Tag: law

The rule of dynamic law

Now that it has been successfully established that Americans can be taxed for not engaging in economic activity, I suppose it makes sense that they can be charged with committing crimes by not engaging in it too.

The saga of Lavabit founder Ladar Levison is getting even more ridiculous, as he explains that the government has threatened him with criminal charges for his decision to shut down the business, rather than agree to some mysterious court order. The feds are apparently arguing that the act of shutting down the business, itself, was a violation of the order:

    … a source familiar with the matter told NBC News that James Trump, a senior litigation counsel in the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va., sent an email to Levison’s lawyer last Thursday – the day Lavabit was shuttered — stating that Levison may have “violated the court order,” a statement that was interpreted as a possible threat to charge Levison with contempt of court.

That same article suggests that the decision to shut down Lavabit was over something much bigger than just looking at one individual’s information — since it appears that Lavabit has cooperated in the past on such cases. Instead, the suggestion now is that the government was seeking a tap on all accounts

If you do not understand that the USA is now a legally totalitarian country where the law is whatever the government employee claiming jurisdiction declares it to be, you do not understand the difference between the absence of a limit and the observable willingness to exploit that absence.  The fact that the absence of limits are not presently being exploited in full should not cause one to imagine that the limits are still in place.

I suspect that only factors presently restraining the federal government from attempting to test how far they can go in the absence of those legal limits is a) the fact that the American people are very well-armed, and, b) the precarious state of the economy.

Spot the false assumption

CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent changes his mind about the evils of marijuana and its medical inutility

I apologize because I didn’t look hard enough, until now. I didn’t look far enough. I didn’t review papers from smaller labs in other countries doing some remarkable research, and I was too dismissive of the loud chorus of legitimate patients whose symptoms improved on cannabis.

Instead, I lumped them with the high-visibility malingerers, just looking to get high. I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have “no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse.”

They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. Take the case of Charlotte Figi, who I met in Colorado. She started having seizures soon after birth. By age 3, she was having 300 a week, despite being on seven different medications. Medical marijuana has calmed her brain, limiting her seizures to 2 or 3 per month.

Assuming that the government does anything for scientific reasons, common sense reasons, or simply in the national interest is almost always going to turn out to be wrong.  Don’t do it.

Marijuana should be legalized. So should every other illegal recreational drug. The cost of banning them is simply far too high.  It is time to end Prohibition 2.0.

The State does not “protect” children

Given the horrific reports that repeatedly surface from every so-called “Child Protective” service, it is eminently clear that the State should play absolutely no role in how parents raise their children or have any ability to remove children from their parents and extended families:

A foster parent in Milam County is in jail charged with murder after the two-year-old girl she was taking care of died in her custody. According to Rockdale police, emergency crews responded to Sherill Small’s home in Rockdale when they received a 9-1-1 call on Monday evening stating that a child was not breathing and unresponsive. The child, Alexandria Hill, was flown to Scott and White McLane Children’s Hospital in Temple where she was placed on life support.

Doctors determined that Alexandria had brain hemorrhaging and retinal hemorrhaging in both eyes. Detectives said the explanation Small, 54, gave of the child’s injuries were not consistent with the nature of the injuries determined by the doctors. The child was removed from life support on Wednesday and Small was arrested for murder the following day. Small admitted to authorities that she threw Alexandria to the ground…..

According to court records, Alexandria’s mother had a medical condition that does not allow for the child to be left alone with her. The TDFPS also received allegations that Hill used marijuana on a regular basis and on one occasion Hill almost dropped Alexandria while going down the stairs of the home as he was trying to hand the child to his sister. During the month of November, Alexandria was being cared for by her paternal grandmother before the State intervened on Nov. 26.

It doesn’t matter how bad the parents are.  If they commit a criminal act that merits prison, then guardianship of the children should be given to the nearest relatives, not to people whose only interest in the children is pecuniary.  There are evil and abusive parents, but the percentage of them is much lower than the percentage of evil and abusive people in the foster care system.

Predators go where the prey is. The fact that they can also arrange to get paid while being provided access to their victims is an indication that the system is entirely insane.  As for the idea that the system is regulated, well, so are banks and motor vehicles and we all know how efficient the State is with them.

Losing the Cold Peace

I find it interesting that so many self-proclaimed devotees of science readily resort to sophistry in defense of imaginary homosexual rights:

Three months before Russia’s parliament unanimously passed a federal law banning the propaganda of “non-traditional relationships” — that is, same-sex ones — the bill’s sponsor went on the country’s most respected interview show to explain her reasoning.

“Analyzing all the circumstances, and the particularity of territorial Russia and her survival…I came to the conclusion that if today we want to resolve the demographic crisis, we need to, excuse me, tighten the belt on certain moral values and information, so that giving birth and raising children become fully valued,” lawmaker Yelena Mizulina told Vladimir Posner, Russia’s Charlie Rose.

Mizulina heads the Duma’s committee for family, women, and children and has become the stern face of Russia’s campaign against gays. But she would never call it that. Russia’s new laws — banning same-sex foreign couples from adopting Russian children in addition to banning LGBT advocacy — are part of the country’s very search for survival, according to her.

On the one hand, there’s its physical survival — Russia’s birthrate plummeted in the wake of the Soviet collapse and encouraging baby-making (through government grants as well as rhetoric) has been one of Vladimir Putin’s hallmarks. And then there’s its moral survival; if Russia is to survive as Russia it needs to reject the corrupting influences of the West.

The author claims that the first reason is “populist bluster” without bothering to offer any support for that position.  But, as anyone who has read Juvenal will recall, there is at least a partial correlation between societies that permit legal and open homosexuality and societies that are in a steep demographic decline.  This correlation doesn’t mean the relationship is causal, of course; I tend to believe that Ms Mizulina is correct in seeing homosexuality as a symptom of the larger problem, which is the abandonment of traditional values and moralities.

So, here is the interesting question.  Can anyone think of a historical society which openly endorsed legal homosexuality, which permitted men to marry men and women to marry women, which was not in steep demographic decline?  The history of homosexuality has never been an interest of mine, so I don’t actually know, but perhaps some of those who advocate homosexual rights have based their opinions on actual facts rather than feelings and can present some evidence in favor of their position.

Because, as it stands, most of the evidence of which I am aware is clearly in favor of the new Russian laws.  Note that the bans were unanimously adopted and are much more democratically popular than homogamy is in the United States. Regardless, the pendulum is clearly in the process of beginning to swing back, and if Russia’s nationalists manage to reverse the nation’s demographic decline, it will be a powerful argument against the sexual equalitarians, especially if the West whose corrupting influences it has rejected continues to decline.

The West won the Cold War because its economic values were in line with reality and the Soviet Union’s were not.  Perhaps having learned from past mistakes, Russia appears to be more likely to win the Cold Peace because its moral values are in line with reality and the West’s are not.

Putin is unimpressed by US threats

Snowden is granted at least one year of Russian asylum:

The U.S. is “extremely disappointed” in the move by Russia to grant ‘temporary asylum’ to Edward Snowden, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters this morning. Carney appeared to add a threat, as the WSJ reports, he added that the Russian decision undermines law-enforcement cooperation between Moscow and Washington. Russia’s decision also threatens to derail a planned September summit in Moscow between Obama and Putin, as Carney advised “we are evaluating the utility of a summit in light of this.”

These are strange days indeed, when Americans are fleeing abroad and seeking political asylum.  Especially when they’re fleeing to Russia.  In not entirely unrelated news, the international business magazines are finally beginning to figure out that USG’s use of corporate America as NSA spy vehicles is not likely to enhance American Internet technology exports.

Wikileaks: Manning didn’t aid enemy

Bradley Manning has been found not guilty of aiding the enemy.  That’s a bit of a surprise and should help Edward Snowden breathe a little easier.

Manning has been found not guilty of the most serious charge of “aiding
the enemy”. However the private has been found guilty on five counts of
violating the espionage act.

Ignorance of the law

Is no excuse for looking like a moron.  Instapundit wonders what the vibrant ignorati posturing publicly about Florida law will do when they realize that Florida is not the only state in question here:

WHAT WILL THEY DO WHEN THEY FIND OUT THAT CALIFORNIA, MASSACHUSETTS AND PENNSYLVANIA HAVE STAND-YOUR-GROUND LAWS, TOO? Some of the music industry’s biggest acts are joining Stevie Wonder in boycotting Florida over the state’s controversial “stand your ground” law. UPDATE: Illinois has “Stand Your Ground” Too — And Obama Voted For It. Will they boycott White House performances? Dumbasses.

Tomato, tomahto….  Stevie Wonder declares: “I decided today that until the ‘stand your ground’ law is abolished in
Florida, I will never perform there again,” he said. “As a matter of
fact, wherever I find that law exists, I will not perform in that state
or in that part of the world.”

From Wikipedia: “Many states have some form of stand-your-ground law. Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.”

Blindness isn’t merely a physical phenomenon. It should be amusing to see how quickly Mr. Wonder backs down once he realizes he just effectively ended his career outside the recording studio.

Mistrial or he walks

“A lot has been made of the fact that there are six women on the Zimmerman jury.  My expectation is that he will be found not guilty, less because he isn’t actually guilty of anything but self-defense, but because there is a Hispanic woman on the jury.  On matters of race, Hispanics not only tend to stick together, but more importantly, tend to be considerably less guiltable, for lack of a better expression, than whites.”

I wrote that last night but didn’t post it because I was intending to write more and didn’t get around to finishing it.  As it happens, the post was overtaken by events, because last night the jury rightly found George Zimmerman not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin:

George Zimmerman never denied shooting Trayvon Martin, but he said he did so in self defense. Late Saturday night, a Florida jury found him not guilty in the teenager’s death. The verdict caps a case that has inflamed passions for well over a year, much of it focused on race and gun rights. The six jurors — all of them women — deliberated for 16½ hours. Five of the women are white; one is a minority.

I tend to doubt there will be any massive riots; it’s been pretty clear that the prosecution completely failed to make any coherent case against Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense.  Also, unlike Rodney King, this wasn’t an official cop thing and the black community in America knows very well that it is getting its clock cleaned by the Hispanic community everywhere from Compton to Miami.

This tweet sums it all up: “So a Hispanic shoots a black and is acquitted by women, but it’s still white men’s fault.”

Apple found guilty of ebook price-fixing

Now this is going to cause some SERIOUS tremors throughout the publishing world.

The tech giant’s defeat in a New York court is likely to cost the iPad and
iPhone maker hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. The technology giant battled the US Department of Justice in the landmark
case, heard last month in Manhattan, over whether a policy of allowing
publishers to set the price of ebooks broke America’s anti-trust laws.

On Wednesday District Judge Denise Cote, who oversaw the trial, said that
Apple was the ringleader in a conspiracy, which forced the price of ebooks
upwards from the $9.99 Amazon had set as standard to $12.99 and in some
cases $14.99.

“The plaintiffs have shown that the publisher defendants conspired with
each other to eliminate retail price competition in order to raise e-book
prices, and that Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing
that conspiracy,” Judge Cote said. “Without Apple’s orchestration of this conspiracy, it would not have
succeeded as it did in the spring of 2010,” she added.

The good news is that ebook prices should continue to fall to more economically sensible levels.  And the power of the gatekeepers is going to continue to dwindle as their revenues and profit margins continue to fall in response to the greater competition they are facing from independent publishers and self-publishers.

Another interesting thing is that for contractual reasons I am not at liberty to divulge, the major publishers will not be able to sell books through the in-game retail channel.  This will provide even more incentive for the big game developers to retain their media tie-in rights rather than continuing to license them to publishers unable to sell the books through their games.

President Stasi

Obama sets federal workers to spying on each other:

In an initiative aimed
at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President
Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions
of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are
not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government
documents. The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat
Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions
of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk
persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them
could face penalties, including criminal charges.

Anyone noticing a theme here with this president?  He’s got the government spying on everyone around the globe, he’s got bureaucrats spying on other bureaucrats, he’s got doctors spying on patients, and I suppose it won’t be long before he’ll have kids spying on parents.