And on pretty dubious grounds.

The measure calls for creating a 14-member bipartisan commission with a $5 million budget to examine all levels of the justice system – federal, state and local. It is intended to lead to recommendations on how to change laws, enforcement practices and prison operations to make the justice system fairer and more cost-effective. The panel would have to complete its work in 18 months.

Two Republican senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, spoke against the amendment, saying that allowing a federal commission to examine state and local criminal justice systems would encroach on states’ rights and that the commission’s $5 million budget should be used for other purposes.

Hutchison said studying the federal system is within Congress’ powers but including state and local justice systems “is an overreach of gigantic proportions.”

“We are absolutely ignoring the Constitution if we do this,” Coburn said.

A majority of senators supported Webb’s amendment, 57-43, but it fell three votes short of the 60 needed to be added to a spending bill.

Webb blamed Republicans for blocking the legislation and vowed after the vote to keep pressing for the commission.

“Their inflammatory arguments defy reasonable explanation and were contradicted by the plain language of our legislation,” Webb said in a prepared statement. “To suggest, for example, that the nonbinding recommendations of a bipartisan commission threaten the Constitution is absurd.”

Absurd is right. If state and local law enforcement officials, prosecutors, courts, and prisons are violating the constitutional rights of their residents, then there’s a clear 14th Amendment justification for federal involvement.

But let’s be honest, here. This is some pretty blatantly selective fidelity to the Constitution. The drug war is as direct and aggressive an assault on federalism and the power of states and localities to make their own criminal justice policy as anything else the federal government does. Yet Hutchison, Coburn and the rest of the GOP senators who killed the Webb bill all support it. They also support all sorts of federal grants to local police departments. They all support letting the Pentagon give military equipment to local police departments.

Along comes a bill that would create a committee to make some non-binding suggestions that, if followed, may make it less likely that someone will be wrongfully imprisoned, or beaten by cops, or otherwise  get screwed over by the criminal justice system, and suddenly all of these GOP senators get a case of the constitutional vapors.

New Orleans.

You may remember Emily Good, the Rochester woman arrested earlier this year for videotaping a traffic stop from her front yard.

When last we visited the story, Good’s neighbors had held a rally for her. Then Rochester police showed up at that rally, and began writing tickets for those attendees who parked more than 12 inches from the curb. The cops even brought rulers.

Monroe County District Attorney Michael Green declined to charge Good, because, well, because she didn’t break any law. This has apparently invoked the wrath of the police union. Green isn’t running for reelection, but one of his lieutenants running for the job. The police union has endorsed her opponent, and the Good case appears to be a big reason why.

Doorley said she thinks her prosecution of corruption within the Greece Police Department and the decision not to prosecute Emily Good, who was arrested while video recording a police traffic stop, thwarted her chances for law enforcement support.

She said during her endorsement interview that she was questioned at length about the DA’s decision that Good had not committed a crime.

Good was charged with interfering with a police stop — the arresting officer contended she was endangering police — but the District Attorney’s Office decided the charge should be dismissed.

Doorley, who was then first assistant district attorney, appeared in court to request dismissal of the charge. Prosecutors determined that, under the statute, Good had not committed a crime.

A number of prosecutors scrutinized past cases involving the same criminal statute and determined the criminal charge was “not sustainable,” Doorley said.

Imagine the union’s reaction if the DA’s office had done what it should have done—criminally charge the cops who arrested Good for illegally detaining her.

(Hat tip.)

So it’s worse than initially reported.

The D.C. police department has released preliminary statistics on the controversial practice of arresting drivers whose vehicles are unregistered or have expired registration. The numbers indicate that the practice is more widespread than previously thought, with several arrests per day on average.

In the one-year period starting Oct. 1, 2009, records indicate that 2,163 persons were arrested in the District for expired tags. In the subsequent year, ending in September, arrests declined dramatically, to 1,334.

Funny thing about numbers. The article notes that of those 3,500 people arrested, only about 250 were actually put in a jail cell. The disparity between the two numbers first evoked in me an, “Oh, well that’s not so bad” reaction. So just consider that latter number on its own: Over two years, 250 people were jailed in D.C. for having expired license plates. Absurd.

• Non-existent DOJ study repeatedly cited to justify police benefits.
• Stuff Siri says.
• Pat Buchanan: Black people were more American back when they were second-class citizens.
• Remember the high school principal arrested for DWI despite blowing 0.0 on the breath test? There were no drug or alcohol in his system. Still, the cop swears he smelled alcohol. And the DA says he believes the arrest was made in good faith.
• If only this could actually happen.
• Trucking gets a little freer today. The usual suspects predict mass calamity.

New Orleans.

Today’s bizarre attempt to politicize a news story:

I like the response from James Poulos:

If it saved just one deeply humbled Speaker from one escaped tiger attack, the stimulus was worth it.

Ah, Washington.

It seems a rare act of civic sacrifice: in the name of deficit reduction, lawmakers from both parties are calling for the end of a longstanding agricultural subsidy that puts about $5 billion a year in the pockets of their farmer constituents. Even major farm groups are accepting the move, saying that with farmers poised to reap bumper profits, they must do their part.

Yay! But wait. Hold on . . .

But in the same breath, the lawmakers and their farm lobby allies are seeking to send most of that money — under a new name — straight back to the same farmers, with most of the benefits going to large farms that grow commodity crops like corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton. In essence, lawmakers would replace one subsidy with a new one.

And so it goes.

• Headline of the day.
• French court tells ISPs to block sites that post videos of police misconduct.
• Fun video: What the world would look like as you approach the speed of light.
• Gene Healy on Obama’s venture into Uganda.
• The conservative Rutherford Institute: “The War on Drugs Has Become the War on the American People”
• Innocent Atlanta woman arrested, jailed for 53 days. TV station finds the actual suspect.
• Depressing lede of the day.
• Baltimore radio host, libertarian, and all-around decent guy Ron Smith has stage 4 pancreatic cancer. I’ve done Ron’s show many, many times. He’s smart, incisive, principled, and clearly cares about the sorts of stories we cover on this site. This is crappy news. Best wishes to him and his family.

New Orleans.

If you’re in or around Oxford, Mississippi next Tuesday, I’ll be speaking on a panel at Ole Miss on the Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks cases. The panel will happen after a screening of the documentary Mississippi Innocence.  More details here.

Here’s a trailer for the movie. (In the interest of vanity, I feel compelled to note that there were 65 pounds more of me when I shot that interview than there are today.)

MISSISSIPPI INNOCENCE – Trailer from UM Media Documentary Projects on Vimeo.

Over at The Daily Beast, Eli Lake looks at how defense contractors are shopping war on terror technology to local police departments.

It’s known as IBISS, the acronym for the Integrated Building Interior Surveillance System. Like its name suggests, it can see through the walls of buildings and sketch out images of what’s inside.

ntil this year, IBISS was a classified system, a piece of high-tech wizardry the military used to fight the war on terrorism. The contractor that made the system, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), couldn’t talk about it in public, but that’s changing. IBISS is one of the new products SAIC is hoping to sell to local police stations and fire departments as the defense contractor explores what is known in the industry as “adjacent markets.”

The only thing preventing more widespread implementation of this stuff at the moment are strained state and local budgets.

“In some ways this is the entire trend we’ve been seeing since 9/11. All kinds of capabilities that were developed with an eye to foreign countries are being turned inward upon the American people,” Stanley said. “We’ve seen this with everything from the NSA to spy satellites even to a lot of the technologies that are moving through what is called the green to blue pipeline, which is to say the military to the police.”

The trend goes back quite a bit farther than 9/11.

Amazing story from California:

David Dutcher met Sharon on Match.com in late 2008, a few months after separating from his wife. “We had a lot in common,” he recalled. Sharon loved four-wheel-drive trucks and sports.

They met for coffee, then dinner. Sharon was tall, slender, blond and beautiful. She moaned that she had not had sex in a long time. She told him he had large, strong hands and wondered if that portended other things. She described his kisses as “yummy.”…

On their second date, Sharon suggested they join one of her friends “who was partying because she had closed a real estate deal,” Dutcher said. They drove to an Italian restaurant in a suburb near San Francisco. Sharon’s friend, “Tash,” was a loud and raucous brunet who was pounding down shots.

The women fiddled with Dutcher’s tie and massaged his neck and shoulders. The brunet unbuttoned her blouse to reveal generous cleavage. “I am way over my head with these girls,” he remembered thinking. “I hadn’t been out dating in a while.”

Sharon had trouble finishing her tequila shots and asked Dutcher to help, he said. When the women went to the bathroom, two men at the other end of the bar peppered Dutcher with questions…

The women suggested going to a house with a hot tub that Tash was housesitting, Dutcher said. He followed them in his truck. Within a few minutes, a flashing red light appeared in his rearview mirror. The officer said he had been swerving.

Three months later, Dutcher’s wife filed a motion in their divorce case, telling the court that her soon-to-be former husband had been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving and that she feared for their children’s safety. The judge ordered that Dutcher’s visits be supervised.

Here’s what happened:

Dutcher had been duped.

The women who’d ogled him worked for Butler’s detective agency. Sharon, who told Dutcher she was a divorcee employed by an investment firm, actually was a former Las Vegas showgirl.

A man who once worked for Butler had blown the whistle. He told authorities Butler arranged for men to be arrested for drunk driving at the behest of their ex-wives and their divorce lawyers — and that entrapment was only one of many alleged misdeeds.

Butler, 49, a former police officer, was arrested in February. In addition to setting up at least five DUIs, he sold drugs for law enforcement officers and helped them open and operate a brothel, collecting and delivering the profits, according to prosecutors and a statement Butler gave them after his arrest.

In the March 15 statement obtained by The Times, Butler said his accomplices reasoned that they could shield their illegal businesses because any complaints would be investigated by a state-run narcotics task force, which one of the officers headed.

The alleged crimes implicated three different law enforcement agencies — the San Ramon and Danville police departments and the narcotics task force — and took place in Contra Costa County, a collection of mostly middle-class communities that stretch from the East Bay shoreline opposite San Francisco to upscale suburbs inland.

Jewett called the scandal a “sordid drama” that overwhelmed the resources of the county and raised potential conflicts for police departments being asked to investigate their own.

In May, the FBI took over the probe, interviewing Dutcher and other ex-husbands arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. A federal grand jury indicted Butler and two of the officers in August and September. The charges included drug dealing, running a prostitution business and illegal possession of a weapon.

More indictments are expected. A third officer, implicated by Butler in the DUIs, faces state charges of accepting bribes to make arrests.

Half of America now supports legalizing pot. That number exceeds the approval ratings of President Obama, the Congress, the Supreme Court, and every GOP candidate running for president.

Legalization is also at the top of the White House’s “We the People” petition site, and it isn’t even close. Next time Obama laughs off the question—and he will—I’d love to hear a White House reporter ask him if he’s aware that a higher percentage of Americans now support legalizing marijuana than think he’s doing a good job as president.

• Pretty sure something in HIPAA prohibits this.
• Those speedy neutrinos, explained.
• Australian government may levy fines for insulting politicians.
• The unlikely early funder of Occupy Wall Street.
• Jacob Sullum slaps around food columnist Mark Bittman.

New Orleans.

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood gave an interview to the Jackson Free Press last week. Most of it is the nauseating fluff you usually hear from politicians. Hood also wants to take a more active role in “policing the Internet,” whatever that means. He also wants to make it a felony to witness a felony and not report it. And he wants to do lots of things for the children. And orphans and widows. The man is nothing if not bold.

But here’s the fun part:

Last year, you spoke out against a bill that would require a pathologist in Mississippi to hold an American Board of Pathology certification saying it threatened cases involving Steve Hayne. Can you explain your position?

There has been a misconception, and (JFP managing editor) Ronni Mott did this. … She didn’t listen to what I had told her as well as that other guy who writes for the paper (freelancer and then-Reason magazine columnist Radley Balko). Dr. (Michael) West is someone we have investigated, and I don’t support him in any matter. It’s not that I have supported Steven Hayne in any matter. What I have said are the facts: When I was a DA, he testified against me in criminal cases. I always found him to do a good job. By saying that, they assume I am just supporting him all the way, which is absolutely not true.

I don’t know what Hood means when he ways that he doesn’t support West “in any matter,” but his office most certainly continues to defend convictions won based on West’s testimony. In at least two cases, Eddie Lee Howard and Leigh Stubbs, Hood’s office argued that the defendant was procedurally barred from asking for a new trial because of West, because they’d already challenged his testimony and had been denied. If Hood truly believes West isn’t a credible witness, why is he asking that people convicted due to West’s testimony be kept in prison (or in Howard’s case, on death row) on a technicality?

Hood has also previously mentioned some sort of investigation into West, but his office wouldn’t give me any specifics on what was being investigated, or who was doing the investigating. He has also yet to recommend a single conviction be overturned because it was tainted by West’s testimony. West’s lack of credibility has been common knowledge in the Mississippi legal community for well over a decade. What’s taking so long?

As for Hayne, Hood has also previously made the claim that Hayne often testified for the defense back when Hood was a prosecutor, thus I guess establishing Hayne’s impartiality. I’ve yet to find a single example of this. It may have happened, but it certainly wasn’t common, and was dwarfed by the thousands of times Hayne testified for the state. The last time Hood made this claim, I asked his office for a list of cases where Hayne testified for the defense, against Hood when Hood was a prosecutor.  Hood’s office did not respond to my request.

More from Hood:

As far as the legislation goes, what I was saying was if Dr. Hayne has done all these examinations, and say it was several years before—and you know it takes two or three years sometimes before a case goes to trial—then when he goes to take the witness stand, and the statute passes, they are going to be hammering him with the law. And trying to keep him on and qualified in a murder case that occurred before we passed the law will be difficult. … The second thing about a pathologist is that very seldom do they make or break a case. All they say is the manner of death and cause of death, and that’s about it.

The first part of this graph is clearly incorrect. The law passed, and Hayne is still testifying in those old cases. Thing is, the scenario Hood fears should be happening in Mississippi—and a hell of a lot more. Mississippi should be reviewing every case in which Hayne or West has ever testified. But it isn’t. And the law in question wouldn’t have done anything of the sort. It only made sure someone like Hayne couldn’t do autopsies for the state going forward. Hood is either really dumb, or he knew this, and spread misinformation anyway. Neither scenario speaks particularly well of him.

The last statement in the graph above is also plainly false. It may be the case that the testimony from a competent medical examiner doesn’t usually make or break a case, but Hayne often gave testimony that turned a case, and in a number of cases, that testimony was later found lacking by more credible medical examiners. There are currently three men on death row (two in Mississippi, one in Louisiana) who are there because of critical testimony from Hayne (and in the Louisiana case, also because of West). And Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, both exonerated, would never have been convicted were it not for Hayne’s propensity to find bite marks no other doctor had seen, and for West’s “talent” to then match them to the state’s favored suspect. The state had no other evidence.

My Nashville Byline blog has relaunched over at Huffington Post.

The first post today is my report from the Americana Music Fest. It comes with a slideshow of photos from the festival, including an uncomfortably up-close photo of John Oates.

The introduction to this Buddy Holly performance on Arthur Murray Dance Party . . .  is simply wonderful.

(Hat tip: Lucy Steigerwald.)

• Headline of the day.
• Another isolated incident.
• What the hell, here are two more.
• California Medical Association calls for legalization of pot.
• A catalog of strange sex injuries.
• Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street? A quiz.