WAR ON PHOTOGRAPHY: LAPD Detains A Photographer For ‘Interfering’ With A Police Investigation… From 90 Feet Away.

Send ’em a copy of this from Morgan Manning.

JOEL KOTKIN: Silicon Valley: Entrepreneurs Turn Oligarchs. That’s how it usually goes. Excerpt:

For a generation, most Americans, whatever their politics, have largely admired Silicon Valley as an exemplar of enlightened free-market capitalism. Yet, increasingly, the one-time folk heroes are beginning to appear more like a digital version of President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil.” In terms of threats to freedom and privacy, we now may have more to fear from techies in Palo Alto than the infinitely less-competent retro-Reds in North Korea.

Once, we saw the potential unsurpassed human liberation available through information technology. However, Silicon Valley, as shown in the NSA scandal, increasingly has become intimately tied to the surveillance state. Technology has enabled powerful firms – including Verizon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Google – to channel everyone’s email and cellphone calls to the national security apparatus.

“It’s as bad as reading your diary,” Joss Wright, a researcher with the Oxford Internet Institute, recently told the Associated Press, adding, “It’s far worse than reading your diary. Because you don’t write everything in your diary.”

Nor does the snooping relate only to national security. If my emails to friends and family arguably constitute a potential threat to national security, that’s one thing. The massive monitoring and largely unapproved tapping into our data for profit is quite another.

Google, which, in the first half of 2012, took in more advertising dollars than all U.S. magazines and newspapers combined, has amassed an impressive list of privacy violations, notes the Huffington Post. Even the innocent-seeming Gmail service is used to collect and sell information; Google’s crew in Palo Alto may know more about the casual user than most of us suspect.

Even Apple, arguably the most iconic Silicon Valley firm, has been hauled in front of courts for alleged privacy violations. For its part, Consumer Reports recently detailed Facebook’s pervasive privacy breaches, including misuse of information as detailed as health conditions, details an insurer could use against you, when someone is going out of town (convenient for burglars), as well as information pertaining to everything from sexual orientation to religious and ethnic affiliation.

Despite ritual denials about such invasions of privacy, the new communications moguls have little reason to stop, and lots of financial reasons to continue.

I expect, however, that there will be blowback. I’m concerned, too, that these people are closely connected to the Democratic Party, and to the Obama Campaign, even as the Holder DOJ shows little interest in policing privacy violations.

RALPH BENKO: For The Republicans To Win, Libertarians And Conservatives Must Find Common Ground.

REVERSE THE SEXES AND THERE’S NO STORY HERE:

Writing for his college paper, Cory Booker once admitted that he groped a friend when he was 15 years old.

Now the mayor of Newark and a candidate for New Jersey’s open Senate seat, a college-aged Booker described the experience of grabbing the girl’s breast and having his hand pushed away.

But it is unfortunate for him that people are bringing this up as so many other Democratic politicians — and feminist heroes — are having problems.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse proves my point about double standards, and also demonstrates that even I am not immune.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Is Althouse playing the Drudge juxtaposition game?

JAMES TARANTO: This Is Not Rosa Parks: Oprah Winfrey’s Swiss adventure.

We quite like this story as a parable of race relations in 21st-century America. Whatever actually happened at Trois Pommes, it was not a systemic indignity like the Montgomery, Ala., rule that required black bus riders to give up seats when white passengers boarded (to say nothing of the entire Jim Crow system of which that rule was a part).

What Winfrey construes as a racial episode is actually a story about class–a wealthy, privileged celebrity aggrieved by a lowly saleswoman’s lack of deference. And it’s not her first brush with this sort of impertinence: “The incident comes eight years after Winfrey was turned away from a Hermes store in Paris a few minutes after closing,” the News notes. Apparently fermé is un sifflet pour chien.

It’s reminiscent of the endlessly repeated claim that criticism of Barack Obama proves racism is alive and well in America. Somehow Obama’s defenders are unable to see past the color of his skin and notice that he is president of the United States. As for Winfrey, she went all the way to Europe to discover that racism is alive in America.

She’s got a role to promote. She’s promoting it. Collateral damage is just a bonus.

ACTUALLY, THE MOST NOTABLE THING ABOUT THIS MURAL IS THAT George Zimmerman is recognizably Latino.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: California Law School Sues State Bar, Claims First Amendment Right to Hide Bar Passage Stats.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Mother Of All Scandals.

VIA SOUNDCLOUD, I ran across a guy I used to love back during the old MP3.com days. Enjoy some tunes from Digital Ritual. Try Gods and Monsters or Fallen.

AT AMAZON, Deals And Markdowns At The Dockers Store.

Also, 50% or more off on Office Supplies.

AS PEOPLE YAMMER OVER RODEO CLOWNS, it’s worth remembering stuff like this.

WANT HIDDEN-CAMERA VIDEO OF PEOPLE BEING NASTY TO GAYS IN TEXAS? Even with fake-anti-gay actors, it doesn’t happen.

LIFE IN POST-RACIAL OBAMERICA: ‘Butler’ Director Launches Racial Smear Against ‘White Folks.’ “What Lee Daniels sounds like to me — other than someone with bigoted misconceptions about people based solely on their skin color — is a director already making excuses for a box-office flop.”

WELL, NOW, THIS MIGHT MAKE A DIFFERENCE: Attorney for Whistleblower: 400 U.S. Missiles Stolen in Benghazi.

FUNNY HOW PEOPLE WHO LIVE AND DIE BY S.A.T. SCORES MAINTAIN THAT I.Q. SCORES MEAN NOTHING.

AN EVERGREEN LOWER THIRD for MSNBC’s Toure.

I DOUBT IT’S DIFFERENT HERE: Up to 64,000 women in UK ‘are child-sex offenders:’ After Plymouth case shocked the nation, police say number of women abusing children is rising. “Child sex abuse by women is significantly more widespread than previously realised, with experts estimating that there could be up to 64,000 female offenders in Britain. Researchers from the Lucy Faithfull Foundation (LFF), a child protection charity that deals with British female sex offenders, said its studies confirmed that a ‘fair proportion’ of child abusers were women.” I think there’s a double-standard on what constitutes “abuse,” which affects the numbers, too.

NOW ONLINE: My USA Today column for tomorrow. Which includes a plug for Mark Levin’s new book.

A LOOK AT Elon Musk’s “Hyperloop” Plans.

FIRST RODEO-CLOWN MOCKERY, NOW THIS: Kardashian mom totally fries Obama over his wealth. “I bet the President has some friends with 10,000 square foot houses and that you wouldn’t mind going over there, Mr. President, while you were asking them to have a party for you when you were campaigning for dollars to run for president.”

I BLAME JENNY MCCARTHY: With fewer vaccinations, is your child’s school safe? Too many parents are seeking exemption from California’s vaccination law.

ACCOUNTABILITY IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: The man who misled Congress on spying will pick Obama’s intelligence review panel. Kinda like having Eric Holder investigate Eric Holder. It’s just neater that way. . . .

NEWS OBAMA SUPPORTERS CAN USE: 7 Ways To End A Toxic Relationship. Looks like this might be helpful for many . . . .

CONSULTING WITH BUSINESSMEN DOESN’T MAKE IT BETTER: Thoughts on Obama’s claimed authority to suspend laws.

BLOGGING ABOUT PILATES — AT BLOGILATES. The Insta-Wife and Insta-Daughter like these free exercise videos.