Tuesday, December 30, 2014 Without “Qualified Immunity,” Would Cops Be So Quick to Kill? (See a small but significant correction below.) The story had a familiar beginning, but took an unexpected detour en route to an unanticipated conclusion.  Dante Price, a young black man, was trying to visit his girlfriend and infant son at the […]

Wednesday, August 27, 2014 Shielding the Executioner: Shaun Cowley, Paul Cassell, and the Murder of Danielle Willard During a lengthy career that includes stints as a federal prosecutor and judge, Paul Cassell has devoutly upheld the vision of 18th Century arch-authoritarian Joseph de Maistre, who taught that “all greatness, all power, all social order depends […]

Sunday, November 2, 2014 Killer on the Loose: Did Cops “Botch” a Case to Punish an Independent DA? “Comply or Die is Not the Law”: Relatives of police victims speak at Oct. 4 rally in Salt Lake.  After 72-year-old Robert Warren was shot in the face at the front door of his home in West […]

Saturday, December 27, 2014 Law-and-Order Leninism Last Easter, the Right was celebrating the Bunkerville rebellion, and the Left was calling for severe measures – drone strikes, if necessary – to beat down armed resistance to law enforcement. By Christmas, the roles were neatly reversed, with the Left protesting against the ever-growing tide of law enforcement […]

Thursday, December 18, 2014 A Peace Officer Defies the “Blue Tribe”: The Exile of Officer Cariol Horne Not the only one: Chokeholds are illegal, but widely used by police anyway. David Mack was dying of strangulation in front of his horrified teenage sons while nearly a dozen Buffalo Police Officers looked on with indifference. The […]

Tuesday, December 9, 2014 Why “Support Your Local Police” is a Formula for Despotism There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them.  Garet Garrett, “The Revolution Was” “We are […]

Friday, December 5, 2014 Have We Reached “Peak Jackboot”? In 1768, amid escalating tensions between the British government and independence-minded “radicals” in New England, two full regiments were deployed in Boston as peacekeepers. Their presence was, in historian David Ramsay’s elegantly ominous phrase, “a fruitful source of uneasiness.” London tried to preserve the pretense that […]

Monday, September 1, 2014 If We Prick the State, Does It Bleed?   Yes, these are Oregon Sheriff’s deputies, “The taxpayers are entitled to everything Mr. Esbensen cost them,” declared Malheur County District Attorney Dan Norris, affected piety suppurating from every syllable, during an August 28 hearing before visiting Judge Gregory Baxter in the County […]