Tonight's easy viewing

Tonight it's FrontLine's The Pot Republic:

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Another Cory Maye update

Kaelyn Ford of RTV has put together a good report on Cory Maye's release:

H/t to Radley Balko at The Agitator.

RTV conducted Cory Maye's first interview - which has provided some of the footage for this report.

Notes of interest, July 31st: Jan Brewer and Mark Steyn

A few things I thought were worth briefly noting.

1) Erik Kain at Forbes.com on the mom who was charged - although the charges have now been dropped - after boarding a school bus to check on her son.

2) William R. Toler at Indieregister on Mark Schmidter, a Florida man who has been fined and sentenced to almost a year in jail for pamphleteering outside the court-house during the Casey Anthony trial. Bonus outrage: Schmidter was sentenced by the same judge who laid the charges against him in the first place. Can you say conflict of interest?

3) Jacob Sullum at Reason's Hit & Run on Jan Brewer's cowardly approach to marijuana reform.

4) Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing on forced ISP snitching, one big asshole of a security guard, the balls on the Czech Pirate Party, and reporting anarchists to the police.

5) Jonathon Narvey at The Propagandist on why Anders Behring Breivik doesn't matter in the war on terror.

6) A. Barton Hinkle at Reason Magazine on food nannies.

7) If you grow pot, your kids might be healthier for it.

8) Why Mark Steyn is the root of all evil:

9) Finally, Honduran authorities - with help from the States - have nabbed 2.7 tons of cocaine from a "narcosubmarine." What a waste of good cocaine.

Tonight's easy viewing

Tonight it's Nick Gillespie on the Bill Maher show. Good stuff:

Andrew Dolan's threatening, encouraging behavior

Just a quick follow-up to my last post on the career of Victoria civil servant Andrew Dolan, who stands accused of assaulting a homeless man by holding him face-down on the ground and punching him in the head.

In July of 2010, three months before the alleged assault, Dolan apparently took on the case of a very messy yard in the Oak Bay region of the Greater Victoria area:

Read the rest of the summary here. Pretty routine stuff, but take a look at some of the correspondence between Dolan and the owner of the property, Thomas Wilkinson. Here's letter number one from Dolan:

Pretty standard stuff. And so is letter number two:

Letter number three, though, struck me as rather funny:

So, Dolan threatens to fine Wilkinson $100 a day or clean up his yard at Wilkinson's expense unless Wilkinson does something to clean up his mess. Wilkinson, who works as an auto mechanic for a living, grudgingly obliges but doesn't go far enough. This prompts Dolan to keep the pressure on Wilkinson, urging him to "triple your clean-up efforts" and promising to drop by sometime in the next month and start throwing the book at Wilkinson if the place isn't cleaned up to minimum standards. This forces Wilkinson into a little more compliance, at which point Dolan tries to show his nice side by saying "good work" ( with an exclamation point no less ) to the person he had been forcing into action for the past few months.

That wasn't enough, however, and after another inspection in July Dolan recommended to the Victoria Planning and Land Use Standing Committee that:

Just another day in the life, I guess.

Whatever became of Andrew Dolan?

Remember Andrew Dolan? He was the bylaw officer who held a homeless man down on the ground and repeatedly punched him in the head last October. Dolan was charged with assault, and his first court date was June 21st.

I've covered his case a little bit, mainly because I think Andrew Dolan is a world-class asshole and I'd like nothing more for there to be a documented record of him being a world-class asshole.

At any rate, early this month a commenter to my post on Dolan's court date asked if there had been any updates on his situation: was he found guilty or what?

Well...I don't know. A quick trawl for information didn't yield up a verdict, guilty or otherwise. I'm going to assume that such the verdict will be made publicly available - at some point - after it is issued, and so I'll continue to check in every so often on the situation.

In the meantime, here are a few quick items documenting Andrew Dolan's career as a Victoria City bureaucrat.

First, here is a presentation given by Andrew Dolan to Victoria City Council in 2005 on some violation of whatsit or other by I-Tow Towing Group. Nothing too interesting there.

Second, here is Andrew Dolan cracking down on the scourge of one mechanic's "unsightly" piece of property in 2010.

Finally, and this one is actually interesting, here is a 2005 judgement in a case brought against Andrew Dolan, along with fellow bylaw officer Garrett Legault, in small claims court by one Denis Woodward. Woodward's claim? The Dolan and Legault had assaulted him in the course of an arrest. The judge's decision? Case dismissed.

I'm not going to say that this was the wrong decision. After all, what the hell do I know? The judge was probably right. But it seems odd that six years later the same peace officer who got off scot-free in small-claims court for an alleged assault is facing actual assault charges for beating another person in the course of an investigation.

Just saying.

Oh, and guess who Dolan and Legault's lawyer was at the time? Troy DeSouza, who was probably acting on retainer for the Capital Regional District at the time. You might be more familiar with DeSouza as the federal Conservative candidate for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca.

No posting tonight

It's been an incredibly long day today, and most of my writing energy has gone into an article that I'm working on - so no posting today. See y'all tomorrow!

Notes of interest, July 28th: the CBO and non-existent pedophiles

A few things that I thought were worth briefly mentioning.

1) The FDA has started to poke its nose into Americans' dietary supplements.

2) Peter Suderman at Reason's Hit & Run and Mark Steyn at NRO on John Boehner's deficit plan. Also, Peter Suderman on how the US government uses the CBO to get its way - and, back in January of this year, on the history and development of the CBO itself. Interesting stuff, if you've got the time.

3) Nathaniel Rich in the June issue of Rolling Stone on the bizarre case of Amanda Knox, who was sentenced to 26 years in an Italian prison for a murder that she didn't commit.

4) Woodland Park, New Jersey, vs. a Ron Paul sign.

5) Paul Krassner in Counterpunch on how a beating by a police officer in 1979 changed the rest of his life. H/t to Mark Frauenfelder.

6) Michael Coren interviews Robert Spencer about you-know-what at you-know-where.

7) According to one group, more safe-injection sites and needle exchanges are needed to help fight Hepatitis.

8) Guy Lawson writes in the March issue of Rolling Stone on how two young stoners became weapons dealers with hefty American military contracts.

9) British law has seen an episode of the Daily Show pulled from British airwaves.

10) Erik Kain at Forbes.com on the NAACP's new-found opposition to the war on drugs.

11) Jacob Sullum at Reason's Hit & Run on two new bills coming down the pipeline in the States, one which seeks to ban fake pot, another which seeks to ban fake speed.

12) A Pocatello, Idaho woman apparently spotted a man taking pictures of his grandson in a park, assumed the man was a creepy pedophile-type, drove him away, and then sparked a police warning about a non-existent child predator.

13) Get rid of unnecessary regulations and you'll spark job creation. It's that simple.

14) A December, 2010, excerpt from Matt Taibbi's book "Griftopia" in Rolling Stone. Yes, I'm posting a lot of Rolling Stone links today.

15) Ronald Bailey at Reason's Hit & Run on the pros and cons of patents in the software game.

When cops can't do their job, that means you must be punished

Some exciting news on the cocaine beat today. Louise Dickson reports in the Times Colonist:

Two men convicted of possession for the purpose of trafficking in connection with the largest cocaine bust in B.C. history have been sentenced to 16 years in prison.

I'm not particularly interested in defending a pair of cocaine traffickers - although I hasten to point out that such criminal activities would be much less likely in a country with more liberal drug policies than Canada's - but this bit of the story caught my eye:

Although the two offenders were found guilty of possession for the purpose of trafficking, Power said she found the factor of importing cocaine into Canada to be an aggravating circumstance.

Other aggravating circumstances include the high degree of planning needed to carry out the offence and the fact that it was only luck that caused the ship to be intercepted and seized, she said.

Let me see if I've got this right: but for a stroke of blind luck, the authorities weren't on the ball enough to seize a ship trafficking a massive amount of cocaine into the province, and this is somehow the fault of the people trafficking the cocaine. In other words, it's legally better to be a dumb, stupid, easily-caught criminal.

Airtight.

Mark and Connie Fournier in court: another update

Mark and Connie Fournier of Free Dominion will have another day in court tomorrow to appeal the latest decision in the John Doe case. If you're in Ottawa and have a few hours, I'm sure any support would be appreciated.

Andrew Phillips has more:

Information Provided by Connie

This hearing is to ask for leave to appeal the Blishen ruling that ordered
us to turn over personal information on our John Doe defendants to Richard
Warman. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association feels so strongly about
this that they have provided us with an affidavit in support of our request
to appeal the ruling to Divisional Court. As you remember, Divisional Court
created a test that judges are supposed to use to decide whether to order
John Doe information to be turned over, and one of the things they must
consider is freedom of expression. Madam Justice Blishen did not feel she
needed to consider that part of the test, and we strongly disagree. We will
try to have someone around the main desk around 9:30 to direct people to the
right place. Tomorrow we should be at the 161 Elgin St. Courthouse at
9:30am. Cases start at 10am, and, hopefully, we will be near the beginning
this time!

The Fourniers were in court last Thursday, too.

Notes of interest, July 27th: child molesters and John Boehner

A few things I thought were worth briefly mentioning.

1) Parents aren't allowed on buses to check on their children because, um...child molesters, you see. Also, people on sex-offender registries who really shouldn't be.

2) Although Connecticut has decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana, that hasn't stopped prosecutors from trying to get in as many pot-related convictions as they can under the wire.

3) Jacob Sullum on Obama's rather two-faced approach to the war on drugs, the shooting death by police of former Cincinnati Bengal David Lee Turner, and Arizona governor Jan Brewer's version of federalism.

4) Mexican journalist Yolanda Orda has become the latest victim of the cartel violence down south. Rest in peace. She was investigating the murder of her editor and his family last month. Meanwhile, a 14-year-old hitman has been sentenced to three years in Mexican juvie.

5) Apparently there was at least some small level of communication between the ATF and the White House about the ATF's botched Operation Fast and Furious. Hunh.

6) In the United States, some airlines have been secretly screwing over their customers. I for one am shocked.

7) Good friend Blazing Cat Fur's mother has had some more health-related problems. My condolences. At least the hospital staff are helpful, right? Oh...

8) John Boehner is so full of crap that it's hard to believe anybody takes him seriously. Then again, he's not alone.

9) Wells Fargo is being sued by the US Department of Justice for screwing over black home-buyers during the housing bubble a couple of years back. All alleged, of course.

10) A jury trial for plastic testicles. Yes.

Another Cory Maye update

Courtesy of Radley Balko at The Agitator, a couple more updates on the recently-freed Cory Maye.

First off, Cory Maye's first interview, conducted with RT News:

Meanwhile, a profile of one of the lawyers who helped to secure Maye's release, Abe Pafford.

Mark and Connie Fournier in court: an update

Mark and Connie Fournier of Free Dominion were in court the other day to fight Dr. Dawg John Baglow's defamation lawsuit against them. To be completely honest, I don't want to get into the specifics of the lawsuit itself, but suffice to say that Mark and Connie are good friends and I feel that they deserve a lot of support for what they are doing.

'Nuff said.

Anyway, Connie Fournier gives us a short update on the proceedings here:

We had a really interested and engaged judge who seemed to have a good grasp of the culture of the interet. This was exactly what we hoped for. Peter O'Donnell was there and spoke briefly, and Barbara presented evidence for us.

We expected the judge to reserve judgment on this, and we hoped he would because we are asking him to look at all the facts and make a judgement instead of letting this continue on to trial. We are feeling tired but very optimistic.

Xanthippa at Xanthippa's Chamberpot has done an absolutely fantastic job of fleshing out the issue and the hearing proceedings.

Mark and Connie are far from done. Next up: appealing the latest decision in the John Doe case this coming Thursday on the 28th.

Update: Der. Here's Dr. Dawg's own brief de-brief post-hearing.

Support a blogger today

I see that I've come to the party a little late to be of much help to Zilla as she enlists the aid of her fellow bloggers and Internet enthusiasts in, essentially, paying the light bill. I'm glad to read that financial disaster has been averted, for now, but all the same you might want to consider sending a few dollars her way. And, if you're feeling especially generous, DaTechGuy recently had some money problems that, although also solved for now, probably wouldn't be hurt by another small donation.

And hey, I'm not too proud to beg. I'm broke too, although no more than usual, and a couple of bucks for beer and coffee is always appreciated.

Notes of interest, July 26th: dead dogs and Rupert Murdoch

A few things I thought were worth briefly mentioning.

1) Cops keep taking their toll on the canine population: one buried alive, another shot dead.

2) Jacob Sullum at Reason's Hit & Run writes on a variety of topics, including child porn, the NAACP's approach to drug law reform, defamation law, and faith in the criminal justice system.

3) Robert Faturechi of the LA Times reports on several cases of fraud being perpetrated by LA County sheriffs.

4) Erik Kain at Forbes.com on ending the War on Drugs, free market marijuana, and quality of life in America.

5) Xanthippa of Xanthippa's Chamberpot on individualism vs. collectivism.

6) The war on food trucks.

7) Photographer Jerome Vorus talks with Reason.tv on capturing police activity on film. Also noted by Radley Balko at The Agitator.

8) Speaking of Radley Balko, here he is at The Agitator on Cory Maye's Facebook page, Caylee's Law, and another mommy being punished by a judge for a simple mistake.

9) Protesting against the Toronto District School Board.

10) Raquel Nelson has been sentenced to one year of probation and 40 hours of community service - although she might get a new trial. Hey, it could have been worse: she could have been sentenced to three years.

11) Jesse Donaldson at The Dependent on living with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the absolutely crappy system that BC has in place to help people deal with such problems.

12) Blazing Cat Fur in conversation with The Propagandist.

13) Matt Taibbi writes in his blog for Rolling Stone on the Rupert Murdoch empire's sleazy effect on journalism.

Colby Cosh with our depressing thought of the day

At his Macblog, Colby Cosh writes what I will do my best to make the only commentary on the Norwegian massacre to make an appearance on this site:

Perhaps I am wrong, and this is merely an irresponsible musing on an inappropriate occasion. I’m willing to bet that it holds up better, at any rate, than the half-day of speculation about “Islamism” that we have just been through. For a few hours I was as willing as anyone to believe that the terrorist responsible for the dual attack in Norway was Just Another Middle-Eastern Wacko. But even before the spotlight shifted to a B-movie blond beast, I found myself wondering: what difference does it make? Since 9/11 we have witnessed outrages by Muslims and outrages by non-Muslims, with hardly a difference in the effects. Indeed, in venues like airports, subways, and bus stations, the suffering is distributed to the citizenry with explicit randomness. The simple rule is that the terrorists win every time.

Sigh...

Another Cory Maye update

From Radley Balko, whose work in helping secure the release of Cory Maye from a Mississippi prison deserves no small amount of praise, a quick update on Maye's first day as a free man:

Update: Some more photos.

Notes of interest, July 25th: pasta salad and snuff films

A few things I thought were worth briefly mentioning.

1) In Pennsylvania, the poppy seeds in a pasta salad can count as drug abuse.

2) Jacob Sullum at Reason's Hit & Run on bath salt abuse - yes, that's a thing - the evils of ecstasy, and medical marijuana policies in New Jersey, Arizona, and Washington State.

3) Radley Balko at The Agitator on another dubious sex-trafficking study, this time from Tennessee, and in the Huffington Post on the sad story of Raquel Nelson ( more thoughts from Erik Kain at Forbes.com ).

4) Mike Riggs in Reason Magazine on Eric Holder's involvement-by-ignorance in the ATF's "Operation Fast and Furious" screw-up.

5) No complaints, eh?

6) Amnesty International's Neil Durkin Iranian snuff film propaganda.

7) The Israeli Apartheid Lie.

8) The Russian Pirate Party is being forced to change its name.

9) Al Franken, in his own rather droning way, makes a very valid point about parenting:

10) A cop who actually protects people taking pictures in public. Hunh.

11) On the other hand, Erik Kain at Forbes.com points toward this case of police stupidity: apparently, Alameda County sheriffs, before carrying out a search warrant on paraplegic medical-marijuana user Jason Rivera's home, threatened to shoot his dog in advance if he didn't co-operate.

12) Kids on sex-offender registries. It don't make no sense.

13) Tim Cavanaugh at Reason's Hit & Run on the difficulty involved in getting worthwhile information from the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department on complaints about the behavior of its officers.

14) Another dumb-ass cop:

Even compliance with the law isn't enough for some people

Jacob Sullum points us to this choice piece of stupidity:

A reader points out a police dashboard video posted by Ohioans for Concealed Carry that vividly illustrates some of the problems with the state's requirement that people with carry permits "promptly" announce that they have a weapon if they are stopped by a cop. In this case, two officers in Canton pull up behind a car to investigate what they think is solicitation of a prostitute. The driver, William E. Bartlett, repeatedly attempts to notify them that he is legally carrying a handgun, holding out his permit for them to see, and he is repeatedly silenced or interrupted. When Bartlett finally is able to say "I have a CCW," the officer near him, Patrolman Daniel Harless, panics, grabs the gun, and goes off on an extended, adrenaline-fueled, profanity-filled tirade that must be heard to be believed, telling the disarmed, handcuffed man that his failure to promptly report the gun shows he is too stupid and irresponsible to have a CCW permit and would have justified a swiftly administered death penalty:

I should blast you in the mouth right now....I'm close to caving in your head....I tell you what I should have done. As soon as I saw your gun, I should have taken two steps back, pulled my Glock 40, and just put 10 bullets in your ass and let you drop. And I wouldn't have lost any sleep. Do you understand me? He [his partner] would have been a nice witness as I executed you because you're stupid.

In the most comical moment, Harless expresses doubt that Bartlett, who has been holding out his CCW permit for the officers to see since he was stopped, has a permit at all. He goes scrounging through Bartlett's personal effects and car, looking for the permit, which Bartlett is still holding in his hand as he sits handcuffed in the police cruiser.

Here's the video of the whole incident:

Radley Balko at The Agitator finds a more professional example of police conduct.

A few updates on Cory Maye

You might remember the case of Cory Maye, which journalist Radley Balko has done an admirable job of highlighting.

Here's how I described Maye's case earlier this month:

On a related note, Cory Maye, who accidentally killed a Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi, police officer during a - mistaken - police raid on his home, is set to be released from prison and death row. Journalist Radley Balko deserves a great deal of praise for this victory of justice, and offers up more coverage here. Meanwhile, an open letter from Cory Maye: "I know I must get a job as soon as possible. There are a few things my kids have asked for in the last few years that I haven’t been able to get them. I know they’re going to be really excited knowing I’m home, and that daddy will be there for their b-days, Christmas, and more. Maybe we’ll stay up all night watching movies, eating cookies and ice cream."

Much more background on the case and Maye's release from Radley Balko at the Huffington Post.

While it is tempting to count this as a victory - and in a way, it is - Maye's release cannot even come close to patching up the holes put in his life due to his complete and utter shafting by Mississippi authorities. How do you give a man ten years of his life back?

At any rate, Radley Balko has a couple more updates on Maye's case that I thought were worth sharing here. First, at The Agitator, an update on Maye's delayed release:

I spoke with one of Cory Maye’s attorneys this morning. He’s still being processed in Rankin County, Mississippi, and has not yet been released.

As I understand it, part of the problem is that the Mississippi Department of Corrections had no record of Maye’s incarceration from the night of the raid in late 2001 until his trial in early 2004. I’m not sure why that is, though I guess it might have something to do with the fact that on the night of the raid, Jefferson Davis County Sheriff Henry McCullum had Maye surreptitiously moved from his jail to the Forrest County jail for Maye’s safety.

Four days later, on July 19th, we get an update:

Just heard that Cory Maye was finally released yesterday from the processing facility in Rankin County.

Oddly, no one bothered to notify his attorneys before releasing him. But he’s now home with his family.

As also noted by Damon W. Root at Reason's Hit & Run blog, Radley Balko will be hosting a live-chat at The Agitator tonight at 8:00 EST. I don't think I'll have a chance to catch it, but I'd encourage you to take the time if you're able to check it out.

Notes of interest, July 22nd: lemonade and child porn

A few things I thought were worth briefly mentioning.

1) Mike Riggs at Reason's Hit & Run blog on the unspoken rules of the medical drug business.

2) Radley Balko at The Agitator on dildos for justice.

3) Blog Wrath on Barbara Hall's outright vacuity.

4) Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing on how filesharing pirates turn out to be big-spending consumers as well.

5) Radley Balko at The Agitator on recording police.

6) Internet activist Aaron Swartz has been indicted by the city of Boston for, in essence, downloading too many scientific journals from a website called JSTOR.

7) Hannah Burak at Reason's Hit & Run blog on boycotts and freedom of speech in Israel.

8) Another lemonade stand bites the dust.

9) The shooting death of former Cincinnati Bengals player David Lee "Deacon" Turner courtesy of Kern County, California police, has been deemed "justified" by the local sheriff's review board. Surprise surprise.

10) Jacob Sullum at Reason's Hit & Run blog on child porn in California.

11) Graham Sproule at The Royal Unionist on how the British phone hacking scandal has more to do with Rupert Murdoch than corrupt journalism practices.

12) The city council of Gould, Arkansas has decided to try and ban unapproved organizations within town limits. Idiots.

13) Radley Balko at The Agitator on more procedural fairness.

14) Dan Osborne of The Prince Arthur Herald interviews Peter Jaworski.

15) Finally, Reason TV talks with economist Vernon Smith:

Why we don't need more laws on the books for judges to use against grieving mothers

This is exactly why they do not need some form of "Caylee's Law" in place in the United States. Erik Kain at Forbes.com points us toward this piece by Radley Balko at The Agitator on, well... read it for yourself:

Enter the Marietta, Georgia, case of 30-year-old Raquel Nelson, which has been bandied about in the comments section the last few days. Last April, Nelson was crossing a street with her three children when her 4-year-old was struck and killed by a car. She was crossing at an intersection, but was apparently not in a designated crosswalk. The driver who killed her had been drinking, taking painkillers, and was blind in one eye. He also has two prior hit-and-run convictions. Nelson and her daughter were also struck and injured. Residents of Nelson’s apartment building have complained to the city about the intersection. The nearest crosswalk is a half mile away.

If we have as little to fear from overly aggressive prosecutors as supporters of Caylee’s Law claim, we could expect the prosecutor in this case to show some discretion and mercy for Nelson, right? Yes, she admits to jaywalking. Yes, she erred, and subjected her kids to unnecessary risk. But she just lost her son. It’s hard to fathom a more punishing, heartbreaking sentence. Moreover, the underlying “crime” here was a misdemeanor, one most of us commit every day. So mercy, right?

Of course not. Nelson was charged with second-degree vehicular homicide. Which is insane. She was convicted last week. When she’s sentenced later this month, she could spend more time in jail than the man who struck and killed her son. The prosecutor will say he was just enforcing the law. The jury will say they were just applying it. Both are excuses to duck responsibility (prosecutors can decline to bring charges, juries can nullify). But if both are true, then the time to prevent unjust the unjust application of well-intentioned laws is to anticipate those applications while the laws are being written and proposed. That means interpreting the most ridiculous, merciless, farfetched possible applications of the law, then assuming that somewhere, some prosecutor will attempt to apply the law in exactly those ways.

Meanwhile, Erik Kain notes that Raquel Nelson's "jaywalking" charge is debatable.

Porn and hookers

Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon.com notes the latest anti-prostitution insanity:

Newsweek is trumpeting its exclusive coverage of a new study on men who pay for sex with the grabby headline "The John Next Door." Too bad the research -- which set out to compare "sex buyers" with men who don't buy sex -- absurdly lumps together johns with porn watchers and strip-club visitors. Also? It was conducted by self-declared prostitution "abolitionist" Melissa Farley -- whose methodology when studying johns in the past has been rightly criticized -- but the magazine's coverage doesn't bother to mention that until more than halfway through the article. The piece egregiously fails to mention that the stridently anti-porn activist was arrested on multiple occasions in the mid-'80s for entering stores that sell Penthouse and destroying copies of the magazine in protest.

Despite Newsweek's obfuscation, there are plenty of red flags early on. Author Leslie Bennetts writes, "buying sex is so pervasive that Farley's team had a shockingly difficult time locating men who really don't do it." Actually, there's nothing shocking about that because in addition to men who have never visited a prostitute, the researchers were originally looking for those who don't indulge in "pornography, phone sex, lap dances, and other services." In other words, they wanted to group together all forms of sexual entertainment, including the purchase of sex from a prostitute. Of course they had trouble finding men for their control group.

Sigh...

British Columbia is broke, just not today

Continuing in my tradition of looking on in despair at the local scene, I feel I should note this, um... good news (?) from BC Finance Minister Kevin Falcon. As reported by Craig McInnes at the Vancouver Sun:

Finance Minister Kevin Falcon took the political strategy of under-promise and over-perform to a new level Monday. The release of the annual Public Accounts showed the deficit projected in the 2010-11 budget at $1.7 billion had been whittled down to just $309 million by the fiscal year end.

Bully for them. However, as Michael Smyth notes in The Province:

The province's debt soared Monday to $45.2 billion - an increase of $3.3 billion or 7.8 per cent.

The government's excuse? Most of the new debt is backed up by new assets, and the debt load is still affordable when compared with the province's economic growth.

So our deficit is less than projected but our debt is even higher than it was before. I'm generally in favor of getting screwed tomorrow rather than getting f*cked today, but this is getting ridiculous.

The kicker? Smyth again:

Which brings up another case of NDP déjà vu, because the New Democrats peddled exactly the same lines when they were jacking up the debt.

In fact, I remember in 1998, when then-finance minister Joy MacPhail increased the debt to $30.7 billion - a $725-million jump - and a guy named Gordon Campbell went ballistic.

The fiscal conservatives in the BC Liberal Party strike again.

On a related note, natural gas revenues are about $52 million less than projected five months ago, as reported by Sean Holman at Public Eye Online.

Notes of interest, July 19th: light bulbs and Anarchy

A few things I thought were worth briefly mentioning.

1) A new way of getting around repressive State Internet firewalls.

2) H/t to Blazing Cat Fur for this article by Bruce Bawer in Pajamas Media on the Toronto District School Board's ridiculous idea of religious accommodation.

3) More on the latest front in the war on lemonade stands - Georgia - from Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing and David McElroy.

4) State Farm Insurance won't pay your medical bills if your friend punches you in the balls on a regular basis. Good to know.

5) Property rights in St. Louis just got a little stronger. Well, except for that whole Eminent Domain business.

6) Al Queda Inspire Magazine, No. 6.

7) H/t to Boing Boing for this tour of an abandoned hotel which is also a home:

Odd.

8) Jacob Sullum at Reason's Hit & Run blog on light bulbs and individual choice.

9) In Utah, a park ranger named Steven Powers apparently pulled over a woman for driving too slowly ( according to her, she was looking for her camera tripod which she had lost along the side of the road ), then arrested her after she said that she was going to film the proceedings.

10) David McElroy writes about anarchism, minarchism, and why it all doesn't really matter in the end. Also, criminal vegetable gardens.

11) The menace of baby carrots.

A call to action for Mark and Connie Fournier

Unfortunately I'm a few time-zones away so I won't be able to attend, but Mark and Connie Fournier's legal battles are set to continue in court later this week. From an email sent out by Connie Fournier to her list of "Speechie" contacts:

We have two cases coming up in the next couple of weeks that are very important and we would really appreciate it if you could help us get the word out and/or attend one or both of the hearings.

The first case will take place on July 21. We have been sued by blogger John Baglow (owner of Dr. Dawg's Blawg, and friend of Richard Warman). His case is very flimsy, so we have made a motion to dismiss the case as frivolous and vexatious. This hearing should be interesting because we will all lay all of our cards on the table and, if we get our way, the judge will decide this right away and we won't have another case dragging on for YEARS like the Warman cases.

http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=145396

The second case is a motion for leave to appeal the last John Doe verdict. We feel that the judge did not apply the divisional court test correctly, and he Canadian Civil Liberties Association agrees with us so strongly that they are making the unprecedented move of submitting an affidavit for our motion for leave to appeal, asking the judge to grant us leave so they can intervene in Divisional Court again. Their affidavit is posted on Free Dominion:

http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=145395

We really hope that people will come to these hearings, so I hope you will hope us get the word out.

Meanwhile, Andrew Phillips forwards some more information from Connie to his list of contacts:

Hi, Andrew

It is supposed to start at 10am, so we are going to aim to be there at 9:30,
and we are going to try to post someone near the main desk by the front door
to direct people to the courtroom since they seemed to be misdirecting
people last time. We won't know the courtroom until that morning. Thanks
SO much for this!!

I'm sure any show of support would be appreciated. Gifts of cash money, I'm sure, would be even more so.

The land that approvals processes forgot.

Christopher Pollon has done some excellent work in his piece for The Tyee today, reporting on the obscure, hard-to-understand and completely confusing issue of the expansion of British Columbia's Northwest Transmission Line:

British Columbia is bound by a federal agreement to extend the electrical grid far deeper into the northwest corner of the province than announced back in 2009. The resulting extra costs so far are unclear but could be millions more dollars. And the official reason -- to shift a remote native village off dirty diesel-generated electricity -- has only recently come to light, a surprise even to some who have been watching the proposed project closely.

I don't know nearly enough about this whole issue to add too much to Pollon's article, except to say that it deserves reading. However, I did want to highlight this little nugget of infuriating news:

Both the ministry of energy and B.C. Hydro could not refer The Tyee to any cost-benefit analyses for the NTL, although a B.C. Hydro spokesman did send a link to the coalition report mentioned above. And like the smart meter initiative moving forward this month, the NTL is exempted from the usual B.C. Utilities Commission scrutiny by the Liberals' Clean Energy Act of 2010.

Of course it is.

The American Muslim problem

Cathy Young has a lengthy piece in Reason Magazine that I would say is one of the most balanced explorations of Muslim extremism vs. anti-Muslim extremism in the US that I have ever read ( not that I read such things too regularly ). Anyway, it's worth a read if you've got the time:

With Muslims accounting for nearly a quarter of the world’s population, the modernization of Islam is one of the 21st century’s most urgent priorities. But the obstacles to reform come not only from militant Islamism but from Islamophobia as well. The Islamophobes, after all, repeat everything the Islamists tell Muslims: that the West is implacably hostile to them and their faith, that the most extreme and violent form of Islam is also its truest form, and that a liberalized Islam is impossible. American Muslims, and America, deserve better.

This is something that I've struggled with, considering my conservative-libertarian leanings. There is, quite obviously, a problematic element in Islam that bears more reflection than some are willing to give it. Unfortunately, this means that some who are perhaps of a slightly more excitable bent are left alone to dominate the entire conversation. This is not to say that radical Islam shouldn't be opposed - it certainly deserves to be - but just that it's regrettable to see so many bad solutions to deal with the problem of radical Islam mixed in with the good.

Notes of interest, July 18th: Mark Steyn and burning Romans

A few things I thought were worth briefly mentioning today.

1) Old Holborn on why Rome can damn well burn.

2) Kathy Shaidle at Taki's Magazine on the Toronto District School Board fiasco.

3) The claw-back on ethanol subsidies that was supported by the ethanol lobby. Uh-oh.

4) Erik Kain at Forbes.com on how the US federal budget could be helped by ending drug prohibition.

5) Europe gets slapped down for its Internet censorship.

6) Mark Steyn has a new book out.

7) Those goddamn little girls with their lemonade stands must be punished.

8) Turns out that bath salts can kill you if you're stupid enough to use them recreationally.

9) Why gun laws suck in Canada.

10) The "Mubarak of antiquities" has lost his job.

11) Steve Chapman in Reason Magazine on the folly of "Caylee's Law."

Joy Smith and the "Nordic model" of prostitution law

Winnipeg Conservative MP Joy Smith has a private bill tabled for discussion this fall which would re-write Canada's prostitution laws, decriminalizing the aspects of the practice ( communicating for the purposes of prostitution, living off of the avails of prostitution, operating a brothel ) from the prostitutes' side of things while targeting pimps and johns instead.

This proposal - which Smith has been pushing for a while - is a re-hash of the "Nordic model" of prostitution law, typified, for example, in Sweden, where it is illegal to purchase temporary sexual services. While this may be a slight step forward when it comes to prostitution-related sanity in our legal structure - at least it has the potential of cleaning up some of the legal loopholes and idiocies currently on the books - there are critiques of this model which should be kept in mind, which I have documented here before.

Meanwhile, h/t to Aaron Wherry for this Amy Lebovitch article in The Mark: The Case for Decriminalizing Prostitution.

Notes of interest, July 17th: pot and ayatollahs

A few things I thought were worth briefly mentioning.

1) Despite upcoming Health Canada road-blocks to medical marijuana access, a new medical marijuana dispensary has opened in Vancouver's Yaletown neighborhood.

2) A Detroit woman who faced jail-time for growing a garden in her front yard - yes, it's that crazy - has had the charges against her dropped by the city of Oak Park. But it's not over. She now faces charges for not renewing her dogs' licenses or something similarly stupid. Meanwhile, a British Columbia man also faces jail time for growing an illegal garden.

3) The DEA says that there are no accepted medical uses for pot. Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance begs to differ:



4) An excerpt from Sam Skolnik's book, "High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America's Gambling Addiction," at Salon.com: What our gambling problem is really costing us.

5) I missed this past caturday, but here's something to catch us all up.

6) Peter Suderman at Reason magazine's Hit & Run blog on Texan' authorities' love-hate relationship with the state's strip clubs.

7) A Tour of the World's Worst Photoshop Propaganda.

8) Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei was apparently not physically tortured during his time in a Chinese prison, but from the sounds of it he underwent some pretty grueling psychological pressures.

9) Lauryn Oates writes in The Propagandist on Iran's bored ayatollahs and their ridiculous clothing decrees.

10) Breweries might soon be allowed to have food-less tastings in California, much like wineries.

11) A Chicago man apparently called the police after someone stole his drugs, then got arrested when police noticed the other drugs that he had lying around. Dumb-ass.

12) Finally, 3 Reasons Why The Debt-Ceiling Debate is Full of Malarkey:

Is there any kind of illegal activity that the ATF isn't propping up undercover?

Some follow-up on the Operation Fast and Furious screw-up by the ATF and various other tentacles of the US Department of Justice.

First, it seems that US Attorney General Eric Holder has some explaining to do. Namely, why did he deny knowledge of Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious when he should have been aware months before his denial that the operation was under investigation?

Second, why is the ATF trying to tailor its witness responses to the House Committee investigating their screw-up?

Third, it seems that a mini-me operation similar to Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious - Operation Castaway - in Florida may have let some guns "walk" across the border to Honduras. Note the use of the word "may."

Finally, I thought I would point to this Associated Press story in January which reported that the ATF had funneled nearly 250,000 cigarettes into black-market tobacco sales - all as part of sting operations, mind.

It's enough to make one wonder if there is a sector of criminal activity which isn't being actively contributed to by federal agents in the United States.

Notes of interest, July 15th: bad parents and Christy Clark

Apologies for the lack of posting the past couple of days. I'm back in the saddle now. A few things that I thought were worth briefly mentioning - extra-long edition.

1) Craig Jones at Freedom Forum on drug prohibition as social engineering.

2) Vancouver's 1912 war on prostitution on Alexander Street.

3) First you get Sharia. Then you kill the gays. It's that simple.

4) Alex G. Tsakumis offers up a compelling case that BC Premier Christy Clark may well have violated cabinet secrecy back in the day.

5) The war on bad parenting.

6) Erik Kain at Forbes on Walter Russell Mead on life after the war on drugs.

7) Competing narratives of the shooting of former Cincinnati Bengals running back David Lee Turner by Kern County, California, police.

8) The Minnesota government shuts down, and the state runs out of booze.

9) Pro-tip: let the TSA grope your child, and you won't go to jail. It's that easy, folks!

10) Steve Chapman in Reason magazine on Utah's nonsensical approach to polygamy.

11) The US Internet just got less free.

12) More on that Michigan woman's criminal veggies.

13) Scott Stinson in the National Post on Stephen Harper's less conservative Conservatives. H/t to Blazing Cat Fur, who also directs us to this video of John Robson on the Tories' spending habits:



14) Those goddamn cigarette bootleggers!

15) All racism is white racism, apparently, at least according to the Toronto District School Board.

16) Radley Balko on CBC's Connect with Mark Kelley ( jump to around the 8:15 mark at the video ), and in the Huffington Post, on "Caylee's Law."

17) Finally, Gary Johnson on drug laws, among other issues:

A few notes on the sex trade

Since my support for prostitution is well and truly documented, here are a couple of sex trade-related stories that I've been meaning to mention for the past little while.

1) Jody Paterson on Google's rather odd approach to sex trade politics and how only dead sex workers get our support.

2) The feds keep up their rhetoric as they try to maintain prostitution's bullshit legal grey zone.

3) Peter Jaworski on legalizing prostitution.

Project Gunrunner, meet Operation Fast and Furious.

Operation Fast and Furious was a US ATF project that attempted to find the criminal elements behind straw-buys of illegally-purchased weapons. It ended in disaster as up to 2500 guns disappeared into Mexico ( or 1700, depending on who's counting ), only to be linked to subsequent murders - such as the death of Mexican attorney Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez and border agent Brian Terry. Oh, and the kicker? The DEA and the FBI might have been using some of the ATF's suspects in Operation Fast and Furious as informants.

In other words, the entire incestuous DOJ family screwed up. Real bad. In Mark Steyn's words:

Stimulus dollars went to fund one federal agency to buy guns for the paid informants of another federal agency to funnel to foreign criminals in order that the first federal agency might identify the paid informants of the second federal agency.

But can all of this be tied to US Attorney General Eric Holder? Did he know that Operation Fast and Furious would lead to the unholy mess that it ended up leading to? Mike Riggs at Reason's Hit & Run doesn't think so:

Big Government and the Washington Examiner have pointed to this speech as evidence that Holder lied when he told the House Oversight Committee in May that he had no knowledge of Fast and Furious while it was being conducted. But Project Gunrunner, which Holder mentioned in his Cuernavaca speech, and Fast and Furious, which led to Terry's death, aren’t the same program.

Project Gunrunner began under President Bush in 2005 and involves several law enforcement agencies within the DOJ, including the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, and the U.S. Marshals. Straw buyers would purchase guns illegally, and ATF would bust them before they left the parking lot. The program apparently turned up a lot of meth heads.

Fast and Furious, the subject of two investigations--one by the DOJ Inspector General’s office, one by the House Oversight Committee--began in 2009 and was intended to catch bigger fish; perhaps whoever was directing the straw buyers. Since the program was exposed by CBS earlier this year, the DOJ has called the actions of those involved with Fast and Furious "illegal."

DOJ Spokesperson Tracy Schmaler said in an email today that it was inaccurate to conflate the two programs.

That's fair enough. However, I'm not quite sure how it jibes with this James V. Grimaldi and Sari Horwitz story for the Washington Post:

The AK-47s have become part of a multi-agency federal investigation code-named Fast and Furious, part of a southwest border crackdown on firearms known as Project Gunrunner. The agent's death led one member of Congress to criticize Project Gunrunner and has also roiled officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who are fighting to save funding for the program.

[...]

The Fast and Furious case was one of the biggest gun trafficking cases since Project Gunrunner began in 2006. It was seen by the ATF as a response to criticism from the Justice Department's inspector general that the firearms bureau was bringing too many minor cases against straw purchasers, individuals who buy guns for others or traffickers.

This doesn't refute Mike Riggs' point: Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious were different operations. But one came from another - it seems odd, to me at least, that Eric Holder would not be intimately familiar with such a significant evolution in gunrunning surveillance operations courtesy of the DOJ. Going from straw-buyers to the larger-scale gun traffickers behind them couldn't have been a light decision. Surely the Attorney General would be aware of the ins and outs of such an operation? If not, why not?

Again, this doesn't refute Mike Riggs' point - not really. He's saying that Holder's speech in 2009 wasn't a direct contradiction of his testimony before Congress. But, again, I find it hard to believe that Holder wouldn't have known of the status of Operation Fast and Furious at some point while it was being conducted, particularly as the operation began to go off the rails.

Odd.

Notes of interest, July 12th: legalization and crap construction

A few things I thought were worth briefly mentioning:

1) Flotilla Follies.

2) Walt Gilbert on drug legalization.

3) Ezra Levant and Kathy Shaidle on Internet filtering:



4) Indiana State Senator Karen Tallian gets is "surprised" by the amount of support from her constituents for legalizing pot.

5) Christopher Luna in The Propagandist on shitty construction practices in China.

6) Jacob Sullum in Reason's Hit & Run blog on pot and public health.

7) Finally, an obligatory cute kitty:

John Cummins and the BC Conservative resurrection

[ This post brought to you by the Magicwhiz.com magic shop. ]

I was in the room at the Sheraton in Surrey, Vancouver when John Cummins, former MP for Delta-Richmond East, was elected as leader of the BC Conservative Party. The whole thing was kind of amusing, really: no one else was running for the job, so the only people who voted against Cummins' leadership were a few griping hold-outs. Cummins was elected with something like 97.7% support.

I've been pretty critical of the BC Conservatives in the past, mainly because they've had the symptoms of a crippling disease for quite some time: it's called being a third party.

Being a third party is hard. Downright brutal, actually. It tends to attract every weirdo from miles around, and the infighting can be almost shocking considering the low stakes involved. It leads to silly screw-ups and communications typos and oversights, the inevitable result of running a party from its president's basement for lack of personnel. The dedication is admirable, at least.

I've been following the ins and outs of the BC Conservative Party at least haphazardly for the past couple of years, and more closely in the past few months, and I can attest to the fact that the BC Conservatives seem to be overcoming their third party-itis. There are still plenty of glitches to iron out, and undoubtedly there will continue to be malcontents within the party's ranks, but the infrastructure is being laid thanks to a growing army of volunteers and supporters: riding associations are being formed, funds are being raised, membership is slowly growing, communications are becoming more focused and coordinated, and, now that John Cummins has taken on the job of leader, the party can really go on the attack. The polls might not be particularly encouraging, but they're not particularly discouraging either, considering the BC Conservatives' relative newcomer status as a party to be taken seriously.

As proof that the BC Conservatives are being taken seriously are the attacks coming their way from both the BC Liberal Party and those members of the federal Conservative Party - like former MPs Stockwell Day and Jay Hill - who support the BC Liberal Party. You see, we can't have vote-splitting on the right, the argument goes, because then the BC NDP will get in and there. Will. Be. Armageddon!

Or somesuch. It's probably true that any surge in support for the BC Conservatives would hurt the BC Liberals and make the BC NDP happy. But this is only a scary thought if you're a BC Liberal supporter. Indeed, the arrogance of this argument is rather striking: we are the only thing that stands between you and the abyss, so overlook our shortcomings and don't dare support anyone else. The stakes are too high!

That's not good enough. As John Cummins himself noted during his speech in Surrey after becoming leader of the party:

Ever since I announced I was running for the Leadership of the new BC Conservatives, all the Liberals say is that by voting Conservative the free-market vote will be split and the NDP will win.

The fact of the matter is, the Liberals have been quite busy damaging the province and their own reputation enough to hand the next election to the NDP all on their own. What we provide is a new option; a real choice and an alternative to the NDP for the free-market voters who are ready to flee the Liberals.

It is extremely telling that the only line the Liberals use is the so-called splitting of the vote. They don’t brag about their own record – no, their only argument is: Vote for me, I’m not NDP. Although after this week it is getting pretty hard to tell the difference any more.

If the BC Conservative Party wants to become a force to be reckoned with, there's still a lot of work to be done. And I mean a lot. But there's promise there, and a will to become more than just an "also-ran" party. It will be very interesting to see whether the BC Conservatives can pull off a full resurrection in the months and years to come. I'll certainly do my best to follow their efforts.

Today is the International Day against Stoning

For Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani:



From the International Committee Against Stoning: DAY OF ACTION: 11 July 2011, International Day against Stoning.

Police and the evolving attempt to film their activities

[ This post brought to you by Rush Order Tees' Custom T-Shirts. ]

Every so often, people seem to get into trouble for filming police during routine business. Folks like this teenager, who was arrested ( illegally ) for "interference with a police investigation" for filming a police officer in action. Or this woman who was arrested for filming a police officer from her own backyard ( charges against her were later dropped, although not before police harassment of her supporters ). Or this man who was thrown on the ground, cuffed, and had his cameraphone smashed for filming a police shoot-em-up. Or Reason.tv's Jim Epstein, who was arrested while attending and recording audio of a meeting of the D.C. Taxicab Commission ( for this short Reason documentary ), after he filmed the arrest of journalist Pete Tucker.

The answer to this problem? Well, from the perspective of the people who are being harassed and arrested for filming police business at least:

OpenWatch is a project that publishes open/free apps for Android and iOS; the apps (called "OpenWatch Recorder" and "CopRecorder") covertly record audio and, at your direction, transmits it to the OpenWatch site. There, it is reviewed for significance, stripped of personal information, and published. It also has a video mode. The OpenWatch site looks for regional patterns in authority-figure interactions -- for example, whether a county operates its drunk-driving checkpoints in an illegal fashion.

I'm not saying that all police are bad at their jobs, but arrests for perfectly legal activity ( filming ) do happen. It's nice whenever technology evolves to meet an authoritarian challenge.

Update: Thanks to Anon in the comments for bringing up this site: Photography is Not a Crime.

The US DEA still thinks that marijuana has no health benefits and has a "high potential for abuse."

Jacob Sullum at Reason's Hit & Run blog has the story:

On Friday the Drug Enforcement Administration officially rejected a nine-year-old petition asking it to remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the law's most restrictive category. Schedule I is supposedly reserved for drugs that have "a high potential for abuse," "no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States," and no "accepted safety for use under medical supervision." The Los Angeles Times notes that "marijuana has been approved by California, many other states and the nation's capital to treat a range of illnesses"; that "the DEA's decision comes as researchers continue to identify beneficial effects"; that "Americans overwhelmingly support [medical marijuana] in national polls"; and that the National Cancer Institute "notes that marijuana may help with nausea, loss of appetite, pain and insomnia."

Sigh... There is a silver lining, however, as Sullum goes on to report:

This is the third time the DEA has denied a marijuana rescheduling petition: The first petition, filed in 1972, was rejected 17 years later in a decision that overrode the recommendation of the DEA's own administrative law judge; the second, filed in 1995, was rejected six years later. Last week's rejection came two months after Americans for Safe Access asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to compel the DEA to respond. Now ASA can go back to the D.C. Circuit and challenge the rationale for the DEA's decision. "We have foiled the government's strategy of delay," says ASA attorney Joe Elford, "and we can now go head to head on the merits, that marijuana really does have therapeutic value."

One step at a time, I guess.

The Tories and Access to Information

Andrew Phillips writes ( scroll down ):

The Tories recently killed the Access to Information database in an effort to stop access to information requests and stop prying eyes. Along with that the government will - it appears - be monitoring social network sites like facebook in an effort to counter the "misinformation" about political issues. When in point of fact it will be a campaign of disinformation as the trolls will not divulge their identities. This being done, or attempted, apparently in violation of the Office of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner. Add to that the 21st Century Act and the ability of the police to turn on your GPS through tracking warrants as well and I get a bad feeling.

Recently the Supreme Court ruled that the PM, Ministers of the Crown, the RCMP, and the PCO did not need to release any information through the Access to Information Act. Killing the Access to Information database is the government extending the blanket protection the SCC ruling has given them on the prohibition on information in areas it wasn’t meant to apply. Back in May Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault issued a warning about this very problem . So what we have is a system slowly coming into existence where we can no longer find out what they are doing.

But they will be in a position to monitor us virtually 24/7 knowing what we are saying, who we are saying it to, and where we are going. Along with a vigorous disinformation campaign ongoing by government employees on social sites. The band the Police said it so well, "Every breath you take, Every move you make, Every bond you break, Every step you take, I'll be watching you".