First it’s chess. Then Sun Tzu. Eventually you have a militia on your hands overthrowing the government. That’s how these things progress, right? The scourge must be stopped at its source! A group of seven mild-mannered chess players are due in criminal court next month after police officers from the 34th Precinct issued them summonses [...]

The Innocence Project reported just today that the hair sample used to condemn Claude Jones to death was not a match. “(Houston – November 12, 2010) The Innocence Project today released DNA test results proving that crucial hair evidence found at the scene of a murder, the only physical evidence linking the accused Claude Jones [...]

As of today, it should be clear to everyone in this country, that our system for dealing with criminals (I won’t call it a “criminal justice” system since justice has so little to do with it), is utterly broken, beyond any conventional concept of repair. At this point, again I say, it should be clear [...]

Resolved, that The Powers That Be™ believe the following: Foreclosures are bad. Falling house prices are bad. Banks losing lots of money is bad. It’s not hard to understand why. Politicians sell a version of The American Dream where it’s all lollipops and homeownership, and people getting tossed from their property or deeply underwater on [...]

As cameras have become more available to individuals and government alike, viral videos of cops behaving badly have become quite pervasive on the internet. This short video by The Cato Institute provides a few recent examples of this relatively new phenomenon and explains why recording the actions of police and government officials for all the [...]

In an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, some incredible quotes came from the aging Cuban dictator: (Reuters) – Fidel Castro said Cuba’s economic model no longer works, a U.S.-based journalist reported on Wednesday following interviews with the former president last week. Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly magazine, wrote in a blog [...]

Its one thing when anti-death penalty activists petition a governor to pardon or commute a sentence of an individual scheduled for execution but quite another when death penalty supporters agree. Kevin Keith is scheduled to be executed by the state of Ohio on September 15th for the 1994 murders of 2 adults and 1 child; [...]

Rules, rules, rules. You try to do something nice. You try to organize a little competition for homebrewers where they can have their craft evaluated, judged, and [even for those who don't win] provide valuable feedback on technique. It’s done in private events, county and state fairs, organized by major breweries and by national brewing-centric [...]

Obama on Saturday: “We’ve made Medicare more solvent by going after waste, fraud, and abuse – not by changing seniors’ guaranteed benefits” Really? And how aggressively have you been “going after” them? It took private sleuths hired by Medicare an average of six months last year to refer fraud cases to law enforcement. According to [...]

In Canada, there’s terror afoot. Young girls, late at night, are just BURSTING into flames! It seems they’ve been buying unapproved underpants, and the bodies are piling up. Only, they’re not. Nobody to date has burst into flame. And they were approved, but they just got reclassified, and apparently the difference between calling them underwear [...]

I saw a chart today that took me aback. At the Cato @ Liberty blog, a look at aggregate state debt over the last decade: I had well expected that state governments were growing their budget in accordance with the boom economies of the past decade (especially rising property tax collections through the boom), but [...]

A few months ago, when Pelosi crowed about the immediate effects of Obamacare, I pointed out a long list of them and my responses. My thoughts: 6. NO DISCRIMINATON AGAINST CHILDREN WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS—Prohibits health plans from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Effective 6 months after enactment. (Beginning in 2014, this prohibition would [...]

If it wasn’t already evident that Hugo Chavez is a complete madman, the exhuming of the long dead revolutionary Simon Bolivar should prove that to you: (Reuters) – Venezuela exhumed the remains of 19th century independence hero Simon Bolivar on Friday and will test them to see if he was poisoned by enemies in Colombia. [...]

As our readers can no doubt see, things have moved to a snail’s pace here. I’m not sure I expect that to change soon [at least for me]. However, I came across this post at TJIC, referencing a post at Coyote Blog, that is an absolute must read. This is a government that is arbitrary, [...]

David Cameron today apologized for the  British Armies conduct on Bloody Sunday. Great… now do something of substance. Either treat the north as a real part of the rest of the damn country, or get the hell out. The UK is firmly wedded to a lot of government involvement in industry, in finance, in development… [...]

Yesterday SCOTUS decided they will hear Hank Skinner’s case; arguments will likely be heard sometime next year. However, even if Skinner ‘wins,’ SCOTUS is unlikely to decide once and for all if convicts have a Constitutional right to challenge their convictions if exculpatory evidence becomes available post-conviction. Legal experts say that the most Skinner can [...]

Okay, that’s not true. But it’s no different than this: Prosecutors Ask if 8 Banks Duped Rating Agencies Wall Street played a crucial role in the mortgage market’s path to collapse. Investment banks bundled mortgage loans into securities and then often rebundled those securities one or two more times. Those securities were given high ratings [...]

Congress has a problem. They have a tough time cutting unpopular spending, but cutting popular spending is just impossible. They talk about their ability to be elected, go to Washington, and make the tough decisions, but when push comes to shove, they want to shove responsibility off to a third party. I believe it’s called [...]

The proprietor of Coyote Blog is an entrepreneur specializing in operating camping & recreation facilities. Recently he’s been moving from big pick-up trucks to much smaller, more fuel-efficient, cheaper used Japanese trucks. That is, until the EPA barred their import: These are trucks that are from an emissions regime (in Japan) harsher than ours and [...]

Hank Skinner is scheduled to be executed by the State of Texas on March 24th. Despite more than a decade of requests to have his DNA tested, Texas courts have denied him every step of the way. The Medill Innocence Project has even offered to pay for the testing to no avail. Skinner’s attorneys have [...]