Terrorists in Johnson County?

Pardon me if I'm skeptical. I thought the Liberals were the only thought police. Seems like some folks have been thinking about and trying to commit some "terrorist acts?". Like raising money for some terrorist organizations like the dudes in Charlotte a few years ago who gave money to Hamas.

Hello, just because we support a foreign position and give money to it would not seem to me in America to make it against the law to support an opposing foreign agency. Remember our support for Afghanistan rebels like bin Laden when they were fighting Russia? Remember our support for Saddam when he was fighting Iran? It seems we can't get it right. How do you believe we have it right even now? We support Israel over the arabs. Why? Why have we picked one aggrieved party over another aggrieved party? Are we that smart?

So the terrorists arrested recently once fought in Afghanistan for a group that we heartily supported at the time. Now, this fight is being used as evidence against them?

You know, we just seem to arbitrarily decide to call something terrorist. Dropping bombs on innocent people from an airplane is somehow not seen as behaving in a terroristic manner. Maybe that's because it's what WE do. So we OK our behavior and outlaw all other opposing forms of behavior.

Now, it is against the law to talk about jihad in another country. Has anyone been paying attention to what our leadership has been doing? Pardon me if I'm skeptical about this whole situation. This sounds a lot like the Lackawanna 6. I think they got a bad deal. The got punished for getting out of a community that misrepresented itself to them. They were smart enough to leave and get back to putting their lives together, but not smart enough to avoid having our government hold it against them for the crassest of political reasons.

Just pardon me if I'm skeptical. I think I have every right to be.

What does it mean to be an "activiist judge"?

From Glenn Greenwald's excellent blog today, he quotes an answer given by Sam Alito during his confirmation hearings for a position on the Supreme Court:

When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.

Two weeks ago, Alito cast the deciding vote in Ricci v. DeStefano, an intensely contested affirmative action case. He did so by ruling in favor of the Italian-American firefighters, finding that they were unlawfully discriminated against, even though the district court judge who heard all the evidence and the three-judge appellate panel ruled against them and dismissed their case. Notably, the majority Supreme Court opinion Alito joined (.pdf) began by highlighting not the relevant legal doctrine, but rather, the emotional factors that made the Italian-American-plaintiffs empathetic.

You know, Sotomayor has been villified for talking about the advantages of having a Latino judge with a background unfamiliar to the court today. She's talked about the fact that, in a sense, judges do make law since they ultimately interpret the law to determine if it passes constitutional muster.

Republicans claim to despise activist judges and, according to the tenets of the Federalist Society, want judges who interpret the law the way it would have been interpreted by the founders of the US of A. I suppose what they really mean is an activist judge is any judge who rules differently than the way they would like. To me, an activist judge is one who is reversing laws that have been passed by legislatures. That is the only way a judge could "make law".

That means that, if the legislature determines that a city could throw out a test when the results of those passing the test do not reflect in some basic way the population of the citizens there, you might determine that maybe the test is biased toward the group that managed to pass the test. That is the intent of the laws under which Sotomayor made her ruling (along with another in a 3 judge panel) on a lower court. She is now being villified for having that ruling reversed recently by the supreme court.

A fair interpretation of this affair would be to determine that the Supreme Court (5-4) has made an activist ruling. They, in effect, have changed the law and are now preventing New Haven from redoing the promotion test for firemen.

What is particularly stunning in this story is that Ricci, the white fireman for whom the case was named was hired in the first place under anti-discrimination laws. Ricci has dylexia and he was given special provisions in order to pass the exams to qualify as a fireman for New Haven.

I'm telling you, some folks can only see life through their own special prism. I suspect Sotomayor will have an interesting viewpoint and be asking some interesting questions as she serves on the Supreme Court. Whether guys like Alito, Thomas, Roberts, or our good buddy Scalia will be listening is of course another question. After all, it's hard to hear with your ears plugged.

How can there be uncertainty about what Nancy Pelosi was told???

The continuing controversy about CIA briefings attended by Nancy Pelosi and a limited set of congressmen during the Bush administration leaves one major point unaddressed. If the CIA summaries presented thus far are so full of obvious inaccuracies (wrong dates, wrong people on the list), why has not more attention been directed to this?

First of all, the claim is that congressmen could not take notes about what was told to them. Secondly, it is also apprarent that either no records were made during the briefings (as a secretary would do) or that records were made but are being withheld.

These briefings were top secret. The very idea that our government gave top secret briefings and then has no official record of what was said is just astounding to me. If one of those attendees were to have leaked top secret info, how could anyone ever prove what they were told? It would devolve to he said/she said as seems to be the case now.

Unless this approach has been official CIA policy all along, it smacks to me of the Bush approach of hiding, obscuring, and failing to reveal any information which would make them look bad or show them to be the liars they truly are.

Having no official record of Top Secret briefings seems to me to be a firing offense. If they can't handle something so obvious as this, what can they possibly handle with any degree of competence? Their record reveals the answer to that question.

Re Contributory Negligence

NC is one of only 4 states that continue to have a "contributory negligence" civil statute. That means that , if you in any way contribute to your own injuries in an accident or whatever, you can't sue the other party for damages.

Now, I don't know if that discourages injury suits from fights in which a beat up party could not maybe collect because he made an offensive remark to a "friend", but it surely does apply to auto accidents where insurance companies are always involved. It cuts down on insurance costs and of course the insurance industry has always supported this kind of thing.

There has been on exception that I know of that was written into the law: If you aren't wearing a seat belt and received injuries exclusively due to negligence on the part of another, you COULD sue. That's an interesting exception. You have to argue that you would have contributed to your injuries if you were not wearing a seat belt except in maybe some extremely rare situations. Such an exception shows just how poorly constructed is a law such as this in general. You could imagine many more such innocent contributions to injury than seat belts in which a person could not collect under the law.

NC is about to change that law. They're adding some other political tradeoffs at the same time such as requiring multiple people who have responsibility to have to bear proportional responsibility rather than to go after the most wealthy in the bunch...also a good change.

Contributory negligence laws are a good example of how money influences politics. Fair examinations of the rate of return for political contributions to politicians shows more than a 20,000% rate of return. It is legal bribery and the public has to begin to throw its weight behind demands for good government. There is a sea change about to happen, I feel sure and I'm happy to be a part of seeing it come into being.

How do you abandon a lost cause?

There is a basic concept in economics known as “sunk costs”. The term describes the reluctance of an investor to get out of an enterprise in which a large investment has been made, but which is losing money and has little prospect of recovery. An example of this would be someone who invested a few years ago in Enron, saw his investment climb, then drop like a rock as the company’s true financial picture came to light. At some point, you realize that it’s not coming back, but, since you have so much invested, it is difficult to sell and try to salvage something. Psychologicially, it is also an admission of failure and that adds to the reluctance to give it up. You are tempted to believe you made the right choice and it’s going to come back, given enough time.

The “sunk costs” concept can be applied to other investments we make that are not strictly financial. For example, the Iraq War, once it was determined that the whole idea on which it was based was a fraud, a simple and maybe a logical conclusion would be to withdraw as fast as possible to reduce further expenditures on an invalid enterprise. Such decisions aren’t really that simple.

The ability to recognize failure, admit it, then change course is difficult because pride is involved. Let me propose that we need to change course in the “war on drugs”. In this case, the purpose is noble: to reduce the use of illegal drugs. We chose a “logical” solution by locking up folks who use or sell illegal drugs. Our prisons are full of them. 60% of folks in the Federal system are there on drug-related charges. Many others are there because of a criminal enterprise they were involved in to pay for their drug habit. Examples: breaking and entering, possession of stolen goods, and passing bad checks.

Our investment has been in enforcing drug laws, investigating drug related crime, and prosecuting and locking up drug related offenders. Just how wise is this? We have a sunk cost (billions upon billions) that we’ve invested in this problem. The net result is drug use is about the same as it’s always been and our incarceration bills are out of sight.

We need to change course, but what is holding us up? Is it pride that we picked a path and it has been a total failure? Is it that we are more interested in punishing than in fixing the problem? Is it the fear that someone who is even more ignorant than you are will claim that you are being “soft on crime”?

Or, will we keep holding on to that Enron stock until it costs more to sell it than it’s worth?

Conservative are wimps

One of the interesting theories I've been thinking about lately is the pattern of wimpiness of conservative leaders. They talk tough. They act tough, but their record shows relative fright. The position of conservatives who support torture is simply disgusting to me. It is a vengeance and bullying kind of mindset. It has no regard for efficiency and is based on gut emotion, not factual information. The idea that they'd squeal under torture is all the thought they put into it....so it must be effective.

It interests me to realize that the Supreme court decision to require Guantanimo prisoners to have legal representation and be tried by a jury of their peers had a dissent from (guess who?) Antonin Scalia who said, quaking: "Allowing federal judges, rather than military officials, to release terror suspects could have disastrous consequences.

The game of bait-and-switch that today's opinion plays upon the nation's commander in chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.

This is based on simple unreasoning fear and nothing else.

Conservatives don't want Guantanimo prisoners moved to US prisons. They'll break out and harm us seems to be the "fear". Even though McVeigh and company were housed easily and successfully. What a joke. NIMBY. They're scared.

I think conservatives generally are the victims of projection. They accuse you of doing what they themselves are doing. Look at the ration of public officials who divorce (conservative vs liberal). Look at their strong objection to homosexuals and then start counting the homosexuals among them .... it's hard to do since you're out of the party pretty much once you are outed.

Look at the Focus on the Family and the Fallwell group's list of miscreants. Susan Smith's dad was head of Fallwells group in SC, yet it was determined he sexually molested Susan when she was a teen. (I swear I didn't see him prosecuted for this).

I am wondering if there simply isn't a serious character flaw in the right wing mindset? Are they hard right conservatives because of their messed up set of genes? It's beginning to seem so.

Great Campaign for America's Future Convention

Had a great visit to DC to attend this convention early this week.  Emphasis was on support for Obama and pushing him to go further than he might normally do given political considerations. This is a unique opportunity in this country to establish a progressive approach to governing. We must not let it slip away.

The emphasis was on universal health care with a public insurance component.  Single payer is preferred, but being able to counter the push and money of vested interests who will try to derail this ship is what this convention is about.  Grass roots is why it will work.

The other incentives emphasized by attendees:

Employee Free Choice Act passage

Green jobs to push for energy independence

Attack the problem of global warming and environmental issues

Do more to change the influence of credit card companies, banks, etc.  Example: Cap on interest

Reform the justice system especially in regard to drug penalties.

Push for public financing of political campaigns

It was nirvana to talk to and listen to great ideas like this.  What a  great experience.