Olivia Troye is a Republican who worked as the Homeland Security advisor to former VP Mike Pence, but became an outspoken critic of Pence’s boss after leaving the White House in 2020. Among the things she’s criticized him for lately is his nomination of, shall we say, less-than-qualified candidates for many important positions.

One of those is his nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, whose main qualifications seem to be love of conspiracy theories, subservience to Trump, eagerness to use the FBI to punish critics, and his efforts to educate youth via children’s books such as The Plot Against the King, in which Patel portrayed himself as a wizard helping defend “King Donald” from … well, you know.

Probably less interesting than J. Edgar Hoover’s book How to Tell If Your Parents Are Members of the Communist Party, but at least the artwork’s in color.

Troye is among many members of both parties who’ve criticized the nomination and Patel himself, and she said a couple of weeks ago (among other things) that she believed Patel would “lie about intelligence” (and not just his own), “lie about making things up on operations,” and by doing so had “put the lives of Navy SEALs at risk.” This prompted Patel to get his lawyer to threaten Troye with a defamation suit if she didn’t retract her comments.

Troye has a lawyer too, though, and he writes much funnier letters:

For email subscribers who may not get embedded images for a reason I haven’t yet figured out, Troye’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, thanked Patel’s lawyer Jesse Binnall for his letter and said he was replying on his client’s behalf. “I respectfully note,” he continued, “that many—if not all—of her statements have been previously or similarly stated by a wide swath of the knowledgeable population.” He also expressed doubts that the threatened lawsuit would “thrive.” But the important part is how he conveyed his client’s “intentions as to a retraction,” which was to post a picture of the French knight taunting King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I don’t know whether there’ll be a lawsuit or how that might go, but the letter is terrific work. See also “Cleveland Browns Lawyer Letter Is Apparently Real” (Mar. 18, 2011) (discussing the best response to a cease-and-desist letter ever written, just attaching the original and stating “I feel that you should be aware that some a$$hole is signing your name to stupid letters.”).

“The ideologies of this group were concerning,” an expert was quoted as saying, “and they genuinely believed that they had the power to construct their own legal system, threaten others, and [that they] were above the law.” In the U.S., that’s a winning electoral platform, but the four people in this story have the bad luck to live in the United Kingdom.

Belief is one thing, no matter how odd, but these four acted on their beliefs illegally and with weirdness aforethought. Specifically, they barged into the Essex Coroner’s Service last April carrying handcuffs and announcing they were there to arrest the senior coroner. He wasn’t there at the time, so they settled for threatening a different one. According to her, the four accused her of “interfering with the dead.” Which, in a sense, is what coroners do at least some of the time. It’s just not illegal for them.

Who is the coroner and what does the coroner do? Those are the two questions on this Essex-coroner-related FAQ page, so I have answers. In this context, the coroner is “an independent judicial officer appointed by the Crown,” and he or she is responsible for investigating (1) violent or unnatural deaths, (2) sudden deaths with no known cause, (3) reported deaths in custody, and (4) treasure finds. So that’s pretty much—wait. “Treasure finds”? Yes. We’ll come back to that. But in general, coroners investigate suspicious deaths in proceedings called “inquests.” These might or might not involve a post-mortem; if they do, a pathologist does that.

So what problem did these people have with the Essex coroner? There’s no FAQ for that, and after reading several reports I really have no idea except that it involves them being idiots. Specifically, they are the kind of idiots often called “sovereign citizens” because the only legal sovereign(s) they recognize is themselves. The upside of membership in that club is that you don’t have to pay taxes or follow any other so-called “laws”! The downside is that yes you do, because your legal arguments are bullshit, but you didn’t, so welcome to jail. See, e.g., “Did Congress Forgive All Your Debts by Passing a Law Nobody Knows About Because of 9/11?” (Aug. 17, 2022) (hint: nope); “Sovereign Citizen Convinces Jury He Is Innocent of No Charges” (May 2, 2017).

The leader of the Essex group, an idiot named Mark Christopher, had declared himself the “chief judge” of a “Federal Postal Court” and also “Sheriff-Coroner: England and All Dominions.” Not that he had any legal authority or legitimacy for this, but he did get a logo made that he stuck to the side of his car (see above), so I guess that’s something. Apparently, having declared himself “Sheriff-Coroner,” he could brook no other coroners within his domain, and so off they went to arrest the closest one.

The senior coroner at that location had previously received threatening letters from the group, accusing him of being a “detrimental necromancer.” “I thought this was odd, to say the least,” the senior coroner told the BBC, in what seems like a very British thing to say. I like the phrase a lot, both because it sounds like a Queensrÿche song title and because it concedes there might be beneficial necromancers out there. (“Necromancy” is often equated with “black magic” but technically it just means trying to learn stuff by talking to the dead. Sure, that could be bad, but maybe you just need directions or something?) But what these people meant by it is not at all clear.

Anyway, having stormed in to confront the senior necromancer, but finding him absent, the group “served” some documents purporting to be “warrants” and then left without doing any more damage. They were arrested by real authorities later that day.

At trial, the defendants’ testimony was about as coherent as you’d expect. In general they claimed to have been trying to “shed light” on the “fraud” perpetrated by the court, although one also “claimed to have been acting with King Charles III’s approval to tackle ‘state child trafficking.'” Turns out neither part of that is true. The Sheriff-Coroner of the Federal Postal Court for England and All Dominions didn’t testify, being at least marginally smarter than the others. They made some effort to blame their leader for having a cult-like sway over them, but the jury convicted them all anyway. In October a judge sentenced Christopher to seven years in jail and gave the minions 30-month sentences each.

Oh, I promised to come back to the treasure issue. In the UK, coroners not only investigate suspicious deaths but also have jurisdiction over treasure finds. In fact, according to the Essex Coroner’s Office, “[i]f you think you’ve found treasure, you must report it to the Coroner within 14 days via the ‘Finds Liaison Officer.’ It’s a criminal offence not to do so.” The coroner will then investigate the matter. If it turns out to be Potential Treasure (their capital letters, not mine), an inquest will follow to determine whether it’s Actual Treasure. This page helpfully defines what counts as “treasure” under the Treasure Act 1996. It looks like it has to be more than 300 years old. We don’t have any of that here, but over there they do. And I guess it makes sense that the coroner would have jurisdiction over that, because Actual Treasure more than 300 years old will often be in the clutches of … well, you know. At least that’s how it is in the movies.

Four football fields of land degrade into desert every second. That equates to an area almost as large as Ethiopia each year. Could efforts to restore and reforest this arid terrain bear fruit?

On Wednesday, November 13, the California Department of Insurance announced the success of what it called “Operation Bear Claw,” an investigation into whether what looked like a bear damaging the inside of a Rolls Royce was, in fact, a person in a bear costume committing insurance fraud. The investigation concluded it was, and as a result four L.A. residents have been arrested and charged with fraud and conspiracy.

Sorry, I don’t mean he was committing insurance fraud while inside the car, like using the dashboard to write up the claim form or something. I meant this was a person in a bear costume committing an overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy to commit insurance fraud. Just to be clear.

According to the press release, the suspects filed an insurance claim in January asserting that a bear had gotten into their 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost and clawed up the interior. Assuming correctly that the insurer might want some evidence to support this, the suspects provided surveillance video footage that I haven’t figured out how to embed here yet but is worth watching.

In the video, the car is facing the surveillance camera but a strategically placed wall obscures the space to the right of the passenger side. Thus, while we see the dome light go on when a bear-like form enters the car, we are unable to see exactly how this alleged bear got the door open. Perhaps the owners mistakenly left the door slightly ajar, just enough for a passing bear to slip its claws in and swing the door open? And presumably they left a picnic basket or something equally tasty inside, which would explain why a bear would want to get in there in the first place? Questions abound.

Once inside, the bear-like form appears to rummage around inside the vehicle, and as it does this, its arms seem to bend in a way that the arms of a normal bear would not. Or, at least, the proportions aren’t bear-like. I don’t claim to be a bear expert, but I have watched videos of bears and in my amateur opinion, these don’t look like bear arms. They look more like, I don’t know, human arms in bear sleeves?

But you don’t need to take my opinion for it. The agency “had a biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife review the three alleged bear videos and they [the biologist] also opined it was clearly a human in a bear suit.”

Wait—three alleged bear videos? Where are the other two?

Well, if you look closely at the video you’ll see it’s actually a compilation of three sets of footage, from slightly different angles and showing three different vehicles being molested by what appears to be the same bear. Because here’s the thing: once you’ve had a great idea like this and have already gone to the trouble of getting yourself a bear costume, you wouldn’t stop at just one vehicle. Upon investigation, the agency found two other insurance claims had been filed with two other insurance companies seeking bear-inflicted damages for two other vehicles: a 2022 Mercedes E350 and a 2015 Mercedes G63. And, remarkably, those losses allegedly happened on the same date and at the same location as the Rolls-Royce incident.

So what we have here is either (1) one or more bears vandalizing the interior of three different cars successively parked at the same location on the same night, each with the passenger door at least slightly ajar to enable a curious bear to open said door, or (2) insurance fraud. This is where one turns to Occam’s Razor—the rule of thumb that “recommends searching for the explanation constructed with the smallest possible set of elements,” often paraphrased as “the simplest explanation is probably the best one”—which in this case suggests that #2, insurance fraud, is the better explanation.

That (plus the biologist) was enough to get a search warrant, and if you assumed these suspects would have disposed of the bear costume after using it to commit three crimes rather than keeping it at home, you must be new here:

Note that the suspects appear to have used “meat claw” cooking utensils to do the damage rather than the bear suit’s own claws. The real clue here is that, as the video shows, the damage involved perfectly parallel scratches to the upholstery, which I don’t think is how real bear claws work. (The damage is also minimal, so whoever wore the bear suit didn’t even put much effort into this.)

According to the press release, the insurance companies “were defrauded of $141,839” due to the bogus claims. But it also says the insurance companies reported the possible fraud, so I assume this means they paid while the Department of Insurance was on the other line encouraging them to do that because it would confirm the crime and also be pretty hilarious.

Say (you’re probably thinking), I wonder if this is the first time Lowering the Bar has covered a story involving a criminal in a bear suit? Again, you must be new here. See, e.g., “Costumed Bear Harasser Wanted by Authorities, Evolution” (Aug. 17, 2015). I guess I should clarify: in that case, a guy in a bear suit ran through a group of bear-watchers (this was in Alaska) and started “waving and jumping” in an apparent attempt to get the attention of the real bears. Having somehow survived, he faced charges for animal harassment. So, potential criminal in a bear suit, which is close enough. (We might also include “Dancing Polar Bears Sue for False Arrest,” a 2010 story involving protesters concerned about global warming, but I don’t think they were actually charged.)

But the story that leapt into my brain upon seeing this was the murder/conspiracy case in which a guy planned to make his own bear suit and hire a hitman to kill his ex-girlfriend while wearing it. (He would use the bear’s claws, not, like, a gun or something. That would be stupid). He never actually went through with this plan, probably realizing that Step One posed a pretty significant hurdle. See “How to Get Back at Your Ex: First, Kill a Bear” (Oct. 3, 2011). But he was a criminal, and he contemplated a bear suit, so I’m counting that one too.

Alexander Rogers was "ostracised" by his university peers shortly before his death, a coroner says.

Climate campaigners are bringing a legal case they hope will halt drilling at two huge fossil fuel projects.