Most likely you haven’t been following the FBI’s so-called “African Sting” case. It’s a huge, expensive operation, but so obscure and technically complex that nobody but dedicated fiskers of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) pays much attention to it.

I know about the case via Rich Lucibella, who knows and likes one of the defendants. At his instigation I wrote an article about it for S.W.A.T. a year or so ago.

I don’t believe the article is online, but I can sum the case up in a couple of lines: The fibbies entrapped a bunch of small business people into paying bribes (which the feds called “commissions”) to a supposed representative of the government of Gabon in hopes of getting business. Then they pounced on them, accusing them of all manner of crimes, including the ever-popular “conspiracy.” For the last several years, these businessperson-victims have been forced to fight for their assets, their reputations, and their freedom.

Now, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the business these folks do. All of them chose to get into the government-contracting racket. On top of that, some used their status as minorities to get special consideration from the fedgov.

They went into a dirty business with eyes wide open.

Still, it’s a joy to watch the predictable thing occurring: two years after the initial busts, the government case is collapsing.

This morning an FCPA-watching website printed an insider’s look at jury deliberations in the most recent trial. Among other things, the jury foreperson wrote (emphasis mine):

As noted above, a number of jurors were troubled by the nature of the FBI sting operation. Specifically, some seemed unwilling to convict on the basis of vague language (e.g., “commission” instead of “bribe”) and where the defendants had not sought out the deal. These jurors were largely not participatory in the deliberations and when specifically called upon for their views would typically voice agreement with views expressed by some other juror voting “Not Guilty.” But enough small comments through the course of deliberations lead me to believe that their underlying view was that the defendants had acted in good faith and the FBI/DOJ in bad faith. Along the same lines, more than one juror voiced concern that it would be unjust for the defendants in this case to be convicted when the government relied so heavily on Mr. Bistrong [an informant/instigator of the sting] who freely admitted on the stand more illegal acts than the entire group of defendants was accused of, yet was able to plead to only one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA.

So here we have jury nullification in brilliant action. Not the bold agitation of a Julian Heicklen (though bless him and his great courage). Not an overt FIJA-based challenge (though bless FIJA and their educational efforts). Just the quietest people on the jury sitting there thinking, “No, even if the defendants actually did something wrong, the government did worse.”

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• If you’re going to the big game today I’m sure this’ll make you feel wonderful, no matter who wins or loses: hot dog vendors with the skills and proclivities of the TSA.
• Of course, if you turn out to be one of the “suspicious” attendees, you won’t feel good at all if they use one of these on you. (And here’s a video.)
• But it could be worse, you know.
• All of which got me to wondering how the fedgov would handle somebody like Lawnchair Larry today.
• Or for that matter, any of us.
• So if you’re going to do something “illegal,” best to do it by proxy. Or Lego. :-)

I fear that in the last couple of days of not posting (deadlining, sorry), I may have lost track of all the hat tips due for links. So hoping I’m not leaving anybody out, thank you’s to P, F, H, and M.)

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I turn the blog over this morning to two commentors at Earthineer:

Oilman2, who says that small farmers (and by extension many more of us) should opt out.

And Earthineer founder Dan Adams who answers that we should opt in.

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• The strange birth of New York’s gun laws.
• Oooh, now this is cynical. And fraught with … well, just fraught. (Tip o’ hat to JB.)
• Darn. They’re ruining it for me! (Tip o’ hat to MJR.)
• At least Twitter is is trying to mitigate its consent to censorship.
• “Why Conservatives Should Be Libertarians.”
• The Barefoot Bandit will probably serve just under five years. Federal and state sentences to be concurrent. Seems a reasonable mercy — and with luck a chance for that bright but screwed-up boy to get his head together. (HT to PT.)
• A troop of gorillas visits a human camp. (First couple of minutes are boring; stay with it.)
• The halo effect. And its impact in politics. (HT Beth and Dave Gross.)
• A free privacy tool for you Windows users. And another. Both look useful and — better yet! — easy to use. (Courtesy of JB.)

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• It just had to happen eventually, didn’t it? Ron Paul action figures. I like the man. But seriously, I agree with Joel. It’s getting a little nuts. Okay, maybe the superhero action figure is sorta funny. But since when do free people set up idols to worship?
• The dog: man’s best friend for more than 33,000 years.
• If this is a “minor infraction” I’d hate to see what serious violence is. But of course, if the cop loses his job over this, some other PD will consider him prime material for their wrong-house-puppykittyciding-drug-raiding SWAT team. (Tip o’ hat to C^2.)
• I am unacquainted with the art of Mr. Rhymes and know his name only because I love to read about celebrities, even if (and sometimes because) I’ve never heard of them. But he’s dead-bang right about the Megaupload bust.
• Why is it that they take our freedom in big gobbling gulps, then dole it back in such tiny, wimpy doses? Hey, Indiana: Free people have a right to resist the state and all its agents — particularly those who come storming in unannounced. Period. Without a lot of ifs, ands, and butts.
• Speaking of which …
• Oh yeah. Remember what was left of the Fifth Amendment once the NDAA got through with it? You can forget about that now.

Finally — marketing for the (very!) soon-to-be-released Hunger Games is getting fiendishly (and I mean that literally) clever. Lionsgate has now opened CapitalCouture.pn — a site that “celebrates” the style and fashion of the games.

If you don’t yet know The Hunger Games trilogy don’t be offput by the shallow, fashion-obsessed site. That’s the point of the thing. In the books (and the looks-to-be-fantastic movies being made from them), hapless teens from outlying districts are forced to fight to the death in an annual display of subjugation to the all-powerful state of Panem (thus the .pn in the URL, though in reality that belongs to Pitcairn Island). The games are orchestrated in Panem’s capital city, a vision of future decadence based on Rome of empire days.

Costumes are hugely important to the games (and become inadvertently vital to the success and survival of Our Heroine, Katniss Everdeen). So I think this is a darned clever way of showcasing them and hyping the movie. Even if it is shallow, ugly, and grotesque — just like Panem, the capital, and the games.

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No, not happy news like about crippled orphans being rescued by blind puppies (though that’s good, too). Not glurge.

But in the biblical flood of bad news, good news does occasionally bob to the surface and I’ve been saving up bits of it to brighten your day. So here goes:

• Rhode Island may defy the NDAA. (Tip o’ hat to JS.)
• The most important secret of a prosperous economy.
• Remember the homeless man with the golden voice? Well, so far, so good. (HT to SC)
• Obama (not intentionally, of course) might bring back the Constitution.
• Gaston Glock did an amazing thing.
• Speaking of homeless-but-talented, a homeless whiz kid is a semi-finalist in a national science competition, and the attention is helping her family.
• TSA may — may — apologize to some old ladies it abused. (Okay, I grant you it’s not much; but it’s something.)
• There was once a great pirate botanist. (Tip o’ hat to PT.)
• You don’t have to be a swashbuckling young man to perpetrate Outlaw acts of courage. (HT to MJR.)

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I just heard from Dave Duffy, who posted this on his blog.

Backwoods Home’s website will go dark for 12 hours tomorrow, Wednesday, January 18 — joining Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, and other sites to demonstrate what the Internet would look like under the rule of SOPA, PIPA, and the evil cabal of government and its crony corporate owners.

I wish we’d had more time to make the announcement, but my heart cheered when I got Dave’s email.

See you after the blackout! Under the reign of crony censorship, that might not be the case.

—–

I’ll save Wednesday’s planned blog entry until Thursday.

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• “Why can’t they just hire a lobbyist like everyone else?” That should go down in history along with “Let them eat cake.”
• Anybody familiar with this? Useful or not?
• Libertarianism and science fiction. Yeah.
• Just gets creepier.
• And creepier.
• And creepier. (But remember, not inevitable and potentially monkeywrenchable.)
• This looks interesting. (Tip o’ hat to C^2.)
• Bastards.
• But as always, always, always — ya gotta laugh at ‘em. (Tip o’ hat to Kevin in comments.)

(Kudos to The Usual Suspect.)

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