PRESUMED DEAD: A True Life Murder Mystery

By Henry K. Lee

Berkley, 445 pages, $7.99

Reviewed by Steve Weinberg

Nina Sharanova Reiser disappeared from her life in Oakland, California, on Sept. 3, 2006, leaving behind her six-year-old son and five-year-old daughter. Her estranged husband, Hans Reiser, insisted Nina left of her own accord while trying to throw suspicion on him as a murderer.

It is uncertain whether anybody believed Hans Reiser. Certainly the police did not believe him. But police could not find Nina’s body. It is conventional wisdom within the law enforcement establishment that it is unwise to file a murder charge against a suspect without physical remains to prove somebody is dead. After all, a wise defense lawyer could say on behalf of a client during trial something akin to “reasonable doubt must prevail. The alleged victim could walk into the courtroom 60 seconds from now. You cannot convict my client of a violent crime because perhaps no crime occurred.”

Police and prosecutors in Oakland decided to defy conventional wisdom, believing they could convict Hans Reiser based on circumstantial evidence. 

Henry K. Lee reported about the Reiser case for the San Francisco Chronicle, as he has reported about many other cases, from the dramatic to the relatively mundane. As Lee says in the Foreword to his book about the Reiser case, “I have written about gang shootings, horrific traffic accidents and all manner of incidents that have irreparably changed—or claimed the lives of—the young and the old, the rich and the poor, hardworking citizens and drug offenders, police officers and criminals. I chronicle the heartbreak and the pain, telling stories of the horrible things that people do to each other.”

After 18 years of such reporting, Lee says it is reasonable to ask why he continues. “The answer is simple, and it comes in the form of these fundamental questions: What would it mean for society if these crimes were just swept under the rug? What if nobody cared? What if victims weren’t given a voice, an opportunity—sometimes from beyond the grave—to be heard?”

Lee gives Nina Reiser a voice, as he chronicles her upbringing in Russia, her education as a physician there, her agreement to marry Hans after he searched in the unfamiliar nation for a bride. Lee brings remarkable detail to a marriage that start out oddly but well, and how it fell apart, with the two children suffering even when their mother still lived.

Inexpensive paperback books, especially of the true-crime variety, generally carry a reputation as sensationalistic, and often shoddily reported. Berkley, part of the Penguin conglomerate, is one of several publishers that offer true-crime paperbacks regularly, sometimes as often as every month.

Lee’s book, published as an inexpensive paperback, is gruesome on many pages, but never sensationalistic. The reporting is impressive and the writing is clear. Lay readers (those who are not part of the criminal justice system) will receive not only entertainment (of a depressing nature), but also learn a great deal about how police detectives, forensic analysts, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, jurors and child welfare workers function.  An easy-to-digest yet didactic murder story is quite an accomplishment.

[Video by Arnaud Jordain]

Titled “Party at the DOJ,” the report features findings from a Government Accountability Office study heavily larded with bits from local newspaper stories, a mix apparently aimed at exciting the outrage centers of the American brain. “With our nation facing the heightened threats of domestic terrorism and unprecedented debt and financial challenges,” the report says, “taxpayers should be shocked to learn DOJ crime prevention grant programs are paying for parties and rollercoaster rides for children rather than focusing on investigating crimes, locating and prosecuting terrorists, and administering justice.” Coburn’s report hazards a guess that DOJ has spent $100 million over the past five years on frivolities at the expense of public safety and national solvency.

Coburn’s ire is directed primarily at DOJ’s Weed and Seed program, which hands out grants targeted at cleaning up high-crime neighborhoods. The funds go to police and prosecutors to weed out gangs, addicts, and thugs, and to private community groups to then seed the area with social services, from treatment programs to youth centers. Sometimes the seeding involves community activities like dances and block parties.

Coburn’s report, citing the GAO study, recommends DOJ should require weed and seed programs to keep better track of the money they receive. To inflate this important, if quotidian, point into an indictment against recreation events on the taxpayer dime, the report spikes facts with an ample dose of truthiness.

Let’s look at that $100 million figure. Sounds impressive, but how did the report arrive at that figure? By lumping the Weed and Seed’s relatively modest budget ($25 million) together with the entire budget the much larger Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Program ($453 million), and then making a guess. “If the total amount spent on parties and other fun activities is only a small percentage of the $478 million combined Weed and Seed and OJJDP budgets, tens of millions of crime prevention dollars are being spent on parties and other recreational activities with little or no measurable impact whatsoever on crime every year,” the report says. “Over a five year period, this could amount to well over $100 million, yet it is impossible to know for sure.”

This $100 million guess was then repeated as an estimate – without reference to its less-than stringent methodology – in reports by CBS News, Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government site and the Washington Examiner. The Legal Times covered Coburn’s report on its blog, but did not mention the alleged $100 million figure. Being a journalistic enterprise in accuracy more than agitprop, it also tested some of the report’s claims.

One of the recreational events portrayed in Coburn’s report as a trivial waste was a luau thrown by East Chattanooga Weed and Seed. The program’s site director, Vivian Hixon, told the Legal Times the event, intended for children, was staffed by volunteers and paid for with private donations.

“This is not some luau party like he’s making it sound,” Hixson said. She added that Coburn’s office did not contact her before issuing its report. “I wish that we had been asked,” she said, “because I think that we could have cleared this up very easily.”

Told of the Chattanooga program’s response, Coburn spokesman John Hart wrote in an e-mail: “In many of these cases, it comes down to a question of whether the funds in question are fungible. Also, because DOJ does not track the funds, it is difficult to pin this down.”

The report also complains about the lack of examination into the effectiveness of recreational activities. But it’s not like Weed and Seed programs haven’t been studied. Research tends to concentrate on the forest, primarily how the weeding and seeding programs impact things like crime rates and perceptions of safety, rather than the trees, like the effect of a block party or carnival. Granted, there’s a concrete example of Weed and Seed funds being misused in Coburn’s home state of Oklahoma, but in the absence of data on recreation activities, the report simply assumes money spent on that (which it assumes is $100 million) is by definition a waste.

Coburn has earned a reputation as an anti-pork crusader and, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, DOJ programs fall under his purview. (He tried and failed to eliminate the funding for Weed and Seed back in early 2009.) I suppose his willingness to employ what Stephen Colbert would call “truth that comes from the gut” in this report is a sign of his enthusiasm for controlling government spending. It’s a shame he doesn’t have a seat on the appropriations committee, where he’d get a crack at a lot bigger fish than a program to improve high-crime neighborhoods.

Here are a few highlights:

DODGEVILLE, Wisc., July 26 — The winners of the losers’ bracket in the Ohio Valley Regional is going to the Babe Ruth Senior World Series because of a game-ending brawl between the two teams in the first game of the best-of-three championship.

About the only detail not being argued is that Noblesville (Ind.) came back from three runs down in the sixth inning to lead the Hammond (Ind.) Chiefs, 11-10.  Oh, the only other detail not being argued is that Babe Ruth headquarters in Trenton, N.J., ruled both 16-18-year-old teams out of the tournament. In between, it gets messy.

According to the Noblesville coach, talking to the near-hometown Indianapolis Star, all three Hammond coach freaked the fuck out when the game-leading run was scored on an obstruction call against the Chiefs, and all three got ejected. With no adults left to coach Hammond, the umpires declared Noblesville the winner. The Noblesville coach said the teams lined up to shake hands, and while his team was “excited,” the Hammond team was in a rage, the flames being fanned by one of their coaches. A Chiefs player jumped one of the Noblesville players, and the brawl was on.

What happened in Dodgeville with the Chiefs, as re-enacted on ice. (NSFW language)

The Hammond coach copped to nothing, and in fact said he was trying to keep the peace and separate players, according to his interview with the near-hometown Northwest Indiana Times in Munster, Ind.

Meanwhile, the Dodgeville police said they arrested one fan on disorderly conduct charges, allegedly because he punched a Noblesville coach.

So congratulations to Cross Plains (Wisc.), which advances to the Babe Ruth Senior World Series for not punching anybody.

VALLEJO, Calif., July 21 — Vallejo Babe Ruth coach David Davis was booked in the local hoosegow on a charge of battery against a sports official. He allegedly punched a first-base umpire during the state 15-and-under championship tournament. Davis was arrested at the local police station as he was filling out an assault report — against the umpire, David Abbitt, a 26-year veteran.

Abbitt said Davis sucker-punched him — knocking him out and requiring him to be taken by ambulance to a hospital — as he argued a close call against the Vallejo team at first base. Davis, meanwhile, citing scratches on his arm he said were made by Abbitt, said he was only defending himself, and that the knockout punch never happened. Davis told the San Jose Mercury News:

[After the umpire kicked him out] Davis then describes a highly emotional situation between the two men, with alleged spitting, swearing, racial epithets and self defense.

“I thought it was a make-up call, so I went down to my knees and came up and he said ‘You’re outta here,’” Davis said, claiming that the knockout punch never happened. “All I did was defend myself. I just put my hands up as a reaction. Guy falls down, looks at me from the ground and puts on a tirade like he was hurt. It was weak and it was fake.”

Apparently there were no police or security at the July 18 game because of cutbacks by the city of Vallejo. After the Davis-Abbitt incident, somehow, some way, security was found for the tournament.

GURNEE, Ill., July 17 — Unlike the other two incidents, this was not a playoff game. But it doesn’t have to be one for tempers to get out of hand.

According to the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Ill., police were called after a fight broke out a 15- to 18-year-old Colt (Pony League) game. Two opposing players wrestled at the plate — a runner trying to score, and the catcher who tried to block him (without the ball in his hand) during the last out of the game. The umpires did not get involved, and player tempers cooled.

However, parents started screaming and fighting with each other. That’s when police were called. But no arrests were made. The presence of the authorities inspired a lovefest, according to the Herald:

[Gurnee Police Commander Jay] Patrick said the players on both sides hugged as the three cops left the field. The teams were not named.

“It could have really gone south,” Jacobs said. “But when (police) got there, everybody started to calm down quite a bit.”

For an incident like this, that counts as a happy ending.

In New Hampshire a bear entered a house through an open door then proceeded to eat two pears, a bunch of grapes, sipped some fine agua from the fish bowl and then on his or her way out grabbed a stuffed bear. That’s an adult grown bear that could tear you limb from limb grabbing a toy stuffed bear before exiting the house. It must get lonely in those woods.

via Bear Eats Fruit, Takes Stuffed Bear From NH House – NYTimes.com.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The Interior Ministry’s Department of Economic Security reports today that as President Dmitry Medvedev’s war on corruption heats up, so has corruption. In the first six months of 2010, the size of the average bribe has nearly doubled, from 23,000 RUB ($760) to 44,000. Since Medvedev was elected in 2008, bribes have quadrupled.

Quadrupled.

And bribes for bureaucrats who are of middle or low-middle rank have grown faster than inflation.

This confirms what I’ve been hearing from Russian businessmen in Moscow, who complain that visits from renegade tax inspectors, fire inspectors, pencil inspectors have grown more frequent and more brazen, and the size of bribes they ask for, well, see above. Some speculate that it is because the average bureaucrat’s sense of uncertainty has grown, especially if he thinks his money spigot is in imminent danger of being shut off, so they take as much as they can for the long winter ahead. But that is, of course, just the speculation of the people who have to deal with these inspectors.

No wonder even Medvedev admits he’s made no progress on fighting corruption. Quoth he: “Often efforts toward fighting corruption are limited to energetically signing papers.”

via Gazeta.ru

Image via Wikipedia

It has been a year and a half since Chris Brown was arrested for assaulting Rihanna, his girlfriend at the time, the night before the 2009 Grammy Awards. Both of them have released albums since then, acknowledging the incident in their own ways – Brown with songs like the over-the-top “Changed Man,” and Rihanna more subtly on tracks like “Stupid in Love” and “Cold Case Love.”

Though she shouldn’t have to forever wear her victimhood on her sleeve, Rihanna did express in interviews following the incident that she felt to compelled to speak out about her ordeal out of concern for her young fans who might be dealing with similar problems. It’s pretty bizarre, therefore, that her newest hit has her singing the hook on a domestic violence-fueled Eminem track, the single “Love the Way You Lie,” currently No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Rihanna’s portion of the song is rather tongue-in-cheek. She moans the refrain throughout: “Just gonna stand there and watch me burn, well that’s all right because I like the way it hurts/Just gonna stand there and hear me cry, well that’s all right because I love the way you lie.” In between her bouts of singing, though, Eminem hurls angry words that paint a scary picture of a relationship gone wrong, a theme typical of his raps. “I feel so ashamed, I snap … I laid hands on her/I’ll never stoop so low again/I guess I don’t even know my own strength,” he spits, before closing the song with this terrifying revelation: “I’m tired of the games, I just want her back I know I’m a liar/If she ever tries to fucking leave again, I’ma tie her to the bed and set this fucking house on fire.”

Subtle, Eminem is not. Which makes Rihanna’s participation in such an explicitly violent song all the more hard to understand. She has lent her vocals to countless rap tracks by other artists, giving a strong feminine touch to songs like “Run This Town” with Jay-Z and Kanye West, and “Live Your Life” with T.I. And while some of those songs contained vaguely violent elements, they were rooted in metaphor (“Get your fatigues on”), and had Rihanna as an active participant – she dons the same all-black outfit and badass swagger as the men she’s next to. But in “Love the Way You Lie,” the girl at the center of the story is clearly and unequivocally a victim, even if Eminem describes being hurt by her too.

Rihanna certainly isn’t obligated to forever use her music as a platform from which to speak out against abuse. There has to be a happy medium, however, between advocating for women and participating in a song in which one is getting beaten to death.

Image by AFP via @daylife

Arizona, where I live, has become ground zero in one of the most divisive issues of our day: immigration. There are two reasons for this unfortunate distinction.

On the surface, the element that gave the issue traction here was passage of SB1070. The new law, which is due to go into effect on Thursday, would compel law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of individuals who they “reasonably suspect” of being in the U.S. illegally.

The second, and deeper, reason for Arizona’s role is political. Support for SB1070 has become a litmus test for conservatives and particularly for the far-right. The law has galvanized the small but active white supremacist movements here, who have donated money to Governor Jan Brewer’s fund to fight legal challenges to the law, and begun armed patrols near the border with Mexico. The political pressure to embrace SB1070 has become so intense that Barry Wong, a Republican running for re-election to the state commission that regulates utilities, promises to go even further and prevent utilities from selling electricity to undocumented aliens.

With bizarre anti-immigrant proposals like Wong’s now part of mainstream discourse in Arizona, Francis Fukuyama’s thoughtful piece in today’s Wall Street Journal is a much-needed antidote to the toxic politics of the day.

Fukuyama’s argument is that we must have a more nuanced understanding of the issues if we want to solve the real problem of illegal immigration: crime.

Yes, people crossing the border into the U.S. are, by definition, committing a crime. That is vastly different, however, from the notion that once here, they live the lives of criminals. Most immigrants, documented and undocumented, come here to work and to give their children a chance at a better life.

“The gardeners and maids and busboys,” Fukuyama writes, “are indeed breaking the law. But they are in a very different category from the tattooed Salvatrucha gang member who lives by extortion and drug-dealing.”

The broad-brush approach demagogued by Brewer, Wong and Senator John McCain, has nothing to do with reducing crime and border violence and everything to do with stirring up fears to get votes. It is a sad fact that politics, not logic, funnels resources. The pro-SB1070 crowd will take money that could be used to fight narco-traffickers and direct it to identifying, incarcerating and deporting people who, at worst, are guilty of over-pruning, inadequate vacuuming and failure to clear a table with all deliberate speed.

The people of Arizona would be better served by politicians who actually want to fight violent crime, than by demagogues who will settle for the farce of hunting down “illegals” and declaring “Mission Accomplished.”

The problem of gangs and drug violence should not be confounded with the behavior of the vast majority of illegal immigrants to the U.S., who by and large are seeking the same thing that every immigrant to America has wanted since the time of the Mayflower: to better their condition and that of their families. They are not criminals in the sense of people who make a living by breaking the law. They would be happy to live legally, but they come from societies in which legal rules were never quite extended to them. They are therefore better described as “informal” rather than “illegal.”

via Immigrants and Crime: Time for a Sensible Debate – WSJ.com.

Image via Wikipedia

Rounding a bend in the road around a local airport the other day, I glanced to the left and saw a cop sitting in the grass off the pavement. The white SUV was easy to see. The guy wasn’t trying to hide, but he didn’t need to because people love to come whipping around this particular stretch of road — it lends itself to speeding — and probably a few of them can’t slow down soon enough and shoot past the cop’s position.

As I passed him, however, I was struck by a very depressing thought: The day is coming when your car — your very own, much loved member-of-your-family automobile —  is going to fink on you, rat you out, and otherwise get you in trouble.

Oh, yeah. Because eventually cars will have a communication system that by law will have to be able to communicate with the police. This will be factory-installed in the name of safety. It will amount to this: You’ll pass by a cop’s location, and your car will tell the laptop in his car how fast you’re going.

Don’t think so? Live long enough, you’ll get to enjoy this and much more. Rental car companies are already letting subcontractors spy on you and fine you. Retailers are tagging their crappy clothes so that they can track your movements and spending habits. A respected American aircraft manufacturer, maker of one of the aeronautic icons of WWII, is proud to offer a high-altitude, long-flying spy drone that will undoubtedly spy on Americans. I’ve already written a post about the day when the Earthly landscape itself spies on you using “smart dust.”

I hate all this because I’m getting intensely beleaguered of being observed, tracked, and otherwise spied upon in “the Land of the Free.” I must point out, however, that at times I submit voluntarily to observation either because I simply can’t get around it, or a desired activity results in observation.

This blog and also my Facebook profile are examples of that voluntary action. Search engines survey the words I use in blog posts, and advertising related to the concepts of those words pops up on Beaufinn now and then. Some months ago when I wrote about wild boars in Germany, an ad for boar hunting in America appeared on my site.

As for Facebook, we all fell for it, really, including me. We unnecessarily gave away a ton of personal information, and that site is now obviously all about watching and monitoring people and their activity, and trying to sell stuff to them. I no longer post photos to my Facebook profile, and comment minimally on my own activities, because I find it akin to reporting on myself to both the world and also to a hidden authority about which I get to know nothing.

Privacy has become a commodity, and I’m starting to invest more and more, or at least try.

As for that idea about your car ratting you out to the cops, that’s not entirely about privacy, because if you’re just +2 mph over the limit, you’re doing that in public. What’s wrong with that is the passivity of it — that my machine, not I, files a report that I wouldn’t deign to file. The person is in charge of the machine, or should be. My car shouldn’t be making phone calls that I didn’t dial or wouldn’t dial.

Is it all about safety and peace of mind? Will we feel wonderfully secure in a world where our cars are talking to the other cars and regulating their speed together while we, in our GPS-tracked, holographic clothes, can spend the drive to work already doing work using our cranially implanted PDAs? While overhead, the drones know exactly who’s where, what they had for breakfast, how much they weigh, their blood sugar and heart-rate, and if they’re pregnant or not?

At lunch, you take a walk, and the genetically modified trees can detect the skin cells you shed. They record your presence in an embedded chip.

Oh, yes — trees will be computerized in the future.

I just wonder: How soon?

Though marijuana legalization is largely a liberal and progressive cause célèbre, it may be fair to say that the state’s elected Democrats aren’t exactly cuckoo for these coco-puffs.

Prominent California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein has declared her opposition to Prop. 19, signing a ballot argument against legalization put forward by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Sen. Barbara Boxer and Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown were quick to adopt Feinstein’s position, and the state’s Democratic party, while apparently torn on the issue, officially elected to stay neutral fearing their support could damage state-wide candidates.

In spite of Democratic opposition, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a drug policy reform group made up of former cops, judges and federal agents, seems to stand perhaps the best chance of swaying the state’s drug policy establishment. They’ve put forward a ballot argument in favor of Prop. 19, and three of their most prominent members from California law enforcement have signed it.

In an exclusive interview, the former police chief of San Jose and the former deputy police chief of Los Angeles County — both members of LEAP — took to task those favoring continued prohibition, insisting that both Sen. Feinstein and MADD level an “emotional, unreasoned” argument for keeping pot illegal.

Sen. Feinstein’s press office was contacted multiple times in seeking a response to these officers. Both times a returned call or e-mail was promised, but none were received after several days.

“I know Dianne Feinestein quite well from when she was mayor of San Francisco,” said former San Jose Chief of Police Joseph McNamara. “I’m kind of stunned by her stance on this. It’s contrary to everything she talked about as a politician in San Francisco.”

By contrast, post-Feinestein San Francisco was host this year to the first-ever International Cannabis and Hemp Expo, and the Hemp Industry Association is planning to hold its 17th annual meeting there in November. Last month also saw San Francisco hosting the first ever Medical Cannabis Cup: a competition among growers, to see who produces the best pot.

It’s pretty clear that the city, by and large, has taken a position of favoring Prop. 19.

“[Feinestein's] position [as San Francisco's mayor] certainly wasn’t this law and order nonsense on stamping out marijuana,” McNamara said.

In a ballot argument against legalization (PDF link), Feinstein and MADD argue that Prop. 19 could cost California school districts $9.4 billion in federal funding, as they would no longer be able to meet federal drug-free standards. They also fret that colleges and universities in California will lose out on federal grants, which is a very real threat that LEAP did not address.

The main thrust of their argument is that due to the ballot initiative’s wording, officers or other public officials would not be able to take preemptive action against stoned drivers: they’d have to wait for accidents to happen. Much of the argument focuses on school bus drivers, and how they could be permitted to ingest marijuana and transport children, leaving the hands of authority bound until someone got hurt.

“Their argument is specious and I don’t think it’s based on any emperical evidence,” contended Steven Downing, the former Los Angeles County deputy police chief. “It’s kinda like, we make things up in order to pass laws. Well, come up with the facts.”

He and McNamara insist there is no evidence to support the assumption that officers or public officials could not enforce laws against driving while intoxicated. They argue that Prop. 19 has nothing to do with laws requiring sobriety while driving, and that it’s impossible to say, as MADD does, that legalization would turn California’s highways into a nightmare.

Similarly, though a recent study by the Rand Corporation predicted that usage is likely to go up because prices could plummet if cannabis is legalized, they too admit that estimating the number of stoned drivers is impossible.

“I think one of the strongest points to make is that there were no studies when these drugs were outlawed,” Downing said. “It was religious fervor and prejudice. Fear. We all know that’s how it all got started. That’s how alcohol prohibition got stated. It’s the same today for marijuana, which is kept illegal by emotional, unreasoned arguments.”

“Smoking may even decrease,” McNamara said. “Looking at the reaserch, 85% of high school students surveyed say it’s more difficult to get beer than marijuana. The reason for that is that beer is regulated. You need proof of identity and age to purchase it. That argument, that use will explode, is wrong. It may be exactly the opposite. It will be more difficult for people under-age to get cannabis.”

He adds that “marijuana is already in the mix,” as far as the sobriety of drivers is concerned. The former police chief, now a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, calls Feinstein and MADD’s argument on stoned drivers “speculation that doesn’t make any sense.”

Supporting McNamara’s position is the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, which reported in May that after a double-blind study of 85 drivers tested before and after smoking marijuana, “no differences [in motor control and response time] were found”.

“The laws today prohibit driving under the influence of drugs,” he said. “If they do that, they’re violating the law and can be punished under the present laws. By freeing law enforcement from making so many [marijuana] arrests, this would give them more resources to use against dangerous activities like driving under the influence.”

Downing’s argument was similar, and one of surprise at the lack of support from MADD. He said that fewer marijuana prisoners would mean more drunk drivers serving out their full sentence, thanks to reduced overcrowding in California’s jails.

“When you look at all of it, I think Prop. 19 offers an opportunity for rationality in an area that’s been so emotional,” McNamara said.

Prop. 19 will appear on California’s state-wide ballot this November. Should it pass, individual counties and municipalities would be able to opt in or out of the legalized system; those which opt in would be given additional tax and enforcement options, and residents would be allowed to transport up to one ounce and grow plants in a five-foot-by-five-foot area.

Even if the voters carry Prop. 19, it may not mean anything as it still conflicts with federal law. The Obama administration’s policy has been to not interfere with state-supported medical marijuana initiatives, but the president has said he is opposed to legalization. Whether or not the administration will take a hands-off approach to legalization in California is still an unanswered question.

A recent CBS poll found that while 42 percent of the state’s voters oppose legalization, 56 percent are in favor. Aligned with the majority is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which endorsed legalization because of prohibition’s inordinate impact on minority communities. The California Young Democrats also endorsed Prop. 19, along with former United States Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders. The 200,000-member-strong United Food and Commercial Workers union, of the Western States Council, backs it as well.

LEAP’s full ballot argument in favor of Prop. 19 is available on their blog.

Here is ThinkProgress, ably documenting how we can be sure that the farmer’s wife is the farmer’s wife — which in itself sounds like a line from a Cohen Brothers film.

– Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Marcus Garner confirmed to ThinkProgress that the paper independently found Eloise Spooner for her interview.

– Eloise and Roger H. Spooner are listed in the Iron City, GA phone book.

– The Spooners’ 62nd wedding anniversary, according to a blog post of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, was celebrated at the 2009 Tennessee Truck Show.

– Roger Spooner has been cited in “mainstream” news reports, including a 2002 Associated Press story in the Lexis-Nexis database, claiming to be a “survivor” of the USS Yorktown at anniversaries of the Battle of Midway, which purportedly happened in 1942.

– In a 2009 article, USS Yorktown survivor Roger Spooner claimed to have “discharge papers” from the Navy in his “wallet.”

Now, here’s Breitbart saying, well, well, what is knowing, REALLY?!?!

You tell me as a reporter how CNN put on a person today who purported to be the farmer’s wife? What did you do to find out whether or not that was the actual farmer’s wife? I mean, if you’re going to accuse me of a falsehood, tell me where you’ve confirmed that had this incident happened 24 years ago. [...]

You’re going off of her word that the farmer’s wife is the farmer’s wife?

And now here’s Freddy Reidenschneider, played by Tony Shalhoub, explaining to Ed Crane, the protagonist in The Man Who Wasn’t There, their legal strategy.

They got this guy, in Germany. Fritz Something-or-other. Or is it? Maybe it’s Werner. Anyway, he’s got this theory, you wanna test something, you know, scientifically – how the planets go round the sun, what sunspots are made of, why the water comes out of the tap – well, you gotta look at it. But sometimes you look at it, your looking changes it. Ya can’t know the reality of what happened, or what would’ve happened if you hadn’t-a stuck in your own goddamn schnozz. So there is no “what happened”? Not in any sense that we can grasp, with our puny minds. Because our minds… our minds get in the way. Looking at something changes it. They call it the “Uncertainty Principle”. Sure, it sounds screwy, but even Einstein says the guy’s on to something.

And then there’s Paul Dobson.

Officer Paul Dobson is a 20-year veteran of the Phoenix police force, who happens to be assigned to the precinct where I live. (I don’t know him, personally.)

I don’t think Dobson is a liberal and I know he’s not Hispanic. He’s not an actor, either. He’s a cop, outraged by the law he will be required to enforce starting July 29.

Dobson also happens to be the only person from Arizona who answered the Cuéntame’s request for people who think they’ll be affected by the law to upload a video explaining the impact the law will have on them.

Phoenix Officer Paul Dobson (Photo by Cuentame)

SB1070 requires law officers to determine the immigration status of any individual when, during the course of investigating another legal infraction (traffic violations, a neighbor’s complaint about weeds in someone’s yard), there is a “reasonable suspicion” that the person is in the U.S. illegally. If so, the officer is required to arrest them. Failure to do so can result in a personal law law suit against the law officer.

In the emotional video, Dobson lays out the kind of scenario he’ll be facing after July 29.

He answers a domestic violence call. During the incident, he gets the sense that the couple are not in the U.S. legally. For example, their English isn’t so good. And there’s not much furniture in the house — possibly indicating that they haven’t lived there for very long. Maybe the radio is on and tuned to one of the many Spanish language stations in the Valley.

If he grows suspicious, Dobson explains on the video, “I’ll be required to ask the victim, Are you here legally? I will have to arrest both of them. I’ll be required to. And both would be deported.”

How many abused Latinas in Arizona without proper documents, although they may have lived here for 30 years and have children born in America, will think twice before calling the police at the first slap of what they know from experience will turn into a long night of pain? Better a black eye and a couple of cracked ribs — and pray that this isn’t the night he makes good on the death threats. Better that, than risk being deported and separated from the kids who are American citizens.

“It’s horrifying,” says Dobson. “I mean, it violates our calling to serve and protect.”

At one point, Dobson explains in raw terms how SB1070 will affect him: “This law will make me feel like a Nazi out there.”

Although the officer explains at the beginning that he is speaking only for himself and not for any other cops or for the department itself, Dobson is now under investigation for his comments. A police representative told a local reporter that Dobson could face a written reprimand for the video, but the possibility of his being fired, or intimidated into quitting, can’t be ruled out. Certainly not in the politically-charged climate created by the new law that has led out-of-state businesses to cancel conventions in Phoenix and cities including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Austin, Texas to boycott Arizona.

The Republican dominated legislature created and passed this bill as an issue to run-on in November. Governor Jan Brewer signed it into law for the same reprehensible reasons: good old fashion politicking. Even Barry Wong, a heretofore decent GOP incumbent on the Arizona Corporation Commission, has pathetically suggesting that Arizona utilities be banned from selling electricity to illegal aliens. If I weren’t so nauseous by his self-debasement, I’d ask about the details of how that would actually work.

Politics is all Brewer, et al., see. Dobson, who will have to do the dirty work, understands exactly how this will play out on the ground. The picture Officer Dobson paints isn’t pretty, which may be why so many in this state, and in others now contemplating similar legislation, avert their gaze.

Image by AFP via @daylife

The more I learn about events leading-up to the explosion on the BP Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20th, the more I have to wonder: What would it have taken for BP to have stopped drilling and address the safety problems and corner-cutting that lead up to the disaster in the gulf that claimed 11 lives outright and began an environmental nightmare that still continues?

The oil giant was as singled-minded in its pursuit of oil as the Terminator was in its quest to annihilate John Connor. A better analogy might be to Don Blankenship, the coal baron, who, according to former employees, wouldn’t allow workers to take time away from mining coal to build safety features at the West Virgina mine.

The resulting explosion killed 29 men — just two weeks before the BP disaster.

The latest news comes from testimony by a BP site leader on the doomed rig.

“I assumed everything was O.K,” he told investigators at a hearing in a New Orleans suburb today. “I reported [the safety failure] to the team leader…”

But the drilling continued.

KENNER, La. — In the final days before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP continued drilling for oil despite internal reports of a leak on a critical safety device on the rig, a company official testified on Tuesday.

Ronald Sepulvado, a BP well site leader, said he reported the problem to senior company officials and assumed it would be relayed to the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that regulates offshore drilling. The leak was on a control pod connected to the blowout preventer, an emergency mechanism that failed to activate after the April 20 disaster.

via BP Continued Drilling Despite Report of Leak, Official Says – NYTimes.com.

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

You know how it goes: You’re wandering around in scrubby country, you’re a little hungry, and a little low on cash. You see a rattlesnake.

Pretty soon you’re back in your apartment at the hotel with a bucket of 27 rattlesnakes, eating some snake-on-a-stick, hoping to sell the rest of the serpents to science, when the wardens bust through the door without even phoning:

A Malta, Idaho, man found himself in a bit of trouble after he wrangled 27 rattlesnakes into a five-gallon bucket in hopes of finding someone who would buy the reptiles.

Terry Brian Teeter, 38, was issued two Idaho Fish and Game misdemeanor citations for possession, transport or shipment of wildlife on May 25, after Fish and Game officials found him and the Western rattlesnakes in his apartment at the Sunset Motel in Malta.

Teeter said he originally had 32 snakes but gave a couple away. He also skinned a couple, put them on hot dog sticks, cooked and ate them.

“They taste like chicken,” Teeter said.

Teeter has hunted rattlesnakes for 15 years but said he was unaware that a license was required to hunt rattlers in Idaho, or that a hunter may only take four rattlesnakes each year.

Teeter’s attorney, Don Chisholm, said most people seem to be unaware such regulations exist.

That’s from a story from over the weekend by reporter Laurie Welch, in the Times-News MagicValley.com, which covers news in the Twin Falls region.

Welch quotes Teeter, who has hunted rattlesnakes since age 15, as saying, “Everybody out here fears [rattlesnakes] for their cows, their horses and their kids. I hate the things. I have nightmares over them all the time.”

Rattlesnake collecting, killing, and eating is an old endeavor of our American brethren in the West and Southwest. This story, however, presents an interesting combination of succinct factors: personal tradition, hunger, psychological disturbance, and entrepreneurship. If you’re a cultural anthropologist, Freudian psychoanalyst (are there any of them left?), or economist, Teeter could serve as a day’s worth of lecture.

Personally, I wonder why we’ve never seen Mrs. Smith’s Snakes-on-a-Stick in the freezer section of our favorite grocery stores.

# # #

Note: Welch’s story doesn’t specify what species of rattler Teeter caught and ate, but they were probably Western diamondback rattlers. A photo accompanying the article depicts Teeter with what appears to be a small diamondback. The snake in the photo here is an Eastern diamondback

via Man cited for keeping rattlers in Malta home.

It’s not just sports. Look at the advertisements in any metro area child-focused magazine, and you’ll see plenty of preschools, camps, tutors, coaches and party clowns who sell, implicitly, the promise that time and (lots of) money spent with them will send your little brat on the primrose path to Harvard. Meanwhile, if you don’t shake out all your loose change to pay for these services — well, let’s not even think about that, though let’s remind you that all of your neighbors’ 3-year-olds are getting their Harvard applications under way while you refuse to spend $2,000 on a party clown that speaks English, French, Farsi and Klingon.

So if you’re planning to scam someone out of thousands of dollars, and you don’t know how to execute a pigeon drop on an old lady, desperate, worried parents are a great target. Such as, parents in South Dakota worried that their kids, what with being in South Dakota, were never going to be found by Major League Baseball scouts.

A group of those parents is claiming they were scammed out tens of thousands of dollars by a man who said he was putting together a select team that, thanks to his major-league connections, would give their kids wide exposure to people who could put them on the fast track to Harvard, er, the major leagues. Media reports put the money lost at anywhere from $25,000 to $33,000, though I suspect that’s a bit low. A baseball camp organizer said he lost $18,500, and individual parents report paying — in cash — up to $6,300 for the travel team that never was.

What’s not low is the sense of betrayal, anger and gullibility shown by these parents, and the waste of time for children who were pulled off of other travel teams for the alleged elite of the elites, Team South Dakota.

The complaints, including a lawsuit filed by the guy running the baseball camp, are against Jason Anderson, the alleged mastermind behind Team South Dakota. Even before the complaints against him started, there were other complaints — namely, that his travel team was gutting well-established summer leagues. But who could argue against a guy who said he was a former minor-league baseball player, in the Angels’ system, and could bring Rickey Henderson to town for a camp?

What is readily apparent is that the parents (and the camp organizer) were so in love with the idea of South Dakota’s own ass-kicking, big-time youth operation that they blindly handed over money without asking who was this guy parachuting into the Black Hills with promise of future baseball stardom. Anderson has not responded to any allegations, including one I’m going to make: That he might not the person he says he is. I base this on the fact I’ve combed the Internet and cannot find a Jason Anderson who played in the Angels’ system. I can find Jason Andersons who have played for other teams, but not a Jason Anderson who played for the Angels. (Inside Dakota Sports reported July 16 that Rapid City, S.D., police have opened a criminal investigation, and that Anderson has warrants out for his arrest in Panama City, Fla., and Monroe, Mich., on fraud and forgery charges. As of now, Anderson is nowhere to be found.)

So what you get are heartbreaking stories about a mom bringing her kid and her family to a park for a tournament, and finding out they were the only ones there.

On the other hand, my heart breaks less because the parents let their fear (of their kids being left behind) and greed (this guy is our ticket to stardom!) overwhelm their good judgment. If you want to spend thousands of dollars for your 9-year-old to play travel baseball, there are plenty of outfits whose only fraud is promising you that they can make your kid a major-leaguer. At least they’ll offer actual practices and tournaments. Best you put your fear and greed in check before draining your bank account for the promise of sports stardom. Otherwise, you may well just hire that multilingual party clown.

(Hat tip to SportsJournalists.com for alerting me to this story.)

Image via Wikipedia

The fissure that has been slowly opening between BP and National Incident Commander Thad Allen, widened further today, making it appear more likely that the disagreement could end in an all-out battle of wills between the giant multinational oil company and the former Coast Guard Admiral who represents the U.S. government.

The conflict surfaced in early June, in a dispute over who was responsible for withholding a video showing the magnitude of the spill. (This was before live spill-cams became a fixture on the internet.)

“The video has been available to the unified command from the very beginning.” BP official Mark Proegle told ABC news. “It’s always been here…They had it.”

Confronted with accusations of censorship, the Coast Guard said that BP had prevented them from airing of the video, on the grounds that the images on the tape were “proprietary.”

At around the same time, joint press conferences with BP officials and Adm. Allen were discontinued. Since then each side has held separate press briefings.

Tension escalated with several incidents beginning in the early morning on Sunday and extending into the predawn hours Monday.

Today’s direct contradiction over whether or not there are seeps of oil or gas coming from the seabed near the well is the most serious disagreement yet. If there are seeps, Allen is likely to end the testing phase and order BP to open the well to avoid an even more catastrophic failure. If that happens, BP would have little choice to either follow Allen’s order or disobey him and directly challenge U.S. authority over management of the site.

Although National Incident Commander Adm. Thad Allen says that there are “seeps” near BP’s broken Macondo well, BP isn’t acknowledging them.”I’m not sure that we have,” spokesman Mark Proegler said when asked about the seeps. In a letter Sunday to BP Chief Managing Director Bob Dudley, Allen said that tests have “detected a seep a distance from the well head and undetermined anomalies at the well head.”

via BP: Seeps, what seeps? | NOLA.com.

Norma Lopez went missing on her way home from summer school. Photo via KTLA News.

When 7-year-old Kyron Horman went missing from his Portland, Ore. school early last month, news outlets ranging from blogs to newspapers to TV stations raced to cover the story. His name quickly climbed up most-searched term lists and People magazine has been relentless in its documentation of each break in the case. Meanwhile, the case of another young boy who went missing at nearly the exact same time as Horman, Anthony Thomas, generated only a fraction of the coverage.

It was only a yet another example of the media’s crush to report on abductions and foul play involving white women and children, while giving little coverage to minorities who disappear: The latest example is 17-year-old Norma Lopez, who appears to have been kidnapped on her way home from summer school in Moreno Valley, Calif. Most of the coverage of Lopez’s disappearance has come from local news outlets, while the national attention to the case by places like the Los Angeles Times and CNN has been restricted to short blog posts — rising nowhere near the level that dominated the disappearances of girls like Elizabeth Smart and Natalee Holloway.

Media coverage is crucial to the cases of people who go missing because it is often vigilant members of the public who can play a role in helping law enforcement find the victim. Certainly a young, beautiful girl like Lopez and the eery circumstances surrounding her going missing — some of her belongings and “evidence of a struggle” were found in a field Lopez would walk through as a shortcut — are just as deserving of coverage as any other person — white, female or otherwise.

Image via Wikipedia

There is new evidence that the BP Deepwater well has been damaged and is leaking oil or natural gas into the surrounding seabed, a worst-case scenario that the company has portrayed as extremely unlikely since the runaway well was closed on Thursday afternoon to test for damage.

In a terse letter sent Sunday night by National Incident Commander Thad Allen to BP director Bob Dudley, Admiral Allen cited a “detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head…” Both are possible indications of damage to the well that exploded in April, killing eleven people outright and releasing millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico for over three months.

Earlier in the day, Allen released a statement expressing concern over the “lower than expected pressure readings” from the well test.

Last week, officials said that to guarantee “well integrity” scientists were looking for a reading of 8,000 pounds per square inch (psi) or above after 48 hours. Below that number, the results would be ambiguous, with confidence in the well falling proportionally. The pressure rose quickly to 6,700 psi and unexpectedly leveled-off.

After the pressure failed to reach the levels announced by officials, the term “reservoir depletion” entered the BP disaster lexicon. Perhaps, this theory went, the failure to reach the anticipated pressure was because so much oil had already leaked into the gulf. Less oil down in the reservoir might explain the diminished pressure.

At a press conference on Friday, Allen announced that a reading of 7,500 psi would indicate “high integrity” and, he added, “low potential for any loss of flow out of the wellhead.” Factoring in the possible depletion, however, could result in a lower number. But no hard-and-fast pressure standard was offered. As long as the level didn’t begin to drop, whatever pressure was reached could be deemed acceptable evidence of a structurally sound well. Any gap between the original standard and the test result could be chalked up to “depletion.”

On Sunday morning, BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles was upbeat at a press conference. He assured reporters that all testing “continues to show encouraging signs. We’re not seeing any problems…” Suttles was so encouraged – he used the word a dozen times in 15 minutes – that BP planned to leave the well closed permanently.

“We’re hopeful that if the encouraging signs continue,” Suttles said, “we’ll be able to continue the integrity tests all the way to the point that we get the well killed. Right now there is no target set to open the well back up to flow.”

But that was never the plan Allen had approved. He had been clear all along that following the tests, the well would be hooked up to a riser pipe feeding oil to vessels on the surface with the capacity to capture all the oil from the well. The purpose of the test was to ensure that the well bore and casing were sufficiently strong to allow the well to be closed for brief periods if a hurricane forced the oil-collecting ships into port.

BP has good reason to change that plan and leave the well capped, however, even with test results inconclusive and other evidence now indicating that the well is failing.

If the well is opened according to plan, the government will, for the first time, be able to accurately measure the rate at which oil has been flowing into the Gulf. That number will determine how much BP will have to pay in fines – at $4,300 per barrel. As things stand now, BP’s lawyers can be expected to argue that any estimate made by the government is arbitrary and probably too high. A scientific measurement of the flow could force BP to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines that they might otherwise be able to argue down in court.

Suttles stated repeatedly that “no one wants to see oil flowing back into the sea,” and warned that opening the well again could unleash the torrent of oil for “potentially up to three day.”

A few hours after Suttles’ press conference, Adm. Allen issued his statement expressing concern over the low pressure readings (which Suttles had said were just where they were supposed to be, factoring in depletion). Allen went further. For the first time since assuming the post of National Incident Commander, the Admiral fired a warning shot across BP’s bow.

He wrote: “Per my conversation with BP Executive Bob Dudley as recently as 11 a.m. EST today, nothing has changed about the joint agreement announced yesterday between BP and the US government.”

The agreement was that the test period would end later on Sunday to be extended one day at a time and discontinued when Allen made that decision. The government was not buying into BP’s plan to keep the well closed until late August or September when the gusher could be plugged from below.

The Admiral followed this up with his Sunday “Now Hear This” letter to BP’s Bob Dudley.

Allen ordered Dudley to make monitoring of the seabed a top priority, and he issued specifics on what that means.

BP must:

• Quickly investigate when seeps are detected and report the findings to the government in no more than four hours.
• Provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed.
• Provide me a written update within 24 hours of your intentions going forward.

At roughly 3 AM EDT, Monday, BP issued a statement that included measured contrition and a return volley at the Admiral.

According to the statement, “BP continues to work cooperatively with the guidance and approval of the National Incident Commander, etc.”

As for the plan to open the well and contain oil, BP gave this warning: “The sealing cap system and many of the other containment systems have never before been deployed at these depths or under these conditions, and their efficiency and ability to contain or flare the oil and gas cannot be assured.”

The pressure inside the well, they report, has reached 6,792 psi, an increase of 1.3 percent since Friday morning.

My blog has addressed the role of false confessions in wrongful convictions previously. I call attention to the Chicago Tribune story partly to make a positive point about investigative journalism, which is under siege these days.

The point is this: More than a decade ago, the Chicago Tribune assembled three reporters, Mills, Maurice Possley and Ken Armstrong. They investigated wrongful convictions from numerous angles. Along with theireditor and photographer colleagues, the three reporters accomplished what might be the best sustained, consequential investigative reporting in the history of the craft.

One result: The governor of Illinois, who had entered office as a death penalty supporter, placed a moratorium on the death penalty in the state. Why? Because he realized he could no longer trust the conduct of police, prosecutors, judges and juries in Cook County capital cases.

The Chicago Tribune has fallen on tough times in recent years, in large part because of its new owner, Sam Zell, who might represent the nadir of newspaper publishers. Armstrong and Possley left. So did many of their editor and photographer colleagues. Mills, obviously, remained.

Every contribution Mills and his Tribune colleagues make to understanding the ridiculously common phenomenon of wrongful convictions will be welcome.

Cynics will condemn this post as incestuous journalism. To them, I can only say: good for you. Suspicion is a good starting point for critical reading. On the other hand, I claim nothing objective about this list. It’s just a snapshot of my personal preferences and recommendations.

Scorched Earth - Jeff’s posts are usually the first ones I turn to after signing-in on T/S. The fact that Jeff writes about environmental issues is obviously a major draw for me, since I generally cover the same beat. But, there are good environmental reporters and bad ones, and Jeff is excellent. I like his writing style, too. He combines the best elements of old-school journalism with a blogging sensibility that isn’t shy about having a POV. I like!

Broadside — I’d read Caitlin even if her blog didn’t have one of the cleverest names on the roster. That’s because the same attributes on display in the title are also found in each post: smart, female, witty and with good aim and a willingness to set off the cannons when necessary. Okay, I admit I don’t know for sure if Caitlin meant to include that last definition of broadside in her title. Maybe she only had the two meanings in mind: Broad, as in a strong woman, and broadside, a reference to the old one-sided news-posters. But, read her posts and then you tell me if you don’t hear the roar of cannons.

Native Pop — For affluent white people in Phoenix, Arizona — where I live — it’s entirely possible to go through life never seeing or having to think much about what’s going on in Indian Country, despite the state’s large population of indigenous peoples. The only part of a reservation most Phoenicians will ever see is the inside of Casino Arizona. National media coverage is about the same. That’s one reason why Rob’s T/S blog, Native Pop, is a valuable addition to this site. Rob is a staff writer for the influential Native publication, Indian Country Today and his blog shares the ICT’s geographic coverage and, more important, the emphasis on today. With the rare exception of the newest Twilight film, media Indians are frozen in time: the middle-to-late 19th century.

The Not-So Private Parts — To be honest, it took me some time to actually read Kashmir’s blog. The naughty title and her picture led me to think the was an E-version of the Hollywood scandal sheet, a faulty conclusion which says much more about me than it does about her. I became a fan after reading a single post. Kashmir writes with insight (a recovering corporate lawyer) and clarity about contemporary privacy issues and the law –  and she manages to do it with a breezy style that makes reading her column a not-at-all guilty pleasure.