In the coming weeks and months, I'm planning to try to dilute some of the legal blogging on Windypundit with a little blogging about the healthcare crisis in this country.

I should admit right here at the start that I'm woefully ignorant of how the healthcare industry works. It's the biggest industry in the world, and it will only become more important as I get older, so it seems I ought to start learning more about it. Blogging seems like one way to do that.

I plan to investigate several questions, such as

• Where can I get good information about our healthcare system?
• Is there a healthcare crisis?
• What's wrong with healthcare?
• Who or what is responsible for the problem?
• Can it be fixed?
• How do we fix it?
• Would a single-payer system be better?

I'm not entirely sure where to start. Ideally, I'd like to just buy a good book about our healthcare system and build from there using online resources, but this is such a contentious issue that there's a lot of biased information out there, and I don't know how to separate the good from the bad.

I'll probably just tear off a piece of the problem I understand and work out from there.

By the way, I'm posting this in the Disclosures department because one of the supposed problems with our current healthcare system is the large amount of money spent on bureaucracy, and my readers should therefore be told that a large share of my income is derived from helping companies stay on top of the paperwork for their employees' healthcare benefits.

Wish me luck.

I just checked Simple Justice and it looks like Scott Greenfield hasn't posted anything new today. My God, I hope he's alright. The silence over there is frightening. Somebody in New York please check on him.

Update: Stand down. Scott's posting at last. The delay appears to have been caused because he was watching one of Ken Lammers' lengthy CLTV sagas.

By now you have probably heard that police in Colorado have uncovered an apparent plot by white supremacists to assassinate Barack Obama.

I was just now skimming through the blog feeds I read when I noticed that Illinois Reason had a post up entitled "Obama assassination plot foiled in Colorado." The main guy at that blog, Rob Nesvacil, is a rabid anti-conservative who really has it in for the right-wing blogosphere, so as I clicked through to his post, I thought "Wouldn't it be funny if he was crazy enought to try to blame right-wing pundits for the assassination attempt?"

It turns out he does.

What happens when the one side constantly smears the other as unpatriotic, treacherous and disloyal simply because they disagree with that side's ideas, no matter how valid they may be...

when they constantly promote six degrees of separation to anyone even remotely considered "bad" (no matter how thin the connection) even though the candidate was never involved in any wrongdoing and has routinely repudiated those others' despicable acts...

when lie after lie after lie is promulgated to falsely insinuate a candidate either sympathizes with terrorists or is one himself...

when the elitist billionaires of one political side use their money not to do charitable good for society but to tear down any with whom they disagree as if such acidic poison were what our Founding Fathers had always hoped for when fighting a war to launch our independent democracy...

when the most vile of heretical and blasphemous rhetoric is used to lie about a candidate and portray him as not just evil, but perhaps even the Anti-Christ and harbinger of the End Times...

...What happens when one side of the political spectrum, through fetid ranting over the course of a great many years, foments rage and anger and promotes and even glorifies violence in order to 'pump up their base of voters'?

Idiots try to assassinate a presidential candidate, that's what happens.

It doesn't matter if they are alleged white supremacists or hopped up on meth. Something clearly pushed these people over the edge to think murder was somehow acceptable. Rational and sane folks do not simply load up a high-powered rifle and work on an assassination plot; something or someone prods them toward that disastrous destination.

This is the same sort of dubious "reasoning" that caused some liberal pundits to blame conservative pundits for the bombing in Oklahoma City because conservatives were against big government and, you know, the bombers blew up a government building.

This is strange and a little sad. From a Chicago Tribune report:

Someone broke into the Sept. 11 memorial near Naperville City Hall and stole a piece of concrete that had been part of the Pentagon, police said.

The theft occurred Wednesday, police said.

Naperville CrimeStoppers is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

The memorial honors victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including Navy Cmdr. Dan Shanower, 40, a Naperville native who was one of 125 people who died at the Pentagon.

I encountered the Dan F. Shanower memorial in 2005 and took a few pictures which I used in a memorial day post.

Though presumably accurate, the story is slightly confusing because it makes it sound like the thief broke into a building to steal the pieces of the Pentagon when in fact the memorial is outside and in the open.

Larger ImageDan F. Shanower Memorial

From the description, I think this is what they're talking about:

Larger ImagePieces Of the Pentagon

The little clear boxes contain fragments from the Pentagon. I guess someone broke open one or more of the boxes and stole the chunks of concrete from inside.

I imagine it was just some kid screwing around, but with a front-page article in the Chicago Tribune, it's probably drawing more heat than he expected.

The second season starts on September 8. I can't wait.

According to Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, Maya Angelou once said

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

I don't know if she really said that, but I thought it would make a nice blog post to explain how I'd handle those three things, so you folks can learn something about my character.

Rainy Day

I guess I don't understand this one. Except for cancelling activities that require a clear day---outdoor photography, washing the car---rain has no effect on my day. I don't mind driving in the rain, and I have rain gear to keep myself dry.

Lost Luggage

I would be filled with righteous rage. All manner of indignities are inflicted upon air passengers in the name of false security, but when it comes to keeping our luggage secure, pathetic failure is considered an acceptable standard. My anger would be tempered only by the knowledge that yelling at front-line customer service people never really helps me get what I want. I would keep the white-hot fury inside me as I fill out the paperwork.

Tangled Christmas Tree Lights

Those tiny lights don't last very long and they only cost something like $2.99 for a string of 100. If I need some, I just buy new ones.

The greatest noir video game of all time is coming to the silver screen. And Max Payne is going to relive his long vengeful night once again.

Based on the 2001 video game from Remedy Entertainment, the Max Payne movie opens on October 17th and stars Mark Wahlberg in the title role as a cop out to avenge the murder of his wife and child.

IMDB tells me that Vladimir Lem and Alfred Woden aren't in the movie, but most of the rest of the characters make it: Alex Balder and Jim Bravura, B.B. Hensley and Jack Lupino, Nicole Horne and Mona Sax. Of course Mona Sax.

From the trailer at the Max Payne move website, I can see that New York is still caught in a slow but relentless snowstorm, and junkies are going crazy on the new drug Valkyr. I saw some action taking place in the Aesir Corporation offices, and I thought I caught a glimpse of the Ragna Rock nightclub. And Max still has his leather coat and gun.

One odd bit from the trailer is that there are several scenes in which we see strange demonic creatures. Valkyr users in the game were always muttering about "the flesh of fallen angels" and other strange occult themes, so I'm not sure if we're just seeing V illusions or if the filmmakers have taken the occult theme a little too seriously.

(Although, I have to admit that I'd played half of the Max Payne game before I stopped expecting vampires and demons to be part of the plot.)

It sounds like they're keeping Max's unforgiving internal dialog---although I didn't hear any exact lines lifted from the game---but in the trailer they've replaced Max's haunting violin theme with a somber guitar riff (taken from the Marilyn Manson song "If I Was Your Vampire"). The website has it looping in the background, and I've been listening to it as I wrote this. It seems to work.

No word on Lords and Ladies. Or Captain Baseball-Bat Boy.

One of the signs of emerging totalitarianism is the intrusion of the state security apparatus into areas where they don't belong, have nothing to contribute, or can cause serious harm by usurping the authority of true experts. For example, DEA agents have increasingly been interfering with medical decisions, first with painkillers and now with medical marijuana.

Now Jim Campbell of Aero-News.Net has another example from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport where a Transportation Security Administration employee decided to check the security of parked aircraft by climbing up the outside of them. In doing so, he damaged the Total Air Temperature probes on nine American Eagle jets, causing all of them to be grounded by maintenance personnel.

If you or I did this, we would now be in federal prison awaiting trial, and in the old days, if some airport security employee had done this, he would have been fired and that would be the end of it. But since parts of airport security were federalized after 9/11, this fool is a government employee who is probably untouchable. Thus the expertise of highly-trained pilots and aircraft engineers is subjugated for the self-serving needs of government security agents.

This is, to be sure, a small thing. No one got hurt. It takes more than a bent probe to crash an airplane. But the police intrusion into medicine has certainly killed people---chemotherapy patients choking on vomit because they can't control their nausea with medical marijuana or patients with painful diseases committing suicide because their doctor has been arrested for prescribing them too many painkillers. If this new intrusion isn't stopped, it may only be a matter of time until airline passengers start dying.

(Hat tip: Jacob Grier)

While cops in Los Angeles were busy busting illegal bacon-dog vendors, our own Chicago cops were catching up to some bad, bad people.

With help from a surveillance tape and Cicero police officers, Chicago Police nabbed a 16-year-old girl for robbing and throwing acid on a Logan Square woman last month.

The teenage girl, who did not act alone, was charged as a juvenile with armed robbery and heinous battery for the July 28 incident, police announced Sunday. The girl had thrown a caustic liquid at 48-year-old Esperanza Medina as she left her home on her way to work.

"She has given a statement implicating herself and another juvenile offender," said Grand Central Area Detective Commander Joseph Salemme.

Nicely done.

As little as I know about the military, I know even less about military law. Still, this sounds wrong:

IRVINE, Calif. - A former Marine sergeant facing the first federal civilian prosecution of a military member accused of a war crime says there is much more at stake than his claim of innocence on charges that he killed unarmed detainees in Fallujah, Iraq.

...

Nazario is the first military service member who has completed his duty to be brought to trial under a law that allows the government to prosecute defense contractors, military dependents and those no longer in the military who commit crimes outside the United States.

I understand there have been incidents where American contractors committed crimes in Iraq and slipped through the cracks. As civilians, they could not be tried by the U.S. military, but due to a diplomatic agreement, the Iraqi government isn't allowed to try them either. This might be the least troublesome way to close that gap.

(On the other hand, it doesn't seem right to try people in U.S. courts for crimes they committed as civilians against people of another country while in that other country. As it is, we already have Americans convicted in America for violating Honduran fishing laws while in Honduras. This seems like another step down that dangerous road.)

I doubt, however, that it's a good idea to put members of the U.S. military on trial under this provision. We expect soldiers to do things that would be capital crimes if done outside the context of war. Our civilian courts have little experience dealing with situations like this, and the possibility of having military decisions second-guessed by a civilian court years later seems like it could cause confusion in the ranks.

Others say the law closes a loophole that allowed former military service members to slip beyond the reach of prosecution. Once they complete their terms, troops cannot be prosecuted in military court.

I know that military courts have no jurisdiction over civilians, but I was under the impression that in situations like this there were provisions to recall ex-soldiers to duty for purposes of a trial. I guess not. But it sounds like a better solution to me.

Scott Silliman, a law professor and executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University, says it has little to do with questioning military decisions and everything to do with whether a service member committed a crime.

That seems oversimplified. If there's no difference in criminal law between military and civilian environments, then why do we have a separate military legal code and justice system? Is it just a historical oddity? Or is there something fundamentally different about military service?

I'd love to hear more about this from someone who knows a lot more than I do.

I was going to write something about Hiu Lui Ng's death from untreated cancer while in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, but Scott Greenfield beat me to it.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The undesirables who hate American values are already here, and they work for Homeland Security.

Virginia prosecutor Ken Lammers has a few interesting things to say about a video taken by a some kid who's a political operative visiting the opposition camp. I'm going to disagree with Ken over this---oddly enough, I'll be defending the cops---but first you might want to view the video. Or not.

In case you skipped the video---it's nothing spectacular---it starts with a political rally at which some politician named Rossi is speaking to a bunch of off-duty cops. Then a few security guys start arguing with the kid taking the video and hustle him out of the room and onto the sidewalk. A uniformed cop asks him for ID, and then goes to talk with the off-duty cop who brought him out. The kid walks up to the cops, and they order him to get away. Then the video ends.

I've seen this video before, and I was planning to ignore it, but in light of Ken's comments, I'll just make a few observations.

First of all, as far as I can tell, the videographer wasn't being disruptive. He just quietly filmed the proceedings, along with members of the media, until the security guys started messing with him. If this Rossi guy is afraid of being videotaped by the opposition, he's kind of a pussy. Once he's elected, he'll be fair game for lots of media, so if he can't tolerate it, he's got no business in office.

On the other hand, when you're on private property, the people controlling the property have the right to tell you to leave. The videographer kid probably entered legally on the grounds that---as Lammers quotes the statute--- "The premises were at the time open to members of the public" or he "reasonably believed that the owner of the premises, or other person empowered to license access thereto, would have licensed him to enter or remain." But once he was asked to leave, he pretty much had to leave.

(There's some question of whether he was told not to enter before the video began, but I'm just going on what we see in the video.)

Once the confrontation begins, Ken and I both agree that the videographer turns into a whiny jackass, saying "I'm not doing anything" over and over. That may have been true, but it's kind of beside the point. It's their property. They don't have to have a reason to kick him out.

My first disagreement with Ken is about what happens when the kid goes over to tape the cop he was just talking to:

To top it all off, when the officer called to the scene walks down the street to talk to the complainant (off duty officer) and the kid follows right behind them filming it crosses over into harrassment.

Nope. Taping a police officer going about his duty in public is a perfectly legitimate newsgathering technique. It may annoy the cop, but that's a small price to pay for a free press. Also, the cop has an easy remedy, which he used: He ordered the kid to step back.

Please note, I didn't say he broke the law; people are obnoxious all the time without breaking the law. This kid is doing what we're all starting to see over and over in the age of YouTube, he is doing his best to provoke in a manner which will allow him to claim innocence.

Maybe, but it's still a legitimate thing for a reporter to do. And it doesn't matter that he's not a "real" reporter either. Freedom of the press isn't just for the fair and balanced press.

The second place where Ken and I differ is with how the cops handled all this:

As for the police officers, I don't think they handled the situation well either. Not because they went overboard, but because they tried to handle it in what I'll call a "middle-way." They were faced with a number of ways to handle this and they tried to talk it down. Personally, if I'm in an encounter with police I'd prefer that they use this method. However, in this case talking it down just plays to what the kid is trying to do; he gets a wonderful little thing to put up on YouTube.

From what I saw, I thought the uniformed cops did a terrific job. They were respectful and courteous to a fault, and not once did they tell the kid to stop rolling video. Unlike Rossi, they're not afraid of people seeing what they're doing.

In addition, no charges were filed. It's clear they eventually diffused the situation, reducing strife and conflict in their city without wasting taxpayer dollars with an unnecessary arrest. A job well done.

There were two ways to handle this better (if we solely look toward the possibility of YouTube publication). One would have been to ignore the kid and let him film. Of course, that's not the natural reaction of an officer who has given a warning and is seeing someone blatantly ignoring it and breaking the law.

Agreed.

The other would be to grab the kid, hustle him outside - as they did - and immediately arrest him, taking the camera and turning off the video right after stating "You are under arrest for trespassing after having been given notice not to come on this property" or something similar. It would have devalued the film and probably made it too short to be very interesting. They had probable cause and a whole bunch of credible witnesses to the trespassing; I'm pretty sure the charge would have stuck. But, hey, they tried not to be too big of jerks and consequently gave the kid his day on You Tube.

Here I strongly disagree: Preventing the kid from having his day on YouTube is not a legitimate police function. I'm guessing that the cops probably would have done about the same thing if he hadn't been filming them. Why should the camera make them more aggressive?

Besides, wouldn't an arrest have made this mess ten times bigger? The opposition media would be using every step through the legal system to revisit the incident. Now it's just going to die a quiet death here in the blogosphere.

Fans of TNT's The Closer know that when Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson tells a suspect that he's going to get away with his crimes, but then she asks him to do just one harmless little thing for her, he's about to go down hard.

I thought of that when I read this:

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton's name will be placed in nomination along with nominee-in-waiting Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention, an emblematic move intended to unite the party after a divisive primary.

...

"I am convinced that honoring Senator Clinton's historic campaign in this way will help us celebrate this defining moment in our history and bring the party together in a strong united fashion," said Obama, an Illinois senator.

I'm sure he's right.

Rob at the 26th St. Bar Association has a fascinating post, at least to a non-lawyer like me, about the difficulty the state has in proving constructive possession of contraband.

What really caught my eye, however, was the description of the police raid:

The police still came in, without any information that there would be guns or possible violence, shot all three of the family's dogs (two of which were chained up and on less than four feet of leash) and tore the house apart.

This touches on two interesting Drug War issues. First, cops like to shoot your dogs, and second, cops like to break your stuff. The former has been a topic of this blog before, and the latter is the subject of a recent Eighth Circuit decision.

In United States v. Santana-Aguirre, No. 07-3706 (8th Cir. August 12, 2008) (opinion), a 2-1 panel held that when you consent to a search, you also consent to the destruction of your property.

The property in question was a bunch of cheap candles. No great loss, except of course to people who can only afford cheap candles. But it seems clear that police will be quick to apply this ruling to everything.

They can already destroy your car's spare tire under an earlier decision, but now they will be able to slice open your child's teddy bear, open all the canned goods you just bought at the grocery, or smash your laptop to pieces as part of the search.

It's not hard to imagine this will be used punitively: If some smartass gives them trouble on the street, cops will "search" his cell phone to teach him a lesson.

Maybe there's a bright side. If you tell a cop that you don't consent to a search and he comes back with "Why? Are you hiding something?" just tell him that if you gave him permission to search, then under Santana-Aguirre you'd also be giving him permission to break all your stuff, and you certainly don't want him to do that.

Kip Esquire points us to an AP wire story that has some shameful news (emphasis mine):

WASHINGTON - Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.

...

Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.

"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

Isn't that terrible? North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgon can't read. Either that, or he doesn't know the difference between sales and profits. He has an MBA degree, so I guess either is possible.

As the proud owner of a small software consulting corporation, I can assure you that I pay taxes. Lots of taxes. The company itself doesn't pay federal income taxes, but I pay personal income taxes on every dollar I receive from the company and every dollar of company profit.

If I hadn't incorporated, I'd receive fees from my clients and deposit them in my personal bank account. I'd deduct my expenses, and then make estimated self-employment tax payments during the year. Then at the end of the year I'd do a final accounting and settle up with the IRS.

Instead, my corporation receives the clients' fees, which are deposited in the corporate bank account. As the only employee, I pay myself a salary, which is then deposited into my personal bank account. Just like every other employer, I withhold federal income taxes and deduct Medicare and Social Security from my paycheck and send that money to the government right away. Then at the end of the year, I do a final accounting in which I deduct corporate expenses from revenue to calculate profit and report that to the IRS as income for myself as the owner of the corporation. Then I do a final accounting of my personal taxes and settle up with the IRS.

Either way---whether I receive the money directly or pass it through the corporation---I pay roughly the same amount of taxes. Only the paperwork is different.

(For various reasons, I'm probably paying a bit more as a corporation than I would as a self-employed consultant.)

When the corporations are giants like Microsoft and Exxon, the numbers are a lot larger, but the principle is the same: Even if the corporation doesn't pay income taxes, every employee and every stockholder does. And the amount they pay will be roughly comparable to what would have paid if they had received the corporation's revenue (and paid the corporation's expenses) directly.

Don't forget, too, that one-third of U.S. corporations do pay income taxes. That's in addition to the income taxes paid by their employees and stockholders.

(Note: Of course, some corporations do manage to get some sweet deals written into the tax code. For example, the mortgage bailout bill includes an awesome tax cut for Chrysler. But most corporate income is taxed before any fat cats can spend it.)

I've been a little too busy to do proper blogging, so I'll just post a few random shots around the web:

• Heh.

• Nice Try

LONGMONT, Colo. - A man claiming to be a police detective tried to get an adult novelty shop to give him free X-rated videos, saying he wanted to make sure the performers weren't underage, authorities said.

He made three tries within nine days last month and was turned down each time. The store manager called police after the third try.

• This is a fairly topical cartoon.
• Important tips about bear safety.
  

Last week, Prince George's County cops raided the home of Cheye Calvo. They were there to seize 32 pounds of marijuana that had just been delivered by FedEx.

Even when the story first broke, it seemed unlikely that Calvo was actually the intended recipient of the drugs, since he's the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. Of course, that didn't stop the county's finest from shooting his dogs.

The police now seem to have a better idea what happened:

Police say the couple appeared to be innocent victims of a scheme by two men to smuggle millions of dollars worth of marijuana by having it delivered to about a half-dozen unsuspecting recipients.

The two men under arrest include a FedEx deliveryman; investigators said the deliveryman would drop off a package outside a home, and the other man would come by a short time later and pick it up.

Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin High has apologized to Mayor Calvo and his wife for the raid on his house and for killing his two black Labradors, and he's promised to revisit the decision making process his department uses to decide when a raid is approved.

Ha! Just kidding. No, Chief High is being a dick about it:

Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin High said Wednesday that Calvo and his family were "most likely ... innocent victims," but he would not rule out their involvement, and he defended the way the raid was conducted.

It's possible that Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin High is selling child pornography to raise money for Al-Qaeda. I don't actually have any evidence of this, but I'm not prepared to rule it out.

He and other officials did not apologize for killing the dogs, saying the officers felt threatened.

So what? If I broke into Calvo's house and killed his dogs, I couldn't hope to keep out of jail by saying I was afraid of the dogs. That doesn't matter if you don't belong there in the first place.

The cops had a warrant, so it wasn't a crime for them to be there, but they could still apologize. Heck, even if Calvo was a drug kingpin, they could still apologize for killing a pair of innocent dogs.

Actually, as Mike at Crime & Federalism points out, the police had a few problems with the warrant. They entered without knocking, something they claimed their warrant allowed. It turns out they were lying about that:

But a review of the warrant indicates that police neither sought nor received permission from Circuit Court Judge Albert W. Northrup to enter without knocking.

So now the police have changed their story:

But officials insisted they acted within the law, saying the operation was