Tales from the Trenches: I was SWATed →

It's not like we haven't had people prank call the police on others. But 1. the number of false calls is rising, 2. probably because fancy new anonymizing services are making it very hard to find out who's making the calls, and 3. it's far more dangerous than previously, since SWAT has been taking over for more and more traditional police calls.

It's now turned into an intimidation tactic against people's [small-time] political opponents, and police haven't caught on yet. And even those that are aware have no good way of legally or practically dealing with it.

It’s not as simple as homophobic thugs vs. civil rights in Indiana →

These conflicts happen all the time. Sometimes, balancing them is easy. In January, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the state of Arkansas had to allow a Muslim prison inmate to grow a short beard. It weighed the state’s interests in security against the inmate’s First Amendment rights, and the case was a slam dunk. (Then again, it was deemed worthy of review, so maybe not.)

Other times, the balance is difficult. In a powerful concurring opinion in the Elane Photography case, a New Mexico judge confessed that he struggled with his decision. The law was clear: if you open a business, you play by the rules of the market, and that includes anti-discrimination laws. But he also understood the religious convictions of the photographer, and the difficult choice he was forcing her to make.

Indiana’s RFRA, like others, would likely cause that case to come out the other way. And so, both RFRA’s supporters and opponents are right. Indiana’s RFRA, like others, is both a “license to discriminate” and a “protection of religious freedom.”

Is there no way forward, then? Must the two sides continue to talk past one another, each more irate than the other?

The Blood Cries Out →

Gahungu’s experience mirrors other stories familiar to Burundi for decades—stories that are multiplying and worsening as the country copes with a veritable explosion of people. At 10,745 square miles, Burundi is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland, but it holds nearly twice as many people: about 10 million, according to the U.N. Development Programme, or roughly 40 percent more than a decade ago. The population growth rate is 2.5 percent per year, more than twice the average global pace, and the average Burundian woman has 6.3 children, nearly triple the international fertility rate. Moreover, roughly half a million refugees who fled the country’s 1993-2005 civil war or previous ethnic violence had come back as of late 2014. Another 7,000 are expected to arrive this year.

The vast majority of Burundians rely on subsistence farming, but under the weight of a booming population and in the long-standing absence of coherent policies governing land ownership, many people barely have enough earth to sustain themselves. Steve McDonald, who has worked on a reconciliation project in Burundi with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, estimates that in 1970 the average farm was probably between nine and 12 acres. Today, that number has shrunk to just over one acre. The consequence is remarkable scarcity: In the 2013 Global Hunger Index, Burundi had the severest hunger and malnourishment rates of all 120 countries ranked. “As the land gets chopped into smaller and smaller pieces,” McDonald says, “the pressure intensifies.”

The Biggest Outrage in Atlanta’s Crazy Teacher Cheating Case →

The big story is about a system-wide cheating scandal in Atlanta (mirrored across the US), thanks to excessively "high-stakes" testing (read: principals' and teachers' jobs being linked to test performance). But the author makes a fair point about the justice system:

So let’s see how the justice system dealt with these two cases. When mostly African-American educators at poor schools in Atlanta cheat on tests, they get the book thrown at them. Ten of the 11 convicted on Thursday went directly to jail while they awaited sentencing; Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter only spared the eleventh because of her imminent pregnancy. They each face up to 20 years. With Baxter quoted as saying “they have made their bed and they’re going to have to lie in it,” it’s difficult to expect much leniency. Even higher-ups got drawn into the criminal justice net; the former Atlanta School Superintendent, Beverly Hall, only avoided conviction for looking the other way at obvious fraud because she was too sick to stand trial. She died of breast cancer earlier this year. 

As for the entire housing market, top to bottom, you can count the number of people who went to jail on one finger. Lorraine O’Reilly Brown was the CEO of a default services company called DocX, which filed over 1 million false documents in courts and county offices from 2003 to 2009. This was industry practice, but only Brown went to jail for it, with the claim that she committed a conspiracy of one, allegedly defrauding banks by concealing the fraudulent document scheme. Apparently when banks contracted DocX to create documents they should have legally already had in their possession, they never expected them to be fake.

Outside of Brown, nobody who authorized any falsification, no superiors at DocX parent company Lender Processing Services (now Black Knight), nobody at a major mortgage servicer, no mortgage origination manager, and certainly no executive of any Wall Street bank ever faced the full wrath of Judge Jerry Baxter or any other authority figure forcing them to don a jumpsuit and spend 10 to 20 thinking about what they did. Despite the clear criminality of the enterprise, nobody thought to use a RICO statute on banks and their affiliates, or do anything beyond settle for cash.

The Thirsty West: 10 Percent of California’s Water Goes to Almond Farming →

...The state produces one-third of our vegetables and two-thirds of our nuts and fruits each year. While fields in iconic agricultural states like Iowa, Kansas, and Texas primarily produce grain (most of which is used to fatten animals), pretty much everything you think of as actual food is grown in California. Simply put: We can’t eat without California. But as climate change–fueled droughts continue to desiccate California, the short-term solution from farmers has been to double down on making money.

Survey of Americans' Privacy Habits Post-Snowden →

Overall, these numbers are consistent with a worldwidesurvey from December. The press is spinning this as "Most Americans' behavior unchanged after Snowden revelations, study finds," but I see something very different. I see a sizable percentage of Americans not only concerned about government surveillance, but actively doing something about it. "Third of Americans shield data from government." Edward Snowden's goal was to start a national dialog about government surveillance, and these surveys show that he has succeeded in doing exactly that.

Iraqi forces claim last parcels of Tikrit from Islamic State →

Iraqi security forces backed by sectarian militias took control of the last Islamic State strongholds in Tikrit on Wednesday, the first successful operation by the government in Baghdad to reclaim a major Sunni Muslim population center since the extremist group took control of most of central, western and northern Iraq last year.

Reports from the scene indicated that the operation, far bloodier than anticipated when the security forces and their Shiite militia allies began it a month ago, had destroyed most of the city and surrounding areas. The death toll among the pro-government forces exceeded 1,000.