“Caylee’s Law,” a proposed federal bill that would charge parents with a felony if they fail to report a missing child within 24 hours, or if they fail to report the death of a child within an hour.

Radley Balko points out the many reasons that such a law would be a stupendously bad idea, verging on being evil itself.

In an interview with CNN, Crowder concedes that she didn’t consult with a single law enforcement official before coming up with her 24-hour and 1-hour limits. This raises some questions. How did she come up with those cutoffs? Did she consult with any grief counselors to see if there may be innocuous reasons why an innocent person who just witnessed a child’s death might not immediately report it, such as shock, passing out, or some other sort of mental breakdown? Did she consult with a forensic pathologist to see if it’s even possible to pin down the time of death with the sort of precision you’d need to make Caylee’s Law enforceable? Have any of the lawmakers who have proposed or are planning to propose this law actually consulted with anyone with some knowledge of these issues?

What if a child dies while sleeping? When would you start the clock on the parent’s one-hour window to report? From the time the parent discovers the child is dead, or from the time the child actually dies? If it’s the former, can you really believe what a parent tells you if he knows a felony charge hinges on his answer? What if a parent or babysitter missed the deadline because she fell asleep at the time the child was playing outside and suffered a fatal accident? You could argue this is evidence of bad parenting or inattentive babysitting, but under those circumstances, do you really want to charge a grieving parent or heartbroken babysitter with a felony?

The portion of the bill that requires a parent to report a missing child within 24 hours is just as fraught with problems. When does that clock start? From the time the child actually gets abducted, gets lost, or is somehow killed, or at the time the parents noticed the child was missing? How do you pinpoint the time that they “noticed”? When teenager Rosie Larsen is abducted and murdered in the new AMC drama The Killing, it takes two days for her parents to notice she’s missing. They thought she was spending the night at a friend’s house, and she and her friends often rotated sleeping over at one another’s homes on the weekends. The Killing is fiction, but this isn’t an implausible scenario. Again, are we really so angry about the Casey Anthony verdict that we’re prepared to charge grieving parents with a felony because it takes them longer than some arbitrary deadline to notice their child is missing?

The law and the attention it attracts could also cause problems of overcompliance. How many parents will notify the authorities with false reports within an hour or two, out of fear of becoming suspects? How many such calls and wasted police resources on false alarms will it take before police grow jaded and begin taking note of missing child reports, but don’t bother investigating them until much later? How many legitimate abductions will then go uninvestigated during the critical first few hours because they were lost in the pile of false reports inspired by Caylee’s Law?

It isn’t difficult to come up with other scenarios where innocent people may get ensnared in Caylee’s Law.

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Assertions by the prosecution that Casey Anthony conducted extensive computer searches on the word “chloroform” were based on inaccurate data, a software designer who testified at the trial said Monday.

The designer, John Bradley, said Ms. Anthony had visited what the prosecution said was a crucial Web site only once, not 84 times, as prosecutors had asserted. He came to that conclusion after redesigning his software, and immediately alerted prosecutors and the police about the mistake, he said.

The finding of 84 visits was used repeatedly during the trial to suggest that Ms. Anthony had planned to murder her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, who was found dead in 2008. Ms. Anthony, who could have faced the death penalty, was acquitted of the killing on July 5.

The already weak circumstantial evidence for a “murder” verdict is now even weaker. I still think there’s plenty of evidence to convict Ms. Anthony of being a horrible parent. But that’s not the same thing as proving, beyond any reasonable doubt, that she acted with deliberate premeditation to commit murder. Losing this piece of evidence just makes those doubts all the more reasonable.

Gandolf’s words to Frodo, from the Fellowship of the Ring still ring hauntingly true.

Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.

International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was ordered held without bail Monday after Manhattan prosecutors charged him with seven counts stemming from allegations he sexually assaulted a hotel housekeeper—a decision that sends one of the towering figures of international finance and French politics to a jail cell on New York’s Rikers Island.

I like that very much.

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Meanwhile, while Bernard-Henri is scandalized that a mere chambermaid can get a “great” man like Strauss-Kahn in trouble with the law merely by credibly accusing him of sexual assault, I am proud to live in a country where a housekeeper can get a world leader pulled off a plane bound for Paris.

The U.S. may not always live up to its ideals but it’s always a rousing sight when it does.

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I recently read about how horrifically Dr. Phil treated fathers on a recent episode of his show. What I read was enough to get me angry all over again. (For those who don’t understand, try reading the article but substitute “mother” everytime you see “father” in the story and visa-versa. Now does it make you mad?)

In the Creek case, Sarah Creek has repeatedly accused father Sheldon Creek of sexually abusing their daughter.

In the episode, Dr. Phil came down unequivicably on the side of Sarah Creek. In so doing, he overlooked 13 different problems with her allegations.

Problem #1-Sylvia Creek has been examined for possible child sexual abuse on 5 separate occasions, and not one of the examinations has substantiated any of the charges

Problem #2 Child Protective Services has repeatedly investigated accusations against Sheldon Creek, and has never substantiated any of them.

Problem #3: Custody evaluator Sean Jackson, PhD did not believe that Sheldon Creek had molested his daughter.

Problem #4: Sheldon Creek passed an FBI polygraph examination concerning the molestation allegations.

Problem #5 The assertion that Sylvia Creek is being sexually abused and is experiencing great trauma is contradicted by the report of Sylvia Creek’s therapist Linda Falcon.

Problem #6: The assertion that Sylvia Creek is being sexually abused and is experiencing great trauma is contradicted by minor’s [Sylvia Creek] counsel Dana A., Esq. and Sylvia’s teachers and other professionals involved in the case.

Problem #7: Mediator Don Yarborough doesn’t believe the molestation accusations.

Problem #8: Angela R., MD examined Sylvia on 8/27/07 and found no evidence of sexual abuse.

Problem #9: Sylvia was examined at the Sutter Hospital Emergency Room on 8/3/05 and no evidence of sexual abuse was found.

Problem #10: Sylvia was examined by Sutter Hospital on 2/14/07 and no evidence of sexual abuse was found.

Problem #11: Sylvia was examined at UC Davis on 8-22/23/06 and on 12/24/07 and again no evidence of sexual abuse was found.

Problem #12: Presiding judge Thomas A. Smith concluded that the molestation charges were false, and noted that “psychological evaluations concluded Sylvia was coached to report incidents of sexual and physical abuse”

Problem # 13: Presiding judge Thomas A. Smith agrees with Sheldon Creek’s contention that “Anytime a hearing/trial is scheduled, it is almost a guarantee that in the weeks or months prior, Sarah will make an accusation of abuse.”

Given the evidence in this case, it would be hard to conclude that Sheldon is/was molesting his daughter. The enormous amount of time and care that social services and the family court have devoted to examining the sexual abuse allegations and the evidence in general belie the mothers’ advocates’ contention that courts are biased against mothers or are turning their backs on children abused by their fathers. Five separate sexual abuse examinations failed to find any support for the accusations-how many more should they have been expected to conduct?

… Dr. Phil alleges that a family court has given custody to a child molester, yet the evidence is strong that this is not a molestation case, and the court certainly did not award custody in the case capriciously or without a thorough investigation.

Now, Dr. Phil has accused a man, a father, of sexually molesting his daughter. From the evidence I’ve seen, that charge is false and Dr. Phil is joining Sarah Creek in an ugly divorce power play. There is nothing honorable or good about such behavior. Dr. Phil should apologize to Sheldon Creek. It is absolutely despicable that he would choose to air such wild allegations with not a shred of substantiating evidence. Our society would rip Dr. Phil’s career to shreds if made these allegations against a woman, a mother. But, because he’s making them against, a man he’ll be applauded for his courage and his willingness to be a protector.

Shameful.

Last March, after the University of Maryland men’s basketball team beat Duke, students spilled out into College Park to celebrate. That brought out the riot police. In footage captured by several students with their iPhones, Maryland student Jack McKenna dances down the street with dozens of other students, then stops when he sees two cops on horseback. Unprovoked by McKenna, three riot cops then enter the picture, throw McKenna up against a wall, and begin beating him with their batons. According to attorney Christopher Griffiths—who is representing McKenna and another student, Benjamin Donat—both suffered concussions, contusions, and cuts from the beatings.

McKenna was charged with disorderly conduct, a charge that as of last week was still pending but now seems certain to be dropped. Prince George’s County has since suspended four police officers, the three captured on tape beating McKenna and the sergeant who supervised them. But were it not for those iPhone videos, it would have been McKenna’s word (and possibly those of whatever celebrating student witnesses he could round up) against the word of three of Maryland’s finest. Or at least three. It seems likely that a number of other cops would have come forward to lie on behalf of those who beat McKenna.

If that sounds harsh, consider this: After the iPhone video of McKenna’s beating emerged, investigators subpoenaed 60 hours of surveillance video from the College Park campus police. The only video police couldn’t manage to locate was the one from the camera aimed squarely at the area where McKenna was beaten. Funny how that works. Campus police claimed that a “technical error” with that particular camera caused it to record over the footage of the beating. As public pressure mounted, police later found what they claimed was a recording of the lost video. But two minutes of that video were missing. Coincidentally, those two minutes happened to depict key portions of McKenna’s beating. The kicker? The head of the campus video surveillance system, Lt. Joanne Ardovini, is married to one of the cops named in McKenna’s complaint. (Washington D.C.’s ABC News affiliate, WJLA, a station with a history of deferring to police spokesmen without bothering to verify the accuracy of their statements, quaintly referred to this as “a bizarre coincidence.”)

In another instance, Maryland police raided an individual’s home for video tapes after he committed the non-crime of video taping a police officer, on a public highway. The judge who authorized the illegal raid?

According to Graber, the name of the judge who signed off on the raid of his parents’ home doesn’t appear on the warrant. As Graber told Miller, “They told me they don’t want you to know who the judge is because of privacy.” If true, that statement is so absurd it’s mind numbing. A judge issued an illegal warrant for police to invade the private residence and rummage through the private belongings of a man who broke no laws, and we aren’t permitted to know the judge’s name in order to protect the judge’s privacy?

Here’s the bottom line: government officials, acting in their official capacity, have no right to privacy. You work for us. You have no more privacy rights, in the performance of your job, than any private sector employee in the performance of his job. And you’re not above the law either. Wearing a uniform isn’t an authorization to go out and beat people — or otherwise break the law — with impunity. Period. And, no, having a stressful job isn’t a good justification for mistreating American citizens.

An off-duty Orange County sheriff’s deputy, who allegedly was intoxicated when he crashed his Mercedes-Benz into another vehicle and injured a passenger, had crashed 30 minutes earlier and was allowed to drive from that accident scene by fellow deputies, authorities said Friday.

Sheriff’s deputies were called Monday afternoon to a crash involving Deputy Allan James Waters, 36, and another vehicle outside City Hall in Dana Point. Deputies took a report and permitted Waters keep driving, said Assistant Sheriff Mike James.

About 30 minutes later, at 5:20 p.m., Waters crashed his Mercedes-Benz into a Toyota in Laguna Niguel, causing it to cross the center median and slam into a tree, according to the California Highway Patrol. Dolores Molina, a 78-year-old passenger in the Toyota, suffered minor injuries.

And that, right there, is pretty much why I don’t respect law enforcement these days.

Last week’s address was particularly painful. It was almost scary to listen to. The President spoke quite passionately about his desire to tax big banks to pay for the assistance they’ve received over the past 2 years. This is part of what he had to say (emphasis added by me).

Much of the turmoil of this recession was caused by the irresponsibility of banks and financial institutions on Wall Street. These financial firms took huge, reckless risks in pursuit of short-term profits and soaring bonuses. They gambled with borrowed money, without enough oversight or regard for the consequences. And when they lost, they lost big. Little more than a year ago, many of the largest and oldest financial firms in the world teetered on the brink of collapse, overwhelmed by the consequences of their irresponsible decisions. This financial crisis nearly pulled the entire economy into a second Great Depression.

As a result, the American people – struggling in their own right – were placed in a deeply unfair and unsatisfying position. Even though these financial firms were largely facing a crisis of their own creation, their failure could have led to an even greater calamity for the country. That is why the previous administration started a program – the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP – to provide these financial institutions with funds to survive the turmoil they helped unleash. It was a distasteful but necessary thing to do.

Many originally feared that most of the $700 billion in TARP money would be lost. But when my administration came into office, we put in place rigorous rules for accountability and transparency, which cut the cost of the bailout dramatically. We have now recovered most of the money we provided to the banks. That’s good news, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s not good enough. We want the taxpayers’ money back, and we’re going to collect every dime.

That is why, this week, I proposed a new fee on major financial firms to compensate the American people for the extraordinary assistance they provided to the financial industry. And the fee would be in place until the American taxpayer is made whole.

Reading the President’s address now, it sounds bland and reasonable. But listening to it was a different experience. The President sounded angry and distinctly sounded like he wanted to punish the banks for ever daring to make trouble. He sounded like what he really wanted was to make the banks pay for the entire cost of the stimulus bill. I was deeply disturbed, as I listened to the speech, to the hear the President so angrily attacking and villianizing a specific industry.

Here’s the thing. Not all of the banks that received government help wanted government help. Some of them were strong-armed into accepting the help. The President’s new “fee” doesn’t account for that. Nor does it account for the fact that not all large banks even received help. Nor does it account for the fact that some banks were healthy throughout the crisis and had no rule in causing the crisis. No, the President’s “fee” taxes all banks equally, just for the sin of being big.

As I listened to the speech, I wondered if the plan was even Constitutional. As I said, it sounded like he really wanted to lay into the banking industry, to punish it. And the Constitution specifically forbids a “bill of attainder”. What’s that? It’s when Congress passes a bill declaring someone guilty of a crime — and punishing them — without giving that person the benefit of a trial. And the President’s language and tone sounded dangerously close to someone who wants to declare the entire banking industry guilty of “crimes against America” and then punish them.

It turns out, that I’m not the only person to think this is un-Constitutional. John Carney writes in The Business Insider Law Review that he’s recently concluded that the proposed bank tax is an illegal bill of attainder.

Read his full piece for a much better explanation of the concept of a “bill of attainder”, as well as some great examples. Here is his conclusion.

The Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee is unconstitutional on its face. It is as if the Obama administration had urged a tax called “The Fee That Violates Nonattainder Principles.” Assigning responsibility after the matter and levying penalties is reserved for the judicial branch that is restricted to using already existing laws and treating similarly situated people equally. The Obama administration wants to assign responsibility for the financial crisis and levy a fee, while exempting its favored automakers. This is exactly the sort of thing the Attainder Clause was put in place to prevent.

A Christian might also suggest that all sins are sins against God, not men – but that is simply nonsense. Whosoever harms me, harms me (a better argument is the idea that God wants you to forgive as you were forgiven, but that proves a lack of need for blood). God is by all accounts undamaged. Indeed, the only crime against God must be simple, completely ineffective rebellion – which we must assume does not hurt God’s feelings, because that would suggest we have some power over Him – and the idea that God can’t put up with that suggests He’s not merciful at all.

I disagree, for perfectly valid libertarian reasons. But to follow the logic, you’ll have to temporarily assume that the Bible is what it claims to be: God’s attempt to reveal who he is and what he’s all about.

Propositions:

1. God created the earth. (Genesis 1:1)
2. God created man (Genesis 2:7-8)
3. Ownership comes from mixing labor (John Locke)

Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.

Conclusion: God owns the earth and everything in the earth — including us. Further conclusion: Because God owns us, he can do with us as he likes. He has, in fact, done so by giving us the Law and requiring us to obey it. I’d say that most of the Old Testament assumes this point of view.

Deuteronomy 10:12-14

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good? Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.

1 Samuel 2:8

He raises up the poor from the dust;
he lifts the needy from the ash heap
to make them sit with princes
and inherit a seat of honor.
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s,
and on them he has set the world.

1 Chronicles 29:11

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.

Nehemiah 9:6

You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.

Psalm 24:1-4

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,
the world and those who dwell therein,
for he has founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the rivers.

Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to what is false
and does not swear deceitfully.

To repeat my argument: God created the world and everything in it, including us. Therefore, God owns us and is perfectly justified in doing with us as he likes. God has designed his world (his universe) to run according to certain laws. Every violation of those laws is a violation of the “natural order” of things and a rebellion against God. Rebellion is nothing more nor less than taking that which doesn’t belong to you, namely power.

True, your sin of theft is between you and your victim. He’s harmed by longer having that which once belonged to him. But your theft is a crime against God: you’ve also usurped his power to decide what is and isn’t right. You’ve placed your own judgment and desires above his.

Jonathan Edwards makes the argument that punishment must be proportional to the degree of sin. He goes on to argue that sin is a crime against an infinite God and deserving of infinite punishment.

A crime is more or less heinous, according as we are under greater or less obligations to the contrary. This is self-evident; because it is herein that the criminalness or faultiness of any thing consists, that it is contrary to what we are obliged or bound to, or what ought to be in us. So the faultiness of one being hating another, is in proportion to his obligation to love him. The crime of one being despising and casting contempt on another, is proportionably more or less heinous, as he was under greater or less obligations to honour him. The fault of disobeying another, is greater or less, as any one is under greater or less obligations to obey him. And therefore if there be any being that we are under infinite obligations to love, and honour, and obey, the contrary towards him must be infinitely faulty.

Our obligation to love, honour, and obey any being, is in proportion to his loveliness, honourableness, and authority; for that is the very meaning of the words. When we say any one is very lovely, it is the same as to say, that he is one very much to be loved. Or if we say such a one is more honourable than another, the meaning of the words is, that he is one that we are more obliged to honour. If we say any one has great authority over us, it is the same as to say, that he has great right to our subjection and obedience.

But God is a being infinitely lovely, because he hath infinite excellency and beauty. To have infinite excellency and beauty, is the same thing as to have infinite loveliness. He is a being of infinite greatness, majesty, and glory; and therefore he is infinitely honourable. He is infinitely exalted above the greatest potentates of the earth, and highest angels in heaven; and therefore he is infinitely more honourable than they. His authority over us is infinite; and the ground of his right to our obedience is infinitely strong; for he is infinitely worthy to be obeyed himself, and we have an absolute, universal, and infinite dependence upon him.

So that sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime infinitely heinous, and so deserving of infinite punishment.

Therefore, I argue, God is perfectly justified in any punishment he cares to deal out.

Here is one straw in the wind that does not bode well for a Sotomayor appointment. Justice Stevens of the current court came in for a fair share of criticism (all justified in my view) for his expansive reading in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) of the “public use language.” Of course, the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment is as complex as it is short: “Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” But he was surely done one better in the Summary Order in Didden v. Village of Port Chester issued by the Second Circuit in 2006. Judge Sotomayor was on the panel that issued the unsigned opinion–one that makes Justice Stevens look like a paradigmatic defender of strong property rights.

I have written about Didden in Forbes. The case involved about as naked an abuse of government power as could be imagined. Bart Didden came up with an idea to build a pharmacy on land he owned in a redevelopment district in Port Chester over which the town of Port Chester had given Greg Wasser control. Wasser told Didden that he would approve the project only if Didden paid him $800,000 or gave him a partnership interest. The “or else” was that the land would be promptly condemned by the village, and Wasser would put up a pharmacy himself. Just that came to pass. But the Second Circuit panel on which Sotomayor sat did not raise an eyebrow. Its entire analysis reads as follows: “We agree with the district court that [Wasser's] voluntary attempt to resolve appellants' demands was neither an unconstitutional exaction in the form of extortion nor an equal protection violation.”

She may be empathetic towards plaintiffs but I’m not sure how that’s suppose to reassure me. I didn’t grow up poor and I didn’t graduate from Yale law school, but Greg Wasser’s demand sure sounds a lot like extortion to me. If her court will allow rich, politically connected developers to use government connections to demand payoffs from politically weak property owners — where exactly does that leave the poor?

Was Bart Didden’s case just not sympathetic enough for her?