David McElroy

When armed police showed up to shut down a Massachusetts ice cream shop, the owner was surprised. He’s operated the shop and a small demonstration dairy at a state part for 26 years and never had any trouble. But he had recently made improvements to the property which enlarged the shop and improved the adjacent barn. Because he didn’t get permission from the various state and local authorities for this construction, police shut the place down and stood guard to make sure no one could buy ice cream. It’s all to protect the public’s health, of course, even though the ice cream isn’t even made there.

• The Keystone Cops at the TSA are happy to tell everyone else how to handle security, but they’re pretty inept when it comes to their own affairs. An illegal immigrant stole the identity of a dead man 20 years ago — and he’s had a top security job at the airport in Newark, N.J., working for the TSA.
• We’ve never been pro burglars, but we think we’re smarter than these guys in Colombia. They broke into an Internet cafe to rob the place, but while they were there, they logged onto Facebook — and didn’t bother to log out. Here’s how we reacted when we heard this story.

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Are you a subject, a citizen or a sovereign? Your answer to that question says a lot about who you think owns you, at least in the earthly sense.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Eduardo Saverin giving up U.S. citizenship as Facebook goes public. He’s one of the founders of Facebook, so he’s becoming incredibly wealthy because of Facebook’s initial public offering. By living in Singapore and giving up his U.S. citizenship, Saverin is going to save millions of dollars now and save his heirs possibly billions of dollars by avoiding U.S. estate taxes later.

Saverin told the New York Times, though, that his move isn’t about saving money.

“This had nothing to do with taxes,” Saverin told the Times. “I was born in Brazil, I was an American citizen for about 10 years. I thought of myself as a global citizen.”

In 1215, King John of England signed what came to be called the Magna Carta. (The full name in English was “The Great Charter of the Liberties of England, and of the Liberties of the Forest.”) The English lords accepted that they were subject to the king, but they tried — sometimes unsuccessfully — to get kings to limit their absolute power over them.

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If you’re unemployed and really want work, farmers in rural Alabama say they’re so desperate for labor that they’re having to cut back the number of acres under cultivation. The labor shortage comes after the state enacted a tough set of laws targeting undocumented immigrants. Alabama’s laws are modeling on Arizona laws that are currently being challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court. So it appears cracking down on immigrants means higher prices for some vegetables and produce.

• Schools in Florida are angry with the scoring on the writing section of the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test. Scores this year have fallen substantially, and state officials say it’s because the new score system is “demanding students use correct spelling and grammar,” among other things. Think about that for a moment. If the new scoring system demands correct spelling and grammar, what exactly was the old system based on? How well the kids revealed their feelings?
• If you believe the U.S. justice system could never execute innocent people, you’re mistaken. A new story about how Texas executed a man who didn’t commit the crime he was charged with is the latest grim reminder that giving the state power to kill people is a very bad idea.

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After slaves were freed in the United States in the 19th century, how much really changed for them? For the most part, they worked on the same land, did the same labor and worked for the same plantation owners. How exactly did their lives change when they were told they were free?

The slaves in the United States had worked hard and had nothing to show for their work. When we look at the sharecropping contracts they signed after they were allegedly free, it’s clear that their lives were just as controlled as they had been before. The only difference was that they now had a piece of paper that said they were free.

If you look at the typical sharecropping contract they signed, it’s clear that they didn’t have a chance to change their lives. They were leasing small tracts of land from the plantation owner. They went into debt — to the plantation owner — for the tools and animals they needed to work the land. They were required to mill the cotton at his cotton gin at a specified price. They were required to pay back the money for the tools out of the first cotton of the season. If there was anything left over, they could buy their own food, of course. But the plantation owner had the right to end the contract and kick them off any time he wanted.

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When Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies threatened a photographer for taking their picture, they repeatedly lied to him and illegally searched him. What they didn’t know is that a video camera was running for much of the encounter. You can see the video here, although he says a lot of what was said came after deputies found the camera recording and shut it off. He’s suing for damages.

• If you’re already familiar with the bizarrely maddening practice of “civil forfeiture,” this story will merely confirm what you already know. But if you’ve never heard of it, you’ll be outraged even more by this story of Tennessee police confiscating $22,000 from a man pulled over for speeding. The man hadn’t committed any criminal act — and told the officer that he was on his way to buy a car with the cash — but police say simply having that much money means it’s probably “drug money.” A television station investigated the incident and the dialogue between the reporter and the officer is enlightening. The whole practice of civil forfeiture is obscene.
• Louisiana is the world’s prison capital, according to a New Orleans newspaper. In addition to imprisoning more people per capita than any other state, it also exceeds the rate of anywhere else in the world — mostly in prisons that are privately operated. The state’s rate or imprisonment is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s.

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Why would anybody sane want to be elected to political office? I really don’t know. There was a time when I was seduced by the idea of being elected, but I can’t imagine subjecting myself to it now.

I thought about all that Monday when a local newspaper columnist attacked one of the few honest politicians I know. His crime? Refusing to try to ram through higher taxes in the Alabama Legislature to give money to a county government that’s in bankruptcy because of long-term corruption and mismanagement.

Over the 20 years I worked as a political consultant, I had few clients I liked or respected. Paul DeMarco was one of the very few who I both liked and respected. I did campaign work for him when he was running — successfully — for the Alabama House seven years ago. He was intelligent, thoughtful, principled and honest. He understood that he had to balance what he thinks is best with what the voters of his district want. He thinks that good people can make a difference by being elected and fighting for better government. I don’t think that’s possible, but he’s idealistic enough to try.

In his years in the House, he’s become a respected leader. He had a shot at becoming speaker of the House when Republicans took over the Legislature for the first time in more than a century, but he lost to someone with many more years of experience in the House. He’s the co-chair of the House delegation for the largest county in the state. He’s known as a peacemaker who’s willing to meet with anybody to try to find common ground for solutions between people who don’t agree with each other.

In other words, he’s everything your high school government textbook told you was the ideal as a political leader.

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If you don’t pay careful attention, this one is going to confuse you. The federal government has spent money for a study of another study which looked at the effectiveness of other studies. The conclusion was that the study of studies was ineffective. Confused? The Pentagon had so many studies going that it commissioned a study to see how effective they were. Then the Government Accountability Office studied whether that study was effective. We think they need to repeat that study a few times, so they can do a meta-study of studies about a study of other studies. Or something like that.

• When a Connecticut man found himself being pulled over by a state trooper, he had no idea what he had done wrong. The officer told him that the radiation detector in his police car showed that the man’s car was carrying radioactive material. It turns out that man had undergone a medical procedure earlier in the day that involved a small dose of radioactive liquid being put into his body for scanning, but that small amount was enough to trigger the radiation scanner. Police say many cars are equipped with these scanners as a way of fighting terrorism. We figure it will be very effective if a potential terrorist has had a cat scan that day.
• Barack Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, claims that he was offered $150,000 during the 2008 campaign to shut up and quit speaking out about Obama and race relations. If this is true — and we bet it is — what’s the difference between this offer and the allegations that former presidential candidate John Edwards paid off his mistress to keep her quiet? And why should the law prevent either action — as long as they’re spending voluntarily given campaign money?

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Which is more important — letting people make their own decisions about what to do with their property or forcing them to make decisions that are morally acceptable to you? You have to pick one. You can’t have it both ways.

Discrimination is a dirty word today, but there’s no reason for it to be. Discriminating is actually a neutral thing. Merriam-Wesbster’s first definition for the word is, “Making a distinction.” That’s all it is. It’s only when you discriminate on grounds that we think are wrong that discrimination becomes a bad thing. A woman who chooses one man over the others who might want to marry her is discriminating. She’s making a choice based on what she sees as the differing characteristics of her choices. A man who chooses between different job offers is discriminating. The woman who chooses one pair of shoes over another is showing discrimination. The list is endless.

What you’ve come to think of as discrimination is a specific class of discrimination, characterized by choosing among people for reasons that are considered wrong. Examples are racial discrimination, sex discrimination or religious discrimination. If you hire a white man instead of a black man because he’s white, you’re engaging in racial discrimination. If you hire a woman as a teacher because you refuse to believe that men can be good teachers, you’re engaging in sexual discrimination.

Until the 1960s, this sort of discrimination was perfectly legal. In fact, the law in some places required racial discrimination in many areas of life. (In the U.S. South, the legal requirements to separate races in many ways were called Jim Crow laws.) The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 changed all of that. The law said that restaurants and other private businesses must serve anyone, regardless of race.

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Despair turned to jubilation at a funeral in Egypt when the “dead man” turned out to be not so dead. A 28-year-old man had been declared dead by a hospital after he suffered a heart attack. A doctor sent to sign the death certificate at the funeral gathering was surprised to find the body warm. When the man turned out to be alive, his mother fainted, but the doctor was able to revive both the dead man and his mother.

• A mother in Arkansas is so upset that her son wasn’t selected for his high school basketball team that she’s suing the school. Her suit claims that he’s being denied the education he deserves since not being on the team will deny him a chance to compete for athletic scholarships.
• Do you remember how national Democrats piously pleaded for me civility in politics in recent times, especially after the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords? Well, apparently, that only applies when they want to be pious and claim the moral high ground. A large donor to a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney has had a Democratic operative trolling through his divorce records and attacking him personally — just for supporting the wrong candidate.

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The voting was tight, but the judges were fair. There were no hanging chads and no spoiled ballots. In honor of the site’s first birthday, here are the posts that got the most readers over the past year. A few of them still have me scratching my head.

‘I’m just quitting’: A scene right out of ‘Atlas Shrugged’ in Birmingham – The most popular story on the site in the first year was read more than 50,000 times. When I started, I wasn’t sure I’d have 50,000 views for the entire year put together, so this was gratifying. I happened to attend a public hearing about environmental issues, because I was doing some research that I didn’t think would turn into a story. But I wasn’t counting on an angry coal mine operator to tell the environmental officials that he wasn’t going to open a mine he had planned — because of the attitudes he saw in the meeting that made him believe people didn’t want him. The comments posted after the story are amazing and heartbreaking in some cases, as people give their own stories about having businesses hurt by the government.

The story was picked up by Instapundit, The Blaze, Free Republic, Fark, Reddit and dozens of other sites. For a few days, it was viral. This one story contributed hugely to increasing overall daily traffic on the site immensely. (Here’s an interview that a radio station in Indianapolis did with me about the story. I wasn’t happy with the interview, but it was my first radio appearance in years, so I wasn’t too upset.)

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