159. Puppycide in Buffalo during a police raid that fails to turn up any drugs or make any arrests.

160. Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio, no friend of fugitives, illegal immigrants or civil rights, spends an unknown amount of taxpayers’ money on production costs for a Fox reality show.  Then his boys arrest some people applauding a speech critical of Arpaio during a county supervisors meeting.  And Phoenix police raid the home of a blogger who’s been criticizing them.

161. I’m from the government, and I’m here to check out that funny noise under the hood: President Obama can’t save the banks or balance the budget, but he’s now backing your transmission.  More details about the warranty from those helpful folks at reason:

162. “One of liberty’s great benefactors”, Burt Blumert, chairman of the Mises Institute and a champion of many libertarian causes, passes away at the age of 80.

163. After a student is kicked in the groin, a Connecticut school bans all physical contact.  Because today’s hug could be tomorrow’s headlock.

164. Michigan woman charged for her son’s stay in juvie hall, then is sent to jail herself after she’s unable to pay.

165. More than half of California’s service stations face hefty fines or even closure for failing to install expensive vapor recovery nozzles on their pumps.  The CARB-mandated systems run about $11,000 per pump.

166. Congress seeks to give the FDA the power to regulate tobacco, while also limiting safer choices for people looking to cut back or quit.

167. Speaking of tobacco, remember Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on people making less than $250,000?  Well, he lied, unless you think only rich people smoke.  They don’t, at least not as much as the poor do, making the new cigarette tax increase highly regressive.

A Chesapeake grand jury indicted the 28-year-old Portlock man Tuesday on charges of capital murder, use of a firearm during the commission of murder and manufacturing marijuana. Frederick is accused of “willfully, deliberately and premeditatedly” killing Detective Jarrod Shivers the night of Jan. 17 while Shivers and more than a dozen other officers executed a drug search warrant.

Keep in mind, prosecutors hadn’t sought a capital murder charge against Frederick; the grand jury upgraded it from first-degree murder.  The more serious charge means the state can seek the death penalty against Frederick.

So many things have gone wrong with this case from the outset:

• The warrant was served on a tip that Frederick was running a massive pot-growing operation in his garage, but all the police found was a small amount of marijuana and no plants.  However, Frederick, an avid amateur gardener, did have some young Japanese maples growing under lights, which do bear some resemblance to marijuana plants.
• Frederick’s home had been broken into just a few days before the police raid.
• Oh, and the informant whose tip led to the warrant?  He committed the burglary on Frederick’s home.  He also had credit card fraud charges pending against him, which were dropped just days before the raid.

So based on information from a guy who broke into Frederick’s house and was facing jail time, the police busted in on the home of a man with no criminal record and had just dealt with a burglary, and the end result is a dead cop and another man facing lethal injection.

Radley Balko summarizes more absurdities from the DA’s office:

Special Prosecutor Paul Ebert pushed the unlikely theory yesterday that Frederick looked out his window, saw several police officers about to break into his home, heard them announce themselves as police, decided to shoot and kill just one of them, then surrendered. This is a guy who friends, former employers, neighbors and family describe as harmless and unconfrontational to the point of being meek. The idea that he’d knowingly kill a cop over a few joints is absurd.

Frederick had a job he enjoyed, a record of steady employment and strong recommendations from supervisors, and he’d just gotten engaged. Again, hardly the profile of a cop killer with a death wish.

The felony marijuana charge is even less comprehensible, apparently hinging on the fact that the police found equipment which can be used for indoor marijuana growing operations.  Just as a wire coat hanger can be used to break into a car, I suppose.  Does that make us all guilty of conspiracy to commit auto theft?

The police performed little due diligence on their tip about Frederick: no controlled buys to determine if he was dealing, no observation of unusual traffic or activity in front of his house.  Their background check revealed only traffic tickets.  Yet this was enough for them to break down his door at night.

It’s clear from all the charges they’ve thrown against him that the Chesapeake prosecutors are seeking a plea deal with Frederick.  That’s the saddest part of this very sad case.  Based on what we know so far, Ryan Frederick doesn’t deserve death for his actions, or even life in prison.  He doesn’t deserve to be in jail at all. The police performed one of their most dangerous actions, a no-knock raid, based on very little evidence, and one of their officers was killed when the homeowner, quite understandably, chose to defend himself.

The only possible bright side to this injustice is that the public in Chesapeake is not siding blindly with the cops.  They are asking questions and wondering why the authorities won’t answer them.  One can only hope this same skepticism will extend to the jury that will hear Frederick’s case.

112. A-raiding we will go:

• Massive sweeps in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas nets hundreds of arrests, 1,300 traffic tickets and some seized cash.  All in the name of keeping us safe from terrorists.
• Police in Akron, Ohio continue a “Gun Violence Retention Sweep” that resulted in 72 arrests, although no guns were confiscated.

113. Minnesota seeks to conscript banks into its ranks of tax collectors, requiring them to rat out customers who owe the state money.

114. Another isolated Tasing incident leaves a a University of Miami graduate in critical condition.

115. Flying the heavily scanned skies:

• L. A. International Airport will start using body-imaging scanning to search for contraband under passengers’ clothing.  The technology “essentially shows how the person looks without clothing.”
• The Department of Homeland Security leans on airlines and cruise lines to collect fingerprint data from all foreign travelers departing the U. S.  Industry lobbyists claim the effort is cost-prohibitive.

116. Porn film producer John Stagliano faces multiple Federal charges of distributing obscene material.  Said “Buttman” of the charges: “With the war in Iraq going so well, Osama bin Laden captured, the economy thriving, our public school system fixed, and our crumbling infrastructure completely repaired, the Bush administration’s top priority seems to be harassing filmmakers and watching our movies.”

117. Shock to the system: a Colorado man convicted of murder served 20 years in prison, where the state put his electrician skills to good use, transporting him all around the correctional system, and even driving him to Denver to take his exams and paying his license renewal fees.  But now that he’s paroled, the state licensing board is threatening to pull his license based on his murder conviction, even though they’ve known about it for years.

93. First Amendment follies:

• A Santeria priest sues a Texas town over their prohibition against animal sacrifice.
• An Illinois delegate for Barack Obama resigned after she used the word “monkeys” to refer to black kids playing in a tree. The real insult, however, is that she was issued a $75 citation for disorderly conduct.
• A professor at Lake Superior State University faces a formal reprimand for offensive material posted on his office door. The university claims the cartoons and other material create a “hostile environment”; the professor says he’s being singled out for his conservative political views.

94. Now go away, or we shall punish you a second time: an Orange County, CA man was wrongly convicted for carjacking and spent 16 months in prison before he was freed. Now the state says it has no obligation to compensate him for the wrongful imprisonment because he implicated himself by accepting a plea deal on the original charge.

95. Infamous until proven innocent: police in Arizona are posting mug shots of accused shoplifters online as a “deterrent”. Hell, what are they waiting for? Just lop off their right hand when they arrest ‘em!

96. Our incorruptible public servants:

• So if you’re convicted of accepting bribes, you lose your job, right? Not necessarily, if you’re a public school teacher.
• Don’t worry, Daddy will take care of it: Federal employees have been racking up personal charges on government credit cards to the tune of $2 million.

• The Dallas City Council passes new laws banning the use of cell phones while driving through school zones and requiring increased monitoring of Internet usage in public libraries, joining other recent laws banning toy guns in parks and restricting panhandling.  They’re also considering expanding the public smoking ban, which currently includes restaurants, to bars.
• Maine becomes the first state in the country to protect children from the menace of novelty lighters.
• Virginia now requires that public schools offer Internet safety courses.  No word on whether they’ll provide supplemental courses for parents on properly supervising their children while on the Internet.  Nah, that would be a violation of parental rights!

Speaking of smoking bans, a new study suggests that they may lead to an increase in driving under the influence.  And Warren Meyer expresses his own frustration with the unintended consequences of nanny statism.

90. To serve and protect:

• Two Florida SWAT officers bring their kids on a drug raid.  What, they can’t afford a baby sitter on their salaries?
• A Somalian refugee studying at Metro State College in Denver spent eight days in police lockup last fall on auto theft charges, which were dismissed when the prosecutor finally noticed he didn’t look anything like the suspect in a mug shot.  This despite the fact that he produced multiple forms of ID at the time of his arrest to prove he wasn’t the guy cops were looking for.
• An investigation by the Orange County Register uncovered nearly a million vehicles registered to state and local government employees whose home addresses are kept secret in DMV records, allowing drivers to bypass highway tolls, run through camera-enforced red lights, and ignore parking tickets.  “They’ve exempted themselves from the rules they’re enforcing,” says a traffic safety activist.

91. Follow the taco truck: Los Angeles considers a new ordinance that would make it a crime for food trucks (known as loncheras if they serve Mexican food) to stay in one place for more than 30 minutes.  Denver has had a similar row over loncheras in years past; a 2002 ordinance requiring food trucks to move every four hours and limiting their hours of operation imposes a $1,000 fine and jail time for violators.