Reason Magazine - Staff > Juliet Samuel > Hit & Run Posts

My T-Shirt Went to Peterborough and All I Got Was an Â£80 Fine

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 08:18:00 EDT

The BBC’s “WHO, WHAT, WHY?” magazine section brings us the story of Mr. Pratt, of Peterborough, England, fined for his "offensive" t-shirt:

He thought it was a bit of a laugh, but Peterborough City Council failed to see the funny side of David Pratt's T-shirt. He has been threatened with a £80 penalty notice after wearing a top with the slogan: "Don't piss me off! I am running out of places to hide the bodies.” After an official complaint was made to the council, street wardens told Mr Pratt his T-shirt could cause offence or incite violence. He faces an on-the-spot fine from the police if he wears it again.

And he’s not the only one. The article goes on to list a bunch of objects that were censored by police, mostly after complaints by nosy members of the public: A toddler’s t-shirt with the word “sperm” on it; a pub sign featuring the word “faggot;” and an fcuk (French Connection U.K.) t-shirt picturing a copulating couple:

Using threatening, abusive, or insulting language is a criminal offence under Section 5 of the Public Order Act, even if it's printed on a T-shirt. This applies in England and Wales, in Scotland such an incident would be classed as breach of the peace, says the Law Society of Scotland.
It is not necessary for someone to have made an official complaint for the police to act, they just have to think it might offend a hypothetical third party, says criminal solicitor Louise Christian.

Every Little Bit Helps... Right?

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 11:09:00 EDT

Conscientious greens fix their sights on plastic water bottles:

In the last few months, bottled water — generally considered a benign, even beneficial, product — has been increasingly portrayed as an environmental villain by city leaders, activist groups and the media. The argument centers not on water, but oil. It takes 1.5 million barrels a year just to make the plastic water bottles Americans use, according to the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, plus countless barrels to transport it from as far as Fiji and refrigerate it. ...
Dave Byers, 65, from Silver Spring, Md., discussed the issue with his wife, Pat, on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a 90-degree Saturday. “I think it should be banned, actually,” he said of bottled water.

The US currently uses 20 million barrels of oil per day. First we’re going to ban plastic bags, slicing away a giant 0.16% of that consumption. Now, bring on the plastic bottle ban, slashing a full 0.02% from the oil guzzling. Take that, global warming!

A Glass By Any Other Name...

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:34:00 EDT

Rising demand in India and China has sparked fears that the world could experience a drastic champagne shortage in the near future. Some say hoarding vineyard owners are to blame (the damn kulaks!)—they currently keep back about 100 million bottles for their retirement funds. But evidence points to a more likely culprit: the French government. In order to plant more champagne grapes, vineyards have to obtain authorization, which can take 10 years.

Global sales have risen from 287 million bottles in 2002 to 321 million in 2006. They are likely to reach 330 million this year, with exports to Russia growing by 39 percent, to China by 50 percent and to India by 125 percent. But only 32,600 hectares of vineyards are authorised to produce the black grapes for champagne.
Experts say that the maximum number of bottles to be wrung out of the land is 350 million – and many even doubt whether this can be attained. They say that the region’s grapes are already being pushed to the limit as owners await official approval to plant more vines in 2017.

Of course, one solution is to just buy the same product with a different name. Since 1990, an E.U. law has forbidden any wine producer not from the Champagne region in France from using the name for their goods (and it tries hard to insist its trading partners abide by the rule). After all, if consumers can’t be trusted to tell French champagne from trashy foreign stuff, they obviously need the government to help them. Perhaps what we’re really facing is a semantics shortage.

Ignoring the Victim

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:39:00 EDT

More on unintended consequences in the NYT: it turns out that state mandatory arrest laws—whereby a police officer turning up to the scene of domestic violence must arrest someone—discourage victims from reporting crimes. States with mandatory arrest laws on average have intimate partner murder rates 50% higher than states without them:

The mandatory arrest laws were intended to impose a cost on abusers. But because of psychological, emotional and financial ties that often keep victims loyal to their abusers, the cost of arrest is easily transferred from abusers to victims. Victims want protection, but they do not always want to see their partners put behind bars.
In some cases, victims may favor an arrest, but fear that their abusers will be quickly released. And many victims may avoid calling the police for fear that they, too, will be arrested for physically defending themselves. The possibility of such “dual arrests” is most worrisome for victims who have children at home.

The problem with a law like this is that it regards all individual victims of domestic violence as a collective underclass that needs to be forcibly “saved” in any way the state deems fit. Undoubtedly resources and information should be available to victims, but blanket rules like this treat them as voiceless prey rather than human beings with their own priorities and knowledge of the situation. Any law that fails to take the victim’s wishes into account when dealing with a risk that affects them is bound to run into problems.

Via IWF blog Inkwell.

The Milk Club

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 17:30:00 EDT

The NYT wrote yesterday of a rising trend of illegal substance use, outlawed by the FDA for twenty years, but used by half a million people in the U.S. The product is raw milk—straight from the udder, just as the cow intended. Currently, most milk in the U.S. is pasteurized, which involves heating it to temperatures at which nasty bacteria (E. coli, salmonella, etc) break down, then cooling it down again and bottling it up. According to raw milk drinkers, the process gets rid of its “rich” taste and beneficial bacteria. But it’s often the only legal way to buy and sell milk:

While its sale for human consumption is illegal in 15 states, New York is one of 26 where it can be bought with restrictions. The chief one is that raw milk can only be sold on the premises of one of 19 dairy farms approved by the state. Clandestine milk clubs, like the one Mr. Milgrom-Elcott joined, are one way of circumventing the law, and there are others.

And the market is growing:

In 2000, the Organic Pastures Dairy Company in the San Joaquin Valley near Fresno became California’s first raw milk dairy with certified organic pasture land. This year its co-founder, Mark McAfee, expects it to gross $6 million — up from $4.9 last year.

It's legal within California, but the only way to ship it across states lines without inciting the FDA’s wrath is to label it as pet food. Admittedly, despite its “natural” appeal, raw milk might not be perfectly healthy (“In 1938, for example, milk caused 25 percent of all outbreaks of food- and water-related sickness”), but it’s hardly the FDA's place to snatch bottles of milk from the hands of full-grown adults.

FBI Takes "A Small Step Toward Sanity"

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:26:00 EDT

The FBI’s personnel shortage has led to a relaxation in its drug rules. Previous rules stipulated that prospective employees must have smoked dope no more than 15 times (15 being the magic number beyond which signifies a drug problem), and done other drugs no more than 5 times in the past in order to be eligible. In classic FBI fashion, these rules were being enforced to the letter, which caused problems when responsible adults failed polygraph tests on the grounds of being unable to remember if they got high 15 or 16 times in college.

But it was the CIA pinching their applicants that was the final straw:

"One of the things we came to realize was that our drug policy was largely out of step with the rest of the intelligence community and much of the law enforcement community," said Jeffrey J. Berkin, deputy assistant director of the FBI's security division, which implemented the new guidelines. "We're going to focus less on a hard number and more on a whole-person approach... The new policy just allows us a little more flexibility than the old policy."

The new rules merely require applicants to have avoided cannabis in the last three years and everything else in the last ten, which is a marginally more sensible policy than the previous one:

Bruce Mirken, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, which advocates looser restrictions on marijuana use, called the policy change "a small step towards sanity" by the FBI.
"What it really does reflect is a reality that lots and lots of people in this society have used marijuana—some of them have used it a fair amount -- and have gone on to become capable and effective citizens," Mirken said. "Are we really going to stop all those folks from serving our country?"

It's Called Doublespeak, Bitch

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:45:00 EDT

The New York City Council, which brought us such futilities as a moratorium on the word “nigger” (no matter who says it or in what context), continues its battle against free speech. In an effort to promote civility and general niceness, the words “bitch” and “ho” will reportedly soon join the "n-word" on a list of Words That Shall Not Be Named. The legislation (as well as the sensitive NYT) delicately refers to the offending noun as “The B Word,” and seems rather unnecessarily focused on rap music:

The measure, which 19 of the 51 council members have signed onto, was prompted in part by the frequent use of the word in hip-hop music. Ten rappers were cited in the legislation, along with an excerpt from an 1811 dictionary that defined the word as “A she dog, or doggess; the most offensive appellation that can be given to an English woman.”
While the bill also bans the slang word “ho,” the b-word appears to have acquired more shades of meaning among various groups, ranging from a term of camaraderie to, in a gerund form, an expression of emphatic approval. Ms. Mealy acknowledged that the measure was unenforceable, but she argued that it would carry symbolic power against the pejorative uses of the word. Even so, a number of New Yorkers said they were taken aback by the idea of prohibiting a term that they not only use, but do so with relish and affection.

Cast your mind back to December 2006 when Katherine Mangu-Ward listed all the things the New York City Council tried to ban that year.

More Money Than Sense

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 14:46:00 EDT

In the civilized world’s latest sordid military venture, the Australian military has revealed plans to forcibly sterilize and displace thousands of innocent kangaroos. The army originally planned to just shoot the beasts, whose grazing has eroded military bases and endangered other animals, until public uproar prompted a rethink. The new thinking: the best use of taxpayer resources would be to simply move the animals.

The kangaroos would be herded into a padded pen and sedated, then shot with a paintball gun to mark them as ready for transport. They would be released in a fenced area covered with shadecloth, the report by the Wildcare protection group for the Defence Department said.
At A$3,600 a head, the cost of moving each animal is more than a standard economy class return air ticket from Sydney to London on Qantas, the national carrier which features a kangaroo on its tail.

Those Troublesome "Rights" Things

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 10:22:00 EDT

A recent high-profile case in Australia has undermined public confidence in its terror laws. Mohammed Haneef, an Indian doctor, was arrested and detained by police for 12 days under immigration laws despite an initial court order to let him go:

"This is a cynical exercise of power, a slap in the face to the judiciary and a dangerous precedent," was how Stephen Estcourt, the President of the Australian Bar Association, put it to BBC News, making little attempt to conceal his disgust.

Perversely, the case could lead to a strengthening of police powers. The cops found themselves most inconvenienced by the need to cart Haneef to court every few days for permission to keep him locked up, so they're looking to avoid the hassle in future:

This legal to-ing and fro-ing, claims Clive Williams, a counter-terrorism expert at Macquarie University, has actually undermined public confidence in the anti-terror laws.
"Every time they went to court, there was all this publicity, and that put enormous pressure on the police. In Britain it's much easier, when suspects just disappear into Paddington Green [police station in London]. The Australian system is a real pig's ear."

Williams wants the police to have more powers—namely the same 28-day power of detention that British bobbies have. That way, it will be easier for the government to avoid dealing with the damnable free press.

The Latest Peril for Kids: Lack of TV

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 10:11:00 EDT

Efforts to protect innocent children in the U.K. from dangerous ads for high-sugar/fat foods have led to a drastic drop in the amount of funding available for high-quality kids’ TV. Funding for kids’ programs has fallen by £30 million ($61 million) since a ban made it illegal to advertise "unhealthy" food to children:

ITV responded [to the ban] by scrapping new commissions and long-running hits, including My Parents Are Aliens. Drama repeats have replaced children’s programmes on ITV1 at teatime as the channel competes for ratings with [the more trashy] Channel 4.

Children now have to suffer through endless re-runs of Australian soaps and sappy dramas--thus avoiding the perils of junk food ads, but only at the cost of their "cognitive, linguistic, emotional and social development." So the government doesn't mind dimwit kids, as long as they're not fat.

The answer, of course, is legislation. Presenters of children’s TV programs, and other such experts, want regulation to make sure broadcasters keep a minimum amount of kids’ TV around. And some subsidies thrown in for fun.

If You Try to Sit, I'll Ban your Seat; If You Get Too Cold, I'll Ban the Heat

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 15:04:00 EDT

This month, in the U.K., a national smoking ban came into effect. Smokers all over the country vacated comfortable, warm armchairs in pubs and restaurants and retired to picnic tables, beer gardens, and terraces.

But while paternalists celebrated a triumph for public health, environmentalists mourned a tragedy for the Earth. As it turns out, when smoking is not allowed in heated, enclosed areas, businesses invest in heating the great outdoors for their puffing patrons. Gas-guzzling patio heater use is predicted to double in the UK, increasing CO2 emissions (perhaps by 20,000 tons a year just for London) and breeding mosquitoes.

Patio heaters can use as much gas in six months as the average U.K. stove does in a year. They’re therefore fairly expensive to run. But the smoking ban has made outdoor heating more profitable than ever before, particularly since only some venues can afford them or have any outdoor space. The heaters become a draw for smokers and their friends.

Both London Mayor Ken Livingstone and Norman Baker, a U.K. Liberal Democrat Party MP, have spoken out against patio heaters. Baker claims that "patio heaters are an absurd invention. It is ludicrous that people are trying to heat the open air, as well as being irresponsible in the light of the climate change challenge we face.” He says that instead of relying on such ridiculous modern technology, people should just put on more clothes if they’re cold.

And if they refuse to wrap up, the only solution is another ban--this time on patio heaters.

Plastic Bag Panic Grips the Nation

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 08:08:00 EDT

Boston, Portland, Santa Cruz, Oakland, Annapolis, Baltimore, New Haven—all are currently considering some form of plastic-bag ban, most of them total bans, on the grounds of environmental harm. The bans would cajole all stores to give up the convenience of 2-cent, water-resistant, cheaply recyclable plastic in favor of 5-cent, soggy, handle-less, expensively recyclable paper.

The initiative follows from San Francisco’s ban on plastic for all supermarkets and big-chain pharmacies (the ban currently exempts all small, independent retailers and thus passes on costs mostly to the poorest consumers). Apparently, plastic bags are an environmental nuisance because people insist on throwing them into the sea, where they kill fish and other marine life. And they won’t rot away for a millennium.

The anti-plastic movement has also inspired a fashion craze: ugly hemp bags (greener than plastic AND paper!). Most recently the fad saw hordes of “light greens” lining up around the block at Whole Foods to buy $15 designer bags emblazoned with the statement, “I’m NOT a plastic bag”:

The greatest irony of the morning was as a result of the ongoing torrential rain. Upon leaving the store, after hours in the downpour, proud owners placed their prized new bags into Whole Foods plastic bags to keep them dry.

Enter the Progressive Bag Alliance, an organization of three plastic bag manufacturers founded to promote responsible plastic bag use (that is, in favor of no plastic bag use). The Alliance claims that the anti-plastic movement has ignored some important facts about the beloved paper they will require stores to supply. So they've started selling their own rival to the hemp craze on eBay: "I AM a plastic bag and I'm 100% recyclable":

Myth: Paper grocery bags are a better environmental choice than plastic bags.
Fact: Plastic bags use 40% less energy to produce and generate 70% less emissions & 80% less solid waste than paper. (U.S. EPA website, www.epa.gov/region1/communities/shopbags.html)
Myth: Plastic grocery bags take 1,000 years to decompose in landfills.
Fact: Today’s landfills are designed to prevent decomposition of anything. Chances are your orange peel, milk carton and even last year’s newspaper won’t breakdown. Research by William Rathje, who runs the Garbage Project, has shown that when excavated from a landfill, newspapers from the 1960s can be intact and readable.

What Every Sensible Driver Needs: Speeding Insurance

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 09:13:00 EDT

Following on from the latest French craze of trading speeding penalties, the Danes have invented a whole new business designed to take the pressure off drivers who like to go fast (or are just careless): speeding insurance.

Drivers pay 2.5 Danish crowns (46 cents) per day. In return they get annual coverage of up to $1855 for four speeding and four parking tickets. And again, it’s a case of drivers uniting against the state:

The idea, [insurance company] Fartklubben founder Poul Winther told Danish daily Politiken, is not to give Danes license to put the pedal to the metal, but rather to protect motorists from over-zealous traffic cops.
"We're a solidarity club where each member is jointly liable for one another," he said. "We believe that photo speed traps and parking companies have become pure money machines."

The government could respond by lowering incentives to use such insurance, i.e. reducing penalties for speeding or getting control of its traffic cops. More likely, they'll go for Option 2: make speeding insurance illegal.

Don't Pick on the Drivers

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 09:36:00 EDT

If there’s one thing that gets people really angry, it’s governments picking on drivers. But that hasn’t stopped Virginia from introducing astronomical fines for speeding—some as high as $2500.

The injustice has spurred the masses to action, and congressmen all over the state are getting earfuls from furious constituents threatening to vote them out unless they repeal the fines. Drivers are particularly angry since the rise in fines is a simple money-raising matter.

“Criminal and civil penalties shouldn’t be created for raising money,” Mr. Marshall said, adding that constituents had stopped him on the street and even in the post office and called his office to voice frustration with the new fines. “You don’t want to turn our police into gun-toting tax collectors. They’re supposed to be officers of the peace, nothing else.” ...
Clay Morad, a driver in Arlington who signed the petition [against the fines], said: “There are other ways to get these road projects done. I’d be more than willing to pay an extra dollar per year in taxes to avoid having to worry about getting a $2,500 fine for going above the speed limit.”

The petition is probably one of the best recent examples of mass action against the state, which says it only introduced the fines because raising taxes was too politically difficult. Maybe they should take a hint.

A couple of weeks ago, Radley Balko looked at the dubious delegate behind the fines.

Feeling the Angst? A Year in Jail Should Help.

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 08:21:00 EDT

Several years ago a young Turkish rock band released a song railing against the unfairness of the country’s national standardized test for university entrance. “Life should not be a prison because of an exam,” they sang, “I have gotten lost; you have ruined my future; I am going to tell you one thing: Shove that exam...”

This week they are standing trial for “insulting Turkishness,” with the possibility of an 18 month jail sentence if convicted. That seems unlikely, however:

There's been little public discussion about the wisdom of prosecuting the punk band. Turkish prosecutors routinely file defamation complaints, creating a glut of cases, some of which never go to trial.

So the whole case is a tiresome and wasteful use of government resources—if Turkey keeps it up, its prospects for EU membership look better than ever. (via Shoutmouth)

If It Moves, Register It!

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:14:00 EDT

There is growing concern in India over increasingly high abortion rates for female fetuses. Supposedly, having a boy assures parents of an income source in their dotage and spares them the financial burden of a dowry. The result: Many families who can afford it get illegal sex tests done and then have a fetus of the “wrong” sex quietly aborted. Abortions are only allowed in “special circumstances” (e.g. rape, incest etc.) in India, but that doesn’t stop one in every 25 females being aborted, according to one study.

The government has come up with a foolproof solution: Have every woman register her pregnancy with the government so they’ll know about any illegal abortions. Unfortunately, it’s yet to explain how it will enforce the plan, nor what incentives women could possibly have for registering (via Feministing):

Some activists said the government's plan to create a pregnancy register in a country of 1.1 billion people--where more than 50 percent of women deliver children at home without medical assistance--was unrealistic.
"We cannot give elementary health services in a satisfactory way to most of our citizens, and to talk about registering pregnancies is ridiculous," said Alok Mukhopadhyay, head of the Voluntary Health Association of India.

What is it with the recent fad in baby-registering?

Kerry Howley blogged the deficit in German baby production last year.

New Markets in Speed

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:39:00 EDT

Sarko might not yet have transformed the French economy, but in one area at least, he has created a market where there was none before: driver’s license points.

As in many European countries, French drivers start with a total of 12 license points, which they lose for various driving offenses. Getting to zero means an automatic six-month driving ban. During Sarko’s reign as Minister of the Interior, he introduced 1,000 more speed cameras across France in a frenzied law and order “crackdown." There are particularly harsh punishments even for mild speeding (under 20kph over the limit)-- two points a pop.

But the crackdown has rather misfired: Drivers now see the penalties as universally unfair, and have started a market in license points. Those still with relatively clean records (close to 12 points) sell their points online for 300-1500 euros each to drivers in danger of a suspension. The seller then sends in her license number and name in place of the guilty party, and takes the rap. And the sheer number of cases makes it impossible to check who’s who:

Officials acknowledge that the state is swamped with the administration of automatic fines. The Interior Ministry said that it carries out spot checks. “For example, suspicion will be raised if an 84-year-old grandmother is snapped at 200 kph (160mph) at five on a Sunday morning near a nightclub,” he told le Parisien newspaper.
Jean-Baptise Iosca, a lawyer who specialises in motoring cases, said that the borrowing and buying of license points now touched every social class. “I have clients coming to see me after losing not only all their own points but also 12 from their grandmother and all their grandfather’s,” he said.

The solution? Another crackdown. Ex-PM de Villepin began a 20 million Euro investigation to stamp out fraudulent point-claiming, but it has yet to release any findings or suggest any action.

(Thanks to Sahil Mahtani for the tip.)

Gated Community, Gated Speech

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:26:00 EDT

Does living in a gated community abridge your First Amendment rights? According to the Cambridge Park Homeowners Association in Denver, the answer is yes—especially when it comes to the American flag. The Association is seeking to fine one resident for hanging her flag upside-down:

The association board notified Beth Hammer in an April 24 letter that the flag display is against federal flag code and is in violation of the association's "patriotic and political expression policy."
The letter gave her a week to right the flag or face fines that appear to range from $25 to $500.
"Living in a community association offers many advantages to the homeowner, but at the same time, imposes some restrictions," said the letter signed by association manager Melissa Keithly.

Having consulted the federal flag code, Hammer raised up her flag upside-down to indicate the official call of “distress” as a protest against the Iraq war. But this gated community won’t stand for such “unpatriotic” displays. An embarrassing climb-down on the part of the community board seems likely, but not without the expense and inconvenience of Hammer hiring herself a lawyer.

Take an AIDS test--Win a Pickup Truck!!!

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:07:00 EDT

Could mining firms be at the forefront in the fight to contain AIDS? A Reuters story claims that up to one in every three mining workers in South Africa is infected with the virus, and it’s getting so bad that companies are taking notice:

Firms are enticing miners to take HIV/AIDS tests by offering prizes, sending mobile treatment units to the bush where sex workers operate and blanketing the region with condoms.
For instance, Gold Fields gives each miner who takes an HIV/AIDS test a lottery ticket, offering monthly prizes of cell phones, televisions and cash, plus a final sweepstake where one worker wins a new pick-up truck.
…
BHP Billiton -- the world's largest mining company -- said for every dollar it invests in HIV training, education and medical programs the return is four-fold in terms of benefits such as re-training, absenteeism and productivity.
…
"When we started our HIV program we didn't wait for any government to say yes or no, if there is a risk for an organization we take appropriate action."

For years, activists have been calling on governments and the UN to spread awareness and treatment. It looks like business could instead be the source of more effective and efficient efforts against the epidemic.

Steve Chapman pointed out the idiocy of government needle policy and AIDS, while Ronald Bailey has looked at the progress made (and yet to come) in developing AIDS treatments.

Snooze and You Lose

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 17:03:00 EDT

John Kass in the Chicago Tribune brings us the story of Sam Hardison, the window cleaner charged with "sleeping dangerously" on the Chicago subway:

"I looked the officer right in the eye and said, 'You've got to be kidding. I have to go to court on this?' And he said, 'Yes, you do,'" Hardison, a West Sider, told us the other day about his June 5 ticket on the Red Line....

"And the other officer said, 'If you don't be quiet, we will take you to jail right now. We'll arrest you,'" Hardison said. "I let them write their citations. I felt that it was not right, but what can I do?"

Apparently City Hall is hard up and looking to extract cash from innocent bystanders. Fines are a good way to do it because, as Kass says, most people who receive a fine just grumble and pay it. Not Hardison, who instead went to a hearing to dispute the charge.

The City dropped the case today, but Hardison complains that he lost a day's wages to attend the hearing. And his friends have another theory as to why he, of all the other comatose subway riders, was picked up:

"Absolutely, absolutely, if you look at him, you might think he was homeless, a black guy with a pretty scraggily beard," Dahl said. "If it was me, a short Jewish guy, sleeping on the train, they are not going to write me a ticket."

Which would suggest that either City Hall is demanding money from homeless people or it's spending money to kick them off the subway.

Staring Down Terrorism

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:16:00 EDT

At a start-up cost of $90 million, and maintenance costs of $8 million a year, London-style surveillance is coming to New York. Having obtained less than a third of the money needed ($25 million), New York's finest are about to install thousands of cameras and license plate readers in Lower Manhattan:

Three thousand surveillance cameras would be installed below Canal Street by the end of 2008, about two-thirds of them owned by downtown companies. Some of those are already in place. Pivoting gates would be installed at critical intersections; they would swing out to block traffic or a suspect car at the push of a button.

Yet:

There is little evidence to suggest that security cameras deter crime or terrorists, said James J. Carafano, a senior fellow for homeland security at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington.

As is customary in surveillance societies, the whole project is coming in with no public consultation whatsoever.

Julian Sanchez has looked at ever-more powerful surveillance technology; Ronald Bailey protested the total surveillance society, and Katherine Mangu-Ward has examined the extent of surveillance nation. Reason analyzed the advantages of databasification in June 2004.

Kids in Lockdown

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:03:00 EDT

Prison sentences for petty drug crimes increase the number of jailed women, who are more likely to be single parents than men:

“A lot of women who probably wouldn’t have gone to prison before are now going in for Class 4 drug felonies — the least serious felonies,” Dr. LaLonde said, referring to crimes that in some instances had previously resulted in nothing more than probation.
Studies show that about 75 percent of imprisoned women across the country are mothers, most of whom had custody of their children before their incarceration.

In response to the growing number of young children with incarcerated parents, California decided to invite kids into prison with their mothers. One San Diego center that houses convicted mothers and their children is currently being investigated for neglect:

For instance, one inmate, Marsha Strickland, complained to the staff about her 5-year-old daughter’s blinding headaches and constant nausea for at least six weeks before the girl was allowed a hospital visit in January, according to accounts by inmates and former staff members. The child is now living with relatives and undergoing treatment for brain cancer.

Jacob Sullum on the thousands in prison for pot here and calling out Congress on its crackbrained crack sentencing laws here.

Mississippi Cracks Down on Pleasure

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 09:07:00 EDT

This bizarre story via feministing:

Jackson Police make three arrests after an undercover operation uncovers illegal sex toys at two adult bookstores on East McDowell Road in Jackson.

Police told News Channel 12 phone calls from neighbors led them to investigate Secrets Adult Bookstore and the McDowell Adult Bookstore....
The three arrested face charges of posessing sex toys with the intent to resale.

And Mississippi isn't the only state with a law against pleasure aids; it is also illegal to sell toys shaped like sexual organs in Georgia, Texas and Alabama. Of course it's one thing to have a Puritanical law. It's another to mount a whole investigation into violations of it.

Back in February Nick Gillespie had instant blog reaction when Alabama upheld its sex toy ban.

Somehow the Final Connection Is(n't) Made

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 16:02:00 EDT

The NYT today reports the bleeding obvious: Flight delays are getting worse. More interestingly, the way delays are recorded does "not begin to capture the severity of the problem. That is because these statistics track how late airplanes are, not how late passengers are." So a missed connection might show up as a 1 hour holdup even if results in a 3 day delay:

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did a study several years ago and found that when missed connections and flight cancellations are factored in, the average wait was two-thirds longer than the official statistic. That finding prompted the M.I.T. researchers to dust off their study, which they are updating now.
...
Some other airline delay statistics, meanwhile, are getting a fresh look, as well. After thousands of passengers were stranded for hours on tarmacs in New York and Texas this past winter, consumer advocates began complaining that Transportation Department data does not accurately track such meltdowns.
If a flight taxies out, sits for hours, and then taxies back in and is canceled, the delay is not recorded. Likewise, flights diverted to cities other than their destination are not figured into delay statistics.

The article suggests that one reason for worsening delays is that flights are increasingly full, which makes missing a connection far costlier than it used to be. (It misses the chance to speculate on the TSA's role.) But one aspect of flying that goes unmentioned is the ever-lengthening gap of time needed to just catch a plane in the first place. There was a time, not so long ago, when leaving one hour to get an international flight was a little risky but not unreasonable. Nowadays, it's hard to imagine security wouldn't just laugh in your face as you struggle with a multitude of shoes, belts and zip-lock bags.

Elsewhere in reason, read Julian Sanchez on the TSA's "no-fly list" and Jacob Sullum on the liquid ban.

UK Will Stand up to Terrorism (by Curbing Freedoms)

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 16:03:00 EDT

In the wake of the recent fumbled British car bombs, some have raised the possibility of resurrecting an old bill that would give UK police the power to detain anyone they like for 90 days without trial. This is the bill that saw Blair's first-ever parliamentary defeat, and was eventually negotiated down to (only!) 28 days before it passed into law.

With new PM Gordon Brown on the clock, some reckon another push for the full 90 days might be coming, especially if "Terror" hits the headlines in a more serious way. Brown says no, for now—but then he's only been in power a few days, and certain "emergency" powers have already been rushed through for the Scottish police:

[Scottish police chief] Mr McKerracher said the powers had been applied for on Saturday after the car bomb attempt. Speaking at a press conference in Glasgow today, he urged the public to be tolerant of extra security measures being brought in to protect Scotland. He said: "We have applied for the authorisation to utilise stop-and-search and that is across every community in Scotland. That will be done sensitively and in situations where officers on the ground feel that is appropriate. Those powers were sought two days ago and that gives us an immediate 48 hours authorisation and then they will be confirmed by the home secretary."

Remember when the ban on liquids on planes was just a temporary "emergency" measure?

Jesse Walker blogged Blair's defeat in 2005.