If you see it, film it!

The freedom you save may be your own.

Don’t forget the fine print

[HT: PINAC]

Free speech (within certain guidelines)

Gotta love local government’s support of civil rights. Linton Johnson, a spokesman for the BART police department had this to say

“We are allowed to designate the time, place and manner of free speech.”

Just like the prisoners in Alcatraz were free to assemble in the time, place and manner designated by the warden.

Oh the video? Oops, Sorry.

Anytime the dashboard camera on a police car shows evidence of a crime – its made available. Anytime it shows nothing (or potentially incriminating evidence against the officer) it can just disappear with no recourse.

“I lost it” is officially a legal excuse to destroy evidence unless you catch them in the act. The camera turns on automatically, the officer should have noted it wasn’t working at shift change and department policy requires all footage to be preserved for at least 30 days and no one noticed it didn’t exist?

“We agree with the state that the record supports a finding by the district court that the police did not act in bad faith,” Justice Bob Pemberton wrote. “The United States Supreme Court has held that ‘unless a criminal defendant can show bad faith on the part of the police, failure to preserve potentially useful evidence does not constitute a denial of due process of law.’”

Unbelievable. Well, If You Haven’t Been Paying Attention. — Trey Garrison

First cel phones, now homes

Cuba is preparing to legalize private property. This is a fundamental underpinning of free market economies. Here’s to hoping it sticks – but it will be a while before anyone fully reacts to it because of the uncertainty that it could be taken away at any time.

You can’t just tell people they are free. You have to continually successfully publicly thwart challenges to their freedom before they will believe it. Only after they believe it will they act on it. Only after they act on it will they actually be free.

Futuristic (sounding) cars

Responding to the Pedestrian Safety Act of 2010 Ford has provided some potential sounds they might use for their Focus Electric car because they are “too quiet”

I can appreciate the futuristic George Jetson quality these cars make but it seems absurd to artificially make cars sound like they do in Minority Report just because we’ve been trained by the movies that that is what cars will sound like someday.

Lets get creative instead. Instead of Close Encounters I want mine to sound like

• a pouncing tiger
• a ray gun
• a Sherman tank
• hell, just let me pipe my radio to the outside and they’ll hear me coming a block away.

PS – I don’t want my car to sound like it can fly. I want my car to fly.

Debt defaulting to yourself?

Ron Paul has some good ideas, some crazy ideas, and some that just make you tilt your head and go “Uh… yeah!… wait, uh… no! … huhwhat?”

He recently introduced HR 2768 which is intended to immediately eliminate $1.6 trillion from the federal debt.

The text of the bill isn't available just yet but here is the gist of the idea

• The Treasury owes the Federal Reserve about $1.6 trillion
• The Fed essentially makes the investment money out of thin air
• The Treasury then has the right to make the interest payment money out of thin air and cancel it all out.

Its an interesting idea. It essentially would be a bold statement that the Fed is a fake customer to the Treasury and so we don’t accept any deals with them as real. They sort of are a made up customer since they can make up money to buy things.

Does the treasury bond interest rate crash if we default on bonds, but only on those which were never actually issued to anyone in the real market? Can the Fed continue to use its purchasing power to artificially inflate interest rates?

The big question which relates more to his candidacy – Is that kind of uncertainty better or worse than the kind we have now?