Giving Cops Bad Incentives to Harass Victimless Behavior

The Washington Post has an interesting report about the huge amount of money that Fairfax County spends to go after gambling. The story cites critics who ask "why law enforcement spends valuable time and money on combating sports gambling. The answer is obvious - and explicit in the story: "...police in Virginia are allowed to keep 100 percent of the assets they seize in state gambling cases." In other words, harassing the gambling business is a profit-making endeavor for police. And it also can be deadly since cops killed an optometrist during a SWAT arrest. The Institute for Justice has a powerful video on the dangers of "policing for profit," and Fairfax County is just one bad example of how this lures cops into misallocating resources to fight behaviors that shouldn't even be illegal.

It's football season, and for millions of Americans that means betting season. ...It's a crime that Fairfax County police take seriously. So seriously that in one recent gambling investigation, they spent -- and lost -- more than $300,000 in cash to take down a Las Vegas-based online bookie and his group of Fairfax-based associates. ...Police critics have long wondered why law enforcement spends valuable time and money on combating sports gambling. In Fairfax, the police rarely publicize their arrests, and the details of their investigations are little known outside the small corps of detectives in the money laundering unit. Unlike drug cases, police in Virginia are allowed to keep 100 percent of the assets they seize in state gambling cases, so other agencies or divisions receive no benefit. And the vast majority of those arrested are placed on probation. "What a waste," said Nicholas Beltrante, founder of the Virginia Citizens Coalition for Police Accountability, a group formed earlier this year in part to combat unnecessary police spending. "The police should be utilizing their resources for more serious crimes." Fairfax's most notorious gambling investigation ended in disaster. In 2006, an undercover detective lost more than $5,000 while betting on NFL games with optometrist Salvatore J. Culosi -- and when the detective called in a SWAT team to make the arrest, an officer shot Culosi once in the heart and killed him. ...Since 2004, the squad has seized about $1 million in cash and assets annually, but some of those cases landed in federal court, where money is divided among various agencies, Schaible said. ...One case from 2006, that of admitted bookmaker Kyle Peters, resulted in police seizing and keeping $566,940 from his bank accounts. Schaible said such funds are recycled "back into investigating cases. It's helping us resolve these and fight further crime."

Protecting Good Cops with Oversight to Deter Bad Cops

Here's a great video on the issue of whether police can and should be videotaped. Put together by my Cato colleagues, the answer is yes, of course. The only thing I'll add is that this actually is a great way to protect the reputation of the vast majority of cops who do their jobs honorably.

Cops Arrest Homeowner for Crime of Self-Defense

A man in New York recently scared off some gang members by firing a couple of warning shots into the ground. When the cops arrived, did they congratulate the man for protecting his family and start looking for the thugs? That's what would happen in a logical and just society, but the anti-gun mentality in New York is so pervasive that the cops actually arrested the homeowner. Needless to say, I can't imagine this happening in Georgia or Wyoming - places where both the law and cops seem to be more rational. Some day, I hope to be on a jury and have a case like this so I can vote not guilty and engage in the noble tradition of jury nullification. Here's an excerpt from the story I found on Drudge.

He was arrested for protecting his property and family. But it’s how the Long Island man did it that police say crossed the line. ...George Grier said he had to use his rifle on Sunday night to stop what he thought was going to be an invasion of his Uniondale home by a gang he thought might have been the vicious “MS-13.” He said the whole deal happened as he was about to drive his cousin home. “I went around and went into the house, ran upstairs and told my wife to call the police. I get the gun and I go outside and I come into the doorway and now, by this time, they are in the driveway, back here near the house. I tell them, you know, ‘Can you please leave?’ Grier said. Grier said the five men dared him to use the gun; and that their shouts brought another larger group of gang members in front of his house. “He starts threatening my family, my life. ‘Oh you’re dead. I’m gonna kill your family and your babies. You’re dead.’ So when he says that, 20 others guys come rushing around the corner. And so I fired four warning shots into the grass,” Grier said. ...You may think a person has the right to defend their home. But the law says you can only use physical force to deter physical force. Grier said he never saw anyone pull out a gun, so a court would have to decide on firing the gun. Police determined Grier had the gun legally. He has no criminal record. And so he was not charged for the weapon.

Is a $1 Million Fine for Speeding too Much?

Like my views on many criminal justice issues, I'm a bit conflicted about this BBC story about a Swedish driver who is being fined about $1 million by Swiss authorities for driving 180 mph. This sounds absurd (and at some level, of course, it is), but if the idea of a fine is to deter speeders, then penalties based on income and/or wealth can be appropriate. On the other hand, I don't like revenue-hungry politicians. I don't like speed traps (though that's presumably not an issue in this instance). And I don't like class warfare policies designed to poke rich people in the eye for the sin of, well, being rich. Feedback is welcome, as always.

A Swedish motorist caught driving at 290km/h (180mph) in Switzerland could be given a world-record speeding fine of SFr1.08m ($1m; £656,000), prosecutors say. The 37-year-old, who has not been named, was clocked driving his Mercedes sports car at 170km/h over the limit. Under Swiss law, the level of fine is determined by the wealth of the driver and the speed recorded. In January, a Swiss driver was fined $290,000 - the current world record.

Are Separate Prisons for AIDS-Infected Prisoners an Unconstitutional Form of Discrimination?

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't pretend any expertise on the legal issues, but this brewing controversy about prison policy in South Carolina strikes me as a case of political correctness run amok. The state separates prisoners with AIDS and sends them to a separate facility that has specialized medical treatment. This policy also protects uninfected prisoners from exposure due to rape. I suppose one could argue that this is a form of quarantine, but all prisoners - by definition - are being quarantined, so that hardly seems to be a compelling argument. A former staffer with the Department of Justice's Civil Rights division has a column in the Washington Examiner, which is excerpted below.

Two unpleasant topics of conversation most of us avoid are the epidemic of HIV/AIDS among prison inmates and a variety of sometimes violent events resulting in transmission of the disease. Some states long ago implemented policies to protect the uninfected part of the prison population while providing exceptional medical treatment and counseling to the infected population. In South Carolina, it has worked so well since 1998 that there has only been a single transmission of HIV/AIDS to a noninfected prisoner. All that may change, however, thanks to a threat from Eric Holder's Justice Department. South Carolina received a letter from the now-infamous Civil Rights Division that the policy of keeping infected inmates at a designated facility, instead of scattered across the state in the general prison population, may unfairly stigmatize infected prisoners. To the Obama political appointees in the Civil Rights Division, this constitutes discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities Act. ...Justice raises three primary objections to this effective and humane approach. First, it prevents infected prisoners "from participating in activities and jobs of their choosing." Leave it to bureaucrats in Washington to concoct the grievance that prisoners have choices when it comes to activities in the first place. Second, DOJ claims the South Carolina program is unconstitutional, something the courts have repeatedly rejected. Once again we see the rule of law falling by the wayside when it comes to decisions of this Civil Rights Division. This is the same Civil Rights Division that was sanctioned more than $4 million during the Clinton administration for bringing cases as frivolous as the one against South Carolina prisons. Third, with all the pragmatism of a sociology lecture at Harvard, DOJ argues that the separation of the HIV/AIDS prisoners "stigmatizes" the prisoners. Ozmint responds, "Prison is a voluntary activity; breaking the law, earning a criminal record, and wearing 'state issue,' all stigmatize. Since one purpose of prison is punishment, this stigmatization is somewhat intentional." How refreshing.

Giving Libertarianism a Bad Name

I cringed when I read this story from the EU Observer that makes it appear that libertarians - at least those in Sweden - are sympathetic to child pornography. If you read the article, the Swedish Pirate Party does have some legitimate concerns about broad and vague laws that can be misused, but this nonetheless seems to be an example of what I call chest-beating libertarianism. This is the impulse to oppose anything a government is doing and thus be a completely-consistent anti-statist. This generally is a very sound instinct, but it can lead to positions that are absurd (do you get rid of laws against murder?). My main piece of advice to hard-core libertarians is that we should focus on getting rid of the programs, department, and agencies that should not exist. And if we ever succeed with those goals, then we can start fighting and squabbling over how to privatize streets and how to protect against child molesters without giving police too much power.

The libertarian Pirate Party in Sweden has set off a storm of controversy by arguing that the country's current laws on child pornography should be done away with. In an interview with Swedish Radio out on Thursday (5 August) Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge described a 1999 child pornography law as "a battering-ram against the open society." The radio spot and an accompanying article noted how a policy plank in the party's election manifesto, published last week, would "make it legal to hold the image, text and sound with child pornography" on a computer. ..."The big story on Swedish Radio, that said we are positive to child pornography, that is really not the case," [the party's communications manager] said. "We want to make it clear that the Pirate Party does not have a positive stance on child pornography, but rather we are opposed to Swedish laws that say that almost anything, pictures, sound, drawn images, anything at all depicting someone under the age of 18 can be called a sexual image." "What we want is not an end to all child pornography laws but a return to their previous form, which existed before 1999, in which it defined it as images of prepubescent children," he said. "Swedish child pornography laws since then are more like something like a yoke the police can apply to this or any case. It shows well how the child pornography law can be used on anyone." ..."The law could also cover a 17-year-old taking a nude picture of himself, keeping the picture until he's 19 and then he is suddenly in possession of child pornography. It's the 18 cut-off that is the main problem." Mr Kindh gave the example of how a Swedish comic books translator, who specialised in translating Japanese manga, was last week arrested under the law: "From a collection of around 1,000 comics, the police found 51 images that they misread as child pornography." The party does want all child pornography laws lifted in relation to any fictional content.

Tough-on-Crime Is the Right Approach, but only if Laws Are Just

The Economist has an excellent article about criminal justice in America, including valuable observations about the over-abundance of victimless crimes and incomprehensible laws that result in prison time for failing to understand the intricacies of government regulations. My only quibble is that the article could have paid more attention to the potential value of locking up people who commit real crimes such as rape, murder, burglary, and assault. I realize I'm nit-picking, and I'm fully aware that prosecutors can engage in abuse even when targeting genuine criminals, but there are some people who belong in jail.

Three pickup trucks pulled up outside George Norris’s home in Spring, Texas. Six armed police in flak jackets jumped out. Thinking they must have come to the wrong place, Mr Norris opened his front door, and was startled to be shoved against a wall and frisked for weapons. He was forced into a chair for four hours while officers ransacked his house. They pulled out drawers, rifled through papers, dumped things on the floor and eventually loaded 37 boxes of Mr Norris’s possessions onto their pickups. They refused to tell him what he had done wrong. “It wasn’t fun, I can tell you that,” he recalls. Mr Norris was 65 years old at the time, and a collector of orchids. He eventually discovered that he was suspected of smuggling the flowers into America, an offence under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. This came as a shock. He did indeed import flowers and sell them to other orchid-lovers. And it was true that his suppliers in Latin America were sometimes sloppy about their paperwork. In a shipment of many similar-looking plants, it was rare for each permit to match each orchid precisely. In March 2004, five months after the raid, Mr Norris was indicted, handcuffed and thrown into a cell with a suspected murderer and two suspected drug-dealers. When told why he was there, “they thought it hilarious.” One asked: “What do you do with these things? Smoke ’em?” Prosecutors described Mr Norris as the “kingpin” of an international smuggling ring. He was dumbfounded: his annual profits were never more than about $20,000. When prosecutors suggested that he should inform on other smugglers in return for a lighter sentence, he refused, insisting he knew nothing beyond hearsay. He pleaded innocent. But an undercover federal agent had ordered some orchids from him, a few of which arrived without the correct papers. For this, he was charged with making a false statement to a government official, a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Since he had communicated with his suppliers, he was charged with conspiracy, which also carries a potential five-year term. As his legal bills exploded, Mr Norris reluctantly changed his plea to guilty, though he still protests his innocence. He was sentenced to 17 months in prison. ...Justice is harsher in America than in any other rich country. Between 2.3m and 2.4m Americans are behind bars, roughly one in every 100 adults. ...As a proportion of its total population, America incarcerates five times more people than Britain, nine times more than Germany and 12 times more than Japan. ...The system has three big flaws, say criminologists. First, it puts too many people away for too long. Second, it criminalises acts that need not be criminalised. Third, it is unpredictable. Many laws, especially federal ones, are so vaguely written that people cannot easily tell whether they have broken them. ...Badly drafted laws create traps for the unwary. In 2006 Georgia Thompson, a civil servant in Wisconsin, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for depriving the public of “the intangible right of honest services”. Her crime was to award a contract (for travel services) to the best bidder. A firm called Adelman Travel scored the most points (on an official scale) for price and quality, so Ms Thompson picked it. She ignored a rule that required her to penalise Adelman for a slapdash presentation when bidding. For this act of common sense, she served four months. (An appeals court freed her.) ...There are over 4,000 federal crimes, and many times that number of regulations that carry criminal penalties. When analysts at the Congressional Research Service tried to count the number of separate offences on the books, they were forced to give up, exhausted. Rules concerning corporate governance or the environment are often impossible to understand, yet breaking them can land you in prison. In many criminal cases, the common-law requirement that a defendant must have a mens rea (ie, he must or should know that he is doing wrong) has been weakened or erased. “The founders viewed the criminal sanction as a last resort, reserved for serious offences, clearly defined, so ordinary citizens would know whether they were violating the law. Yet over the last 40 years, an unholy alliance of big-business-hating liberals and tough-on-crime conservatives has made criminalisation the first line of attack—a way to demonstrate seriousness about the social problem of the month, whether it’s corporate scandals or e-mail spam,” writes Gene Healy, a libertarian scholar. “You can serve federal time for interstate transport of water hyacinths, trafficking in unlicensed dentures, or misappropriating the likeness of Woodsy Owl.” “You’re (probably) a federal criminal,” declares Alex Kozinski, an appeals-court judge, in a provocative essay of that title. Making a false statement to a federal official is an offence. So is lying to someone who then repeats your lie to a federal official. Failing to prevent your employees from breaking regulations you have never heard of can be a crime. A boss got six months in prison because one of his workers accidentally broke a pipe, causing oil to spill into a river. “It didn’t matter that he had no reason to learn about the [Clean Water Act’s] labyrinth of regulations, since he was merely a railroad-construction supervisor,” laments Judge Kozinski. ...Some prosecutors, such as Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced ex-governor of New York, have built political careers by nailing people whom voters don’t like, such as financiers.

Should Convicts Be Allowed to Smoke?

I'm somewhat conflicted by this BBC story from New Zealand. I want prison to be a miserable experience so that there is a strong deterrent effect. Yet anything that keeps prisoners calm is presumably good for prison management. The guy who sent me this story included a comment that a smoking ban will increase the lifespan of prisoners and that will increase the burden on taxpayers (at least for those serving life sentences). I'm enough of a budget geek that this is a compelling argument for me. Give them all unfiltered cigarettes! (except, of course, the ones in jail for victimless crimes, all of whom should be immediately released).

New Zealand is to ban smoking throughout the country's prisons from 1 July 2011, Corrections Minister Judith Collins has announced. The announcement has prompted concerns that violence in prisons could increase if prisoners are denied tobacco. But Ms Collins dismissed the warnings and said high levels of smoking were a risk to staff and prisoners. About 5,700 prisoners - two-thirds of the current total in New Zealand prisons - are smokers. ...Former inmate Shenelle Ngatai told TVNZ that cigarettes were like gold in prisons, where they are used as currency. She also said that jails would become more corrupt if cigarettes were taken off prisoners. ...Denying inmates their "fix" would lead to an increase in violence between desperate prisoners, she added. Human Rights lawyer Michael Bott agreed that the ban would cause more problems than it might solve. "They are going to be very frustrated, very dangerous; it's a toxic dangerous environment, made even worse by such foolishness as this," he told 3News in New Zealand. However, Ms Collins insists that the smoking ban will have other advantages. It would make it easier to put more than one prisoner in each cell, she said, and reduce the number of prison officers suing the government for being exposed to second-hand smoke.

Send Mayor Daley to Jamaica...and Without a Gun to Defend Himself

Is there anything more despicable than a politician with personal (taxpayer-financed!) security guards who wants to prevent other people from having the right of self defense? Mayor Daley of Chicago is a good example of this strange species (scientific name: hypocratus sleazious). The priceless John Lott looks at the evidence from Jamaica to show the idiocy of gun control:

With Chicago's Mayor Daley again claiming that a gun ban is necessary to keep Chicagoans safe, Jamaica and other countries with gun bans might teach Americans a lesson. ...every instance we have data for shows that when a ban has been imposed, murder rates rise. ...Jamaica wasn't always the extremely violent country that it is today (see the figure here). Jamaica experienced large increases in murder rates since enacting a handgun bans in 1974. Since the gun ban, Jamaica’s murder rate has soared to become one of the highest in the world, currently at least double that of other Caribbean countries. ...Just as Mexico's President Calderon showed last week, it is always easy for politicians to blame crime on guns. The crime data in Jamaica shows the same thing as the crime data in Chicago and Washington have shown. It is the law-abiding, good citizens, not the criminals, who are disarmed by gun bans.

Asset Forfeiture Laws Should Be Repealed

I´ve already posted a great video from the folks at the Institute for Justice about this issue, but this John Stossel column is another good reminder of the corrupt and evil impact of asset forfeiture laws. If bureaucrats have an incentive to take people´s property - even if they never get convicted of a crime, the results are bound to be horrendous. Repeal is the right answer, but at the very least the laws should be changed so cops and prosecutors can´t line their own pockets:

Zaher El-Ali has repaired and sold cars in Houston for 30 years. One day, he sold a truck to a man on credit. Ali was holding the title to the car until he was paid, but before he got his money the buyer was arrested for drunk driving. The cops then seized Ali's truck and kept it, planning to sell it. ...The police say they can keep it under forfeiture law because the person driving the car that day broke the law. It doesn't matter that the driver wasn't the owner. It's as if the truck committed the crime. "I have never seen a truck drive," Ali said. I don't think it's the fault of the truck. And they know better." Something has gone wrong when the police can seize the property of innocent people. ... This is serious, folks. The police can seize your property if they think it was used in a crime. If you want it back, you must prove it was not used criminally. The burden of proof is on you. This reverses a centuries-old safeguard in Anglo-American law against arbitrary government power. The feds do this, too. In 1986, the Justice Department made $94 million on forfeitures. Today, its forfeiture fund has more than a billion in it. ..."When you give people the wrong incentives, people respond accordingly. And so it shouldn't be surprising that they're stretching the definition of law enforcement," Balko said. "But the fundamental point is that you should not have people out there enforcing the laws benefiting directly from them."

The Drug War Is a Failure

The Associated Press has a thorough story looking at the utter failure in the War on Drugs. In part, this is a predictable result of government incompetence, akin to the War on Poverty. And just as the so-called War on Poverty has negative side effects such as increased dependency, the War on Drugs has negative said effects including lots of wasteful government spending. I'm personally very anti-drug, and if I ever catch any of my kids doing drugs, they'll be sorry, but that doesn't mean the government should be involved. Let's look at some of the key excerpts from the article, beginning with a look at the overall cost and an admission that all the added spending hasn't generated any positive results:

After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread. Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked. "In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. ...President Richard M. Nixon seized on a new war he thought he could win. "This nation faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people," Nixon said as he signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. The following year, he said: "Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive." His first drug-fighting budget was $100 million. Now it's $15.1 billion, 31 times Nixon's amount even when adjusted for inflation.

Experts who have looked at the issue say criminalization is bad policy, costing lives, expanding government, and misallocating law enforcement resources:

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, the AP tracked where that money went, and found that the United States repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did little to stop the flow of drugs. ...Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse. ...Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron says the only sure thing taxpayers get for more spending on police and soldiers is more homicides. "Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use," Miron said, "but it's costing the public a fortune." ...The dealers who are caught have overwhelmed justice systems in the United States and elsewhere. U.S. prosecutors declined to file charges in 7,482 drug cases last year, most because they simply didn't have the time. That's about one out of every four drug cases. ......A full 10 percent of Mexico's economy is built on drug proceeds — $25 billion smuggled in from the United States every year, of which 25 cents of each $100 smuggled is seized at the border.

The good news is that there is growing interest in a free-market/libertarian approach:

A decade ago, no politician who wanted to keep his job would breathe a word about legalization, but a consensus is growing across the country that at least marijuana will someday be regulated and sold like tobacco and alcohol. California voters decide in November whether to legalize marijuana, and South Dakota will vote this fall on whether to allow medical uses of marijuana, already permitted in California and 13 other states.

Unfortunately, Obama seems to have little interest in a more rational policy, even though he admits drug use when he was young. As usual, politicians get to live their lives using one set of rules while imposing a different set of rules on everyone else:

Obama is requesting a record $15.5 billion for the drug war for 2011, about two thirds of it for law enforcement at the front lines of the battle: police, military and border patrol agents struggling to seize drugs and arrest traffickers and users. ...Until 100 years ago, drugs were simply a commodity. ...In 1904, an Episcopal bishop returning from a mission in the Far East argued for banning opium after observing "the natives' moral degeneration." In 1914, The New York Times reported that cocaine caused blacks to commit "violent crimes," and that it made them resistant to police bullets. ...a young Barack Obama was one of those young users, a teenager smoking pot and trying "a little blow when you could afford it," as he wrote in "Dreams From My Father." When asked during his campaign if he had inhaled the pot, he replied: "That was the point." So why persist with costly programs that don't work?

Subsidizing Terrorism with Welfare Handouts

Here are some very depressing stories. The Daily Mail reports that a European Court has ruled that the U.K. no longer can impose restrictions on welfare payments to women married to suspected terrorists:

A European court has instructed Britain to drop restrictions which limit social security benefits paid to the wives of terror suspects. Ministers imposed tight rules on payouts to stop the money falling into the hands of alleged Al Qaeda fanatics. Under the restrictions, cash payments were strictly limited and families had to show receipts to justify every penny of spending. But yesterday the European Court of Justice said there was no danger of the handouts being used to fund terror and branded the measures unlawful.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated story. Here's a report from the Express about a Muslim cleric who collected welfare from the Brits while (to put it mildly) being a reprehensible slug: "The twisted cleric provoked outrage by comparing British troops to Nazi stormtroopers and telling parents of dead soldiers that their children had died in vain. ...Choudary, a former lawyer...rakes in more than £25,000 a year in welfare handouts." And CNN reports that, "Since the mid-90s, London has been a haven for foreign jihadi preachers, organizers, agitators and propagandists, many of them recipients of generous welfare benefits. And here's a BBC report noting that: "In November 2000, Mr Kaplan was convicted for incitement to murder and sentenced to four years in jail. Since then, intelligence reports say his followers have become even more devoted to Mr Kaplan, considering him a martyr for the cause of Allah. ...Mr Kaplan is believed to have a fortune worth millions. Nonetheless, he claimed social benefits in Cologne for many years until 2m Deutschmarks (1m euros, £700,000) in cash was found in his flat. This Mickey Kaus blog post has more nauseating details.

The most amazing story comes from Australia. Here's a Youtube copy of a report showing that Aussie taxpayers gave $1 million of welfare over 19 years to an Islamic extremist who planned to kill thousands of innocent people.

Great Moments in Government Stupidity

The blogging about Greece is too depressing, so let's kick a couple of government bureaucracies for bone-headed stupidity. This excerpt is from a Pajamas Media story about how the Customs bureaucrats mistakenly confused BB guns for machine guns, and then turned the toys over to the BATF bureaucrats, who are now stonewalling and refusing to return the toy guns and admit the government's mistake. I'm willing to stipulate that these toys are probably designed to look like real guns, and they probably shoot multiple BBs with one pull of the trigger, so perhaps the Customs bureaucrats made an honest mistake. But it appears that BATF bureaucrats are in CYA mode:

It was only a month ago that a bizarre story broke in the Pacific Northwest, as Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers trumpeted their seizure of what they claimed were more than two dozen machine guns disguised as toys. The problem with the CBP claim was that the items seized were...gas blowback Airsoft rifles that shoot plastic BBs. They really were toys. But instead of admitting they can’t tell a toy gun from a real one, CBP turned these Airsoft rifles over to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the agency agreed that these pot-metal made, plastic BB-shooting plinkers were honest-to-God firearms. ...multiple experts examined the dubious ATF claim and found that the WE Tech rifles confiscated by the CBP and slated for destruction by the ATF cannot be converted to machine guns, or any other kind of working firearm. ...Customs has refused to answer questions addressed to them about the seizure, referring all claims to the ATF. As a result, Pajamas Media filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the ATF.. The ATF’s written response to the FOIA request was less than helpful. Instead of providing information about the WE Tech rifles seized from Airsoft Outlet Northwest at the Port of Tacoma, Washington, ATF responded with what appeared to be a clumsy bait-and-switch... Perhaps an expert in FOIA law can explain this interesting redirection to those of us less versed in the finer points of the legalities, but it would seem quite bizarre that an agency subject to FOIA requests has the authority to randomly determine that the requester really wanted something entirely different … and entirely useless. ...Hope is not lost for Airsoft Outlet Northwest, however. The government recently released some of the $20,000 in inventory they’d seized, including 15 other Airsoft machine guns made by WE Tech and 20 bolt-action Airsoft guns. Perhaps with some patience — and a bit of tenacity — the ATF and Customs can finally be convinced to return these toys to their rightful owners. Getting them to admit they were laughably wrong may be an entirely different matter.

Gangster Government

I'm down in Miami for the Resource Bank and saw this video at the Heritage Foundation booth. They did an excellent job exposing how the federal government too often acts like a bunch of thugs. I am disgusted and ashamed that my government puts people like this in prison.

Share this blog post with your friends.

Asset Forfeiture Laws: A License to Steal?

This Institute for Justice video shows what happens when bad laws are enacted (often using the excuse of fighting crime) that give government unchecked power.

Subsidized Viagra for Sex Offenders: A Fitting Conclusion to the Obamacare Nightmare

I don't seem to be as depressed as everyone else about Obamacare, in part because our system is already so distorted and controlled by government that (this is my rough guess, to be sure) all we did was move from a system that is 68 percent run by government to a system that is 79 percent run by government. Nonetheless, any movement in the wrong direction is terrible. But there is one group that will celebrate the passage of the reconciliation portion of Obamacare. As noted by an Oklahoma newspaper, the Senate of the United States voted to kill an amendment that would deny subsidies for erectile dysfunction drugs for convicted child molesters, rapists, and other sex offenders.

The Senate on Wednesday killed a proposal by Sen. Tom Coburn to prevent convicted sex offenders from getting Viagra or similar prescriptions in the insurance markets to be established under the new health reform law. ...Coburn, R-Muskogee, called the new health reform law "the greatest assault on liberty this country has ever had,” as he put Democrats in the position of voting down his proposal to prevent convicted child molesters, rapists and other sex offenders from getting federal drug coverage for erectile dysfunction drugs. The amendment was killed by a vote of 57-42. ..."This amendment will prohibit prescriptions for recreational drugs for rapists and child molesters,” Coburn said. "Nobody can disagree with that … If this bill goes through without this amendment, your tax dollars are going to be paying for Viagra for child molesters. That’s what’s going to happen.”

Should Banks Be Forced by the Government to Spy on Consumers?

There's a principled Fourth Amendment argument against anti-money laundering laws. In this video, however, I mostly focus on the cost-benefit issue, explaining that the fight against crime will be more effective if law enforcement is not forced to look for a needle in a haystack.

Two More Great Gun Control Posters

I'm told these posters are created by a guy named Oleg Volk. All I know is that I got an email with a bunch of them. The two I posted earlier and these two are my favorites.

Good Gun Control Photos

The English Have Gone Bonkers

This blog periodically makes fun of England (even though it is one of my favorite nations) for big government and political correctness, but these two stories caused my jaw to drop. First, the Daily Mail reports that a man was jailed for several hours because he was falsely suspected of writing an email that indirectly may have made an un-PC reference to Gypsies. Yes, you read correctly. It is a crime to utter bad thoughts in the nation that gave the world the Magna Carta. To add insult to injury, the investigation cost taxpayers more than $15,000:

A...businessman was arrested at home in front of his wife and young son over an email which council officials deemed ‘offensive’ to gipsies – but which he had not even written. ...The 45-year-old IT boss was held in a police cell for four hours until it was established he had nothing to do with the email, which had been sent by one of his then workers, Paul Osmond. But police had taken his DNA and later confirmed they would be holding it indefinitely. The businessman, who has asked not to be named, was also fingerprinted in the police investigation estimated to have cost taxpayers up to £12,000. He said two uniformed officers came to his house on a Sunday afternoon and said he would be handcuffed if he did not accompany them to the police station. His computer and other internet equipment were also seized.

This next story may be even crazier. The Guardian reports that a woman - alone with her daughter inside her own home - was warned by police for waving a knife at some thugs who were looking in her window. The police (and this is not a joke) told her that you're not allowed to protect yourself against an intruder. Gee, that must be very comforting for the rape, assault, and burglary victims in the United Kingdom. Let's pray this level of idiocy does not cross the Atlantic:

Myleene Klass has been warned by police for waving a knife at teenagers who were peering into a window of her house late at night. Klass was in the kitchen with her daughter upstairs when she spotted the youths in her garden just after midnight on Friday. She grabbed a knife and banged the windows before they ran away. Hertfordshire police warned her she should not have used a knife to scare off the youths because carrying an "offensive weapon", even in her own home, was illegal. ...Klass's spokesman, Jonathan Shalit, ...told the Sunday Telegraph. "...the police explained to her that even if you're at home alone and you have an intruder, you are not allowed to protect yourself."