According to Kip Hawley the TSA's airport security system is broken:

Airport security in America is broken. I should know. For 3½ years--from my confirmation in July 2005 to President Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2009--I served as the head of the Transportation Security Administration.

You know what Kip? Fuck you. You're part of the problem. The very first words out of your mouth should be "I'm sorry." Anything less is just not good enough.

You know the TSA. We're the ones who make you take off your shoes before padding through a metal detector in your socks (hopefully without holes in them). We're the ones who make you throw out your water bottles. We're the ones who end up on the evening news when someone's grandma gets patted down or a child's toy gets confiscated as a security risk. If you're a frequent traveler, you probably hate us.

I've flown once since 9/11. I still hate you. I hated you even before I flew. You know why I hated you, even though I hadn't flown? Probably not. It's because I have something called empathy for other people. I realize that's a foreign concept for you, but you really should try it out.

Any effort to rebuild TSA and get airport security right in the U.S. has to start with two basic principles:

First, the TSA's mission is to prevent a catastrophic attack on the transportation system, not to ensure that every single passenger can avoid harm while traveling. Much of the friction in the system today results from rules that are direct responses to how we were attacked on 9/11. But it's simply no longer the case that killing a few people on board a plane could lead to a hijacking. Never again will a terrorist be able to breach the cockpit simply with a box cutter or a knife. The cockpit doors have been reinforced, and passengers, flight crews and air marshals would intervene.

We've been telling you this for YEARS, you dumb son of a bitch! Years!

Sigh. According to Hawley, it's not all his fault, and I have to admit his explanation rings true:

I wanted to reduce the amount of time that officers spent searching for low-risk objects, but politics intervened at every turn. Lighters were untouchable, having been banned by an act of Congress. And despite the radically reduced risk that knives and box cutters presented in the post-9/11 world, allowing them back on board was considered too emotionally charged for the American public.

We did succeed in getting some items (small scissors, ice skates) off the list of prohibited items. And we had explosives experts retrain the entire work force in terrorist tradecraft and bomb-making. Most important, Charlie Allen, the chief of intelligence for the Department of Homeland Security, tied the TSA into the wider world of U.S. intelligence, arranging for our leadership to participate in the daily counterterrorism video conference chaired from the White House. With a constant stream of live threat reporting to start each day, I was done with playing defense.

Still, he's kind of clueless:

Taking your shoes off for security is probably your least favorite part of flying these days. Mine, too.

Actually, most offensive part is when the TSA pricks look at us naked and touch us in places that strangers shouldn't touch us. I realize that system came online after Hawley left the TSA, but it was going through procurement while he was in charge.

Eventually, he gets to a list of changes he proposes, most of which are pretty good:

What would a better system look like? If politicians gave the TSA some political cover, the agency could institute the following changes before the start of the summer travel season:

1. No more banned items: Aside from obvious weapons capable of fast, multiple killings--such as guns, toxins and explosive devices--it is time to end the TSA's use of well-trained security officers as kindergarten teachers to millions of passengers a day...

2. Allow all liquids...

3. Give TSA officers more flexibility and rewards for initiative, and hold them accountable...

The TSA's basic problem with accountability is that it is responsible for enforcing its own standards. That's not very effective, especially since TSA employees have civil service protections that make them hard to fire. They aren't law enforcement officers, so they don't need to be government employees. The best way to hold airport security employees accountable is to lay off 90% of TSA employees and go back to the private security system we had before. Turn the remaining TSA officers into inspectors that hold the private system accountable.

4. Eliminate baggage fees: Much of the pain at TSA checkpoints these days can be attributed to passengers overstuffing their carry-on luggage to avoid baggage fees...

You could also try to make baggage handling safer and more efficient. Stop losing bags. Stop letting baggage handlers and TSA officers steal stuff. All that security, and someone can still walk off with anything you check. That's why people carry stuff on.

To be effective, airport security needs to embrace flexibility and risk management--principles that it is difficult for both the bureaucracy and the public to accept. The public wants the airport experience to be predictable, hassle-free and airtight and for it to keep us 100% safe. But 100% safety is unattainable. Embracing a bit of risk could reduce the hassle of today's airport experience while making us safer at the same time.

Again, some of us have been telling you that for years.

--Mr. Hawley is the author of "Permanent Emergency: Inside the TSA and the Fight for the Future of American Security," to be published April 24 by Palgrave Macmillan.

Like we didn't see that coming...

Security expert Bruce Schneier, who has been explaining the TSA's errors for years, has posted his reaction, which is basically that Hawley has finally caught up to the rest of us. Also, Hawley was saying something completely different as recently as one month ago.

Martin Luther King's holiday seems to be as good a day as any to talk about how we should respond to police barbarism.

It's no secret that a lot of people with libertarian leanings aren't happy with the way the United States seems to be turning into a police state. As a reminder of the degree to which our cops have become militarized, check out the Cop or Soldier quiz at Radley Balko's place. I did pretty good, so see if you can beat me:

 

Some folks in the blogosphere have been saying that the emerging police state won't be stopped until the cops start getting hurt. Some have even suggested that it may be time for a violent uprising. I can understand where they're coming from -- it looks pretty bad to me too -- but then I know that some people in every generation have been certain that America was about to plunge into tyranny, and they've always been wrong. I think it's safe to assume that with a longer perspective, we'd see that our current time isn't so bad either.

(Then again, American freedom is going to end eventually. Nothing lasts forever. I sure hope that future generations will not look back on mine and ask, "Why didn't they shoot them while they still had the chance?")

Recently, some people on Twitter have been lauding this video, posted under the title "Police Brutality - Handled the Way It Should Be":

In the video, you can see some idiot run onto the field, and then then a bunch of uniformed security guards or cops tackle him and pin him down. So far, so good. But then the cop/guard on the right apparently starts to jab him with a nightstick. At which point people in the stadium rush the field to attack the cops.

I can't fault the sentiment. Although violence as a response to violence often isn't the wisest approach, there's certainly nothing morally wrong with using violence to stop violence. Resisting arrest is wrong. Defending yourself or others against police brutality is not.

However...

Watch the video carefully. The cop/guard on the right jabs the guy on the ground a few times. The other cop/guard yells at him. Then the mob attacks, and it looks like the yelling cop takes a beating. As for the cop who was jabbing the guy on the ground...he abandoned his buddies to the crowd and got away without a scratch.

This, in a nutshell, is one of the problems with trying to defeat the police state by violence. It never seems to work out the way it's supposed to. It's too easy to hurt the innocent, and too hard to make sure only the guilty are punished. And the kinds of people who attack or kill cops are not the kinds of people you want on your side. Back around the Days of Rage, the Weathermen killed a cop, but they didn't target a particularly bad one, just whoever was standing there when the bomb went off. The Symbionese Liberation Army claimed to be leaders of a black revolution, but they ended up killing a black school superintendent and a mother of four.

Fantasies of vengeance are commonplace and often make for entertaining fiction, but in real life, violent reprisals are rarely instigated by people who value freedom and respect human life. In the movies, we get a mysterious stranger in a Guy Fawkes mask who speaks eloquently of liberty, outwits the authorities, and strikes at the heart of a brutal state by blowing up empty buildings. In real life, we get Timothy McVeigh using a bomb in a truck to kill children.

I have to admit, I'm pretty excited about the iPhone 4S. I've had my iPhone 3S for a couple of years now, and although it's been pretty cool, it was beginning to show its age. Some of the newer apps are a bit sluggish on my less-than-leading-edge hardware, and my phone doesn't have the iPhone 4's WiFi hotspot feature, which I'd find pretty useful. By the time my contract ran out this summer, the tech rumor mill was saying Apple would have a new phone out in October, so I decided to wait.

I'm not normally an early adopter of anything, so when Apple made their announcement on Wednesday, I thought about it for a few days before deciding I was going to buy the new phone. Finally, this weekend, I took the plunge and visited the Apple online store, and promptly stumbled on a defect that even the design wizards at Apple were unable to eliminate. In the otherwise elegant and powerful iPhone, I had discovered a glaring problem. A fly in the ointment. A monkey in the wrench.

The problem, simply put, is that you can't use an iPhone as a mobile phone without having to involve a mobile phone company. Apple's iPhone may be one of the design and technology sensations of the modern world, but they depend for their functionality on one of the most despised industries in the modern world. It's like buying a Lamborghini Murcielago supercar and discovering that you're only allowed to drive it on gravel roads.

(Mobile carriers aren't as bad as they used to be. When I first started using one, I remember I wanted to change some feature and when I called the company, they told me that the change would require a $35 "programming fee." Their network computers could follow me all over the country and stream audio to my phone in real time, but changing a field in the database was so difficult that I'd have to pay for it.)

The new iPhone works with any one of three carriers: AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. I used to have Verizon before I switched to AT&T for my iPhone, and I'd love to go back -- they were great to work with and I had good connectivity -- but they use CDMA technology which (for reasons beyond my comprehension) doesn't allow users to talk and surf the web at the same time. That could be a problem if I'm going to be tethered and online for hours at a time.

As for Sprint, well...let's just say I have a history with those fuckers.

So that means I'm stuck with my current carrier, AT&T.

Picking out the iPhone at the Apple site was easy, and even linking the purchase to my AT&T account seemed to work just fine. The problem came when I tried to arrange shipping. You see, I have a rental box at a nearby UPS Store. Everything I buy online gets sent to that address so I don't have to choose between staying home all day or having the package left in the hallway where anyone can steal it.

It turns out that this offends AT&T. Even though I had the UPS box listed as my default shipping address for the Apple store, the ordering system wouldn't let me ship the phone to the UPS box, and a chat with Apple support confirmed that AT&T would only allow them to ship the phone to the billing address on my mobile account. It didn't even matter that this was the exact same address to which they had successfully shipped the iPhone I was currently using.

I suppose there's some security rationalization for this, but it's not much security, since all I had to do was visit the AT&T site to change my billing address to the rental box and then go through the purchasing process again. I'll change it back after I get the phone, so my bills arrive at home again. It was a useless and annoying waste of my time.

I realize this is not a huge problem, but I thought it deserved attention -- perhaps some sort of prize for Special Achievement in Bad Customer Service. I mean, think about it: AT&T has figured out a way to screw with me that (a) is completely gratuitous, (b) hits me before I even have the product in my hands, (c) affects a product I'm actually buying from someone else, and (d) only really hurts their returning customers.

It's a pity the folks at Apple have to work with losers like this.

In my email this morning, I got this notice about a proposed class action settlement with Verizon Wireless due to some alleged misdeads in the way they handled roaming charges. The beginning part sets the scene, but note the bits I've highlighted:

A proposed settlement has been reached with Verizon Wireless ("Verizon Wireless") in a class action, Cowit, et al., v. Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless, No. A0505869 (Ct. of Common Pleas,Hamilton County, Ohio), related to a lawsuit about whether Verizon Wireless failed to provide roaming service without any roaming charges under the America's Choice II Calling Plan. Verizon Wirelessdenies all of the claims.

WHO IS INCLUDED? The Settlement Class includes all current and former customers of Verizon Wireless who, since February 21, 2005, subscribed to its America's Choice II Calling Plan. If you are a member of the Settlement Class, you have certain rights and options, such as submitting a claim for benefits, requesting exclusion from the settlement, or objecting to the settlement.

SETTLEMENT BENEFITS. In summary, current Verizon Wireless customers whose calling plan provides for a specific allowance of minutes as part of their monthly access fee automatically will receive 25 additional wireless calling minutes, which they can use for a period of one year, or, in the alternative, if these class members submit a Claim Form they can receive a transferable PIN for 40 calling units, which will be valid for 24 months, that can be used to make domestic or international long distance calls. Current Verizon Wireless customers whose calling plan provides for an unlimited number of minutes as part of the monthly access fee will automatically, without filing a Claim Form, receive a transferable PIN for 40 calling units, which will be valid for 24 months, that can be used to make domestic or international calls. Former Verizon Wireless customers must submit a Claim Form to receive a transferable PIN for 40 calling units, which will be valid for 24 months, that can be used to make domestic or international calls. You can submit your claim online at www.cowitsettlement.com or by mail. The claim deadline is November 8, 2011.

This is called a coupon settlement, and it's a total ripoff. The class members -- who are supposedly the victims of Verizon's perfidy and the clients of the lawyers who negotiated this deal -- get at most 40 minutes of long distance calling. How much is that worth?

Looking at prepaid plans in my area, I see one for 450 minutes for $44.99 which is about 10 cents a minute, so the settlement here is worth $4.

But that's not the only way to compute the value of 40 minutes of long-distance talk time. If you go over your pre-paid minutes, Verizon charges between 25 and 45 cents per minute, which works out to a value as high as $10 to $18 per settlement.

On the other hand, Verizon's costs are essentially fixed -- they already own or lease all the towers, computers, and trunk lines they need to provide service. A few extra users spending class-action minutes wouldn't increase their costs, so the cost to Verizon of giving out minutes on their own network is essentially zero.

Then again, the settlement includes international calling, which may involve real costs to buy time on international trunk lines. The per-minute rates for these calls run as high as $2.99, which makes the settlement worth a whopping $119.60. Of course, that's only for people who don't have a calling plan. And only if they need to call Afghanistan.

So what's the right value? Well, I think I have a good argument that if you use the only proper method of calculating the value of this settlement, it's a big fat zero.

Here's why: I cancelled my Verison Wireless account when I got my iPhone (Verizon iPhone hadn't come out yet) so all I get out of this is a PIN number good for 40 minutes of free long distance. However, I have unlimited free long distance on my home phone. My mobile phone has limited minutes, but I never come close to using them all, so I have thousands of unused rollover minutes and hundreds of them age out every month. Finally, I don't ever have to make international calls.

My guess is that I'm pretty typical, in that most mobile phone users already have calling plans that provide all the minutes they could ever use. They will never have a need for the 40 extra minutes this settlement provides. Therefore, the value of this settlement to most people is zero.

You could argue that the settlement still hurts Verizon and teaches them a lesson, which is one of the justifications for class action suites, but that's a matter of policy. It's not what counts here. The lawyers who are supposed to represent me in this deal are supposed to look out for my best interests, so only my interests matter. And since this is worth nothing to me, it means my lawyers have failed me.

Speaking of my lawyers (Richard S. Wayne of Strauss & Troy and Jeffrey P. Harris of Statman, Harris & Eyrich), how much will they get? That's not in the email they sent me, but you can find a hint in the FAQ on the settlement website:

How much will the attorneys be paid and who will pay it?

The attorneys for the plaintiffs and the class have worked on this case for more than 5½ years including appeals to the Supreme Court of Ohio. They will submit a request for attorneys' fees, expenses, and incentive awards for the Class Representatives in an amount not to exceed $6 million. The Court will determine the amount of any attorneys' fees and expenses awarded to class counsel, which will be paid by Verizon Wireless and will not affect the benefits to the class under the Settlement.

Six million dollars? Holy crap!

So the lawyers want to get paid millions of dollars because they put in over five years of work on this thing, even though the value to their supposed clients is nearly zilch. What is it that Mark Bennett always says? "Gunfighters don't charge by the bullet."

If they think long-distance minutes are such a great idea, why don't they accept them in payment for their services instead of asking for cash? I'm tempted to suggest that the class action statutes should be amended to require lawyers to accept the same kind of payment that they get for their clients. (I was vaguely under the impression that the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 already did something like that, but I'm obviously mistaken.) Or else their payment should be based on the actual value of these payments that are redeemed by the clients. I'll bet it's less than 10% for something like this.

I think probably the best solution would be to require that all class action settlements must be in cash and cash only, but I'd sure like to hear from someone who's given this a little more thought.

After reading about Jennifer's ambition to "touch every U.S. citizen," I was randomly poking around the Department of Homeland Security website when I stumbled on this horrifying headline:

Secretary Napolitano Announces Stop.Think.Connect. Campaign Partnership with D.A.R.E. America

Oh God. The DHS and D.A.R.E. That's a partnership forged in the pit of hell. I can smell the fail from here.

Actually, the Stop.Think.Connect program doesn't seem like an awful idea. It's supposedly an educational effort to help children and adults learn about the importance of staying secure online. I say "supposedly" because as far as I know, no peer-reviewed study has ever shown that the D.A.R.E. program accomplishes any of its goals.

(And if someone from D.A.R.E. wants to respond, let me head off the usual distraction: You're going to tell me that those studies are out-of-date because they were of the old D.A.R.E. program. The new one really works. At least until the next study comes out, and you change the program again.)

Of course, the program is more about "awareness" than about actually teaching people specific and helpful skills. If you're a government agency like the DHS or public interest group like D.A.R.E., awareness is always a cool thing to promote, because you can easily survey people's awareness, launch an educational program, and do another survey to show that people are more "aware." They won't actually be any better off, because you haven't taught them anything useful, but you'll have numbers to prove that people are more "aware," which will make it easier to get more money next time.

Then there's the key issues page. In addition to warning people about identity theft and fraud, it also has a section on this decade's version of the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic: Cyber Bullying and Cyber Predators. The warning about predators is especially amusing coming from the people who brought you TSA patdowns for children.

Let me be perfectly clear about this: Scott Andringa tried to put a paraplegic man in prison for 25 years for having too many pain pills.

This happened a few years ago, and obviously the story is a bit more complicated than I can summarize in that one sentence, but that's basically what happened. The paraplegic man is named Richard Paey. He's been in a car accident, he's suffered through failed back surgery, and he has multiple sclerosis. Without medication, he'd be in a lot of pain. And he'd still be in jail thanks to prosecutor Scott Andringa if Governor Charlie Crist hadn't pardoned him.

Given the kinds of things I blog about, I hear a lot of stories about prosecutors who do crazy evil shit like this. (For example, I just wrote about U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway, who abused the grand jury system to harass Siobhan Reynolds and shutdown her pain management advocacy organization.) I worry that they'll get away with it--no, that's not quite right. I know they'll get away with it. They're prosecutors: They have immunity. What I'm really worried about is that they'll thrive.

In my imagination, people who commit these kinds of atrocites are shunned. They have a hard time finding employment, and when they walk down the street, old ladies spit on the sidewalk in front of them, and mothers make their children cross the street so as not to pass too close.

In reality, of course, such behavior rarely has any consequences, and these people often have long careers in public life. States Attorney Janet Reno was at the heart of the Satanic sexual abuse panic down in Florida, and yet President Bill Clinton appointed her as U.S. Attorney General. Both Rudy Giuliani and Eliot Spitzer used their prosecutorial offices as platforms for self-aggrandizement, eventually becoming mayor and governor of their respective New Yorks. And former U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan may have lost her bid for Congress, but we probably haven't seen the last of her.

So whenever I read about some outrageous behavior by a prosecutor, I worry that if nobody pays attention, they'll just turn up again in public service somewhere to cause even more damage. At one point, I even tried to start a web site to keep track of these people, so that we'll recognize them when they pop up again, and have information about the crap they've pulled. It never really worked out, so I'm left trying to lure search engines by blogging about things like how Scott Andringa tried to put a paraplegic man in prison for 25 years for having too many pain pills.

I'm bringing all this up because look what Scott Andringa's been up to:

On Monday, December 13th, 2010, Scott Andringa; 42, a member of The Florida Bar since 1993,  announced his candidacy for Pinellas County Judge, Group 2, in the 2012 election.

Gee, I wonder who holds that position now? Oh yeah, it's Henry J. Andringa, who happens to be Scott's father.

In a terrific post at Res Publica, blogger Spartacus Thrace at Res Publica has far more detail about Scott Andringa and his run for office:

Among the elected officials in Pinellas County up for election in 2012 is Judge of the County Court, Group 2, a seat currently occupied by Henry J. "Hank" Andringa, who is expected to retire in 2012.  Until now, there has been considerable speculation as to who might run for this seat when it becomes vacant.  That speculation ended December 13, 2010 when, with little fanfare, Andringa's son, Attorney R. Scott Andringa, announced that he has entered the race to succeed his father when the next election is held, on November 6, 2012.

Sounds like Scott's really qualified to be a judge.

(Read the whole post by Spartacus. It's got a brief biography of Andringa, a good summary of the Richard Paey case, and some analysis of Andringa's chance of winning the election.)

In any case, I'll finish now with one last reminder to all those Pinellas County voters: Scott Andringa tried to put a paraplegic man in prison for 25 years for having too many pain pills.

Jennifer Abel gets off a good rant explaining part of the problem:

Should've left well enough alone. Should've stayed off-line. But no-I checked a couple of news websites instead and read something which must've shown on my face, for my boyfriend asked, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I snapped in the same tone of voice most people use to say "Fuck you and everyone you love." Then I quickly added, in a much softer tone, "I'm not a violent person but I swear, every time I read about the latest TSA travesty I want to punch something."

If you were fool enough to try flying yesterday, then you might have learned the hard way what I learned about online: TSA has decided that Thermos bottles and other insulated food containers are the latest Potentially Dangerous Terrorist Threats.

When I first heard about this, I thought it was stupid. Then I thought, well, maybe they got intelligence about a plot. Maybe some special forces team ransacked an Al-Qaeda training camp and found thermos bottles filled with explosives.

Of course not:

Despite the warning, however, authorities stress that there has not been any intelligence about a specific threat involving the drink-toting bottles. The closer inspection is simply an additional safety check to ensure safe holiday travels, they said[.]

Sigh. As Jennifer explains:

The thuggish behavior now standard in American airports is creeping to other forms of mass transit, too. Washington DC kicked off the holiday season by starting "random checks" of Metro passengers' baggage on the Winter Solstice. New York City has already done that to subway passengers for a few years now. And whenever the latest invasion of our privacy is announced, the government PR agents calling themselves journalists find some dimwit to give a Man On The Street quote: "Oh, yes, it's worth it so the government can keep us safe."

No, dammit, the government doesn't do this to keep us safe; they do this instead ofthings that would keep us safe! TSA's so busy feeling your underwear, they can't find the actual bombs that test agents smuggle through security checkpoints; so busy measuring how many hundredths of an ounce of shampoo you've got, they can't bother checking what's in a plane's cargo hold.

Careful, Jennifer. If you try to prove that TSA security is stupid, you might get a visit from the FBI:

SACRAMENTO, CA - An airline pilot is being disciplined by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for posting video on YouTube pointing out what he believes are serious flaws in airport security.

The 50-year-old pilot, who lives outside Sacramento, asked that neither he nor his airline be identified. He has worked for the airline for more than a decade and was deputized by the TSA to carry a gun in the cockpit.

He is also a helicopter test pilot in the Army Reserve and flew missions for the United Nations in Macedonia.

Three days after he posted a series of six video clips recorded with a cell phone camera at San Francisco International Airport, four federal air marshals and two sheriff's deputies arrived at his house to confiscate his federally-issued firearm. The pilot recorded that event as well and provided all the video to News10.

At the same time as the federal marshals took the pilot's gun, a deputy sheriff asked him to surrender his state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon.

A follow-up letter from the sheriff's department said the CCW permit would be reevaluated following the outcome of the federal investigation.

You can almost smell the retaliation, can't you?

Whatever problem that pilot discovered, you can bet the TSA knew about it long before he posted his videos. But now that he told the rest of us about it, they're going to claim that he's the one who's endangering people.

Actually, there's another way to look at it: The TSA isn't pissed off because the pilot showed us how lax security is behind the scenes. Rather, they're pissed at him for showing us the pointlessness of all the checkpoint security.

Dear 1010global.org,

I hope you die. I hope you die violently. I hope people rise up and tear you apart piece by piece with their bare hands as you scream in tormented agony.

Nah, just kidding.

However, I just saw your repulsive promotional video. Maybe killing innocent men, women, and children in the name of environmentalism seems like dark, edgy humor to you, but I think you should consider that you're running a global initiative, and some of the countries you list on your home page are the kinds of places where in living memory innocent men, women, and children really were murdered by smug, repulsive bastards to serve somebody else's great cause.

In closing, fuck you. And this time I mean what I'm saying.

[Addendum: The internet is full of people who complain about what other people are saying to gain political points, but really, take a look at the promotional video. It's...man, I've never seen anything like that.]

Update: Changed my mind. Not about the "fuck you" part, I still mean that very sincerely. But I'm starting to get hopeful about you dying. Not at anybody else's hand, but by your own. Your whole 10:10 carbon reduction plan is so stupid that it wouldn't surprise me if your entire team accidentally got themselves killed in an unfortunate piano moving incident.

Update: Actually, even though wishing doesn't make it so, it's probably unkind of me to hope you die violently and painfully. So I want you all to die happy. Perhaps by autoerotic asphyxiation.

One of the most disgusting aspects of the current economic unpleasantness is the way our local governments have betrayed us. Instead of tightening the belts like the rest of us, they've been trying to find new ways to squeeze money out of us to meet their bloated payrolls.

Here in Illinois, the cost of license plate stickers has gone up $21. No reason for it, they just need to squeeze us a little more.

And the city of Chicago is installing hundreds of new traffic cameras. They even have a plan to use them to find uninsured motorists so they can collect millions of dollars in fines. They're not even pretending it's about safety any more.

Daisy Nguyen has more in an AP wire story:

LOS ANGELES -- Shomari Jennings was willing to pay the $70 ticket he received for driving without a seatbelt, but not the slew of tacked-on fees and penalties that ballooned the cost more than tenfold.

Every $10 of his base fine triggered a $26 "penalty assessment" for courthouse construction, a DNA identification program, emergency medical services and other programs. Other fees ranged from $1 to $35.

"It's the new tax," Jennings, 30, complained while waiting in traffic court to contest a staggering bill compounded by a $500 fine for missing a court date.

It's not just Chicago and L.A. either:

In Iowa, lawmakers grappling with shortfalls in the state's public safety budget are exploring ways to increase fines for traffic violations. There's a proposal in Maryland to add a $7.50 charge to traffic fines to help pay for law enforcement and fire protection equipment.

I've got an idea, how about if Iowa pays for law enforcement and fire protection out of their general revenue like they're supposed to! Lawmakers always like to tie new taxes to important things -- education is another big one -- to make it harder for people to argue against the taxes, as if there weren't tons of other less-critical services they could cut. (Or, you know, stop wasting money on victimless crimes. I'm just sayin'.) I mean, what the fuck are Iowans paying their taxes for if not police and fire?

Naturally, California is the most fucked up:

Last year, lawmakers agreed to a budget deal that nearly doubled the vehicle license fee that owners pay when they register their cars every year. The fee rose from .65 percent of a vehicle's value to 1.15 percent. A significant portion of the revenue goes to the state's general fund, and the rest to local crime prevention programs.

This year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested retrofitting 500 city and county traffic cameras to cite not only drivers who blow through red lights but speeders, too. The state, facing a $20 billion deficit, would collect 85 percent of the money, using the projected $338 million to help pay for courts and court security.

This, on the other hand, has a certain poetry to it: 

State Sen. Jenny Oropeza, however, has introduced legislation prohibiting local governments from collecting and keeping traffic fines.

[Los Angeles city councilman Dennis] Zine argues that the city pays for the cameras as well as training and equipping police.

"The state collects a majority of the fine for doing nothing when we're burdened with all the responsibilities," he said.

Welcome to the party, pal. That's exactly how a lot of us feel about our income taxes.

The people who run our city and state governments have betrayed us when we needed help the most. Come election time, lets make them pay.

(Hat tip: Radley Balko.)

About the only good thing I can think about in the whole Polanski fooforaw is that it gives folks who wouldn't otherwise have had one an easy opportunity to stake out a not particularly morally difficult or brave position against middle-aged guys raping young girls, and in favor of said assholes being given appropriate punishment for it.

Miami lawyer Brian Tannebaum takes a little time out from both what is apparently a very successful legal practice (as well as endless fascinating with moderately expensive wine and an obsession as to which group of men is marginally better at transporting an oblate spheroid constructed of a fragment of inflated swine's epidermis in an arbitrary direction) to point out some obviousnesses; Brian has, from time to time, a keen eye for the obvious.

A lot of folks have been blogging about Polanski.  I'll join in, perhaps, but  . . . I'd like to know a little more, before I start flogging my own keen eye for the obvious.

Which leads to my questions -- which aren't of the hypothetical of "What sort of rope would, in a saner society, be used to execute the 'suspended sentence' that the bastard deserves?" as easy and tempting a target as that might be.

Nah.  Realistically -- and forgetting about what should or shouldn't be done -- what sort of sentence would a guy who doesn't have a plea bargain be likely to face, today in California, for the offense Polanski pleaded guilty to?  (I'm not asking about what somebody who pled out recently would get; the law may have changed in CA in the ensuing decades, and I'm assuming -- although certainly willing to be corrected -- that he'd be sentenced based on what the law was then, as opposed to now.)

Also:  on the flight charge or charges, what would the CA crimes be that he's at least possibly going to be prosecuted for violating by his flight?  And what, should he be charged and convicted, would he likely to face in terms of time for those?

I'm not asking any lawyer to put his law license into the pot for the purposes of satisfying my curiousity, but if anybody -- with or without a law degree -- has any knowledge on the subject that they'd care to share, I'd love to see it in the comments.

 

Really.

For those of you who think I'm going all Rush Limbaugh with this "feminazi" stuff: chill.  I'm talking about Elisha Strom, the now ex-wife of convicted kiddie porn felon, the loathesome Neonazi Kevin Alfred Strom. (The two of them had a falling out of some sort.  Nazis, like other people, find breaking up hard to do at times.)

That's her, at right, in a photo from around 2003.  She is apparently as uncharming as she looks, and calling her a Feminazi is only fair, because she's the closest thing the neonazis have to a feminist, okay? 

Okay.  Fine.  If she happens to be out walking someday and a cow falls out of a clear blue sky to squash her flat, that would be a sad thing only because it would be a waste of a good cow.  Got it.

But, alas, what she's apparently been charged with an is, basically, blogging and photograpy. The scumbag neonazi bitch has a blog; she makes comments hostile to, and posts snapshots of some local cops. 

Well, blogging and photography aren't a crime, and it would really be a shame -- really -- if all of our civil rights were further degraded because people wouldn't support the rights of this feminazi scumbag to write and to take pictures.

So:  please support the rights of this feminazi scumbag.  It's important that her case get coverage, and that she be acquitted of the absurd chages. 

Damn.  Well, you don't always get the good poster boys and girls on this civil rights stuff.  Yeah, sometimes you luck out and get a real hero like Rosa Parks, or Savana Redding.

But most of the time it's scumbags like Ernesto Miranda or Elisha Strom.

Live with it.

(h/t Scott over at SJ) <

I just filed my taxes. In addition to the paperwork (filed electronically) I just sent the United States Government a depressingly large amount of money. I figured I would owe them a bit this year, but I must have goofed figuring out my withholding because it was a lot more than I thought.

Last night, I heard the IRS commissioner talking about how the IRS stimulated the economy because all the tax refunds help kick off the spring shopping season. Even ignoring the economic ignorance behind thinking taxes stimulate the economy, I can tell you that I'm not very stimulated right now.

I've been a little busy, so I'm late to the party on this one, but Randazza, Popehat, Greenfield, and Bennett (among others) have been piling onto Nordstrom for their attempts to bully a small business.

There's a nice summary of the situation at InformationWeek, but basically the U.S. Patent and Trademark (PTO) office mistakenly approved "Beckon" as a trademark for Nordstrom for a forthcoming line of clothing. The problem was that a small two-person clothing business had already filed for a trademark for the very similar "Beckons" which they had been using for years.

This forced the small business to fight Nordstrom for the trademark, and cost them a fortune in legal fees and expenses. Legally speaking, Nordstrom didn't have a leg to stand on. The small business had filed first and they were already doing business using the "Beckons" name, so trademark law clearly was unambiguously in their favor. Nevertheless, Nordstrom fought back.

Eventually, the PTO owned up to their error and revoked Nordstrom's "Beckon" trademark.

That should have ended the matter, but instead Nordstrom filed a claim that the "Beckons" trademark had been abandoned. It's a losing claim, because the business is still active, but now the two women who own "Beckons" have to fight another legal battle to protect their business. However, the costs are so huge that it may actually drive them out of business.

In other words, Nordstrom is engaging in a legal battle where it is clearly in the wrong solely because they're hoping to drive the real Beckons out of business with legal costs. They're using their size to bully a little guy.

(Does that title sound like the title of a Ludlum novel?)

While I was busy watching 24, someone sent me the following email at one of my other email addresses at a different domain (redactions mine):

Dear <domain-name>:

We are Shanghai Chooke Network Information Technology Co., Ltd, which is the domain name register center in China.I have something need to confirm with you.   
          
We have received an application formally,one company named "Shengteng (China) Investment Co.,Ltd" applies for the domain names(<several domain names listed here> etc.) ,and the Internet keyword(<domain>) on the internet January 12, 2009. We need to know the opinion of your company because the domain names and keyword may relate to the copyright of brand name on internet.

we would like to get the affirmation of your company,please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Kind Regards,

<name, phone, and email>
Shanghai Chooke Network Information Technology Co., Ltd
website: www.chooke.com.cn

It has the look and feel of a scam, doesn't it? Surely a domain registrar could affort to have their message translated into proper English?

On the other hand, maybe the company is concerned I might give them trouble over the name, and they want to see if I'll license it to them. Or maybe they were thinking of challenging me on the name and they wanted to see if I would put up a fight. I was starting to wonder if I was going to have to get a lawyer involved.

Still, it looked like a scam, even if they weren't asking for any money. I figured I better Google it. A minute later, I had my answer, in the form of a blog post by David Ting. He received a similar message, and he replied by saying he objected to the other company's use of the name. They responded quickly by offering to let him buy the domain names out from under the other company.

David decided to string them along for a while to see what happened. Eventually he got them to quote on registering six domains for 20 years. (By comparison, Microsoft's domain registration expires in five years.)

This was all the answer I needed, and then some. I figured the least I could do for David is to promote his post so other people like me can find out about this scam. I can't figure out if the scammers are ruthless or clueless, so go read David's post about the Shanghai Chooke domain name scam and then read this followup and decide for yourself.

Houston Criminal Defense Lawyer Murray Newman used to be an Assistant District Attorney at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center until today. He backed the wrong horse in the last election and was the victim of a political firing by incoming District Attorney Pat Lykos. Newman had been told today would be his last day, but yesterday he posted a satirical version of The Twelve Days of Christmas that made fun of some people at the office, and today they called him in and---even though it was his last day---fired him again.

In a fit of apparently genuine remorse, Newman has taken down the offending post. Houston Criminal Defense Lawyer Mark Bennett has reposted it, however, just to cause trouble. I'm linking to it to improve its score in the search engines:

Satire about Harris County D.A. Pat Lykos

Hope this helps.

There's no way this could be hiding anything important.

In prostitution, everybody involved gets something they want. It's a victimless crime. That doesn't stop cops and prosecutors from going after it anyway.

From the AP wire:

TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. - A woman convicted two weeks ago of being the "D.C. Madam" hanged herself Thursday, apparently making good on her vow never to go to prison for running a high-end Washington prostitution ring. The body of Deborah Jeane Palfrey was found in a shed near her mother's home about 20 miles northwest of Tampa.

That's not even the first one:

One of the escort service employees was former University of Maryland, Baltimore County, professor Brandy Britton, who was arrested on prostitution charges in 2006. She committed suicide in January before she was scheduled to go to trial.

So, two women driven to suicide when prosecuted for a victimless crime. Way to go, dickheads.

I'm not a violent person by nature, and I don't think anyone deserves to sexually molested---not on the job, not on a date, not in prison---but at 3:00 am, after a long day, I think I'd get a good chuckle out of it if someone raped these guys in the ass!

I'll probably feel bad about writing this in the morning.

Update: Yeah, not my proudest moment. I just ran across this latest travesty by Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps and thought, "Damn, I wish something bad would happen to these people to teach them a lesson! What's the worst thing that could happen to a bunch of homophobic assholes?"

And then it hit me.

Sigh. I know that most of what Phelps' people are doing is free speech, and if they wants to propound a hateful ideology, that's their right. I also know that in the universe of all possible crimes, disrupting a funeral isn't a very big one. It's incredibly crass and hateful, but it's not like they're actually injuring anyone.

Nevertheless, for some reason Phelp's protests at military funerals---and now the funerals of several women killed in a nearby shooting---just send me over the edge.

I think it's the combination of their vicious hatred, and their total inability to do anything to effectively advance their cause. It's bad enough they do that crap, but somehow it seems even worse that they're doing it for no reason.

I don't read John Dvorak's PC magazine column very often, and when I do, I usually disagree with him.

In his latest column, Dvorak bashes the RIAA for its lawsuits against people who rip MP3 files from CDs even though they own the CDs. He finds this practice reprehensible, and he implies that when we see RIAA executives in public we should spit on them.

Well...OK, he got that one right.

I used to think that O.J. Simpson was merely a double murderer. But after reading this, I think he may be one of the most despicable American criminals of all time.

The former football great...reportedly has been paid a whopping $3.5 million to write about the double murder that shocked and riveted the nation in 1994, according to a detailed report in the new National Enquirer.

But Simpson is not actually confessing to the murder—rather, he’s writing a “hypothetical” book—which the Enquirer reports is tentatively being called “If I Did It.”

The early part of the book tells how Simpson fell in love with Nicole and how the marriage collapsed, reports the tab. He goes on, according to the article, to describe in gruesome detail the killing of his ex-wife and Goldman; he stipulates that the murder scenes are “hypothetical.” But, notes the tab, the descriptions are “so detailed and so chillingly realistic” that readers are left with little doubt as to what really happened.

As Radley Balko points out, O.J. has finally found the Real Killer...it's O.J. of course.

To: Supreme Iranian Leader Ayatollah Khameini

On this day I beseech you to direct your attention to the fates of seven women of your nation who are to be executed by sangsar (stoning to death) for crimes against chastity.

You can claim it's an act of governance, and you can claim it's motivated by religion, but your claims do not change it from what it clearly is: murder.

Any moral system that prescribes the execution of people for consensual sexual behavior—adultry, fornication, homosexuality, prostitution—is self-invalidating and illegitimate on its face. It deserves no respect from anyone.

If you allow this to happen—as I'm pretty sure you will—you will have demonstrated that you and your people are uncivilized, backwards, ignorant, intolerant, and cruel. Your petty, narrow, and heartless morality has no place in the modern world.

You are a monster and a thug who who should never be allowed to have control over the lives of other people. You are a stain on humanity, and I am embarassed for my species that people such as you are given power and respect.

By this murderous act alone, you forfeit your own right to rule. You and your supporters should be removed from this world, much as one would scrape shit from the bottom of one's shoe.

I am not a warmonger, and I hope the United States does not go to war with Iran. But if we do, I hope the U.S. Air Force blows you cruel bastards into steaming bloody chunks.

Sincerely,

Mark Draughn

Sigh. I didn't really send that. What would be the point?

Perhaps a more productive approach is to visit this site and follow some of the suggestions there. That's what I did.

The busybodies in the Chicago city council have banned the use cell phones while driving. I don't use the cell phone all that much, but my wife is going to be really pissed-off.

They say you can use hands-free phones, but since the State of Illinois banned headsets, I'm not sure what that leaves. So if you want to make a call, you have to pull over. I guess I could get used to that.

But what if you receive a call? You can't control what you're doing when that happens. I guess I could try to pull over real quickly, but wouldn't that be dangerous? How many accidents are caused by people suddenly slowing down to pull over?

Or what if you're stuck in heavy expressway traffic during rush hour and the cell phone rings? What do you do? Pull onto the shoulder, potentially creating a hazard? Wait until you reach an exit, leave the expressway, and find a place to pull over in a neighborhood you've never been in and which might be dangerous?

No wonder the ordinance's sponsor had to use a parliamentary trick to bring it to a vote without warning the opposing aldermen.

Let's see, in Chicago you can't use your cell phone for the reason you bought it, you can't buy anything without paying a higher sales tax, you can't protect your home with a handgun, and you can't even buy a can of spray paint. Sometimes I don't know why we still live in this city. We should sell this place and move to the 'burbs a.k.a. the Illinois Free-Zone.

One of the most interesting technical sites on the web is Philipp Lenssen's Google Blogoscoped. He writes about Google, about search engines in general, and about all the things you can do with them.

The man seems to be that most appealing of geek types, the inquisitive genius. He's Mr. Wizard for the search-engine set. He's always writing about interesting things he's discovered in the world of search engines. Even better, he's always doing interesting things in the world of search engines.

That's why it pisses me off to see him attacked by SEOInc, one of many Search Engine Optimizers out there. SEO's aren't quite the same species as spammers, but they're in the same family of animals. They aren't doing anything good for me.

SEOInc recently suffered a bit of a blow to their business when their Google rank dropped. Lenssen wrote about it, and the geniuses at SEOInc responded by sending him a cease-and-desist order.

Lenssen is just one guy. He can't afford to be sued. So he removed the article from his web site. However, being a faithful follower of the Way Of The Web, he did what any blogger would do: He wrote an article about it and posted the cease-and-desist order on his website. It's the blogger way.

Other people, like me, are now writing about that. None of us, including me, is saying anything nice about SEOInc. In other words, shortly after their own site dropped in the Google rankings, SEOInc took an action which generated a lot of interlinked web pages critical of their firm, all of which mention it by name. Google is indexing them as you read this.

Would you hire these guys to improve your web visibility?

TWELVE YEARS we've been bombing Iraq...and Chicago's WGN cuts off the last 15 minutes of Angel to announce the explosions in Baghdad. It wasn't even a scoop: they just rebroadcast the CNN feed.

Bastards.

I called them at (773) 528-2311 at the time to complain. It's all recorded messages at that time of night, unless you press 5 to get the breaking story tip line. Since it was the news department that pissed me off, I didn't feel bad bothering them.