Wednesday, October 31

and... why is it controversial?

Free Market News stated that Ron Paul was going to run his two commercial spots in New Hampshire, despite the criticism the ads garnered last weekend. I liked them. I thought the first one was cheesy, yes, but it tells the viewer where our candidate stands on the issue. The second one, is better, I think.


the last defense

Since I was a sophomore in high school, taking Procedural Criminal Law, I have dreamed of becoming an attorney. One Saturday morning during first semester, I was laying in bed, and grabbed a book for some light reading: Constitutional Interpretation: Rights of the Individual, by Craig Ducat. A pre-lawyer was born.

Between then and now I've toyed with several ideas about where I'd find my niche. I thought about being a prosecutor, the Solicitor General for the US, a corporate lawyer, an author, a missionary (not having anything to do with law, but I did go through a weird kick for a few weeks one May), a trafficking victim advocate, a politician and finally, nothing. A few weeks ago, I hit a point in my studies when I realized that nothing appealed to me as a career. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my future.

A few days ago, I found my path again. I was having a conversation with a friend whose father is a lawyer. He told me that considered lawyers to be the people's last defense against the government. I had a eureka moment. I heard in my head the Will Smith song "Men in Black," the line where Will says that the MIBs are the first, last and only line of defense against the worst scum of the universe. I thought, yep, that sounds about right.

Our people need protection from the government. Further, the Constitution needs protection from the government as well. Places like the ACLU and the Institute for Justice work to continue that protection. Since I was raised a Republican, I was brought up disdaining the ACLU. I don't agree with all the cases they represent, but an organization that purports to preserve the civil liberties of Americans can't be all bad.

And maybe one day, our country will wake up and realize what has been given up, and realize that the only remedy is to act to bring us back to the way our country was when founded.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Friday, October 26

militia maintenance

I did not grow up with guns in my home. My parents never owned a gun, and I’m almost positive that neither my mother nor my father has ever even fired a weapon before. I did grow up with the mentality that guns are bad, and that I never wanted to use one, especially once I was older and went through my pacifist phase.

My views have changed recently, however. I wouldn’t say that I’m now an enthusiastic member of the NRA, and I’m not going to be donning reflective orange gear to forage around in forests anytime soon, but I do recognize the rights of others to do so.

I was in eighth grade when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold stormed Columbine High School and orchestrated the second deadliest school shooting in our history. Though there’d been other school shootings and violence, the scale of this incident immediately polarized the nation and brought out the zealots defending or denouncing the right of citizens to bear arms.

The Second Amendment guarantees this right of the citizens, but civilians and government officials alike seem determined to tell us that that’s not really what the Founders meant when they wrote:

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

There are theories about what the Founders could have meant: “the people” really means the State; “to bear arms” really means in a military sense; “militia” really means the Army. In “Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” a report to the Senate, Senator Orrin Hatch wrote,

“They argue that the Second Amendment's words ‘right of the people’ mean ‘a right of the state’ — apparently overlooking the impact of those same words when used in the First and Fourth Amendments. The ‘right of the people’ to assemble or to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures is not contested as an individual guarantee. Still they ignore consistency and claim that the right to ‘bear arms’ relates only to military uses. This not only violates a consistent constitutional reading of ‘right of the people’ but also ignores that the second amendment protects a right to ‘keep’ arms.

“When our ancestors forged a land ‘conceived in liberty’, they did so with musket and rifle. When they reacted to attempts to dissolve their free institutions, and established their identity as a free nation, they did so as a nation of armed freemen. When they sought to record forever a guarantee of their rights, they devoted one full amendment out of ten to nothing but the protection of their right to keep and bear arms against governmental interference. Under my chairmanship the Subcommittee on the Constitution will concern itself with a proper recognition of, and respect for, this right most valued by free men.”

I recently began exploring the idea of purchasing a firearm of my very own (once I save up a lot of money for a really nice piece). Since I reside in Illinois, I am required to apply for and hold a valid Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card. The card falls under the control of the Illinois State Police; before issuing the card, the applicant is run through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which in turn is run by the FBI. The NCIS determines whether the applicant can possess a firearm based on criteria enumerated by the Gun Control Act of 1968.

I cannot legally own a gun if I’m under 18, or under indictment for a crime, or am mentally defective, or am addicted to a controlled substance, or have been convicted of a federal crime (imprisonment of more than 1 year) or a state crime (imprisonment of more than 2 years). Reading the restrictions of lawfully infringing the Second Amendment, I now understand why it is so easy to buy guns on the black market, and why citizens choose to do so.

I can also understand why many citizens believe that these restrictions should be imposed. They don’t want another Columbine (even though it happened again with more fatalities at Virginia Tech almost exactly eight years later). They want to get guns out of the hands of criminals. It makes sense, in a paternalistic way. But it’s undermining the freedom bestowed by the Framers, by the men who fought for freedom and liberty from the Crown, who died so that we might do what we want and be left alone to do it.

I own a t-shirt from Random Shirts.com, showing a man holding a squirrel. The caption is “Guns don’t kill squirrels. Cars do.” It’s an obvious analogy to the argument “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Still true.

The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising. – Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Japanese Shogun, August 29, 1558

Wednesday, October 24

getting schooled

Children for me are a long way off. But I've been giving some thought recently concerning how I would educate my brood. I grew up in stereotypical white suburbia and received a public school education. I went on to attend a private religious university in another state and am now enrolled at an independent private graduate school. I grew up thinking that anyone who didn't go to school with me was strange somehow, like a few kids from church who were home-schooled. I equated private schools and homeschooling with bible class, like my friend who attended enigmatic P.S.R. classes at her Catholic church.

Now that I've had a chance to meet people from differing educational backgrounds, I'm not so sure that I would want my children to be victims of public education. Across the country, schools, even public schools, have varying curricula. Though there are standardized tests, some schools, especially in rural and urban areas, lack consistency and thoroughness in some subjects.

When considering public education, parents have to think about myriad decisions: Will my child be bored because he has to work at the same pace as others, though he is more advanced? Will my child be lured into a gang and killed in senseless street violence? Will my child learn about sex at the age of 10 and be given free condoms at the age of 14? I would say that a good percentage of American parents assume that a public school education is "good enough." Some don't have the money for private schooling, or the patience for home-schooling. I'm not sure I would have the patience, either, but anything but public schooling is looking attractive right now.

From all of my friends who are pursuing an education in education, the biggest complaint I hear is Public Law 107-110, popularly known as No Child Left Behind. Apparently, the No Child Left Behind Act leaves everyone behind, but at least they’re all together. The NCLB Act requires public schools in a given state to conduct standardized testing at appointed years during a child’s education, provides federal funding as an incentive to raise expectations for students, and purports to be succeeding at achieving a level field for all students, regardless of socioeconomic status or ethnicity.

Surprisingly, the Act was supported and signed by President Bush. (I say surprisingly because he is a Republican, but given the liberties he’s infringed on American citizens in other areas of life, it really shouldn’t be so much of a shock.) Though states are free to set their own standards and methods of testing, the money is still coming from the federal government, and there is a very real threat of a movement toward standardized federal schools.

Meanwhile, children who are home-schooled seem to be doing better than their standardized compatriots. In a study of more than 7,000 adults who had been home-schooled, the National Home Education Research Institute found that the majority were content, intelligent, active citizens. About 60% of home-schooled adults claimed to be “very happy,” and 70% found life to be “exciting,” compared to non-home-schooled adults answered 30% and 50%, respectively.

The question wants for further analysis, and I certainly have time for it. But as the federal government sneaks in the back door to control our lives, who knows what will have happened by the time I’m ready to send kids to school.

The public school system: "Usually a twelve year sentence of mind control. Crushing creativity, smashing individualism, encouraging collectivism and compromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting it instead into meek subservience to authority." – Walter Karp, Editor Harper's Magazine

Friday, October 19

what Hitler didn't learn from Napoleon

Before sending his troops to invade Russia, Hitler said, "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." He obviously didn't learn his lesson from Napoleon, who retreated five months after attempting to take over the same country. History has a way of repeating itself. It doesn't seem very likely that we're able to learn from our mistakes. Granted, I don't think that there will soon be a Fourth Reich who tries once again to claim control of Russia, but there are other mistakes to be repeated.

During my internship in Washington, DC, my program took the participants to see "Cabaret." I'd seen the 1972 movie a few years earlier and hadn't been too impressed, but the stage production was different, and absolutely fantastic. The dramaturg included in the program an essay comparing the rise of socialism and Nazism to the current political climate in America. The essay showed ten signs that demonstrated the decline of Germany into paranoia and oppression; those signs were then linked to events happening in America, making several frightening parallels.

The movie Rendition opens today, which shows the darker side of our current administration. In his review of the movie, Roger Ebert comments that rendition started under Clinton. There is actually basis for rendition between states in the Constitution. Article 4, Section 2, Clause 2 states:

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

This is commonly called extradition, and when it appears as a plot device in Law and Order, we're ok with it. However, rendition, or more specifically extraordinary rendition, is completely different from that. The United States has repeatedly denied claims that the government engages in this behavior, through interviews with various officials and reports for Congress. Whether or not there is hard proof, I don't believe that it's a stretch, considering the presence of America in other countries, CIA satellite stations abroad, and Abu Ghraib. The plot of the movie Rendition follows an Egyptian-born American citizen being kidnapped off a flight from South Africa to Chicago. He is taken to an unnamed country and tortured during an interrogation to discover why a known terrorist, or someone with the same name, called him on his cell phone, which he may not even have had at the time. His wife, when she discovers his disappearance does everything in her power to free him, attempting to fight faceless security admins who care more about averting the possibility of a terrorist plot than actually considering the likelihood that the man is a terrorist.

The last time I was in an American law class, which was earlier this morning, we operated on an adversarial system of law, whereby people are innocent until proven guilty. And I'm pretty sure I read somewhere in the United States Constitution the words "due process." Yes, that's right, Amendments 5 and 14. But then, if the government is working to protect us from foreign threats, we should blindly accept it.

These attitudes toward foreign-born citizens is reminiscent of something.




"A member of the U.S. Congressional Nazi crimes committee visiting Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after its liberation, 24 April 1945."

The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its forein and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked, and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide.- R.J. Rummel, Death by Government

Saturday, October 13

self-censorship

A friend just today regaled me with a story that exemplifies a current running through our country today. He is in his last year of college at a private Christian school. He received through campus email a message with the subject "Are You a Hetero-sexist?" The email had a link that lead the viewer to a quiz concerning his beliefs on homosexuality. My friend, a very conservative Christian, scored high on the quiz, placing in the "homophobe" category. He was also raised with the idea, and he maintains as an adult, that homosexuality is a sin. He took issue with the quiz's judgment that not agreeing with homosexuality is the same thing as homophobia and discrimination and hate crimes. I took the quiz myself, scored a 45. Most of the points I accrued were from answers like "I never considered that before." I suppose that would be a personal failing, not wondering if everyone around me is gay. But it's not politically correct to ask people their sexual orientation, or to say that it is wrong, from a religious view.

I recently heard a speech given by Charleton Heston on the Radio Free Liberty podcast. Speaking at Harvard Law School in 1999, Mr. Heston said,

"If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe. Don't let America's universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism."

It's not only the topic of homosexuality. I will admit that I was unaware that my godmother was mixed-race until a few months ago. I've known her since I was in junior high, and only this year did I know she was African, French and Creole. Before then I just saw her as the beautiful woman who was my godmother; the only thing that's changed is now I know her heritage. Sometimes I feel as though I can't talk about certain things or complain about others because I am three generations away from British citizens.

It's much easier to stay quiet, to assume that someone else will speak up if conditions get bad enough. Like the story of Kitty Genovese, whose murder was heard by about a dozen of her neighbors, but none thought to call the police or come to her aid, we rely on the next person to do something. The people my age are distinctly quiet in this generation, content to stick ear buds in their ears and listen to their iPods instead of taking up the cause, any cause. Even the horrific thought of Vietnam's history repeating itself in Iraq has barely spurred any activism in colleges, at least not compared to the 60s. Many activists this time around are leftovers from the last time, while my peers sit eerily silent. Maybe they're afraid to speak up. After all, in today's society, citizens who are anti-war are harshly admonished for being unpatriotic and not supporting the soldiers who are dying on foreign soil. But who thinks to ask why those men and women are dying?

Our U.S. Constitution still gives us the freedom of speech, though it's been carved away in pieces. We still need to be asking questions, making statements, even at the cost of uncomfortable silences, or social ostracism. The Sedition Act expired in 1801, and even though the Patriot Act has resurrected some of its ideas, we still enjoy a relative freedom to express ourselves. We need to exercise that freedom while we still can.

The freedom of speech and the freedom of the press have not been granted to the people in order that they may say things which please, and which are based upon accepted thought, but the right to say the things which displease, the right to say the things which convey the new and yet unexpected thoughts, the right to say things, even though they do a wrong. – Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), Seventy Years of Life and Labor, 1925

Thursday, October 11

a question of dollar signs

If you've ever watched tv in the Chicago area, it's likely that you're familiar with commercial staples such as Erik Martin and Legal Helpers, J.G. Wentworth, Attorney Peter Francis Geraci (my roommate and I believe that his legal first name is actually "Attorney") and Roni Deutch. Now, there's really nothing sinister about these commercials, or the companies they advertise, save for the sad commentary on American lives and Americans' desire for government handouts. My favorite commercial depicts some type of credit class, where Erik Martin prevents the room from being "schooled" by "Creditor the Clown" by bopping him with his inflatable baseball bat. "Don't let bankruptcy, garnishment of wages or the threat of foreclosure keep you down," Martin admonishes. It's a nice idea, isn't it? Hiring a law firm to get your creditors off your back? Just forget the fact that you wouldn't be in the position if you were responsible with your money and didn't spend more money than you had. Unfortunately, for Americans, debt is a way of life, as the average American household has more than $9000 of credit card debt, and the national debt has topped $9 trillion (that figure is incredible, because I know for a fact that it was around $8.5 trillion in March of this year. So, in seven months, our government spent half a trillion dollars). Each American born today is responsible for almost $30,000 of that debt.

Since we're all saddled with thousands of dollars of debt, just by being Americans, it would be nice to have something to counteract that. Hillary Clinton has proposed such an idea: giving $5000 to every newborn to put into an account to later be used for college or a down payment on a house. It reminds me of the deal my parents made with my sister and I; they'd give us some money when we got engaged, to be used for the wedding or the first house. Good idea in theory. But where will that $5000 for every child come from? The taxpayers. It'll add to the national debt and drain further on our resources. Since about 4 million kids are born in our country every year, that's $20 billion in just one year. While it would be theoretically nice to put all children on a level playing field, to help disadvantaged kids go to college, it's a hard program to stomach. If our government can't set a good example of fiscal responsibility, how are the citizens supposed to carry it out?

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. – G. Gordon Liddy

Tuesday, October 9

alternative history

One of the main tenets of our current presidential administration is the proliferation of freedom, or what the regime considers freedom. This is what America is doing in Iraq, apparently, spreading canned freedom, as well as doing what presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee calls "fixing what we broke." The think tank, Freedom House, reports on the state of the world's freedom on a per-country basis every year. According to Freedom House,

"Freedom is possible only in democratic political systems in which the governments are accountable to their own people; the rule of law prevails; and freedoms of expression, association, belief and respect for the rights of minorities and women are guaranteed."

There is a wonderfully colorful chart of the organization's findings, called "Freedom in the World" on Wikipedia, in addition to color-coded maps like the one below.


The green color means that the country is "free," the tan "partly free," and the blue "not free." There is also a chart that enumerates each country in the world and assigns it a value based on the amount of political rights and civil liberties its citizens enjoy. The lower the number (from 1 to 6), the better off the country is. Unsurprisingly, the United States earns a 1 in both categories, and is labeled "free." In fact, the majority of countries in the Americas are free. Cuba is the only country labeled "not free," though Venezuela is close to it, with 4s in both categories. It's a nice idea, to be able to distinguish the apparent freedom of a country's citizens, especially when those doing the distinguishing do so from the lofty perch of Mount Superpower. I've always found it a bit ironic that for as great a country we are, we are unable to see freedom as something other than a democracy.

John Adams said in 1814, "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." We're pressing our luck, aren't we, two centuries later? Historically speaking, our country's experiment with democracy has been successful. We emerged from relative obscurity to be first to develop nuclear weapons (be first to use them, too), first to put a man on the moon. But if we look back at the formation of our country and why it was that way, we've moved very far away from our original goals. With instruments like Social Security and the Great Society, we've moved into a position of reliance on the government such that we've developed selective amnesia. We can't remember what it was like before the government helped to support its citizens, warned its citizens about the dangers of ingesting mood-altering substances, regulated the civil unions of its citizens. We've become so dependent, we don't believe we could ever be independent again.

Sometimes I wonder how our country would have turned out if the South had won that nasty War of Northern Aggression. It's a polarizing question because many are liable to jump on the soapbox of slavery. Slavery is a horrible institution. It was horrible then and it's horrible now. But it was not the reason our Civil War was fought. It was fought out of fear. The South was defending State's rights and its very way of life. The North was advocating Change and Progress and National rights. Ultimately, Lincoln succeeded in reuniting the Union, a feat he is much commended for. I'm not a big fan of Lincoln to begin with. Yes, he was a great speech-writer. Yes, he was calm in the face of adversity and all that. But he suspended habeas corpus. And he quashed State's rights. The South contended that States should be able to decide how to live, and since the States were founded before the United States was, their rights should prevail. The North contended the opposite. Obviously, we know what happened.

But if the South had won, what might the world be like? Would there still be a Confederacy, or would the South have eventually joined up with the North again? Would Amendments 13, 14, and 15 be passed eventually? Realistically, there's no way to know. But wouldn't it be nice for people to think about it, without getting caught up in the peripheral issues?

Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it? – Harlon Carter

Monday, October 8

re-examining job descriptions

It's a case that highlights so many problems inherent in the system. Pleajhia Mervin's wrist-breaking arrest by a security guard at Knight High School in Palmdale, CA is an easy story to get upset about. After being asked repeatedly to pick up cake that she had accidentally dropped, Mervin was arrested for "littering." Apparently, the security guard doing the asking was unsatisfied with the job she was doing with picking up cake crumbs with her fingers. She was slammed onto a table and her arm was raised behind her back so high, the wrist shattered. When another student was seen videotaping the incident on her cell phone, she was wrestled to the ground. Another student took still photos with his cell phone of that arrest.

I have more than four years of experience being a university security officer. I understand the frustration of dealing with people who seem like a waste of time for what seems interminably long. I can hear in my head some of my more exuberant colleagues excitedly cheering on the arresting guard. And yes, there is definitely a question of reception of the whole story. Maybe Mervin was violent resisting arrest, and the guard felt justified in using so much force. And maybe her wrist bone was weak in some places, and coincidentally broke along those lines. We've only heard her side of the story thus far, the guard's side is ominously silent, save for the official statement issued by the school:

"Good afternoon. I can just comment we did have an incident at our school last week. However, I would like to emphasize that we do have a safe campus. I've been working with our staff, with my district office staff, community leaders, and parents, to ensure that we continue to keep our campus safe for all students, but I want people to know that our focus here is academic excellence for all students," said Dr. Susan McDonald, principal of Knight High School.

Mervin claims that the guard told her to "hold still, nappy head." It's a curious thing that the guard felt comfortable using such a racially charged comment, considering only 20% of Knight's students are white, according to the school's website. It wasn't unconstitutional for him to say it, but it's unfortunate that some people don't understand the concepts of politeness. At any rate, the guard felt that a littering offense required not only arrest, but the perpetrator's being thrown onto a table in front of her peers.

It reminded me of the display shown at the tasering of Andrew Meyer at the Unversity of Florida. The longer version of the video on youtube shows Meyer at the microphone and talking to Kerry about a journalist who claims Kerry won the '04 election, prior to asking his question. Kerry seems a little peeved, and keeps wondering aloud when the question will come. Meyer responds that he wants to first lay down some exposition before asking the question. Behind Meyer are at least two uniformed campus police (campus police, not city police or county sheriff's department, but campus police), attempting to speed Meyer along. He occasionally talks back to them, but mostly ignores them at first. So, then Meyer asks three questions of Kerry (maybe he was worried Kerry would only answer one, so he asked them one after the other); why did he concede the '04 election, why shouldn't Bush be impeached (he brings up Clinton's 'blow job' offense); was Kerry a member of Skull and Bones.

The questions are not really related, and Meyer is obviously excited. But just as he finishes asking the questions, the campus police grab his arms and begin to lead him away. Kerry then says he'll answer the questions, but the officers continue to attempt to restrain Meyer. Some audience members clap at this, and I get the feeling that Meyer had been a bit of a pain to them during the presentation. But the officers never audibly tell Meyer what he's being arrested for. Perhaps understandably, Meyer begins to resist. He doesn't understand why he's being arrested, and in truth, neither do I. Three uniformed officers are now leading him, and Meyer is yelling, "help." The video gets pretty shaky at this point, and it's easier to see what happens next from another youtube post.

Eventually, Meyer is on his stomach at the back of the auditorium, not even outside, but inside, where everyone, including Kerry and various people videotaping the incident can see what's happening. It takes at least six officers to subdue him, apparently. They do warn him that they will tase him if he doesn't stop resisting. But he keeps asking, "what did I do?" and saying "Don't tase me." Then he starts yelling as they tase him a few times.

It has been my opinion for some time that the death knell of our country will be complacency. Americans have been lulled into this false sense of security. As long as nothing bad appears to be happening to us, we don't care about anyone else. The audience's reaction to Meyer's tasing, and even Mervin's arrest are perfect examples. No one in the audience did anything to stop the officers. Kerry half-heartedly starts to answer Meyer's questions, but he never asks the officers to stop, to let him go. There must have been other adults in the lunchroom who saw what was happening to Mervin and the other student who was arrested for videotaping. No one did anything.

Due to my experience in campus law enforcement and by working closely with village law enforcement, I've developed a respect for those who are charged to "protect and serve." But there comes a time when we must re-examine those priorities and who they're actually helping. Is a littering offense worth breaking a 16-year-old girl's wrist and expelling her? Who was the guard trying to protect from errant cake crumbs? And was there something in the UF's student code that criminalized potentially controversial questions asked of visiting speakers?

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. – Voltaire

Saturday, October 6

the veil is lifted

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