Tag: posts

In France, police have seen fit to DNA test
all male students and staff—527 individuals in total—at
Fenelon-Notre Dame high school in La Rochelle as part of an ongoing
sexual assault investigation.

The “DNA dragnet,”
as the AP calls it, comes after months of failed leads into the
September 30, 2013, rape of a female student in a high school
restroom. Though police recovered DNA evidence from the victim’s
clothing, they turned up no matches in the country’s extensive DNA
database.

DNA testing at the girl’s Roman Catholic high-school started on
Monday and will likely last through Wednesday. Prosecutor Isabelle
Pagenellen said that no one had yet refused to give a DNA
sample—perhaps because she’d warned that anyone who did would be
considered a suspect and may be detained. 

“The choice is simple for me: Either I file it away and wait for
a match in what could be several years, or I go looking for the
match myself,” she told the Associated Press. 

U.S. authorities have a less aggressive policy toward
prosecuting rapists, notes
Allie Jones with some dismay at The Wire. This is
true, and thank goodness: While there are a lot of valid critiques
of the way sexual assault case are handled in America, demanding
the DNA of anyone in the vicinity of an assault is not something to
emulate. 

Students and staff at Fenelon-Notre Dame may be going along with
the tests, but not all are doing so happily. “It’s disturbing to
have to do the test, it’s bizarre,” one
student told The Local. Defense lawyer Joseph
Cohen-Sabban told French newspaper Le
Figaro that the situation was “ludicrous” and  “a
truly unacceptable abuse of process.” Refusing to give a DNA
sample when not in custody is a right, he added. 

French courts rarely order mass DNA tests, and those that have
occurred generally targeted specific categories of people.
According
to France24.com, the only previous time blanket DNA sampling
was conducted in France was in 1997 in response to the murder of
visiting British teen Caroline Dickinson. French police tested more
than 400 local residents the following year. Dickinson’s killer,
who was later arrested in the U.S., was not among those
tested. 

Miami-Dade internal affairs Detective Ralph
Mata, who has been accused in a federal complaint of arranging a
murder-for-hire and trafficking guns on behalf of a drug dealing
organization in New Jersey, was released on $500,000 bond today.

According to Reuters, he will have to wear a tracking bracelet.
A federal judge in Miami made the decision. Mata agreed to be
extradited to New Jersey, where the federal investigation took
place. The charges against Mata include conspiracy to distribute
cocaine and engaging in monetary transactions from specified
unlawful activity (the murder-for-hire plot).

The complaint against Mata did not identify the drug-dealing
group he is accused of having assisted, but the organization is
alleged to be trafficking narcotics from locations in Latin America
for distribution “in New Jersey and elsewhere.” CNN reported on
some of the details of the complaint against Mata,
including the murder-for-hire plot:

In one instance, the complaint alleges, Mata arranged
to pay two assassins to kill rival drug dealers.

The killers would pose as cops, pulling over their targets before
shooting them, according to the complaint.

“Ultimately, the (organization) decided not to move forward with
the murder plot, but Mata still received a payment for setting up
the meetings,” federal prosecutors said in a statement.

The complaint also alleges that Mata used his police badge to
purchase weapons for drug traffickers.

Mata, according to the complaint, then used contacts at the airport
to transport the weapons in his carry-on luggage on trips from
Miami to the Dominican Republic.

Mata worked at the Miami-Dade Police Department for 22 years,
including with the K-9 unit and an anti-gang task force. He spent
the last four years with internal affairs. If he’s found guilty of
the charges against him, he could face up to life in prison.

Over at
The Week, Michael Brendan Dougherty has written about
the very well-financed opposition Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) may face
from neoconservative Republican donors once his widely anticipated
2016 presidential campaign begins.

Last month, TIME
magazine’s Zeke Miller reported that some donors at the Republican
Jewish Coalition suggested Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino
magnate, was prepared to spend “vast sums” if it looked like Paul
was in a position to do well in the primaries. According to
Miller’s reporting, one former Mitt Romney bundler, who believes
that a Paul nomination would be “scary,” thinks that the Kentucky
senator could win the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire
primary.

Dougherty believes that a Paul nomination is unlikely without
so-called  “‘Paul bundlers,’ ‘Paul angels,’ and
‘Paul-billionaires'”:

Perhaps the Paul camp would welcome such a unified opposition.
After all, it would grant his us-vs-them fundraising campaigns
quite a bit of legitimacy. Surely, his grassroots-savvy team could
light a few money-bomb campaigns with that. But does even Paul
believe that a presidential campaign can run on $100 checks sent in
by hepped-up liberty advocates?

To win, Paul and his anti-interventionist cadres must develop a
fundraising apparatus as well-organized, as active, and as
deep-pocketed as the one he faces. Until the media is buzzing about
“Paul bundlers,” “Paul angels,” and “Paul-billionaires,” I wouldn’t
bet on him winning the GOP nomination.

Slate‘s Dave Weigel asked at the end of last month,
“Could the shadowy network of Rand Paul’s old fundraising machine
sink his presidential ambitions?” Reason Senior Editor
Brian Doherty
wrote about Weigel’s article, saying that the answer to
Weigel’s question is “probably not.”

Although Paul might not have the support of any
“Paul-billionaires” yet, he is enjoying popularity. Paul topped the
list of possible Republican 2016 contenders in a
recent CNN/ORC
International survey, something his father never managed to do,
and won last month’s CPAC
straw poll. Last month Paul also won
a 2016 poll conducted by the Northeast Republican Leadership
Conference.

Of course, popularity this far ahead of the race doesn’t mean
Paul will necessarily clinch the GOP presidential nomination. While
some may be pleased with Paul’s success at the most CPAC straw poll
it is worth remembering that four of the last five winners of the
poll have had the last name “Paul.”

However, Paul’s appeal does reportedly have some
neonconservatives worried, which,
as I have said before, is a sign he’s doing something
right.

Californians have shown a bit
of a propensity for taxing the shit out of themselves and each
other. Just a year and a half ago, voters in the Golden State went
to the polls and
approved a $6 billion tax hike with Proposition 30. This is a
state that enthusiastically made its way to the Revenue Room at the
House o’ Pain and then promptly forgot its safe word.

Well, mostly. Maybe Californians are having second thoughts.
While half of voters in the state call the tax system fair and
majorities want to tighten the squeeze on corporations and “the
wealthiest,” a record 60 percent say they themselves are paying too
much.

The results come in a wide-ranging
poll (PDF) conducted last month by the Public Policy Institute
of California. Asked, “Overall, how fair do you think our present
state and local tax system is—would you say it is very fair,
moderately fair, not too fair, or not at all fair?” 3 percent said
“very fair” and 47 percent answered “moderately fair.” The results
were consistent across income groups, with 53 percent of those
making over $80,000 agreeing with the 49 percent of Californians
earning under $40,000 that the tax system is just swell.

Of those polled, 51 percent also said corporations should pay
higher taxes and 63 percent called for raising the top income tax
rate on the state’s wealthiest residents.

But if Californians agree that the other guy should get it in
the neck, they’re all ready for a little mercy on their own behalf.
Fifty-six percent of those making less than $40,000 say they’re
paying more than they should, 59 percent of those making between
$40,000 and $80,000 agree, and 64 percent of those earning over
$80,000 chime in with a “ditto.”

Tax us more and harder, please. Whoah! But enough on me,
already.

Last month, the financial site WalletHub
published a state-by-state comparison of real estate tax, state
income tax, local income tax, vehicle property tax, vehicle sales
tax, sales and use tax, fuel tax, alcohol tax, food tax, and
telecom tax. California
comes just after New York as the most burdensome, tax-wise. It
also ranks as the second
worst state for overall freedom in Mercatus Center
rankings.

Scott Shackford
noted earlier today that all of that extra tax revenue is doing
California little good—its economy still staggers along, with
outstanding bills, such as $3 billion in required payments to the
state teacher pension fund, essentially glossed over.

C’mon Californians. If you think hard, you’ll rememember that
safe word. Maybe it’s “Jarvis.”

Last month I
noted that a visit to an indoor gardening store plus wet tea
leaves in your trash can earn you an early-morning visit by
rifle-wielding agents of the state. In addition to drinking tea, a
fondness for hibiscus (perhaps to put in your tea) can make you
look like a felon to cops with too much time on their hands, as
Angela Kirking discovered
last fall. Four DEA agents and five local police officers burst
into Kirking’s Sherwood, Illinois, home around 5 a.m. on October
11, looking for a marijuana grow. Instead they found 9.3 grams of
pot (less than a third of an ounce) and three glass pipes. Kirking,
a 46-year-old face painter, recently
asked a judge to throw out the evidence obtained during the
search and the two misdemeanor charges resulting from it, arguing
that police did not have probable cause for a warrant.

Why did the DEA think Kirking was growing pot? On September 17,
The Huffington Post
reports, Donn Kaminski, a Braidwood, Illinois, police
officer assigned to the DEA, was staking out Midwest
Hydroganics in Crest Hill when he observed Kirking “exit the front
door of the store carrying a green plastic bag containing
unknown items.” Kirking says it was liquid fertilizer for her
hibiscus plants. Based on her apparent interest in gardening,
Kaminski obtained Kirking’s electric bills, which were
“consistently higher” than the bills of two neighbors. He also
sifted through her garbage, finding “multiple green plant stems”
that allegedly smelled like “green cannabis.” A field test (perhaps
the same kind that
misidentified Addie Harte’s tea leaves as marijuana) supposedly
confirmed that the stems came from a cannabis plant. Presto:
probable cause. Or so a judge thought.

Another judge may decide differently. During a hearing earlier
this month, Patch
reports, Will County Judge Bennett Braun seemed
unimpressed by Kaminski’s electric-bill analysis, saying “ComEd
routinely notifies him that his electric bills are higher than
average.” The DEA’s formula for probable cause in this case mixed
two completely innocent facts—a fertilizer purchase and relatively
high electric bill—with an agent’s odor report and a field test,
both of which are notoriously
unreliable and both of which proved inaccurate with respect to
Kirking. The DEA spent nearly a month investigating Kirking, but
somehow it could not spare the time for a lab test on her plant
stems before charging into her house.

Beyond the lack of diligence in this particular case is the
standard outrage of pot prohibition, which leads employees of our
government to spy on the customers of hydroponic supply stores and
rummage through their trash, looking for traces of arbitrarily
proscribed plants. Grown men should be embarrassed that they do not
have better things to do with their time.

The recent ouster of Mozilla CEO Brandon Eich
over his support for traditional marriage has many conservatives
calling foul. But where were those same conservatives a decade ago,
writes A. Barton Hinkle, when the Dixie Chicks got hounded off the
radio for criticizing George W. Bush at the start of the Iraq
War?

Do conservatives owe the Dixie Chicks an apology? It sure looks
that way, Hinkle writes. But liberals owe some apologies too.

View this article.

White House press secretary and occasional beard grower Jay
Carney likes political art. Particularly, he likes Soviet military
propaganda.

This fact was accidentally
revealed in, of all places, the latest issue of
Washingtonian MOM magazine. The journal did a profile on
Carney’s wife, Claire Shipman. There’s a lot of fun facts about
Carney’s preferred brand of $275 sneakers (Hugo Boss) and how the
family’s Portuegese water dog is related to Obama’s (cousins!).

A
few sources
picked up on some non-sequiturs, though. Can you spot the
strangest thing about this totally candid picture? Hint: It’s not
that each member of the Carney clan eats a pyramid’s worth of food
for breakfast.

Rather, it’s the
World War II-era Soviet poster pointing over Shipman’s
shoulder, which asks if you’ve enlisted in the Red Army yet
(because you’re going to get drafted anyway), and the other one beyond
the sink, which asks if you’ve gotten a factory job to fill in for
your husband (who has probably been shot on the front lines).

In another picture, the family has what appears to be a bust of
the U.S.S.R.’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. As a bonus, whoever
poorly photoshopped the Carney library for added girth accidentally
cloned his son’s finger.

Why does Carney decorate with reminders of one of the most
murderous governments in history? In case you’ve been slacking off
on your White House personnel trivia, prior to
dodging questions for the Obama administration, Carney worked
as a journalist in Moscow. He and Shipman met there.

I have been
pushing
back on claims that California’s economy is
fine and awesome and should be used as a model for other
states’ recoveries. California is doing better these days than five
years ago; but so are most states. However, it’s sheer bullshit to
say that the state doesn’t still have huge, dire economic issues,
and Gov. Jerry Brown, like previous California governors, is
concealing the problems with accounting tricks.

So the next time anybody insists that California’s problems are
“fixed” or suggests that Brown’s handling of the state’s fiscal
crisis should be a model for other states, drop some knowledge on
them, courtesy of David Crane at Bloomberg View. He
explains how Brown (and other governors) is able to trick
journalists into thinking the state of the state is
better than it really is:

They avoided scrutiny thanks to an accounting method known as
“cash-based budgeting,” which recognizes expenses only when cash
changes hands and treats any cash received, even borrowed cash, as
revenue. That’s how New Jersey Governor Chris Christie “balanced”
New Jersey’s budget in 2010: by simply pushing a $3 billion pension
payment from one year into the next.

Similarly, Brown is using cash-based budgeting to underreport
the cost of an employee benefit—retiree health care—by $3 billion.
The governor could have chosen to report the expense at its full
size, but to do that under cash-based budgeting, he would have had
to actually contribute $3 billion in cash to a retiree health-care
trust fund.

That’s exactly what governors are supposed to do. Retiree
health-care expenses, like pensions, are supposed to be pre-funded
in order to protect future generations from having to pick up an
earlier generation’s costs. But Brown chose not to do so, making
his budget look rosier than it is. This shortchanges future
generations, which will have less money for their own services
because they will have to pay off the skipped costs.

Brown is also ignoring a $3 billion in required payments to the
state teacher pension fund, so really there’s $6 billion in
payments unaccounted for by the state’s budget. But thanks to these
games, it’s not counted as debt. And not paying it helps avoid
putting the state back into a spending deficit, and the lack of a
deficit is what folks are pointing to when they insist California
has recovered. Crane notes:

Even though California teacher pensions—and therefore that
debt—are guaranteed by the state, for accounting purposes the state
treats that obligation as off its balance sheet, as if it’s not on
the hook. When the trust fund runs out of money, the debt will
total more than $600 billion.

Crane concludes by pointing out how badly California is leeching
off its citizenry. Despite getting more money from taxpayers than
ever, the taxpayers themselves are getting crap out of it:

Just as California’s budget wasn’t fixed in 2000 or 2007, it
isn’t fixed in 2014. In fact, even though revenue, taxes and fees
are higher now than they were the last time California reported a
balanced budget, in 2007, state spending on most state services is
lower. Spending on welfare, universities, courts and parks is down
more than 20 percent because spending on employee salaries,
pensions, retiree health care, debt service and Medicaid is up more
than 20 percent.

And even with that huge increase in spending on its own workers,
there’s still billions of dollars in debt that’s unaccounted
for.

John Paul Stevens is not going quietly into that good night.
Since retiring from the Supreme Court in 2010, the former justice
has written a
memoir, delivered numerous speeches, and even found time to
spar with various critics of his jurisprudence, including
yours truly.

Now Stevens is back with a second book, Six Amendments.
This time around his subject is how to “fix” those parts of the
Constitution he does not like. Given his dissenting votes in the
landmark gun rights cases District of Columbia v. Heller
(2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010), it should come as
no surprise to find him setting his sites on the Second Amendment.
Writing in The Washington Post, the retired justice

explains his line of attack:

As a result of the rulings in Heller and
McDonald, the Second Amendment, which was adopted to
protect the states from federal interference with their power to
ensure that their militias were “well regulated,” has given federal
judges the ultimate power to determine the validity of state
regulations of both civilian and militia-related uses of arms. That
anomalous result can be avoided by adding five words to the text of
the Second Amendment to make it unambiguously conform to the
original intent of its draftsmen. As so amended, it would read:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a
free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when
serving in the Militia shall not be infringed.”

In effect, Stevens would rewrite the Constitution in order to
give lawmakers free rein to enact prohibitory gun control measures.
And he’s quite open about his goal. “It is those legislators,
rather than federal judges, who should make the decisions that will
determine what kinds of firearms should be available to private
citizens, and when and how they may be used,” he writes.
“Constitutional provisions that curtail the legislative power to
govern in this area unquestionably do more harm than good.”

In fact, it’s highly questionable if gun control laws actually
serve the beneficial purposes that Stevens imagines they do. But
regardless of that, the whole point of the Bill of Rights is to
place certain liberties beyond the reach of lawmakers. That means
the judiciary often has no choice but to “curtain the legislative
power” and strike down overreaching statutes. This is true in
Second Amendment cases just as it is true in First Amendment cases.
The government is simply not allowed to do some things to the
citizenry. Stevens apparently sees that as a bug; but in fact it’s
a feature of our system.

Finally, take a moment to consider the practical implications of
Stevens’ approach. As he sees it, the Second Amendment should
not—indeed, must not—be read to protect the right to own guns for
purposes of hunting, sport shooting, or self-defense. Unless you
are serving in a state militia, in other words, you have no right
to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment. To say the least,
that view is profoundly at odds with constitutional text and
history, as the extensive arguments and briefing in Heller
and McDonald
made plain.

Justice was served in those two cases when Stevens lost on the
Second Amendment.