Police has no obligation to protect

One day [estranged husband with history of violence] Mack called Ruth to say that he was coming to her house to kill her. Ruth called the police for immediate help. The police department "refused to come to her aid at that time, and asked that she call the department again when Mack Bunnell had arrived." Forty-five minutes later Mack arrived and stabbed Ruth to death. Responding to a neighbor's call, the police eventually came to Ruth's house...after she was dead.

Ruth's estate suid the city police for negligently failing to protect her. The California appeals court held that the City of San Jose was shielded from the negligence suit because of a state statute and because there was no "special relationship" between the police and Ruth—the police had not started to help her, and she had not relied on any promise that the police would help. Case dismissed.

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The Supreme Court has held that neither the U.S. Constitution nor the federal civil rights laws rquire states to protect citizens from crime. As one federal appeals court observed, ordinary citizens have:

no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators but it does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution. The Constitution ... does not require the federal government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a service as maintaining law and order.

Knights Templar seeking compensation

The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ has launched a court case in Spain, demanding Pope Benedict “recognise” the seizure of assets worth €100bn. The Spanish-based group of Templars apparently says in a statement: "We are not trying to cause the economic collapse of the Roman Catholic Church, but to illustrate to the court the magnitude of the plot against our Order."

Inefficient non-market structures inside corporations sustained by government

But—again—the state’s intervention in the market raises almost insurmountable barriers to this form of organization. The state artificially promotes hierarchy at the expense of markets by subsidizing the input costs of large-scale enterprise and by protecting large corporations against the competitive ill effects of inefficiency. It subsidizes long-distance transportation and thus artificially inflates market and firm size. Its differential tax advantages for corporate debt and capital depreciation (or more accurately, its differential tax penalties on those not engaged in such activities) encourage mergers, acquisitions, and excessively capital-intensive forms of production with high entry costs. Its cartelizing regulations, in addition, limit competition in product features and quality. Thus the boundary between hierarchy and market is artificially shifted so that the dominant firms are far larger, more hierarchical, and more vertically integrated than they would be in a free market.

Argument of harm by intellectual property too.

Getting Locke straight

He wound up expanding that comment into a separate post, describing the way Locke’s “admixture of labor” standard for initial appropriation (that one appropriates unowned land and “takes it out of the common” by “mixing one’s labor with it,” i.e. altering or improving it in some way) was used in practice to legitimize the theft of native lands in areas colonized by Europeans.

This particular view of (real) property claims was very convenient to the Age of Colonization, since it gave Euro-originating settlers the opportunity to “mix their labor” with “something not already anyone’s property,” which is to say, land that was sustaining non-Europeans...

By Rothbard’s version of the Lockean standard, the overwhelming majority of land titles in the Third World, of latifunderos and other landed oligarchs, are illegitimate, and the land is the rightful property of the peasants whose ancestors cultivated it. In the United States, all absentee claims to presently vacant and unimproved land should be treated as null and void, and land subsequently developed under such title is the present rightful property of the actual homesteader or his heirs and assigns.

The Gridlock Economy

A simple example of how too much ownership and intellectual property rights "wrecks markets, stops innovation, and costs lives":

Tarnation, a spunky documentary on growing up with a schizophrenic mother, originally cost $218 to make at home on the director's laptop. It required an additional $230,000 for music clearances before it could be distributed.

That's against the law?

From Cracked:

Stafford Township, New Jersey has had enough of your childish shit and isn't going to take it any more. In 1998 the township council voted 4 to 2 to ban the disruptive and potentially deadly music played by ice cream trucks.

We can think of two possible reasons for this. One is the known fact that no one under the age of 30 can resist sprinting out into the street at the sound of a passing ice cream truck, which probably causes millions of injuries and deaths every year (we actually couldn't find the stats on this but if there's a low, it's surely in the millions).

Improper vegan diet results in father's child abuse conviction

Blair Parker's trial began in late May, and Parker himself took the witness stand to defend his dietary beliefs, which he had gained through his university studies of nutrition.

He described a daily regimen with the children that included prayer, study, chores, exercise and rigid adherence to diet, right down to what liquids they could drink and when.

Parker claimed that he could not find a doctor of his own religious faith or dietary beliefs that he trusted. Instead, he consulted with a naturopath who lived in Washington state and who could not actually see or examine the children.

Parker still claims that the children suffered from "malabsorption," an inability to absorb vital nutrients.

The prosecutor said that Parker obsessed about the children's bowel movements and gave them enemas that further impeded absorbing any nutrients of the food they ate.

Texas man who shot and killed two unarmed men believed to be burglarizing neighbors is not going to trial.

Then Horn sounding angrier by the moment cited the new Texas law.

"OK, but I have a right to protect myself too, sir," he said. "And you understand that. And the laws have been changed in this country since September the first, and you know it and I know it."

But the burglars were unarmed and shot in the back. Not exactly self-defense.

Subtle racial slurs still shock, humiliate targets; federal officials see increase in complaints

Tomeika Broussard thought it was so absurd when she overheard her supervisor refer to her as a "reggin" that she just laughed. Then she realized it was the n-word spelled backward.

The only African-American in the small medical clinic in Los Gatos, Calif., Broussard said she was subjected to racial slurs almost daily. They were not the overt ones that most people would immediately recognize, but rather subtle, surreptitious code words that sometimes take a while to figure out.

Some history of eugenics

Indeed, this "reversion towards mediocrity" was suspected by some historians to be a major contributor to the fall of the Roman Empire. The gloomy prediction of mankind's decline was dubbed dysgenics, and it was considered to be the antithesis of the eugenics movement; but it was not considered inevitable. It was believed that a society could reverse its own genetic decay by reducing breeding among the feebleminded and increasing fertility of the affluent.

World's most dangerous gangs

Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), Brazil:
... On Friday, May 12, the city of São Paulo came under siege as anonymous attackers burned buses, banks, and public buildings, gunning down police and instilling chaos as they went. Simultaneously, 73 prisons around the state erupted in rebellion. For days, the city and the prisons were at a standstill while local leaders floundered, unsure how to respond.

This mob is big in Japan

Most Americans think of Japan as a law-abiding and peaceful place, as well as our staunch ally, but reporting on the underworld gave me a different perspective. Mobs are legal entities here. Their fan magazines and comic books are sold in convenience stores, and bosses socialize with prime ministers and politicians. And as far as the United States is concerned, Japan may be refueling U.S. warships at sea, but it's not helping us fight our own battles against organized crime -- a realization that led to my biggest scoop.

Taser suffers a rare loss in court

69 court victories, and then (from The Herald of Monterey County):

A federal jury has held Taser International responsible for the death of a Salinas man in U.S. District Court in San Jose on Friday, and awarded his family more than $6 million in punitive and compensatory damages.

An attorney for the family called the verdict a “landmark decision,” and indicated that it was the first time Taser International had been held responsible for a death or injury linked to its product.

Forensic science on trial

...to judge by the most comprehensive study on the reliability of forensic evidence to date, the error rate is more than 10% in five categories of analysis, including fiber, paint and body fluids. ...DNA and fingerprints are more reliable but still not foolproof....a 2005 study in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology suggests a fingerprint false-positive rate a bit below 1%, a widely read 2006 experiment shows an alarming 4% false-positive rate.

How can we preserve the usefulness of forensic evidence while protecting the public when it breaks down? The core problem with the forensic system is monopoly. Once evidence goes to one lab, it is rarely examined by any other. That needs to change. Each jurisdiction should include several competing labs...

Other reforms should include making labs independent of law enforcement and a requirement for blind testing. When crime labs are part of the police department, some forensic experts make mistakes out of an unconscious desire to help their "clients," the police and prosecution. Independence and blind testing prevent that.

Canada's C-51 law may outlaw 60% of natural health products; big pharma pushing to criminalize supplements

Among the changes proposed by the bill are radical alterations to key terminology, including replacing the word "drug" with "therapeutic product" throughout the Act, thereby giving the Canadian government broad-reaching powers to regulate the sale of all herbs, vitamins, supplements and other items. With this single language change, anything that is "therapeutic" automatically falls under the Food and Drug Act. This would include bottled water, blueberries, dandelion greens and essentially all plant-derived substances.

The Act also changes the definition of the word "sell" to include anyone who gives such therapeutic products to someone else. So a mother giving an herb to her child, under the proposed new language, could be arrested for engaging in the sale of unregulated, unapproved "therapeutic substances."

Dutch bill to ban magic mushrooms

... the government's decision was prompted by the death of a 17-year-old French girl last year, who jumped from a bridge in Amsterdam.

But no formal link was established between her death and the use of mushrooms.

Other incidents involving the drug have included an Icelandic tourist jumping from a balcony and breaking both legs and a Danish tourist driving his car wildly through a camping ground, narrowly missing sleeping campers.

The ban on the cultivation and use of the mushrooms means most of Smart Shops will have to close.

Seattle's regulations add on $200 000 to house price

From a University of Washington study.

Humanity Lobotomy -- on net neutrality

Some fine history of communication costs and development arc.

Proving you're a Jew getting harder

The rabbinate’s handling of the issue has placed it on one side of an ideological fissure within Orthodox Judaism itself, between those concerned with making sure no stranger enters the gates and those who fear leaving sisters and brothers outside.

Police power trips on video

Dumb shits. Five videos if you click on the title. This is the Maltese one; the others are American.