Barack Oblogging

Radley Balko basically captures all my quibbles with Obama in his latest Fox News column (yes, he does a column for Fox. Get over it.)

The thing is, every single one of these are politically easy positions. Willie Nelson has earned my everlasting ire (despite his absolutely amazing collabo with Snoop Dogg [SPOILER: IT'S ABOUT SMOKING POT]) for his free memetic PR on behalf of the Farm Lobby; similarly, nobody who is interested in getting elected to anything and is not either a certain crazy elf from the Midwest or a certain web-popular Texan Obstetrician dare oppose the War on Drugs or expanding federal powers. Needless to say, a Democrat who goes against the Teachers' Union has all the chance of a Republican who hates Jesus.

It's not surprising, it's just a good reminder to certain people (like my father) that simply electing a youthful, charismatic, less-evil-than-most-other-politicians Black guy is going to magically change the world.

Ugh.

This is absolutely disgusting.

On the other hand, how can we possibly expect a human father to act rationally towards his son in a situation like this? Shit like this happens often enough to be a fairly significant problem. The only answer, to me, is to reduce the number of people with this kind of power, and reduce the power individuals have. The only other possibilities are this kind of miscarriage of justice or expecting/coercing a parent (or child, or spouse, or friend, or...) to act inhumanly towards a person they love. Not cool.


[Via Radley "The Agitator" Balko]

@Workblogging: What 4th Amendment? Edition

So now, apparently La Migra are borrowing tactics from their drug-bustin' bretheren and harassing innocent people at home. The only surprising thing is that there is a concerted legal effort to stop the practices.

The money quote from the article:

"As long as we have people willing to flaunt the law, then the possibility of an innocent person having to endure wrongful arrest will always be there," said Jean Towell, president of the Citizens for Immigration Reform Dallas.

The thing is, it's really just incidental that immigration is the issue at hand. You could replace "flaunt the law" with any one of your favorite illegal activities:

"As long as we have people willing to double park, then the possibility of an innocent person having to endure wrongful arrest will always be there."

It's a scary look into the mind of the law-and-order types who are pointing this country in a worrisome direction.



[Hat tip Radley "The Agitator" Balko]

Perhaps...Too Clever?

This week, the The Onion did their American Voices feature on Ron Paul's dropping out of the presidential race. All three people featured have the last names of people who work for Reason Magazine, including Radley Balko, the guy I interned for at Cato.

("Hat tip" Reason Hit & Run and Radley's blog The Agitator)