Category: crime and punishment

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crime and punishment folly general freedom nannyism too much government

America’s Twilight Zones

On Friday I lamented the picking up, by local police, of two children, 10 and 6, for walking home from a local park . . .

and the subsequent two-month Montgomery County (Maryland) Child Protective Services investigation, which found the parents “responsible” for “unsubstantiated child neglect.”

Left unanswered? Whether parents “may” let their kids walk somewhere without supervision.

There’s no law, of course, against children walking in public without parents. But the “swarms of Officers” employed “to harass our people” aren’t limited by trifling things like laws.

This Kafkaesque episode reminds me of my experiences with campaign finance agencies.

In both cases, agencies rely upon meritless complaints to investigate, intimidate and impoverish people without any law being broken. All that’s required? An unelected bureaucrat’s arbitrary decision.

Take Lois Lerner. She ran the IRS division targeting conservative groups. Remember her allegedly lost emails? Irretrievable! Until someone actually looked for them.

Before violating people’s rights at the IRS, Lerner did so heading the Enforcement Division of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). A recent George Will column detailed her threats and very public and politically damaging harassment of Al Salvi, the Illinois Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. Sure, he was fully acquitted in federal court . . . after his defeat.

Using a spurious complaint by former Rep. Mike Synar (D-Okla.), Lerner launched a political persecution against U.S. Term Limits, costing us nearly $100,000 in legal fees and much more in dislocated time and manpower.

Finding no evidence — there was none to find — the FEC finally closed the matter. But agency officials still issued a news release proclaiming that they believed we had violated the law.

An Oklahoma newspaper headline read, roughly, “National Term Limits Group Broke Law, Says FEC.”

Talk about “unsubstantiated.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly judiciary

Contemptible Court

Judge Tim Grendell

Judge Tim Grendell missed his calling. Given his dictatorial impulses, he should have been a Soviet commissar or ancient Egyptian vizier. O, but for time, and place, and the mismatches of metempsychosis!

Grendell has lashed out punitively at Nancy McArthur, chairman of the Geauga County (Ohio) Republican Party, for seeking to undermine his authority with “vile” criticism. What happened? Did she interrupt courtroom proceedings with her aspersion-casting? Shout obloquy as he sought to instruct a jury?

Nothing like that. McArthur was never in Grendell’s court.

She did badmouth the judge, however . . . in private conversation.

The person McArthur was talking to is involved in a case presided over by Grendell, and, in a private email, reported on McArthur’s comments. Grendell, somehow, got hold of that email.

His response? Slap a subpoena on McArthur, demanding that she show cause why she should not “be held in Contempt of Court for making vile, contemptuous, slanderous, and insulting language directed at the Judge which reflects negatively on the integrity of the Court and impedes the Court in the administration of justice. . . .”

Yikes. McArthur was actually threatened with incarceration for speaking of this judge as if he were the type to do the sort of thing he did. Fortunately, his attempt to hold her in contempt has been blocked by an appellate court.

This isn’t the first time Grendell’s judicial reach has exceeded his ethical and constitutional grasp. Guilty of outrageous malpractice, he deserves a boot — to his rear, ejecting him from the bench.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights

Herd Immunity to Violence

I praised Juan Williams the other day. Let me balance that out.

On Tuesday’s The Five, a Fox news opinion chat show, in the wake of the Mall of America terrorist threat, Greg Gutfeld decried “gun-free zones” advancing the “more guns, less crime” argument that economist John Lott has more famously made.

Mr. Williams expressed incredulity. “I don’t think that makes sense, that everybody in the mall has a gun. Let the police protect us.”

Gutfeld laughed. There was banter. Some accusatory explanation. Oh, you lefties! But then Gutfeld regrouped.

“This is not an either/or — like everybody’s armed [or] everybody’s not. The concealed [carry] permit creates a level of uncertainty on the people that are choosing an attack.”

Other things being equal, the secretly (or discreetly) gun totin’ are safer than the rest of society. The more folks who secretly carry means that those prone to violence face higher risks.

There may be more than one reason why gun violence has plummeted over the past two decades. But one must be this: as Americans have accumulated more guns per capita than ever before, as more households possess guns than ever, the “celerity of punishment” (that old Benthamite term for swiftness of bad repercussions) has increased, nudging the marginally criminal to choose to commit fewer violent crimes.

Making society safer.

Since Williams seemed to have some difficulty with this, let’s translate it for him: compare gun violence and peaceful gun ownership to viral infection and vaccination.

It’s herd immunity, only to violence. Just as the more vaccinated make us all safer, the more peaceful people discreetly carrying guns make us all safer.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment

Chasing Protocol

Early in January, store manager Don Watson chased a thief who had fled an Alabama Walmart with over $1,000 worth of goods. With the help of security personnel at a nearby apartment complex, he stopped the culprit, getting a punch in the nose for his trouble.

A month later, Watson got a second, figurative punch in the nose: he was fired. For violating protocol.

Walmart thinks he should have stayed put, sticking to the rules rather than sticking his neck out.

“I thought I was protecting the company,” he says.

I can understand a policy requiring employees to avoid unnecessary risks; it’s motivated by the desire to prevent lawsuits and prevent harm to employees. But to fire the man for violating this policy in the heat of the moment and acting heroically — especially when they’ve asked him to keep theft down? Come on.

That’s just wrong.

Higher-ups could instead have taken Watson aside, reiterated the what and why of the fine print, and advised him that although they appreciate his actions, he must stay put if something similar happens. They didn’t.

So, what statement is Walmart making by firing Mr. Watson? What is the company saying to other employees, customers, and, for that matter, potential thieves?

It’s not just “we care about the lives of our employees,” but also “we have no sense of proportion” and “we discount courage and initiative in the defense of our property.”

The store can still make this right, though.

Re-hire the guy. At least.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment too much government

Baby Steps in Reform

Bounkham “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

His crib.

The Georgia toddler was badly burned by a flash grenade during a drug raid gone wrong. A remorseful sheriff’s department claims they could not have known what would happen.

But such botches are not rare.

The War on Drugs is habitually conducted via late-night, no-knock, violent intrusions into homes. That’s now a main part of the standard modus operandi.

OverkillThe raids are often based on scanty and unconfirmed information. They proceed even if no dangerously violent criminal is known to be inside. The drug warriors’ primary concern, they say, is to stop suspects from flushing contraband down the toilet, not to avoid needlessly jeopardizing the lives of known and unknown occupants.

A couple of Georgia lawmakers have offered legislation to reduce the chances of such collateral damage. One would slightly restrict the circumstances in which no-knock warrants could be issued. Another would require most no-knock raids to be conducted between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Though modest steps, they may help save some lives.

But the fundamental problem? The persistence of the War on Drugs.

Waging that war permits endless “botched raids” like the one that almost killed Bou Bou. So long as such invasions remain a standard means of trying to catch dealers with their stash — indeed, so long as the War on Drugs is being waged at all — innocent persons will always be needlessly at risk from the persons charged with protecting them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Honoring Tyrants

A Saudi blogger has just received the first 50 of 1000 lashes for “insulting Islam.” He’s got 950 lashes and ten years of prison to go.

That’s the sentence the Saudis imposed on Raif Badawi last May for criticizing clerics. His blog is shuttered and — because 10,000 lashes and ten years behind bars just isn’t enough — Badawi (pictured with his children) must also pay a cleric-criticizing fee of a million riyals ($266,600). He was spared execution.

The motive for the sadism? Critics of the royal family say that if you do anything to possibly undermine the country’s religious establishment, you’re also threatening Saudi Arabia’s ruling family, of which recently deceased King Abdullah (ruler since 2005) was one member. And the government is ruthless about protecting its turf.

For controversial reasons, our own government thinks it’s important to maintain a strong alliance with Saudi Arabia’s. Even if that dubious proposition were correct, to cooperate on specific questions of foreign policy and to especially sanction the shapers of such a regime are two very different things. Yet with flabbergasting obtuseness, the U.S. military has just announced its sponsorship of an essay competition “in honor of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz” (who was alive in May). (Yes, seriously.)

The contest is a fitting tribute to the now-defunct monarch, according to General Martin Dempsey; it’s an “important opportunity to honor” his memory while also encouraging scholarly research, all at the same time.

Think it through, General.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment insider corruption

Blood Sport Justice?

The trial of Dr. Annette Bosworth has been postponed from next week to May 18. She faces 24 years in a South Dakota prison on 12 felony counts of election fraud and perjury, as well as the loss of her medical license if convicted on even one charge.

Pursuant to her run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican, Dr. Bosworth had gathered petitions, including at her office. When she traveled to the Philippines to care for those injured in a typhoon, folks back at her office continued to sign six petitions — 37 people in all, including her sister.

Dr BosworthWeeks later, the doctor signed an affidavit as the circulator of those petitions, stating that she witnessed each signature being affixed. Not true, but she did know each signer. Seems more of a mistake than a criminal act. Having garnered more than enough signatures to meet the requirement, she obviously wasn’t someone trying to cheat her way onto the ballot.

Still, South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley pursues a case designed to crush not only her future in politics but also her career as a doctor.

For me, this story hits close to home. Seven years ago, a state AG launched a political war against two activists and me, the “Oklahoma 3.” Though eventually vindicated, it was scary.

The worst part? The impact on my wife and three daughters.

I know Annette is going through the same fright with her husband and three boys.

Putting Annette Bosworth, a caring doctor, a loving mother and a good, decent person, in prison — or ruining her medical career — serves only one purpose: to intimidate those people, like the doctor, who might dare step into the political arena against entrenched officials.

Politics in America isn’t supposed to be like this.

Let’s use the time between now and May 18 to help stop this injustice.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Action: Help Dr. Bosworth Today!

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crime and punishment

A Learnable Moment

It used to be called “the Blue Flu.”

Cops, in the course of union negotiations, would deliberately slack on the job, or falsely call in sick (the “flu”) . . . just to get more moolah out of union contract negotiations.

Betraying a not wholly dissimilar epidemiology, New York’s finest have cut back on citations and arrests. According to a New York Times report, for “two consecutive weeks, New York City police officers have seemed to sit back, ignoring minor offenses and parking transgressions so completely that only 347 criminal summonses were written in the seven days through Sunday, down from 4,077 in the same period a year ago.”

This doesn’t seem union-directed, but a spontaneous result of the brutal police shootings that followed mass protests against police abuse . . . and seeming support for the protester’s critique from true-blue, left-leaning Mayor Bill de Blasio.

There is much apprehension about the police laggardness, of course.

But there is some jubilation, too, as folks receive fewer parking tickets. It’s mighty difficult to park in the Big Apple; a lot of folks appreciate the reprieve, however temporary.

The rap on the NYPD — and for that matter, police across the country — has regarded over-policing: enforcing the rulebook so aggressively that it becomes harassment. That sort of policing is counter-productive, leading to the current unrest, for instance.

Maybe we can learn something from this experiment in less policing.* We might discover that, in a lot of neighborhoods, less can be more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* According to recent reports, city government and police officials are trying to crack down on the breakout of police restraint. Regardless of future efficacy of these efforts, inquiry into the results of the inadvertent experiment remain worthwhile.

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crime and punishment insider corruption political challengers

Time to Drop Charges

Annette Bosworth is a medical doctor. She’s also a political neophyte, last year having sought the Republican Party nomination for the U.S. Senate in South Dakota.

She lost. Which is not surprising.

But the next day, she was arrested on twelve counts of election fraud and perjury. She awaits a Feb. 3 trial facing an incredible 24 years in the hoosegow — and, not insignificantly, the loss of her medical license if convicted.

Is Bosworth some sort of threat?

Here’s the story: She gathered ample signatures to earn a spot on the ballot, some at her medical office. During the petition drive, however, she went to the Philippines for two weeks to help victims of a typhoon.

According to dates on the petitions, 37 people signed when Dr. Bosworth was saving people and not in South Dakota. Yet, she signed as the circulator, stating she witnessed the signatures being affixed.

To the guillotine!

Bosworth had asked her campaign attorney if she needed to get those 37 folks — whom she knows, one being her sister — to re-sign. She was advised that she didn’t.

Attorney General Marty Jackley insists Bosworth’s crimes are “serious, deliberate and must be addressed in order to preserve the integrity of our elections.”

Calling such haphazard signature petitioning “commonplace” in South Dakota, former state senator Gordon Howie explains that “during the frenzy of political seasons, MANY (and I do mean MANY) South Dakota politicians circulate petitions and sign as circulators when they are not ‘in the room.’”

Let’s you and me ask* the AG to do the right thing: drop the felony charges.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Here is contact information for Attorney General Marty Jackley:

Ask him to do the right thing. Please drop all felony charges against Dr. Annette Bosworth.

Phone: (605) 773-3215

Email: atghelp@state.sd.us

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/MartyJackley

Official Contact page on AG’s website

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom national politics & policies

Rand Paul Raises Banner

Last weekend, 60 Minutes offered up a fascinating profile of outgoing Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma). Coburn has prostate cancer, and is leaving Washington for his home state before his term is up.

My trouble with the segment? It didn’t mention Coburn’s views on term limits, or make any point about him leaving early, other than, well, cancer. But it is worth mentioning that many, many politicians die in office. Coburn retains enough of his views to exit the political stage at an appropriate time.

He’s not clinging on to power as if he were Gollum at the Crack of Doom.

Thankfully, not all of Coburn’s projects will languish. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) is planning to re-introduce a piece of legislation that Coburn had developed, a plan to halt the federal practice of sending “military-grade equipment to local police departments.”

It’s a typically Coburn-esque notion.

Though Occupier folks may have some trouble understanding where Coburn is coming from, or in what direction he wishes the country to go, Coburn’s Tea Party constituencies get the idea. And, if they had misunderstandings, Rand Paul made the limited-government perspective clear in August with his Time op-ed arguing against the militarization of America’s police forces.

The revived bill will still allow (too much) federal taxpayer money go to local departments. But it will (fortunately) stop the distribution of “vehicles and weapons used by the U.S. armed forces” to police.

No better tribute to Tom Coburn could be found than Rand Paul’s taking up his banner on this important issue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.