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The decision provides important protection for property rights, and features a powerful concurring opinion by prominent conservative Judge Amal Thapar. In many states, asset forfeiture laws allow law enforcement agencies to seize valuable property based on mere suspicion that it was used in a crime, and then keep it even if the owner was never convicted of any crime. On top of that, some force owners to wait many months before they even have a chance to challenge the forfeiture in a hearing. Yesterday, in Ingram v. Wayne County, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a...

The Department of Justice is shelling out more than $6 billion to private companies to manage its asset forfeiture investigations, raising alarm from one nonprofit law firm that accuses police of "treating ordinary Americans like ATMs" and seizing their cash. "You've probably heard the adage, 'you've gotta spend money to make money.' Here, it's 'you've gotta spend money to take money,'" said Dan Alban, head of the Institute for Justice's National Initiative to End Forfeiture.

Here's something you see all too rarely -- not because the government's civil asset forfeiture programs aren't routinely abused -- but because it's a good way to spend lots of money fighting a losing battle. Vu Do, owner of two nail salons in New York City, is trying to retrieve nearly $44,000 -- his life savings which he had put together over twenty years -- taken from him by the DEA at the JFK airport. The complaint points out that Do has run two legitimate businesses in NYC for several years, and not once has he been arrested or even...

California, especially California cities, have had a bad reputation for decades, of legally stealing firearms.  This was primarily done with police officers confiscating firearms that they came across, without any crime being committed.  Department policy was then to refuse to return the firearm unless a court ordered them to do so.  As the process of obtaining a court order would ordinarily be much more costly than the price of a firearm, most people who had their firearms stolen by police simply did not bother in attempting to obtain a court order. The situation became so notorious that a law...

Derrick Washington of Cleveland, Ohio, is suing police for the return of his legally owned firearm. Washington alleges that the police seized the weapon from him illegally in a case for which he was never charged and have refused to return it since February. Washington has filed a lawsuit in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in order to get the gun returned along with tens of thousands of dollars in damages. According to the lawsuit, Washington called the police in order to report a shooting. He later told police that he has a permit to carry a weapon. The police...

It’s almost a cruel play on words. You go to the airport and bring that which you know you’ll need for the trip. Transportation Security Administration employees rifle though your bags and find that bottle of shampoo that was a little too big or the can of deodorant that had a few too many ounces. They tell you that certain items in your possession cannot be taken on board the flight and you have to leave them behind. The name they have for those goods is a hoot: “Voluntarily Abandoned Property.” … It was my “property”, but after I “voluntarily...

A HOMEOWNER has been ordered to leave the house where he was caring for his 92-year-old mother to allow his estranged wife to move back in. Angus and Barbara Ann Fraser are fighting a legal battle over the home in the Lochaber village of Caol. Mrs Fraser, 61, left the house the couple shared with her mother-in-law Elizabeth nine weeks ago when the pair separated, but then began a legaADVERTISEMENT l move at Fort William Sheriff Court to return to live there. Sheriff Douglas Small has granted an interim exclusion order against Mr Fraser, 54, banning him from the house...

Big pension numbers: The top earner problemMonday, Sep. 27, 2010 Last week, the New Hampshire Retirement System released a list of all 23,500 state pensions and what type of employee (police officer, firefighter, teacher or other state employee) received them. The list showed that 11 retirees receive pensions of more than $100,000, and 20 make between $90,000 and $100,000. Twenty-four of those 31 retirees were police officers, four were firefighters, one was a teacher, and three were local-government employees. Though the average pension was about $18,000, according to the NHRS, more than half of the 500 top-earning public pensioners (254)...

Federal regulators on Friday seized ShoreBank, the fabled South Side bank known for its community lending, and turned its good assets back over to its management team to be reopened as Urban Partnership Bank. The management team, which had joined ShoreBank only recently and which sources say includes former First Chicago Corp. executives Bill Farrow and David Vitale, entered into an agreement -- called a loss-share transaction -- on $1.41 billion of ShoreBank¹s assets with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), according to a press release issued tonight. The 15 branches of ShoreBank wll reopen Saturday as branches of Union...

A former supervisor for the federal Transportation Security Administration has pleaded guilty to stealing $20,000 worth of jewelry and other items from checked luggage at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The U.S. Attorney's office in Seattle says 50-year-old Randy Pepper entered the plea Monday at U.S. District Court in Seattle. Pepper was fired in July 2009 after another TSA worker saw him removing items from checked luggage. Surveillance video confirmed it, and investigators discovered Pepper had pawned the items. Prosecutors say they included gold diamond rings and sterling silver necklaces and earrings.

WITH the academic year about to begin, colleges and universities, as well as students and their parents, are facing an unprecedented financial crisis. What we’ve seen with California’s distinguished state university system — huge cutbacks in spending and a 32 percent rise in tuition — is likely to become the norm at public and private colleges. Government support is being slashed, endowments and charitable giving are down, debts are piling up, expenses are rising and some schools are selling their product for two-thirds of what it costs to produce it. You don’t need an M.B.A. to know this situation is...

This just in from the trustees that issue the annual report on the health of those two pillars of the modern entitlement state: Medicare and Social Security. For the first time in its history the Social Security program will pay out more money than it takes in. This watershed event will occur this year, to the tune of $41 Billion dollars. Under any rational accounting standards this makes the Social Security program bankrupt. And that's right now, not in 25 years when the so-called Trust Fund becomes insolvent. You see, most pension programs hold income producing assets in their Trust...

He did nothing illegal. At 44, Hugo Tassone retired from the Yonkers police force with an annual pension of $101,333 - thanks to overtime pay he tacked on to his $74,000 salary. Tassone told The New York Times it was the pension he could collect after 20 years of service that attracted him to the job in the first place. He’s not alone. In the last decade, half of the police and firefighters who retired in Yonkers collected pensions that exceeded their base pay, in (at least one case) by as much as 75%.

Andy Stern, the former head of the Service Employees International Union who now sits on President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, said the United States needs an economic plan that does not include “worshipping” the free market. “America needs a 21st century economic plan because we now know the market-worshipping, privatizing, de-regulating, dehumanizing American financial plan has failed and should never be revived, worshipping the market again,” Stern said in remarks at the annual conference of the liberal activist group Campaign for America’s Future in Washington on Monday. “It has failed America and everyone that works here,”...

Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign slogan, "the audacity of hope," should have instead been "the audacity of deceit." After months of telling the American people that he supports the Second Amendment, and only hours after being declared the president-elect, the Obama transition team website announced an agenda taken straight from the anti-gun lobby--four initiatives designed to ban guns and drive law-abiding firearm manufacturers and dealers out of business: "Making the expired federal assault weapons ban permanent." Perhaps no other firearm issue has been more dishonestly portrayed by gun prohibitionists. Notwithstanding their predictions that the ban's expiration in 2004 would bring...

RALEIGH — Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration. Triggered by the financial crisis the past two months, the hearings reportedly were meant to stem losses incurred by many workers and retirees whose 401(k) and IRA balances have been shrinking rapidly. The testimony of Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, in hearings Oct. 7 drew the most attention and criticism. Testifying for...

RALEIGH — Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration. Triggered by the financial crisis the past two months, the hearings reportedly were meant to stem losses incurred by many workers and retirees whose 401(k) and IRA balances have been shrinking rapidly. The testimony of Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, in hearings Oct. 7 drew the most attention and criticism. Testifying for...

The troubled insurance giant American International Group already has consumed three-quarters of a federal $123 billion rescue loan, a little more than a month after the government stepped in to save the company from bankruptcy. AIG has borrowed $90.3 billion from the Federal Reserve's credit line as of yesterday, the bulk of it to pay off bad bets the company made in guaranteeing other firms' risky mortgage investments. That's up from roughly $83 billion AIG had borrowed a week ago, and the $68 billion level it reached a week before that. The news comes as the company's new chief executive...

In the midst of Wall Street's agonizing slide last week, there was at least one place in Manhattan where the liquor was flowing, the cigar smoke was billowing and the theme of the evening was simple: Work hard. Play hard. "I was a crook," says Jordan Belfort, once a Wall Street fat cat who made $1 million a week before going to jail. "It's like fiddling. Nero fiddled while Rome burned," said Thomas Graf, vice president and producer of Northmarq Capital. "We're smoking cigars while we're losing our shirts, literally." He was among hundreds of mid-level Wall Street executives and...

I'm not putting a reference in becasue I want my freakin' title, I'm pissed. But search and you shall find ...