Category: Justice

A Good Start

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The LA school district has decided to stop sending kids to juvie for minor infractions. This is a much better than the zero tolerance crap that has been pushed for the past few decades:

Students caught misbehaving in the nation’s second largest school district will be sent to the principal’s office rather than the courthouse as part of sweeping disciplinary reforms announced Tuesday by Los Angeles schools.

Under the new policy, police officers at Los Angeles Unified School District won’t arrest or cite students for low-level offenses like possessing alcohol or marijuana but will instead refer students to administrators or counselors — a shift that educators and justice officials say will prevent students from becoming mired in the criminal justice system.

The decriminalization of student discipline marks the latest rollback to “zero tolerance” policies that were instituted in the 1970s and 1980s and intensified in the wake of the Columbine school shooting. School districts from California to Florida have instituted so-called restorative justice measures, which aim to address the underlying reasons for misconduct rather than mete out harsh punishments. The Obama administration in January issued recommendations favoring conflict resolution over arrests and citations.

The school to prison pipeline is a deeply wrong, and it good that school districts are beginning to recognize this fact.

Well, I Would Prefer a Bounty on the Vulture’s Heads, but this Works Too

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Argentina is offering a voluntary bond swap to exit US jurisdiction:

Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández announced plans on Tuesday to launch a voluntary debt swap aimed at dodging a US court ruling that last month triggered the country’s second default in less than 13 years.

The government is seeking approval from congress for plans that would enable it to service debt in Argentina as well as allow bondholders to exchange their debt issued under foreign law for bonds of the same value governed by local law.

Ms Fernández said Argentina would stop using Bank of New York Mellon as a trustee and instead make payments on its bonds via an account at Banco de la Nación in Buenos Aires, after the default was caused by a US judge preventing BNY Mellon from transferring $539m to bondholders.

The US Supreme Court upheld the judge’s ruling that Argentina must pay its so-called holdout creditors in full at the same time as paying the rest of its bondholders, who accepted a 65 per cent haircut on their bonds after a 2001 default.

One wonders how many of the bond holders will take the deal.

My guess is most of the non-vultures will if Argentina sweetens the deal by a few more basis points on the bonds.

Of course, the alternative is that the court will prevent disbursements to the bond-holders who refuse the swap for a few years so I don’t think that the deal needs to be sweetened by all that much.

Still, I prefer sending bounty hunters after the vultures.

This is Beyond Repulsive

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It appears that some courts have made the conscious decision to imprison poor people for just being poor:

In a recent letter to the United States Sentencing Commission, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. sharply criticized the growing trend of evidence-based sentencing, in which courts use data-driven predictions of defendants’ future crime risk to shape sentences. Mr. Holder is swimming against a powerful current. At least 20 states have implemented this practice, including some that require risk scores to be considered in every sentencing decision. Many more are considering it, as is Congress, in pending sentencing-reform bills.

 Risk-assessment advocates say it’s a no-brainer: Who could oppose “smarter” sentencing? But Mr. Holder is right to pick this fight. As currently used, the practice is deeply unfair, and almost certainly unconstitutional. It contravenes the principle that punishment should depend on what a defendant did, not on who he is or how much money he has.

 The basic problem is that the risk scores are not based on the defendant’s crime. They are primarily or wholly based on prior characteristics: criminal history (a legitimate criterion), but also factors unrelated to conduct. Specifics vary across states, but common factors include unemployment, marital status, age, education, finances, neighborhood, and family background, including family members’ criminal history.

Such factors are usually considered inappropriate for sentencing; if anything, some might be mitigating circumstances. But in the new, profiling-based sentencing regimen, markers of socioeconomic disadvantage increase a defendant’s risk score, and most likely his sentence.

So, you live in the bad part of town (high crime area), you go to jail longer.

You grew up poor, you go to jail longer.

Broken family, you go to jail longer.

Unemployed, you go to jail longer.

From a single parent household, you go to jail longer.

As Hamilton Nolan observes:

Design an economic and political system that requires a great many people to be poor. Pass laws that are far more likely to be broken by poor people. Use a computer to dispassionately predict that poor people will probably break the law more in the future. Then sentence poor people to longer prison terms.

This is a f%$#ing abomination.

A Correction That I am Happy to Make

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In yesterday’s post about the indictment against Rick Perry, I suggested that the indictment for abuse of official power against Rick Perry, I supported the outcome, but was dubious on the actual law.

Well, I was wrong. Both the facts and the law support this indictment.

First, in addition to his public pronouncements, Governor Goodhair called the Travis County DA to threaten the veto:

When Lehmberg refused to resign, Perry threatened to veto funding of her Public Integrity Unit—which investigates corruption of local, state, and federal public officials. Sources close to the investigation told me that Perry’s threat happened as the unit’s prosecutors were investigating whether Perry’s political backers and campaign contributors had received preferential and improper treatment in receiving grants from an anti-cancer state agency, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

 ……… (Run of the mill Texas corruption snipped)

 When Lehmberg refused to resign, Perry threatened to veto funding of her Public Integrity Unit—which investigates corruption of local, state, and federal public officials. Sources close to the investigation told me that Perry’s threat happened as the unit’s prosecutors were investigating whether Perry’s political backers and campaign contributors had received preferential and improper treatment in receiving grants from an anti-cancer state agency, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

Making public statements and publicly threatening a veto is one thing, but the behind the scenes machinations and contacts by his evil minions™ appear to be a direct threat against the office that is investigating him.

And then there is the legal precedent:

The closest precedent dates back to 1917, when Gov. James Ferguson, who wanted the University of Texas to fire some faculty and staff of which he disapproved, was indicted based on his veto of funding to the university. Ferguson resigned before he was convicted. “There’s not really any legal or political precedent for this. You’ve got to go back nearly a century,” Jillson said.

I think that the case is far stronger than is made out in Politico.

The case against Perry is a lot stronger than against Ferguson, because those college professors were not investigating him and his, and DA Lehmberg is investigating him and his.

I still think that it is a tough case to prove unless the DA turns one of Perry’s evil minions™, but I do think that it is a winnable case.

I Have Mixed Emotions About This………

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I think that Texas Governor Rick Perry is a truly evil person, he has presided over the dubious executions, as well as the obstruction of the investigations of these questionable executions.

Additionally, I think that his handling of Texas retirement funds have been clearly corrupt.

I also get the fact that they got Al Capone for tax evasion.

But I have mixed emotions about the abuse of power allegations against Rick Perry:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) was indicted on felony charges Friday by a grand jury in Austin for allegedly abusing his veto power to force the resignation of a Democratic prosecutor.

The grand jury indicted the 2016 presidential hopeful on two felony counts – coercion of public official and abuse of official capacity, according to The Associated Press

Perry, 64, must turn himself in to the Travis County Jail, where he will be booked, fingerprinted and have his mug shot taken, according to KVUE-TV.

The charges stem from an ethics complaint filed last year by Texans for Public Justice, a left-leaning government watchdog group, claimed that Perry abused his official powers by threatening to veto money for public corruption prosecutors in the state in order to pressure a local district attorney to resign.

The public integrity unit is housed in the Travis County district attorney’s office. Perry called for the resignation of District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg after she was arrested and pled guilty in April 2013 to drunken driving.

Lehmberg, a Democrat, did not resign. Perry eventually made his veto threat a reality. The special prosecutor on the case worked to show evidence that Perry’s threat to veto $7.5 million over two years was unlawful.

I do not think that Governor Goodhair is on the side of the angels. 

Travis County is both one of the few strongly Democratic counties in Texas, and because the capitol, Austin, is located in Travis County, it also runs the state public integrity division.

Were Lehmberg to resign, it is clear that Perry would replace her with a political crony who would do their level best to ignore the ethical cesspool that is Texas politics.

On the political or social merits, it is clearly a good thing that Rick Perry is looking at some time in the hoosegow, but I am a bit dubious as to the underlying legal theory:  It seems to me that a governor’s veto should be accorded a wide amount of respect, even if the governor in question should not be accorded any respect.

Pass the Popcorn

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The judge reviewing the collusion among Silicon Valley firms to suppress high tech wages has just ruled the settlement to be inadequate:

The judge overseeing the landmark Silicon Valley wage theft antitrust lawsuit has struck down the $324 million settlement reached between most of the class action plaintiffs and the defendants — Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe.

 In her 32-page order striking down the settlement terms, issued just moments ago, US District Judge Lucy Koch writes:

“This Court has lived with this case for nearly three years, and during that time, the Court has reviewed a significant number of documents in adjudicating not only the substantive motions, but also the voluminous sealing requests. Having done so, the Court cannot conclude that the instant settlement falls within the range of reasonableness. As this Court stated in its summary judgment order, there is ample evidence of an overarching conspiracy between the seven Defendants…”

This is stunning news, and it means that we still may get a trial after all, and learn more about the Techtopus wage theft conspiracy.

 Judge Koh bases her rejection by comparing the $324 million sum to the earlier settlement in 2013 with three other defendants in the wage-theft lawsuit: Intuit, LucasFilm and Pixar. Judging by that metric, Judge Koh argues that the settlement figure should have been at least $380 million. She also cites the “strength” of the plaintiffs’ case against the Big Tech defendants, and rejects the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ argument about the difficulties in winning an antitrust wage theft lawsuit of this scope.

This should get interesting for a number of reasons:

  • The documents make it pretty clear that the plaintiffs’ claims are airtight. (They also prove that Steve Jobs was a sociopathic @sshole, but that has been common knowledge for decades within the tech sector)
  • If the case proceeds, discovery should create even more damning information.
  • The blatant illegality of the behavior is such that the insurance carriers for the tech firms may end up suing them, claiming that the behavior is covered under the “deliberate acts” exclusions that almost all liability insurance policies contain.

This should be entertaining.

This is Too Awesome for Words

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Some cops in the UK were on their way to a fancy dress party (in the US we call them a costume party), and they encounter, and apprehended a man threatening people’s lives at a super market while dressed as a zebra and a monkey:

A pair of off-duty police officers who made an arrest while dressed as a zebra and a monkey have been commended for their bravery.

PCs Tracy Griffin and Terri Cave were on their way to a fancy dress party when they came across a man yelling threatening abuse in a supermarket in Coventry in March 2014.

The pair, dressed in zebra and monkey onesies, wrestled the man to the ground as he left the Co-op store and told one of the staff to ring 999.

The man was arrested and taken into police custody on suspicion of public order offences, said West Midlands police. The PCs, who are based in Solihull, spent the rest of their evening filing reports at the police station rather than heading to the party.

On hearing the news of the arrest, colleagues tweeted from @SolihullPolice: “Man threatening to kill people didn’t expect to be wrestled to the ground by our off-duty officer in a zebra onesie. We go that extra mile.”

This is so awesome on so many levels.

H/t the PBS news/comedy show Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me.

Barack Obama Just Admitting to Covering Up Crimes Against Humanity, Which is a Crime Against Humanity

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Barack Obama has blithely stated that, “We tortured some folks,” but continues to insist that there will not be any sort of accountability for this:

In startlingly blunt phrasing, President Obama on Friday acknowledged the CIA’s use of brutal interrogation tactics in the years after the Sept. 11 attack, even as he defended the agency’s top spy, who is a veteran of the era.

 “We tortured some folks,” Obama said to reporters during a news conference Friday. “We did some things that were contrary to our values.”

 ………

 He sought to put the interrogation program in context, recalling Americans’ fear after the Sept. 11 attacks and the “enormous pressure” on law enforcement to prevent more attacks.

 “You know, it is important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had,” Obama said. “And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.”

No, they weren’t patriots, they were “Good Germans”.

He also further makes it clear that not only will there be no prosecution of torturers, there won’t even be a real investigation of who gave the orders.

As Richard Nixon’s head in a jar might attest to, sometimes it’s the cover up that constitutes a crime, and Obama has thrown his lot in with the coverup.

Whoever performed, authorized, or ordered torture, at a very minimum, should be stripped of their security clearances and fired.  (I would argue that the same should apply to those who did not report torture through the chain of command)

He was forced to make this statement, since the Senate report on this reveals that the torture was more common and more brutal than was reported to Congress of the public, as well as the fact that it never produced meaningful actionable intelligence.

It is also important to note that many of the people tortured were guilty of nothing, and had just been swept up in a panic driven dragnet and bounty program.

Finally, it should be noted that torture comes home.  National guardsman who observe or participate in torture, and then come home to work in civilian law enforcement, are more likely to engage in torture themselves.

Prosecution, and public shaming, are essential to stopping this.

Fabulous!

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The Uganda constitutional court has ruled their Kill the Gays (lite) bill unconstitutional:

Gay rights campaigners in Uganda and around the world are celebrating a decision by the country’s constitutional court to strike down a widely condemned anti-gay law on a legal technicality.

Activists in the courtroom cheered after a panel of five judges ruled on Friday that the speaker of parliament acted illegally when she allowed a vote on the measure despite at least three objections that not enough MPs were in attendance.

“The speaker was obliged to ensure that there was quorum,” the court said in its ruling. “We come to the conclusion that she acted illegally.”

While celebrating the ruling, activists warned that homosexuality remained a criminal offence in the east African country under colonial-era laws.

While much of the blame for this rests on the politicians of Uganda, who are, after all, human beings with their own capability of agency, but I really do think that we should be investigating members of “The Family” in the United States for conspiracy to commit genocide.  (Click the link, the Family is a scary bunch of people)

It’s nice that Uganda cannot throw people convicted of “aggravated homosexuality” into jail for life, but it would be nicer still if they were to repeal the colonial-era laws.

Seriously, Republican Judges are Just Phoning it in Now

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In the Hobby Lobby case, we have Justice Alito pulling a religious privilege for corporations out of thing air, but not for blood transfusions or psychology, because the people who oppose medical procedures are, Jehova’s Witnesses and Scientologists,  are icky.

They did the same thing with 150 years of precedent on recess appointments, etc.

Now with the ruling of the DC Court of appeals on Obamacare subsidies, they went off the deep end, and ruled that the subsidies only apply to states that have set up their own exchanges.

2 hours later, the 4th circuit court of appeals ruled the other way.

What’s more in the 4th Circuit’s opinion has an assent that absolutely nails the amazing level of hackitude in the DC Circuit’s opinion:

In fact, Appellants’ reading is not literal; it’s cramped. No case stands for the proposition that literal readings should take place in a vacuum, acontextually, and untethered from other parts of the operative text; indeed, the case law indicates the opposite. National Association of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife, 551 U.S. 644, 666 (2007). So does common sense: If I ask for pizza from Pizza Hut for lunch but clarify that I would be fine with a pizza from Domino’s, and I then specify that I want ham and pepperoni on my pizza from Pizza Hut, my friend who returns from Domino’s with a ham and pepperoni pizza has still complied with a literal construction of my lunch order. That is this case: Congress specified that Exchanges should be established and run by the states, but the contingency provision permits federal officials to act in place of the state when it fails to establish an Exchange. The premium tax credit calculation subprovision later specifies certain conditions regarding state-run Exchanges, but that does not mean that a
literal reading of that provision somehow precludes its applicability to substitute federally-run Exchanges or erases the contingency provision out of the statute.

Seriously, conservative Judges will take any cockamamie fringe idea that some desperate for tenure right law professor, desperate for tenure can scrawl on a bathroom wall, and they are running with it.

They have completely lost it, because, to quote Blazing Saddles, “The Sheriff is a Ni!!!”

Detroit Retirees Vote to Cut Own Pensions, Bond Scum Plan to Fight it in Court

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I understand how insurance works: You sell insurance, and when someone makes a claim, you do whatever you can to screw your policy holders.

In the case of Detroit pensioners, who have no access social security as municipal employees, made concessessions, but the bond insurers want it all:

Two major bond insurers that could lose billions on Detroit’s bankruptcy blasted the city’s plan to pay retirees more than financial creditors and vowed to fight retirees’ endorsement of the deal.

After pensioners voted by a wide margin to accept cuts and allow the Detroit Institute of Arts to spin off into an independent charitable trust, bond insurers Syncora and Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. (FGIC) pledged to continue their vigorous legal fight against the city.

Judge Steven Rhodes will now conduct a confirmation trial starting Aug. 14 to consider evidence and witness testimony before determining whether the plan is fair, feasible and legal and can be approved.

The bond insurers — which backed a $1.4-billion debt deal brokered in 2005 by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s administration to fund pensions — voted no on the city’s offer to them, which ranged from 0 to 10 cents on the dollar.

BTW, they want the Detroit Institute of Art, one of the finest art collections in the United States, to sell off all of its art, because they cheated Detroit with their (probably illegal) interest rate swaps, fair and square.

Not enough bullets.

Least Surprising News of the Day

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You know all those terrorism plots that the FBI uncovered?

A study has revealed that the FBI manufactured most of the terror plots that it broke up:

Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the “direct involvement” of government agents or informants, a new report says.

Some of the controversial “sting” operations “were proposed or led by informants”, bordering on entrapment by law enforcement. Yet the courtroom obstacles to proving entrapment are significant, one of the reasons the stings persist.

The lengthy report, released on Monday by Human Rights Watch, raises questions about the US criminal justice system’s ability to respect civil rights and due process in post-9/11 terrorism cases. It portrays a system that features not just the sting operations but secret evidence, anonymous juries, extensive pretrial detentions and convictions significantly removed from actual plots.

“In some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act,” the report alleges.

Which ones weren’t? Those ones:

The four high-profile domestic plots it found free of government involvement were the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Najibullah Zazi’s 2009 plot to bomb the New York subway; the attempted Times Square carbombing of 2010; and the 2002 shooting at Los Angeles International Airport’s El Al counter.

So, while the FBI has been finding random idiots (read the case files, they are really stupid, while missing all of of the plots that actually went through to fruition.

But they did catch one potential terrorist that they did not sponsor ……… They just missed the other ¾ of them.

It’s an adequate batting average, for a pitcher, I guess.

You know, maybe the FBI should stop manufacturing terrorist plots, and start looking at real terror plots.

And while they are at it, how about going after the f%$#ing banksters?  They are still defrauding the rest of us.

And while we are at it, how about a pony.

I’m not gonna get that either.

Meanwhile, Some Good News on the IP Front

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The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle has been claiming that, even though most of the Sherlock Holmes stories are out of copyright, a few are old enough to fall under the Mickey Mouse copyright extensions,* so the whole character falls under copyright.

The appellate court ruled against them and now the Supreme Court has denied cert, effectively ending the case in favor of the public domain:

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan refused on Thursday afternoon to block a federal appeals court ruling against continued copyright protection for fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, for any stories about him that have entered the public domain. Kagan acted without even asking for a response from an author who is preparing a new Holmes anthology, and she gave no explanation for her denial of a stay.

The nickel tour of the original case is here:

The estate has been attempting to block a California lawyer and Holmes fancier, Leslie S. Klinger, from publishing a new book about the two characters unless he is willing to get a license from the estate and pay a fee. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected the estate’s copyright claim, calling it “quixotic.” The new filing at the Court, including the Seventh Circuit’s ruling as an appendix, has been docketed as 14A47, and can be read here.

 ………

 Doyle has been dead for eighty-four years, but because of extensions of copyright terms, ten of his fifty-six short stories continue to be protected from copying. All of the short stories and four novels were published between 1887 and 1927, but all of the collection except ten short stories have entered into the public domain as copyrights expired.

 The Doyle estate, though, is pressing a quite unusual copyright theory. It contends that, since Doyle continued to develop the characters of Holmes and Watson throughout all of the stories, the characters themselves cannot be copied even for what Doyle wrote about them in the works that are now part of the public domain and thus ordinarily would be fair game for use by others.

It’s nice that cockamamie IP theories are no longer getting judicial deference.

*I mean that literally. Disney has been vociferous in lobbying for copyright extensions to ensure that the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, remain out of the public domain.

I’m Guessing that Obama Has a Sad Right Now

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Because the UN Human Rights Commissioner has said that Edward Snowden should not be prosecuted:

The United Nations’s top human rights official has suggested that the United States should abandon its efforts to prosecute Edward Snowden, saying his revelations of massive state surveillance had been in the public interest.

The UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, credited Snowden, a former US National Security Agency contractor, with starting a global debate that has led to calls for the curtailing of state powers to snoop on citizens online and store their data.

“Those who disclose human rights violations should be protected: we need them,” Pillay told a news conference.

“I see some of it here in the case of Snowden, because his revelations go to the core of what we are saying about the need for transparency, the need for consultation,” she said. “We owe a great deal to him for revealing this kind of information.”

The United States has filed espionage charges against Snowden, charging him with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorised person.

Pillay declined to say whether President Barack Obama should pardon Snowden, saying he had not yet been convicted. “As a former judge I know that if he is facing judicial proceedings we should wait for that outcome,” she said. But she added that Snowden should be seen as a human rights defender.

Considering the fact that Obama’s war on whistle-blowers makes Richard Nixon look like Julian Assange, I rather imagine that Obama is on the phone telling UN Ambassador Samantha Powers to go postal on Ms. Pillay.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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As a small child, I spent a fair amount of time unsupervised.

As a 20 year old, I took a year off while I changed schools and majors, and saw the (IMHO Ronald Reagan inspired) height of the missing child hysteria in 1981-82.*

So, I am disgusted, but not surprised, that a mom was jailed for sending her 9 year old to play in the park alone, despite the fact that she was sent with a cell phone, and the mother was at work nearby:

Just in case you thought you could parent whatever way you see fit in 2014 America:

A North Augusta mother is in jail after witnesses say she left her nine-year-old daughter at a nearby park, for hours at a time.

Hours at a time? At a park? In the summer? Gosh! That certainly sounds normal and fun like a reason to throw a mom in jail—and place the child in state custody.

Here are the facts: Debra Harrell works at McDonald’s in North Augusta, South Carolina. For most of the summer, her daughter had stayed there with her, playing on a laptop that Harrell had scrounged up the money to purchase. (McDonald’s has free WiFi.) Sadly, the Harrell home was robbed and the laptop stolen, so the girl asked her mother if she could be dropped off at the park to play instead.

Harrell said yes. She gave her daughter a cell phone. The girl went to the park—a place so popular that at any given time there are about 40 kids frolicking—two days in a row. There were swings, a “splash pad,” and shade. On her third day at the park, an adult asked the girl where her mother was. At work, the daughter replied.

The shocked adult called the cops. Authorities declared the girl “abandoned” and proceeded to arrest the mother.

Watch the news: It sounds like Debra Harrell committed a serious, unconscionable crime. The reporter looks ready to burst with contempt. But what are the facts? She let her daughter play at the park for several hours at a time—like we did as kids. She gave her a daughter a phone if she needed to call. Any “danger” was not only theoretical, it was exceedingly unlikely.

The danger is vanishingly small.

We are a nation who lives in terror of vanishingly small threats, child abduction, shark attacks, plane crashes, and non existent things, like vaccine related autism, while blithely ignoring greater threats, like driving, guns in the home, crossing the street, and anything that begins with the phrase, “Watch this.”

Have I mentioned that we as a society are both paranoid and insane?

*The people whipping up the hysteria claimed that there were something like 85,000 child abductions a year†. They did this by counting every time a kid was delivered late from visitation, got lost in the mall for 5 minutes, etc.
†Stranger child abduction number significantly less than 100 per year.

Well, It’s a Start

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A Florida judge has two Congressional districts to be illegally Gerrymandered:

In a sharply worded decision, a Florida judge ruled late Thursday that Republicans illegally redrew the state’s congressional districts, saying they “made a mockery” of an amendment meant to inject fairness into a process that has long been politically tainted.

Judge Terry P. Lewis of Florida’s Second Judicial Circuit ordered that two districts be redrawn — one, the 10th District, now held by Representative Daniel Webster, a Republican, and the other, the Fifth District, held by Representative Corrine Brown, a Democrat. In redrawing them, neighboring districts are also likely to be affected.

………

Judge Lewis delivered a blistering, 41-page attack on Florida’s redistricting process, reserving his most scathing criticism for the Republican establishment, including political operatives. He said it was clear that Republican operatives had managed to “infiltrate and influence” the Florida Legislature.

“Republican political consultants or operatives did, in fact, conspire to manipulate and influence the redistricting process,” the judge wrote. At another point, he quoted George Washington, who warned of “cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men.”

………

In 2010, Floridians voted to pass two constitutional amendments that required lawmakers to draw congressional and state legislative districts more cohesively and without favoring a political party.

The maps were redrawn in 2012, before the midterm elections. They were approved by the Republican-dominated Legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican.

During a two-week trial in May and June, a parade of political operatives, lawmakers and legislative staff members took the stand to testify about what they did and did not do during the redistricting process. It turned out that legislative leaders destroyed many documents relevant to the process, a move that Judge Lewis sharply criticized on Thursday.

“You have to wonder,” he said.

Well the judge can wonder, but I don’t.

Of course the ‘Phants engaged in partisan Gerrymandering.

Pusillanimous Police, Prosecutors, Punt Penis Pix

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Well, it looks like DA and the Cops in Manassas have backed down on their demand to a photograph of a teens genitalia in a sexting case:

Manassas City police said Thursday they would not serve a search warrant seeking to take photos of a 17-year-old boy charged with “sexting” an explicit video to his 15-year-old girlfriend earlier this year.

The teen is facing felony counts of manufacturing and distributing child pornography. As the case was headed to trial last week, Manassas City police and Prince William County prosecutors said in juvenile court that they had obtained a warrant to photograph the teen’s erect penis, in order to compare with the video he allegedly sent in January, according to the teen’s lawyers. When defense lawyer Jessica Harbeson Foster asked how they would obtain a photo of her client while aroused, she said police told her they would take him to a hospital and inject him with a drug to force an erection.

On Thursday, Prince William authorities decided to drop that plan. Lt. Brian Larkin of the Manassas City police said, “We are not going to pursue it.” He said the police planned to allow the search warrant, obtained last week, to expire. He would not say why the decision had been made to abandon the warrant or discuss the reasons for the search.

They would still be going for this, except for the fact that it got ink.

Sunlight is a disinfectant to this sort of vile behavior, and here’s hoping that this destroys a few careers in law enforcement.

In This Case, it is Appropriate to Use Porcine Metaphors to Refer to Law Enforcement

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You know the story, girl sexts boy, boy sexts girl back, and the police and district attorney demand a photo of boys erect penis:

A Manassas City teenager accused of “sexting” a video to his girlfriend is now facing a search warrant in which Manassas City police and Prince William County prosecutors want to take a photo of his erect penis, possibly forcing the teen to become erect by taking him to a hospital and giving him an injection, the teen’s lawyers said. A Prince William County judge allowed the 17-year-old to leave the area without the warrant being served or the pictures being taken — yet.

 The teen is facing two felony charges, for possession of child pornography and manufacturing child pornography, which could lead not only to incarceration until he’s 21, but inclusion on the state sex offender data base for, possibly, the rest of his life. David Culver of NBC Washington first reported the story and interviewed the teen’s guardian, his aunt, who was shocked at the lengths Prince William authorities were willing to go to make a sexting case in juvenile court.

 ………

 Foster said the case began when the teen’s 15-year-old girlfriend sent photos of herself to the 17-year-old, who in turn sent her the video in question. The girl has not been charged, and her mother filed a complaint about the boy’s video, Foster said. The male teen was served with petitions from juvenile court in early February, and not arrested, but when the case went to trial in juvenile court in June, Foster said prosecutors forgot to certify that the teen was a juvenile. The case was dismissed, but police immediately obtained new charges and also a search warrant for his home. Police also arrested the teen and took him to juvenile jail, where Foster said they took photos of the teen’s genitals against his will.

 The case was set for trial on July 1, where Foster said Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Claiborne Richardson told her that her client must either plead guilty or police would obtain another search warrant “for pictures of his erect penis,” for comparison to the evidence from the teen’s cell phone. Foster asked how that would be accomplished and was told that “we just take him down to the hospital, give him a shot and then take the pictures that we need.”

(emphasis mine)

This is beyond contemptible.

This is a profound abuse of prosecutorial discretion.  In fact, I would argue that this is a credible threat of torture, as well as conspiracy to produce child pornography.

This is profoundly and deeply unethical, and the local bar should be apprised of this behavior.

If there were justice in the world, that evil ratf%$# attorney would be flipping burgers for a living.