Link: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/12/eyewitness_testimony_and_crimi.php#more

Over at Ed Brayton's excellent blog "Dispatches From The Culture Wars", part of the indubitably excellent Scienceblogs aggregation, we find this discussion based on yet another report concerning the low reliability of eyewitness accounts of anything, but especially crimes. Having read an article about the crash of the DH-110 at the 1952 Farnborough Air Show, where virtually none of the eyewitness accounts were correct, I was already attuned to the fundamental issues with "live" accounts of events. There is a similar correlation with the Kennedy assassination, where numerous eye-witnesses provided a baffling array of contradictory accounts.
This topic is also explored in detail in the book "Mistakes Were Made, (but not by ME)", which is one of my favorite books of 2009. The book points out that the criminal justice system is deeply resistant to any attempts at reform, because the culture surrounding its practitioners is one of asserted infallibility, even in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary.

Background: Ramsgate has a fully-equipped ferry port, built some years ago on land reclaimed from the sea West of the current harbour. The ferry port had freight and passenger sailings for a number of years, until the previous company bailed on the arrangement with lots of years left on the lease. Since then, the port has survived on a limited number of freight-only ferry sailings, while the harbour has to be constantly dredged due to sand infill from ocean currents. In short, this is not a shining example of local industry or success.
This year, there were rumours, talked up by the local MP Dr. Steven Ladyman, that EuroFerries would restart passenger services from Ramsgate to Boulougne in France this Autumn. This seemed to be a positive development, except that no date was announced to begin with, then no news was forthcoming other than postponements, accompanied by vague assurances. When local blogger East Cliff Richard linked to another local blog where a commenter referred to a rumour that EuroFerries might have "gone bust", EuroFerries threatened him with legal action. They did the same to the local blogger whose comments section contained the alleged rumour.
I think that I understand the policy being adopted here by EuroFerries (who are very much still in business, by the way). It's called either Shoot The Common Carrier (if you're feeling charitable) or School Playground Bullying (if like me, you are not feeling quite as charitable).
Most recently, EuroFerries has admitted that it will not be starting services this year after all. Sailings are now not planned to start until March 2010.
The net result of all of the false starts is a reduction in the credbility of the local MP, and deepening local skepticism about the likelihood that there will be a resumption of passenger ferry services out of Ramsgate.
As for EuroFerries themselves, any organization that thinks that threatening local bloggers whose comment sections contain statements of which they disapprove is a good way to go about its business is either stupid, being badly advised, or both. No good can come of threatening local commentators with legal action, especially since in this case, they were not even the ones making any allegations - the allegations were being made by an anonymous commenter to a blog. It merely makes Euroferries look like a typical bunch of corporate bullies - and nobody likes corporate bullies.
UPDATE - I rewrote parts of this posting to better explain what I think actually occurred to cause EuroFerries to threaten the two bloggers in question with legal action. My conclusion that EuroFerries is engaging in bullying, hiding behind UK libel laws, still stands. I repeat - just because you can do something does not mean that you should. Smarter thinking should have prevailed.
UPDATE 2 - There is a discussion forum about the Euroferries initiative here. I rest my case about the general level of skepticism...

Link: http://www.bnet.com/2403-13239_23-352693.html?tag=content;col2

This article in BNet explains how Australia has weathered the recession better than most countries, and may be already in economic recovery.

Both Uganda and Jamaica are currently gripped by a nasty approach to homosexuality - they appear to regard it as an anti-social disease, and are actively working to criminalize it.
That being the case, I refuse to visit either country. When they wise up and stop enshrining bigotry and discrimination based on sexual orientation into their laws and societal value systems, I shall consider visiting them and buying products from those countries. Until then, they're not getting a cent of my money.

Link: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/homicide-and-cover-up-by-dday-im-sure.html

...is an old truism in the history of malfeasance. Currently my home state is proving the truth of this. It is highly likely that they executed an innocent man, Cameron Tood Whillingham, in 2004.
Now, in a highly suspicious turn of events, Texas Governor Rick Perry has suddenly dismissed several members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission that was due to report on the events leading up to the execution. He is trying to replace the dismissed members with hard-line authoritarians.
I have not recently seen a more blatant example of "stacking the deck" for many years. However, on another level, Perry's actions do not particularly surprise me. As Carol Tavris and Elliott Aronson point out in their book "Mistakes Were Made (But Not By ME)", the criminal justice system is a very good example of a system that persistently refuses to admit to error, even when the errors are egregious and obvious. Cover-ups and general avoidance and malfeasance are normal responses when that system is challenged by evidence of failure.
In any sensible legally policed jurisdiction, Rick Perry would not even have tried such a blatant piece of gerrymandering. However, this is Texas, a state that does not even allow criminal defendants the right of discovery (the term used by lawyers in this state is "trial by ambush"). In that context, it is less surprising that the state does not want to have to admit that the criminal justice system here is defective.
I would like to think that electors will take note of this malfeasance by Perry. However, given that they had one previous opportunity to toss him from office and failed to take it, I am not optimistic.
UPDATE - There are claims in the Houston Chronicle that Gov Perry's office refused to consider late submissions before the execution of Whillingham. This is potentially serious, the allegation is that Rick Perry deliberately refused to consider new evidence. Beware the comments section however, the intellectually dishonest authoritarian bottom-feeders are out in force with their peurile arguments and petty ad hominems...
UPDATE 2 - Gov. Perry has now commented on this case, only to utter a string of ad hominems and fallacies. Nowhere in his monologue does he address the underlying issue - that Cameron Todd Whillingham was executed on the basis of inadequate evidence. No amount of bluff and bluster can avoid that unpalatable reality.
UPDATE 3 - Another miscarriage of justice (this time the subversion and undermining of the appeal system) is also unfolding in Texas over a man sentenced to death, where it is apparent that jurors used Bibles as they determined whether he should be sentenced to death. Lawyers for the man on death row explain how they were denied the ability to ask jurors questions that would have proved their arguments...my cynical expectation is that Rick Perry will refuse to intervene in order to burnish his "tough on crime" credentials. The "hang 'em high" brigade has a lot of membership, particularly in rural areas of Texas.

Link: http://shemyanews.wordpress.com/

This interesting blog has appeared, promising information about developments on Shemya, which is not quite the back of beyond in the Aleutians, but is close...

For those people not just returned from Mars....film director Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland on an outstanding arrest warrant from the USA, issued after he fled the U.S. over 40 years ago while awaiting sentencing following a plea of guilty to what has been quaintly termed "statutory rape".
His arrest has led to massive amounts of bloviation both by supporters, who appear to want the whole issue swept under the carpet, and detractors who appear to want him at the very least forced to do the perp walk, or possibly (as in the case of the unutterably stupid Cokie Roberts), have him put to death.
Watching all of the huffing, puffing and pontification about Polanski does rather tend to remind me of the quotation "We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality." Armchair moralists everywhere seem to be united in wanting to weigh in with their own views of the whole affair.
Commenter jeer9 on HaloScan, responding to this posting on Lawyers, Guns and Money, seems to hit the nail on the head for me:

...Polanski already pled guilty to statutory rape. After 42 days of psychiatric observation, he fled when he believed the judge was not going to abide by the agreement. By failing to stay and litigate the issue and serve the appropriate sentence (which, short of execution, will not satisfy some), he has incurred the retrospective wrath of Americans everywhere which no amount of money or energy will dissipate. There's a large moral lesson to be learned here somewhere, but I'm far too obtuse, what with the distractions of Wall Street criminal passes and the relentless prosecution of torturers, to be able to see it. I seriously doubt, given the judge's inappropriate conduct, that he'll serve any time (other than probation) on the sexual charge. The fugitive count is another matter. He should have just stayed and fought it with with the sort of representation the wealthy and privileged can afford. Americans prefer their evildoers to be brazen and unrepentant. Fleeing the country lacks the self-righteous bravado we appreciate in our villains and speaks to a type of cowardice that is simply not tolerated. Better to lawyer up (would that it were necessary!) and retire to a quiet life in Dallas or appear on TV regularly defending one's sadism as the height of patriotism. It's all about priorities and we sure have ours straight.

A classic indicator of the health of a housing market is the number of months of inventory that exists. During property price recessions, the amount of inventory shoots up dramatically. Generally, prices then drop since it becomes a buyers market. Appreciating housing markets generally run with 4-6 months of inventory at current sale rates.
During the recent crash, inventories had ballooned in some areas to years' worth of houses. Housing market optimists have been watching to see for signs of improvement that they can point to as evidence of a recovery. There have been recent drops in outstanding inventory in some distressed areas, particularly California, which have led to optimistic noises that the housing market is recovering.
Not so fast. As Dr. Housing Bubble explains in this posting, there is an additional factor that needs to be added to any calculation of housing recovery - Shadow Inventory. It is difficult to excerpt from this posting, but the argument in the posting is that there are a lot of properties with delinquent mortgages, where the lenders have not even issued Notices Of Default. This is mainly because they do not want to have to admit that a loan is delinquent, because then it damages the value of their loan portfolio. This merely kicks the problem down the road; although no NoD has been issued (which means that the foreclosure process does not start, and the property does not appear in pre-Foreclosure or Foreclosure stats), the loan is delinquent and may never be made good, which means that either the lender writes off the debt, or forecloses the property later.
The reluctance of lenders to assume responsibility for failing loans is not new - we have already seen numerous instances of lenders refusing to take formal possession of properties where borrowers walked away from them, thus leaving the borrowers still with legal title to the property and still liable for property and state taxes etc.
My guess is that lenders are hoping to somehow bury these defaulting loans when the overall market recovers, either by quietly negotiating away the debt, or by foreclosing the property and hoping to bury the foreclosure amidst other good news. However, no matter what happens, this "shadow inventory" issue exists, and it will slow the recovery of the housing market. As long as a significant number of homeowners are delinquent on mortgage payments, and very likely to ultimately default, the real level of distress in the market is higher than shown by foreclosure stats.

Link: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/10/beck_tries_to_kill_parody_webs.php#more

Glenn Beck, like many authoritarian radio and TV bloviators, is very good at creating strawman arguments that allow him to commence some rant about some real or imagined Awful Thing About The World.
Some time ago, a satirist parodied Beck's approach to bloviation here.
Now Glenn Beck, a man who by his own written words, hates international law, has filed a complaint against the owner of the website with...the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
The owner of the website has responded with some fairly pointed arguments against what seems to be a rather flimsy complaint.
Beck originally threatened a libel suit against the site owner, but that would almost certainly fail since the site is demonstrably satirical.
I do love it when bullies suddenly find themselves on the recieving end of a take-down. Suddenly they morph from bloviation, bullying and vaguely threatening speech and triumphalist crowing to pathetic special pleading and allegations of persecution.
Cry me a river, Glenn Beck. I sense the biter bit, the bully being called out.

Link: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/Property_seizures_seen_as_piracy_.html

This article from the San Antonio News reveals that the police department and the Mayor of Tenaha in East Texas have apparently been egregiously abusing asset forfeiture laws. These laws, originally designed to allow for the confiscation of assets owned by convicted felons, have been abused (in some cases egregiously) for years by many law enforcement agencies. They are attractive laws to abuse, since seized assets can be used to offset the rising cost of law enforcement.
In the case of the city of Tenaha, the asset forfeiture abuse went hand-in-hand with that old legal invention of Driving While Black. A local lawyer has now filed a lawsuit as a result of investigating numerous forfeiture incidents in Tenaha. As the L.A. Times reports:

David Guillory, an attorney in nearby Nacogdoches who filed the federal lawsuit, said he combed through Shelby County court records from 2006 to 2008 and discovered nearly 200 cases in which Tenaha police seized cash and property from motorists. In about 50 of the cases, suspects were charged with drug possession.
But in 147 others, Guillory said the court records showed, the police seized cash, jewelry, cellphones and sometimes even automobiles from motorists but never found any contraband or charged them with any crime. Of those, Guillory said he managed to contact 40 of the motorists directly -- and discovered that all but one of them were black.

The citizen leadership of Tenaha appears to be in total denial about the egregiousness of this bullshit:

Tenaha Mayor George Bowers, 80, defended the seizures, saying they allowed a cash-poor city the means to add a second police car in a two-policeman town and help pay for a new police station.
“It’s always helpful to have any kind of income to expand your police force,” Bowers said.
Local police, he said, must take aggressive action to stem the narcotics trade that flows through town via U.S. 59 — drugs heading north, cash going south.
“No doubt about it. (U.S. 59) is a thoroughfare that a lot of no-good people travel on. They take the drugs and sell it and take the money and go right back into Mexico,” said Bowers, who’s been Tenaha’s mayor 54 years.

I guess my question to George Bowers is: what part of the phrase "probable cause" do you not understand? My question to the electors of Tenaha: do you realize that you have a fuckwit representing you?
UPDATE - News of the lawsuit has now gone national, via this article in CNN. The article itself adds little that was not already public information, but it further provides much negative publicity. Way to go, Tenaha.
UPDATE 2 - The District Attorney is now attempting to use money confiscated by the Tenaha law enforcement body to fund a defense of the asset forfeiture policy...sometimes there is no way that you could make this stuff up...