79. It’s for the children: the Colorado legislature considers a bill that would criminalize negligent storage of firearms.

80. Aside from the top-secret Camp 7 within the Gitmo terrorist camp, it’s now possible that detainees convicted of terrorism could face the death penalty and be executed on Gitmo, which would be “largely beyond the reach of U. S. courts”.

81. Voter confusion over a poorly-designed ballot in Los Angeles County may have led to as many as 776,000 “Nonpartisan” ballots to be ignored in the vote count.

82. Do you have any undeclared vegetables, plants or hard drives?  Customs agents are seizing computers and other electronic devices, without a warrant or even probable cause, from international travelers and copying any data found on them.

83. The smell of drug money: an Oregon man is busted for running an indoor marijuana farm after a bureaucrat notices that the money he used to pay a tax bill smelled like pot.

84. Narcs for the New World Order, unite!  United Nations anti-drug bureaucrats claim that new marijuana vending machines in California violate international drug treaties and should be shut down.  And the DEA threatens San Francisco landlords with property seizure if they continue to rent to medical marijuana dispensaries, even though they are legal in California.

85. The Feds seize cash, computers and financial records of a Denver business which they say operated a high-end prostitution ring, but have not arrested or charged the owner or employees with a crime.

86. It’s for the children, pt. 2: Boston cops go door-to-door in poor neighborhoods, “asking” if they can search the house for illegal guns.

87. In the wake of a Lima, Ohio SWAT raid in which a young woman was shot to death and her one-year-old son wounded, protesters at the Lima City Council meeting are greeted by SWAT snipers on the rooftops.

88. A Barstow, Calif. man is also greeted by SWAT, in the form of a flash-bang grenade thrown into his home, causing second- and third-degree burns.  They then drag the disabled man out on his porch, where he is kicked and beaten.  “They weren’t acting like professional policemen,” observed a neighbor. “They were acting like thugs.”

68. Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says she might be willing to garnish workers’ wages in order to ensure universal health care coverage. She might want to ask Mitt Romney, late of the Republican nomination race, how that has worked out.

69. President Bush sends a $3.1 trillion budget to Congress, looking for big cuts in health care spending but big increases for homeland security.

70. More wrongful convictions based on flimsy evidence overturned: a Greeley, Colorado man goes free after spending nearly a decade in prison for murder when DNA tests show he wasn’t the killer. The evidence police used against Tim Masters consisted of knives (but not the murder weapon), gory sketches and stories, and a psychologist’s testimony that Masters’ creative output indicated an obsession with rape and murder. And in Indiana, DNA testing also clears another man in the bludgeoning death of an 89-year-old Terre Haute woman, after he had already spent 25 years in prison for the murder. David Scott, who was 15 at the time and learning disabled, was convicted based on his own confession. The DNA testing technology which exonerated both of these men has been available for years.

71. The FBI embarks on a $1 billion odyssey to build the world’s largest biometrics database, incorporating facial scans, fingerprints, iris patterns and other identifying characteristics.

72. Because if you blah blah, the terrorists win again: some law students from the University of Denver find that the very rules they’re fighting at the Federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo. may also bar them from seeing the inmates they’re representing in civil-rights lawsuits against the government.  The Justice Department’s argument: because they’re not yet lawyers, the students may be more likely to aid the terrorists in passing messages to the outside.  Right, because lawyers always become less corruptible after they get their licenses.

73. The U. S. strikes a deal with the World Trade Organization to allow the Federal online gambling ban to remain in place, at a cost of billions of dollars in trade concessions.  Blogger Ed Brayton files a Freedom of Information Act request to get a copy of the agreement with the WTO.  The government denies the request, citing a matter of “national security”.

74. REAL ID roundup: a DHS official suggests that a national ID card could be required to purchase over-the-counter medication to combat meth.  And CNET has a series of stories on the controversial initiative, covering the impact REAL ID will have on travel, visits to Federal facilities, privacy and more.

75. Concerned neighbors set fire to a trailer in front of a home where they found out a registered sex offender lives.  Too bad it was the wrong house.

76. Cops in Virginia Beach charge an Abercrombie & Fitch store manager with obscenity and confiscate two of the store’s racy ad posters.  (The obscenity charge was later dropped.)  One of the posters depicted teenage boys running with their pants falling down, which led to police concerns that they would not be able to enforce city dress codes.

77. A Maryland lawmaker introduces a bill to require all driver license applicants under the age of 21 to submit to drug and alcohol testing.  Because it will save lives, of course, at least during the driving test.  Trevor Bothwell rips this one to shreds.

78. A story in LA Weekly digs deep into Los Angeles’ grilled bacon-wrapped hot dogs wars: they’re so good, they’re illegal.

59. Public health workers turn drug users into first responders by handing out rescue kits that can reverse potentially fatal overdoses. But the White House would rather the junkies just die:

But Dr. Bertha Madras, deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, opposes the use of Narcan in overdose-rescue programs.

“First of all, I don’t agree with giving an opioid antidote to non-medical professionals. That’s No. 1,” she says. “I just don’t think that’s good public health policy.” . . .

“Sometimes having an overdose, being in an emergency room, having that contact with a health care professional is enough to make a person snap into the reality of the situation and snap into having someone give them services,” Madras says.

Of course, killing off the junkies would make prosecuting volunteers for a needle exchange program unnecessary; pity about the innocent people (usually poor) getting stuck by contaminated needles.

60. Why Internet porn is a good deal, pt. 2: A Colorado lawmaker proposes adding a 99-cent tax on hotel in-room adult movies, to provide additional funding for child sex-abuse investigations. “Most of our sexual predators in prison are addicted to pornography,” according to the lawmaker. Actually, there’s a link between child sexual abuse and ownership of child pornography, which I’m assuming is not on the pay-per-view options menu at Holiday Inn. (Thanks to Severin at LP of Colorado Blog.)

61. A Pennsylvania woman faces a potential $10 million fine for selling items on eBay without an auctioneer’s license. Maybe I’m missing something here, but I thought that when you listed an item on eBay, it was the Web site that performed the auction, not the seller. Is this concept really that elusive for the state to grasp?

62. A Chicago cop who was caught on tape beating a man who was handcuffed and shackled to a wheelchair is scheduled to return to work in April after completing a two-year suspension, despite the police department’s recommendation to the review board that he be fired.

63. Live sober or die: a New Hampshire police chief testifies in a hearing on a bill to reduce penalties for marijuana possession that he would favor bringing back Prohibition. Because, you know, that worked out so well the first time.

64. Arizona’s tough new employment laws are having their desired effects, including the ones the nativists didn’t tell you about.  One of those may be reduced tax revenues, as even more illegals are paid under the table.

65. As if there weren’t enough reasons to oppose the REAL ID Act, now domestic abuse survivors fear it will create a giant honeypot for stalkers and violent exes.

66. Ohio woman calls 911 after being assaulted by her cousin; police end up assaulting her.

67. Because if you don’t make people cower in fear on the subway, you let the terrorists win.