Author: Brian J. Noggle

After all, he’s federal legislator, so he cannot be seen by the public as Doing Something!!!! on local law enforcement problems. So he gathered up a news conference with local law enforcement and spake:

Sen. Jim Talent, calling methamphetamine “the No. 1 law-enforcement problem facing Missouri,” on Friday outlined a federal plan to increase funding for police and prosecutors and restrict sales of the over-the-counter cold pills used to make the powerful narcotic.

Speaking at a news conference at the St. Louis County Police headquarters in Clayton, Talent called the Combat Meth Act the most comprehensive anti-meth legislation ever proposed.

The bill – sponsored by Talent, R-Mo., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. – would direct $20 million to train police, hire prosecutors and fund programs that help children injured in drug labs. But the bill’s focus is restricting the sale of pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in scores of cold remedies.

It’s a big problem facing Missouri, so Talent (a name, not necessarily a noun) wants the federal government to gather federal tax dollars, take its cut off the top, and then pass those federally-taken tax dollars to the states to spend as they see fit. Well, maybe pass the money back to the states, if the states jump through the new federal hoops correctly, probably including passing legislation to make it possible to charge someone with DUI for wearing aftershave. But I digress.

My senator co-sponsored this bill with Dianne Feinstein. That says it all.

They’re doing something to make America better and stronger by setting up a vigorish that will fund administration of the tax money redistribution and by making more innocuous behavior (buying too much cough medicine) criminal.

The America they’re strengthening is the federal government. That America and the amalgamated citizens and states of America are often not the same thing.

From the sound of it, the case against Leonard Little was a little weak:

On Friday, the only defense witness that Rosenblum called was Ladue police Officer Keneth Andreski, who was Stork’s backup when Little was arrested and was standing five feet from the defendant when Little was given the sobriety tests.

Stork had testified that Little was windmilling his arms and unable to stand on one foot. Andreski said he didn’t recall seeing Little swinging his arms or holding them outward like airplane wings to keep his balance.

Andreski said he didn’t recall seeing Little swaying or using the Mercedes for support, as Stork had told the jury.

Also testifying Friday was Sgt. Darin McClure. Under questioning by prosecutor Mark Bishop, McClure said he administered a breath test at the arrest scene on a portable machine and it showed that Little had been drinking. McClure said also he smelled alcohol on Little’s breath.

Under Rosenblum’s questioning, McClure said Little wasn’t stumbling, swaying, losing his balance or smelling of alcohol at the Ladue police station, where he was taken 18 minutes after the traffic stop.

“Nothing in this case is consistent with intoxication,” Rosenblum said.

Well, that’s the flipside of fame and the law’s engagement with you. On the first offense, you leave a mother dead and get a slap on the wrist; from there on out, every cop who pulls you over will try to railroad you for DUI.

Cardinals Differ on Who Will Succeed Pope

Pujols is said to favor Matthew Arnold, whereas Matt Morris and some of the relief pitchers back Percy Bysshe Shelley. Jim Edmonds publicly espoused Anonymous, which proves he was either joking, is daft, or has some weird Californiaesque buddhist leanings.

Clinton Supporters Gear Up Against ‘Swift Boat’ Tactics

Fortunately, this still leaves her exposed to deep water navy tactics, including submarine warfare.

Biometric security at work:

Police in Malaysia are hunting for members of a violent gang who chopped off a car owner’s finger to get round the vehicle’s hi-tech security system.

The car, a Mercedes S-class, was protected by a fingerprint recognition system.

(Link seen via Signifying Nothing and The Liquia Blog.)

Sandy Berger, the former National Security Adviser accused of putting documents in his socks, has plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of stealing classified documents. Of course, dear friends, you realize that stealing classified documents remains a misdemeanor only because only powerful people do it; stealing a couple hundred bucks of rare manuscript or something of comparable size and relative value would land you or I, simple citizens, in jail for a long time.

But in case you’re interested, remember MfBJN provided Stealing Documents In Socks: A Primer last summer to edify you, lawful reader, about how the bad deed is done.

(Story seen on Michelle Malkin.)

Ann Althouse, on a ruling that regarding a landlord who wouldn’t renew the lease for a trangender group because they were tranrestrooming, comments:

This is denying people the right to chose which sex to identify with when they choose whether to use the men’s or the women’s room.

I’ve forgotten. Do I have a penumbra or an emanation?

Loss of Amtrak would derail some travelers’ only ride:

If:

One of 170,000 passengers who use the Missouri Amtrak run each year, Breese may have to find another way if Blunt and the Legislature go forward with plans to cut the state’s $6.4 million Amtrak subsidy.
“It would really be inconvenient if Amtrak wasn’t here,” Breese said Monday afternoon as he and his wife, Clarita, rode the train from St. Louis to Jefferson City. Breese was returning home after a five-month stint in Kuwait.

And:

Ticket revenue is not enough to support Amtrak. The state kicks in $6.4 million to support two daily trains crossing Missouri, one from Kansas City to St. Louis and another in the opposite direction. They stop at eight cities along the way: Kirkwood, Washington, Hermann, Jefferson City, Sedalia, Warrensburg, Lee’s Summit and Independence.

Without the state’s support, the trains would cease to run, according to Jeff Briggs, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Transportation.

Wouldn’t this problem resolve itself if only Amtrak raised ticket prices?

Oh, bite my tongue and perhaps my nose as well; Amtrak isn’t a service, it’s trainfare, and any increase in ticket rates would adversely impact the poorest among us. Like the poverty-stricken anecdote that kicks off the Post-Dispatch story who works as an IT contractor in Kuwait and earns substinence wages doing so.

By raising the ticket prices and covering its costs, Amtrak would ensure that some people could still ride the trains, but Amtrak is a government entity. Its goal is not to cover its costs. Its goal is to exist. Also, to get bigger and get more tax money budget if possible.

Also, kudos to the Post-Dispatch reporter for leading with the story of someone returning from the Middle East to parallel the contractor with military men and women serving in the area.

Court rules telecommuter must pay taxes:

A telecommuter who lives out of state while working by computer for a New York employer must pay New York tax on his full income, the state’s highest court ruled Tuesday in a case that could have wide implications in the growing practice.

The Court of Appeals said that computer programmer Thomas Huckaby who lives in Nashville, Tenn., owed New York income tax for his full salary, not just the time he spent working at his employer’s New York offices.

Huckaby paid tax on about 25 percent of his income over two years for the time he spent working in New York state. But the court upheld a state tax department ruling that all his income should be taxed. That amounts to $4,387 plus interest. However, the ruling could lead to much greater income for the state as it is applied to the growing field of telecommuting.

I would expect cities used to justify income taxes their non-resident commuters by saying that those people used city services and should pay their share for them, as though public goods were private services. The population accepted that.

Now, though, New York tips its hand. It’s not about commuters paying for their share of services that they use; it’s about New York getting what it thinks is its fair share of your income.

I truly look forward to the day that some innovative, unelected regulator determines that my telecommuting is taxable in his jurisdiction because my Internet communication hops through a server in his city or state.

After all, that’s what one could extrapolate from her For the Children rant attacking P2P networks:

I am all for protecting those “really excellent uses.” And I am all for protecting software entrepreneurs and their right to create new products. This blog wouldn’t exist without them. But there’s a cloud of unreality hanging over the P2P debate. It’s not just high-minded geek revolutionaries against Big Media/RIAA/MPAA who are benefiting from P2P. And P2P ain’t just about trading your favorite tunes.

It’s also about sickos and smut purveyors who have unprecedented access to an unimaginable volume of child porn–not to mention photos of children made available to child sex predators through indavertent file-sharing.

So technologies and protocols that allow workstations to network in a peer to peer fashion, that is client-to-client are bad and perhaps should be banned? What about server-to-server networks where clients can connect to servers to retrieve information? People who distribute questionable content can use those networks, too, and have for years. Should we ban those technologies and protocols? Well, no, because they’re widely used and not under suspicion.

Perhaps the paradigm and the workings of the Internet are too advanced and too much a part of society to start burning now. But since we’re in a pitchfork and torch mood, maybe we shoul ban other peer-to-peer communication systems that allow users to disseminate illegal content. Like the United States Post Office. Anyone, for the cost of a stamp, can mail child pornography to someone else!!!! Or the phone system–anyone with a phone can dial another user and can tell them a social security number or plot a crime!

Come to think of it, Malkin’s not the first to want to prohibit P2P protocols and technologies. There’s a very basic movement afoot to ban another personal communications device used occasionally for illicit means. The gun, and its transmission the bullet, are frequent targets for prohibition because some individuals use them with ill intent. Remove the tool, and you’ll remove exercise of the ill intent, right?

I’m all for prosecuting people who commit crimes, but I draw the line at banning multiple use technologies that some individuals will use for ill because human nature leads someone to try to use everything for bad purposes.

Once you start, you have to draw an arbitrary and ever-more-constricting line at how much ill-intention use demands prohibition. Easy identity theft and copyright infringement don’t make Malkin demand prohibition of P2P software, but alleged child pornography does. That’s a couple people among millions of users, a rather small percentage indeed. What percentage of bar stools and pool sticks must be broken over malcreants in brawls before we ban them?

Ad absurdum or slippery slope? Slippery slope, I fear.

Update: Malkin responds to critics in an update to her post:

First, nowhere do I call for outlawing P2P or shutting down the Internet. Crikey. Reread what I wrote. It’s in plain English: “I don’t know what the legislative or regulatory solution is, or whether there is one.” What I’m calling for is for users of this technology–especially parents–to take personal responsibility for knowing what they’re sharing and what others are sharing on these networks. I also would like to see the P2P Pollyanas acknowledge that this crap is out there and take increased corporate responsibility for doing something about it.

Unfortunately, when concerned citizens sound the alarum and the klaxon blares, those elected officials in the legislature or those unelected regulators will react unpredictably, and often in the most simplistic manner possible so they can get back to the power lunches.

I guess one could find some call for parental responsibility in her original post, but in plain English, it looks more like a call for agitation and political action than a call for private citizens to monitor their childrens’ computer use.

A survey of the 200 best walking cities, and St. Louis comes in at 103 and Milwaukee comes in at 135? Are you kidding me?

What, does St. Louis get higher marks for the extreme sport of dodging crumbling facades?

(Link seen on Dustbury.)

Apparently, the IRS thinks people aren’t paying their fair share:

Most Americans pay their federal taxes by their due dates, but there’s still a yawning gap between what taxpayers owe and what they pay, according to the IRS.

That gap — known as the net tax gap — is between $257 billion and $298 billion, according to preliminary findings from a three-year study on taxpayer compliance released Tuesday.

“Even after IRS enforcement efforts and late payments, the government is being shortchanged by over a quarter-trillion dollars by those who pay less than their fair share,” said IRS commissioner Mark W. Everson in a statement.

The IRS discovers the more people it audits, the more it can shake out of them. But only to get its their fair shares.

I am uncomfortable when the head of the IRS is determining what each person’s fair share of tax burden is. I thought we had elected officials to do that, but what we really have is unelected enforcement agents who want more budget and more power.

Poll: Australia against Taiwan war:

Australians are against following the United States into a war with China over Taiwan, according to a new poll on Australian attitudes.

But the same number who oppose involvement in such a war — 72 percent — think Australia’s alliance with the United States is important for Australia’s security.

Hey, don’t get me wrong, I am against a war over Taiwan, too. Ideally, this situation will be resolved peacefully as mainland China allows Taiwanese independence or Taiwan elects to rejoin a free mainland China.

I find it shortsighted and self-serving that the Australian public won’t protect a free people from an aggressive and militaristic foe, but that the Australians would certainly expect us to jump in to save them from the same aggressive and militaristic foe. But that’s modern Western thought for you.

Gettysburg College President Katherine Haley Will doesn’t care for the Department of Education’s new spending program:

A proposal by the Education Department would force every college and university in America to report all their students’ Social Security numbers and other information about each individual — including credits earned, degree plan, race and ethnicity, and grants and loans received — to a national databank. The government will record every student, regardless of whether he or she receives federal aid, in the databank.

The government’s plan is to track students individually and in full detail as they complete their post-secondary education. The threat to our students’ privacy is of grave concern, and the government has not satisfactorily explained why it wants to collect individual information.

She’s rightly concerned about the privacy implications, but I’m also concerned about the government overreach. Why, oh why, does the Department of Education feel the need to track every student in the country to the microlevel?

So it can perform its job more efficiently, of course. That job? To spend vast sums of tax money and acquire more power and budget for itself.

Gun scare closes part of Cincinnati airport:

Part of Cincinnati’s main airport was temporarily shut down Sunday after a passenger passed through a security checkpoint with what appeared to be a gun in a carryon bag, authorities said.

Baggage screeners noticed an X-ray image that resembled a gun after the passenger had picked up the bag and left the checkpoint, said Christopher White, a Transportation Security Administration spokesman in Atlanta.

To rectify the situation, the TSA closed the airport and searched everyone beyond the checkpoint again.

Were this a novel, movie, or an actual plot, the bad guy would have stashed the gun somewhere beyond the checkpoint for an accomplice to retrieve later. Instead, it’s an example of befuddled TSA grunts closing down an airport because they couldn’t watch the X-rays in real time.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin comments and suspects it was a real gun.