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Grits for Breakfast
Personal blog · gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.compoliticshistory
Grits for Breakfast is a personal blog at gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com about politics and history. Since 2013, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 5 times. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked for posts on Texas criminal justice: crime lab independence, prosecutors and wrongful convictions, police arrests, and open-records law. Comments cite the posts as support and do not judge the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Welcome to Texas justice: You might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride.
What Hacker News says?
Livelihood is frequently the reason why biases creep in. Independent labs tend to do better. Here's a look at two different Texas crime labs. Compare and contrast, and see if you can spot the differences. https://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2021/02/beyond-aid-to... It starts with one pledging to: aid law enforcement in the detection, suppression, and prosecution of crime whereas the other seeks to provide medical…
Comment linking /2021/02/beyond-aid-to-law-enforcement-crime-lab.html
on “Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA testing kit”>Yup, even if you're totally innocent you can be held in jail for 3 days if a cop decides they don't like you. Yup. Happened to an acquaintance who was in town for a charity event. He was arrested in Fort Worth, and when we tried to post bond for him, the jailers "couldn't find" him. Went on for 3 days. The ironic part was that the guy was a prosecutor (from Mass.) See also: http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/200…
Comment linking /2005/12/tarrant-county-bail-politics-keeps.html
on “Taken”Yes, this is most definitely a proxy in the ongoing political battle between the Senate Republicans and the DoJ. It's a little surprising that he would side with Aaron just to take a potshot at the U.S. attorney's office. It's also worth pointing out that Texas (at least until recently) had some of the best open-records laws in the country. Cornyn argued that the Feds should emulate Texas in this regard -- during th…
Comment linking /2005/03/cornyn-foia-should-mimic-texas-open.html
on “U.S. Senator Questions Attorney General about Aaron Swartz”Here are some excerpts from the WSJ paywalled article: Cellphones are programmed to connect automatically to the strongest cell tower signal. The device being used by the U.S. Marshals Service identifies itself as having the closest, strongest signal, even though it doesn’t, and forces all the phones that can detect its signal to send in their unique registration information. Even having encryption on one’s phone, s…
Comment linking /2013/03/bypassing-telecoms-stingrays-allow.html
on “Americans’ Cellphones Targeted in Secret U.S. Spy Program”It is possible because a prosecutor's incentives are to get convictions above all else, and because prosecutors are rarely (almost never) held to account for such crimes. Even when prosecutors deliberately obstruct efforts by the defense to obtain that evidence, going so far as to ignore an order from a higher court, the punishment is relatively small. Ken Andersen was allowed to resign as district judge, and also t…
Comment linking /2013/09/from-too-little-too-late-department.html
on “How inmate Michael Morton lost 25 years of his life”