Reduce prosecutors’ power to investigate it. That’s Scott Walker’s method in Wisconsin, banning a particular kind of covert investigation for bribery and political misconduct. Violent and drug crimes, no problem! It’s much the same logic as when Oklahoma politicians decades ago proposed mandatory sterilization of criminals—but not for bribery, fraud, corruption or any other crime they might be nailed for (which played into a major eugenics Supreme Court decision, as detailed in In Reckless Hands).
•It’s illegal to strike potential jurors based on race, but prosecutors still do it.
•A judge has dismissed a privacy lawsuit against Facebook over its use of personal data. Pinterest, however, lost a lawsuit over whether other websites can talk about “pinning” things.
•Yet another Republican conservative asserting that if government doesn’t do what he wants, it’s an invalid government.
•Apparently some feminists see Hilary Clinton’s candidacy as irrelevant because she’s a rich, white woman. At the link, Echidne looks at intersectional feminism and its drawbacks.
•The FCC limits prison-phone companies’ ability to screw prisoners over.
•Digby points out that Donald Trump makes millions from endorsements—putting his name on other people’s building projects and the like—and that while it’s perfectly legal, it doesn’t require any sort of entrepreneurial ability, just celebrity.
•Roy Edroso looks at right-bloggers’ outrage that Benghazi didn’t deliver Hilary Clinton’s scalp. In a column on the hearings, Jonah Goldberg (explaining how he foresaw all this happening years ago) asserts—well more accurately vaguely references Dune: “There’s a scene in one of the Dune books where Paul Atreides experiences living through the moments he’d already prophesied. If I remember right, it was a dreamlike sense of ennui as he walked through steps he’d felt he’d already walked through. Or something like that.” Even for Goldberg (of the evil veggie burger) that’s incredibly vapid. What’s the point in drawing a metaphor like that if he can’t even be certain it’s accurate?
