I think Fred Phelps and his family are disgusting, but I think the Supreme Court made the correct choice here.
Category: Civil Liberties
Media Bloggers Association Stands up to Righthaven
Media Bloggers Association are standing up for a blogger who was sued, and rather than fight took a default judgement, they argue:
Media Bloggers Association on Wednesday called Righthaven’s demands for damages against Hyatt outrageous given the nature of the alleged infringement and what they call Righthaven’s abusive business model.
If you’re interested in joining, you can sign up here. This might be something I have to consider. Righthaven needs to be stopped. Take, for instance, this Pennsylvania couple who spent six months fighting a lawsuit when they weren’t even the proper party. Supposedly Righthaven has racked up $364,000 in settlements so far. This is a sick and twisted abuse of our legal system.
This blog will continue its policy of scrubbing links to any media outlet that works with Righthaven. I’m not driving traffic and Google love to pond suckers.
Terror Watch Lists and Due Process
Les Jones reports on a story out of the UK where an estranged husband, who happened to work as an immigration officer, put his wife on the no fly list while she was in Pakistan, which prevented her from flying back to the UK.
And to think, we have fascists people in this country who think the use of no-fly lists is acceptable grounds for denying citizens fundamental constitutional rights.
Bob Brady’s Free Speech Killing Bill
New Jersey Laws Hurt Gun Owners
Scott Bach is calling on the New Jersey Statehouse to do something about the state’s laws which entrap honest gun owners. Brian Aitken isn’t the first, not by far. He was just lucky enough to get caught up in the perfect storm. There are a lot of honest citizens walking around New Jersey with felony convictions because they ran afoul of a technicality. This, to me, is also a disturbing part:
But that never happened because the judge refused to let the jury consider the testimony or the exemptions themselves: He had predetermined that none applied. Counsel protested repeatedly, and the jury itself three times asked why it couldn’t consider the exemption, but the judge refused every request, eventually lecturing the jury: “The issue of whether the defendant was moving, and therefore entitled to an exemption from the permit requirement, is not before you.†Accordingly, the jury had no choice but to convict merely because there were firearms present.
Not long after the clemency, Mr. Aitken got an e-mail from one of the jurors:
“It is unbelievable how much power a judge possesses,” the e-mail read. “Why wasn’t the exception allowed by the judge??? Did he have something against you or your attorney???? Again, glad to see you are out.”
See, I don’t absolve the jury of blame in this injustice. To me they are just as guilty as the prosecutor and the judge. Ignorance of their civic duty is no excuse. The judge has exactly zero power to punish a jury for a verdict, even in New Jersey. If the jury felt that Aitken should not be convicted, they should have acquitted him despite the judges orders. The fact that a jury was willing to convict this guy shows just how far we’ve fallen in terms of our civic understanding of our relationship to our government, and the role juries play as a check on government officials.
How We Catch Terrorists
A lot of folks on the Internets aren’t too happy with how the FBI is catching terrorists these days, by seemingly manufacturing them. I can’t say it’s a perfect method for catching terrorists, but I’m not sure what they are doing isn’t the least evil of the options available. First off, suggesting that the FBI is manufacturing terrorists is probably a bit of a hyperbole. Generally speaking, what constitutes entrapment is pretty well defined, and if the FBI wants to have a case, they will be careful to avoid it. So what are the elements of entrapment?
- The idea for committing the crime came from the government agents and not from the person accused of the crime.
- Government agents then persuaded or talked the person into committing the crime. Simply giving him the opportunity to commit the crime is not the same as persuading him to commit the crime.
- The person was not ready and willing to commit the crime before the government agents spoke with him.
If this turns out to be entrapment, I’ll jump on board in criticizing the FBI’s methods. But I don’t really like the idea of violent jihadis wandering around the United States, with only a lack of materials standing between themselves and the next Oklahoma City. If you think about it, the alternatives are probably worse than what the FBI is doing. What alternatives would there be?
- More controls over explosives and explosive precursors. Given how many chemicals are explosive precursors, this method doesn’t enthuse me. Plus, much like gun control, it’s not going to stop someone determined. But it will definitely be annoying for people who lawfully use explosives or their precursors.
- More domestic spying. If you’re going to keep close enough eye on them to catch them when they finally do hook up with Ahmed the Truck Bomb Maker, you’ll need to keep a close watch on them and anyone they associate with. Without thinking about the manpower issues involved here, it’ll be a big problem if one of these jihadists manage to slip away from his FBI watchers after securing an uncomfortable amount of Semtex.
- Widen the GWOT to ensure terrorists have no places to train, hide, or get radicalized. This would be my preferred option, but it’s not politically or economically feasible. You’d have to send troops into Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen. The only way we’re paying for such an expansion of military action is either through massive tax hikes or adding even more to our deficit. That still doesn’t stop the problem of people who are already over here and already radicalized.
- Doing nothing as long as terrorism is a low level problem. I’d probably be OK with this too, but the first time one of these guys manages to get his hands on something and executes another Oklahoma City, I can promise you there will be all kinds of restrictions put on not only explosives and precursors, but many civil liberties.
- Institute extreme violations of civil liberties for Muslim Americans. I don’t find this option to be remotely acceptable, and don’t think anyone else should either.
So as much as it might feel better if we catch terrorists just before they are about to trigger the detonator on the truck bomb Ahmed built, setting the bar at that height seems to have an awful potential for someone actually pulling it off before agents can intervene. You can’t just think of what your reaction would be to a potential truck bombing. You have to think of what the now frightened population is going to let the civil servants get away with, and it can be guaranteed they will try to get away with as much as they can. Last time we went through this, our wonderful civil servants almost ended model rockery as a hobby in the United States, among other things.
So for now, provided the FBI isn’t unlawfully entrapping people, I’m fine with the FBI hooking up people who have the will to commit violent jihad with what they think is the means, and then busting them. It’s probably the lesser of available evils at the moment. It’s not the explosives that are dangerous, but the jihadist who has no issues murdering men, women and children as they go about their daily lives that’s dangerous. That’s generally been our philosophy when arguing against gun control right?
The Man Who Coined the Term “Security Theater” …
Friday Must Read
From Popehat, on the federal gropefest:
The purpose of Security Theater is not only to prevent actual security threats. The purpose of Security Theater is to convince us that the government can do something and is doing something, and most importantly to make us accept “unquestioning compliance†with government as an American value. The purpose of Security Theater is to normalize submission. But “unquestioning compliance†is not an American value.
And he continues:
Throughout my career — both as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney — I’ve observed a consistent inverse relationship: the more petty a government officer’s authority, the more that officer will feel a need to swagger and demand that you RESPECT HIS AUTHORITAH. Your average FBI agent might search your house based on a crappy perjured warrant, invade your attorney-client emails, and flush your life down the toilet by lying on the stand at your mail fraud trial. But he doesn’t feel a need to vogue and posture to prove anything in the process. He’s the FBI. But God above help you when you run into the guy with a badge from some obscure and puny government agency with a narrow fiefdom. He and his Napoleon syndrome have got something to prove.
Read the whole thing.
Let Freedom Ring
In Bloomberg’s New York, apparently playing chess can be a crime if you do it in the wrong park near children. It would seem New York City makes the assumption that if you’re in a park with children, you’re pretty clearly a child molester. Personally, I think this is probably more a case of wealthy New Yorkers not wanting their kids around scary homeless people. New Yorkers are remarkably tolerant folks, you know.
Hat Tip to Cam Edwards
Muslim Women Allowed to Pat Themselves?
Because my hair is apparently the next big terrorist threat according to TSA, I’m curious as to why I was not allowed to pat down my hair and have a chemical swipe of my hands instead of having the girls groped. Muslim women are apparently given this option, but I was instructed to stand their while being felt up by an old woman without being given a choice.
According to CAIR, here are some guidelines on options muslim women are given when dealing with TSA:
- Before you are patted down, you should remind the TSA officer that they are only supposed to pat down the area in question, in this scenario, your head and neck. They SHOULD NOT subject you to a full-body or partial-body pat-down.
To some degree, this was the case in my situation. I didn’t have anyone’s hands roaming down my legs, but the front of my chest was felt up while I had absolutely no hair hanging down in front of my shoulders. If my hair set it off, only my back should have been groped.
- Instead of the pat-down, you can always request to pat down your own scarf, including head and neck area, and have the officers perform a chemical swipe of your hands.
I was never given this option at all. And considering I wasn’t wearing a scarf, a swipe of my hands would have been far more likely to turn up any problematic substances. Why is my hair treated differently because I don’t have a religious scarf, even though the same issues may be the cause of secondary screening?
Is the only way to avoid a TSA-groping to dress like a muslim woman? If so, anyone know where I can get a long, stylish scarf?