iftttwall

• Realizing the national news
  media is no longer cooperating with positive coverage about the
  Obamacare rollout, the Obama Administration is turning to
  local news media instead. They are also working to coordinate a
  media strategy with
  health care groups. They still seem to think that the their
  messaging is the problem, don’t they?
• The European Union is seeking stronger protection against
  
  U.S. surveillance and the right to sue if their data is abused.
  Ha ha ha! Like Americans can currently sue if their data
  is abused.
• A judge will rule on Dec. 3 whether
  to allow Detroit to declare bankruptcy.
• A federal judge will allow a
  lesbian couple in Illinois to get married ahead of the actual
  day their new recognition law takes effect because one of the women
  is terminally ill.
• Following the negotiations in Iran, Obama is now asking for the
  release a
  former FBI agent who disappeared there in 2007.
• The Obama Administration is calling for a
  crackdown on political campaigning by tax-exempt non-profit
  groups. So Organizing for Action is closing its doors when?

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The Swiss are set to
vote on whether their country should introduce a basic
national income of 2,500 Swiss Francs ($2,800) a month for every
adult, regardless of their salary or net worth. Although the
particular proposal in Switzerland may not be ideal, that does not
mean, Matthew Feeney argues, that libertarians should shy away from
proposing something similar. Being morally comfortable with some
degree of government wealth redistribution might be contrary to
anarchism, but it is not contrary to libertarianism. Were
libertarians to argue for replacing the current welfare system with
a basic national income we would be better positioned to highlight
that libertarianism is not the heartless and selfish philosophy it
is commonly portrayed as, and it would allow for a more
humane and effective way to deliver welfare than the
current system on offer.

View this article.

The Huffington Post’s Radley Balko
has highlighted the case of a New Mexico woman who claims that
a corrections officer sprayed mace on her vagina almost two years
ago. The ACLU is filing a federal lawsuit on the woman’s behalf.
 

The woman, Marlene Tapia, was reportedly strip searched after
being arrested for a probation violation related to a drug case. It
was during this search that Tapia claims her vagina was sprayed
with a substance which Executive Director of ACLU of New Mexico
Peter Simonson says was mace.  

From KOB4:

According to court records, police arrested Tapia for a
probation violation tied to a previous drug case.  While at
the Metropolitan Detention Center, Tapia said two officers strip
searched her and asked her to bend over at the waist.  That’s
when they noticed a plastic baggie protruding from Tapia’s
vagina.

Instead of taking Tapia to a doctor to have the baggie removed,
she said one of the officers – Blanca Zapater – sprayed a chemical
agent directly on her genitals twice.

Simonson said the chemical agent was mace.

Tapia said she suffered “severe pain that lasted for several
weeks including burning, swollen genitals and painful urination,”
according to the court records.

As Balko rightly states:

And so this is where we are with the drug war. Government
officials are shoving fingers, tubes, and cameras up rectums,
sticking hands into vaginas, and spraying mace on genitals, all to
protect us from ourselves — to stop us from getting high. Feel
safer?

For more from Reason.com on police brutality and the drug war
click here and here.