Don't F***k with SUV's

A 13 year sentence for torching some SUV's to make a point about our environmental policy? Yep.
Give thanks to our beloved federal prosecutors.


$750 Semen Salad

How can you resist a headline like "Teen Sentenced for Semen Salad Dressing "?


Who Is a Rat?

This excellent Adam Liptak piece is worth a read. It's about the website Whosarat claims to be the internet's largest database of informants and undercover officers. Pretty clearly legal, (as it's based on public filings) this seems to me a lovely side effect of the government's consistent attempts to make criminal records and court cases available online to everyone. Of course the government is looking for ways to crack down on it and it's use.

Strangely as of the writing of this blog post, the website seems to be blocked (leaving me to wonder whether XICOM Technologies which seems to be doing the blocking is about to be hit with a very large lawsuit) but here's the old interface:

Uh-Oh Alberto...

In an ad in the Washington Post today, a number of his old Law School Classmates Criticize AG Alberto Gonzales.

In an open letter they say: "As lawyers, and as a matter of principle, we can no longer be silent about this administration’s consistent disdain for the liberties we hold dear,” those classmates said in a letter to Mr. Gonzales today. “Your failure to stand for the rule of law, particularly when faced with a president who makes the aggrandized claim of being a unitary executive, takes this country down a dangerous path.”

While I don't think you need to go to Harvard to understand this one, I'm glad a bunch of those who did, do.


Why the rich get richer...

The I.R.S. has curtailed many audits in tax havens because obstructionist rich people can make it too time consuming to force them to pay.

In one typical case, the I.R.S. spent four years investigating a person with businesses in both the United States and an unnamed overseas tax haven. The investigation included 20 summonses, 23 demands for documents, 5 missed appointments and 2 refusals by the person being investigated to supply information. After four years, the government still did not know how much money had been moved to the tax haven.