Category: crime and punishment

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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.

Categories
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.

Categories
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.

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture

Ding Jinhao Was There

Boys will be boys. And tourists will be tourists.

Not long ago, a graffito was spotted on an ancient Egyptian wall — a stone relief, with pictographs and representations and the whole gamut of ancient Egyptian art — photographed and then posted to the Internet, where it got more than 100, 000 comments.

It was soon discovered to have been scratched into the wall by a 15-​year-​old lad from Nanjing: his mark read “Ding Jinhao was here.” And then came the firestorm. Though the BBC tells us that Egypt’s ministry of antiquities has dubbed the scratchmarks “superficial,” the “controversy comes days after Wang Yang, one of China’s four vice-​premiers, said … that the ‘uncivilised behaviour’ of some Chinese tourists was harming the country’s image.”

Welcome, China!

Previously, the world had been blessed with the Ugly American, the Annoying European, and the Over-​Photographing Japanese — tourists from wealthy or up-​and-​coming countries not uniformly presenting their respective nations in the best possible light as they tramped abroad.

In this case, though, it’s worth noting that most of the scandal is confined to China itself. The bloggers’ ire was primarily an in-​group thing, and even the government (especially the government?) has gotten in on the shame game bandwagon, trying to needle tourists to behave themselves. (So much so that the desecrating teen’s father pleaded for the critics to let up — “too much pressure,” he said.)

As an I‑try-​not-​to-​be-​ugly American, I appreciate the Chinese concern for manners and image — honor, really. And hope that all their graffiti remains easy to repair, and that the concern for national honor doesn’t go too far in over-reaction.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment education and schooling

Arrested Development

Former Atlanta schools superintendent Beverly Hall and 34 other school employees, including high-​level administrators, principals and teachers, were recently booked in Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail after being indicted on 65 criminal counts. The charges included racketeering, theft, conspiracy, making false statements and witness tampering.

Just four years ago, Hall was the National Superintendent of the Year. Now, she faces 45 years in prison for having allegedly snagged almost $600,000 in bonus income for higher test scores achieved through fraudulently changing students’ test answers.

And this, the nation’s largest-​ever cheating scandal, may prove only the highest shard of a proverbial large floating mass of frozen water.

But instead of condemnation, some of the nation’s leading “education experts” seem bent on excusing the cheaters.

“What we do know,” Washington Post education writer Valerie Strauss pointed out, “is that these cheating scandals have been a result of test-​obsessed school reform.”

Dr. Christopher Emdin of Columbia University Teachers College reminded readers at the end of a recent Huffington Post column, “I am not saying that educators and school officials who cheat on tests or conspire to cover up cheating should not be reprimanded.”

Just “reprimanded”?

Award-​winning teacher Steven Lin explained  that “environments such as that alleged in Atlanta present the classic sociological phenomenon of ‘diffusion of responsibility,’ along with a host of other flaws regarding the compartmentalization of job descriptions within bureaucracies.”

You mean they suffer from “peer pressure”?

Nevertheless, I still think it’s more than sorta bad to cheat.

And I agree wholeheartedly with the “controversial” remark by George Washington University Dean Michael Feuer: “It’s not the test that made them cheat.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.