Domestic Terrorism

Where’s that Corruption

This entry was posted in Democracy Domestic Terrorism Federal Government Law Enforcement Libertarianism Regulation on by

The Corporate Crime Reporter has ranked the 50 states by their rate of corruption.
Then there is the state wannabe The District of Columbia

We calculated the District�s corruption rate as 79.33. This is more than ten times what Mississippi�s corruption rate is……
But we didn�t include the District in the list for one obvious reason � the District is the seat of the federal government, and because of this, there are more criminal prosecutions for public corruption than anywhere else in the country.
It can be said that the District is the most corrupt political entity in the nation � but that�s only because it�s the seat of an apparently actively corrupt federal government � with 453 public corruption convictions over a ten-year period.

Even though there are some deficiencies in the data (noted in the full PDF report) this is an interesting indicator of the quality of government officials.
Via A List a Day.

Helping with those Govm’t Budgets

This entry was posted in Capitalism Democracy Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Law Enforcement Libertarianism on by

Number 5 on Alternet’s list of the Top Ten Drug Stories of 2003 is this:

5) The FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report reveals that police arrested an estimated 697,082 persons for marijuana violations in 2002, or nearly half of all drug arrests in the United States. This amounts to one marijuana-related arrest every 45 seconds.
The total number of marijuana arrests far exceeded the total number of arrests for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

Hmmm, I know this math isn’t perfect but with a swag: decriminalize marijuana use and sales and then lay off 1/3 of local, state and federal law enforcement employees.
Or, put them to work doing something that actually helps to protect our lives and property.
Additional fringe benefits: reduced load in judicial system and increased housing available in the prison system.

Extraordinary Rendition

This entry was posted in ashcroft bush Domestic Terrorism Iraq Libertarianism US Foreign Policy War on Terrorism on by

No matter your politics you should be outraged by this:

That’s all they had: guilt by the most remote of computer- generated associations. But, according to Attorney General John Ashcroft, that was more than enough to justify Arar’s delivery to Syria’s torturers.
Besides, Ashcroft added, the torturers had expressly promised that they would not torture him.
Our intelligence agencies have a name for this torture-by-proxy. They call it “extraordinary rendition.” As one intelligence official explained: “We don’t kick the s — out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the s — out of them.”
This secret program for torturing suspects has been authorized, if that is the right word for it, by a secret presidential finding. Where the president gets the authority to have anyone tortured has never been explained.

Read Maher Arar’s story here.
Brad Delong thinks this is worth an impeachment and Brian Weatherson wonders how many conservative bloggers will condone this behavior and thinks that the perps should at minimum spend time in jail.
I’ll go along with Brad on the impeachment idea.

Drug Money

This entry was posted in Capitalism Constitution Democracy Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Law Enforcement Libertarianism on by

In Calgary, drug money is at the heart of gang violence:

Greed and infighting between members of a large Asian street gang over drug money splintered the group, leading to a spate of Calgary shootings, stabbings and at least two murders in the past 13 months.

I wonder if these street gangs and their counterparts in the US have lobbyists working to stiffen existing drug laws?
Via The Media Awareness Project.