Obama's nudge-and-wink on free trade

According to Canada's CTV, Barack Obama is telling his supporters one story about his position on free trade, and Canadian government officials quite another.

On Wednesday, CTV reported that a senior member of Obama's campaign called the Canadian government within the last month -- saying that when Senator Obama talks about opting out of the free trade deal, the Canadian government shouldn't worry. The operative said it was just campaign rhetoric not to be taken seriously.

The Obama campaign told CTV late Thursday night that no message was passed to the Canadian government that suggests that Obama does not mean what he says about opting out of NAFTA if it is not renegotiated.

However, the Obama camp did not respond to repeated questions from CTV on reports that a conversation on this matter was held between Obama's senior economic adviser -- Austan Goolsbee -- and the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago.

In one sense, that's reassuring -- that Obama doesn't mean the populist economic idiocy he's spewing to American voters. But it's also an interesting peek into the duplicity of the candidate for "hope" and "change." Politicians are ... well ... politicians.

Oh, and don't think Hillary is any different.

The CTV exclusive also reported that sources said the Clinton campaign has made indirect contact with the Canadian government, trying to reassure Ottawa of their support despite Clinton's words. The Clinton camp denied the claim.

Do you think John McCain is secretly telling foreign leaders that he'll really yank our troops from Iraq if he's elected? That would be an interesting surprise too.

See Steve Chapman on populist silliness on free trade.

Making America more European

Not long ago, I riffed on an episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations set in Greece on my way to asking whether the host of EU-style laws, taxes and regulations that some folks want the United States to adopt would really make Americans more ... well ... European.

Many of the subjects of those laws don't actually obey them, I pointed out. After all, Bourdain's besotted hosts fired illegal guns in the air in full view of TV cameras. While Americans are pretty law-abiding by international standards, it's quite possible that Greek-style laws will turn them into Greek-style scofflaws.

But how to prove that point about subjects of "wiser" regimes elsewhere not quite so placidly submitting to the yoke as is often assumed? I turned to tax compliance rates. Just how likely are Americans to pay what the government demands when compared to other folks? As it turned out, the 84% compliance rate bemoaned by the IRS compares rather favorably with Switzerland's 78% compliance (PDF). But then I got stuck; most tax agencies treat compliance rates as state secrets, so I didn't have much more to go on.

Silly me. I'm not the first one to stumble across this problem, and I'm far from the first person to discover that, while tax compliance data depends on figures closely protected by government officials, the size of underground economies can be measured with publicly available data. The numbers I'm drawing on were compiled by Professor Friedrich Schneider of the University of Linz, one of the recognized experts in tracking unofficial economic activity. He defines the underground economy (he uses the term "shadow economy") as:

The shadow economy includes all market-based legal production of goods and services that are deliberately concealed from public authorities for the following reasons:

(1) to avoid payment of income, value added or other taxes,
(2) to avoid payment of social security contributions,
(3) to avoid having to meet certain legal labor market standards, such as minimum wages, maximum working hours, safety standards, etc., and
(4) to avoid complying with certain administrative procedures, such as completing
statistical questionnaires or other administrative forms.

In Shadow Economies of 145 Countries All Over the World: What Do We Really Know? (PDF), Prof. Schneider estimates the sizes of the underground economies of 145 countries as percentages of their official GDPs. The 21 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (developed countries) are listed below by the size of their underground economies, in ascending order:

United States: 8.4%
Switzerland: 9.4%
Japan: 10.8%
Austria: 10.9%
United Kingdom: 12.2%
New Zealand: 12.3%
Netherlands: 12.6%
Australia: 13.5%
France: 14.5%
Canada: 15.2%
Ireland: 15.3%
Germany: 16.8%
Denmark: 17.3%
Finland: 17.4%
Sweden: 18.3%
Norway: 18.4%
Belgium: 21.0%
Portugal: 21.9%
Spain: 22.0%
Italy: 25.7%
Greece: 28.2%

Sure enough, the United States has the smallest underground economy of the bunch. Fewer Americans than their counterparts in Switzerland, Canada or (especially) Italy and Greece choose to conduct their business out of sight and reach of the tax and regulatory authorities.

But why? Why is the U.S so relatively law-abiding?

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute thinks the answer is taxes. He points out that high-tax countries generally have larger underground economies than low-tax countries. Mitchell cites research that has "found that a 1 percentage point increase in marginal tax rates is associated with a 1.4 percentage point increase in the underground economy." It certainly makes sense that high tax rates would give people a reason to shield their earnings. And the U.S. has traditionally been a lower-tax country than most other developed nations.

Is that the only reason?

Schneider himself defines the shadow economy as being at least partially motivated by desire to escape "certain legal labor market standards" and "certain administrative procedures." And the United States is often criticized for its "cowboy capitalism" -- supposedly unrestrained market forces, in contrast to the heavily regulated economies of Europe. The extent to which the United States embraces laissez-faire is certainly overstated by Europeans, but there's no doubt that there's less overall government intervention in U.S. markets than in France or Germany. That may well help to explain why fewer Americans choose to take the risks involved in running businesses out of sight of the authorities.

So it's not surprising that when at least some American entrepreneurs do go underground, burdensome regulation -- as well as taxes -- features prominently among their reasons.

For the past few years, the underground restaurant industry -- a particularly tasty segment of the shadow economy -- has been booming. Michael Hale was among the restaurateurs interviewed for a 2005 article on the now-trendy business. Trendy they may be, but underground restaurants went subterranean for very practical reasons.

"It costs $200,000 just for a permit to be allowed to buy water from the city!" exclaims Hale. "You have to get tons of permits from various people. You've got to get a building permit, a permit if you want to remodel, you have to get licenses for beer and wine, and you have to get certified by the Health Board." ...

Hale isn't the only illegal entrepreneur who feels that way.

Their desire to serve high-quality food in a unique setting is now a reality because they don't pay any taxes or licensing fees. "It keeps the costs down, and it's a lot of fun," says Mo.

Well ... that makes sense. Permits, licenses and regulations create new and challenging barriers to entry into any industry. Taxes make it difficult -- and potentially unrewarding -- to stay in business. Restaurants are among the businesses in the United States subject to especially burdensome regulation. So it has become attractive for some people to operate their eateries outside the law -- in the underground economy.

But those are Americans cited in the above article complaining about taxes and regulations, not Belgians or Italians. And the underground industry in which they're operating is especially trendy and dependent on heavy interaction with the public, which could turn them in, but doesn't. That means that not only are Americans willing to go underground if given sufficient reason, but they're capable of doing so with widespread support.

Us denizens of the United States may be relatively law-abiding at the moment, but that is likely situational. So long as taxes are comparatively low and regulations somewhat tolerable, we're willing to play within the system. But if we get European-style laws and taxes, we may well get European-style disdain for the law.

If that means Anthony-Bourdainesque parties on the beach, with meat, booze and guns, so much the better. But I don't think that's what advocates of tighter laws and higher taxes have in mind.

Arizona pols meddling in pediatrics

It's not at all unusual for politicians to consider themselves better stewards of the people's health than the people themselves or the medical providers that people choose to treat their ills. The fact that such meddling isn't unusual doesn't mean you want to encourage it, so I'm passing along an emailed heads-up about two bills being considered today by the Arizona Senate Health Committee that would compromise the privacy of patients and the independence of physicians:

SB 1213 AHCCCS; children; psychiatric medications; information

This is basically the same bill as last year, which we defeated. The bill would require AHCCCS to release an annual report to the legislature and the public containing the following information for all children receiving behavioral health care through the state system including children in the Arizona Long Term Care system and Foster Care and children receiving services through DDD:

1. THE TYPE OF PRESCRIBED PSYCHIATRIC MEDICATION.
   
2. THE AGE OF THE CHILD RECEIVING THE MEDICATION.
   
3. THE DRUG NAME AND DOSAGE.
   
4. THE COUNTY OF THE CHILD'S RESIDENCE.
   
5. THE CITY OF THE CHILD'S RESIDENCE.
   
6. THE NAME AND PROFESSIONAL LICENSE NUMBER OF THE HEALTH PROFESSIONAL WHO PRESCRIBED THE MEDICATION.
   

The sponsor and the supporters of this bill will testify that they are concerned about the number of children who are receiving multiple medications and this is their way of tracking that information. The problem with that argument is that this information is already tracked by both AHCCCS and DBHS as well as the RBHA's. This information, (without the personally identifying information), is available to the legislature but not the public and should not be made available to the public.

AT ISSUE:

• The information provided includes personally identifying information (age) as per HIPPAA and therefore would be in violation of Federal and state law.
  
• The information would not provide an accurate picture of the treatment plan for the child. The name and dosage of the drug without a diagnosis is useless information. Treatment plans do not consist of drug therapy alone.
  
• By making the report public they would be releasing information that, if taken out of context, could be used inaccurately to inflame an already controversial issue thus fueling the further stigmatization that children with mental health disorders and their families have to deal with everyday.
  
• Knowing that their child would be included in such a public report could prevent families from seeking needed treatment.
  
• Publishing the names of doctors and making them available to the public is wrong for the following reasons:
  
  
  
  • Anyone with a personal agenda or and organization with a national agenda against psychotropic medications would be able to access the names of doctors who are prescribing to young children. This information could be taken out of context and used against the doctors in a public forum.
    Doctor's should not have to defend themselves, to the public, for using evidence based, standard in the industry, medical practices.
    
  • These doctors treat the medicaid and foster care population. We already have a shortage of pediatric psychiatrists, both state wide and nationally. This type of pubic reporting would prevent doctors from agreeing to treat these very vulnerable populations who have no other options.
    
  • Primary care physicians and pediatricians who also treat the medicaid population and prescribe psychotropic medications to children would be discouraged from doing so knowing that their names would be published in a publicly accessible report.
    
  • The state already has a mechanism in place for tracking this information and investigating doctors who may be prescribing inappropriately. The public does not have the knowledge or expertise in these issues and should not become part of this process.
    
  
  

SB 1399 doctors; prescriptions; nonindicated use

This bill would add language to the definition of unprofessional conduct for a licensed medical professional to include the prescribing of medication for "off label" use to anyone under the age of 18 unless that prescription has been confirmed in writing by a consulting physician who must examine the patient and the patient's medical records.

Prescribing of medications for "off label" use (a use other than the FDA approved use) is a common practice among the medical profession. Many drugs are used for purposes they were not originally intended but were later found to be effective treatments for. Such as: Retina A; approved by the FDA as an acne treatment but now also used to correct sun damage and for cosmetic reasons, Beta-blockers for the prevention of migraine headaches and benzodiazepines for the treatment of pain in cancer patients.

AT ISSUE

1. The bill is too broad

• The bill does not indicate if the "consulting" physician must be licensed in the same specialty as the original prescribing doctor.
  
• Emergency room doctors would also have to comply, which could delay life saving treatment.
  

2. The bill would create additional expense

• Requiring a second opinion which includes a physical exam by a second physician would result in additional costs which insurance companies would most likely not cover if the need did not fall under their definition of medical necessity.
  
• The state budget for AHCCCS would have to be dramatically increased in order to provide payment to a consulting physician.
  

3. The bill would create delays in treatment

• Requiring a second opinion on all off label prescription would delay treatment in a state that is already suffering from a shortage of doctors.
  
• Parents would have to take additional time off work to meet the consulting physician requirement.
  
• The small towns and rural communities in AZ who often have a shortage of doctors, would be more adversely impacted.
  
• Emergency rooms would delay life saving treatment.
  

4. The Arizona Medical Board already monitors physicians prescribing practices and has rules, as well as punishments for breaking those rules, in place. This additional requirement is not needed.

PLEASE CONTACT THE MEMBERS OF THE SENTATE HEALTH COMMITTEE. (The names with the asterisk before them are especially important.)

* Carolyn Allen, Chairman (Dist 8)
callen@azleg.gov
(602) 926-4480


Tom O'Halleran, V. Chairman (1)
tohalleran@azleg.gov
(602) 926-5584

* Thayer Verschoor (22)
tverschoor@azleg.gov
(602) 926-4136

* Barbara Leff (11)
bleff@azleg.gov
(602) 926-4486

Meg Burton-Cahill (17)
mburtoncahill@azleg.gov
(602) 926-4124

Amanda Aguirre (24)
aaguirre@azleg.gov
(602) 926-4139

* Paula Aboud (28)
paboud@azleg.gov
(602) 926-5262

If any of these members are your Senator be sure to indicate that you are a constituent in the subject line.

War on drugs has prisons bulging at the seams

According to a new report from the Pew Center on the States, One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008 (PDF), more than 1% of all American adults are cooling their heels behind bars -- a record number. That's a staggering figure, but one that grows even more frightening when you examine specific groups. "While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine."

At a time when U.S. global leadership is being questioned in a variety of areas, there's no doubt that this country still leads in its ability to lock people up.

The United States incarcerates more people than any country in the world, including the far more populous nation of China. At the start of the new year, the American penal system held more than 2.3 million adults. China was second, with 1.5 million people behind bars, and Russia was a distant third with 890,000 inmates, according to the latest available figures. Beyond the sheer number of inmates, America also is the global leader in the rate at which it incarcerates its citizenry, outpacing nations like South Africa and Iran. In Germany, 93 people are in prison for every 100,000 adults and children. In the U.S, the rate is roughly eight times that, or 750 per 100,000.

Could it be that so many more Americans deserve incarceration than Chinese or Germans? Why are these people locked up?

The Pew Center blames the surge in the ranks of the imprisoned primarily on policy choices. Examining Florida, for instance, the report says:

While crime and a growing resident population play a role, most of the growth, analysts agree, stemmed from a host of correctional policies and practices adopted by the state. One of the first came in 1995, when the legislature abolished “good time” credits and discretionary release by the parole board, and required that all prisoners—regardless of their crime, prior record, or risk to recidivate—serve 85 percent of their sentence. Next came a “zero tolerance” policy and other measures mandating that probation officers report every offender who violated any condition of supervision and increasing prison time for these “technical violations.” As a result, the number of violators in Florida prisons has jumped by an estimated 12,000.

These numbers seem to hold up across the country. In California, "A 2005 study showed that more than two-thirds of parolees in the Golden State were returned to prison within three years of release; of those, 39 percent were due to technical violations."

OK. But that doesn't tell us what brought this teeming mass of inmates to the attention of the justice system to begin with. What did they do that would make them subject to policy decisions about parole and probation? If we have a disproportionate ratio of the world's rapists, robbers and murderers in this country, maybe we need all of that expensive prison capacity.

Unfortunately, the Pew report just doesn't go there. It talks about parole, probation, long prison sentences and the high costs of incarceration. But the document steadfastly avoids addressing the overwhelming reason U.S. government officials incarcerate so many of the people subject to their authority: the war on drugs.

In 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice itself sounded a warning in An Analysis of Non-violent Drug Offenders with Minimal Criminal Histories:

Using one set of criteria which limited offenders to no current or prior violence in their records, no involvement in sophisticated criminal activity and no prior commitment, there were 16,316 Federal prisoners who could be considered low-level drug law violators. They constituted 36.1 percent of all drug law offenders in the prison system and 21.2 percent of the total sentenced Federal prison population.

By 2003, those numbers had grown dramatically. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported:

Experts say mandatory sentences, especially for nonviolent drug offenders, are a major reason inmate populations have risen for 30 years. About one of every 143 U.S. residents was in the federal, state or local custody at year's end. ...

Drug offenders now make up more than half of all federal prisoners. The federal penal system, which has tough sentencing policies for drug offenses, is now the nation's largest at more than 151,600 – an increase of 4.2 percent compared with 2001.

Simple drug possession convictions make up about 5% of the federal prison population drug offenders in federal prisons and about 27% of the state prison population drug offenders in the state prison population*, according to the federal government's own figures. Other nonviolent drug offenders were charged with nothing more than "sale or intent to sell" illegal intoxicants to willing buyers.

The legal system's reach into American life -- largely as a result of drug prohibition -- extends even farther than the Pew Center figures would indicate. In Probation and Parole in the United States 2006 (PDF), the Justice Department revealed that "About 3.2% of the U.S. adult population, or 1 in every 31 adults, were incarcerated or on probation or parole at yearend 2006."

That means that police, courts and prison authorities currently play a significant role in the lives of a shockingly high percentage of the adult population. And most of those unfortunate people are subject to loss of liberty and government supervision because they like to get high or want make a few bucks by helping other people get high. If their choice of "cocktails" were different, we'd call them bar patrons and bartenders.

So, thanks, Pew Center, for the wake-up call about the insane U.S. incarceration rate. And thanks, too, for the suggestions about parole, probation and sentencing guidelines.

But, if we want to step back from the brink of making America a land of convicts and ex-cons, we'll have to declare an end to the oppressive and brutal war on drugs.

*Thanks to Thorley Winston who pointed out in the comments that I had misstated the numbers. We are, of course, still talking about nonviolent "criminals" who engaged in victimless activity.

Tales from the smoking underground

In 2006, a majority of Ohio voters had a temper tantrum and decided they could dictate the conditions they like in private businesses -- specifically, they banned smoking in "public places" and "places of employment."

Not all business owners are knuckling under, however. In particular, lots of bar owners don't see why they should allow people who may or may not ever set foot in their establishments tell them how they can or can't cater to actual customers. Says Terry Hymore, owner of Toledo's Rip Cord bar, "It's my bar, it's my house. I can do what I want in it."

The bar owners are cooperating to stay one step ahead of the Prohibition agents:

Not only are some bars not paying fines, they're also working together, says Dr. David Grossman, with the Health Department. Grossman says when health inspectors are investigating complaints, a small network of bars start informing each other by phone.

"It's kind of in a way like bootleggers," Grossman says.

Not just bootleggers, but speakeasies are being emulated. The AP reports that in Cleveland:

Underground nightclubs where patrons can smoke freely and watch strippers after midnight have opened in some of the city's residential neighborhoods since the state began enforcing new restrictions on strip clubs and public smoking last year, police say.

Now that's the American way.

Strong minority opposes Arizona marriage amendment

I'm not surprised that more Arizonans support a proposed state constitutional amendment "that would define marriage as between one man and one woman" than don't. I am pleasantly surprised, however, that social conservatives enjoy a rather small advantage on the issue. According to the latest Cronkite-Eight poll, "[f]orty-nine percent favored the amendment, 40 percent opposed it and 11 percent said they were unsure how they felt." It's a bit trendy now to fret over the supposed gay threat to the oh-so-sacred rite of marriage, so it's nice to see that the Goldwateresque Arizona live-and-let live impulse still has a bit of life in it.

Actually, it's 40-percenters on the issue who are the traditionalists. As Stephanie Coontz, a professor of history at Evergreen State College, wrote for the New York Times back in November 2007:

Why do people — gay or straight — need the state’s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.

So ... What's all this nonsense about asking the county for a license to get hitched? How did that get started?

The American colonies officially required marriages to be registered, but until the mid-19th century, state supreme courts routinely ruled that public cohabitation was sufficient evidence of a valid marriage. By the later part of that century, however, the United States began to nullify common-law marriages and exert more control over who was allowed to marry.

By the 1920s, 38 states prohibited whites from marrying blacks, "mulattos," Japanese, Chinese, Indians, "Mongolians," "Malays" or Filipinos. Twelve states would not issue a marriage license if one partner was a drunk, an addict or a "mental defect." Eighteen states set barriers to remarriage after divorce.

Ah! So, you mean there's an unsavory origin to the government's intervention in what was previously a purely private matter? I never would have guessed.

Oddly, this means that the growing ranks of Americans living "in sin" (married couples now constitute a minority of households) are the ones harking back to the traditional concept of marriage by rejecting this newfangled idea about seeking state permission to lay their toothbrushes side-by-side.

Unfortunately, marriage has been turned into an administrative sub-unit of the state. Cohabiting couples may be perfectly happy with their arrangements, but they'll likely run into trouble when it comes to inheritance, making medical decisions for ill partners and collecting Social Security. That -- along with the fundamental respect to be found in being treated equally -- is why gay and lesbian couples have been so eager to gain the same access to marriage licenses as straight couples.

But easing paperwork for government officials seems like a poor reason for allowing the state to further expand its reach into our private lives. Surely, if neighbors, priests and judges found it possible for a thousand years to recognize privately constituted marriages as legitimate, Social Security administrators can eventually find their way to the same accomplishment.

Returning to privately arranged marriages could have the added benefit of allowing couples (or hell, any number of partners) to define the terms of their arrangements to their liking. Under state-defined marriage, government retains the power to redefine marriage in ways that may not please everybody concerned. As the Cato Institute's David Boaz wrote for Slate:

In the 20th century, however, government has intruded upon the marriage contract, among many others. Each state has tended to promulgate a standard, one-size-fits-all formula. Then, in the past generation, legislatures and courts have started unilaterally changing the terms of the marriage contract. Between 1969 and 1985 all the states provided for no-fault divorce. The new arrangements applied not just to couples embarking on matrimony but also to couples who had married under an earlier set of rules. Many people felt a sense of liberation; the changes allowed them to get out of unpleasant marriages without the often contrived allegations of fault previously required for divorce. But some people were hurt by the new rules, especially women who had understood marriage as a partnership in which one partner would earn money and the other would forsake a career in order to specialize in homemaking.

Returning to private rites, but with the very modern option of individually defining the terms of the marriage contract, would allow the conservative-minded to make arrangements under the authority of their religious institutions that please them, the experimental to customize something to their taste and would force nobody to believe that they were giving their imprimatur to relationships that offend their sensibilities.

Defining marriage "as between one man and one woman"? Well, that just wouldn't be an issue for political debate.

And wouldn't it be nice if matters of love and relationships weren't the subject of political debate?

Forty percent of Arizonans oppose an amendment defining the meaning of marriage? Let's move toward a solution that allows everybody to define their own marriage.

Day off

I'm sampling a nasty little virus today. I hope to return to regularly scheduled programming as soon as possible.

Supremes to review Arizona search case

Says the Associated Press:

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide when police without a warrant can search the vehicle of a person who is under arrest.

Rodney Joseph Gant was handcuffed, seated in the back of a patrol car and under police supervision when Tucson, Ariz., police officers searched his car.

A sharply divided Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the search violated the Constitution's Fourth Amendment. The state asking the U.S. high court to overturn that ruling.

The justices said they will hear the case next fall to decide whether officers must demonstrate a threat to their safety or the need to preserve evidence to justify a warrantless search in cases like Gant's.

On its face, the Arizona Supreme Court decision makes excellent sense. Gant was arrested "about 10 feet away from his parked car." Secured as he was he posed no threat to police and there was nothing other than curiosity to draw law enforcement attention to his vehicle. It seems like a no-brainer to say that police had no business searching the car without a warrant.

It seems, I say but we're talking about cars, the Fourth Amendment and the Supreme Court -- three things that don't mix well.

In Maryland v. Dyson, the Supreme Court held that police can pretty much search automobiles at will. In Florida v. White the court ruled that a parked car can be seized by police without a warrant if they believe (but haven't legally proved) it is "contraband" under local law. There are other cases along these lines, too, but the gist is that, when it comes to automobiles, the Fourth Amendment is dressed-up, rouged and lying in a pine box.

Will the fact that Gant was arrested ten feet from the car make a difference?

I wouldn't count on it, unless the court is set to make a dramatic break with the trend of its recent rulings (Dyson and White both date to 1998). And don't look to Arizona law to provide a bulwark against weakened federal search and seizure protection -- the Arizona Supreme Court's Gant decision (PDF) was based on the Fourth Amendment and federal precedent, so stronger state protections won't be forthcoming.

I'm afraid that we're due for another Supreme Court ruling that we're all ripe for the plucking by the nearest uniformed government employee the moment we set foot in our cars.

The self-correcting Internet

The Washington Post's Brian Krebs expends much digital ink on the to-do over the government of Pakistan's decision to censor YouTube and how this decision cut off world-wide access to the online video service.

According to wire reports, Pakistan ordered all in-country Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to YouTube.com, complaining that the site contained controversial sketches of the Prophet Mohammed which were republished by Danish newspapers earlier this month. The people running the country's ISPs obliged, but evidently someone at Pakistan Telecom - the primary upstream provider for most of the ISPs in Pakistan - forgot to flip the switch that prevented those blocking instructions from propagating out to the rest of the Internet.

The problem is one of misplaced institutional trust he says. The Internet was created in the days when all its administrators pretty much knew each other, and the systems they created remain in place -- potentially allowing malicious governments and companies to have their nefarious way with our Internet surfing.

This kind of implicit trust has caused similar troubles on a number of prior occasions. While it's usually the result of an oversight, this trust can be abused: In 2003, Los Angeles County found that a large swath of its Internet space was suddenly redirecting visitors to porn sites. Investigators later learned a relatively small California ISP had simply declared itself the authoritative destination for a huge chunk of LA's Internet addresses in order to drive traffic to adult sites hosted on his network.

The government could have and should have fixed this situation, says Krebs, but it fell down on the job.

The U.S. government thought it a problem worthy enough of more scrutiny that it spent a few million dollars between 2004 and 2006 funding a research endeavor called the Secure Protocols for Routing Infrastructure project. Due to budget cutbacks at the Department of Homeland Security, however, the program is being discontinued.

But wait! Is this really a problem at all? I mean, YouTube is perfectly accessible today. How did that happen?

In his own post, Krebs quotes Marc Sachs, director of the SANS Internet Storm Center, who says:

"Someone at a large network could probably get away with a stunt like that for up to 30 minutes or an hour before [those in charge of] the rest of the Internet would just start shunning them," Sachs said. "As soon as you have someone in the system acting in a rogue manner - intentionally or not - they tend to lose the trust of the rest of the community pretty quickly."

So... You're saying that the Internet is already pretty effective at countering this sort of maneuver -- and in short order.

And, as ZDNet's Richard Stiennon points out, Pakistan pretty much got bumped completely off the Internet as a result of its ham-handed censorship.

Well, that's a different story, isn't it?

Account of a wrong-address raid

Here's an interesting step-by-step account of the events and decisions that led Minneapolis police to raid the wrong house, resulting in a shootout with the homeowner (nobody was injured, and nobody is being charged).

The story also includes simple tactics the police could have used, but didn't to make sure they had the right address.

Update: Aaagh! Radley Balko beat me to the punch again. Damn, he's good.

NYC adopts the euro

Today's Washington Post tells of the growing ranks of businesses in New York City that are now accepting euros, as well as Canadian dollars and British pounds. The move makes sense, since the weak U.S. dollar has brought flocks of foreign bargain-chasers to the city, and merchants can simultaneously cater to the new customers while accumulating caches of coins and banknotes currently perceived as more likely to hold their value than American greenbacks.

The precipitous fall of the dollar -- currently one euro is worth nearly $1.50 -- has already changed the city.

Last year, the weak currency helped draw 8.5 million foreign visitors to New York, more than ever before, said George Fertitta, chief executive of NYC & Co., the city's tourism operation, and what they have been buying is as varied as lingerie and condominiums. Tourists generated $28 billion in spending last year and supported more than 350,000 jobs, and Europeans represent the largest group of foreign visitors, he said.

The plummeting dollar and rising euro have even entered popular culture. Rapper Jay-Z has a video in which he cruises New York streets flashing wads of euros.

"I need euros," said Garba Bar¿, a street vendor who sells cellphone covers and iPod cases from a table on Broadway in SoHo. He explained that he is from Niger, which he visits frequently and where the euro is commonly used.

"The dollar's going down," he said. "I don't want to change it before I go home."

While something of a sad commentary on government mismanagement of its legal monopoly on money, the real test of declining esteem for the dollar would be if merchants were refusing to accept U.S. money even as they took in euros -- a situation that has occasionally occurred in other countries. Legal tender laws (and practicality) prevent American business owners from making such a dramatic gesture, however, but growing acceptance of foreign currency seems a pretty strong statement on its own.

Bill Ayers, meet Eric Rudolph

Fueled by a story written by Politico's Ben Smith, and the Clinton campaign's desperate promotion of said story, the press is slowly picking up on Barack Obama's past working relationship with notorious terrorists William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

They disappeared in 1970, after a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse, and turned themselves into authorities in 1980. They were never prosecuted for their involvement with the 25 bombings the Weather Underground claimed; charges were dropped because of improper FBI surveillance.

Ayers and Dohrn are far from contrite about their violent past. “I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough,” Ayers told the New York Times in 2001.

Even so, they've done rather well for themselves. Despite a violent past, Ayers has settled in comfortably as an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Dohrn is an associate professor of law at Northwestern University.

And, of course, the two are respected political activists in Chicago's Hyde Park, where they hosted Barack Obama in their home and where Ayers worked alongside Obama on the board of a foundation.

I'm less concerned about Obama's association with Ayers and Dohrn than some political chatterers seem to be. I've never doubted that Obama shared some of the leftist views of people more radical than he (a touch pink? You don't say!) And I don't really fear that he's a closet bomb-thrower; there's simply no evidence that Barack Obama wants to implement his political views by force -- at least, not by force beyond that permitted by the "legitimate" political system.

But I am intrigued by the rather friendly treatment that Ayers and Dohrn receive in contrast to terrorists who adhere to different flavors of violent authoritarianism.

And I do mean authoritarianism. While press coverage tends to emphasize Ayers' and Dohrn's anti-war activism (and to refer to the bombers as "radicals" rather than "terrorists"), their ideology encompasses rather more than skepticism about the long-gone bloodbath in Vietnam. They're hostile to the market system, fond of socialism and openly solicitous of repressive political leaders who share their goals. On his blog (they're very modern radicals), Ayers writes of Hugo Chavez's Venezuela:

Despite being under constant attack from within and from abroad, the Bolivarian revolution has made astonishing strides in a brief period: from the Mission Simoncito to the Mission Robinson to the Mission Ribas to the Mission Sucre, to the Bolivarian schools and the UBV, Venezuelans have shown the world that with full participation, full inclusion, and popular empowerment, the failings of capitalist schooling can be resisted and overcome. Venezuela is a beacon to the world in its accomplishment of eliminating illiteracy in record time, and engaging virtually the entire population in the ongoing project of education.

Chavez has engaged "virtually the entire population" by requiring even private schools to adopt his regime's politicized curriculum, under threat of nationalization.

That's the sort of political ideology that "radical" professors Ayers and Dohrn find attractive, and which drove their (still fondly remembered) bombing campaign.

Compare the treatment of this pair to, say Eric Rudolph. Rudolph is another political terrorist who also spent years as a fugitive, apparently assisted, like Ayers and Dohrn, by sympathizers. Driven by hatred of gays and lesbians and opposition to abortion, Rudolph planted bombs that killed two people and injured over 100. In his 2005 statement, Rudolph said:

Abortion is murder. And when the regime in Washington legalized, sanctioned and legitimized this practice, they forfeited their legitimacy and moral authority to govern. ...

There is no more legitimate reason to my knowledge, for renouncing allegiance to and if necessary using force to drag this monstrosity of a government down to the dust where it belongs. ...

Along with abortion, another assault upon the integrity of American society is the concerted effort to legitimize the practice of homosexuality. ...

[W]hen the attempt is made to drag this practice out of the closet and into the public square in an "in your face" attempt to force society to accept and recognize this behavior as being just as legitimate and normal as the natural man/woman relationship, every effort should be made, including force if necessary, to halt this effort.

Like the former Weathermen, Rudolph remains unrepentant. Referring to his bombing of an abortion clinic, he wrote, "I have no regrets or remorse for my actions that day in January, and consider what happened morally justified."

Unlike Ayers and Dohrn, however, Rudolph is serving hard time in prison -- multiple consecutive life terms without parole. Ayers never served time and Dohrn spent less than a year in prison for refusing to testify about a Weather Underground heist in which a guard and two police officers were killed. And there's never been any question about Rudolph's status: press accounts regularly (and accurately, I would say) refer to him as a "terrorist," denying him the nudge-and-wink "radical" status afforded to the lefty bombers.

While it's unlikely that we'll ever get the chance to see whether any American universities are eager to award Rudolph with a tenured teaching job, it's safe to say that the authoritarian right-wing bomber is treated rather more roughly by the press and the intellectual establishment than are the authoritarian left-wing bombers. Ayers and Dohrn are widely presented as otherwise-respectable activists who went a tad too far, while Rudolph is generally described as the unpleasant product of hate, intolerance and the dark underbelly of rural American society. The association of a presidential hopeful with Ayers and Dohrn may excite scattered raised eyebrows -- and talk that the issue is an overblown bit of "Obama backlash"-- among the all-of 26 news stories on the matter that a Google search turns up as of February 24. But it's hard to believe that McCain's campaign would enjoy the same nonchalant treatment if it turned out that he'd broken bread with Rudolph at a pro-life fundraiser.

The difference is likely one of culture and familiarity. Journalists, academics and intellectuals run into even the most radical leftists often enough that the likes of Ayers and Dohrn might seem excessive without coming across as unsympathetic. That sort of familiarity can result in the occasional howler, such as the misty-eyed 1990 New York Times story on a failing retirement home populated by "political idealists" -- aging communists with a lingering nostalgia for Lenin. It's hard to believe the Grey Lady would have run a similar piece about octogenarian German-American bundists pining for Adolph. But I'm certain that aging reds strike many journalists as quaint, while old brownshirts just come across as pathetic -- despite the comparable body counts of the two totalitarian ideologies.

So the minor kerfuffle over Obama's association with Ayers and Dohrn says less about the candidate -- who did nothing most of his peers would find unacceptable -- than it does about the thinking of a certain part of the American political and intellectual establishment. Violence to achieve political change may be a no-no, but it's a minor transgression in the service of a sympathetic kind of politics, and a reprehensible crime when implemented for the wrong ideas.

And the fact that the sympathetic kind of politics is as repressive as the wrong kind? Well, that says something too.

Give drugs a chance

I'm rereading Jacob Sullum's Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use, several years after I first picked the book up. I'm struck, once again, by his treatment of the consumption of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and any other intoxicant you can think of as a not inherently bad thing -- in fact, a potentially good thing if done in moderation. Sullum is one of the few writers I can think of who treats the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake with respect, rather than as an unseemly vice.

Even among many advocates of drug legalization, drugs are treated as an unavoidable curse that burdens the human race, with legalization a necessary evil preferable to the ills, such as loss of civil liberties, that accompany prohibition. The very term "harm reduction," so popular now among advocates of alternatives to the War on Drugs, implies that drug use always damages the user, and that the goal is to reduce drug use by means other than criminal sanction.

This is why so many debates over legalization devolve to discussions of whether removing criminal sanctions will result in more consumption of disfavored intoxicants. See this otherwise somewhat sensible discussion from the Baltimore Sun:

A recent column on jury duty -- my first actual trial in more than 20 years of summonses to the Circuit Court of Baltimore City -- prompted a letter from reader Tom Ryugo about the decriminalization of heroin and cocaine. As you'll see, it's kind of hard to argue with this common-sense take. I've had this discussion with many people, including the former New York cop you runs an organization devoted to decriminalization, and the famous Baltimore attorney Bill Murphy. I can't make up my mind about it. Perhaps I should. . . . My fear is that legalization will lead to more use. I don't think the death penalty is a deterrent to murder, but I think the threat of incarceration and a life of addiction and misery is a deterrent to people who might be tempted to move from reefer to heroin or coke.

If you view drug use as inherently bad, it makes sense to assume that anything that might lead to increased consumption is something of a setback.

But, as many of us who have not just experimented with, but enthusiastically consumed various intoxicants know (Whoops! I bet I just blew my next job interview), the road to perdition is not usually lined with dried vegetation, white powder, pills or crystals. In fact, many a party, evening or weekend afternoon has been made more pleasant by "cocktail hours" that featured refreshments that would make John Walters weep. Some of us dabbled, a few of us indulged and there were occasional bingers, too. The vast majority of us, whether we still smoke or snort or not, suffered little or no harm -- in fact, we downright enjoyed our experiences, improved our moods and released a lot of tension in the process. And then we went about our responsibilities just a little more relaxed than we might have been.

Yet the loser pothead or scrawny junky is the image most often evoked when people think of drug use.

There's a good reason for that. As Sullum writes in Saying Yes:

We see the drug users who get hauled away by the police, who nod off in doorways or on park benches, who beg on the street or break into cars. We do not see the drug users who hold down a job, pay the rent or the mortgage, and support a family. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, people naturally assume that most illegal drug users are like the ones they notice, who are apt to be the least discreet and most antisocial. This is like assuming that the wino passed out in a gutter is a typical drinker.

Hmmm. So, how many users are, you know, addicts?

That's actually a hard question to answer, given the difficulty involved in asking people about their drug consumption habits. In fact, when prohibitionists talk about vast armies of addicts, they're talking about something they just don't know. Let's turn to psychologist, lawyer and drug researcher Stanton Peele for an idea of how many cocaine users just can't put the stuff down:

One way to calculate the number/percentage of addicts is to compare those who have ever taken a drug with those who currently take it with those who currently take it daily (or nearly so). Of course, many regular, daily users wouldn't be classified as addicts (like the physician described by Zinberg and his colleagues who for decades injected morphine daily, but did not use on weekends and vacations, without ever increasing his dosage or undergoing withdrawal -- see Meaning of Addiction, Chapter 1).

Unfortunately, you can't get government statistics on daily use. The most frequent use calculated in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) National Household Survey on Drug Abuse is 51 or more times in the prior year, or an average of once weekly (or more), which would obviously include many users who are not addicts.

The 1995 Household Survey found that of 3.7 million cocaine users in the last year, 1.2 million used on average at least once a month and 600,000 used at least weekly on average. Although these 600,000 would not qualify as clinical addicts, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey wants to claim these and more.

Hmmm ... so the number of addicted cocaine users actually falls below the government's measurement threshold.

Well, what about heroin? that's nasty stuff, right? Surely we have an idea of how many heroin addicts there are. Well, we can kind of guesstimate. Wrote Sullum for Reason magazine in 2003:

The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse indicates that about 3 million Americans have used heroin in their lifetimes; of them, 15 percent had used it in the last year, 4 percent in the last month. These numbers suggest that the vast majority of heroin users either never become addicted or, if they do, manage to give the drug up. A survey of high school seniors found that 1 percent had used heroin in the previous year, while 0.1 percent had used it on 20 or more days in the previous month. Assuming that daily use is a reasonable proxy for opiate addiction, one in 10 of the students who had taken heroin in the last year might have qualified as addicts.

One in ten? How does that compare with perfectly legal alcohol? Well, according to the National Institutes of Health:

A 1994 study of drug use and addiction in the U.S. showed that more than 90 percent of Americans have experimented with alcohol, and about 70 percent drink at least occasionally. About 15 percent of those who experiment become alcohol-dependent at some point in life. This compares to a dependency rate of 25 percent in those who experiment with smoking tobacco, and around 4 percent in marijuana smokers.

So, it's pretty clear that the vast majority of people who consume any intoxicant do so without developing dependency and, in fact, may well enjoy benefits from their consumption, since they presumably value the pleasure, stress-reduction and other qualities found in intoxicants. On the other hand, a few users of any intoxicant will have problems, whether their drug of choice is legal or illegal.

So, even if you don't believe that people have an inherent right to choose what to put into their own bodies (I obviously do), the "problem" of legalization isn't as simple as whether it "will lead to more use." For every abuser who suffers problems, there may be nine users who enjoy benefits. Increased use may, in balance, be a good thing since the evidence suggests that most of that use will be moderate.

All things considered, you still may conclude that prohibition, with its militarized policing, erosion of the Fourth Amendment, soaring costs and high rate of defiance (breeding disdain for the law) is a worthwhile venture. But I think Jacob Sullum makes a strong case that the drug use that prohibitionists want to stamp out is not an unalloyed evil.

Commissar ... err ... Sheriff Joe faces lawsuit over attack on press

Remember when Arizona's headline-chasing Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an embarrassing fixture in Maricopa County, decided to escalate his long-running feud with the Phoenix New Times by arresting newspaper executives Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin? Lacey and Larkin were released, of course, and Dennis Wilenchik, the special prosecutor in the case was fired. As you might guess, that didn't quite end the matter.

Now, the New Times has filed a Notice of Claim, a preliminary step before a lawsuit, against Arpaio, Wilenchik and County Attorney Andrew Thomas.

The Arizona Republic has a brief Q&A with Lacey about the lawsuit and the New Times' contentious relationship with Maricopa County's ruling junta. Here's a highlight:

Question: In the case of your arrest, it's more than just arresting a citizen. There's a First Amendment, freedom-of-the-press issue.

Answer: The First Amendment on a number of levels: It isn't simply my First Amendment right to write a story without fear of incarceration, it's the right of all of our readers to read our newspaper without fear that their records are going to be gone through on the Internet.

The critical question is: How do they get to the point where they believe that they have the right to arrest journalists in the middle of the night and subpoena the identity of the people that read our newspaper? They didn't get there overnight. They began by abusing prisoners, and there was a staircase escalation where they were never stopped. They're attacking judges, they're attacking editors, they're attacking writers. And by the time they get to attacking the First Amendment rights of readers of newspapers, it never occurs to them, because as Joe Arpaio says, "Hey, lock them all up until they prove they're innocent."

Incidentally, County Attorney Thomas, a key Arpaio ally, has a long-standing history of ideological discomfort with rights-focused individualism in general and libertarianism in particular. Reason magazine once quoted a 1996 Thomas contribution to the Weekly Standard (not available online) in which the future county attorney referred to street crime and social unrest as "the libertarian-created problems of Southern California and elsewhere." On another occasion, Thomas wrote in the Standard that "The root of our crime problem is a rights-happy radical individualism."

So, I guess we have no call to be shocked at how Arpaio, Thomas and company have assaulted individual freedom once in office. To anybody paying attention, Thomas telegraphed those punches.

'Capital murder' for Ryan Frederick

Ryan Frederick, who shot and killed a police officer during a confused, unannounced middle-of-the-night raid on his home that turned up a personal-use amount of marijuana, may be charged with "capital murder" says the prosecutor in the case. That's because Detective Jarrod Shivers was ... umm ... standing in the yard, not breaking through the door at all, contrary to earlier reports. Apparently, that's why Frederick was denied bond.

Radley Balko, who has been following the case, has the lowdown on the authorities' changing story. Read it and catch up before the prosecutor tries to tell us that Frederick actually hunted down Detective Shivers and shot him in the bath.

Starving the beast: A case history

I'm not a fan of homeowners' associations. To my eyes, they seem to include all of the bad aspects of government -- nosiness, intrusiveness, arbitrary rules, authoritarian leadership -- with even less of the already slight accountability and restraints on power that apply to formal government bodies. The last time we went house-hunting, my wife and I specified that we would not consider any property encumbered by an HOA, and we've set the same condition for our current house search.

But nobody makes you buy into an HOA. And, unlike governments, HOAs can't annex land and acquire unwilling new subjects the way governments can.

But that still leaves many people unhappy with the HOAs under which they live, just as many people are unhappy with local governments (which are much more difficult to escape). The Verde Village Property Owners Association, in Yavapai County, just outside Cottonwood, Arizona, is one somewhat typical HOA, in that many of its residents are unhappy with the rules it imposes on homeowners' enjoyment of their own property.

Unlike many HOAs, though, and completely unlike formal governments, the Verde Village Property Owners Association is an organization in which participation is voluntary. That doesn't mean mean obedience to the rules is voluntary; but payment of the annual dues that go to sustain the HOA, pay for the upkeep of common property and enable the organization to enforce rules is purely a matter of personal choice. And most people are opting out. Says the Verde Independent:

Only 200 families of the 3,800 property owners pay the meager $25 annual dues. That is not enough revenue to allow a large association to operate. ...

The organization also enforces the codes, covenants and restrictions. "The county doesn't have the time or money to do that. It is frustrating because people don't seem to want to be part of a community any more. More people are interested in avoiding their obligations than participating in the community," said Otterson. ...

But, as the regular income to the association dries up, so does the enforcement. The covenants will also expire in 2018.

Interesting ... So, when given the opportunity to choose whether to support their closest government body, the vast majority of people subject to its rule opt to starve it to death. That would be my choice, too, but I've never thought my views were representative of majority sentiment. On this one issue, anyway, apparently I'm more typical than I thought in my desire to put government out of my misery.

Wouldn't it be nice if the choice being exercised by most Verde Village Property Owners Association members was available to subjects of HOAs and formal governments everywhere?

Activist victorious after catching cops on camera

The very excellent Harvey Silverglate writes in the Boston Phoenix about Simon Glik, a Massachusetts attorney who ended up in handcuffs, charged with "wiretapping," when he recorded what he considered an excessively forceful arrest with the camera function on his cell phone.

Justice Mark Summerville of the Boston Municipal Court subsequently dismissed all charges against Glik, saying his monitoring of the incident "was not a secret recording and, therefore, not the type of conduct that the legislature sought to prevent with the wiretap statute." Summerville also rejected a spurious "disturbing the peace" charge against Glik.

Silverglate applauds the ruling, but warns that it's not enough to protect similar citizen activists in the future.

Summerville’s decision is good news for Glik, who had, ironically, been seeking a job as a prosecutor, but who has had difficulty getting hired — despite graduating at the top of the New England School of Law class of 2006 — because of the outstanding criminal charges. Even so, neither the Hyde opinion nor Summerville’s decision is likely to stop police in the future from arresting citizens who record their misconduct.

The explicit statement in Hyde, that the law prohibits only secret recordings, creates a perverse incentive for cops to exaggerate or lie about whether a citizen was surreptitiously recording them in order to obtain a conviction in future cases. The small size of cell-phone cameras makes it easy for a cop to claim that at least part of the recording was done before the police noticed. And if it comes down to an officer’s word against the citizen’s, who do you think wins?

Citizens who want to document police misconduct need more protection than the statute, the Hyde opinion, and Summerville’s Glik ruling provide. As long as state law prohibits secret recordings of police activity, there can be little effective deterrent to police abuse. Without evidence, citizens cannot credibly pursue complaints. Under Massachusetts’s Hyde standard, as Chief Justice Margaret Marshall pointed out in her vigorous dissent in that case, the Rodney King video taper (or a reporter in the same position) would have committed a crime by recording that infamous example of police brutality on a Los Angeles street.

Incidents of private citizens recording police misbehaving are becoming increasingly common in the cell phone and YouTube age. As police become more sensitive to the likelihood that their conduct will be distributed to critical eyes over the Internet, at least some of them will use any legal angle they can to prevent recording of their activity or to seize any recordings after the fact.

Anything short of explicitly protecting such recording under law hands the worst cops the weapon they need to bludgeon anybody who might expose their misconduct.

Until then, we can only hope that people will continue to take their chances and record the police anyway -- and then run real fast if that's what it takes to put the recording before the eyes of the public.

Shreveport cop beats woman on camera

From Fox News:

The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday announced an investigation after a video surfaced showing a Louisiana police officer beating a handcuffed female inmate who later is seen lying in a pool of blood.

The department's investigation comes two weeks after the firing of Wiley Willis, the officer involved in the incident. The Caddo Parish district attorney also will investigate.

Video of the incident can be seen here:

I've addressed the phenomenon of abusive police officers being caught in the act by their own surveillance cameras before. Incidents like this should never happen, but since they do, it's best that they be recorded so that there's no question of what actually occurred. Willis had been accused of abusing his authority and using excessive force in the past, but in the absence of irrefutable evidence, nothing came of the charges.

After his latest assault, I sincerely hope that Willis faces criminal charges in addition to the loss of his job.

Stop making education a political football

The Cato Institute's Andrew Coulson explains to Wired why government monopoly schools inevitably breed battles over curriculum and exacerbate social divisiveness. He argues that it's better to let families guide their own children's education -- even if they teach them a dose of nonsense.

Actually I would. I would say you should leave all these decisions to individual families. The alternative is to make the government the arbiter of truth. You either leave it up to families, or you say the political process is going to decide what truth is. We've tried doing this before, and you get any number of problems. Deciding evolution is truth and teaching it in biology classes is not effective. You also set up a conflict, because we have one of the most pluralistic societies on the planet, and we don't see eye to eye on history, math, reading, evolution ... it goes on and on. You say there has to be an official truth, you force people into conflict. You have a battle, it's a knock-down drag-'em-out fight, and it's zero sum. For every winner, there's a loser, and that's why we're still fighting the Scopes-Monkey trial 80 years later. It solves nothing basically to say the government will declare, this is truth.

I addressed this issue in a column four years ago (please excuse the funky formatting). Among other points, I emphasized that government schools often teach nonsense too.

No lesson is too trivial to become a political football. In 1997, New York State ordered public school teachers to treat the Irish potato famine of the 1840s as an act of genocide by the British. Historians debate the causes of the famine, but Empire State politicians know that only one interpretation stirs the passions of Irish-American voters.

It's no surprise that people compete to have their ideas taught in the public schools. Despite the growing popularity of homeschooling, vouchers and other schooling alternatives, most American children learn in classrooms supported by their parents' tax dollars. After paying those taxes, few families can afford alternative schools, so determined parents fight to mold government institutions to resemble the schools they would pick if they had the resources, and they are assisted by political groups interested in shaping public debate. Nobody wants hateful ideas and propaganda force-fed to their children, but people don't always agree on which ideas are hateful and which information is false. As a result, lessons are often crafted to please, or avoid offending, those with the most political clout.

Wikileaks censorship proves irrelevant in Internet age

From the New York Times, here's an interesting case study in how government and the courts still overreach in trying to suppress free speech, and how the Internet renders most censorship efforts completely futile. First, the censorship aspect of the case:

The site, Wikileaks.org, invites people to post leaked materials with the goal of discouraging “unethical behavior” by corporations and governments. It has posted documents said to show the rules of engagement for American troops in Iraq, a military manual for the operation of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and other evidence of what it has called corporate waste and wrongdoing.

The case in San Francisco was brought by a Cayman Islands bank, Julius Baer Bank and Trust. In court papers, the bank said that “a disgruntled ex-employee who has engaged in a harassment and terror campaign” provided stolen documents to Wikileaks in violation of a confidentiality agreement and banking laws. According to Wikileaks, “the documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.”

On Friday, Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco granted a permanent injunction ordering Dynadot, the site’s domain name registrar, to disable the Wikileaks.org domain name. The order had the effect of locking the front door to the site — a largely ineffectual action that kept back doors to the site, and several copies of it, available to sophisticated Web users who knew where to look.

Sure enough, Wikileaks.org is unreachable, but those "copies" available to "sophisticated Web users"? Well, for starters, how about looking at an easy-to-reach mirror site in Europe -- like Wikileaks.be.
That mirror site -- and others -- lie completely beyond the jurisdiction of any U.S. court, but as available to Web users as the original, U.S.-based site.

In fact, Wikileaks.be is covering the progress of the case and publishing relevant documents -- including correspondence between Wikileaks and Julius Baer's attorneys.

I suppose Julius Baer could chase after the mirror sites too, but there are an awful lot of jurisdictions on the planet, each capable of hosting Web sites and each with its own laws about what can and can not be published.

Judge White’s censorship order has been labeled "clearly not constitutional” by David Ardia, the director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School. Just as important, it's unenforceable.

This is far from the first time that the world-wide reach of the Internet has nullified censorship efforts. As far back as 1996, a French ban on a book about then-President Francois Mitterand was bypassed when an Internet cafe owner scanned it, uploaded the document to the Web and it was mirrored across the globe.

Update: Judge White reversed himself on February 29, 2008. In his order, he voiced frustration that his effort at censorship had proven irrelevant and unenforceable, saying, “We live in an age when people can do some good things and people can do some terrible things without accountability necessarily in a court of law.”

Arizona two-step 2: Paging Kevin Bacon

There are lots of things you can do under the stars in the Arizona desert: you can camp, shoot, go four-wheeling, build a bonfire, search for fossils or dance in the open air.

Oh wait. Strike that last one; you can't dance outside in the Arizona desert -- at least, not in Pinal County.

Pinal County has a musty old ordinance against outdoors dancing, and county officials have inexplicably exhumed that legal antique and used it to slap San Tan Flat, a popular and well-reviewed restaurant and bar with an open-air stage where country-western music is often played. They pulled the dance law out of their hats after earlier efforts to harass San Tan Flat failed to shut the place down.

I've written about this case before, and so have a lot of other people. You'd think that Pinal County officials would have backed down by now, given the ample ridicule to which they've been subject.

But they haven't -- instead, the Board of Supervisors ruled against restaurant owner Dale Bell and has continued its inexplicable crusade in an environment of mounting outrage and disbelief. The hearing transcript is full of choice quotes:

“[T]hat I envisioned it being like stepping back in time 100 years to a mining camp, and I didn’t envision a mining camp, Sir, to be one where you’d read poetry from a stage.” (Tr. Day 1 at 78) (discussing what he envisioned when he wrote down “rustic western restaurant” on his application).

Dale: I didn’t build anything for dance hall activities. I did build a stage for outdoor entertainment; that’s true.

Gruber: And you never mentioned what was in this – when you label it now, in Plaintiff’s Exhibit number nine (indiscernible – mic interference) and went into any detail of what would be happening on that stage, because you told me old west. There’s going to be no poetry, is there, Mr. Bell? No poetry; correct? Is there going to be poetry? Wait –

Dale: What are the rest of the things you said could have happened there? Puppet shows? I’ve heard that one.

Gruber: There could have been a comedian; there could have been mimes, pantomimes.

Represented by the Institute for Justice, San Tan Flat is now appealing the ruling, and permitting its patrons to dance while the case goes forward.

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