Category: crime and punishment

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crime and punishment education and schooling ideological culture

Liars, Fools, Educators

There’s something very, very wrong with today’s public school culture.

I wrote that as a start for today’s excursion into the land wherein common sense has utterly fled . . . but without knowing whether I would dissect a Washington Times story about two Virginia Beach, Virginia, students suspended (perhaps for the entire year) for playing with an air soft gun in their own yards, or the Washington Post’s excellent coverage of a new test-score scandal.

The first story reflects both today’s crazed anti-gun culture and a sort of imperialism: educators seem to think that it’s their jurisdiction to judge how children behave at home, especially when it comes to toy guns, which they apparently deem inherently bad, etc., etc. Yes, Virginia educators insist on enforcing pacifism and disarmament as a settled matter, as if the Second Amendment didn’t exist.

Now, schools should not allow violence on school grounds or buses. And, if the kids who were playing with the toy guns were pointing and shooting with dangerous irresponsibility, and against city code, then maybe the school has a leg to stand on.

Nearby in Washington, D.C., in our second story, public school administrators have rigged the testing system to yield better math scores. Indeed, the district had boasted of a four-point gain. Then it was discovered that scores had actually declined, in part because of new rigorous tests. But instead of “biting the bullet” and taking a “temporary” hit, educators fiddled with the statistics and came up with phony bragging points.

Liars to the north of me; fools at another point in the compass, entirely.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment

Crazed Killers, Columnist

Following the recent Navy yard shooting . . . much talk of gun control.

But the more “clever” and “sophisticated” response is to advocate cracking down on crazy people. You know, “put away” people who are a danger to themselves and others. So argues Charles Krauthammer, the psychiatrist-turned-columnist.

Not so fast, writes Brian Doherty at Reason: “No, Arbitrarily Locking Up People Instead of Restricting Guns Isn’t a Good Option Either.”

There are all sorts of things we could do . . . to violate the rights of citizens because they are in a class that sometimes but really hardly ever goes on to commit a crime. Of course, it’s best, as Krauthammer does, to say it’s not just for our (possibly presumed) good that we do it: it’s for theirs.

Wanting a quick cure for the problem of mass shootings is not the same thing as having one.* Doherty notes that, “like most gun control solutions offered,” the idea of locking up the mentally ill is “just one more thing to say that pretends on the surface to be a solution” but that “would not necessarily have prevented the particular problem.”

Science has come a long way, but studies show, as fellow Reason writer Jacob Sullum recently put it, that even “mental health professionals are notoriously bad at predicting which of the world’s many misfits, cranks, and oddballs will become violent.”

An easy fix? Science fictional, not scientific. And we know what science fiction says about locking people up for institutional convenience.

That’s truly crazy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Wanting a quick cure for the broader problems of the mentally disturbed is also not the same thing as having one.

Categories
crime and punishment too much government

Top Cop Says Stop

I agree with Eric Holder, the Attorney General of these United States of America: His gang at the federal Department of Justice should stop unfairly locking people up.

At the American Bar Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco, Mr. Holder admitted that, “too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law enforcement reason.”

Specifically, the AG argued for “fundamentally rethinking the notion of mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes,” acknowledging “they oftentimes generate unfairly long sentences,” which breeds “disrespect for the system.”

Unfair long jaunts in prison do tend to ruin people’s lives — er . . . unfairly. Bad system.

Holder also pointed to the enormous cost of incarceration: $80 billion annually. Since 1980, our population has grown about 33 percent and our prison population 800 percent.

So, to hand out fewer of the “excessive prison terms” the DOJ has been meting out for decades, Holder is changing Department of Justice policies for charging “low-level” and “non-violent” suspected drug offenders – so they don’t face mandatory minimum sentences.

Like me, the ACLU is “thrilled.” But while calling Holder’s policy pivot “a great step,” Julie Stewart, the president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, added, “what’s being proposed here is very modest.”

A federal public defender in Virginia points out that prosecutors are likely to continue using mandatory minimums as a weapon, saying, “There is a real difference between general guidance from the attorney general and actually taking actions on the ground.”

The Department of “Justice” is locking people up “unnecessarily.” Attorney General Holder speaks out against it, but it is his job to actually stop it. Now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment too much government

One Helluva Policy

Protecting the peace isn’t easy. Sometimes it calls for extraordinary action. Like a recent police assault to capture and kill an outlaw . . .

In this case, the targeted outlaw wasn’t really a person at all, but a fawn named Giggles.

The baby deer was being illegally held by the Society of St. Francis no-kill animal shelter and farm near Kenosha, Wisconsin, without the required state permit. Giggles had been nursed back to health by shelter employees, who told reporters they were within days of moving the fawn to an Illinois wildlife facility.

Four sheriff deputies and nine Department of Natural Resources agents took the heavily-armed SWAT-like approach, and, through “aerial surveillance,” were able descend upon the fawn and kill it.

It is policy to euthanize because of the potential for disease and danger to humans.

“That’s one hell of a policy,” said the man who had cared for the dangerous Giggles.

Why the rush to kill this deer? And, why not make a phone call to talk to the folks at the Society of St. Francis, instead of a launching a military-style assault?

“If a sheriff’s department is going in to do a search warrant on a drug bust,” DNR spokeswomen Jennifer Niemeyer explained, “they don’t call them and ask them to voluntarily surrender their marijuana or whatever drug that they have before they show up.”

Right. No quarter is given to outlaws. Even if they are innocent forest creatures who had received illegal charity from well-meaning humanitarians.

This is Common Sense? I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment

Bottled-Water Buyers: Threat or Menace?

Gone are the happy-go-lucky days of buying water and then going home as though it were no big deal.

Elizabeth Daly learned the hard way. As she and her roommates walked toward her car in a dark parking lot, she was accosted by a crew of Virginia state Alcohol Beverage Control agents. One jumped on her car, another drew a gun. They thought she was lugging beer instead of LaCroix sparkling water.

You must be 21 to buy alcohol in Virginia. Daly is 20.

“They were showing unidentifiable badges . . . but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform,” she recalled. “I couldn’t put my windows down unless I started my car. . . . They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were . . . terrified.”

As they made their escape, the women dialed 911.

The ABC agents charged Daly with counts of assaulting and eluding enforcement officers. (“Assault” because the car brushed past agents as Daly drove away.) She had to spend a night in jail.

We hear so many stories of government-empowered bullies using the feeblest of excuses to terrify luckless innocents. Renegade T-shirt-wearers, estranged husbands of financial-aid scofflaws, barbers . . . and now water-buyers?

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, says the ABC agents should be fired.

Yes. But when “law enforcement” thugs blatantly violate the rights of innocent persons they should be more than fired. They should be prosecuted. Let’s also shut down agencies that consistently threaten innocent people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment too much government

The Wars on Dogs, Drugs, Etc.

China is waging a war on dogs taller than 13.7 inches. The basis is a long-dormant law prohibiting Beijing residents from owning dogs “too big” for — well, for the law prohibiting dogs that big.

In addition to losing their furry friends, flouters are subject to fines but not jail time. In other respects, though, the war resembles many silly but dangerous wars on wrongly banned things.

  • The rationale is contradictory on its own terms. Critics note that small breeds which are not banned (Jack Russell Terriers) can be more aggressive than large breeds which are banned (English Sheep Dogs).
  • Owning the illegal thing is illegal even if no one’s rights are violated thereby, and regardless of the owner’s actual rights.
  • Enforcers of the bad law have quotas to fulfill.
  • Enforcers receive tips from persons eager to cause trouble, even when they have no real complaint to make.
  • Enforcers conduct scary raids, sometimes mid-night raids, to hunt for the non-dangerous banned thing.

Such features also characterize America’s War on Drugs, hardly limited to cracking down on crack houses full of shady characters. On the basis of real or imaginary information, police violently invade homes to search for drugs. People (and their dogs) are killed during such assaults.

What Radley Balko calls The Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces (officially published in July) has made America’s War on Drugs, a war on people, and dogs, all the more deadly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment government transparency

Welcome Debate?

As the weekend began, we learned that the Obama Administration had formally charged Edward Snowden with espionage, theft and stealing cable TV. Snowden is the guy who leaked classified information about massive and unconstitutional National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs and then fled to Hong Kong.

President Obama said he welcomed the debate touched off by Snowden’s disclosures to The Washington Post and Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian in London . . . but apparently not enough to welcome the man himself.

Sunday, we awoke to hear of Snowden’s new travel plans. Clearly, there is surveillance! Snowden left Hong Kong and flew to Moscow. From there, he appears headed to Ecuador, where he is requesting asylum.

Having just turned 30, Mr. Snowden, a former Central Intelligence Agency employee, then employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, a contractor for the NSA, remains mysterious. Whatever we learn about Snowden, though, I agree with Greenwald’s judgment: “What he has done is an immense public service, an act of real patriotism, to inform his fellow citizens about things the government has been doing of great consequence in the dark . . .”

A separate story over the weekend drives that point home: “President Obama held his first-ever meeting Friday with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) — the group charged with ensuring that the executive branch balances privacy and civil liberties needs with its national security efforts.”

Were it not for that Snowden fellow, would this group “charged with ensuring” our rights and privacy have ever even met?

Don’t bother asking. The story reports, “The White House declined to comment on the meeting.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment education and schooling ideological culture Second Amendment rights

Wear NRA T-shirt, Go to Jail

In April, eighth-grader Jared Marcum was arrested for refusing to change a T-shirt with the National Rifle Association logo, a picture of a rifle, and the words “Protect Your Right.” The 14-year-old now faces a possible $500 fine . . . and up to a year in prison.

Jared had bean wearing the shirt in the cafeteria when a teacher demanded he either change it or reverse it. He refused and was sent to “the office,” where he again refused. And then a police officer was called in.

According to press accounts, when Jared was sent to the principal’s office, he went. Doesn’t sound like he posed a threat to anybody. Why was the cop called in?

Jared did nothing to “obstruct” the officer — the charge that may send him to prison — except reportedly continue talking when asked to stop. If so, sounds like poor judgment, given the power over us that police have. Maybe it would be good for Jared not to remain 14 years old indefinitely. He will probably grow older even if not sent to prison, however.

What the whole controversy comes down to is this: The kid peaceably displayed a pro-rights sentiment which a particular teacher happened to dislike. Logan County Schools’ dress code doesn’t prohibit references to the Bill of Rights — indeed, it doesn’t prohibit messages on clothing unless they contain “profanity, violence, discriminatory messages or sexually suggestive phrases.”

One hopes that the school doesn’t regard a defense of the Second Amendment as “violent,”  and therefore worthy of prohibition.

Nor does wearing a pro-NRA shirt deserve the threat of a year in prison.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people

Invasion of the Wrong-Lesson Snatchers

A seeming lone gun nut sends threatening, ricin-laced letters to New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and U.S. President Barack Obama.

“What’s in this letter is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned for you” is a typical line. “. . . Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional God given right.”

Hmm. Perhaps one difference between the letter-sender and most Americans who support the right to bear arms is that the latter would never prepare threatening poison-laced letters?

That’s merely common sense, though; and some editorialists and other opinion-lock-and-loaders lurched to another “obvious” conclusion. Clearly, they intimated, we have a gun nut allied in his nuttiness with Americans who also cite the Second Amendment provided by the gun-nut Founding Fathers.

Guilt by association is a fallacy in any case. But there were at least two motives for writing such a letter. One, to assert a right to bear arms in so wacky and threatening a way that, presumably unbeknownst to one’s wacky self, one proves that one should be allowed nowhere near guns. Two, to frame an estranged, pro-gun-rights husband.

Shannon Richardson, an actress best known for playing a zombie on TV, told the FBI that her pro-gun-rights husband was probably the culprit. But mounting evidence soon pointed to her, not her husband. Uh oh . . .

My conclusion? Many opinion-bearers should be a little more thoughtful and a little less zombie-like when taking ideological aim.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment insider corruption

IRS Case Closed! The End! Letsmoveon!

Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings says it’s time to stop investigating the latest IRS shenanigans. According to him, closed-door interviews with IRS staffers prove that no White House or other Washington officials were involved in targeting the applications for tax-exempt status of conservative groups for special obstructionist attention.

Whew! Crisis over.

But the congressman is ignoring a few things.

For example, history. Everything we are now learning (visit TaxProf Blog for the latest news roundups) indicates that this latest shocking scandal only confirms what we already knew about the Internal Revenue Service. The outfit does not play nice. It is not animated by unwavering concern for truth, justice, and even-handed enforcement of its welter of wretched regulations.

More immediately, the congressman is ignoring the fact that the IRS’s ideological targeting is not resolvable into the actions of one or two frazzled clerks in Cincinnati. (Even if some reporters have valiantly striven to show, in the words of the San Francisco Chronicle, “How One Overworked IRS Worker Ignited the Tea-Party Targeting Scandal.”)

We know that many DC-based officials linked to the targeting of conservative groups quit, were transferred, or were put on administrative leave right after the scandal broke. We know that IRS employees in Cincinnati have testified that the DC office especially requested Tea Party files. We know that DC lawyers both reviewed the intrusive questionnaires sent to Tea Party groups and drafted many of the questions. Etc. All irrelevant?

Come on, Cummings.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.