• Why All Police Are Bad — for Society. Ademo Freeman, Cop Block (2010-12-30). I'm often questioned about my stance on police which is fine — anyone who knows me is aware that I don't mind sharing my thoughts. Oftentimes during the conversation I'm accused of being a "cop hater" or told that not all cops are bad. I understand the reasoning most people… (Linked Friday 2011-01-14.)

• From the Downsize DC Foundation: The Dictator Fallacy. DownsizeDC.org (2011-01-13). The Downsize DC Foundation’s website, www.DownsizeDCFoundation.org, continues to grow. Today, we bring you one of those articles, from the Our Lexicon category . . .  "The Dictator Fallacy" by Jim Babka fal·la·cy  –  * a misleading or unsound argument.  * Logic. any of various types of erroneous reasoning that render… (Linked Saturday 2011-01-15.)

• Nothing Natural about It. Sheldon Richman, Free Association (2011-01-15). The sharp historical division between labor and capital ownership is not a natural emergent feature of the market economy but largely the conscious result of government privilege.Atom (Linked Sunday 2011-01-16.)

• Two Little Pigs: How Some Cops Get Jail While Others Go Free. Modesto Anarcho (2011-01-16). It’s not that police “protect their own,” exactly. It’s that police protect their power. Rape your step daughter or get plastered and drive your car off the road, and you’re well behind the blue wall. Do something that disrupts command and control within a prison, and the long knives come out. (Linked Sunday 2011-01-16.)

• Kiva Lending Team: Anarchists for Empowerment. tolstoyscat, things along the way (2011-01-11). Join here: Anarchists for EmpowermentKiva’s mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva empowers individuals to lend to an entrepreneur across the globe. By combining microfinance with the internet, Kiva is creating a global community of people connected through lending.Anarchists for Empowerment: We loan… (Linked Sunday 2011-01-16.)

• Mistakes Were Made. Guns Were Pointed. A Family Was Terrorized. Pets Were Threatened. Radley Balko, Gangsters in Blue (2011-01-16). The DEA has apologized for the wrong door raid in the Hudson Valley that I blogged about last week. Sort of. John P. Gilbride, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration, issued a statement Friday clearing Spring Valley resident David McKay and his family of anything to do… (Linked Sunday 2011-01-16.)

• Why read about it when you can play? Shelley, MyTech (2011-01-16). Earlier today I got into a friendly discussion and debate on Twitter about a new web site called W3Fools. The site bills itself as a "W3Schools intervention", and the purpose is to wake developers up to the fact that W3School tutorials can, and do, have errors. The problem with a… (Linked Sunday 2011-01-16.)

• The state begins in robbery; some patterns of robb… Gary Chartier, Comments on Free Association: Take It to the Limit (2011-01-08). The state begins in robbery; some patterns of robbery are doubtless spontaneously ordered, but surely others are planned by groups of robbers.Once the state has been established and mechanisms for obtaining power have been regularized, it will surely be unsurprising if people who do obtain power are people who like… (Linked Sunday 2011-01-16.)

• The Semicolon Wars » American Scientist. www.americanscientist.org (2011-01-16). I mock the pettiness of these squabbles—and I believe some of them deserve mocking—and yet I don’t want to give the impression that only cosmetic issues are in dispute, or that programming languages are really all alike under the skin. On the contrary, what’s most fascinating about programming languages is… (Linked Sunday 2011-01-16.)

• Let a million bookmarks bloom. l.m.orchard, 0xDECAFBAD (2010-12-19). TL;DR: Don't depend on Delicious; host your own, pay for it elsewhere, or hope for the best. Use real-time feeds to stitch the bookmarking diaspora back together into topical aggregate indexes. In the last entry, I wrote about why my use of Delicious has dropped over time, and what I've… (Linked Sunday 2011-01-16.)

The SWAT Team Would Like to See Your Alcohol Permit. Radley Balko: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-12-13):

In August a team of heavily armed Orange County, Florida, sheriff's deputies raided several black- and Hispanic-owned barbershops in the Orlando area. There were more raids in September and October. According to the Orlando Sentinel, barbers and customers were held at gunpoint, some in handcuffs, while police turned the shops…

You may have been aware that government professional-licensing regulations are routinely used to burn out competition and protect the financial interests of politically-connected businessmen. What you may not have known is that, besides being used to uphold state capitalism, they are also now frequently used to uphold a police state, and allow hyperviolent SWAT raids against licensed businesses, without even the pretense of a warrant.

Do you feel secure in your person, house, papers and effects?

Balko notes that, “at least in the 4th Circuit,” the Fourth Amendment doesn’t prevent the government from sending a SWAT team to make sure your beer is labeled correctly.” I of course could not care less whether or not these completely unrestrained hyperviolent stormtrooper raids, conducted at the pleasure of government police against innocent people’s hang-outs and places of business, are or are not authorized by the Constitution. Either the Fourth Amendment allows them, or it can demonstrably do nothing to prevent them. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

What's Going On in New Haven? Radley Balko: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-10-26):

New Haven has been having some problems with its nightlife. So they’re sending out the SWAT team. For a moment, employees at a St. John Street cabaret said, they thought they were being robbed when masked gunmen with assault rifles stormed in Monday night. It quickly became clear, however —…

The workers thought they were being robbed when a bunch of masked, heavily armed strangers stormed the club and held them all at gunpoint.

It turns out that they were being robbed. It’s just that they were being robbed by the Gangsters in Blue.

• What's Wrong With Woodrow Wilson? Radley Balko: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-10-11). A: He was a fucking fascist, that’s what’s wrong. (Linked Monday 2010-10-11.)

• Modesto Police Shoot Francisco Moran and Rita Elias. Modesto Anarcho!'s MySpace Blog (2010-10-04). On Friday night, Rita Elias, 31, died after off-duty sheriff’s detective Kari Abbey, shot and killed her after an hour long argument. Kari Abbey, a 6 year veteran to the force, and a detective of four… (Linked Monday 2010-10-11.)

• Under Surveillance America. Darian Worden, Center for a Stateless Society (2010-09-16). Federal Bureau of Investigation files indicate that Ernest Withers, prominent photographer of 1960s Civil Rights activism, was also a federal informant. According to the Washington Post, he provided photographs, scheduling information and biographical sketches on Civil Rights leaders to the FBI. Whether Withers was trying to cash in on information… (Linked Tuesday 2010-10-12.)

• Nothing new under the sun. John Markley, The Superfluous Man (2010-10-06). Contemporary American politics makes a great deal more sense in light of the realization that Barack Obama’s most devoted fans and fiercest critics are united by a shared delusion: the belief that Obama is really, really interesting.How this manifests among his supporters is apparent enough in the starry-eyed adulation he… (Linked Tuesday 2010-10-12.)

• Homesteading in Haiti: Very Adverse Possession. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-10-12). Emily Troutman reports from the hills near Port-au-Prince: Six months ago, this land was nothing but crickets in the grass. Now, it's Haiti's new frontier, a landscape of squatters whose greatest hope is a home of their own. Gray and blue shacks and shanties extend for miles. Small gardens and… (Linked Tuesday 2010-10-12.)

• Event: The Prospects and Ethics of Political Reform. justino, DFW Alliance of the Libertarian Left (2010-09-27). What: As we near election time, candidates for office will inevitably present themselves as an alternative to the status quo that plagues us. But what types of reform in practice, if any, are consistent with a libertarian political philosophy? The first article we will study is Ron Paul's "My Plan… (Linked Tuesday 2010-10-12.)

• Event: !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;For the Bible Tells Me So' Movie. justino, DFW Alliance of the Libertarian Left (2010-09-22). What: 1919 Hemphill, a local DIY collective, is hosting a screening of the documentary For the Bible Tells Me So (2007) as part of its long-time movie series Conscientious Projector. A recipient of numerous international awards, the film documents the turmoil Christian families with a gay child face and "sometimes… (Linked Tuesday 2010-10-12.)

• Grieving Student Suspected of Using Marijuana Reinstated. DFW Alliance of the Libertarian Left (2010-10-12). Narco-Statism Vs. Compassion and Human Decency (Cont’d) (Linked Tuesday 2010-10-12.)

• Getting Away With Murder. Center for a Stateless Society (2010-10-12). Cops are here to keep us safe. (Cont’d) (Linked Tuesday 2010-10-12.)

Proper Treatment. Daily Brickbats (2010-10-11):

Michelle Schreiner is a diabetic and her blood sugar was dangerously low, so a friend called 911. For some reason, dispatch sent a police officer as well as paramedics to her Gresham, Oregon, home. When they got there, Schreiner was holding a syringe filled with insulin and drifting in and…

The police are here to keep you safe.