Wow, Maryland Courts Actually Rule In Favor of Privacy

and against the cops no less.

The state's highest court has invalidated the body search of a drug offender, effectively wiping out his conviction by ruling yesterday that police had not given him enough privacy when they checked a common drug-stashing location: between his buttocks.

Baltimore County detectives could have searched the Fallston man at a police station or "in the privacy of a police van," Judge Clayton Greene Jr. wrote for the majority of the Court of Appeals. Instead, a gloved investigator searched John August Paulino at night at the Dundalk carwash where he was arrested and where his friends who were with him might have seen.

Greene called the search unconstitutional and unreasonable, writing that it was not an emergency and should not have been done in public.

But Judge Lynne A. Battaglia, a former U.S. attorney for Maryland, disagreed, saying that the majority opinion ties the hands of police.

"By holding as it does, the majority impermissibly restricts the police's ability to conduct reasonable searches under the Fourth Amendment for drugs that are secreted on an individual known to be carrying such drugs to prevent their loss," she wrote in the dissent.

I do love how the dissent says that they already know the individual is carrying drugs. If that's true, why not just throw them in jail? What's the point of the search?

Anyway, the guy has already served six years of his wrongful 10-year sentence, and it's hard to have too much sympathy for a crack dealer (accidental pun not intended, but nonetheless mildly funny), but I'm glad that the Court does value privacy and the presumption of innocence even if only a little.

Kid H.

Forget going "off the grid." This guy's gone "on the grid," bigtime

This is some odd behavior, but it is pretty amusing. Brilliant as a work of social commentary . . . but a little scary too.

Hasan Elahi whips out his Samsung Pocket PC phone and shows me how he's keeping himself out of Guantanamo. He swivels the camera lens around and snaps a picture of the Manhattan Starbucks where we're dinking coffee. Then he squints and pecks at the phone's touchscreen. "OK! It's uploading now," says the cheery, 35-year-old artist and Rutgers professor, whose bleached-blond hair complements his fluorescent-green pants. "It'll go public in a few seconds. "Sure enough, a moment later the shot appears on the front page of his Web site, TrackingTransience.net.

There are already tons of pictures there. Elahi will post about a hundred today — the rooms he sat in, the food he ate, the coffees he ordered. Poke around his site and you'll find more than 20,000 images stretching back three years. Elahi has documented nearly every waking hour of his life during that time. He posts copies of every debit card transaction, so you can see what he bought, where, and when. A GPS device in his pocket reports his real-time physical location on a map .

Elahi's site is the perfect alibi. Or an audacious art project. Or both. The Bangladeshi-born American says the US government mistakenly listed him on its terrorist watch list — and once you're on, it's hard to get off. To convince the Feds of his innocence, Elahi has made his life an open book. Whenever they want, officials can go to his site and see where he is and what he's doing. Indeed, his server logs show hits from the

Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense, and the Executive Office of the President, among others.

Link via Boing Boing.

Kid H.

Thank you for saving me from myself . . . again

It seems you can't get firework ingredients anymore from this company. The link above shows how idiotic this is - even federally licensed dealers can't get these things. Here's the article about the case:

A federal judge in Boise has ruled in favor of the government in a lawsuit against an Internet retailer that sold ingredients used to make illegal fireworks.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill has ordered Firefox Enterprises Inc., of Pocatello, to stop selling chemicals, tubes, end caps and fuses used in M-80s, quarter sticks and other illegal fireworks.

"This court ruling is a victory for consumer safety," Nancy Nord, acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission said Friday in a news release. "There are far too many injuries and deaths from the manufacture and use of illegal fireworks. By taking strong action against individuals and companies that sell chemicals and components to make these dangerous devices, CPSC can stop illegal fireworks from being made and keep consumers safe."

The commission said its investigation found that Firefox sold and shipped fireworks components in hundreds of transactions between November 1999 and May 2005. Winmill ruled that Firefox's packaging and shipping of chemicals violated the Federal Hazardous Substances Act and the Department of Transportation's Hazardous Materials Regulations.

Winmill granted summary judgment in favor of the government in December and made his order permanent Monday. He also imposed shipping and record keeping requirements and authorized the commission to make surprise inspections of Firefox.

Deaths, injuries and property damage from consumer-product incidents cost the nation more than $700 billion annually, the agency said.

First, I'm sick of how legislators dismiss the slippery slope idea when it comes to passing legislation to protect people, while in the same breath banning this product or that one because "it could be possibly maybe used in some negative fashion." Hell, fire takes oxygen to burn, when is Congress or some dumbass court going to ban air?

Also look at the last weasely qote above (I put it in italics for you). What does that have to do with the issue at hand? Nothing. I mean, if you damage your house because your washing machine overflowed, that's included in that number. How stupid does the government think we are? Oh . . . I forgot . . . they think we're very stupid . . . because we keep letting them get away with this crap.

This just confirms one of my theories: nothing good ever comes out of Boise.

Kid H.

P.S. If they're just worried about the wrong people getting their hands on this stuff, way to drive those people underground and make them more difficult to trace. Good job guys. Keep up the mediocre to below average work.

Rudy G in the land of the free

I'm stealing this post in its entirety from the awesome blog Nobody's business. Just wanted you all to see it before you decide to vote for Rudy in any upcoming election or primary.

Every petty dictator should have these Giuliani quotes embroidered on a nice decorative pillow. And every lover of liberty should remind him- or herself that these words were not lifted from Orwell's 1984, but were uttered in all apparent seriousness by a man who is a top contender for the Republican nomination.

"Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

He might have left it at, stopping short of turning an already dicey sentiment into something certifiably disgusting, but no:

"Freedom is about authority."

I swear that's what he said. Jawdropping.

My previous Giuliani assessment here.

Just thought you guys should know that real freedom is giving up liberty to the government - at least according to Giuliani. Also, if everyone would please compare Rudy's mayoral approval ratings in New York prior to 911 and post 911, that might show you something. Essentially, he benefitted from the tragedy by crying at the right times and calling the right people heroes. I think there are a whole lot of people who could have done that, yet somehow this jerk-off is now one of the leading candidates for the presidency.

Montgomery County, MD is first county to Ban Trans-Fats

Wow. If the city council had only banned idiots first, then we'd never have fun legislation like this.

The Montgomery County Council unanimously approved a ban on partially hydrogenated oils in restaurants, supermarket bakeries and delis yesterday, becoming the first county in the nation to restrict artery-clogging trans fats.

The pride factor of being the first county to ban transfats is probably causing dancing in the streets down in Rockville.

The Montgomery regulation could have a broader reach because of the county's sweeping definition of what it means to be in the business of serving food. Religious establishments, schools and grocery store salad bars are subject to the county's regulation.

Sweet, there goes your local bake sales to raise money. Bye bye scrumptious church dinners. Seriously, how is this supposed to be a real benefit to us? Regular fats, for lack of a better term, aren't much healthier (if at all) than transfats - and transfats might taste better (depending on your personal tastes). Don't think about that question too hard, the government is here to provide us the answer.

Council member Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At Large), the bill's chief sponsor, said she thinks the food industry will be able to adjust. Some Montgomery establishments, such as the Silver Diner and Marriott Corp., stopped using trans fats voluntarily.

"The goal is to protect the public health," she said. "People want to know what they are eating."

What a crock! People probably do want to know what they're eating Duchy (and isn't that name rife with irony). However, you idiots are telling people that it doesn't matter if they know what they're eating - they still can't have it.

Gene Wilkes, owner of Tastee Diners in Bethesda and Silver Spring, said the ban will force him to eliminate certain items, such as lemon meringue pie and chocolate cream pie, which he buys from a supplier. His popular biscuits, made in bulk at the diners from a General Mills mix that contains trans fats, will be a no-no. He said he'll begin making them from scratch, most likely.

Wilkes said he has begun to use healthier oil for deep-frying and grilling. And soon, butter, not less costly margarine, will be on the hundreds of pieces of toast his 24-hour establishments serve each day. But he is annoyed about the treatment of packaged foods.

Wow, it's not like butter is a super-healthy alternative. Plus, this ban eliminates two awesome pies. "Restaurateurs say that it could be difficult for them to find healthy replacements for trans fatty oils and that they might have to use artery-clogging palm and coconut oils or butter."

Listen folks, it isn't about making us more healthy. It isn't about junk science or anything like that. It's about local legislators that must appear to be doing something, anything, to justify their continued existence. When these guys run out of actual important issues to deal with, or they can't find the answer, they always, always, always end up doing something idiotic either for the general well-being of the public (like it or not), or for the children.

Let's start looking at this type of legislation for what it is. It isn't just authoritarianism or nanny-statism (though it is those things). It is something that verges on communism. The ultimate goal is to make everyone the same, only they can't call it communism or even socialism, so they just keep eliminating all our choices and our liberties until eventually the choices we get to make are the same exact choices everyone gets to make . . . and those aren't really choices at all.

You think I'm kidding or maybe going overboard? Well, now you can't have transfats or foie-gras. You can't buy toilets that really work anymore, washing machines are 35% more efficient and who knows how much less effective, CAFE standards mean you can't really get the car you might want, soon you won't be able to buy lightbulbs that don't give you headaches, you can't use ephedra to lose weight (or use in tea like the Mormons), you can't smoke, you can't drink the liquor you want in the way you want, you can't build many types of model rockets, you can't really own and carry a gun. Seriously, I could go on all day. I'll say this, unless you're Bill Gates or Donald Trump, etc., I'm willing to bet that your house isn't big enough to store the entire Code of Federal Regulations - then add in the state and local stuff, yet somehow, you're supposed to know all this stuff and abide by it. And, lest you forget, those codes ain't getting any smaller.

Kid H.

Link via this post at Hit & Run.

Also thanks to commenter John on that post for getting my list started.

PATRIOT Act - the view from 5 years later

Interesting article on some of the failures of the Patriot Act, which I've criticized from day one. I know 911 was a terrible event, and I was all for exacting retribution, but it was painfully obvious that the PATRIOT Act was a naked power grab by the government. Anyway, there were some who criticized it initially and discussed potential abuses. Here is an excerpt from a longer article assessing some of the initial criticisms (they were right).

In March 2007, FBI Inspector General Glenn Fine released a report that undermined that argument. It turned out the bureau had underreported the number of requests for National Security Letters, had issued letters before exhausting other options, and had issued them to Americans who were not the targets of ongoing investigations. In short, the FBI had abused its new powers.

“That vindicated my concerns over that provision of the PATRIOT Act,” says Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican who had joined Sununu and most Democrats in the 2005 filibuster. “Not because I have reason to believe that FBI agents were acting with ill intent, but it does show that we shouldn’t create shortcuts when it comes to civil rights. Mistakes will, and did, happen.”

That scandal was soon chased from the headlines by something even more incendiary: The White House had fired eight competent U.S. attorneys for, among other things, not working hard enough to prosecute Democrats. Washington State’s John McKay hadn’t dug into claims of Democratic voter fraud in a governor’s race; New Mexico’s David Iglesias, the model for Tom Cruise’s character in A Few Good Men, wasn’t willing to rush an indictment against a Democratic state senator before an election. And the power that let the president replace them with cronies was enshrined in the PATRIOT Act.

Presidents had always set up a revolving door for the U.S. attorneys at the starts of their terms, and they had the right to shuffle them out and nominate new blood at any time. But PATRIOT effectively eliminated Congress’ role in approving those replacements, by removing restrictions on the length of service for interim U.S. attorneys and allowed them to serve indefinitely without confirmation by the Senate. As first liberals, then conservatives started calling for the attorney general to fall on his sword, the Senate voted to strip the president of that power.

It took its time, but the political class has finally lost confidence in its belief that the government had done the right things to secure America after 9/11. As scandal piled on top of scandal, it became harder, then impossible, to deny that the powers granted to the executive could be abused by some corrupt actors or by agencies enamored of their own secrecy.

This impacts the way Washingtonians play out the decade’s big hypothetical scenario: What happens if we get hit again? How will politics change after another 9/11? The thinking had been that politics would pivot right back to the frenzied “whatever my government wants” attitude of 2001. But the validation of civil libertarians’ fears has changed all that.

“This is a case where I can say ‘I was right all along,’ ” says Sununu. “But I am not happy about it.”

KH

Let's be realistic about reality

This is an article by Mark Steyn which I found on LGF, and it's dead on.

The "gun-free zone" fraud isn't just about banning firearms or even a symptom of academia's distaste for an entire sensibility of which the Second Amendment is part and parcel but part of a deeper reluctance of critical segments of our culture to engage with reality.

Read the whole thing...

Otter