Police and prosecution roundup

  • Follow the federal funding: “Stop giving out awards for arrests” [Andrew Sullivan]
  • NYC cops shoot at mentally disturbed man, hit bystanders instead, charge him with their injuries [Scott Shackford, Popehat]
  • Electric car owner charged with stealing 5 cents worth of power [Chamblee, Ga.: WXIA, auto-plays]
  • Claims re: sex trafficking in US fast spiraling into absurdity. Keep going [Maggie McNeill, earlier] “Perverse Incentives: Sex Work and the Law” [Cato Unbound symposium] “California to Open Victim Compensation Funds to Prostitutes” [Shackford]
  • Illegal ticket quotas at the LAPD, inmate beatings at the county sheriff’s jail: Los Angeles policing hit by multiple scandals [L.A. Times: editorial on charges against 18 sheriff’s deputies, LAPD ticket quota]
  • Massachusetts crime lab test faker Annie Dookhan gets 3-5 year sentence [ABA Journal]
  • “Overcriminalization in the states” [Vikrant Reddy, Texas Public Policy Foundation, draft; related Mother Jones] Conservatives call for reforms in New Mexico justice system [Rio Grande Foundation via @PatNolanPFM]
  • Also: “Chief Judge For 9th Circuit [Alex Kozinski] Cites ‘Epidemic’ Of Prosecutor Misconduct” [Radley Balko]

Voting for unconstitutional laws, and a lawmaker’s oath

I’ve long found it exasperating when would-be lawmakers take the view that it’s okay for them to vote for measures that might be unconstitutional because, after all, the courts are there to backstop things. The Michigan businessman who’s challenging Rep. Justin Amash in a Republican primary is just out with a particularly flagrant quote along those lines to which I respond at Cato at Liberty.

A case for broadcast deregulation

Per activist group Blue Oregon, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should yank radio station KPOJ’s license because its owner dropped progressive talk shows and switched instead to a sports format. “Clear Channel must air programming that is responsive to the needs and problems of its local community. That’s us. We’re the community,” the group says. More: Willamette Week.

The Washington Post on Medicare eye drugs

Last week the Washington Post flayed doctors who participate in the Medicare program, along with the pharmaceutical company Genentech, because they often prescribe the $2,000-a-dose (and fully FDA-approved) eye drug Lucentis in preference to Avastin, a biologically related compound also made by Genentech that seems to work equally well against “wet” age-related macular degeneration and can be obtained off-label from compounders for only $50 an injection (albeit with some additional risks and hassles). Taxpayers have shelled out billions of dollars, the Post complains with some justice, because many docs (currently close to half) choose FDA-approved in preference to off-label treatments.

Great investigation, guys. Now that you’ve accused doctors of being socially irresponsible and greedy for not going off-label to prescribe, could you investigate who exactly has been demonizing off-label prescribing as a dangerous, unregulated practice that the FDA needs to crack down on? What would happen if you found that that it was some of the Post’s own favorite sources and advocacy groups?

Medical roundup

“British Man Arrested for Making Nelson Mandela Joke”

Authorities in Rugeley, Staffordshire, England, detained sandwich shop owner Neil Phillips for eight hours, searched his computer, fingerprinted him and swabbed him for DNA after a local elected official complained that Phillips had engaged in online jokes and comments on Facebook, including jokes about Nelson Mandela. [Birmingham Mail, The Star] Afterward, Phillips complained that the constabulary had “over-reacted massively”: “There was no hatred. What happened to freedom of speech?” Charles Cooke explains at NRO:

Well, the Public Order Act of 1986 happened to freedom of speech – in particular, Section 5, which makes it a crime in England for anyone ”with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress” to

(a) [use] threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or (b) [display] any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.

In other words, Section 5 allows anybody to have anybody else investigated for speaking. And they have. The arrests have run the gamut: from Muslims criticizing atheists to atheists criticizing Muslims….

Is it still legal for Britons to laugh at this Mark Steyn column?