PAUL JOHNSON REVIEWS Conrad Black’s prison memoir, A Matter of Principle.

In addition to Black’s understand-able desire to set the record straight in his own case, the book has the more important public object of exposing the faults in the American judicial system, which make such a miscarriage possible. I had for some years been worried about the deterioration in the American process of criminal law, and I am gratified, and also profoundly disturbed, to find my misgivings confirmed by this account. The process of decay seems to have begun in the 1970s, but it has reached the point where it now constitutes the most radical weakness in the entire American system and one which must be addressed as a matter of urgency.

The fault can be summed up in a sentence: America’s criminal courts now insist on convictions at the expense of any other consideration, above all of justice. They are more like a court martial than a civilian establishment of law. The presumption of innocence has been abandoned. . . .

The assumption of guilt is sanctified in law by the grotesquely unjust plea-bargaining process, which saves the accused from total financial ruin by forcing him to plead guilty to some of the crimes with which he is charged, however innocent he or she may be. Plea-bargaining in turn leads to a multiplicity of indictments by prosecutors, which adds a judicial to the financial compulsion of the innocent to bargain.

Hence the American prosecution practices are what the law calls ‘a derogation from honest service’. The US prosecution service, in heedless pursuit of convictions, does what it wants and prosecutes whoever it wishes for as long as it likes. Thus, over 90 per cent of prosecutions are successful, a higher proportion than in either Putin’s Russia or Communist China. America, as Black puts it, has become a ‘prosecut-ocracy’.

Yes, I really need to get around to writing my Due Process When Everything Is A Crime piece, which has been germinating for quite a while. However, there’s Harvey Silverglate’s Three Felonies A Day, Gene Healy’s Go Directly To Jail: The Criminalization of Nearly Everything, and Angela Davis’s (no, not that Angela Davis), Arbitrary Justice: The Power Of The American Prosecutor. All are worth reading.

TO BE A GENUINE BARBIE, DON’T YOU HAVE TO BE FAKE? Human Barbie Valeria Lukyanova is probably mostly fake, which surprises probably mostly no one.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Genetic Screening Can Uncover Risky Matches at the Sperm Bank.

SOCIAL MEDIA can be dangerous if you’re a douchebag.

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases in Home & Kitchen.

VIDEO: BILL WHITTLE ON THE G.O.P. LEADERSHIP. Most Republican politicians “do not believe our own philosophy. The GOP leadership . . . are victims of Stockholm syndrome.”

I saw Neal Boortz tweet this and say “Bill Whittle for President!”

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21ST CENTURY PRUDERY: You Can’t Say That On The Internet:

A BASTION of openness and counterculture, Silicon Valley imagines itself as the un-Chick-fil-A. But its hyper-tolerant facade often masks deeply conservative, outdated norms that digital culture discreetly imposes on billions of technology users worldwide.

What is the vehicle for this new prudishness? Dour, one-dimensional algorithms, the mathematical constructs that automatically determine the limits of what is culturally acceptable.

Consider just a few recent kerfuffles. In early September, The New Yorker found its Facebook page blocked for violating the site’s nudity and sex standards. Its offense: a cartoon of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Eve’s bared nipples failed Facebook’s decency test.

That’s right — a venerable publication that still spells “re-elect” as “reëlect” is less puritan than a Californian start-up that wants to “make the world more open.”

Read the whole thing.

GALLERY: Deep Inside The James Bond Lair That Really Exists.

HOLDING BACK FLOODWATERS with a balloon. Lots of research here, but where’s the deployment?

PROGRESS: For First Responders, EVs Offer New Hazards.

TAXPROF: The New York Times Doesn’t Understand Marginal Tax Rates.

YES, AS IT TURNS OUT: Should People Who Make $250,000 a Year Worry About Obama’s Tax Proposals?

Kevin Drum and Dave Weigel take off after rich people who don’t understand that they only pay marginal tax rates on the extra dollars they earn above taxation thresholds. “This isn’t true, of course. Obama is only proposing to raise tax rates on income over $250,000, so if your income goes up to $251,000, you only pay the higher rate on the extra $1,000. The tax bill on your first $250,000 stays exactly the same.”

Their analysis is basically sound, except for the fact that it is not quite true. They have forgotten to look at deduction phaseouts, surtaxes, and the AMT, which are not taxes on marginal income.*

No matter what you have heard on the internet, there are in fact a lot of sizeable marginal inflection points for high earners.

Read the whole thing.

BENGHAZI: “The cover story is… what? Some faceless entity within the Office of the Director is the scapegoat.” Instead of “the dog ate my homework,” it’s sounding more like “the dog wrote my homework.”

THIS ARTICLE IS UNFAIR TO UGANDAN WARAGI, which, if you get the good stuff, is like a slightly-softer gin. Quite tasty. I’ve been drinking it for 20 years, and my vision is fine. Now the Nigerian “Napoleon” Brandy is another story — I opened a bottle of that at a party and even my “I’ll drink anything” friends took a sniff and said, “I’m not drinking that, smells like carburetor cleaner.” Speaking of your third-world liquors, Cretan “racchi,” which is a moonshine distilled from fermented grape pulp, can be quite good, or hideously bad, like most moonshines. The good stuff is buttery smooth. The bad stuff is . . . kinda like carburetor cleaner, though I wouldn’t use it on a carburetor I really cared about.

MATT LEWIS: They’re Trying To “Palinize” Marco Rubio. “And just like Palin — whom they feared — they want to destroy his credibility; to make him a joke.”

Punch back twice as hard. And when a Republican is interviewed, he/she should first ask the journalist to explain the importance of the Higgs Boson, and the difference between forcible and statutory rape. On camera. And always, always, always bring your own camera. . . .

Also, in light of my earlier comments about the impact of the women’s/lifestyle media, Sarah Palin should really think about following Andrew Breitbart’s advice to become the “Red State Oprah.” That’s a position of considerable power. Or would be, if it were occupied.

SLATE: Who Said It: Marco Rubio or Barack Obama?

Q: Senator, if one of your daughters asked you—and maybe they already have—“Daddy, did god really create the world in 6 days?,” what would you say?

A: What I’ve said to them is that I believe that God created the universe and that the six days in the Bible may not be six days as we understand it … it may not be 24-hour days, and that’s what I believe. I know there’s always a debate between those who read the Bible literally and those who don’t, and I think it’s a legitimate debate within the Christian community of which I’m a part. My belief is that the story that the Bible tells about God creating this magnificent Earth on which we live—that is essentially true, that is fundamentally true. Now, whether it happened exactly as we might understand it reading the text of the Bible: That, I don’t presume to know.

In case you’re wondering, that’s Barack talking.

EMILY ESFAHANI SMITH: What Boomer Women Can Learn About Aging From (Gasp) Older Women. “Members of this authority-averse generation should reconsider their stance on listening to their elders.”

RAND SIMBERG HAS LAUNCHED a kickstarter project to fund his next book. I’ve donated. If you’re interested in space, you should too.

OBAMA’S BENGHAZI DEFENSE, IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE:

Whoops. That’s exactly what Republicans were saying when the FBI and newspaper investigators were closing in on President Richard “I am not a crook” Nixon for covering up the Watergate break-in by his operatives. Republican defenders of Nixon described it as merely a third-rate burglary and said investigating it would be a waste of time because nothing illegal or untoward happened.

Obama does seem more Nixonian all the time.

FORGET THE FISCAL CLIFF: How About Copyright Reform?

“The bad news for the movie studios and record companies is that the discussion about how to make copyright law make sense in a digital age has already started in Washington, and it will continue, with our without them,” Gigi Sohn, an attorney and president and co-founder of the public policy non-profit Public Knowledge, wrote in her blog.

Indeed, Public Knowledge and others advocating for change to the copyright system have at least one ally in Congress. Rep. Darell Issa, who sits on the Judiciary Committee and its Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet Subcommittee, wrote on his Twitter account Monday that the report was a “very interesting copyright reform proposal” and “It’s time to start this copyright reform conversation.”

The Congressman, who emerged as a leader on issues related to Internet rights earlier this year when he opposed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), has already said he plans to make digital rights a priority in the new Congress.

Internet and tech-savvy activists ardently opposed SOPA, which was aimed at foreign websites that violate U.S. copyright laws. They said the law was overly broad and would hamper online speech. They also want to see changes made to current copyright law, including some of those proposed in the Republican report that officially no longer exists.

The report, written by a young RSC staffer named Derek Khanna, is highly critical of the current copyright system, which it says “violates nearly every tenet of laissez-faire capitalism” and gives content producers a “government subsidized content-monopoly.”

It starts by describing the original constitutional purpose of copyright protection and argues that the current system has veered away from the intent. It says the law as it stands favors content creators instead of focusing on the public good or what will promote the most productivity and innovation.

By the way, Rob Merges and I wrote a piece on this in the Harvard Journal on Legislation some years ago: The Proper Scope of the Copyright and Patent Power.

HOUSE DEMOCRATS INCH CLOSER TO BECOMING A TWO-STATE CAUCUS: “A Smart Politics analysis of 83 general election cycles dating back to 1850 finds that the Democratic Party now comprises a larger percentage of Californians and New Yorkers in the U.S. House than at any point since California joined the Union.”

AT AMAZON, up to 40% off on toys for girls. Also, toys for boys. Plus: Stocking Stuffers for under $10.

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MICHAEL BARONE: Democrats Have An Edge, But Presidency Still In Play.