More proof that the terrorists won

In the news yesterday is an alarmist article titled “People on terrorist watch list allowed to buy guns”. It should, more accurately, read “Innocent people allowed to buy guns”. Today CNN is running a poll asking if we think people on the watch list should be allowed to buy guns. Overwhelmingly (89%-11%) the answer is no. This is the wrong answer. A senator is introducing legislation to remove the right of these people to buy guns. But these people haven’t done anything wrong. They are not terrorists. They are suspects, but they are not even suspects of crimes committed, they are suspects of possible future crime. They are being denied their rights because of what they might do.

To put it in context: let’s say you are put on a list of those likely to have a fatal car accident, so you are forbidden to get a driver’s license, or buy a car. Is that right? Would that be acceptable if the list was 95% accurate? What if it was 50% accurate? How about 5% accurate? What percentage of the people on the terrorist watch list have actually committed or attempted to commit terrorism? I doubt those figures are public, but I can assure you the number is closer to 5 than 95. And for the record: car accidents kill far more Americans than either terrorists or guns do.

The ban would make no sense at any rate. Who is committing terrorism with guns? Planes, yes. Bombs, yes. Guns? Not so much. Guns are not the weapons of terror. Well, unless one is pointed right at you. But the point of terrorism is to scare people who are nowhere near the scene of the actual event. So clearly, if we’re taking freedoms away from innocent people in the name of fighting terror… the terrorists have succeeded. We are literally terrified beyond reason.

People on the list are an interesting group. As Bruce Schneier sums it up: They are too dangerous to let fly in an airplane, but too innocent to prosecute in a court of law. Where is the sense in that? Even some of our elected politicians have wound up with their names on the terrorist watch list. Of course, being well connected as they are, their names don’t stay there long. What about yours? And did you know that simply speaking out against the government can get you labeled a terrorist?

Stupifyingly oppressive regime

Take a guess at which regime I’m talking about. A wild, wild guess.

I don’t know what you just guessed, but I’m pretty sure you guessed wrong. Unless you’re already read about the city of Helena-West Helena* in Arkansas. This never-before-heard-of city apparently has very bad crime. Worse than Detroit or Chicago or NYC or LA. Because they have felt the need to institute martial law a 24-hour-a-day curfew. Any time of the day, if the cops (carrying assault rifles, rifles with laser scopes, or sawed off shotguns) see you, they can stop you and arrest you. The city council voted unanimously to take this action.

What really disturbs me isn’t so much the curfew itself (though it likely is unconstitutional, and for a very good reason). What really disturbs me is the attitude behind it:

“The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional
rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the
Constitution.”

That is a quote from Mayor James Valley. A quote in which he simultaneously says “infringing the constitution a little bit like we are is OK” and “but we aren’t infringing the constitution”.

Next up, we have this beauty:

“As far as I’m concerned, at 3 o’clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law”

This from Councilman Eugene “Red” Johnson. I assume “Red” is short for “Redneck”. I’ve got news for you, “Red”. I’ve got just as much business being on the street at 3 AM as you do at 3 PM. I suppose all your stores close at sundown, and nobody ever works a graveyard shift? Once the bars stop serving alcohol, people are at home within the hour? Get a life, “Red”, and quit fucking around with everybody else’s lives.

“The only rights y’all have is what we give you.”

OK, you got me… Nobody actually said those exact words.

*what is up with that city name? Is the city founded by Bond-James Bond?

Supreme Court gets it right for a change

I disagreed with their ruling earlier this week forbidding the death penalty for crimes other than murder and treason, but they’re back on track striking down the D.C. handgun ban as unconstitutional. I’m still frustrated by the opposition arguing stupidly, though.

Elilta “Lily” Habtu, however, told the high court that she supports the handgun ban, and tighter gun control in general. Habtu was in a Virginia Tech classroom in April 2007 when fellow student Seung-Hui Cho burst in and began shooting. She survived bullets to the head and arm.

“There has to be tighter gun control; we can’t let another Virginia Tech to happen,” she told the court.

This, despite the fact that Virginia Tech has a complete ban on handguns, and despite the fact that D.C. with a handgun ban had 143 gun-related murders last year compared to 135 the year before the ban went into effect. Why are people so blind to facts? I’m glad that 5 out of 9 supreme court justices saw the truth. Still, that’s an awfully slim margin for something that should be clear cut. The second amendment to the Constitution is only confusing to people with a poor grasp of the English language. It very clearly states “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” What comes before that is merely the reason why the right of the people is to be protected. In my opinion, it’s an outdated reason… but defense of self, family, and home is a far better reason.

We ain’t nuthin’ like *THEM*

“This is not any subversive thing like trying to legalize marijuana
or whatever. This is just practical agriculture. We’re desperate for
something that can make us some money.”

That’s real nice. Legalizing hemp so a farmer can make a buck is more important than legalizing medical marijuana, which could (in addition to making a lot of money for farmers) alleviate a lot of pain and suffering? I really get sick to my stomach whenever some asshole uses the “we ain’t like them” defense in trying to get something legalized. Quit beating down your fellow man. Stand together.

But the fight over hemp is not political or philosophical, people here
say. It lacks any counterculture wink, any hint of the fear some hemp
opponents express that those trying to legalize hemp secretly hope to
open the door to the plant’s more potent cousin.

It’s not political or philosophical? Bullshit. It’s political as all hell. It’s philosophical too, really. The philosophy here is that the government shouldn’t be outlawing things that don’t really hurt people. But the good capitalists of North Dakota want to frame this solely as soulless capitalism. Just trying to turn a buck. Just trying to make a living. Just looking across the Canadian border at some successful hemp farms that ship hemp products to the USA….

“We’re not wide-eyed liberals,” Mr. Johnson said.

Heaven forbid. Nothing worse than being a goddamned liberal!

Of course, it’s not just the farmers (who I’m actually on the side of, despite their hypocrisy and good-ol’-boy-ishness) that are pissing me off. The people opposed to legalizing hemp are idiots too.

“Everyone here knows everyone,” Mr. Thoreson said, “and yet we’ve had a
huge problem here with homegrown methamphetamine labs, too.”

Well hell… what’s worse? Meth or marijuana? This isn’t a trick question, and it’s not a hard one, either. Meth is at least a thousand times worse than pot. So why are you fighting so hard against pot? Maybe if you made it easier to grow pot, your meth problem would decrease. Two birds, one stone. Help a farmer, reduce the drug problem. Exchange a truly toxic drug for one that ain’t so bad. Or are people still under the delusion that we can “win” this 20-some-year-old “war on drugs”?

Mixed emotions

On the one hand, I’m severely tempted to just point and laugh at Tom Cruise. On the other hand, I’m not at all happy about the discrimination being practiced by the German government. At the heart of the matter is the question, “What is the difference between a cult and a religion?”. I’ve never heard an answer that didn’t basically boil down to “my cult is a religion, but your religion is a cult”. Governments should be blind to race, gender, religion, etc… There is never any justice in treating a person differently based upon anything other than their actual actions. Want to ban Mr. Cruise from your military bases because you think he’s mentally unstable? Fine. He jumped up and down on a couch on (inter)national television. You’ve got a good case there. But banning him because his personal beliefs are different from yours? That I can’t abide by. Even if it is Scientology that’s being discriminated against. Funny that a country that tries so hard to distance itself from the Nazis of the past can be so… fascist.

I support gay marriage and polygamy

The Huffington Post today asks these questions:
Do you support the concept of gay marriage?
Do you support the concept of polygamy?
If so, why? If not, why not?
It’s quite simple, really. As an American, I believe in freedom. One of the foremost freedoms set forth in the bill of rights is freedom of religion. There are absolutely no arguments against gay marriage or polygamy that are not firmly rooted in a particular religious belief. To deprive our fellow Americans of the freedom to marry whomever they please is an affront to our way of life. It’s no less bigoted than the long-since vanquished laws preventing inter-racial marriages.  All attempts to “defend marriage” are really attempts to force other people into doing things “your” way or not at all.
Furthermore, it’s none of my, your, or the government’s damned business who’s fucking who, or who lives with who, or who makes a life-long commitment to who. Indeed, commitment is the only thing really involved in marriage, as there’s no law forcing married people to have sex with each other (much as some guys wish there was) or live together. Saying that Tom and Steve can’t make a commitment to each other is tantamount to saying they can’t enter into a legal contract with one another, and that is an incredibly scary precedent if followed through to the extreme.

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Who’s a rat?

I am a big, BIG proponent of freedom of speech, but this story makes me pause and rethink that. There’s a website devoted to “exposing the identities of witnesses cooperating with the government”, called Who’s a Rat. The Justice Department, obviously, is not happy. The intimidation factor for potential “rats” is plain to see. This really sounds like a high-tech mafia thug, particularly when it’s run by a guy named (or at least claiming to be named) Anthony Capone. Not that having the last name “Capone” should ruin a man, but in this context, there’s a definite shady implication.

The site says it has identified 4,300 informers and 400 undercover
agents, many of them from documents obtained from court files available
on the Internet.

So there you have it: All this info is publicly available anyhow. This site is just making it easier to find. And who are these “rats”, anyhow? Mostly they are criminals who have plea bargained for a lesser sentence in exchange for bearing witness against allegedly worse criminals. While it looks great in the movies or on TV, I have a problem with plea bargaining. It basically says, “tell us what we want to hear, and you won’t have to spend 10 years in prison”. Hell, I’d probably bear false witness against damn near anybody to avoid 10 years in prison. Just imagine what an even-less-scrupulous person would do. Buying testimony is like torturing a confession. You might wind up with the truth, but I wouldn’t bet on it. And suddenly, this website doesn’t sound all that bad.

Professor Bowman added that he was studying the deals prosecutors made
in the aftermath of the collapse of Enron, the energy company. “To do
that effectively,” he said, “I really need to know who flipped and the
nature of their plea agreements.”

And as much as the government portrays this as a witness safety issue, it’s really a witness illusion-of-safety issue. The witnesses never are actually safe. As I said, this website gets the information from publicly available sources. It just highlights the fact that this information is out there, which might reduce a thug’s willingness to plea bargain. Which is good for the thug and bad for the prosecutors.

So while the site leaves a bad taste in my mouth, I guess I have to argue that freedom of speech should still prevail.

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The way Virginia Tech should have been

A robbery and crime spree came to a halt late Thursday when Charles Parker Jr., 18, of Detroit was killed by a 53-year-old man with a 9mm handgun and a valid concealed weapons permit. Parker was armed with a .22 caliber (unloaded) pistol. Four of his alleged accomplices are now in custody. Police called it an obvious case of self defense, released the man and returned his gun to him. I call that “happily ever after”. How many lives could have been saved if guns were allowed on Va. Tech’s campus?

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First and second amendment rights under assault again.

Imagine that you are employed at a good job, and that you do good work. You show up on time, don’t skip out early, don’t take long lunches, and never make mistakes. But you like to go target shooting. And you talk to a co-worker about buying a new gun. And you get fired. For talking. About doing something perfectly legal. Just because a gun is involved.
Now imagine that you are a writer for a webcomic. Rather than get upset and get a lawyer and fight for your job, you decide to roll with the punch and just use the absurd humor of the situation as free material for your comic. And so police detectives swoop down on your home and question you on account of your “borderline terroristic threat.”
This, sadly, is the world we live in. Fear rules.

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What do you do with a drunken sailor?

Apparently you presume them to be guilty, and refuse to give them the degree they have paid for (and earned). One pirate hat. One plastic “Mr. Goodbar” cup. The drinking pose. A caption reading “Drunken Pirate”. That’s all it takes to be denied a degree in teaching from Millersville’s School of Education. No proof of alcohol consumption required. No consideration for the fact that if she was drinking, she was of legal age, and doing so on her own time. Maybe they just hate pirates. Arr!

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