On the Supreme Court's Ruling in Dobbs

The headline today in legal matters will surely be that Roe v. Wade (1973) has been overruled, but the problem goes further. The reasoning employed by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) undermined the reasoning employed in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) under which Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) was overruled to end anti-sodomy statutes, which is the same line of reasoning ultimately used to prevent states from banning same-sex marriage (e.g., that the State had no legitimate interest to protect), and in fact the same line of reasoning used by the Supreme Court to strike down laws criminalizing birth control.

We have not seen the end of this.

Cannot Remain In Power: What That Means Without Any NATO Attack

Information Gap

If Putin's rule could survive Russians learning what its government was doing at Putin's instructions, Putin would not have suddenly changed the law to prevent Russians calling his invading Ukraine a "war" and closed all the independent news outlets in Russia. He knows his rule depends on misleading Russians. It's a lesson he learned while in the KGB, helping to mislead Russian and East German workers whose output was captured for the benefit of the regimes' political elites. Putin may have been deceived by Soviet propaganda about Russia's history, but he certainly understood his government employers did not try in any way to deliver Russians communism – ordinary Russians didn't control the means of production in Russia, did not choose how Russian resources would be allocated, and were prevented from achieving reform by farce elections that existed only for propaganda purposes (anyone operating a reform party was killed or incarcerated). Putin knew Russia's government existed for the benefit of its political elite, and he's worked to become the head of that political elite and to restore what he regards as the tragically lost glory of Stalin's Soviet empire.

Putin's miserly grip on true facts is killing Russians. Consider the soldiers who had no knowledge of the history of Chernobyl – why would Putin-authorized schools and media allow information about Russians causing the world's most notorious and nasty nuclear disaster? Ordered to seize Chernobyl with no forewarning of its dangers, soldiers not only stirred up radioactive dust driving vehicles through danger zones but dug trenches in areas so toxic facility oversight workers were forbidden even to go there. The deaths aren't all over-the-horizon horrors of dying slowly at home in a later year: in the first month Putin has gotten as much as 25% of his entire invasion force killed. This is a direct result of what onlookers have noted as a surprising inability to execute combined arms: Putin's armor has advanced without infantry support so armored elements could be picked off and destroyed by anti-armor infantry weapons like the NLAW and Javelin (or mines) which have been delivered to Ukraine in quantities that significantly outnumber Putin's entire inventory of tanks; advancing infantry has consistently lacked close air support; artillery hasn't supported armor; in essence, each of Putin's infantry, armor, artillery, and air units have been acting in relative isolation, and without the coordination required to execute military maneuvers at the skill and effectiveness NATO forces have trained to achieve. Putin's police state, apparently assuming that its information campaigns and not its huge numbers of troops have allowed it to swallow tiny opponents, grievously misunderstood the nature of the conflict it started in Ukraine.

The death toll isn't a diversion from the discussion of information, but a consequence of Putin's iron-fisted control over the distribution of facts. A Western military conducting a ground assault would empower a local officer to receive intelligence from every available source so that commands could be given across all military branches to achieve a joint mission intelligently integrating armor, artillery, bombing operations, infantry, close air support, and intelligence. Imagine for a moment how long Putin would last in office if some office other than his own had such broad access to information and military command. Would he last a week? The fact Western militaries do this all the time without governments collapsing in a coup shows that Western governments have the support of their people: they possess what in a democracy passes for legitimacy, which is broad popular support. Putin does not. In a Putinesque government, legitimacy is the fact of rule as maintained by bribe or threat and nothing more.

Putin can't let local commanders coordinate or he'd be out of a job and he knows it. Putin can't give his commanders the ability to perform like Western forces. This isn't something Putin can learn from: this is a fundamental flaw in Putin's entire style of government.

Ukrainian Capabilities

From the outset, Ukrainian civilians have opposed Russian invaders, refusing to collaborate with invaders (for which some were murdered), and poisoning occupiers. The crimes committed against Ukrainians have galvanized them against Russia. The enormous catalog of photos available online of Russian armor standing in a derelict shambles in Ukraine proves Ukraine is willing to engage Russia's armor, and the fact Ukraine has retaken towns Russia formerly occupied proves that it is capable of succeeding in offense against Russian infantry. The scores of Russian aircraft lost so far demonstrate it can do what Afghans did for more than nine years of occupation and make air operations a sphincter-puckering experience for Russians.

Russian claims about its destruction of Ukrainian personnel and equipment are pretty easily debunked: had Putin's forces obliterated more than 50% of Ukraine's inventory of tanks or artillery,  Ukraine's military would no longer be an effective fighting force. Yet, it's Russian forces in retreat. While Russia has managed to capture several small military watercraft, it's lost a landing craft and suffered damage to another landing craft and a patrol boat. Out of the water, the tables are turned: Ukraine has destroyed at least 62 Russian aircraft, the number Oryx has been independently able to verify through photographic evidence, while losing 30. Oryx has confirmed Russia's loss of 2608 ground vehicles including 448 tanks, of which 182 have been captured by Ukraine and turned against Putin; Oryx has confirmed Ukraine has lost 697 vehicles, including 95 tanks. This means Ukraine's tank count may have actually increased since the start of the invasion as its forces have captured from Putin more tanks than it has lost in battle. Other sources make Russia's losses to Ukraine look much grimmer: since Russia is unable to field precision munitions, the only way its aircraft can hit anything on the ground is to make a bombing run that is low enough for visual targeting, which drives planes directly into the teeth of the air defense Russians have no hope to suppress – man-portable anti-air rockets of the kind NATO countries have been showering Ukraine. Three weeks into the war Ukraine was claiming 77 aircraft kills, and the New York Times radio intercepts included numerous ignored pleas by a Russian armor radioman for close air support that never came. Russians can't do what they want with air.

Russians may be able to murder Ukrainian civilians at will, but they've been unable to defeat Ukraine's military forces anywhere. Citing Ukrainian sources, Pravda reports Ukraine has killed 16,600 invading Russian soldiers, a number greater than Russia's losses over several years in Chechnya or even its nine-plus-year campaign in Afghanistan.

Putin's Ambitions

Anyone who has been watching understood Putin planned to take the rest of Ukraine after he ordered it partially seized in 2014. His blatant invasion lacks the middle-of-the-night quietness of salami-slicing border encroachment committed by prior regimes, by China into India, or even by Putin into Georgia. Aggression hasn't worked out for Putin in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine: within the first two weeks Putin lost up to 10% of his combat forces – the very definition of "decimation."

Since Putin committed Russia's entire deployable force, there's nothing with which he can quickly reinforce troops he sacrificed to wood chipper that is Ukraine. Accordingly, Putin has been scraping to find soldiers he can re-allocate from occupation of Georgia (which Putin invaded in 2008), mercenaries from Syria and Putin's advertising campaigns targeted at Russians who have previously murdered civilians abroad, and a tyrant enthusiasts from war-ridden places like Chechnya. Putin's pleas for Belarusian soldiers have not met with success: Belarus' dictator owes his office to Putin's intervention, but Belarusians are dissatisfied with his sham elections, and Belarusians are undermining their dictator's effort to support Putin's war in Ukraine. Putin's work to keep Belarus under the boot of a puppet dictator has, in fact, made Belarusians enter Ukraine to kill Russians. Foreign volunteers motivated to defend against Putin for free might not actually reach the reported 20,000, but even so may dwarf the number Russia has been able to hire or import. One of the major foreign fighter groups in Ukraine is the Georgian Legion, which since 2014 has been striking back at the dictator who invaded their homeland; they're training other foreigners (including many from English-speaking countries). Since 2016 the legion has swelled from about one hundred fighters to hundreds of applications per day.

Putin's biggest enemy may be the shocking incompetence of his own regime. His army can't manage to get a column of vehicles to Kyiv on a paved road. The missiles he's firing into Ukraine have a fail rate approaching 60%. And he's not going to make it up in volume: he seems to be running out of inventory (other arguments here). The fact he wasn't ready for the war he started has been something of a shock to observers. Forces sent to capture Kyiv included elite Russian units like the now-decimated 331st Guards Parachute Regiment. Decisions to staff logistical roles with conscripts who haven't been on job even a single year hasn't helped keep Russian invaders supplied with food or armaments. Although Putin has just ordered another 134,500 men to be conscripted into the Russian army, they won't be of much help until trained. Also, deploying conscripts in a foreign war violates Russian law, and Putin's own claims, though he has been contradicted by Russian military sources who confirm Russia indeed ordered conscripts deployed to war to Putin's "special military operation" in Ukraine. The domestic effect of this news is severe enough that Putin made a public announcement ordering military prosecutors to identify and bring charges against those who sent conscripts into Ukraine in his invasion's first phase. Putin claims that these conscripts won't be sent to Ukraine, but time will prove him a liar as the vanishing Russian soldiers begin contradicting Putin's propaganda that everything is going to plan.

Apparently, part of the plan is shoddy equipment. Instead of military-grade communications with encryption, Russian soldiers have been found using unencrypted off-the shelf handheld walkie-talkies from budget Chinese manufacturers. Accordingly, their disorganization and panic can be heard on open channels, as captured by The New York Times. Russians' discussion of their own war crimes can be captured by German intelligence services. 

Considering the huge trove of photographs showing Russian armored personnel carriers and tanks destroyed in every corner of Ukraine, it's hard to see how Russia can sustain war while it can't build more military equipment. Check out this image, showing Russia removing from Ukraine the scrapped husks of destroyed Russian armor:

Looking at this photo casts in a new light all the photos shown of Russian armor rusting by a roadside or laying upside down or standing in a roadway with the turret blown free of the body: how many more of those we'd see if Russia had been able to spirit away more of the physical evidence.

Speaking of evidence, Putin's propaganda that Russians are carefully targeting exclusively military targets while providing humanitarian assistance to locals has been undermined by drone and satellite footage showing Russian forces slaughtering fleeing motorists, murdering bicyclists, shooting civilians in a bread line, and Russians killed civilians and left their corpses on the street before Ukrainians could possibly have created a staged scene. Russians killed and wounded civilians indiscriminately while committing an airstrike against a maternity hospital in Mariupol, which is not an isolated incident: Putin's forces have destroyed every single hospital in Chernihiv. By March 26, 2022, Russians had launched more than 70 separate attacks on Ukraine's hospitals and the World Health Organization said the number grew daily. The fact Russian soldiers are robbing civilians during their invasion is proved by the fact Ukrainian survivors can track their robbers' movements as they retreat with stolen Apple devices trackable by their owners. 

Looting expensive consumer tech isn't necessary to Russia's advance, but with Russian logistics in the toilet Russian soldiers have been looting grocery stores and living out of civilian houses and committing other criminal acts against civilians while driven to otherwise avoidable contact. Russia can't supply soldiers. So, it's little wonder all the evil Putin can order has failed to take Ukraine. It has, instead, galvanized against Russia virtually everyone capable of receiving uncensored news. Germans, who long disdained active military activity beyond their borders and resisted spending on defense what NATO encourages its members to spend, have escalated from sending Ukraine non-lethal aid like helmets to sending antitank and antiaircraft missiles while bumping defense spending above NATO's recommended 2% threshold. Putin's effort to strangle democracy in neighboring nations – Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus – has driven democracies together.

Sanctions have halted Putin's ability to restore lost force-projection capacity. For example, the two principal factories that make and rebuild Russia's tanks and armored personnel carriers have been shuttered for lack of parts formerly imported from Europe, which is Russia's most leading trading partner. Putin's aircraft lost their source for repair parts. Russia may have the ability to manufacture small arms, but vehicles? Putin had a hard enough time moving soldiers away from a railway when his ability to amass war matériel stood unobstructed. Now his power to project force is gone.

International condemnation isn't mere words: substantial changes in international trade posture has created a long-term and growing problem for Russia, the impact of which is already contracting the Russian economy. To prop up the Rouble with deposits in Russian banks, Putin had Russian banks more than double the interest rate to 20% – but inflation was forecast at 24%, but the White House Economic Council reported April 5 that current inflation in Russia stood at 2% per week or 200% per year. 

Putin wanted to live in the Soviet Union again … and now he does. He'll better understand how the Soviet Union he served through the '80s collapsed in the early '90s by making it happen again under his watch.

He'll throw bodies at this problem – and, like all those sent to their fruitless destruction in Afghanistan, they'll die.

Police Militarization Undermines Mission

First, some background: the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a nonprofit society of scholars created by an Act of Congress that President Lincoln signed into law in 1863. It's not some site founded to subvert the government, or undermine the rule of law. To the contrary, its purpose is to advance the sciences. The National Academy of Medicine, for example, was founded under its charter.
NAS' publication Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America recently published "Militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputation," which includes graphs that suggest adding SWAT teams to police departments causes more assaults against police officers.  Of interest to those who like to argue militarization serves some kind of beneficial purpose in protecting police may be the observation that "Estimates for officer deaths, both accidental and felonious, are precise and near zero, partly because they are so rare[.]"  Although there was little increase in death to explain even after SWAT teams' exacerbation of conflicts elevated them, data "show[] a statistically significant 3.2% increase in noninjurious assaults" before adjustment for time trends.  Although the evidence for increasing officer risk is iffy, "there is no evidence that acquiring a SWAT team lowers crime or promotes officer safety."
The article observes that aggressive policing strategies disproportionately target minority communities, but that defenders of militarization claim it's necessary to protect officers. The data disagree. The author concludes that "the routine use of militarized police tactics by local agencies threatens to increase the historic tensions between marginalized groups and the state with no detectable public safety benefit."

California Police Show True Colors to Cameras

Police of Pomona, California arrested teenager Christian Aguilar for filming the brutal manner in which they arrested his family.  When they spotted him filming the crimes they committed against his family, they arrested him, too – for "resisting arrest" … which is in fact not an offense under California law if the person is not in fact charged with some other offense that would justify an arrest.

Police then noticed Robert Hansen, whom they spotted recording their beating of the teenager.  Naturally, they arrested him, too – alleging a slew of bogus offenses.

They had it all neatly wrapped up – they wrote reports that spun a bald-faced lie how the encounter went down, and they edited the video they seized so that their wrongdoing never appeared.  It was this video they presented to the District Attorney's office of Los Angeles.

While this was going on, they delivered Christian Aguilar – a minor – into the hands of actual criminals by locking him among a population of male offenders.  They kept him there despite his protestations he was a minor.  Pomona police told Christian Aguilar's mother that her son could not have a lawyer.

The terrible allegations made by police against their victims cost the job of one of Christian's relatives, a respected cardiac nurse. 

The story gets worse.  Read all about it here.

Also, some of the video is available.

New Lesson: Don't Wave To Police

Not posting on police violence toward U.S. civilians isn't because there's been none.  Now, when you wave to police, it risks provoking the kind of escalating confrontation that got the unarmed 17yo Deven Guilford shot seven times and killed after flashing his headlights to alert an officer that his high-intensity headlights appeared to be set on high-beam.  And don't expect the district attorney to do justice:  you and your mom (whom the police beat while tazing you) will be fed to the local prosecution machine and driven to penury fighting fabricated charges.

Apparently the only safe strategy is not to be noticed at all.

Hilary's Worst Nightmare? Not Trump: Sanders.

In explaining his decision to run for President, Trump described himself as Hilary's worst nightmare.  Trump hasn't been reading the news.  According to CNN, Bernie Sanders would beat Trump by an even larger margin than Hillary Clinton.

Hillary's worst nightmare is a real liberal, capable of getting liberal votes instead of merely getting "Defeat the Republicans" votes.

To emphasize: Bernie Sanders had better polling against Trump than Hillary Clinton.  Among registered voters surveyed for the CNN poll,  Clinton would beat Trump 56% to 40%, whereas Sanders would defeat Trump 59% to 38%.

As for Trump, his "I'm not Hillary Clinton" candidacy doesn't seem to have done him much good among voters, even if he's got the highest name recognition in the un-thinned Republican field.

Cop Killers

A "Black Lives Matter" activist named Sandra Bland died recently in the jail of Waller County, Texas.  Sandra Bland, 28, was about to begin a new job at Texas A&M University before she was killed in custody.  Pulled over ostensibly for failure to signal a lane change, she was arrested rather than cited.  To defend itself from criticism of the arrest, the department released a video showing her arrest by an officer who later asserted the unarmed woman had "assaulted" him.  Although the video contains obvious signs of editing, the department denies that the video was ever edited.

Speaking with her mother about her new job, Bland had said, "My purpose is to go back to Texas and stop all social injustice in the South."

Well, Waller County had an answer for that, didn't it?

Instead of protecting the citizens, police in the United States have a developed a reputation for using force to coerce citizens into complying with a variety of ridiculous demands (why did Sandra need to exit her vehicle to receive a citation for failure to signal a lane change?), or skipping the demands and moving straight to the killing.  The police killing of Caroline Small emphasizes the ability of police to kill unarmed civilians with impunity even if they aren't men trying to purchase an unloaded air rifle at Walmart, or for allegedly shoplifting.  Maybe – at least in New York, when the officer is a rookie – there's at least an apology for killing a civilian for deciding to take the stairs.  The culture of killing American civilians is an epidemic among U.S. law enforcement.  Suicide by cop just doesn't work in places like the United Kingdom:  they don't kill people.  While acknowledging that the United States has a greater population (~319 million) than the United Kingdom (~64 million), the rate of police killings of civilians is vastly different than the population difference:  despite that U.S. data on police killings is incomplete because reporting to the F.B.I. is purely voluntary, the U.S. death toll from "justifiable" killings by police was more than 400 individuals, while British police discharged their weapons in the line of duty a grand total of three (3) times, with zero fatalities.  British shootings of civilians by police is extremely controversial even in the case of a known gangster.  In the U.S., the hypermilitarized "police" now occupying our cities seem virtually expected to kill.  For some real perspective:  U.S. police killed more people this March than U.K. police have killed since 1900.  Last year, the death toll was 1,100 killed in the U.S. compared to twenty-six (26) in the U.S.  This isn't some multiple based on population difference, it's a cultural problem in U.S. "police" forces.

Convicted for Blackness

In yet another example of what's all too common in the American criminal prosecution apparatus, an African American man was convicted and sentenced to hard labor where he languished for 23 years after the real perpetrator has been convicted.  Investigators told prosecutors no evidence existed to link Robert Jones to robberies, murders, and a rape – and that their evidence on the perpetrator was rock-solid (he wore the stolen jewelry, carried the gun ballistics proved fired the killing bullets, and admitted owning the distinctive getaway vehicle seen at each scene).  But the prosecutors had Jones in custody, and he was black, so despite their memos that show they knew there was no admissible evidence linking him to the crimes in any way they argued to a jury he was a dangerous criminal associate of known evildoers and had to be put away for murder, robbery, and rape. (His name was provided to a tip line when a $10k reward was offered; presumably, the tipster understood naming a black man was good business.)

Cop Whistleblower Retaliation in Missouri

The problem that those entrusted with responsibility will fail to exercise the diligence they're paid to exercise, but will instead act in their own interest to do things that are more convenient to themselves personally, is so well-known that the management literature has developed a term of art to describe it:  the agency problem.  The agency problem confronts voters whose legislators enact undesirable laws at the behest of monied special interests just as it confronts citizens whose police decide to use their badges and guns for some purpose other than to protect and serve.

Or … choose simply to protect and serve only their buddies with badges and guns.  In one case, a Missouri police officer who answered honest questions about the in-custody death of a college student (accused of a misdemeanor) was effectively punished by his superiors for stepping out of line.  Allowing police to be held accountable to the public isn't in the interest of the self-interested police.  Read about the case here.

The problem isn't police only.  The problem is the agency problem and its solutions are applicable to shareholders who want Boards who protect shareholders instead of looting the firm to enrich themselves, to protect voters who want legislators to pass laws that comport with public concepts of justice and reason, and to protect members of the public who don't want to fear violence from police who are protected from the consequence of any misconduct they choose to commit.  The agency problem is the problem of business just as it is the problem of democracy.

Faithful agents mean the difference between justice and oppression, fair returns and fraud losses, free elections and a mislead public.

The agency problem matters.

No Trial Needed: How Mr. Browder Died

New York magazine offers an articulate look at how the criminal justice system's servants took the freedom, and ultimately the will to live, from a teen charged with a felony the government never bothered to bring to trial.  The story is called "How All New Yorkers Killed Kalief Browder" and it's worth your time.  If you don't live in New York, the bail statute is likely much more restrictive, increasing the probability that an accused will languish in jail for years. 

I had a civil client I met in a Montgomery County jail whom I discovered had been in custody more than a year without trial.  His last attorney had tried to get him a plea deal that the State liked, to improve his bid to obtain a job in the prosecutor's office.  Other appointed counsel hadn't done much on his case because they weren't paid to prepare it for trial, they were paid to show up for court settings.  Getting paid for something outside a scheduled setting took extra work, and was iffy.  Whether the client did it or not, we should provide the same due process we'd like to receive ourselves – because the rule is there to protect not criminals we expect should lose, but to protect US when we're broke and wrongly accused. 

If the law and its servants can't do that, they have failed.

Retired Cop's Nonsense Explanation For Police Violence Explains A Lot

This video segment does a great job of showing how one retired cop explains away violence against unarmed peaceful protestors by saying that (a) there was violence someplace else, and (b) someone else shot police someplace else.  Therefore, he argues, we should understand police beatings and tear-gassings at peaceful protests by unarmed people.  You kind of have to see this to believe it.

The African American guest has it right:  the retired white cop can't connect any of his grievances against those involved in violence against police with the violence actually witnessed by the guest.  So he makes up explanations to get the conclusion he wants, which is that all the police violence is justified.

If the retired cop's view reflects that of active members of police forces around the country, it's no wonder there's escalating violence against civilians:  cops feel tit-for-tat violence (and killings) is justified.  No wonder people chant "No Justice, No Peace."  And no wonder it makes thugs like the retired cop nervous.  They intend violence and know they're the problem.

Unarmed Man Killed By Cop Who Just Got Off Suspension for Killing Unarmed Man

If you've been following the Jaded Consumer coverage of America's national epidemic of killings by police, you'll be unsurprised at what should be shocking news.  This time, a Walmart called the police on a woman who approached to ask what her son supposedly stole before he was murdered by the boys in blue.  She's been stonewalled – unsurprisingly – by the department who loosed its known killer on the civilian public despite knowing his history killing an unarmed civilian.

NYPD Rookie Kills Unarmed Innocent Who Took Stairs

In a continuation of earlier coverage, The Jaded Consumer notes that NYPD rookie Peter Liang killed Akai Gurley with one shot to the chest when he and his girlfriend decided not to wait for an elevator but to use the stairs.  There, he was shot by the uniformed officer while doing nothing but trying to walk down the stairs.  Although many of the news accounts do not discuss the race of the participants, New York Daily News published a photo that makes clear that Akai Gurley was African American.

The witness Melissa Butler, who entered the stairway with Gurley, reported that officers never identified themselves, never gave any warning, fired without provocation, and called for no medical assistance.  Butler and Gurley fled the gunshot until Gurley collapsed, dead, three floors below.  No ambulance was summoned until Butler called one after pounding on a neighbor's door.

When asked about killing Gurley with a single gunshot to the chest, Officer Liang said, "I shot him accidentally."

Uh-huh.

In other news, crime in New York is down.  Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected last year on a platform that included reigning in the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practice that in 2011 targeted minorities so heavily that 87% of frisk subjects were African American or Latino.  Contrary to assertions that reforming the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices would "end in buckets of blood on city streets[,]" a 75% drop in police stops – from about 700,000 in 2011 to 50,000 this year – has not prevented New York's murder count to drop by 20 deaths compared to the same period last year.  New York City's crime rate hit a 20-year low.  The NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices were ruled unconstitutional last year.

Maybe the way to reduce crime isn't to escalate oppression.  Who knew?

"Islamic State" Sex Slavery, Personalized

Putting a human face on the sexual slavery practiced by the "Islamic State" declared in Syria and parts of Iraq, CNN is running a story about a 19-year old aspiring physician abducted at gunpoint.  Apparently, the "Islamic State" offers a compensation package to fighters that goes beyond $2,000 cash and drugs to stave off flight from battle:  they offer the opportunity to rape captive women.

FBI Director Worried 1st, 4th Amendments Might Mean Something

The Director of the FBI expressed concern recently that technological advances might render practically meaningful the First Amendment's right to free assembly and the Fourth Amendment's right to freedom from unreasonable search.  Instead, it might be necessary to get a court order to snoop on U.S. citizens.  Poor G-man.

Incidentally, nothing in the tech interferes with government collection of metadata, only with the encrypted message contents.  Mapping networks of connected individuals is apparently still fair game for government agencies interested in snooping warrentlessly into the relationships of those presumed innocent.

UPDATE: The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is asking Congress to create federal law that would interfere with genuine privacy of the sort already required by federal law in areas like credit card transactions and health care privacy.  Apparently those technologies are too dangerous for Americans, after all.

ISIS Explains Enslavement Policy

The Islamofascist organization sometimes known as ISIS has apparently published a position paper supporting its people-trafficking, which it describes as consistent with shariah.  The self-declared "Islamic state" previously admitted it peddled flesh for cash, but the position paper seems a propaganda step taken to defend its position against genuine Muslims reacting to seeing their religion employed in this manner.  Or maybe it's an advertisement to young males, unable to get dates back home.  The would-be caliphate doesn't strictly require females to serve domestic roles, though; they're also employed to oppress women in public in ways males might find hard to explain.

It'll be interesting to see what response results from these killers' formal announcement of their outrageous position.  Presumably nobody will now mistake their outlook for something less sinister.  Certainly the women who are hunting these misogynists with rifles have already gotten the message.

If She's Arrested There Must Be Something To It, Right?

A woman found in possession of a spoon with SpaghettiOs sauce on it spent a month in jail after officers wrote a report that described the spoon as bearing "a residue" they alleged showed she'd used the spoon to prepare meth.  While incarcerated she was so worn down she considered taking a plea deal to be freed, despite that it would falsely have branded her for life as a felon drug user.

When the overloaded lab's test results came back it became evident the state had no case.  At least the prosecutors didn't bury the exculpatory evidence as occurred elsewhere, and the error was discovered while its victim was still alive to free.

Has our zeal to make it easy to arrest bad guys reached a point that nobody is safe from losing valuable rights – like the freedom to sleep at home – on a mere accusation?

Grand Jury: OK To Shoot Man For Buying Unloaded BB-gun at Wal-Mart

Today an Ohio grand jury "decided that the police officers were justified" when they killed Cincinnati resident John Crawford III when they found him shopping in a Wal-Mart, and trying to buy one of the unloaded BB-guns for sale lawfully at the store. (Video at link)

Sean Williams, the officer who shot Mr. Crasford while he was turned away and on a cell phone had previously killed a civilian in 2010.  In that incident Scott Brogli, a retired Master Sergeant, was shot dead at his apartment in front of his 17-year-old son.

Unlike the Brogli killing (which police stated involved a knife), Mr. Crawford was facing away from his shooter, was on a cell phone, and was holding an unloaded BB-gun when he was shot twice.

The other officer involved in the Crawford shooting, David Darkow, is already back at work.

Statue Raised to Innocent Man Who Died Imprisoned

In Lubbock, Texas, a statue has been raised honoring Timothy Cole, a nonsmoker who was convicted of an aggravated sexual assault committed by a smoker.  Cole died in prison years after the real perpetrator, Jerry Wayne Johnson, wrote prosecutors to confess he'd committed the assault.  Johnson had heard Cole weeping in a nearby holding cell, but didn't risk confessing until the statute of limitations had run.  The Lubbock County prosecutor who procured the erroneous conviction sent no response to Johnson's letters, and Cole died in prison without ever learning the guilty man had confessed.  Cole died in prison of a severe asthma his family believed would have been better treated in the free world, – treatment that would have extended his life.  Cole's asthma was one reason he never smoked.


Cole had been offered parole if he confessed to the assault, but refused to lie to be set free.  He encouraged his sister to stick with her law school plans, saying he believed in the justice system even if it didn't believe in him.

There are no words.

Islamofascists Sell Sex Slaves for Fundraiser?

Not long ago, the so-called Islamic militants Boku Haram kidnapped hundreds of girls then announced they were for sale.

Now the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is in the news selling as "spoils of war" captive females they claim converted to Islam in order to marry Islamists.

While it's not clear what established governments are willing to do to protect women from being treated as property (U.S. planes apparently engaged in search activity), it's evident that private individuals are willing to take steps to free captives.

This isn't to say that fascist-government-sponsored sex slavery is new (it isn't), or that established governments do better (if Russia is "established", definitely not), or that it can't thrive where local law is otherwise effective (if we doubt law in the U.S., there's at least a tradition of the rule of law in Canada, no?).  There's room for improvement everywhere, apparently.