Category: crime and punishment

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Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom

Atrocious “Justice”

Paul Jacob

This week I traveled to South Dakota to release an 18-​page report on Attorney General Marty Jackley’s prosecution of Dr. Annette Bosworth. In less than two weeks, Bosworth goes on trial facing 12 felony counts carrying a maximum penalty of 24 years in prison and $48,000 in fines.

From my research, that’s the most severe penalty any American has ever faced on a petition-​related charge. Conversely, the transgressions alleged against Dr. Bosworth are arguably the least sinister ever prosecuted.

She had made available, at her office, petitions to place her name on last year’s GOP primary ballot … for patients and visitors to sign. During that time, the doctor traveled on a medical mission of mercy to typhoon-​devastated Philippines. While she was gone, 37 people — including her sister — signed those nominating petitions.

When Dr. Bosworth returned and the petition period came to a close, she signed as the circulator of those six petitions. But the circulator statement reads that she witnessed each signature being affixed.

So Attorney General Jackley charged her with six felony counts of filing a false document and another six for perjury.

While I empathize with Bosworth’s situation, my report was focused on the impact such an over-​the-​top prosecution has on the people of “the other Sunshine State” — the woman considering a run for public office or the fellow thinking about gathering signatures.

Our election system should be open and welcoming. Not frightening.

Petition rules must be enforced. But consistently, in a non-​partisan and reasonable way — not by coming down in a draconian, disproportionate fashion.

And not singling out someone the AG just happens to have been at odds with personally and professionally for years.

“AG” ought not stand for “Atrocity Generator.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Paul Jacob

Dr. Annette Bosworth

 

 

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crime and punishment privacy too much government

Are They Reading This?

Stingray, surveillance, privacy, invasion, collage, photomontage, illustration, editorial, listening, spying

You’re a nice person, Gentle Reader; I’m glad to communicate with you in a public forum and listen to your responses.

But we both expect limits to this mutual access. If we’re not legitimately suspected of being criminals, we expect to go about our business without strangers intruding upon us at will. We have a right to boundaries.

More and more, though, the borders of the privacy we rely upon are routinely violated by government employees who trawl our lives at random. We often have no idea of the existence or extent of the intrusions until long after the fact.

The latest disturbing practice we’re getting a smidgen of info about is the secretive use by police agencies of so-​called “sting ray” devices, which simulate cell towers to track cell phone data and location.

For years, obeying FBI demands for secrecy, prosecutors have been dropping cases rather than report how the devices are deployed. In a Baltimore murder trial, though, Detective Michael Dresser testified that his department has used the device 4,300 times. He assures us that officers await judicial permission … unless the circumstances are too urgent.

That’s nice. But without a lot more transparency about how and when the sting ray is deployed, I don’t have much confidence that such scrupulousness is par even in Baltimore, let alone all other locales. It’s hard to give government agencies the benefit of the doubt when the track record is so lousy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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stingRaY

 

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Accountability Common Sense crime and punishment First Amendment rights

Wisconsin Raids Speak Volumes

Assault on Free Speech in Wisconsin, police abuse, harassment, militarization, democracy, intimidation, collage, photomontage, illustration, editorial, violence

Where’s the outcry among campaign finance “reformers”?

Silence.

In Wisconsin, laws regulating political speech, along with the clamor for stepped-​up “enforcement,” have facilitated an awesomely powerful prosecutor to launch dawn SWAT raids, dragging men, women and children out of their beds, stealing their computers and cell phones and ransacking their homes.

For what crime?

Supporting an act passed by the state legislature and signed into law by the governor.

And for having the bravery, or naïveté, to think we live in a free republic where organizing with others to promote ideas about public policy is a noble pursuit.

Not a one-​way ticket to Room 101.

Here at Common Sense we’ve been following these dystopian John Doe raids since 2013, when my friend and hero, Eric O’Keefe, refused to be bullied into silence: he violated a gag order to tell the Wall Street Journal and other media about secret investigations tying up 29 conservative groups.

O’Keefe’s courage inspired several suffering the dawn raids to finally speak out. An article by David French in the May issue of National Review tells their stories, which sparked attention last week from Rush Limbaugh and on Fox News’s The Kelly File.

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm “correctly identified some of the most important communicators of political messages in Wisconsin,” O’Keefe told Meghan Kelly, “and they raided their family homes, with kids at home .… They came in the dark.”

“Put aside whether people should have filed different campaign finance reports, is this an appropriate tactic for any kind of campaign finance question?” he asked.

O’Keefe has fought back, suing Chisholm in federal court. Today, we may discover whether the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal in his case and determine whether a federal district court judge’s injunction against Chisholm’s witch-​hunt will stand.

We all know what this is really about. Chisholm was retaliating against individuals and groups that supported Governor Scott Walker’s ultimately successful moves to curb Wisconsin’s public employee unions. It’s a grand example of our age’s real class warfare: between insiders with power and outsiders trying to curb that power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Assault on Free Speech in Wisconsin

 

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Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom individual achievement responsibility

Resist Criminal Attacks

Defend and Evade

Are you ever too old to stop a mugger? Not if your mobility scooter is ready to go.

This conclusion is informed by the example of 92-​year-​old Eileen Mason, who was with her 75-​year-​old friend, Margaret Seabrook, when a mugger tried to make off with the contents of a scooter basket.

The two British great-​grandmothers were returning from a lunch club in Wiltshire as the thief approached and targeted the older of the two.

When he grabbed Eileen Mason’s arm and reached for the bag, she shouted “Oh no you don’t” — at her maximum volume.

“I put my scooter into accelerate and turned really fast,” she told the UK Telegraph. “The next thing I know he was on the floor. I thought ‘my gosh.’ Something in me just told me to turn so I squeezed the accelerator and turned and he went flying. He was so evil looking.”

If you like this story, don’t miss the ones about the grandma who used a handbag to stop a jewel-​store robbery, or the grandma who trapped a burglar in a shed.

Margaret Seabrook says they want their experience to teach people “not [to] leave things on display in their baskets.…”

That’s one lesson — don’t make yourself an unnecessarily tempting target. But the other thing is be prepared … to defend and evade.

If somebody is gearing up to rob you, be ready to stop him. At least, if you can do so without too much risk to life, limb, or liberty.

Thanks, ladies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Defend and Evade

 

Categories
crime and punishment folly general freedom too much government

Police State Blues

Children in a police state

No reason anymore to even feign surprise at today’s police state insanities.

At Townhall yesterday, I bemoaned the six-​hour kidnapping of a 10-​year-​old Maryland boy and his 6‑year-​old sister for the terrible crime of peacefully walking home from a public park. The children were grabbed just a couple blocks from their home …

… by police, who held them for over two hours before handing them to Montgomery County Child Protective Services.

It was hours before anyone contacted the panicked parents.

There’s no law prohibiting kids from walking down a public street, but bureaucrats are threatening this poor family over just that.

So, I guess we shouldn’t be shocked that when an 11-​year-​old boy disagrees with what he’s being taught in school about marijuana, and explains that his mother has used cannabis oil to treat her Crohn’s disease and his mother is not a criminal, (a) he’s going to be detained and grilled by authorities and (b) his mother may soon become a criminal.

A raid on Shonda Banda’s home indeed turned up two ounces of cannabis oil. Ms. Banda could be facing felony drug charges in Kansas, where she now lives, but she used to live in Colorado, where her use of cannabis oil would be legal.

The Washington Post’s Radley Balko identifies the absurdity: “a woman could lose her custody of her child for therapeutically using a drug that’s legal for recreational use an hour to the west.”

Today she has a custody hearing over her son.

The state “protection” being afforded the children in both of these cases isn’t protecting them. It’s terrorizing them.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

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Children in a police state

 

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom

Big Brother Rides Along

Hertz has begun installing cameras in their rental cars as part of a system called NeverLost. But don’t worry, they’ve got no plans (they say) to use them (yet).

“The camera feature has not been launched, cannot be operated and we have no current plans to do so,” Hertz spokesman Evelin Imperatrice assures us. I guess Hertz is with St. Augustine about how all that exists time-​wise is a vanishingly small present moment, inasmuch as the past is already gone, the future not yet here. Ergo, nothing to worry about.

Nevertheless, customers are worried.

“I even felt weird about singing in the car by myself,” says one.

“The system can’t be turned off from what I could tell,” reports another. “[And] the camera can see the entire inside of the car. I know rental car companies have been tracking the speed and movements of their vehicles for years but putting a camera inside the cabin of the vehicle is taking their need for information a little too far.”

I’m all in favor of extensive monitoring of police and others with government-​conferred power over us, in a position to easily abuse that power. I’m not in favor of indiscriminate spying by everybody on everybody. Or of any gearing up to do that.

What to do? A little bit of tape over the lens, that’s one option. Another: boycott Hertz until they rip the cameras out. Or at least make them easy to turn off.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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