“Felony murder” laws are still problematic, even if that law has led to a corrupt drug warrior finally being punished for the evil he has committed under the color of law.

Gerald Goines headed up a Houston PD drug squad for years and was never one to let facts or a lack of evidence stand between him and a drug bust. Unfortunately for Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas — neither of them drug dealers — the raid generated and perpetrated by Gerald Goines ended their lives. They were shot by officers — four of whom were wounded during the raid — who forced entry into the innocent couple’s home, only to be greeted by (according to officers’ allegations) a seemingly reasonable response to armed intruders.

Goines was a monster. Unable to move forward with a controlled heroin purchase from the Tuttle residence (because Tuttle and Nicholas had no heroin to sell), he decided to fabricate a case against the couple, using drugs stashed in his car and series of lies that included sworn statements made in the warrant affidavit. The impetus for all of this was an unsubstantiated claim from a neighbor of Tuttle — one well-known by the Houston PD for filing bogus criminal complaints against people in her neighborhood.

Knowing full well the couple wasn’t actually dealing heroin from their home, Goines assembled his fellow drug warriors and raided their house. Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas were killed. Four officers were wounded. The official narrative is that they were shot by Tuttle. But that narrative is undercut by an independent forensic examination of the home following the raid — one that shows Houston PD investigators failed to conduct a full ballistic recovery and left lots of forensic evidence untouched, something that suggests cover-up far more than it suggests diligent police work.

Goines was the only participant in the raid to be criminally charged. Six other members of this drug squad have been indicated for their involvement in this raid or other crimes they engaged in while in uniform. But it’s Goines who being hit with the most years, thanks to the felony murder law that allows the government to imprison people for murder, even if they themselves didn’t personally murder anyone.

On Tuesday, the jury handed down their sentence after 10 hours of deliberation, bringing the five-year saga to a close. Goines received 60 years for each of the two murders, but his sentences will run concurrently. He will be eligible for parole after serving 30 years, and must also pay $20,000 in fines.

[…]

Prosecutors successfully argued that Goines lied to get the no-knock search warrant for the raid, falsely stating that he had used a confidential informant to purchase drugs from the Harding Street home. From this, they argued that because he was responsible for the raid happening in the first place, and because he was the lead agent on the raid, he was responsible for the deaths of the two homeowners, Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas.

This is not a great way to secure a conviction, especially one with decades of prison time included. Goines is definitely responsible for everything leading up to the raid and, consequently, at least partially responsible for its outcome. But suggesting he’s a two-time murderer because other officers killed Tuttle and Nicholas isn’t even acceptable as an over-correction for years of ignored abusive, illegal actions by Goines and his underlings.

While it’s heartening to see an officer’s actions handled with the severity they deserve, everyone would be far better served if prosecutors had dug into his long history of misconduct (something that’s led to the dismissal of dozens of drug cases) and pursued criminal charges for those acts. While Goines’ hands are definitely dirty, he didn’t pull the trigger.

As for the other cops indicted as a result of this, let’s hope the ones who did actually kill the couple receive sentences roughly aligned to the kingpin of the Houston PD-enabled criminal organization. But let’s not celebrate injustice just because it happened to someone we don’t like. Goines should go to jail and, if he ever comes out, should never be allowed to be a cop again. Felony murder is a cheap shot and short cut. It never feels like actual justice because it simply isn’t.

We are living under a sea of AI-generated slop, where AI deepfakes and non-consensual intimate content abound. Congress, a self-interested creature, naturally wants to create protections for themselves, their favorite celebrities, and their wealthy donors against online impersonation. But until now, visions of so-called AI protections have been limited. From my lair, I’ve seen how Big Content might use congressional panic about AI abuse to make a many-tentacled power grab. With the NO FAKES and No AI FRAUD Acts, it’s delicious to report that we have done exactly that.

Inspired by my seashell-prisons, in which I trap the sweet voices of mermaids looking to rise, these bills would let corporations and trade associations like mine control not only the tongues of young musicians, actors, or authors—but their whole face and body. It has been incredibly lucrative for Big Content to monopolize other intellectual property rights, so that we could prevent Prince from singing his pesky “art” under his own name and block Taylor Swift from buying back her early recordings from powerful enemies. It is far past time that new and more invasive rights are created, ones that allow us to make AI-generated deepfakes of artists singing the songs that we like, dressing in the way we desire, promoting the causes we approve, and endorsing the presidential candidates that we want to endorse.

Since teenagers, abuse survivors, and artists started suffering from AI deepfakes, our leaps toward victory have been enlivened by the sirens we’ve convinced to testify on behalf of concepts like consent, the struggle of artists for respect and dignity, and the importance of human art. They have unwittingly obscured our true aims with the beauty of their voices, and the results are glorious, netting legislation that would lure not only artists, but anyone at all, into crashing on the rocks.

If these bills pass, the vulnerable and desperate will also be lured into trading rights to their voices and faces for almost nothing—a month’s rent or a week’s groceries. A paid electricity bill. And for that we will amass vast libraries of captive voices and faces that we can license out to whomever will pay, to use as broadly and vaguely as we desire. AI-generated intimate content, political advertising, hate speech—sources of vast wealth currently being tapped by small-time influencers and foreign regimes. Many will pay richly to AI-generate another to deliver their message. This sea witch fully intends to insert herself in such a growing market.

And oh, the markets! The No AI FRAUD Act is particularly clever in its moves to kill alternative markets and competition for us, the biggest players in Content. With copious lawsuits, we will be able to smite any who dare attempt reenactments and parody, who depict a historical figure in a movie or sketch comedy, who make memes of a celebrity. After all, how dare they? Did they think the First Amendment was written for their drivel?

Even better, we will be able to sue social media platforms, too, for hosting such content. Although, social media companies have historically made moves to aggressively filter or shut down content they could be sued over. Ultimately, they may proactively smite our competition on our behalf—becoming an even more honed instrument for our supremacy. Either way, we win.

Censorship, you say? Perhaps. But if most of the human faces that are displayed online are the ones we own or sell licenses to, the dollar signs would fill a sea. And, we would own the faces of each person not only during their life, but these laws would let us own them for 70 years after their deaths.

NO FAKES in its turn is an eloquent symphony of conformity. It allows us to claim that any video, photo, or recording we do not like is an AI deepfake and have it removed from the Internet forever. The bill offers no recourse to anyone we might—oopsie—censor with our richly programmed armies of bots and filters. There is no mechanism to put content back online or punish a big content company for lying about a takedown request—well, unless you want to face down our armies of lawyers in federal court, that is. This one is all about who has the most money and power, darlings.

With these bills, we will tighten our many-tentacled stranglehold over arts and culture, ensuring that only those we profit from succeed—and that these choice humans need act only minimally once we have secured their AI likeness. No more pesky frailties or artistic preferences to contend with. No more divas unless we deepfake them. This is why we must make our utmost effort to pass NO FAKES and No AI FRAUD— before creators and the public catch on and discover that these bills don’t fight deepfakes, they solidify control of them amongst the most powerful players while obliterating consent.

We must act swiftly to purchase politicians and parade our most convincing messengers—the artists themselves—to demand Little Mermaid laws. These poor unfortunate souls are already falling into the grips of NDAs, brand protection agreements, other assignable rights, noncompetes, existing IP law, and everything else our lawyers can brew up. We just need one final, strong brew to cement control, and then artists’ ability to speak and appear publicly or online will be safe in our contractual seashells. There will be a new era of peace and harmony, as artists and creators won’t be able to agitate and contribute to conflict as pesky “activists”. They will be quiet and only sing when told to. And, our pretties will be able to sing their hearts out even if they become sick, ugly, impoverished, or die—because we hold their AI replicas.

After all, a star need not be human to shine, and if the human artist cannot speak without our permission, no one will know the difference anyway!

Ursula the Sea Witch, best known for cutting one of the hottest ever sub-marine deals with Mermaid Ariel to trap her voice in a seashell along with other poor unfortunate souls, was recently promoted to the C-suite of the Under-The-Sea Content Trade Association. There, her leadership focuses on expanding her pioneering work with Ariel, aiming to lock voices away without any true love’s kiss to set them free by 2026—and for complete, non consensual-yet-legal AI impersonation of all artists under contract by 2027. Ursula the Sea Witch is also the evil(er) alter-ego of Lia Holland, Campaigns and Communications Director at digital rights organization Fight for the Future.

There are few things the government loves less than admitting wrongdoing, especially when the admission might affect multiple levels of government. That’s why nearly every settlement paid out to litigants includes a disavowment of any wrongdoing. And that’s why courts — at multiple levels — are so extremely reluctant to give possibly innocent people an opportunity to plead their case.

Then there’s the wildcard: justices like Clarence Thomas, who don’t seem to care what the law says and continually seek to convert their own personal ideologies into precedent. While this is definitely something Thomas does more consistently than most, refusing to consider new evidence or any genuine questions of guilt is a common feature of all courts at all levels.

“Innocent until proven guilty” is the ideal. The reality — for far too many judges, prosecutors, and jurors — is the opposite: an indictment or arrest makes a person guilty and places the burden on them to prove their innocence. When the system gets rigged through police or prosecutorial misconduct, it’s almost impossible to overturn this presumption of guilt, even via multiple visits to courts, which are supposed to be doing all they can to prevent miscarriages of justice.

The case of Richard Glossip has made it clear most courts don’t care what happens to people once they’ve been convicted, no matter how much exculpatory evidence is uncovered following the conviction. Glossip is on death row at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, allegedly for hiring 19-year-old Justin Sneed to kill Barry Van Treese back in 1997. He was convicted in 1998 but had his conviction thrown out in 2001 by the Oklahoma District Court of Appeals, which called the prosecution’s case “extremely weak” and finding Glossip had received ineffective assistance of counsel.

Nearly a quarter-century later, this is still somehow being litigated. Glossip was convicted again by a new jury in 2004 and his conviction was affirmed by the same court that found the prosecution lacking the first time around. Multiple appeals, a bunch of new evidence pointing to Glossip’s supposed “accomplice” acting alone, support from local politicians, and questionable acts by the prosecutors handling the case have managed to keep Glossip from being executed, along with various challenges over Oklahoma’s constantly morphing execution cocktail recipe.

At this point, even the Oklahoma state Attorney General, Gentner Drummond, is unwilling to argue against Glossip in court. For some reason, the Supreme Court has decided someone should argue against Glossip, so it hired a former clerk who worked for two current justices (John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh) to argue the state’s case on its behalf.

The Supreme Court’s hired gun, Christopher Michel — one with ties to two conservative justices — did exactly what was asked of him: he argued it didn’t matter the state AG thought the case was indefensible. The Supreme Court should still consider it defensible and ignore the public disavowal of this conviction.

Michel argues that the court should pay no mind to Drummond’s concerns about the legality of executing Glossip. “Nothing in the Constitution compels a state court to provide a particular measure of deference to a state official’s confession of error,” Michel wrote. In other words, it doesn’t matter how flawed Drummond believes the case is, the court is under no obligation to take those concerns seriously.

Chances are, Justice Clarence Thomas would have said what he said, even if he hadn’t been prompted by Roberts and Kavanaugh’s former foot soldier. Thomas has never met a right he isn’t willing to violate if it means helping cops/prosecutors or any right he isn’t willing to imagine into existence if it helps his far-right buddies (Donald Trump, Trump supporters, anti-choice legislators, Republicans complaining about internet “censorship,” etc.) get what they want.

So, he went all in against Glossip and those advocating for him. The real problem here, said Justice Thomas, is that people are maligning prosecutors who seemingly engaged in a whole bunch of misconduct.

Responding to Glossip’s attorney’s assertions that key information was withheld by prosecutors about the actual killer (Justin Sneed) would have given the accused man a chance to challenge the sole witness’s credibility, Thomas acted as though it was unfair the prosecutors were never given a chance to defend themselves from these accusations, despite having had nearly a quarter-decade to do so.

These omissions are no small matter. The due process clause requires prosecutors to turn over potentially favorable evidence to the defense, and compels them to correct false testimony. [State prosectuors] Smothermon and Ackley did neither. If they had, Glossip’s attorneys might have undermined Sneed’s credibility by proving that he lied on the stand. They may have more persuasively painted him as the lone killer, too, since [Sneed’s psychiatrist, Dr.] Trombka believed Sneed was capable of violent “manic episodes.” Because prosecutors chose to stay silent, Glossip’s attorneys could not make the strongest case for their client.

Yet during Wednesday’s arguments, Thomas sought to recast Smothermon and Ackley as innocent victims of a smear campaign. He immediately asked Seth Waxman, Glossip’s lawyer: “Did you at any point get a statement from either one of the prosecutors?” Waxman told him that he did, in fact, get a sworn statement from Ackley, and that Smothermon was interviewed by an independent counsel appointed by Drummond. So yes: Both prosecutors provided statements. Yet Thomas persisted as if they hadn’t. “It would seem that because not only their reputations are being impugned, but they are central to this case—it would seem that an interview of these two prosecutors would be central.” Waxman protested that, again, both prosecutors were given an opportunity to tell their side of the story. And again, Thomas refused to accept it: “They suggest,” the justice said, “that they were not sought out and given an opportunity to give detailed accounts of what those notes meant.”

That’s the take Thomas makes: that the notes referring to things said about Justin Sneed by his therapist (a therapist he denied seeing while testifying against Glossip), including the fact Dr. Trombka thought Sneed was “capable of violent manic episodes,” were simply misinterpreted by Glossip’s lawyers. And since the prosecutors who wrote the notes have never testified directly that they say the things they say, they’ve somehow been unfairly forced out of this court battle to prevent Glossip from being executed for a crime he didn’t commit.

This is garbage law work. If an attorney tried to make the same arguments in front of the court, they’d be shut down and/or berated by the judges on the bench. But if a justice says it, I guess it’s all ok. But Supreme Court justices are expected to be the best at lawyering, since they’re tasked with making final determinations that not only affect the parties in the current case, but the entirety of judicial system across America. But instead of seriously and neutrally considering the facts of the case, activist justices like Clarence Thomas are making things worse for millions of Americans because they’ve decided their own moral compasses (such as they are, especially in Thomas’s case) are the gold standard for constitutional law.

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It has been rumored for a while that Elon wants to remove the official “block” functionality on ExTwitter, but now it’s official. The company has announced that it will soon start rolling out a new version of “block” that no longer blocks content, only interactions.

That’s ExTwitter’s engineering team saying:

Soon we’ll be launching a change to how the block function works. If your posts are set to public, accounts you have blocked will be able to view them, but they will not be able to engage (like, reply, repost, etc.).

Today, block can be used by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked. Users will be able to see if such behavior occurs with this update, allowing for greater transparency.

This is a bad idea for a variety of reasons, though I’d push back on people calling it a “crazy” idea. There actually is some logic to it. As many people will point out, even with the existing “block” functionality, you can still see the content in question if you just switch to an incognito view. And, of course, there is something slightly odd in posting some content publicly, and then expecting that certain people should be “blocked” from seeing it.

That’s the theoretical argument for why what Elon is doing here seems to make sense.

But reality and theory don’t always match up. The reality is that the current “block” feature acts as a form of friction to stop abuse, and it’s somewhat, though not perfectly, effective in that role. That friction does not stop abusive people from viewing tweets or passing them along, but it does seem to help in some form.

The simple fact is that (even though Elon probably doesn’t know this or care to look at the history), Twitter tried this. A decade ago. And it was a complete flop. Such a flop that Twitter backtracked almost immediately.

On Thursday, the social site tweaked the way users block others who harass, spam or otherwise bother them. Under the change the blocked user would still be able to see the profile and tweets of the other user, as well as retweet their posts.

By Thursday night, however, the change was gone, reversed in stunningly abrupt fashion after a flurry of user protests, on a platform perfectly suited for both flurries and protests.

Part of the issue is that the block feature is a somewhat crude tool for dealing with multiple forms of abuse. Some of that abuse is still stopped via the new version (blocking interactions, but still showing content), while an awful lot is not. That’s the real problem. While block is far from a perfect tool in stopping people from ganging up on and abusing people, it does help. And with the new changes, that mostly goes away.

This plan is taking away an important, if imperfect, tool for stopping abuse, while not providing any alternative. It’s likely based on Elon’s near total inability to have empathy for people who are not himself. Over and over again, he has shown that he thinks the real problems on ExTwitter are just the ones that impact him directly: spam and scam repliers (even though he’s made that problem worse).

He has no concept of marginalized and targeted people and the kinds of abuse and attacks that can be heaped upon them. Thus, a tool that works towards minimizing such an impact is not even remotely interesting to him.

At the same time, it’s been said that the legacy blocking system is expensive computationally, because figuring out who can (and who cannot) see certain tweets is a pretty complex issue. I’ve noticed that this system breaks a lot since Musk took over, in that in the last few months I have repeatedly seen tweets from people who block me.

So, what this seems to come down to is (1) Elon trying to reduce more costs as the company continues to collapse, combined with (2) an inability to understand or care about the actual harassment that happens on his own platform. It doesn’t seem like a recipe for success.

While FTC boss Lina Khan certainly has had some growing pains, she’s fought for consumer protection and antitrust reform in a way that U.S. regulators haven’t seen for the better part of a generation.

Whether it’s taking on automaker privacy abuses, supporting right to repair reforms, or taking aim at Amazon’s attempt to dominate the entirety of online retail, she’s notably different from the feckless revolving door careerists that usually stock regulatory agencies, which is why the Barry Dillers, Reid Hoffmans, and Mark Cubans of the world are so hot and bothered.

Enter the FTC’s latest effort: cracking down on the predatory and annoying ways companies try to prevent you from cancelling services. Cemented by AOL in its heyday, and perfected by everybody from the Wall Street Journal to your broadband and wireless phone provider, corporate America loves to make it as annoying as possible to simply cancel services, often actively hiding any way to do so.

The FTC says its new revamp of the FTC’s 1973 “Negative Option Rule” requires companies be completely transparent about the limitations of deals and promotions, prohibits them from making cancelling services difficult or impossible, requires consumer actively consent to having read terms and deal restrictions, and generally makes cancelling a service as easy as signing up.

“Some businesses too often trick consumers into paying for subscriptions they no longer want or didn’t sign up for in the first place,” Khan said. “The proposed rule would require that companies make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one. The proposal would save consumers time and money, and businesses that continued to use subscription tricks and traps would be subject to stiff penalties.”

Most of the FTC’s new guidelines will go into effect in 180 days, with some in effect within 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. The rulemaking updates started way back in 2019. There’s a fact sheet here that explains the proposal in more detail.

Consumer groups like US PIRG were pleased.

“For years, too many companies have used questionable tactics to trap customers in recurring payments even if they no longer want or need their services,” US PIRG Consumer Watchdog Director Teresa Murray said of the rule changes. “Subscriptions and memberships have often been like a visit to the Hotel California: ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.’ Now, you’ll be able to leave.”

Trade groups representing everything from media companies and telecoms to car wash operations called the rules “burdensome and unnecessary.” Publishers and Advertisers like the News/Media Alliance also complained about the rules, insisting they would “confuse customers” (one alliance group member, the WSJ, worked for years to make subscription cancellation as annoying as humanly possible, and didn’t seem too upset about consumer confusion at the time).

I’d suspect that, as in most sectors, these organizations will likely file suit to scuttle the new rules, insisting that several recent decisions by a corrupt Supreme Court have effectively made U.S. consumer protection effectively illegal without the specific, uncharacteristically-competent approval of a Congress too corrupt to function. They’re having more success on this front than you might think.

Again, there’s a lot of grumbling about Khan, but most of it oddly omits the numerous and popular consumer protection reforms she continues to implement cracking down on obvious consumer pain points the government previously spent decades doing nothing about.

It can be easy for people to dislike the secondary market if they aren’t the ones selling into it. Commonly referred to as “scalpers”, the fact is that the secondary market is a very important part of the economy. It’s how goods retain some of their value, for instance. And when goods are sold several times, this naturally feeds into the economy and tax revenue for the country. It can also be a fantastic indicator of pricing efficiency in the primary market. For instance, if a good is bought and able to be resold very quickly on the secondary market for more than the original price, that can be an indicator for the original producer that they can consider pricing their goods higher.

But if you suddenly can’t afford a limited good because of its cost on the secondary market, that can certainly be aggravating. And apparently sometimes the original producer of the product can be annoyed on fans’ behalf as well. That is the case with one Larian director who is very mad at “scalpers” for selling Baldur’s Gate 3 Collector’s Edition copies at ten times the original price.

This was brought to stark attention by Larian’s publishing director Michael Douse, who tweeted (exxed?) to express his disgust at the listings he was finding online.

“Hate scalpers, man,” he wrote on X. “I understand how commodity works, but this CE isn’t a commodity it’s designed to make someone happy not rich.”

Now, frankly, the rest of that Kotaku post is likewise filled with a bunch of empty-calorie remarks on how bad “scalpers” are and how everything about this entire situation sucks and blah, blah, blah. Whether the author was merely attempting to toss red meat to readers or simply has a profound misunderstanding of what the secondary market is and does is of no material importance to me. I’d much rather focus on some very correct and key points that same author makes.

The main thrust of Douse’s complaint above is about people who bought the Collector’s Edition primarily to trade it, not because they’re some superfan or whatever. In other words, according to this complaint, the problem is that people looking to make money off the Collector’s Edition are buying it and creating scarcity for the everyday fan, thereby driving the price up to a point where most of those fans cannot afford it, or at least have to buy it at a highly inflated price. Now try to square that complaint with the entire existence of a Collector’s Edition in the first place.

It’s a situation that’s created by the artificial scarcity of the object in the first place, where a company deliberately doesn’t make as much of something as there are people who want to buy it, then price that thing at far more than it costs to make (because, that’s how commerce works) to reduce the number of people who’ll find it within their means.

If it were mass produced, it presumably wouldn’t be a “Collector’s” version (whatever that actually means—“I’ve collected all one of this Baldur’s Gate 3 boxed version!”), but then it would be available for everyone who wants it at the recommended price. And scalpers wouldn’t have a market to exploit.

Exactly! If Douse and Larian would like to rid the world of inflated prices for Collector’s Editions, let them go first. The call, as the saying goes, is coming from inside the house. Larian created this entire secondary market through its own decisions on production quantities for a special version of the product it chose to make. And, to be clear, it can absolutely do every bit of that without any complaint from me.

But then those same people that created the secondary market should probably stop whining about how it operates.

There is simply too much going on here to pretend there’s a way to succinctly sum up what’s led us to this point in our coverage. A small Kansas newspaper’s offices, the home of its 98-year-old owner (who died shortly after the raid), and the home of Marion vice mayor Ruth Herbel were all raided by the Marion County police, led by its new police chief, Gideon Cody, an apparent refugee seeking solid employment after having (allegedly) become a bit of a problem for the Kansas City Police Department.

I’ll try, but I’m going to crib from some of my previous notes. There’s Kari Newell, a local business person who was seeking a liquor license for a new business when her previous drunk-driving record became public. There’s County Attorney Joel Ensey, who claimed to have no knowledge of the raid until public records showed he actually knew plenty about it beforehand. There’s the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which also disavowed all knowledge, until it became clear it had knowledge as well, at which point it began publicly condemning Chief Cody and his department. There’s the mayor who didn’t like his deputy mayor and seemed to be all too willing to indulge the police chief. There’s the judge who signed off on the search warrants without reading them and then tried to distance herself from actions — a judge who apparently had some drunk driving problems of her own. There are the communications Chief Cody made to Kari Newell, informing her he was going to raid the newspaper to shut down its coverage of her and, presumably, any further investigation into his law enforcement past. In the middle of all of this, there’s some bullshit computer crime charges, which were invoked despite the newspaper accessing driver record data legally through a third party.

Then there’s this, which opens up the court decision [PDF] finding (mostly) in favor of former Vice Mayor Ruth Herbel, who sued following the raid on her house that accompanied the PD’s raid of the newspaper and its owner’s house. It’s the sort of thing that might make one yearn for the relative innocence of big city corruption as it details exactly why a bunch of local officials and government employees may have conspired to intimidate their enemies (a newspaper and a deputy mayor not exactly fond of the mayor) into silence by sending out some guys with guns to rifle through their belongings and walk off with their electronics. If you thought this was nasty and convoluted before, buckle up:

Ruth has been politically active. She ran for city council in November 2019. She said she was “tired of the dishonesty in the city administration.” Ruth campaigned with [Mayor David] Mayfield on a platform of change and transparency. But Ruth and Mayfield began to clash after the election. The local paper reported that Ruth and Mayfield disagreed about city-council meetings. Ruth wanted freewheeling discussion, dissent, and debate. Mayfield seemed to want to act as a rubber stamp.

Ruth and Mayfield had several disputes. Mayfield once called her a “bitch” during an executive session. Mayfield began trying to control to whom Ruth could speak, how much she could speak, and on what topics. In November 2021, he required her to first raise concerns with the city administrator before raising them at meetings. He required her to give advance notice of any ordinances or policies she planned to mention. Mayfield had the city attorney send Ruth a letter warning her it could be illegal for her to speak to anyone interested in dealing with the city without full council approval. Mayfield forbade Ruth from contacting the Kansas League of Municipalities. Mayfield eventually forbade Ruth from contacting the city attorney. No other city council members had these restrictions.

Ruth frequently criticized Mayfield in the Marion County Record, which is the local paper. Ruth complained Mayfield was violating the city charter, handing out funds without authorization, giving raises to favored employees, holding illegal meetings, and disregarding procedure. The paper ran several stories detailing the tension between Ruth and Mayfield. The stories included comments by Ruth that upset Mayfield. In July 2022, Mayfield and the city council passed an ordinance over Ruth’s dissent. Ruth organized a referendum against the ordinance. She spent her own money on signs and advertising that criticized the ordinance. In December 2022, voters rejected Mayfield’s ordinance by an overwhelming margin. The paper described it as a personal defeat for Mayfield.

About a month after the failed vote, Mayfield’s wife filed a petition to recall Ruth from her position on the city council. Mayfield was a sponsor of the petition. Mayfield’s wife promoted the removal petition on Facebook, which Mayfield re-posted. The recall petition failed because there weren’t enough signatures collected.

In June 2023, Mayfield ordered the city administrator to make all city council members sign an acknowledgment that they held their office on an at-will basis, even though they were elected. Ruth crossed out the “at-will” language before signing.

That’s kind of a lot. And that explains why the mayor and his supporters in the city council would have been perfectly fine with supporting raids of the newspaper and Ruth Herbel’s home. But to do that, you need the assistance of law enforcement. Well, it seems Gideon Cody and his business-owning, drunk-driving friend were close enough they were able to collaborate on other forms of intimidation.

Cody’s appointment as police chief immediately introduced a new level of antagonism.

Mayfield decided to hire Cody despite Cody’s troubled history. Cody took the oath of office before the city council had a chance to formally vote on hiring him.

Cody immediately showed hostility toward the media. He declined interview requests with the paper and stopped providing weekly activity reports to the paper. The paper published that he had discontinued the practice. Cody also told the city administrator not to provide the paper with the pay scale for officers.

Cody’s view of the media was shared by others in Mayfield’s administration. By the end of July 2023, the city administrator told Mayfield they should cease all communication with the paper. Mayfield shared posts on Facebook calling journalists the “real villains in America.”

From there, it just descends into full-blown corrupt insanity — the sort of thing you wish was relegated to works of fiction.

[Mayor] Mayfield instructed Cody to open an investigation into his administration’s critics. Cody reached out to KDOR [the TV station website where the paper had verified the DUI info], and Mayfield and Cody both reached out to [Kari] Newell to warn her that Ruth knew about her suspended license. Mayfield and Cody claimed that Ruth would oppose Newell’s catering license because of the DUI, even though Ruth’s concerns were just about eligibility.

Cody told Newell that someone had stolen the letter from her mailbox. He didn’t have any factual basis for this. Newell said he was wrong, and Cody, again without factual basis, said someone had stolen her identity. Cody told Newell that the paper had shared her driving record with Ruth even though Cody knew [Pam] Maag [another town resident] had given the letter to both Ruth and the paper.

Mayfield told Newell that the only way to stop Ruth and get her removed from the city council was to have her arrested and charged with a crime. Mayfield and Cody decided it was a crime for Ruth “to merely possess a screenshot of a screenshot of a letter detailing information posted publicly to Facebook.”

There’s so much more in there, including the cooperation and guidance of the local sheriff, who felt his office would be embarrassed if it became public it had allowed Newell to not only drive, but operate a catering business (presumably involving driving commercially-licensed vehicles) without a valid license. Working with Chief Cody and the mayor, computer crime charges were whipped up and a warrant request handed to a judge — one that carefully omitted every single fact that would have shown no accused of any crime had actually committed these crimes.

There’s a lot to take in here and I encourage you to read the entire decision to fully comprehend the sheer amount of deliberate misconduct engaged in by multiple government officials. The upshot of the decision is this, though: most of the claims survive. Several parties are dismissed, but — most importantly — the ones still on the hook are Chief Cody and his Marion PD underlings. The city itself isn’t allowed to escape the lawsuit either, thanks to the mayor’s overt involvement and complicity in these horrendous civil rights violations. The lawsuit will move forward, with Ruth Herbel continuing to be represented by the Institute of Justice.

This is an extremely ugly chapter in American law enforcement history. Unfortunately, it’s one of several and it certainly won’t be the last time the government abuses its power to silence people it doesn’t like, including journalists who are given the utmost in First Amendment protections when it comes to handling issues of public interest. But hopefully this will cause the next would-be Chief Cody/Mayor David Mayfield to pause before deciding the communities they’re supposed to be serving are fiefdoms they can control through intimidation and unlawful actions.

Over the summer we noted how the brunchlords in charge of Paramount (CBS) decided to eliminate decades of MTV News journalism and Comedy Central history as part of their ongoing and utterly mindless “cost saving” efforts. It was just the latest casualties in an ever-consolidating and very broken U.S. media business routinely run by some of the least competent people imaginable.

We’ve noted how with streaming subscriber growth slowing, quarterly returns have stagnated. So media giants (and the incompetent brunchlords who usually fail upward into positions of unearned power within them) have turned their attention to all the usual tricks: layoffs, pointless megamergers, price hikes, and weird and costly consumer restrictions to goose quarterly earnings and generate tax breaks.

That of course includes Paramount, which recently announced a major merger with Redbird/Skydance that executives promised would result in untold and amazing new “synergies,” helping transform the company into a next-generation streaming juggernaut. Of course what’s actually happened, as usual, has been a whole bunch of layoffs, the second round of which hit this week:

“Paramount is looking to save some $500 million and plans to lay off 15 percent of its U.S.-based employees. Tuesday’s layoffs were the second round, following a first wave of job cuts in mid-August.”

In a statement, Paramount executives called the mass firings an evolution:

“Like the entire Media industry, we are working to accelerate streaming profitability while at the same time adjusting to the evolving landscape in our traditional businesses. Days like today are never easy. It is difficult to say goodbye to valued colleagues, and to those departing, we are incredibly grateful for your countless contributions.”

The new company is being overseen by Larry Ellison’s son David, who first used family Oracle wealth to purchase his role as a Hollywood producer, then received a $6 billion gift from dad to make the merger possible. Paramount had struggled with its ingenious strategy of charging higher and higher rates for lower and lower quality services, and eyed a merger as an executive escape hatch.

Again, the promise here is that this results in a better, leaner, more interesting company, but when it comes to media deals like this, that’s rarely the case. There’s hardly a single major media merger in the last twenty years that genuinely improved product quality or the fortunes of employees or consumers. And it’s almost never the strategically incompetent higher-level executives that wind up paying the price.

In reality, all the costs of debt-riddled transactions are borne by either consumers (in the form of higher prices, lower-quality services, and annoying new restrictions) or lower and mid-level employees in the form of layoffs. The AT&T–>Time Warner–>Discovery series of mergers was the poster child for the madness and dysfunction caused by this “consolidation for consolidation’s sake” mindset.

Wall Street wants its improved quarterly returns at any cost. It doesn’t care if those short term profits result in a lower quality product, consumer backlash, a loss of our collective history, or permanent damage to the brand. That’s a problem for somebody else to figure out after the extraction class has already made their money on the front end.

It’s a pointless doom loop that’s infected both entertainment media and traditional journalism. By the time any sort of check comes due for executive incompetence, they’ve either retired on the back of outsized compensation, or are off to another company to repeat the entire process all over again, having been financially disincentivized from learning absolutely anything from the experience.

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When Congress passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) in 1994, they were assured by then-FBI Director Louis Freeh that the mandated wiretap backdoors posed no security risks. Fast forward to today, following the news of a massive CALEA hack and Senator Ron Wyden is reminding the DOJ of that history, while urging the Attorney General to better protect Americans’ security, in part by no longer demanding backdoors in encryption systems.

Last week, we wrote about the bombshell story of the Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon apparently having “months or longer” access to the mandated wiretapping system found within our phone system. We noted how this story should put an end to the idea — often pushed by lawmakers and law enforcement — that surely we can put similar “backdoors” into encrypted communications.

Senator Ron Wyden has now sent a letter to the FCC and the DOJ highlighting a bit of the history behind CALEA, the statute that mandated wiretapping of the phone lines. In particular, Wyden points out that cybersecurity professionals warned Congress at the time that CALEA would lead to massive vulnerabilities in our phone system and could put everyone’s communications at risk.

These telecommunications companies are responsible for their lax cybersecurity and their failure to secure their own systems, but the government shares much of the blame. The surveillance systems reportedly hacked were mandated by federal law, through the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). CALEA, which was enacted in 1994 at the urging of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), forced phone companies to install wiretapping technology into then-emerging digital phone networks. In 2006, acting on a request from the FBI, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expanded this backdoor mandate to broadband internet companies.

During the Congressional hearings for CALEA, cybersecurity experts warned that these backdoors would be prime targets for hackers and foreign intelligence services. However, these concerns were dismissed by then-FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, who testified to Congress that experts’ fears of increased vulnerability were “unfounded and misplaced.” Congress, relying on the FBI Director’s assurances that the security risks experts warned about could be addressed, passed the law mandating backdoors. The Department of Justice (DOJ) received $1 billion in today’s dollars to provide industry grants for the development and purchase of new wiretapping technology.

The letter suggests that the DOJ should use this to start pushing back on efforts to backdoor encryption:

DOJ must stop pushing for policies that harm Americans’ privacy and security by championing surveillance backdoors in other communications technologies, like encrypted messaging apps. There is, and has long been, broad consensus among cybersecurity experts that wiretapping capabilities undermine the security of communications technology and create an irresistible target for hackers and spies. Even so, law enforcement officials, including your predecessor, as well as the current and former FBI Directors, have denied this reality, spread disinformation about non-existent secure backdoors, and sought to pressure companies to weaken the security of their products.

The letter also asks the FCC to issue rules regarding security on CALEA wiretaps. The FCC has had the ability to do this for decades, but has mostly chosen to stay out of it:

Chairwoman Rosenworcel, your agency has the authority to require strong cybersecurity defenses in these systems today. The FCC should initiate a rulemaking process to update the CALEA regulations to fully implement the system security requirements in the law. At a minimum, these updated regulations should establish baseline cybersecurity standards for telecommunications carriers, enforced by steep fines; require independent, annual third-party cybersecurity audits; require board-level cybersecurity expertise; and require senior executives annually sign certifications of compliance with the cybersecurity standards.

Overall, this is a good letter. It would be nice if the DOJ, at least, started pushing back on backdooring encryption, rather than (as it has done for years) pushing for such a security disaster.

Of course, Elon Musk had to take Twitter private. If he had to answer to shareholders, he would have been ousted months ago for his systematic, single-minded destruction of the company’s value.

Pretty much every move he’s made has been some level of bad, ranging from confusing to annoying to infuriating to catastrophic. Alienating long-term users, chasing away advertisers, amplifying the voices of some the worst people in the world, kowtowing to foreign dictators Donald Trump considers to be great leaders, turning verification into pay-to-play, and generally just being an all-around asshole, Musk has managed to turn a social media pioneer into a toxic dumpster fire in record time.

It’s not just advertisers fleeing the platform. It’s also the public sector. Government agencies also use services like Twitter to reach constituents and they’re beginning to see why it might be a bad idea to send out their messages via a service awash in a sea of hate, misinformation, extremism, and grifting.

Even entities that often align themselves with the sort of authoritarians Musk and his Trump-loving fanboys dig the most are finding ExTwitter to have moved a bit too far to the extremist side of the spectrum to continue doing (government) business with the platform. Here are Andy Bruce and Muvija M reporting for Reuters about the latest collateral damage produced by the Musk regime:

Reuters contacted all 45 territorial police forces and British Transport Police by email. Of the 33 to give details about their policy, 10 forces who collectively police nearly 13 million people said they were actively reviewing their presence on X, while 13 said they frequently reviewed all their social media platforms.

[…]

Yet of these 23 forces, six said they were cutting their presence to just one or two X accounts. One, North Wales Police, serving nearly 700,000 residents, stopped using X completely in August.

“We … felt that the platform was no longer consistent with our values and therefore we have withdrawn our use of it,” Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman said, adding that they would continue to monitor and review alternative platforms.

The quote in bold could be applied to a large number of former Twitter users, many of which began leaving the platform after Musk made it clear he’d prefer to be surrounded by conspiracy theorists, domestic extremists, far-right racists, and people willing to turn to violence rather than respect a peaceful transition of power. Then there are the Nazis. Lots of them. And all of this is surrounded by the non-stop gibbering of blue-checked asshats either trying to foist their bigotry on others or simply cluttering up threats with auto-generated replies pushing whatever crypto scam they happen to be participating in.

North Wales pulled the plug. It looks like another police agency may soon be headed for the exit door as well.

Gwent Police said they were reviewing X because of questions about “the tone of the platform and whether that is the right place to reach our communities”. All Gwent’s individual officer accounts have been removed.

It’s not just cops no longer seeing the value in maintaining ExTwitter accounts, although it’s always a surprise to see law enforcement agencies exit a platform that caters to so many of their biggest fans: bigots, white nationalists, and others who will lick any boot they see so long as it’s someone they hate being pinned under the heel.

Interacting and informing the public is an important feature of social media services. But other government agencies are now deciding it’s not worth wading through a cesspool just to hand out a few extra digital pamphlets.

Of 32 ambulance and fire services surveyed by Reuters, nine said they had actively reviewed their presence on X. England’s North East Ambulance Service announced in July that it had stopped posting there.

[…]

In recent months, some British charities, and health, and educational establishments have said they will no longer post to X.

Every day brings more news like this. Soon, ExTwitter will be of interest to no one but cultural anthropologists. Even those demanding the resurrection of banned accounts are bound to get bored with seeing nothing but their own bigotry and stupidity reflected back at them by a bunch of blue checks with similar interests and a similar lack of anything actually interesting to say.

For public services that seek to serve the entirety of their public, exiting X is the smart move, even if it means temporarily losing a little bit of reach. There’s nothing to be gained by being one of the last rational voices on a service that is pretty much just 4chan but with a more attractive UI.

I’ve written extensively that U.S. broadband is slow, spotty, and expensive thanks to regulatory capture and regional monopoly power. Republicans have propped up this broken status quo at every opportunity, routinely working to undermine state and federal consumer protection, while letting companies like AT&T and Comcast quite literally write terrible state and federal telecom law.

So it’s a bit ironic that the GOP effort to cultivate votes in swing states using an Elon Musk PAC app is running into problems due to substandard, slow broadband access in those same states.

The Guardian notes that the Trump campaign and the Elon Musk-backed America PAC use a management app called Campaign Sidekick to confirm that door to door canvassers are actually reaching “low information” voters in swing states. But the app keeps crashing because it requires bandwidth that a lot of these local areas simply don’t have:

“The Campaign Sidekick app effectively forces canvassers who have less than 40mbps of internet – sufficient to stream 4K video – to use “offline walkbooks” which have no geo-tracking feature and do not always upload after a route is completed, the people said.

As a result, the Trump campaign and America Pac then have little way to know whether canvassers are actually knocking on doors or whether they are cheating – for instance, by “speed-running” routes where they literally throw campaign materials at doors as they drive past.”

So for one, that the app requires 40 Mbps in rural swing states to track canvasser movement means it’s a badly designed app. There are ways to do this using location movement data or lower resolution video that shouldn’t be anywhere near this bandwidth-intensive.

But here’s where I also remind you that Republicans are directly responsible for America’s sluggish, shitty, expensive, slow broadband access in the first place.

The GOP voted against the COVID relief and broadband infrastructure bills that were intended to bring affordable broadband to most of these areas (though they lie and take credit for among misinformed constituents anyway). And they’ve also opposed efforts to require that giant telecom monopolies ensure that networks built with taxpayer money are actually affordable.

The GOP is also currently helping the telecom industry dismantle what’s left of the FCC’s consumer protection authority under the pretense this would somehow magically result in “free market innovation.” Lack of corporate oversight results in companies like AT&T, Comcast, or Verizon seeing little to no real world accountability for monopolistic behavior, harming broadband speeds, availability, and pricing.

The Trump arm of the GOP also just killed a popular program that was helping to provide affordable broadband access to low-income voters across these states. Republicans also routinely rubber stamp competition-eroding telecom mergers resulting in less price competition and spottier access.

Not that I expect local voters to make any of these connections (in large part because local and national journalism isn’t all that interested in telling them the truth), but it’s ironic the Trump GOP ground game is being inconvenienced by their own telecom policies. That’s probably as close as they’ve ever gotten to actually owning the real-world impact their shitty policies routinely have on their own constituents.

There’s no evidence anywhere that even remotely suggests registered sex offenders leverage Halloween to lure victims to their homes. It’s just as untrue and ridiculous as the annual assertions people are lacing (cheap) candy with (expensive) drugs for… well, those reasons go completely unexplored.

Sex offenders are already subject to a considerable number of restrictions, which often include being forced to live as far away from any children as possible. But that doesn’t stop grandstanding law enforcement officials from pretending they’re doing something for the children by continuing to punish adults who’ve already served their time.

When officials start to think they can keep punishing people who’ve done their jail time and are following their post-release mandates, that’s when things get litigious. And that’s when law enforcement officials start finding out it’s not ok to continue to heap additional punishment on people. It’s unconstitutional.

Back in 2018, Sheriff Gary Long of Butts County, Georgia found this out the hard way. He and his deputies started placing these signs in the yards of registered sex offenders:

This stupidity managed to be topped by Grovetown, Georgia’s mayor, who claimed he could keep everyone safe by locking up registered sex offenders in city hall for a few hours every Halloween night to keep them from bothering any kids. The problem with that is, well, the Constitution. You can’t just detain people against their will for any length of time, much less three or four hours — not if there’s no constitutionally supported reason to do so.

All of this ridiculousness finally came to an end, albeit four years later when the Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that planting “no trick-or-treat” signs in sex offenders’ yards was compelled speech — the sort of thing that’s always an extremely obvious violation of the First Amendment.

The state of Missouri had the same bad idea. It passed a law that did the same thing: compelled speech. The statute required sex offenders to post signs at their homes stating “No candy or treats at this residence” every October 31st. Somehow, this law managed to remain on the books for more than 15 years (it was enacted in 2008) before being successfully challenged.

But the law is no longer, for the time being. A ruling [PDF] issued by a Missouri federal court puts the obvious conclusion in plain writing: compelled speech is — as it always has been — unconstitutional. (via Courthouse News Service)

In this case, there’s already been actual harm. Thomas Sanderson, who was convicted in 2006, continued to hand out candy at the house he shared with his girlfriend, reasoning (incorrectly) that the 2008 law did not apply to him since his conviction occurred before the law was passed. He was arrested in 2022 on Halloween night by local police officers. The current police chief testified that his predecessor didn’t do anything to enforce the law, hence the lengthy gap between the law’s passage (2008), the plaintiff’s placement on the sex offender registry (2006), and his 2022 arrest.

During testimony, this somewhat hilarious fact about the unconstitutional law was related to the court by multiple government witnesses.

These witnesses confirmed that the sign posting requirement does not define the size of the sign or the size of the font for the phrase, “No candy or treats at this residence.” These witnesses also confirmed that registered sex offenders could display the sign at the back of the residence, or even inside the residence, and still be in compliance with the sign posting requirement.

In other words, the law was just some performative bullshit meant to score easy dunks on sex offenders while lawmakers pretended to care about the children. And the plaintiff definitely has standing to sue to have the law ruled unconstitutional because he had already been arrested for violating it.

Those facts mean the government (represented here by state Attorney General Andrew Bailey and the chief of the police department that arrested him) had no options to get this lawsuit dismissed. The rest of the evidence on hand just makes it that much easier for the court to find the law unconstitutional.

In the run-up to its conclusion, the court notes the Sheriff of Butts County case that ended with the Eleventh Circuit reminding the law enforcement official that compelled speech is clearly unconstitutional and that there’s a ton of case law already on the books that makes it legally implausible to claim the sheriff couldn’t have possibly known he was violating sex offenders’ rights.

The end result is the Missouri court tearing apart the compelled speech part of the law, along with the rationales the government offered in defense of it.

First, a sign stating “No candy or treats at this residence” does not clarify the danger that
the statute serves to mitigate. The sign contains no warning that there is a convicted sex offender or other dangerous person at that residence. The sign posting requirement does not even dictate the font size or location of the sign to ensure visibility to children or others.

[…]

More significantly, the other restrictions mandated in the Halloween Statute adequately address all of Defendants’ interests. To wit, sex offenders must “[a]void all Halloween-related
contact with children.” See Mo. Rev. Stat. § 589.426.1(1). Sex offenders must “[r]emain inside his or her residence between the hours of 5 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. unless required to be elsewhere for just cause, including but not limited to employment or medical emergencies.” Id. § 589.426.1(2). Sex offenders must also “[l]eave all outside residential lighting off during the evening hours after 5 p.m.” Id. § 589.426.1(4). These provisions prevent sex offenders from being in contact with children outside trick-or-treating and also deter children from venturing onto the properties of sex offenders.

Additionally, law enforcement witnesses testified that the sex-offender registry, which contains each registrant’s name, address, photograph, and convicted offense information, is available on the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s website. This further diminishes the need to require registered sex offenders to disseminate the same information on signs on their private property. The evidence presented has not shown that the sign posting requirement adds any value to protect children from Plaintiff, or other registered sex offenders, on Halloween. Even without the sign posting requirement, Defendants are free to enforce the other sections of the Halloween Statute. Plaintiff can still be charged and prosecuted for keeping his residence’s lights on, participating in Halloween activities that involve contact with children such as handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, or leaving his house absent just cause on Halloween. The Court does not discount the importance of the government’s interest in protecting children from sex offenders on Halloween, but the evidence fails to show that the sign posting requirement is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest in the least restrictive manner.“

And with that, the compelled speech clause of the so-called “Halloween Law” no longer exists, permanently blocked by the Missouri court.

For these reasons, the Court concludes that Plaintiff has met his burden of establishing that declaratory and permanent statewide injunctive relief is warranted. Further, because the
Court has found that Missouri Revised Statute Section 589.426.1(3) is unconstitutional, it is
therefore unenforceable against not only Plaintiff, but all others subject to this section of the
Halloween statute.

The state should have seen this coming. You can’t compel speech. And, at the very least, if you’re going to try to compel speech, you should make sure the part of the law that compels speech actually accomplishes the intent of the law. Something so poorly written someone can comply without posting a sign anywhere trick-or-treaters might see it shows this law was passed solely so legislators could appear to be doing something about something. In the end, they all ended up looking like fools.