Radley “Agitator” Balko’s year-end poll is for “Worst Prosecutor of the Year.” The contenders are an utterly worthless, powermad lot who should probably all be disbarred:

• Mary Beth Buchanan, the power behind the first Federal obscenity prosecutions in 20 years as well as “Operation Pipe Dreams” wherein she managed to jail Tommy Chong for making bongs.

• Forrest Allgood, the Mississippi DA more than happy to use scientifically discredited “experts” to convict people who may in fact be innocent.

• Douglas County, Georgia DA David McDade, a/k/a the man behind the Genarlow Wilson debacle that saw a 17-year-old convicted of rape for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old. Wilson has since been released by the Georgia Supremes, but McDade has no regrets.

• The Virginia attorneys behind the Rack-n-Roll railroading in Manassass Park; it’s a long story, but Balko has the background for you. The summary is “government attempting to put a bar out of business through dubious allegations of drug trafficking, and then arranging for said trafficking to occur.”

• Scott Andringas, former Florida state’s attorney for Pinellas, Pasco, and Monroe counties. Andringas is the man who sought to imprison Richard Paey, a paraplegic and MS patient in chronic pain whom they knew well was not in fact trafficking in the pills he obtained through potentially dubious means. Paey has since been granted a full pardon by the newly non-Bush Florida governor.

What a bunch, eh? Your tax dollars at work, people. Given the government more power always means more people like these will seek to abuse it. People like this pose a much, much larger threat to our way of life than terrorists in Afghanistan.

Guess what? The TSA is basically worthless. Who knew?

Scalzi on the Hilton fortune thing, under the heading “Why We’re All Going To Hell:”

A multi-billionaire industrialist donates 97% of his fortune to help fund clean water in Africa, education for blind children, and housing for the mentally ill, and it’s presented by one of the largest news organizations in the world in terms of what it means for Paris Hilton.

Word.

This column is spot on. Read the whole thing. Some choice bits:

Six years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, airport security remains a theater of the absurd. The changes put in place following the September 11th catastrophe have been drastic, and largely of two kinds: those practical and effective, and those irrational, wasteful and pointless.

The first variety have taken place almost entirely behind the scenes.,[…] Unfortunately, at concourse checkpoints all across America, the madness of passenger screening continues in plain view. It began with pat-downs and the senseless confiscation of pointy objects. Then came the mandatory shoe removal, followed in the summer of 2006 by the prohibition of liquids and gels. We can only imagine what is next.

To understand what makes these measures so absurd, we first need to revisit the morning of September 11th, and grasp exactly what it was the 19 hijackers so easily took advantage of. Conventional wisdom says the terrorists exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling aboard box-cutters. What they actually exploited was a weakness in our mindset — a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings.

In years past, a takeover meant hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were trained in the concept of “passive resistance.” All of that changed forever the instant American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the north tower. What weapons the 19 men possessed mattered little; the success of their plan relied fundamentally on the element of surprise. And in this respect, their scheme was all but guaranteed not to fail.

For several reasons — particularly the awareness of passengers and crew — just the opposite is true today. Any hijacker would face a planeload of angry and frightened people ready to fight back. Say what you want of terrorists, they cannot afford to waste time and resources on schemes with a high probability of failure. And thus the September 11th template is all but useless to potential hijackers.

No matter that a deadly sharp can be fashioned from virtually anything found on a plane, be it a broken wine bottle or a snapped-off length of plastic, we are content wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and untold hours of labor in a delusional attempt to thwart an attack that has already happened, asked to queue for absurd lengths of time, subject to embarrassing pat-downs and loss of our belongings. (Emph added)

The author — pilot and Salon columnist Patrick Smith — continues, noting once again that the London liquid plot behind the whole “3oz and a baggie” bullshit was implausible in the extreme:

Allegations surrounding the conspiracy were revealed to substantially embellished. In an August, 2006 article in the New York Times, British officials admitted that public statements made following the arrests were overcooked, inaccurate and “unfortunate.” The plot’s leaders were still in the process of recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers. They lacked passports, airline tickets and, most critical of all, they had been unsuccessful in actually producing liquid explosives. Investigators later described the widely parroted report that up to ten U.S airliners had been targeted as “speculative” and “exaggerated.”

[…]

“The notion that deadly explosives can be cooked up in an airplane lavatory is pure fiction,” Greene told me during an interview. “A handy gimmick for action movies and shows like ’24.’ The reality proves disappointing: it’s rather awkward to do chemistry in an airplane toilet. Nevertheless, our official protectors and deciders respond to such notions instinctively, because they’re familiar to us: we’ve all seen scenarios on television and in the cinema. This, incredibly, is why you can no longer carry a bottle of water onto a plane.”

Again, go read the whole thing. No word of it a lie.

His Worldwide Pants production company has reached an independent agreement with the Writers’ Guild, which means Letterman’s show — as well as Craig Ferguson’s — will return to the air with writers starting Wednesday.

Leno and Conan will return to air as well, but without writers or an agreement with the WGA. In addition to having crappy material, the NBC drones will also have to contend with the fact that many Screen Actors’ Guild members would prefer to avoid shows working without such an agreement.

ABC:

Robin Garrison, an off-duty 42-year-old firefighter, was walking in Berliner Park in Columbus, Ohio, in May when he saw a woman sunbathing topless under a tree.

He approached her and they started talking and getting comfortable, the woman smiling and resting her foot on his shoulder at one point.

Eventually, she asked to see Garrison’s penis; he unzipped his pants and complied.

Seconds later, undercover police officers pulled up in a van and arrested Garrison; he was later charged with public indecency, a misdemeanor, based on video footage taken by cops who were targeting men having sex or masturbating in the park. While topless sunbathing is legal in the city’s parks, exposing more than that is against the law.

How, exactly, is this not entrapment? Did Garrison really deserve to be arrested here? Does he deserve a conviction? WTF?

A school board in Florida was poised to add Intelligent Design to the curriculum — until the acolytes of the Flying Spaghetti Monster got wind of it. Rock on! (More at Kos.)

From the AP:

BELOIT, Wisconsin (AP) — The 91st-richest man in the United States, a roofing company billionaire, has died after falling through his home garage’s roof, local authorities said Friday.

Ow. Make up your own joke. You lose points for any Morrissette-ian irony comments.

This is positively Soviet: In Shreveport, a principal had what’s been described as an “inappropriate physical altercation” with a student. We’re sure it would have been swept under the rug except for one thing: a student captured it on a cell phone camera.

The school board’s reaction? Ban cell phones:

Board member Dottie Bell brought the concept up after a student’s cell phone video that showed Huntington High School Principal Jerry Davis and a student in a physical altercation garnered local media attention and subsequently forced the system to place Davis on paid administrative leave.

Note wording. The video forced the disciplinary action, not the actions of the principal. Um, whatever.

Bill Maher has a list of the biggest assholes of 2007 at RollingStone.com, and he’s spot on.

Remember that moron on The View who said she wasn’t sure if the earth was round or flat, and was absolutely certain there’s no truth in evolution? Her name’s Sherri Shepherd, and it turns out she’s even dumber than that. Quoth she, yesterday, despite polite attempts by her cohosts to explain what “B.C.” means: “I don’t think anything predated Christians.”

Radney’s on the case, again, but here’s the fun part: Michigan thinks it can force anyone under the age of 21 to submit to a breathalyzer at any time, i.e. when they’re not driving. And they’re aggressive about it. The ACLU is suing.

A second plaintiff, Ashley Berden was 18 years old when she attended a party at a friend’s house to celebrate her graduation from Swan Valley High School. After she left the party, Thomas Township police officers arrived and found her purse which she had forgotten. They then came to Berden’s house at 4:00 a.m., woke up her family and demanded that she take a breath test. The police did not have a warrant but they informed her that would be violating the law if she refused the test. The test registered a .00% blood-alcohol level, indicating that Berden had not been drinking.

Texas joins Kansas, et. al., as another state hostile to science; Christine Castillo Comer was forced to resign as the Texas Education Agency’s director of science for failing to be neutral on the issue of evolution.

It goes like this:

Ms. Comer, 56, of Austin, is out of a job, after forwarding an e-mail message on a talk about evolution and creationism — “a subject on which the agency must remain neutral,” according to a dismissal letter last month that accused her of various instances of “misconduct and insubordination” and of siding against creationism and the doctrine that life is the product of “intelligent design.”

…

Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the state’s education agency in Austin, said Ms. Comer “resigned. She wasn’t fired.”

“Our job,” Ms. Ratcliffe added, “is to enact laws and regulations that are passed by the Legislature or the State Board of Education and not to inject personal opinions and beliefs.”

Ms. Comer disputed that characterization in a series of interviews, her first extensive comments. She acknowledged forwarding to a local online community an e-mail message from the National Center for Science Education, a pro-evolution group, about a talk in Austin on Nov. 2 by Barbara Forrest, a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University, a co-author of “Inside Creationism’s Trojan Horse” and an expert witness in the landmark 2005 case that ruled against the teaching of intelligent design in the Dover, Pa., schools.

“I don’t see how I took a position by F.Y.I.-ing on a lecture like I F.Y.I. on global warming or stem-cell research,” Ms. Comer said. “I send around all kinds of stuff, and I’m not accused of endorsing it.” But she said that as a career science educator, “I’m for good science,” and that when it came to teaching evolution, “I don’t think it’s any stretch of the imagination where I stand.”

Ms. Comer said state education officials seemed uneasy lately over the required evolution curriculum. It had always been part of her job to answer letter-writers inquiring about evolution instruction, she said, and she always replied that the State Board of Education supported the teaching of evolution in Texas schools.

But several months ago, in response to an inquiry letter, Ms. Comer said she was instructed to strike her usual statement about the board’s support for teaching evolution and to quote instead the exact language of the high school biology standards as formulated for the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills test.

…

Ms. Comer said that barely an hour after forwarding the e-mail message about Dr. Forrest’s talk, she was called in and informed that Lizzette Reynolds, deputy commissioner for statewide policy and programs, had seen a copy and complained, calling it “an offense that calls for termination.” Ms. Comer said she had no idea how Ms. Reynolds, a former federal education official who served as an adviser to George W. Bush when he was governor of Texas, had seen the message so quickly, and remembered thinking, “What is this, the thought police or what?”

If we do not act as a nation and keep these nutbird fundies out of educational policy now and forever, then we are well and truly fucked. To a first approximation, anyone insisting that dogma has a place in the schoolhouse is more interested in indoctrination than education. It is paramount that people grow up with actual critical thinking skills, but if we let the relgious types run education, that’ll be the first thing out the window.

More: Arkansas, is, of course much worse off, and surging GOP candidate Mike Huckabee is right there with them, defending creationism and the dumbing-down of American science education.

They’re on this list of the most Anti-Tech Organizations in America. Read. Get pissed off. Act.

(Via.)

Reuters:

Pope Benedict, in a new encyclical released on Friday, said atheism was responsible for some of the “greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice” in history.

We’re gonna have to call bullshit on that, Pope Ratz.

This is exactly how some guy stole a truckload of Guinness.

Chess god turned democracy activist Gary Kasparov has been arrested in Russia.

The Pentagon is apparently insisting that some wounded-and-discharged Iraqi vets repay signing bonuses they received when they enlisted on the grounds that they didn’t serve long enough.

This is what happens when you explain what “Interfaith” means to a bunch of dumbass fundies:

Austin Area Interreligious Ministries, the city’s largest interfaith organization, announced Thursday that its annual Thanksgiving celebration Sunday had to be moved because Hyde Park Baptist Church objected to non-Christians worshipping on its property.

The group learned Wednesday that the rental space at the church-owned Quarries property in North Austin was no longer available because Hyde Park leaders had discovered that non-Christians, Muslims in particular, would be practicing their faith there. The event, now in its 23rd year, invites Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Bahais and others to worship together.

From Warren Ellis: This Happened On Your Planet:

Pony is an orangutan from a prostitute village in Borneo. We found her chained to a wall, lying on a mattress. She had been shaved all over her body. If a man walked near her, she would turn herself around, present herself, and start gyrating and going through the motions. She was being used as a sex slave. She was probably about six or seven years old when we rescued her, but she had been held captive by a madam for a long time. The madam refused to give up the animal because everyone loved Pony and she was a big part of their income.

Pony was eventually liberated, but it required a large armed force because, apparently, people liked fucking a monkey.

Also, note the casual usage of the phrase “prostitute village.”

He’s paying the staff of the Late Show out of his own pocket, at least through the end of the year. Said staff would be out of work due to the WGA strike otherwise.

Leno? Your move. (That’s actually unfair: Letterman and his company own The Late Show, but Leno is an NBC employee.)

Their music critic got a political spam from the amazingly-still-active Marion Barry camp, and responded:

Must we hear about it every time this Crack Addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new — and typically half-witted — political grandstanding? I’d be grateful if you would take me off your mailing list. I cannot think of anything the useless Marion Barry could do that would interest me in the slightest, up to and including overdose. Sincerely, Tim Page.

The Barry camp showed what can only be described as balls the size of Texas in ratting him out to the WaPo and demanding he be fired. The paper has placed Page on leave and forced an apology from him.

However, there is this bit from the end of the WaPo piece:

Barry served a six-month prison sentence after being videotaped smoking crack cocaine during an FBI sting in 1990. […]

Page won the Pulitzer for his music criticism in 1997, two years after joining The Post.

What fucktards.

Schneier notes Gladwell, who makes clear that FBI profiling is probably no more than “psychic” blind reading dressed up in pretty langauge. (Upcoming in the New Yorker.)

DC suspends any meaningful review for parking tickets. Whups.

Explained in four minutes. Go. Watch.

Jones Soda’s Christmas Pack includes ham soda.

Now they’ve zapped a sober diabetic found unconscious in his car and “combative”.

Sleeping man tasered in his own home. No kidding. Is it not yet obvious that giving these things to cops isn’t working out well?

Both from Kottke:

• There is a new rap video by Jay-Z wherein he waves Euro notes, not Benjamins, to illustrate his wealth.
• Further, supermodel Gisele Bundchen now wishes to be paid in Euros, not dollars.

Ooops.

Check Balko for more; Mukasey has basically promised Orrin Hatch that he’ll pursue “mainstream obscenity” in his hypothetical DOJ, which is code for “I’ll crack down on porn.”

Balko:

It’s important to note, here, that “mainstream obscenity” is a contradiction in terms. Obscenity, at least by the Supreme Court’s definition in Miller v. California, isn’t “mainstream.” What Hatch wants are pornography prosecutions.

Still, it’s helpful to know the spirit of Ed Meese is still alive and well in the Republican Party. Never mind that, as I’ve explained before, just about every measurable social indicator that people like Hatch believe could be affected by the availability of pornography is moving the other way, and has been since the early-to-mid 1990s, also the very period over which the Internet has made porn abundant, free, and easily accessible. Over the last 15 years, rapes are down to historic lows, abortions are way down, teen sex is down, teen pregnancy is down to historic lows, divorces are down, and crimes against children are down.

This dude just gets better and better.

The Feds would like very much to convince the courts that you have no right to privacy in email. This would mean that any email communication could be eavesdropped upon without any sort of warrant or court oversight.

We’re pretty sure this is a bad idea.

Real life bales of cocaine are washing up onshore in Nicaragua.

The Westboro Baptist “Church” — principally known for their very Christlike God-Hates-Fags protests — has lost an $11 million lawsuit over a protest they staged at a military funeral.

Check this out: Some nutbird creationist asserts:

scientists have computed that to provide a single protein molecule by chance combination would take 10^262 years. Take thins pieces of paper and write “1” and then zeros after them – you would fill up the entire known universe with paper before you could write that number.

We’ll pause for a moment for the sheer gravity of this stupidity to sink in. Now proceed to one of the finest Internet smackdowns ever.

“Hey, what might Alberto Gonzales need a criminal lawyer for?” Slate asks, and answers. Abu G’s in trouble, and not the little kind, either.

Genarlow Wilson, previously serving a 10-year sentence for having consensual oral sex with another teenager, has been ordered released by the Georgia Supreme Court. He’s served 2 years already.

The “crime” occurred when Wilson was 17; his partner was 15. The law under which he was charged was one against child molestation; some prosecutor’s ass needs to be in a sling for even bringing that bullshit to trial. (His partner didn’t cry rape, and has maintained the sex was consensual the whole time.)

The Feds think they may have a line on Whitey Bulger. It remains to be seen, though, if Bulger had anything to do with a certain art heist.

They’d better find him soon; he’s getting old, and may check out on his own.

The sad tale of Abdallah Higazy bears repeating. Here are the facts.

On 9/11, Higazy, an Egyptian citizen, was staying in a New York City hotel that (predictably) emptied out after the event. The hotel later found, in the closet of Higazy’s room, a radio meant for communication with flight crews and airline pilots.

The hotel alerted the Feds, who detained Higazy for questioning. Higazy denied any part in the events of the day, but was eventually coerced into confessing something to the contrary because the interrogators threatened to tell the Egyptian authorities he and his family were terrorists, and we all know that Cairo is not exactly a paragon of human rights. Faced with an impossible choice, Higazy confessed to something he didn’t do.

Comes now the good news (quoting from here):

So Higazy “confesses” and he’s processed by the criminal justice system. His future is quite bleak. Meanwhile, an airline pilot later shows up at the hotel and asks for his radio back. (Emph added) This is like something out of the movies. The radio belonged to the pilot, not Higazy, and Higazy was free to go, the victim of horrible timing. Higazi was innocent! He next sued the hotel and the FBI agent for coercing his confession. The bottom line in the Court of Appeals: Higazy has a case and may recover damages for this injustice.

We might think that threatening familial torture would be the end of it, but we’d be wrong. The original ruling in the case, which detailed the fact that the FBI had illegally coerced his confession, appeared briefly online. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t online anymore — but a few hours later, it resurfaced, with the objectionable parts redacted on the grounds that they were classified.

Classified, my ass. Thank God some folks grabbed the original version of the opinion so people can know what’s really happening here; that toothpaste is out of the tube now, no matter how embarrassing it is to the Feds. Here’s the part the Court tried to suppress:

Higazy alleges that during the polygraph, Templeton told him that he should cooperate, and explained that if Higazy did not cooperate, the FBI would make his brother “live in scrutiny” and would “make sure that Egyptian security gives [his] family hell.” Templeton later admitted that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: “that they had a security service, that their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don’t advise people of their rights, they don’t – yeah, probably about torture, sure.”

Higazy later said, “I knew that I couldn’t prove my innocence, and I knew that my family was in danger.” He explained that “[t]he only thing that went through my head was oh, my God, I am screwed and my family’s in danger. If I say this device is mine, I’m screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And Agent Templeton made it quite clear that cooperate had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.”

(There’s more; follow the link above.)

So, to recap:

1. FBI collars wrong guy;
2. In absence of any but circumstantial evidence, FBI uses illegal coercion and threats of torture for the suspect’s family to extract a false confession;
3. FBI gets slapped down over the whole thing in court;
4. FBI and DoJ later try to redact the whole affair rather than man up and admit just how fucked up they are.

That’s ok. We’re sure things are much better now.

Not.

Reason magazine notes Jackson’s own little Bush.

Equador says the US can keep its military base there only if it can have a military base in Miami, which we think is funny as hell.

CNN:

No, really.

Also, from the end of the article, there’s this. Can you find the potential problem?

Part of the problem is that devout Hindus believe monkeys are manifestations of the monkey god Hanuman and feed them bananas and peanuts — encouraging them to frequent public places.

Over the years, city authorities have employed monkey catchers who use langurs — a larger and fiercer kind of monkey — to scare or catch the macaques, but the problem persists.

Yeah, nothing can go wrong with that, right?

Pear cable has withdrawn from the James Randi challenge. Score one for science.

TSA fails to find fake bombs 60 percent of the time in tests. Go TSA!

Granny calls Comcast. Comcast ignores Granny. Granny visits Comcast. Comcast stonewalls Granny. Granny goes all Walking Tall on their asses. Madcap hilarity ensues.

They’ve put the entire Daily Show archive online. Enjoy. We’re in particular happy to be able to link directly to this bit.

Joey Bishop went the way of all flesh on Wednesday night. He was 89.

Wired: Robot Cannon Goes Berserk, Kills 9 in South Africa.

We’re pretty sure we’re uncomfortable with the whole idea of a “robot cannon.”

Al Gore won a Nobel.

Radley Balko is on the case again, this time exploring the strange career of Dr. Steven Hayne, the medical examiner used in 1,500 to 1,800 autopsies a year in our home state (the National Association of Medical Examiners says an ME should do no more than 250). Predictably, Dr. Hayne tends to find in favor of the prosecutors, science be damned:

Former Columbus, Miss., Police Chief J.D. Sanders has been trying for years to draw attention to Dr. Hayne. “There’s no question in my mind that there are innocent people doing time at Parchman Penitentiary due to the testimony of Dr. Hayne,” he says. “There may even be some on death row.”

[…]

Another medical examiner reviewed Dr. Hayne’s autopsy in a 1998 homicide and characterized his work as “near complete malpractice.” In that case, Dr. Hayne had determined that a woman had died of “natural causes.” The diagnosis was later changed to homicide by blunt force to the head. According to the medical examiner who performed the second autopsy, Dr. Hayne hadn’t even emptied the woman’s pockets, a standard autopsy procedure. No one has been prosecuted in the case. Dr. Hayne declined repeated requests from me to comment.

Dr. Hayne isn’t a board-certified forensic pathologist, at least as the term is understood by his peers. The American Board of Pathology is considered the only reputable certifying organization for forensic pathology. Dr. Hayne failed the board’s exam in the 1980s. He still testifies in court that he’s “board certified.” But that’s a reference to his membership in the American Academy of Forensic Examiners, which he has said publicly certified him without requiring him to take an exam.

It gets worse:

Mississippi law calls for a certified state medical examiner to oversee the process of shopping autopsies out, to ensure that they are conducted by reputable physicians. But Mississippi hasn’t had a state medical examiner since 1994. The last two people to hold the office actually tried to rein in Dr. Hayne, but met with considerable resistance. The most recent, Dr. Emily Ward, left after the state’s county coroners petitioned for her resignation. The state legislature has refused to fund the examiner’s office ever since.

“Dr. Ward came in here and tried to clean up the system,” says Andre de Gruy, who directs Mississippi’s Office of Capital Defense Counsel, the public defender office for death-penalty cases. “Hayne and the coroners got together and chased her out.”

It’s a clear example of what happens when nobody cares about conflicts of interest, and it’s railroading innocent people into jail.

Fred Clark lays it out pretty clearly:

Here’s the deal: Whatever the technical details of the case, whatever the particulars of the applicable immigration and customs laws, if you confiscate the entire life savings of a minimum-wage dishwasher, you’re doing something wrong.

And you’re an asshole.

I can’t help you. No one can help you. There is no escape clause, no excuse, no qualification, no mitigation. You have chosen this and it is done. You’re just an asshole.

Solid.