof, with intent to enter any such place and with intent to commit therein a felony or theft. The trier of fact may infer from the possession of a key designed for lock bumping an intent to commit a felony or theft; however, this inference does not apply to any peace officer or other employee of a law enforcement agency, or to any person or agency licensed under the Private Detective, Private Alarm, Private Security, Fingerprint Vendor, and Locksmith Act of 2004. For the purposes of this Section, "lock bumping" means a lock picking technique for opening a pin tumbler lock using a specially crafted bumpkey.

(b) Sentence.

Possession of burglary tools in violation of this Section is a Class 4 felony.

(Source: P.A. 95 883, eff. 1 1 09.)

That's not quite the answer I was hoping for---when jail is a possibility, I'd prefer a somewhat brighter line---but I suspect it's the best answer I'll get for such a hypothetical situation.

By the way, just so we're all clear, I'm not a lawyer, Nalley has never even met you, and this isn't legal advice.

People I trust have been saying good things about Jeff Gamso's blog, Gamso - For the Defense, and I've been meaning to check it out for months now. I finally got around to it, and I'm glad I did, because I discovered a fascinating post called "Hobgoblins of Little Minds."

It's about what experts mean when they say a piece of evidence is "consistent":

The criminalist who did the ballistics comparison wasn't sure he had a match...The most he could say is that the gun was "consistent with" the one that fired the bullet that killed the young woman. The murder weapon.

"Consistent with." What the hell does that mean?

It means "might be." It means "maybe or maybe not." It means "sure it's possible." It means "who knows." All of which is a way of saying that it means not much of anything at all.

I have no idea what the ballistics expert means by "consistent," but if he has any scientific integrity, the word "consistent" has a slightly more precise meaning than Gamso is allowing for.

Consider Gamso's next paragraph: 

"He's not desperately poor." That's consistent with the guy who got laid off from the plant and is struggling to get by on unemployment and food stamps and also with Bill Gates and his billions. It tells you nothing.

But it does tell me something. It rules out the possibility that he's desperately poor. Assuming we have a reasonable definition for "desperately poor," it tells me he's not living in the streets, sick and starving.

"Not desperately poor" is an awkward phrase, because it's the negation of "desperately poor" rather than a positive assertion the way "consistent" is. But that leads us to a clearer understanding of what "consistent" means in ordinary usage: It means not inconsistent. That is, when the expert testifies that the gun he tested is "consistent with" the murder weapon, it means he cannot rule it out.

It sounds pretty weak, doesn't it? Saying you can't rule something out is a long, long way from saying it's true. As a matter of philosophy of science, however, this is as good as it gets. Scientific tests never really prove anything is completely true. The only possible results of any test are that it is consistent or inconsistent with the idea being tested. Our technological civilization is built on scientific theories which have never been proven true, but which have survived countless attempts to prove them false.

"Consistent" means something, and when you have enough consistent results, it comes as close to certainty as science can get.

Gamso quotes from the Federal Rules of Evidence:

Rule 401. Definition of "Relevant Evidence"

"Relevant evidence" means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.

That definition bothers me for a reason that is probably a bit pedantic. In particular, I'm botherd by the phrase "make the existence of any fact...more probable or less probable". I think I know what the rules are trying to say, but I believe it is an error in reasoning to say that a fact can be more probable or less probable.

The facts may be unclear, confusing, complex, uncertain, or unknown. But whatever the facts are, they happened. "Probable" has nothing to do with it. There's no way that evidence or testimony at a trial can somehow reach back in time and change what really happened, or change the probability that something happened. Evidence can't make reality more probable or less probable, because reality is fixed.

Evidence in science is no different when you examine it carefully. For example, a public health study might be reported in the nightly news as estimating that "10 million Americans have Greenfield's disease." A newspaper report might add that the study has an error of "plus or minus 2%." That sounds like a strict cutoff, but a scientist would explain that it's really a confidence interval. If you delve into the study, you'll probably find out that the newspaper reporter used the study's 95% confidence interval. The scientist would explain that this means there's a 95% chance that the true number of Americans with Greenfield's disease is within plus or minus 2% of 10 million.

The scientist would be wrong, however, for the same reason the rules of evidence are wrong. However many Americans have Greenfield's disease---let's say it's 9,982,458---that's how many have Greenfield's disease, and there's no chance or probability involved. What our 95% confidence interval of plus or minus 2% is really saying is that conducting this scientific study has a 95% chance of giving us a result that is within plus or minus 2% of the true number. Or, to put it another way, our result is consistent with the theory that Greenfield's disease affects about 10 million people.

Getting back to our ballistics expert, when he says the defendant's gun is consistent with the murder weapon, he's not---despite what the Rules of Evidence say---making it more likely that the gun is the murder weapon. Rather, he's saying that with some degree of scientific confidence, the prosecutor's theory that the gun us the murder weapon was not disproved by the ballistic examination.

Now let's look at a simpler example.

Suppose we suspect that a coin has been modified so that when flipped it always come up heads. We think this modification is subtle and undetectable to the naked eye (and we have no instruments available). How can we prove that the coin has been gimmicked if we can't detect the modification?

Simple: We flip the coin.

If we flip it once and it comes up heads, that proves almost nothing. The coin will do that half the time even if it's perfectly legitimate.

So we flip the coin again, and it comes up heads again. With two tests of the coin in our data set, the possibility that it's a gimmicked coin is slightly higher, because this result will happen by random chance only one time in four. Do a third test, and it's one time in eight. Four tests will come up all heads only one time in 16 with a fair coin, and so on.

If we keep flipping the coin and we keep getting heads, the possibility that this is a fair coin gets smaller and smaller. Ten heads in a row is only a 1-in-1024 possibility with a fair coin. By the time we get to 20 straight heads in a row, the odds of this being a fair coin are less than one in a million. It's safe to conclude there's something wrong with the coin.

(I've just made the same mistake the Rules of Evidence made. The coin is either gimmicked or it's not. The 1-in-a-million probability is really a statement about the accuracy of the testing method. That is, it's not really that the odds of this being a fair coin are less than 1 in a million. Rather the odds of a fair coin behaving this way are less than 1 in a million.)

The coin testing process I just described is good science for three basic reasons. First, it puts numbers to its results. Real science almost always involves some math, and real scientific studies usually state their results in form of probabilities and confidence intervals. Gamso does not report that the ballistics expert gave any probabilities with his conclusions.

Second, and more generally, our conculsion about the coin includes information about the error rate of our testing process: The chances of a coin that is not gimmicked behaving this way are less than 1 in a million. When the ballistics expert testified that the gun was consistent with the murder weapon, did he quantify or even characterize the possibility that it wasn't the murder weapon? For example, did he explain what percentage of all guns would be consistent with the murder weapon? If it's 1 in a million, that's a pretty good sign that you've got the right guy. If it's 1 in 10, the expert's conclusion is just barely relevant.

Third, our conclusion about the coin is based on a series of independent tests. Each flip of the coin is a test. The results of any single flip indicate very little, because even a fair coin will come up heads (produce a false positive) 50% of the time. However, when we conduct a series of 20 independent tests, we can reduce the false positive to one in a million. In general, the more tests we conduct, the more we can reduce the liklihood of a false positive.

This last point is crucial to reaching a conclusion because (in theory, anyway) that's logical rationale behind how the evidence in a trial builds up to a conclusion. Let me see if I can illustrate this with some data that I totally made up.

Let's pretend that the ballistic match is a very simple two-step process. First, we match the caliber of the gun, which must be one of 10 possible calibers which occur in equal numbers---i.e. for any given caliber, 10% of all guns are a match. Second, we match the land-and-groove pattern within the barrel, of which there are 10 possible patterns, all occuring in equal numbers. Since each matching step eliminates 90% of the guns, a ballistic match that passes both steps has eliminated 99% of the guns, meaning that only 1 in 100 guns will match.

In addition, we have a witness ID, which we'll assume is also 90% accurate. Combined with the gun match, this eliminates 90% of the remaining false positives, meaning that only 1 in 1000 gun owners match the criteria. We're getting somewhere.

It all goes wrong, however, if there are hidden connections between the criteria. For example, how did the police narrow down the suspect list that they presented to the witness? If they already had the ballistic report, perhaps they did a database search for people who owned guns of the same caliber as the murder weapon, and used the resulting list to build their suspect list.

If so, this means that the witness ID and part of the ballistic examination are correlated and not independent. And to the extent that they're correlated, we have to factor that out of the calculation. In this case, every suspect presented to the witness was known to have a gun that matched the caliber of the murder weapon, so the ballistic expert's discovery of this fact adds nothing new. This eliminates the 1-in-10 ratio for the caliber match, and we're back down to a 1 in 100 chance of a random person matching the known facts about the murderer.

One of the reasons DNA evidence is considered so good is that scientists have a pretty good understanding of the prevalence of various DNA markers in the human population and of the correlations between them. In fact, DNA testing is explicitly based on statistics, which is why DNA test results usually include an estimate of the chance of a false positive. With a good DNA sample, the chance of a random match is often less than 1 in a billion, and lawyers love to bring that number out in trial because it is so impressive.

By comparison, Gamso's account of fingerprint experts saying things like "There is no error rate. It's 100 percent accurate." is infuriating. Only abstractions are perfect. Everything in the real world has an error rate.

Sometimes that error rate is vanishingly small, which allows us to say that something is "error-free" when speaking informally. But if you press for a number, a real scientist should be able to find one.

Ken Lammers does a nice job of collecting up some of the shortcomings of the just-announced Apple iPad. I don't get it either. The iPad seems really limited.

My iPhone has similar limitations---no multitasking, no USB or FireWire, a closed application deployment mechanism---but it's a cell phone: Making it more flexible would come at the risk of making it less reliable. But in a general-purpose computer, I want a lot more flexibility, and I can live with the reliability problems the come with it. (Yes, I am a Windows user. How did you guess?)

If I still traveled for business, I might appreciate an iPad as an on-the-go email and surfing computer, but the touch keyboard probably isn't adequate for typing long email messages. As a photographer, I'd love to have a small computer that I could use to preview and backup my digital photos, but there's no way to attach an external camera.

I can almost hear the Apple true believers sputtering about how wrong I am: The iPad has both a keyboard and a camera connection kit available as accessories. Well, yes, but since the iPad only supports the proprietary Apple connector, you have to use Apple's keyboards. If they'd put a USB port on the iPad, it could use any of hundreds of popular keyboards.

The camera situation is no better. Instead of USB or FireWire, you have to use the iPad Camera Connection Kit, which offers you two modules for transfering images. One of them is an SD card reader, which is kind of a ripoff considering that cell phones far less powerful than the iPhone---let alone the iPad---have had built-in SD card readers for years.

The other camera connection module is even more galling: It's a USB adapter that allows you to connect the iPad to your camera's USB port. You know what else would have allowed you to connect your iPad to your camera's USB port? A USB port built into the iPad.

It seems like a really frustrating design. It might have made a nice way to accept and transport large specifications documents and image files I get when I visit clients, if only it had a filesystem to store and organize them. If I were a musician, the iPad would be an awesome tool for recording and remixing music, but there's no way to attach a digitizer or a midi keyboard. If I were a video producer, the iPad would be a nice way edit together simple videos, such as a video blog, but there's no way to pull in video from a camera.

Granted, I'm not a visionary genius like Steve Jobs, and perhaps by this time next year I'll be raving about the wonders of my cool new iPad, but I just don't see it...

I've been commenting on the President's State of the Union address on and off for a few years now. I do it for three reasons: (1) to force myself to read the actual speech so I feel more involved in the civic process, (2) to pad out the blog, and (3) because everyone else is doing it (probably for reason 2). I've never bothered to look at the opposition response before, but blogging has been kind of thin this year, and picking apart another speech seemed like an easy way to get a little more content up.

So I Googled "state of the union republican response", but all Google could find was last year's Republican response. The new one hadn't been indexed yet. Not a problem: I'll just search one of the news sites...unless...

Seriously, does anybody really pay attention to the opposition response? It's given by someone that the last election's losers are hoping we'll like better than the guy they ran for President last time, and nothing he says matters, because unlike the president, he's not in a position to do anything about it. Most people probably don't even know that Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell gave the speech. I know I wouldn't if I hadn't decided to write about it.

So...when I wrote my review of the Republican response to the State of the Union, I went ahead and used last year's speech by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. So far, no one has noticed.

(Probably because no one cares, and also because no one reads my blog.)

Anyway, here's my review of the real 2010 Republican response to the State of the Union, as delivered by Governor Bob McDonnell and transcribed by CNN (as far as you know, because you really don't care enough to check. I wouldn't.):

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Good evening. I'm Bob McDonnell. Eleven days ago, I was honored to be sworn in as the 71st governor of Virginia. I'm standing in the historic House Chamber of Virginia's Capitol, a building designed by Virginia's second governor, Thomas Jefferson.

It's not easy to follow the president of the United States. And my 18-year-old twin boys have added pressure to me tonight by giving me exactly 10 minutes to finish before they leave to go watch "SportsCenter."

(LAUGHTER)

I'm joined by fellow Virginians to share a Republican perspective on how to best address the challenges facing our nation today.

We were encouraged to hear President Obama speak this evening about the need to create jobs. All Americans should have the opportunity to find and keep meaningful work, and the dignity that comes with it.

As I've said before, too much of a focus on jobs makes for bad economic policy. Jobs matter, but so do things like productivity and producing things people actually want.

(APPLAUSE)

Many -- many of us here tonight -- and many of you watching -- have family or friends who have lost their jobs. In fact, 1 in 10 Americans is unemployed. That is unacceptable.

I usually let this sort of thing pass, but just for the record, 1 in 10 Americans are not unemployed. Unemployment figures are given as a percentage of people in the labor force, which is everybody who wants to work, whether they are working or not. Since about half of all Americans are too young to work, retired, disabled, institutionalized, or just don't want to work, our current 10% unemployment rate means that about 1 in 20 Americans is unemployed.

Here in Virginia, we've faced our highest unemployment rate in more than 25 years, and bringing new jobs and more opportunities to our citizens is the top priority of my administration.

Good government policy should spur economic growth and strengthen the private sector's ability to create new jobs.

(APPLAUSE)

We must enact policies that promote entrepreneurship and innovation so America can better compete with the world. What government should not do is pile on more taxation, regulation and litigation that kill jobs and hurt the middle class.

Man, the right wing really is obsessed with tort reform...

It was Thomas Jefferson who called for "a wise and frugal government which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." He was right.

Today, the federal government is simply trying to do too much. Last year, we were told that massive new federal spending would create more jobs immediately and hold unemployment below 8 percent.

In the past year, more than 3 million people have lost their jobs, and yet the Democratic Congress continues deficit spending, adding to the bureaucracy, and increasing the national debt on our children and our grandchildren.

The amount of debt is on pace to double in five years and triple in 10. The federal debt is now over $100,000 per household. This is simply unsustainable.

The president's partial freeze announced tonight on discretionary spending is a laudable step, but a small one. The circumstances of our time demand that we reconsider and restore the proper limited role of government at every level.

(APPLAUSE)

Without reform, the excessive growth of government threatens our very liberty and our prosperity.

In recent months, the American people have made clear that they want government leaders to listen and then act on the issues most important to them. We want results, not rhetoric. We want cooperation, not partisanship.

(APPLAUSE)

There is much common ground. All Americans agree that we need health -- health care system that is affordable, accessible, and high quality. But most Americans do not want to turn over the best medical care system in the world to the federal government.

Republicans in Congress have offered legislation to reform health care, without shifting Medicaid costs to the states, without cutting Medicare, and without raising your taxes.

And we will do that by implementing common sense reforms, like letting families and businesses buy health insurance policies across state lines and ending frivolous lawsuits against doctors and hospitals that drive up the cost of your health care.

Allowing insurance to be sold across state lines is a great idea. It's a good way to increase competition in the health insurance market, and it will cost very little to implement. Also---and this is a little unusual these days---it's completely within the enumerated powers of the federal government since it's a classic example of interstate commerce.

And our solutions aren't 1,000-page bills that no one has fully read, after being crafted behind closed doors with special interests. In fact, many of our proposals are available online at solutions.gop.gov, and we welcome your ideas on Facebook and Twitter.

And still, no one has read them...

(LAUGHTER)

All Americans agree that this nation must become more energy independent and secure.

No they don't. We don't have to be energy independent any more than we have to be automobile independent, clothing independent, or consumer electronics independent.

We are blessed here in America with vast natural resources, and we must use them all.

Why should we use our own natural resource if we can get them cheaper from somewhere else?

Advances in technology can unleash more natural gas, nuclear, wind, coal, alternative energy that will lower your utility bills.

Here in Virginia, we have the opportunity to become the first state on the East Coast to explore for and produce oil and natural gas off-shore.

(APPLAUSE)

But this administration's policies are delaying off-shore production, hindering nuclear energy expansion, and seeking to impose job-killing cap-and-trade energy taxes. Now is the time to adopt innovative energy policies that create jobs and lower energy prices.

Uh, I'm pretty sure we can't increase the number of people working on energy production without raising the costs. If energy gets cheaper, someone's going to be out of a job.

(APPLAUSE)

All Americans agree that a young person needs a world-class education to compete in the global economy. As a young kid, my dad told me, "Son, if you want a good job, you need a good education." Dad was right, and that's even more true today.

The president and I agree on expanding the number of high-quality charter schools and rewarding teachers for excellent performance. More school choices for parents and students mean more accountability and greater achievement.

Since the president opposes the charter schools in D.C., you might want to check back with him on that.

A child's educational opportunity should be determined by her intellect and work ethic, not by her ZIP Code.

(APPLAUSE)

All Americans agree that we must maintain a strong national defense. The courage and success of our armed forces is allowing us to draw down troop levels in Iraq as that government is increasingly able to step up.

My oldest daughter, Jeanine, was an Army platoon leader in Iraq, so I am personally grateful for the service and sacrifice of all our men and women in uniform, and a grateful nation thanks them.

(APPLAUSE)

We applaud President Obama's decision to deploy 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. We agree that victory there is imperative for national security.

And we'll know we're victorious how? What would achievable victory look like?

But we have serious concerns over the recent steps the administration has taken regarding suspected terrorists. Americans were shocked on Christmas Day to learn of the attempted bombing of a flight to Detroit. This foreign terror suspect was given the same legal rights as a U.S. citizen and immediately stopped providing critical intelligence.

He's not getting the same legal rights as a U.S. citizen, he's getting the same legal rights we give to everyone who is accused of a crime. The only way it would make sense not to give him legal rights is if we weren't going to put him on trial. I'm not ready to live in a country that summarily imprisons people without a trial.

Look, if they start attacking us with such fury and in such numbers that our justice system can't keep up, then of course we can hold them without a trial. That's a war. But one guy trying to kill some people? That's not a war. That's Saturday night in every big city in America. We handle those cases by the tens of thousands every year. The underwear bomber is just one more attempted murderer.

Also, "critical intelligence"? The terrorist leadership trusted critical information to a guy who was willing to put a bomb in his underwear?

As Sen.-elect Scott Brown has said, we should be spending taxpayer dollars to defeat terrorists, not to protect them.

That would be those 30,000 troops you mentioned earlier.

(APPLAUSE)

Here at home, government must help foster a society in which all our people can use their God-given talents and liberty to pursue the great American dream. Republicans know that government cannot guarantee individual outcomes, but we strongly believe that it must guarantee equality of opportunity for all.

That opportunity exists best in a democracy which promotes free enterprise, economic growth, strong families, and individual achievement.

Many Americans are concerned about this administration's effort to exert greater control over car companies, banks, energy, and health care, but over-regulating employers won't create more employment, overtaxing investors won't foster more investment.

That paragraph is dead-on.

Top-down, one-size-fits-all decision-making should not replace the personal choices of free people in a free market, nor undermine the proper role of state and local governments in our system of federalism. As our founders clearly stated, and we governors clearly understand, government closest to the people governs best.

Correct again. Where were you during the previous administration?

(APPLAUSE)

And no government program can ever replace the actions of caring Americans freely choosing to help one another. The scriptures say, "To whom much is given, much will be required." As the most generous and prosperous nation on Earth, it is heartwarming to see Americans giving much time and money to the people of Haiti.

Thank you for your ongoing compassion.

(APPLAUSE)

Some people say they're afraid that America is no longer the great land of promise that she has always been. They should not be.

America will always blaze the trail of opportunity and prosperity. America will -- must always be a land where liberty and property are valued and respected and innocent human life is protected.

Government should have this clear goal: Where opportunity is absent, we must create it. Where opportunity is limited, we must expand it. Where opportunity is unequal, we must make it open to everyone.

(APPLAUSE)

Our founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to create this great nation. Now we should pledge as Democrats, Republicans and independents -- Americans all -- to work together to leave this nation an ever better place than we found it.

As usual, I suspect that "work together" is politician-speak for "do it my way."

God bless you, and God bless this great land of America. Thank you very much.

And that's it. Next year, I won't play games with the opposition response. Probably because I will forget they even have one.

This year, I thought I'd also take a look at the Republican response to the State of the Union address. As with my post on the State of the Union, I've quoted the entire speech, so this post is pretty long.

Now here's Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, [as reported by CNN]:

Tonight, we witnessed a great moment in the history of our Republic. In the very chamber where Congress once voted to abolish slavery, our first African-American president stepped forward to address the state of our union. With his speech tonight, the president completed a redemptive journey that took our nation from Independence Hall to Gettysburg to the lunch counter and now, finally, the Oval Office.

Indeed. That we've come so far in race relations is a very cool thing, and something we should be proud of. Electing a black man to the presidency is not the end of racism, but you can see it from here.

More after the break...

I usually try to make a few comments about the State of the Union address. This time, I've decided to include the entire text of the speech---even the parts I have nothing say about---so this post is going to be very long.

Working from the official Whitehouse transcript:

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
January 27, 2010

Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address

9:11 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT:  Madam Speaker, Vice President Biden, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:

Our Constitution declares that from time to time, the President shall give to Congress information about the state of our union.  For 220 years, our leaders have fulfilled this duty. They've done so during periods of prosperity and tranquility.  And they've done so in the midst of war and depression; at moments of great strife and great struggle.

It's tempting to look back on these moments and assume that our progress was inevitable -- that America was always destined to succeed.  But when the Union was turned back at Bull Run, and the Allies first landed at Omaha Beach, victory was very much in doubt.  When the market crashed on Black Tuesday, and civil rights marchers were beaten on Bloody Sunday, the future was anything but certain.  These were the times that tested the courage of our convictions, and the strength of our union.  And despite all our divisions and disagreements, our hesitations and our fears, America prevailed because we chose to move forward as one nation, as one people.

As one nation? That never really happens. Also, did Obama just use the battle of Bull Run during the frickin' Civil War an example of moving forward as one nation? We were literally killing each other!

More, after the break...

Let me run a few legislative proposals past you:

• We should make it illegal for anybody to receive money in return for performing an abortion. This would in no way impair a woman's right to choose, because money is not choice.
• The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution clearly reserves the right to bear arms to "the people," therefore it is not a violation of the right to bear arms to prohibit corporations from making or distributing guns.

Does either of those statements seem reasonable to you?

Then how come so many people think it makes sense to respond to the Citizens United ruling---which struck down restrictions on corporate spending for political advertising---by saying the original laws didn't violate the First Amendment because "Corporations aren't people, and money isn't speech"?

By the way, Radley Balko is not just a guy who knows how to find wacky videos. He's also one of the most interesting investigative reporters working today. His latest piece is about some of the shocking things being done in the area of civil asset forfeiture.

I've been saying for a while that asset forfeiture is theft by government employees, but what I didn't realize is that they've started to privatize the thievery:

Timothy Bookwalter, the elected chief prosecutor for Putnam County, Indiana, did not represent the county in its effort to keep Anthony Smelley's money. Nor did anyone else in his office. Instead, the case was handled by Christopher Gambill, a local attorney in private practice. Gambill manages civil forfeiture cases for several Indiana counties, and he gets to keep a portion of what he wins in court. "My contingency for my own county is a quarter; for the others it's a third," Gambill says.

Read the whole thing.

I don't know if you'll learn anything new from this, but for its format it's a pretty accurate summary of the economic debate:

(Hat tip: Radley Balko.

Scott Greenfield has a couple of interesting items up over at Simple Justice. First of all, there's the case of the Jew with suspicious objects on board a plane, as originally reported in the New York Daily News:

A US Airways crew panicked by a Jewish teen's prayer ritual aborted a flight from LaGuardia Airport on Thursday, landing in Philadelphia amid unfounded fears of a terrorist bomb.

The trouble began when the 17-year-old White Plains youth pulled out two small Scripture-filled boxes used for his morning prayers on the Louisville, Ky.-bound plane, authorities said.

The official story is kind of amusing in a we've-seen-all-this-before kind of way:

Officials with the airline, however, said crewmembers "did not receive a clear response" when they talked with the teen, according to a statement issued by Republic Airways, which owns Chautauqua.

Translation: "We didn't understand his response."

Scott sums up the problem:

Just because you don't know what something is doesn't provide justification to deem it a threat. 

There's a whole world of truth in that sentence. People with power have always felt a paranoid need to crack down on things they don't understand. From jazz to rock music, from ferets to pit bulls, from women who wear pants to men who wear droopy pants, unimaginative people have feared them all.

Anyway, when the plane landed, the kid explained what happened to the police and they let him go on his way.

In the other blog post, Scott tells us about a guy who got stopped for a traffic ticket and immediately told the officer he wanted a lawyer. This made the cop suspicious, and she promptly searched the car, finding his mother's dead body in the trunk.

The problem here is that

the invocation of a constitutional rights cannot serve to give rise to probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, nor can the defendant be questioned after invoking right to counsel.

So the officer discovered the crime during a search that apparently wasn't legal. Naturally, this will cause problems when the case goes to trial.

What I'm wondering, however, is whether the police and FBI would have let the 17-year-old Jewish kid go if he'd asked for his lawyer when they started questioning him. I mean, it must have seemed obvious to the kid that he could explain the problem and they'd understand. As it turned out, he was right.

But that doesn't necessarily mean it was a good idea to explain himself. A lot of people are in jail because they explained things to understanding cops.

I really have nothing to say.

I blog about justice and economics and freedom and government perfidy, but the disaster in Haiti right now has little to do with any of those things.

I could probably find a way to link the disaster or the relief effort to one or more of my favorite topics, and soon I probably will. But for now...

For now I think we just let the governments and aid organizations do their thing.

Yesterday I started another one of my Avvo Answers experiments, in which I asked the free advice service the following question:

Is it legal to own lock picks in Illinois?

Chicago, IL

And it it's legal, are there places where you're not supposed to have them? In particular, does Chicago have different laws?

[typos in my original question]

This morning I got my first answer from Avvo Level 10 Contributor Alan James Brinkmeier:

This attorney is licensed in Illinois.

Illinois has stringent picklock laws and locales require a locksmith license to use lock-picking devices to open locks in situations where the owner needs access. Lock picks are devices used to lift the various pins found within the cylinder of a lock. These special tools are used in order to open the lock without the use of a key.

Criminal activity is one such reason for strict picklock laws.

You might find my Legal Guide helpful "Ethics: Yes I Need a Lawyer!"

http://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/ethics-yes-i-need-a-lawyer

Good luck to you.

God bless.

NOTE: This answer is made available by the Illinois lawyer for educational purposes only. By using or participating in this site you understand that there is no attorney client privilege between you and the attorney responding

Brinkmeier's Avvo page describes his practice as 30% appeals, 25% state, local, and municipal law, 25% aviation, and 20% defective/dangerous products. He's apparently been practicing for 26 years.

I Googled "Alan James Brinkmeier" to see if I could find his firm's website. No luck. But I did find listings for him at Zoominfo, Superlawyers, and LawPromo. I thought I also found listings for him at the Southeast Texas Record and CASA, but it turns out those sites are just offering free legal advice services which are really just a feed from Avvo. I guess Avvo is syndicating its Avvo Answers service to other websites.

I also discovered that Houston criminal defense lawyer Mark Bennett has mentioned Brinkmeier in a post entitled "Avvo Answhores":

Brinkmeier, who has "answered" more than 8,000 questions on Avvo, "answers" questions in the area of ethics and professional responsibility, employment and labor, car and auto accidents, debt collection, lawsuits and disputes, child custody, juvenile law, wrongful termination, DUI and DWI, immigration, appeals, civil rights, and domestic violence anywhere in the U.S.

The disclaimers should say that the "answers" are for entertainment, rather than education or information.

What's the game? Why can't people like...Alan Brinkmeier, who recognize that they have no clue what they're talking about, just keep their traps shut and let the lawyers who have some chance of knowing the law answer the questions?

Brinkmeier took offense to this in the comments, and then he and Mark got in to a slightly bizarre argument about the comparative reliability of their respective phone systems.

As is my way, I took the following paragraphs from Brinkmeier's response

Illinois has stringent picklock laws and locales require a locksmith license to use lock-picking devices to open locks in situations where the owner needs access. Lock picks are devices used to lift the various pins found within the cylinder of a lock. These special tools are used in order to open the lock without the use of a key.

Criminal activity is one such reason for strict picklock laws.

and I fed them into Google, which lead me to this page at Superpages.com (which is also the second result in a Google search for the title of my question) in which the first three paragraphs contain the following sentences:

• "The states which have the most stringent laws on this matter include California, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Utah, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Washington DC and Canada."
• "In some locales, those individuals not identified in the statute as legally approved to possess this type of device have to obtain a locksmith license before purchasing a lock pick."
• "But qualified locksmiths also use lock picking devices to open locks in situations where the owner needs access and, for whatever reason, can't gain it."
• "Lock picks are devices used to lift the various pins found within the cylinder of a lock in order to open the lock without the use of a key."
• "Why in the world would anyone need to have a lock pick? Criminal activity is one such reason."

(emphasis added)

I don't think the apparent similarity of certain turns of phrase is entirely in my imagination, which leads to one obvious conclusion: Not only does James Alan Brinkmeier give free advice on Avvo, he also writes for Superpages.

This post at D.A. Confidential includes a link to a list of "The 6 Most Badass Skills You Can Learn in Under a Week." Skill number 4 is lock picking, and the article refers to a Lock Picking School In A Box. which sounds like something you could make yourself by taking a lock apart.

I've always been fascinated by things like lock picking and safe cracking, and maybe some day I'll take the time to learn more about it. Of course, I'd probably have to have some lock picks to do that, which got me wondering what the laws are on possession of lock picking tools. If only I knew a lawyer I could ask...

This seemed like a good time to try another question for Avvo Answers---Avvo's forum where lawyers earn points by answering questions for free. The last time I tried this, it didn't work out too well. The first lawyer pulled an answer out of his butt, and the second lawyer---Illinois criminal defense lawyer Jeremy Richey---was able to give the answer I was looking for only after we talked about it a bit here on the blog.

Is it legal to own lock picks in Illinois?

Chicago, IL

And it it's legal, are there places where you're not supposed to have them? In particular, does Chicago have different laws?

[typos in my original question]

Now let's see if anyone provides any interesting answers.

Update: I've posted about a response.

...is still crazy:

Ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich says he's "blacker than Barack Obama" and tells Esquire magazine that he was a real person in a political arena dominated by phonies.

Blagojevich, referring to the president as "this guy," says Obama was elected based simply on hope.

"What the (expletive)? Everything he's saying's on the teleprompter," Blagojevich told the magazine for a story in its February issue, which hits newsstands Jan. 19.

"I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived," Blagojevich said. "I saw it all growing up."

The White House refused to comment.

Yeah, I'm sure they had nothing to add to that.

A little later, I read something I like:

Blagojevich continues to accuse prosecutors of persecuting him for routine political deals.

We can only hope he's right. And that it catches on.

What the fuck?

No, really, what the fuck?

I like to end each year with a review of some of the things I've been posting about. I don't know if any of you care, but it's always interesting to me to see where I've been. This year I expected the pickings to be pretty slim because of all the turmoil surrounding and following my parents' passing, but it turns out I wrote quite a bit.

In fact, here at Windypundit, 2009 was the year in which

• I asked my hosting provider to move this blog to a new server.
• I explained four ways to answer the question "Have you got something to hide?" Be sure to read the comments for Pete Guither's awesome fifth answer, and few more from Jdog.
• I explained the hedge from hell.
• I explored my love-hate relationship with 24.
• I uncovered the Shanghai Chooke domain name scam...er, well, linked to someone who uncovered it.
• I got peeved at some of the bad tech in 24.
• I started using Amazon Cloudfront to serve the blog design elements.
• I slammed a stupid anti-legalization argument.
• The Obama presidency had its high point.
• I explained how to think about the problem of innocent people in jail.
• The Nazi Zombie uprising reached Austin, Texas.
• I invited people to make my dream of being a published author come true. It didn't work.
• I explained the difference between armed robbery and civil forfeiture.
• The war on drugs reached the century mark.
• I shredded a really stupid argument about evolution.
• I explored Apple's vision of the future...from 1987.
• A cop wrote a silly blog post about Ryan Frederick's conviction.
• A prosecutor wrote a silly blog post about my response to the cop's post.
• A cop tuned up a 15-year-old girl for hitting him with a kicked-off shoe.
• I explained how to keep people from walking off with your pens.
• A minor genius took on Google and won.
• I accepted the loss of Pluto as a planet. But I will Never Forget.
• I fought with my computer.
• I tried to bring back Friday catblogging.
• I explained how The Stimulus could go wrong.
• I gave my wife some tips for a gunfight.
• I welcomed Jennifer to the blogroll.
• My mother got very sick and I moved in with my dad.
• My mother died.
• My wife posted about my mom.
• I smacked around Robert J. Samuelson for his absurd attack on Obama's cap-and-trade plan.
• I discovered that Melrose Park was not Mayberry.
• I tried another video blog. And it also sucked.
• I decided to enter the legal education market.
• My dad told us it was time to put him in a nursing home.
• I explained how much government is enough.
• I evaluated Obama at 100 days.
• The Supreme Court once again showed how much it trusted police.
• USLaw.com didn't bother me as much as it bothered Scott Greenfield, but then they turned psychotic.
• I posted some random thoughts about my mother's passing.
• I fired an open volley in my healthcare blogging, elaborated on it later, and then again some more. 
• I put my dad in a nursing home and got to go back to my home at last.
• I commented on a shocking incident of police thuggery.
• I tried to apply logic to the testimony of a gang expert.
• I discovered that Justice Thomas may be a little crazy.
• Lori Drew was acquitted...which was almost certainly a good thing.
• I finally managed to work Lincoln's 1838 address to the Young Men's Lyceum into a blog post.
• I posted some pictures of fireworks.
• I claimed the title of greatest criminal defense blogger in Chicago and no one has risen up to dispute me.
• I decided to try Chitika.
• I got the story behind a slightly controversial photo.
• I had a depressing vision of how the ubiquitous surveillance in 1984 could actually be possible.
• I speculated about crossing the border with an encrypted hard drive, and then I got a few real answers from a Customs lawyer.
• I started to explain why identity on the web is complicated, and got some puzzling responses. I'll have to finish that someday.
• I explored some of the mysteries of minimum wage.
• I learned that Avvo Answers really was as bad as everyone says it is.
• My father died.
• I explained the evil of coupon settlements.
• The Ninth Circuit tried to clean up the mess that is computer search and seizure law.
• I questioned the ethics of force catheterization, and got a less-than-awesome response from the AMA.
• Norman Borlaug died.
• I found some truth in rock and roll.
• I noticed that a lot of children are being charged as sex offenders.
• The feds came after bloggers who get free stuff.
• Photography was still treated like a crime.
• I questioned the level of happiness in the kingdom of Bhutan.
• I thought about the economics of the death penalty.
• The Minnesota Supreme Court reminded me that sometimes the law is really stupid.
• I gave the world a glimpse of the complex technology of my everyday life.
• Mary Beth Buchanen's reign of terror finally ended.
• A woman who supplied Eliot Spitzer with hookers had a few questions about his ethics.
• Meep.
• I spoke truth to zombie alarmism.
• I explained why the public option and healthcare reform are redundant.
• I complained that juries are kept in the dark.
• I was thankful for my friends.
• Muvico screwed over its customers.
• The Warlord of Maricopa took crazy just a little bit further...
• I explained why people on the internet seem so rude.

See you all in the new year!

I've decided to steal an idea from Gideon and write a quick list of things I learned in the last decade:

• I learned to ignore people who say the decade/century/millenium has one more year to go because there was no year zero.
• I learned that terrorism in the United States is a more real threat than I thought it was.
• I learned that just because the people opposing the president are idiots doesn't make them completely wrong about him.
• I learned that occupying a country to change its form of government is a very long-term project.
• I learned how to start and run a one-man corporation.
• I learned that working from home makes me gain weight.
• I learned that some take my blogging seriously and appreciate what I'm saying.
• I learned how to take a pretty good photograph.
• I learned that taking road trips with cell phones, a mapping GPS system, and wireless internet is a whole different experience from when I was a kid.
• I learned that it pays to buy an insulated delivery bag so the pizza stays hot when you bring it home.
• I learned that a DVR and multiple sources of downloadable video make television in to a completely different experience.
• I learned to program with
• The .NET Framework
• Windows Forms
• Windows Communication Foundation
• PHP
• CSS
• JavaScript
• AJAX
• YUI
• Procedural SQL
• Movable Type
• Drupal
• TikiWiki
• NUnit
• I learned the incredible value of having medical and financial powers of attorney for my parents.

Back in 2007, author Mark Helprin wrote a New York Times op-ed in which he bemoaned the lack of a permanent copyright. I responded to it, as did rather a lot of other people. In my response, I called part of his argument "pure nonsense, bordering on outright lies."

Apparently, many other people used far harsher language, because Helprin later wrote a book (Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto) in which he spent some of the second chapter complaining about the response:

It is not merely training that has unleashed this keypeck ferocity, but also changes in certain fundamental conditions. In the electronic media's dissolution of barriers---time, space, isolation---and in the vast expansion of received (or, at least, receivable) information, we have become in proportion infinitely smaller. Were you to have lived next door to Ethan Frome in Starkfield, Massachusetts, at the turn of the last century you would have been one of only a few hundred... You would not have felt as if you were merely one in six-and-a-half or seven billion. Now, as mere atoms amidst this mass, the damage we can do is by comparison so much less that rage counts for nothing but a cry to be heard---even if the from a protective and cowardly anonymity. Were anyone to have behaved in such a way...on the real commons of a New England village even as it existed in my youth and young-manhood, he would have been immediately brought up short, if not committed or jailed. In the new "commons," brutishness and barbarism are accepted...

More recently, Scott Greenfield writes:

I recently had an email exchange with a lawprof who felt deeply hurt by things that were written about his ideas.  He informed me that they were too harsh, too rough, too disrespectful.  Ironically, he wasn't referring to things I had written.  He was on the verge of giving up blawging, finding it too vulgar for his sensibilities.

These are not the first and second times I've heard this sort of complaint about the blogosphere. The pattern is pretty common: A person with some degree of fame or authority---an author, an politician, a movie star, or even a law professor---checks what the folks on the internet are saying about them and is shocked to discover that people are saying terrible things.

Sometimes, like Helprin, they try to come up with an explanation as to why people are being so rude. Often this is tied up in their personal agenda so, for example, some feminists conclude that the blogosphere is a boys club that resents women. Similarly, a lot of professional journalists and pundits have concluded that the blogosphere is filled with amateurs that have no standards.

I have a simple explanation of my own for the authors and politicians and pundits who are shocked by the style of the blogosphere: The people you're hearing from have always been out here, and we've always talked that way. The difference---the only difference, I think---is that now you know about it.

People have been discussing Mark Helprin's books for as long as he's been writing, but they've been discussing them in private, in coffee houses and classrooms and book clubs, so he's never heard what they sound like. They sound like the blogosphere.

The same goes for you pundits and politicians out there: Sometimes we think you're stupid, and we say so. We use harsh language and violent imagery. This is how people have always talked about you around the water cooler at work, over dinner at home, and in the barrooms afterward.

The point is, the blogosphere isn't some new rude horror. People have always been this way. All that's changed is that those of you who hold the stage can now hear the hecklers a little better. The heckling itself is no worse than before.

I saw Avatar yesterday, and it was a pretty darned good movie. If you think you might like this kind of thing, just go see it.

As with James Cameron's earlier film Titanic, the star of this film is the magnificent setting and the way it is presented. The lush world of Pandora is beautiful, the CGI that creates the aliens is every bit as good as everyone else says, and the 3D unobtrusively helps you understand the the complex action in the forest scenery.

The characters and the plot are simple and relatively straightforward. For some reason, this bothers some people. They point to the thin characterization and simple plot as if it were some kind of terrible failing, and they're proud of themselves for having seen past the special effects, which is a silly attitude. Seeing past the special effects in Avatar is like seeing past the songs in Rent.

Another thing that bothers some people about Avatar is the politics of it all. For example, here's Peter Suderman at Reason's Hit & Run blog:

And the Na'vi, the movie's marble-skinned alien natives, are easily the most convincing humanoids ever to leap forth from a Hollywood effects house's CGI server-farm -- that is, at least in terms of the way they look and move. The realism stops, however, every time they open their mouths and reveal themselves to be crude, one-dimensional native stereotypes: instinctive and animalistic purveyors of cheap mysticism and nature worship. 

So despite its genuinely impressive technical innovations, Avatar isn't much a movie: Instead, Cameron's cooked up a derivative, overlong pastiche of anti-corporate clichés and quasi-mystical eco-nonsense. It's not that the film's politics make it bad, it's that even if you agree, the nearly three-hour onslaught of simplistic moralizing leaves no room for interesting twists or ambiguity in the story or characters: corporations are bad, scientists are good, natives are pure, harmony with nature is the ultimate ideal...

Good grief. A "three-hour onslaught of simplistic moralizing"? There's maybe three minutes of political content scattered throughout the whole movie. Admittedly, some of it is pretty clunky---references to pre-emptive strikes, shock and awe, and fighting terror with terror---but it all goes by in a few seconds. Maybe James Cameron was trying to send me a message, but so what? I was busy enjoying the rest of the movie.

I think Suderman must have gone into this movie with an attitude, because he sure missed a lot. For one thing, the native people's connection to nature isn't just some kind of "cheap mysticism" or "quasi-mystical eco-nonsense." The Na'vi are connected to nature for a reason. Anybody who's familiar with science fiction literature will see it coming, but it's also spelled out quite clearly in the movie.

Also, Suderman and other right-wing critics seem to miss the rather important fact that the bad guys are stealing from the natives and destroying the places where they live, just like any corporation using eminent domain to take someone's land. A libertarian shouldn't have any problem with the natives trying to prevent that.

On the other hand, Roger Ebert says it has an anti-war message, apparently missing the fact that the Na'vi good guys have plenty of weapons and don't mind fighting back.

I'm not saying Avatar is pro-war and pro-property rights, but neither is it about anti-corporate mystical eco-nonsense. It's about these people on this planet, and some of them are human and some of them are alien, and...really, it's a big special effects movie. Just go see it and have fun.

In the spirit of a holiday named after a wise Jew from the (middle) east, I think it's only fair to direct you to Simple Justice, where Scott Greenfield has posted a heartfelt thanks for all his fellow blawgers:

Blawgers give of their time, their thoughts, their talents to write.  In return, they are told how ignorant and stupid they are by people they don't know.  They are stalked and threatened with physical harm by actual psychotics with keyboards.  Why would anyone put up with such abuse?  Yet they do, and continue to write.

Aw, Scott, it's not that bad. I've never met most of the people I blog about, and I call them ignorant and stupid all the time. It's only fair that people say the same thing about me.

Besides, it's not like they're going to get a way with it. I'm making a list and checking it twice, if you know what I mean. Someday, everyone's gonna get theirs who's got it coming.

But not today, because, you know,

 

Peace On Earth, Good Will Toward Men.

 

The vitriol and derision will return tomorrow.

I've been reading How to Stop a Stalker by Mike Proctor, a former detective in Westminster, California.

I'm fascinated by some aspects of forensic psychology, so I was hoping the book would discuss the psychology of stalkers and how to discourage them. However, Proctor's book is more about how stalking is defined as a crime and how police handle it. There are several chapters on personal safety and security gear, but none of that is specific to stalking. This book just wasn't about what I thought it would be about.

Some of Proctor's policework is a little disconcerting. It's not that he's doing anything illegal or even unethical, but I'm used to thinking about police activity in the context of victimless crimes, where pretty much everything police do is wrong. So when proctor describes searching a stalker's house, I feel uncomfortable, even though I know that stalkers are real criminals.

Actually, I should clarify: The stalkers Proctor talks about are all clearly criminals, but I'm a bit less certain that everyone prosecuted under the anti-stalking laws was as bad as these guys. I mean, human behavior didn't suddenly change in 1990, so why did we suddenly have all these laws against stalking? It has the smell of a moral panic, like satanic ritual abuse or sexting, and nothing good ever comes from that.

Part of what worries me is that anti-stalking laws seem like an attempt to punish stalkers for the implied threat of their conduct rather that for their actual conduct. As long as the implied threat is an intended threat (i.e. the threat does not exist only in the minds of the victim and the police) that seems like a legitimate reason for punishment, but I suspect there's room for abuse.

Proctor tells the stories of several terrible stalking incidents. Actually, "incident" is the wrong word. Being pursued by a serious stalker is like being in a low-intensity war. It drags on for years, and you never know when something bad is going to happen.

What's amazing to me is how ineffective the police seem to be. Here you have a guy harassing someone, making threats, breaking into their house, vandalizing their car, and it goes on for years without the stalker receiving any punishment. Yet somehow the police find the time to arrest a guy for being naked in his own home.

Although I didn't get what I was looking for from this book, I did find a few passages in Proctor's description of how a stalking trial works that will amuse or infuriate some of my readers:

Once the defense counsel has gathered up the entire discovery information and has made at least a brief review, she may go to the presiding judge and ask for what she feels is a reasonable disposition to resolve the case---in other words, what it will take to close out the case. The judge then reviews the facts of the case and gives the defense attorney an ideas as to whether probation will be appropriate in the case, or, if a jail sentence is warranted, the approximate length of the sentence. The defense counsel then discusses this information with the defendant, who can either accept or deny the offered sentence. (That is, what the district attorney and the defense have agreed is a reasonable sentence.) Sometimes, though not often, the defense attorney may push for his client to plead guilty to the charges, but his client may fail to cooperate. This is known in the trade as a "lack of client control." In this situation, the defense counsel is forced to go to trial.

Yes, because the client's stubborn insistence is the only reason a defense lawyer would ever go to trial. Maybe Proctor is just so good that he's never given a D.A. a weak case.

After the prosecuting attorney is finished with his questions, the defense counsel gets a turn. It is the defense counsel's job to make sure none of his client's rights are violated, and to defened the client against the charges, if possible. Unfortunately, it is our opinion that too many defense attorneys attempt to liberate their clients by clouding the issues. This is accomplished by trying to put words in your mouth, back you into a corner, or make you look confused and unsure of yourself. This is usually done in an effort to sway the jury into wonderin whether you are sure of the facts of the case. It may not be right, but perception planse a definite rols in a trial setting. If the jury thinks you are lying or confused, it will cause problems for the prosecution. In all fairness, we do know defense attorneys who actually do what they are supposed to do, that is, defend their client in a true and just manner, but it has been our experience that these individuals individuals are few and far between.

 I sure hope that's true if I ever need a defense lawyer.

Radley Balko bids farewell to Kern County California D.A. Ed Jagels:

You'd be hard pressed to find a law enforcement official anywhere in the country who better embodies the worst excesses of America's sharp turn toward law-and-order crime policy over last 30 years. From expanding the death penalty to eroding the rights of the accused to jacking up prison populations to formulating crime policy around sports metaphors, Jagels created a high-profile position by backing just about every bad crime policy in a generation.

But if history dispenses justice more honorably than Ed Jagels ever did, the boyish-looking D.A. will be most remembered for his role ruining countless lives in perhaps the most shameful of the Reagan-era "tough on crime" debacles: the coast-to-coast sex abuse panic of the 1980s.

It's because of prosecutors like Jagels---and while few are as successful as Jagels, many are trying---that I don't automatically assume the prosecutors are the good guys. From Radley's account, Jagels was a cancer on the California justice system. Yet unlike cancer, he was encouraged to thrive and grow by other people in the system.

Nobody ever held him responsible. Kern county residents paid out millions in settlements for his errors, but Jagels himself escaped scott free. He's advising one of next year's candidates for governor.

South Carolina criminal defense lawyer Bobby Frederick has an excellent example today of the scourge of profitable punishment:

Law enforcement agencies receive grants based on the number of DUI arrests they make - if the number of arrests goes down, they are in danger of losing that money. Law enforcement officers are given awards for the number of DUI arrests they make (arrests - not convictions), which encourages them to make as many DUI arrests as they can in order to gain recognition.

He also refers us to a great explanation from Lawrence Taylor of what MADD is really all about.

Meet the God of Tetris, master of blocks. If you've played Tetris, his last words will haunt you.

At some point, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio decided that the rules no longer applied to him. He and his deputies had all the guns, so why couldn't they do whatever they want? If those guys in Somalia and Afganistan could become warlords, why couldn't he do it right here in America?

I think it must have started years ago, back when I first heard about Apaio. He was billing himself as "the toughest sheriff in America." If you don't already know, try to imagine what he must have done to claim that. Did he break up a bank robbery single-handed? Infiltrate a drug gang? Clean out corruption in his own department? Bust an organize crime syndicate?

No, nothing like that. He's tough on the prisoners in his jail. They don't get goodies like coffee or cigarettes or porno mags, they have very limited television viewing, and they spend a lot of time in chain gangs. And they eat very cheap food. Also, he makes them all wear pink underwear. Basically, he makes things very hard on a bunch of people who are powerless.

That's not tough. That's being a bully. A sadistic, hateful bully. (And one of the few Americans ever investigated by Amnesty International.)

I'd forgotten about Arpaio, but it appears that his hunger to control people has continued to grow. I noticed him again a few years ago when he arrested the owners of a Phoenix newspaper for publishing a story he didn't like, and tried to force them to reveal information about their readers.

That's almost unheard of in this country. Thanks to the First Amendment, journalists have a lot of legal protection. They routinely investigate and publish personal scandals, corporate trade secrets, and national security information without repercussions. The few exceptions are so rare that they have become the subjects of books and movies. Arresting journalists is the kind of crap they pull in third-world dictatorships.

Which is, I think, what Sheriff Joe Arpaio is trying to build for himself. He's spent many years as absolute ruler over the people in his prisons, and he now thinks that's a fine model for his relationship to the rest of the county as well. His deputies are his own personal army, and he's the Warlord of Maricopa County.

Arpaio's latest trick is right out of the dictator play book: He's trying to arrest a judge who ruled against him. The county attorney filing the charges, Andrew Thomas, was also involved in arresting the reporters.

Somehow all of this is escaping the attention of the national media. Do they not realize that Maricopa County is having a constitutional crisis? Do they not understand? Are they too busy covering Tiger Woods' personal life? It boggles the mind that all this is going on and it's not front page news.

If any of you are interested, however, Mark Bennett has collected a lot more information about this story.

The good news is that Joe Arpaio will probably not be Sheriff of Maricopa County for much longer. The bad news is that's because he's currently leading the polls for the Arizona Governor's race.

What are the chances he will try to arrest the other candidates?

Update: Via Josh King in the comments at Simple Justice, here's a new summary of what Arpaio's been up to.

Yet another reason to get rid if the INS:

When Jordan Peimer booked an Argentine band that fuses Jewish Klezmer music with tango, he thought he had the perfect act to headline his "Fiesta Hanukkah" concert.

...

That was before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services weighed in with some cultural commentary of its own. The band couldn't travel to the U.S., the agency ruled, because it didn't satisfy a "culturally unique" requirement for a performer visa called P-3.

Yeah, government bureaucrats deciding which forms of art we should enjoy. That's what every great country needs.

It's time to make the INS into a small agency that just processes the immigration paperwork.

For those who were wondering, yes, I did notice that the Immigration and Naturalization Service has changed its name, just like a criminal hoping not to be connected to prior crimes. I wasn't fooled.

(Hat tip: Jesse Walker)

I just read that The Bonnie Hunt Show "is not expected to continue" for a third season.  I am a big fan of Bonnie's and have met her on two occasions and she couldn't be nicer.  I've had a huge crush on her since I met her in Woolworth's in 1991.  

I saw a woman from behind and thought, "That woman has gorgeous blond hair just like Bonnie Hunt.  She turned and I thought, "Wow, she even looks like Bonnie Hunt!"  Then it dawned on me - "Hey! This is Bonnie Hunt!"

She went down an aisle and as I tried to get up the courage to speak to her, an elderly woman beat me to it.  I thought I had missed my chance when this woman recognized her, too.  Or so I thought. I slipped into the next aisle and overheard Bonnie say to the woman very apologetically, "I don't know.  I'm sorry.  I don't work here."  I waited for the woman to leave and came around the corner.  Bonnie's back was to me as she was going through a stack of welcome mats.

"Excuse me," I said. 

Without looking up, she replied, "No, I'm sorry, I don't work here."

I chuckled nervously and said, "I know who you are." And I proceeded to list her recent credits in an effort to prove it.  We talked for about 5 minutes or so about her recently cancelled series Grand and how she turned down the role of the wife on Home Improvement to take a job on Davis Rules for the chance to work with her idol, Jonathan Winters.  She was very gracious, never making me feel as if I was intruding on her time or bothering her in any way (which was my fear).

That being said, if I have to be honest, I'm not surprised her talk show will likely be coming to an end. If she was only half as engaging and funny hosting her own show as she is when she is a guest on other talk shows, she'd be renewed in a heartbeat.

Television was never better than when she was a guest on the Late, Late Show with the late Tom Snyder.  They had a fantastic ease and a chemistry together. (I got to tell her this the second time I met her at a screening of Return to Me.) She's always a hilarious joy to watch when she's on David Letterman. I would tape and repeatedly watch these appearances with Tom and Dave and laugh harder each time. I don't know why that didn't translate into her own show.  I imagine it's very difficult hosting a show, and to her credit, she always seems to treat her guests well, making them feel at home.  But it seems that the pressures of being a good hostess and producing, writing and starring on a daily talk show have squelched her wonderful talent.

I really wanted to love her show, but I've only caught it a handful of times.  It's pleasant and often amusing, but not enough to turn me into a regular viewer.  I wish her the best and I'd love for her to finally get the breakout sitcom or movie roll along with the audience she deserves.  Until then, I'll watch for her on Dave.

I hate it when movie theaters put a message on the screen where they threaten to prosecute us for using a recording device. I understand they want to prevent people from copying movies, and I don't plan on any bootlegging, but I don't like doing business with places that treat me like a criminal.

Since a taping incident doesn't hurt a theater directly very much, I wondered if the message was just a requirement passed along from the distributor. Or were they really serious?

At the Muvico theater in Rosemont, Illinois, they're apparently serious about it. Viciously and stupidly serious, as 22-year old Samantha Tumpach found out last weekend:

Taping three minutes of "Twilight: New Moon" during a visit to a Rosemont movie theater landed Samantha Tumpach in a jail cell for two nights.

Now, the 22-year-old Chicago woman faces up to three years in prison after being charged with a rarely invoked felony designed to prevent movie patrons from recording hot new movies and selling bootleg copies.

But Tumpach insisted Wednesday that's not what she was doing -- she was actually taping parts of her sister's surprise birthday party celebrated at the Muvico Theater in Rosemont.

...

Managers contacted police, who examined the small digital camera, which also records video segments, Cmdr. Frank Siciliano said. Officers found that Tumpach had taped "two very short segments" of the movie -- no more than four minutes total, he said.

Tumpach was arrested after theater managers insisted on pressing charges, he said.

I understand the need to protect intellectual property, but this is ridiculous. Copyright is usually a matter of civil law, so taking it to the level of felony criminal charges should only be necessary to punish blatant piracy of intellectual property such as a DVD forgery operation.

It's also pretty asinine of the theater management to press charges in a case like this. I'm guessing that Ms Tumpach and her friends won't spending any more money at Muvico in Rosemont. Neither will lots of other people If this story gets around.

FYI, here's the Muvico contact page.

(Hat tip: Consumerist via Balko)

Update: Here's my email to Muvico:

Dear Sir or Madam,

I've always been disturbed by the now-common warnings against using a recording device in theaters. I understand why recording is wrong, but I don't appreciate spending good money in your establishment for tickets and snacks, and then being treated like a potential criminal.

Now I read in the Chicago Sun-Times that the Muvico I go to in Rosemont is pressing charges against a young lady for recording  a few minutes of the latest Twilight movie while playing around with a cheap little camera. That's just crazy. Your theater manager has no sense of proportion---What's next? Prosecuting customers for littering if they don't throw away their empty popcorn buckets?

I guess he (or she) also has no sense of the value of customers to the theater business. There are lots of other theater choices in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I don't have to go to Muvico, and I don't think I will.

-- Mark Draughn