Just not in the mood to write today. Here’s a few things of interest.

The Hobbesian Father links up a microstamping poll at the website of Senator Volker. So far, it’s going down in flames.

Jon Caldara mentions a RMN article pointing up four fallacies of transit-oriented development.

Just for fun, the giraffe cam at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

A Moral Argument for Free-Market Health Care, featuring quotage from Ayn Rand. Here’s a nice snippet:

People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism.

Speaking of which, I returned Liberal Fascism to the library because it was overdue, and I’d already renewed it once. I want to finish it, but it’s a bit depressing reading, and I don’t need that right now.

at beSpacific: EPIC Report: - REAL ID Implementation Review: Few Benefits, Staggering Costs

Kevin Baker has a good quote from Jerry Pournell.

Jon Caldara on KBDI tonight, with Lynn Bartels and Patty Calhoun, discussing the 2008 Colorado Legislative session. I used to really enjoy watching Independent Thinking on Friday nights. My TV reception is awful these days, so I reluctantly gave up.

Finally, something for Steve, a different recording of the famous “Largo” from Handel’s opera Xerxes (or “Serse”, if you prefer), Ombra Mai Fu [Ogg Vorbis], mezzo-soprano Judith Malafronte. This is a high-grade Vorbis encoded file, 4.7 MB. Yes, I’m pushing free software here. Learn more at Play Ogg.

Ombra Mai Fu has been recorded a lot. It’s from Handel’s opera Xerxes (yes, I’m being a poor editor here, and lazy too). The part of Xerxes, being male, was originally written for castrato, but is now generally performed by a mezzo-soprano. However, it can be performed by a counter-tenor, as in this clip featuring David Daniels. Now here’s something most don’t know about me. When I was in my 20’s (and earlier), I might well have been able to do that. When I was in high school, near the end of my senior year, we did range testing in music class, and when I did mine, the Professor simply said, “Incredible”. I wonder, on occassion, whether I could regain that. If the counter-tenor rendition isn’t your thing, I can also recommend this performance by Jennifer Larmore.

One more, Roger Fraley has yet more idiocy on the global warming front.

For Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash 7.5

Also via arfcom, a transcript, in 2 PDFs, of the Olofson trial, provided by Dave Kopel.

http://www.davidkopel.com/2A/Olofson/2-OLOFSON-trial-TRANSCRIPT.pdf
http://www.davidkopel.com/2A/Olofson/3-OLOFSON-trial-TRANSCRIPT.pdf

If you aren’t aware of the case of David Olofson, get a quick summary at Liberty Belles

Kevin Baker reports that according to the thread at arfcom, Olofson was sentenced to 30 Months incarceration, 2 Years probation.

Over time, David Codrea has written quite a lot about David Olofson and the railroading he got from the government and the ATF. To have agents of the state bring charges of possessing a machine gun when all you have is a malfunction, and then to have a court actually convict, is beyond the pale.

Update: David Codrea has been working on getting info:

UPDATE-9:12 PM: The conviction and sentence are confirmed. Per Len [Savage], the reason no one was answering their cell phones is because the judge had them confiscated until afterward. His position was the statute makes no distinction or exemption for a malfunction. He denied a motion to suspend sentence pending appeal and is considering extending bond. I have been told Mr. Olofson is going home tonight. The courtroom was packed. Estimates are most of those in attendance were ATF personnel. Bill Tucker from CNN was in attendance, so this will be followed on Lou Dobbs.

The answer is, “It Depends”.

Flex Your Rights Foundation: FAQ on police encounters. A nice compilation of situations where people will encounter police, including traffic stops, and searches. It’s always a good idea to refresh your memory on your rights, particularly with respect to searches. Question 7, “When do I have to show ID?”, is particularly on my mind today, after reading Uncle’s post referencing the Lawreader article: Fed appeals court says motorist’s refusal to give police his name is no cause for arrest , which came up in the Pennsylvania gun siezure post I made on Sunday.

Referring back to Uncle’s post — I’ll just quote it.

A police officer does not have the authority to arrest someone for refusing to identify himself when he is not suspected of committing a crime, a federal appeals panel ruled Friday.

Someone tell Dudley Hiibel and the Supreme Court.

He’s implying a tension between what the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, and the Supreme Court’s Hiibel ruling. But I refer now to Eugene Volokh on Hiibel, who writes in part (note the negation):

Here are the questions not involved here: (1) May the police stop someone without any suspicion, but just based on an articulable hunch, or a random stop policy, to demand identification? (2) May the police require that the person present some written identification? (3) May the police require identification when the person is driving, or when the person is entering a public building, or in similar contexts? (4) May the police simply ask a person, without the threat of legal sanction, who he is? The answer to #4 is “yes”; the answer to #3 is generally yes, though it depends on the context; the answers to #1 and #2 are still unknown. (UPDATE: Let me clarify briefly my point as to #1 — as reader Duncan Frissell points out, Brown v. Texas (1979) struck down such random stops when done without any “practice embodying neutral criteria,” and when done as part of normal policing. See also Delaware v. Prouse (1979). What is unknown is whether they might be permissible, under the Court’s “special needs” cases, when there are some neutral criteria, or when the place is a special location, such as a bus terminal or the environs of some location where security is especially important. There’s enough uncertainty in the “special needs” caselaw [which includes cases such as the drunk driving checkpoints] that it’s hard to be sure what the result would be there.)

Returning to Flex Your Rights and question 7, here’s part of their answer:

Currently the following states have stop and identify laws: AL, AR, CO, DE, FL, GA, IL, KS, LA, MO, MT, NE, NH, NM, NV, NY, ND, RI, UT, VT, WI

Regardless of your state’s law, keep in mind that police can never compel you to identify yourself without reasonable suspicion to believe you’re involved in criminal activity. Rather than asking the officer if he/she has reasonable suspicion, test it yourself by asking if you’re free to go.

If the officer says you’re free to go, leave immediately and refrain from answering any additional questions.

If the officer detains you, you’ll have to decide whether withholding your identity is worth the possibility of arrest or a prolonged detention. In cases of mistaken identity, revealing who you are might help to resolve the situation quickly. On the other hand, if you’re on parole in California, for example, revealing your identity could lead to a legal search. Knowing your state’s laws can help you make the best choice.

Keep in mind that the officer’s decision to detain you will not always hold up in court. ‘Reasonable suspicion’ is a vague evidentiary standard, which lends itself to mistakes on the officer’s part. If you’re searched or arrested following an officer’s ID request, always contact an attorney to discuss the incident and explore your legal options.

I won’t 100% agree with their advice, but only in certain obvious situations. One I can think of is a case where I’m a witness to a crime. Just my opinion, but I would find it entirely reasonable to provide my identity to both the prosecution and defense sides. Other situations would be murkier.

This whole topic reminds of a quote I’m fond of:

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood. — James Madison

And, thanks to Brillianter for the link to Flex Your Rights.

Heh. Okay, I feel a little sorry for the guy, but it’s still funny.

YouTube

(Via Og)

The following is all from this thread at the OpenCarry.org forums. I did only a little reformatting and URL cleanup, so that it’s more readable.

You know, how the gun-fearing wussies are always blithering about how it’ll be like the mythical “wild west”, what with all the shootouts going on, if we lowly proles are allowed to carry guns? Uh, it seems like it’s the agents of the state we have to worry about.

Man Shot At When He Doesn’t Pay For Train Ride

Note the wording there — “shot at”, not “shot”. Either way, does anyone think that failure to pay the train fare is any reason for anyone to pull out a gun? Well, apparently this particular deputy does.

A sheriff’s Transit Services Bureau deputy fired at a man who ran away from a Metrolink train while officials were checking fares, but the man was not hit.

Nothing like being sure of your target before pulling the trigger, eh? The story reports that the deputy feared that the man was armed, but makes no mention of any action, such as withdrawing a hand from a pocket. What’s more telling is that there’s no mention of a weapon of any kind having been recovered from him when he was apprehended, and you can be sure that had that been the case, it would have been splattered all over the story.

The deputy in question should be fired, immediately. Anybody who thinks that firing on a suspect for such a trivial violation has no place in any position in law enforcement.

(Via David Codrea)

In D.C., the police need “assault weapons” to protect themselves from criminals. According to Fenty, the rest of the citizens can just suck it.

I read a bit about this whole OpenID thing a while ago, and was unimpressed. I didn’t look critically at the protocol, because that’s not my area of expertise. But a couple things did come to mind.

One is that there is nothing in OpenID to actually validate an identity — to the extent that’s possible anyway. So the opportunity for identity forgery using OpenID is pretty much open-ended. Whether that’s a big deal depends on circumstances. For example, anyone could make a comment on a blog and claim to be me, given current blog commenting systems. OpenID doesn’t fix that, and so has no utility there. (Sure, the underlying OpenID URL would be different from the one(s) I’m using, but who’s going to look at that? And even if they did, there’s nothing to prevent me from using more than one OpenID URL anyway.)

Another thing that came immediately to me was that OpenID providers have the ability to track all online activity where a person uses their OpenID. Some people might not care about that, but I certainly do.

There was a third thing that flashed into my mind, and disappeared as I typed the second paragraph up there. Gawd, sometimes my short-term memory is maddeningly non-existent.

The purported benefit of OpenID is that you have to have only one ID and password to remember, to access or identify yourself to many websites. The big downside of that is that if your OpenID gets cracked, then somebody else (or multiple somebody elses) can start using it all over the place. Yeah, I noted above that forging is trivial, since there’s no real validation anyway, but there’s a bit of difference from some pretending to be you, using the OpenID you generated, and another one made up for the purpose. This might not be a big deal, if it’s just blog comments. What happens when there’s more at stake? Consider the SourceForge is using OpenID. Looking at their FAQ, I don’t see the question of whether code commits will be allowed using OpenID. I certainly wouldn’t trust it for that. And I hope that no sites where actuall financial considerations apply would ever use it either.

Why? because OpenID is vulnerable to being cracked. I’m not going to try to summarize that article. Just go have a read, and if you’re tempted to jump on the OpenID bandwagon, my advice is either don’t, or use it only for trivial purposes.