Oh, snap!

Tom posted this at 10:06 AM HKT on Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 as Liberty and/or Security, That's Not Change!

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If there are still doubts in your mind as to whether marijuana will eventually become legal, this story will remove them.

When alcohol was chased underground during Prohibition, the resulting clandestine booze was notoriously rank — the paint-stripping moonshine, the barely drinkable homemade wine. Marijuana, however, has undergone radical advances since the war on drugs sent it deep into the shadows 25 years ago.

In the now semi-open marijuana landscape of Northern California, I find a plant species transformed. Skilled mom-and-pop breeders have developed hundreds of high-performing cultivated varieties, and home hobbyists have grown them to perfection using new techniques and technologies. Marijuana has never been more potent, more productive and more varied in its appearance, flavor and effect. It is twice as productive as in the 1980s and three or more times as potent. As the supply has increased, the value has dropped or stagnated, from $5,000 a pound 15 years ago to about $3,000 today. By the ounce, Ramsay says, the choicest varieties still sell for as much as $400, but the cannabis connoisseur can pick up high-grade strains for half that amount today.

Many Americans of a certain age will remember that in the 1970s, seedy homegrown pot was reviled for its raw, throat-burning quality. Now dope-smoking locavores steer clear of cheap, low- and mid-grade weed in favor of organically grown boutique strains. They speak of “presentation” and varieties so agreeably complex that “you inhale one flavor and exhale another.” Just as in the vineyards of the Napa Valley a few miles to the north, complexities come from the soil, from the fruits of labor, from careful breeding. Suddenly, pot has terroir.

The notion that the government can make a plant illegal becomes more obnoxious the more I think about it. I’ve got no clue whether Prop 19 will pass, but it’s largely irrelevant. Within a decade, pot will be legal nationwide.

Apollo posted this at 1:29 PM HKT on Sunday, October 31st, 2010 as I have seen the future. . ., Liberty and/or Security

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You simply must watch this video.  Though it’s heavily edited and filled with editorial content, it shows one of the most blatant violation of a citizen’s 4th Amendment rights I’ve ever seen:

Police officers have dangerous and important jobs that are essential to a functioning society, and — like all humans — they make mistakes.  What this video shows was a mistake that turned into a crime that turned into a cover-up. All the officers involved deserve to lose their jobs and face prosecution.  If the Bill of Rights is meant to do anything, it’s to protect Americans from armed thugs who bust-down doors and seize property without cause.  That includes thugs with badges.

In a free society, police deserve citizens’ respect for the risks they take to protect them as well as their skepticism for the incredible power entrusted to them.

H/T: Balko

Tom posted this at 9:02 AM HKT on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 as Liberty and/or Security

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Andrew McCarthy has a new book The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.  Based on the past performance of his fellow Cornerites who have published books with inflammatory titles, I have full confidence that the following will occur:

1. Tonight on FoxNews, Sean Hannity will tell McCarthy what a wonderful book he’s written and imply something even more inflammatory than what McCarthy wrote.  McCarthy will not exactly endorse this, but he’ll smile and let it slide.
2. In a post on the Corner, McCarthy will thank Hannity for being such a great host — and a Great American! — and complain that the Establishment Media is ignoring him.
   
3. After the book begins selling, McCarthy will be invited on various talking heads shows, possibly The Daily Show.
4. When Jon Stewart confronts him about the book’s subtitle title, McCarthy will emphatically deny its plain meaning.  In fact, he’ll be a little hurt that Jon would think that’s what he meant.
5. Fellow Cornerites will rush to his defense and complain that Stewart was unduly fixated on the title and ignored the book’s substance.
6. Moments later, Kathyrn Lopez will un-ironically link to Kieth Olberman’s latest screed as evidence of how liberals are coarsening our national discourse.
7. Jonah Goldberg, who is traveling, will make a quick post promising to weigh-in as soon as possible.  A week later, he will write a 1,200 essay on the subject.  Twenty-four of those words will concede McCarthy’s critics’ point (three of which will be “everybody knows this”); the remaining 1,176 will defend McCarthy from strawmen.

I love NRO and am a subscriber but, Jeez guys, this routine is getting old.

Tom posted this at 4:42 PM HKT on Monday, May 24th, 2010 as Conservatism, Liberty and/or Security, The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past, There Is Only One God And Jonah Goldberg Is His Prophet

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I’ve complained that the “debate” about the new Arizona illegal immigration law has mostly revolved around hyperventilating idiots who are willfully ignorant about the definition of “reasonable suspicion.” From what I hear on the radio news and see on tv news, that’s still broadly true.

For a break from the ignorance, I recommend this Ilya Somin post. The post itself is fairly weak. Mainly, Somin complains that using state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws increases the chance of enforcement. Honestly, that’s his main complaint.

At present, if state law enforcement stops you and has reasonable suspicion that you are committing a federal crime, they’ll detain you to find out more. For instance, if I’m driving and get stopped and there are sheets of uncut $100 bills in my backseat and I’ve got green ink on my fingers, the fact that counterfeiting is a federal crime, not a state crime, won’t prevent the cop from doing additional investigation. Nor should it. Or if he sees a ski mask and what appears to be a bank bag in my back seat, and he’s recently received an APB for someone in the area who has robbed a bank, the fact that bank robbery is a federal crime will not stop the cop from investigating further. Nor should it.

All sorts of federal laws are enforced, by and large, by state and local police. The argument that immigration laws should not be enforced by state and local police because it will force legal immigrants to obey a federal law they currently ignore because of lax enforcement is, frankly, bizarre. That’s an argument against the underlying federal immigration laws. It is in no way an argument against the Arizona enforcement laws.

Somin makes a minor point that gets picked up in the comments that is much more persuasive. Under this law, many citizens will be faced with the option of either carrying around papers proving citizenship, or being detained for however long it take the cops to see that you’re here legally. The comments on that thread, or at least the first hundred or so I made it through, are worth reading on this point; Volokh has the most thoughtful, civil, and substantive commenters of any site I know.

There’s no free way out of this immigration problem, but at the end of the day I think the onus the Arizona law puts on citizens is acceptable. First, let’s divide people into three groups: illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, and citizens. I’m completely unconcerned about putting requirements on illegal immigrants. That laws will be enforced is a feature, not a bug. With legal immigrants, it’s already a federal requirement that they carry documents showing legal presence. Again, enforcement is a feature, not a bug.

As for citizens, 46 states require proof of legal presence in the U.S. in order to get a driver’s license. Anyone who can produce an Arizona driver’s license is not going to be investigated further. Moreover, virtually all out-of-staters in Arizona, whether arriving by car or plane, will have to have ID anyhow; if it’s from one of those 45 other states, no problemo.

The only people who will have problems are: 1. Arizonans who a.) have no state issued IDs and b.) give off signs of being illegal immigrants; 2. People from 45 other states who a.) have somehow gotten to Arizona without state-issued ID or any other form of American identification (difficult to do in the 21st Century, but not impossible, I guess), and b.) give off signs of being illegal immigrants; and 3. People from the other 4 states (which, admittedly, include two of the four states that border Arizona) who a.) don’t have another form of ID (Passport, Social Security Card matching their driver’s license name, birth certificate?) that demonstrates legal presence, and b.) give off signs of being illegal immigrants. Those are the only three groups of people who will be burdened by this law for whom we should have sympathy.

Illegal immigration places costs (crime, expenses on services, social upheaval, depressing wages) on all Arizonans. Considering that the actual onus of this law will fall on a very small group of people, that onus is not particularly heavy (being detained by police, just like if you were suspected of any other federal crime, until they figure out you’re legal), and considering that this onus can be avoided (after my second or third time being detained, I’d get a passport or something similar, as will most people), I think this is a good law. After decades of unforgivably lax enforcement of immigration laws by the feds, there’s no easy way out. But the Arizona law is a start.

Apollo posted this at 9:31 PM HKT on Saturday, May 8th, 2010 as Liberty and/or Security, The Melting Pot Boils Over

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Jamie posts this footage of a “police” raid.

I put “police” in quotation marks, because this is not the action of policemen. These men are nothing more than thugs acting under color of the law and, unfortunately, armed to the teeth by local taxpayers.

You think “thugs” is a little strong? There are exactly six seconds (one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand, six one thousand) between the first knock at the door, and forcing the door open in order to shoot the dogs. I can’t bring myself to watch the footage all the way through – it’s too disturbing for me.

What I’m waiting on – if it hasn’t happened yet, it’s a matter of time – is this: for twenty dollars, you can get a SWAT t-shirt; for $12 more, you can get something that looks, when a gun is pointed in your face, an awful lot like a police badge; $333 gets you a bad-ass SWAT-style shotgun; find a couple of friends with a little more money to plop down for AR-15s; perhaps splurge a little on some bulky looking body armor, or not – and suddenly you’re the head of a SWAT team. Then you can kick down some rich guy’s door, fire a couple of shots at the first thing that moves, and keep shouting “Police” until everything that’s still alive is laying face down with its hands on the back of its head. If you’re a gentle soul, you can wear ski masks, tie everyone up, and let them live. If you’re not – well, you’ll have the guns and they’ll be afraid to defend themselves. After all, you shouted “Police!”

This is why police are obliged to show their badges when serving warrants and making arrests. It demonstrates to all around that the guy with the gun really is a police officer, so obeying and respecting him is part of your duty as a law-abiding citizen. Uniforms help with this as well. If some thug in a black shirt bursts through your door and shoots your dog, I’m quite uncertain why he’s entitled to be obeyed, regardless of whether he’s screaming “Police,” “Jesus Saves,” or “Roll Tide Roll!”

I don’t advocate violence against the police – they’ve got a difficult and dangerous job to do. But that job wouldn’t be nearly so difficult and dangerous if they didn’t kick down people’s doors at night and run in with guns blazing. If someone breaks into my house and starts shooting, whatever he shouts will have no influence on my reaction.

Apollo posted this at 9:44 PM HKT on Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 as Liberty and/or Security, The Law Is An Ass--An Idiot

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A few weeks ago, I pointed out that the only complaint Marc Thiessen is capable of offering about Bush-Era detention and interrogation policy is that they should have done exactly what they did, only with more awesome.

It’s an infuriating self-criticism for two reasons.  First, it’s simply not plausible that — given the tremendous strains and pressures of the months and years immediately following 9/11 — that they didn’t make some serious error in judgment that they subsequently realize was mistaken.  Second, it’s the kind of self-criticism whose only function is self-compliment; their only mistake, Theissen argues, was fail to realize how incredibly — how awesomely! – right they were from the beginning.

Theissen, however, is not alone in this attitude.  Having suffered set-back after set-back, defeat after defeat, and rejection after rejection, President Obama unveiled a new health care reform bill earlier today.  By all accounts, it differs from both the Senate and the House bills in one important, essential way: it’s more awesome.

NB: Aparently, Marc Thiessen has written a best-selling, insightful, and reasonably-priced book on the subject that answers all conceivable questions in thorough detail and clear prose.  How interesting!  What a shame he doesn’t promote it more often.

Tom posted this at 1:31 PM HKT on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 as Liberty and/or Security, That's Not Change!

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…never mind.

London, Feb 6 (IANS) Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan isn’t intimidated by the full body-scan machines that have been recently installed at London’s airports – in fact, he’s been signing off printouts of his X-rays.

Khan, appearing on ‘Friday Night With Jonathan Ross’ – one of British television’s most popular weekend shows – revealed he’s been turning the controversial security machines into a public relations opportunity at London’s Heathrow airport.

‘I’m always stopped by the security, because of the name. And I think its okay: the western world is a little bit worried, paranoid and touchy, I guess – and feely when they’re frisking you,’ Khan told his celebrity chat show host moments after explaining how his new film is about a Muslim named Khan on a mission to tell the US president he is not a terrorist.

‘I was in London recently going through the airport and these new machines have come up, the body scans. You’ve got to see them. It makes you embarrassed – if you’re not well endowed.

‘You walk into the machine and everything – the whole outline of your body – comes out.’

Khan said he did not know that the body-scans – installed in the wake of last year’s abortive Christmas Day bombing of a transatlantic flight over Detroit – showed up every little detail of one’s body.

‘I was a little scared. Something happens [inside the scans], and I came out.

‘Then I saw these girls – they had these printouts. I looked at them. I thought they were some forms you had to fill. I said ‘give them to me’ – and you could see everything inside. So I autographed them for them.’

In a few months, grocery aisle magazines will feature hi-resolution renderings of Jennifer Anniston’s naked body as she returns from a romantic romp in the Firth of Forth with Gerrard Butler (while secretly pining for Brad Pitt).  Not too long after that, we’ll learn about Angelina Jolie’s next pregnancy from airport scans.  All while feeling so much safer.

Tom posted this at 9:51 AM HKT on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 as Brave New Worlds, Liberty and/or Security

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Remember how libertarians like me were called crazy when we were worried about the abuse of power by the government in the persuit of terrorism.

Crazy like a fox.

Jamie posted this at 10:02 AM HKT on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 as Liberty and/or Security

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Isn’t Frank Lautenberg’s huffing and puffing in this piece over the top, even for a senator? In the last three weeks the federal government has been shown to be, more or less, incompetent at airport security. Rather than blaming the government – I guess Bush is no longer around, so the government is presumed competent again – Lautenberg wants to inflate the criminal charges against this guy who posed and poses no threat.

Moreover, isn’t Lautenberg just incorrect that this incident was harmful “because it sent out an alert that people can get away with something like this”? Any sentient person who walks through an airport knows that it’s easy to breach airport security. Instead, objectively, what happened at Newark will make air travel safer, as each harmless security breach provides a harmless lesson for security agencies on what they’re doing wrong. We don’t know how many times the guards at Newark abandoned their post in the month before this incident, but I’m really certain that I know how many times they’ll do it in the months that follow: zero.

Or perhaps I’m wrong, and slipping through a security checkpoint to kiss your girlfriend goodbye should be a capital offense. I’m just glad Lautenberg’s in the senate, where he’s relatively harmless, and not working in a DA’s office where he could do some real harm.

Apollo posted this at 1:39 PM HKT on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 as Liberty and/or Security

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Surely there are some things here that are disturbing to those of us of a libertarian bent. But the fact that this didn’t get noticed in America – the event happened in September, and Reason is just now taking notice; personally, I’d forgotten it happened – should tell us something.

We’re now on our third generation of school children (I was part of the second) going through the public education system and being taught that the First Amendment exists primarily to protect hardcore pornography and slanderous journalists. I took a constitutional law course while an undergrad, and am now in my third year of law school, and I can’t recall more than a small handful of discussions about the First Amendment applying to actual political protest.

I’d like to think that’s because we take the right to political protest for granted. That’s normally been the case in America. However, the First Amendment, like every protected right, can only do so much. The less it protects, the better it protects it; the broader its protections are spread, the thinner they become. Libertarians frequently argue that we should protect even the most extreme speech as a sort of outward barrier, as though this will protect all speech that is less extreme. But the fact is that a large number of people simply aren’t that gung ho about protecting the rights of their countrymen to post rape porn videos on the internet. If all speech is equal, rather than protecting rape porn with the vigor with which they protect mundane political speech, a part of the population will instead protect mundane political speech with all the vigor with which they defend rape porn. Which is to say, not much.

Though Balko misses the mark when he says that the G20 summit was when we needed the First Amendment the most. A bunch of foreign leaders gathered in an American city attracting a motley crew of protesters from all around the world grousing about insubstantial abstractions is not, I reckon, what the Founders had in mind. The leaders weren’t there to get a gauge of popular opinion, the issues were so large that no matter how many protesters showed up it would not have given an accurate gauge of the opinion of those effected by G20 policies, and the protesters themselves were a group with a history of violence and disorder. I don’t think much of what Balko complains of should have happened, but my sleep won’t be troubled much.

We’ve seen with the Tea Party movement that American political protest is alive and well when it really “matters the most” – spontaneous and representative demonstrations of discontent with elected officials’ actions on specific matters, performed in a time and place so as to actually convey that message to the elected officials. If libertarians want more than that core of political speech protected by the First Amendment, they need to pick their fights a little better. It may not be as simple as choosing between Hustler and G20 protesters (and what kind of choice is that?), but it might well be. In a libertarian paradise the First Amendment might well protect every fart as free speech and every orgy as a peaceable assembly, but here in our fallen world, one amendment can only do so much.

Apollo posted this at 11:39 AM HKT on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 as Dirty Hippies, Liberty and/or Security

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It appears that Abdulmullatab tried to get on the plane without a passport (H/T).  Unfortunately, government screw ups—which this most assuredly was—are less likely to result in sensible policy changes than in more punishments for citizens.  Megan McArdle’s predictions about the future of air travel are probably too optimistic.

Hubbard posted this at 8:56 PM HKT on Monday, December 28th, 2009 as Liberty and/or Security, We're all DOOMED

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It seems that TSA’s Standard Operating Procedures manual (or, at least a version of the SOP dated May 2008) got released online. Some years ago when I was a member of the national security apparatus (either as a James Bond-like secret agent whose job was to win poker games and bang models in Monaco, or as a schlub in northern Virginia who wrote training manuals for airport baggage screeners; my memory’s hazy on some of the details) I had access to that document and probably read most of it. I’m anxiously waiting to find out which contractor posted it – it may well be someone I know. How exciting!

Anyhow, reading the now-released details that are supposedly the most revealing, I have the exact same reaction that I had back when I worked on such matters: 1. It’s hard to think of a concrete way how someone could use specific details of screening techniques to defeat the screening process; but 2. the most important information in the book is how un thorough the screening actually is.

One of our great advantages in battling terrorists is that terrorists aren’t very bright and don’t seem capable of solid analytical reasoning. Anyone who flies a half dozen times a year knows exactly how spotty the screening can be. Immediately after I quit my job working on airport security issues, the wife and I went to France for a month. When we got to Paris I got to looking for something in the backpack I’d used as a carryon, and I found but a box cutter we’d used while packing. Ask anyone who flies regularly, and they’ll have a half dozen of those stories. I was disappointed that I’d made it onto an international flight with a box cutter, but I wasn’t surprised (well, I was surprised that it was in my backpack, but I wasn’t surprised I made it through security).

I’m not saying the screening process is a completely wasted effort. Nor am I saying that we need a significantly more complete screening process – a nation of frequent fliers like America would not tolerate El Al levels of scrutiny on every Des Moines to Chicago flight. But I am saying that a big part of why we’ve spent eight years without an act of air terrorism is because the baddies aren’t very good at calculating their odds of success. To the degree that releasing the SOP allows them to precisely calculate those odds, we’re less safe today than we were last week. However, I just don’t think many terrorists are smart enough to figure that out. Three cheers for ignorance and irrationality in the Muslim world!

Apollo posted this at 9:45 PM HKT on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 as Global War on Terror, Liberty and/or Security, Ourselves

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Isn’t it awful how liberals treat the Constitution like dirt?  As if it’s a living, breathing document that means whatever they want it to mean?

Yes, it is, and it’s even worse when conservatives do it:

I’m not quite certain if Napolitano is entirely correct, but I’m increasingly of the opinion that the decision to not declare war after 9/11 (as well as before the Iraq War) was a tremendous mistake and the progenitor of all the legal/detainee problems we’ve been dealing with so badly these past eight years.  Certainly, the circumstances presented a extra few difficulties — one would have to word the declaration carefully — but it would be quite doable.

But to return where this post started, did O’Reily seriously just say “I don’t care about the Constitution”?  Yes.  Indeed, he did.

Tom posted this at 5:06 PM HKT on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 as Buffoon Watch, Global War on Terror, Liberty and/or Security, The Law Is An Ass--An Idiot

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I’ve spilled my share of pixels criticizing the Bush Administration’s detention policy, but this strikes me as completely insane:

WASHINGTON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four other men accused in the plot will be prosecuted in federal court in New York City, a federal law enforcement official said early on Friday.

But Obama the administration will prosecute Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri — the detainee accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen — and several other detainees before a military commission, the official said.

The decisions to give civilian prosecutors detainees accused of the 2001 terrorist attacks and keep the case of the Cole attack within the military system are expected to be announced at the Department of Justice later on Friday by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because that news conference has not yet taken place.

Why does everyone fly to such ridiculous extremes on this subject?  America gets attacked.  So we capture and detain a bunch of the ringleaders prisoners indefinitely at The Only Secure Location In The World and torture them (but only just a little).  Then, we have this whole rigmarole a few years back that ends with the passage of some fairly sensible legislation to try them through the military so we can be done with them and (hopefully) see them hang.  Then, we completely drop the ball for the next three years and elect a new president who wavers between being a cynical bastard and being a completely reckless pie-in-the-sky lefty nutcase, as we’re seeing today!

Hi, customer service?  Yes, I’d like to return this world; it’s defective.

Tom posted this at 9:58 AM HKT on Friday, November 13th, 2009 as CHANGE!, Liberty and/or Security

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