Jacob Sullum: Christie Vs. Paul On Surveillance & Security

NJ governor unconcerned about warrantless snooping.  Chris Christie says Rand Paul, one of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, is "politicizing America's national security" by objecting to the government's indiscriminate collection of our telephone records. The New Jersey governor's puzzling charge against the Kentucky senator    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - The Right Way To Disobey

America's Out-Of-Control Cop Kill Rate

by Edward Peter Stringham.    The police-against-citizen kill rate in the U.S. is more than 145 per 100,000. The overall homicide rate, by way of contrast, is 5 per 100,000. This weekend, police in Long Beach, California shot and killed Feras Morad, a 20 year old college student who was on a balcony and unarmed, and police outside of Tulsa,     ... MORE

5 Eye-Opening Facts, Figures on No-Knock Warrants

by Sean Piccolli. Stats illustrate America's move to a police state. At a time of anxiety over policing in the United States and heated debate about "militarized" law enforcement, the practice of conducting "no-knock raids" – in which heavily armed SWAT teams burst unannounced into homes – has come under widespread scrutiny. Here are facts, figures, and     ... MORE

Arizona Court Upholds Warrantless Search At Wrong House

State lawyers in robes castrate the Fourth Amendment.     An Arizona court has upheld a woman's marijuana convictions based on a warrantless search conducted when sheriff's deputies were sent to a home in response to a 911 "hang-up" call that was treated as an emergency. The Court of Appeals on Tuesday rejected Starr Bennett's argument   ... MORE

Ralph Lopez: Does Jade Helm Violate Posse Comitatus?

A truly great analysis and conclusion.  Obscured by Jon Stewart’s well-publicized mockery of Texans’ reaction to Jade Helm 15—the US Army’s two-month-long exercise across nine states scheduled to begin in July—is the fact that the criticisms may not all be deranged droolings. The Daily Show‘s Stewart made headlines earlier in May when he    ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Paying The Price

Imposing kinder, gentler policing.    Baltimore is now paying the price for irresponsible words and actions, not only by young thugs in the streets, but also by its mayor and the state prosecutor, both of whom threw the police to the wolves, in order to curry favor with local voters. Now murders in Baltimore in May have been more than double  ... MORE

Sheriff’s Office Stoops To New Low: Claims Infant At Fault For SWAT Team Blowing His Face Apart With A Grenade

by Mike Sawyer.  “Merely by being in that room, Bou-Bou had assumed the risk of coming under attack by a SWAT team. By impeding the trajectory of that grenade, rather than fleeing from his crib, Bou-Bou failed to “avoid the consequences” of that attack.” Habersham County Sheriff, Joey Terrell, has allegedly given the most asinine    ... MORE

Matt Agorist: What Do You Say To Your Children When They See A Video of A Police Officer Killing Someone?

Explaining the nature of the state. The video of Walter Scott being shot in the back by North Charleston Police Officer Michael Slager was plastered across television screens worldwide. It showed a public servant gunning down a man in cold blood. It was a paradigm-shattering moment for people across the US, especially for America’s youth.      ... MORE

Derrick Broze: Introducing REVERSE DRUG STINGS: The Latest Tool For Creating Criminals In The War On Drugs

More criminal tactics from government.   "The time has come to remind the Executive Branch that the Constitution charges it with law enforcement — not crime creation,” one California judge writes in a damning indictment of the practice, while another describes agents as “trolling poor neighborhoods.” Since Sept. 11, 2001, law       ... MORE

Josie Wales: IRS Continues SWAT Raids For Evasion While Hundreds Of Thier Agents Avoid Paying Any Taxes At All

Government's tax cheats are low priority.  The Associated Press has reported that over 1,600 IRS employees have willfully committed tax evasion in a 10-year span; most still employed in spite of a 1998 law calling for termination in such cases. Even worse, it has been reported that many of the tax-evading agents were active in enforcing the federal  ... MORE

Daniel Rivero: The FBI Convicted This Man Using Hair Analysis. Now We Know The Truth. It Was A Dog’s Hair.

What if the government wanted you convicted?    For a while now, thanks in part to the reporting of the Washington Post’s Spencer Hsu, it’s been known that something was not quite right with the FBI’s hair forensics unit in the past. But only but only recently has the FBI admitted that failings within the unit led to hundreds, maybe thousands    ... MORE

Radley Balko: The Increasing Isolation Of America’s Police

How did it get to us versus them.   Politico has put up a fascinating profile of Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which is the country’s largest police union. More than anything, the profile highlights how law enforcement is politically positioned in a way that basically immunizes them from criticism and oversight.      ... MORE

Police Want To Add “Eye Blinding” Laser To Thier Arsenal

by Lina Bryce.        More militaristic tactics on the way. A firm that provides non-lethal equipment to law enforcement is set to release a new “compliance weapon” that temporarily blinds targets for up to 15 minutes and police have their sights set on the “eye-blinding” gun. This, in spite of recent controversy of the Ferguson, Missouri unrest, stirs up      ... MORE

Brian Doherty: Rand Paul Vs The Libertarians

Is libertarian-ish good enough?      James Hohmann at Politico last week quotes me and some other people publicly associated with libertarianism to discuss where Rand Paul the presidential candidate stands in libertarian terms. His central thesis is that Paul is, in his own self-framing, declaring himself at best (in libertarian terms) merely  ... MORE

The Proper Way To Make Mistakes In Drug Policing

by Radley Balko.    A couple in Owego, New York was recently wrongly targeted by local police, who had apparently mistaken them for some pretty big time drug distributers. From local TV news outlet WNBF: Steven Dunlap says he was pulled over by police while he was on his way to meet some friends for pizza. He says they took him into custody at   ... MORE

House Effort Would Restore Privacy & Kill The Patriot Act

Pushing back against terrorism's victories.       A pair of House lawmakers wants to completely repeal the Patriot Act and other legal provisions to dramatically rein in American spying. Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) on Tuesday unveiled their Surveillance State Repeal Act, which would overhaul American spying powers  ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: The Only Truly Compliant, Submissive Citizen In A Police State Is A Dead One

"Serve and protect" has become "comply or die."   Americans as young as 4 years old are being leg shackled, handcuffed, tasered and held at gun point for not being quiet, not being orderly and just being childlike—i.e., not being compliant enough. Americans as old as 95 are being beaten, shot and killed for questioning an order,      ... MORE

Police State Update - Warrantless Searches: Chicago Cops Fight To Keep Cellphone Tracking Technology Secret

by Frank Main.   The Chicago Police Department is fighting to keep a lid on how, when and where officers have used covert cellphone tracking systems — with an outside law firm billing the city more than $120,000 to battle a lawsuit that seeks those secret details. Since 2005, the department has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on       ... MORE

Abigail Hall: Comply Or Die - Trends In Modern Policing

A fundamental problem we can't ignore.     Every time a police officer is killed in the line of duty, it makes local, if not national headlines. Though always shocking, the number of law enforcement fatalities has remained fairly steady over the years. According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 165 police   ... MORE