Archives for November 2011

Insider trading is considered such a serious offense by the federal government that it routinely prosecutes people and sends them to jail for it — unless you’re a member of Congress, in which case the rules don’t seem to apply.

Spencer Bachus is a Republican congressman from the district in Alabama where I live. I’ve met him and I have friends who know him, but I can’t say I know the man. He’s been in the news lately, but for all the wrong reasons. When CBS News’ magazine “60 Minutes” ran a story last Sunday about members of Congress who were involved in insider trading, Bachus was prominently mentioned. It appears that Bachus was taking secret information he was getting as a member of the House Committee on Financial Services and using that to trade banking stocks that he knew were about to go down in value.

Bachus says that nothing he did was illegal, but he also says he quit trading stocks late last year. I wonder why he quit doing what he was doing if it was perfectly legal and ethical.

Here in Alabama, many conservatives and Republicans are outraged about Bachus’ behavior and are calling on him to resign. About 50 or 6o conservatives gathered at Bachus’ Birmingham office Thursday to protest.

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In Montgomery County, Texas, the sheriff’s department has just bought a remote-controlled drone with money from the federal government. The sheriff is vague about exactly why it’s needed, but if you look at his men posing with it, above, you get the idea that these are people going to war, not protecting and serving everyday people.

The militarization of civilian police forces is a worrisome thing to me. With the change in tactics has come a change in attitude. Although police work could always attract an arrogant element who were interested in “showing who’s boss,” it seems that the culture is getting more arrogant and more aggressive.

Radley Balko wrote what I consider to be the definitive paper about police militarization five years ago when he was at the Cato Institute. “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America” is still very much worth reading five years later. It’s even more chilling when you realize that the trend has gotten even more serious since then.

Look at the guns and gear of the soldiers — I mean, deputies — in the pictures above. Is this what we want our police to be? Is the police culture today so excited about this sort of “playing soldier” mentality that it doesn’t care as much about the more mundane things that matter most to everyday people?

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Security Theatre has lost its porno channel in Europe, but the ones operated by TSA agents in U.S. airports are still showing.

The European Union announced this week that the X-ray scanners the TSA loves so much are being banned because of safety concerns. There are two types of advanced scanners being used in U.S. airports — X-ray machines and millimeter-wave scanners. Only the X-ray machines are considered a health risk. About half of the advanced scanners in use in the United States are the X-ray type.

The TSA claims that in almost two years of use, all of the advanced scanners — of both types combined — have detected “more than 300 dangerous or illegal items.” Of course, if those 300 items were actually dangerous things — as opposed to a a water bottle that was too big or something nutty such as that — they’d tell us what the “dangerous” items are.

Scientific estimates of cancers caused by the X-ray scanners each year range from about six to about 100. Given the fact that Security Theatre is mostly just to make the public feel safe — instead of providing actual safety — it’s time to shut Security Theatre down. But once bureaucrats are committed to a program, they don’t generally back down. Don’t expect the TSA to suddenly start caring about cancer or cost effectiveness. Expect the bureaucrats and politicians in charge to stick to their guns — or, rather, scanners.