Lucy Steigerwald

This week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published their study of 20 different law enforcement agencies’ use of SWAT teams on 800 occasions between 2011 and 2013. Their conclusions may not surprise people who have been following the militarization and the normalization of that in police departments across the US, but it should shock … Continue reading “The ACLU Knocks Militarized Police”

When talking of freewheeling domestic spying, it would behoove us to remember that it’s not just the National Security Agency (NSA) that needs reform and a tight leash. Hell, it’s not even just federal agencies who are disinterested in your Fourth Amendment rights. Like the war toys that move from the Pentagon down to myriad … Continue reading “Your Local Police May Be Collecting Metadata”

After a month of media attention-grabbing shootings in Isla Vista, California, Las Vegas, and now at an Oregon high school, President Obama devoted some time in a Tuesday Q&A session on Tumblr.com to these sad incidents, saying that we should “be ashamed” to have failed to address these tragedies. Now, failing to solve the real … Continue reading “Cops, Gun Control, and the Myth of the US as a Bloody Warzone”

All of the dirty DC dealings in Netflix’s House of Cards arguably make it the most cynical of the current crop of highly-acclaimed and talked over television shows. However, the epic Game of Thrones – in spite of its fantastical elements – paints an even more brutal picture of the vile nature of politics, and … Continue reading “Game of Thrones Gets the Nastiness of Politics and War Right”

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the Platonic Ideal of a government entity, at least in these United States. TSA is oppressive, it subjects people to indignities, and its paranoid goal of keeping us safe from terrorists is being done – by most accounts – very poorly indeed. Okay, perhaps it’s not unique. Still, in … Continue reading “Our Pathological Fear of Cutting Federal Budgets and Agencies”

On May 21, the $700 million dollar National September 11 Memorial Museum opened to the general public,12 years and change after that awful, now-historic day in September. The museum provoked controversy for years before it even opened. The astronomical cost – a mixture of private and government funding – to build the thing, as well … Continue reading “The Inherent Awfulness of the New 9/11 Museum”

Last summer, after the in-FBI-custody shooting of Ibragim Todashev, a friend of the elder Boston bomber, the Bureau told the same story they have been telling since 1993 – this was justified. Furthermore, documents acquired by The New York Times last June showed that there were more than 150 FBI shootings by agents in the … Continue reading “The FBI, the NSA, and the Daunting Task of True Reform”

On Tuesday, more than a dozen notable news organizations including The New York Times Company, Scipps Media, Hearst, and the National Press Club filed a brief with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) over the ban on commercial, news-gathering, and small drones. The group specifically objected to the $10,000 fine currently hanging over photographer Raphael … Continue reading “The Fight for Domestic News Drones”

On Tuesday, Clayton Lockett died of a heart attack more than an hour after his botched lethal injection began. Things went so wrong that the state of Oklahoma’s second scheduled execution for that night was stayed for 14 days. A notable thing about Lockett’s slow demise is that it came as no great surprise to … Continue reading “The Death Penalty Is as Flawed and Heartless as War”

On April 15, seven police officers in Peoria, Illinois raided the home of Jon Daniel and his roommates. They took various electronics, and kept several residents of the house cuffed for hours. The reason for this raid? Any good student of the current state of American policing might have guesses – was it drug trafficking? … Continue reading “What Fourth Amendment? Police Raids Go Beyond the War on Drugs”