Civil asset forfeiture in the news again

Some time ago, I wrote about the process known as ‘civil asset forfeiture’ where the authorities can pre-emptively seize someone’s assets and force them to incur the trouble and expense of going to court to get it back. This practice nets the government about $5 billion in revenue annually and many local jurisdictions abuse this power and use such tactics to pay for their police and justice systems.
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The secret rules for blacklisting people

The US blacklists people in many ways, with such people being subjected to snooping and harassment and being put on no-fly lists. And once you are on those secret terrorist watchlists it is almost impossible to get off. Investigative journalists Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux at The Intercept have obtained a key government document that explains how the government decides who goes on the list. They have published the 166-page document in full. The document is unclassified but the administration had vigorously resisted any disclosure about it.
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Ordinary people doing the right thing

We may think that issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples is something that started happening in just the last decade. But that is not the case

Back in 1975, Clela Rorex was a 31-year old woman who had recently been elected county clerk in Boulder, Colorado. One day two men came in and asked her for a marriage license. She had never met any gay people before and was not sure what to do so she went and checked the rule book and discovered that the laws in the state did not specify that marriage had to be between a man and a woman and the district attorney confirmed that. So she issued the license.
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Shutting down the debate

Jon Stewart discovers what it is like when you try to talk about Israel and Palestine.

(This clip aired on July 21, 2014. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)

Heading for a showdown

In order to maintain their non-profit status, the IRS has rules that say that such institutions have to refrain from outright partisan politics such as supporting political parties and candidates. Some churches have chafed under this restriction, think it an unconstitutional infringement on their free speech rights, and have sought to directly challenge that rule by organizing ‘Pulpit Freedom Sundays’ where they explicitly endorsed candidates and even sent the tapes to the IRS, daring them to come after them.
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Request to readers

Some readers of this blog very kindly send me links to items that they think may be of interest. I appreciate them and often use them in subsequent posts. I do have a request, though, that is triggered by the fact that there are many spam messages out there that use links and attachments as ways of transmitting various kinds of malware.

As a result, I never click on links or open attachments that I am not sure are genuinely meant for me, even if they are from people I know well. I only do so if the link or attachment is accompanied by a message that is highly unlikely to have been generated by a bot, which means that it includes something that is not generic but is specific to me and goes beyond just an opening greeting that has my name. It does not have to be a long treatise, just something that tells me that the message actually was targeted to me personally.

This is a practice that I recommend to everyone as a safety precaution.

Thanks.

The effect of early exposure to religion on magical thinking

I briefly mentioned before a study that said that children brought up in a religious environment had a harder time distinguishing whether stories that had fantastical elements were real or fictional. Unfortunately, I did not have access to the full paper but reader Raven did have access and he kindly sent me a copy and I have now had a chance to look at it. [Update: Ben Finney in the comments has kindly provided a link to the full paper.]
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Film review: Cowboy del Amor (2005)

This is a documentary that by all rights should be offensive and yet it was likable. It tells the story of Ivan Thompson, a 60-year old cowboy from New Mexico who acts as a matchmaker between American men and Mexican women. He stumbled into this business after his own divorce when he placed an ad for a wife in Mexican newspapers and received about 80 responses. He realized that if there were that many Mexican women who were seeking American husbands, then he might be able to match them up, so he advertised his services to American men. The takers are usually older divorced men who seek more submissive women and think that Mexican women make better candidates.
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