Category: First Amendment rights

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

Ninety-Nine Percent Pure

Politics is dominated by pious, politic lies and half-truths. Every nation has them, and Turkey’s are most impressive.

Turkey has been a vanguard, in the Muslim world, of “Westernizing” and “modernizing” tendencies. But it still has one foot in the deep past. One of its great pious half-truths is that Turkey is “99 percent Muslim” yet possesses a “secular state” where “all religions are equal.”

With some religions more equal than others.

An Alevi spokesman, Izzettin Dogan, charges that the country “is actually a Sunni Islamic state.” There are 30 million Alevis in Turkey, according to the New York Times, and they are not alone in getting the short end of the stick in “secular Turkey”:

“The state collects taxes from all of us and spends billions on Sunni Islam alone, while millions of Alevis as well as Christians, Jews and other faiths don’t receive a penny,” Mr. Dogan said, referring to the $1.5 billion budget of the Religious Affairs Department. “What kind of secularism is that?”

Good question.

And it gets to the heart of one of the reasons I’m so happy to live in America. Our government may be a mess, but we still have some basic freedoms. We’ve long gotten over the ancient fixation on the union of religion and state.

In ancient empires, kings styled themselves as gods.

We know better.

And we know better than to subsidize religion — or use it as a branch of the government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture too much government

The Pseudonymous Concerned Pseudo-Citizen

Is it wrong to admire a scoundrel, er, “W. Howard”?

In Everett, Washington, traffic enforcement cameras — so-called “red-light cameras” — have stirred up a lot of people, many airing their ideas or just venting on HeraldNet, the local paper’s website. Among the most persistent contributors to the comments/letters section has been “W. Howard.”

Readers got suspicious. Once he said he was from Lynnwood; in another post he implied he lived in Everett. But no matter what town he was from, he was always for the cameras, which he claimed would prevent pedestrian deaths and save the children.

He thus bucked the stream in the growing controversy over the cameras, which seem so big-brotherish, so totalitarian. Even when one is caught red, er, lighted.

But, hey, learn your lesson. That’s what “W. Howard” said, anyway. Get over your paranoia.

The “paranoid” turned out to be right about W.H., though. The newspaper traced his posts to American Traffic Solutions, Inc., far from the Evergreen State in Scottsdale, Arizona — which just happened to make and sell the cameras under question — all the way back to Bill Kroske, vice president of business development.

That makes Kroske a Saul Alinsky of marketing.

But a scoundrel nonetheless, mimicking a Music Man-style pretense of being “part of the community” just to stir up business.

Thankfully, the scoundrel was revealed as such by a free press and in public debate. The First Amendment rides to the rescue!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom

T-shirt Freedom

Electioneering laws that prohibit campaigning at or near polling sites are a bit peculiar. Generally, you’ve got a right to peacefully campaign for your candidate, or party, or reform, so long as you don’t obstruct lawful traffic. But, on the other hand, one doesn’t want to have to run through a gauntlet of mad campaigning activity on the way to vote, even if one technically can navigate a path.

Electioneering law prohibits free speech and association in the cause of assuring access to the ballot box.

But what constitutes “electioneering”?

In the January issue of Reason, Brian Doherty told the story of Tea Party activist Diane Wickberg. She had gone to the polls wearing a “We The People” t-shirt, emblazoning the words “Flagstaff Tea Party — Reclaiming Our Constitution Now.” She got to vote, the poll workers said, only because she was the only voter on the premises. “Coconino County Recorder Candace Owens later warned her that she would not be allowed to vote at a polling station in the county again if she wore the shirt,” Doherty reported.

Wickberg donned the shirt, again, for her next trip to the polls, and was told to cover up, and was scolded never to wear it to any future poll trip. She sued.

And won.

The county has agreed to implement objective standards, re-train their poll workers, and prohibit t-shirts only if they pitch for a particular candidate, party, or specific issue on the ballot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights too much government

Ohio’s Stomp-Speech Commission

The Ohio Elections Commission takes sides in campaign debates and can penalize those they disagree with.

The Commission issues rulings not about obvious libel or slander, but differing interpretations. Disagreements. Their authority derives from a decades-old election law outlawing “false statements” in election campaigns. A new court fight challenging the law may finally end this speech-squelching travesty.

Attorney James Bopp is fighting a defamation suit by a defeated candidate. This losing candidate snagged a favorable ruling from the Commission, preventing billboards critical of him from going up, but still wants a pound of flesh. Bopp observes that Ohio’s law against “false statements” is merely an unconstitutional weapon “that can be deployed during any election to try to stifle speech.”

Chris Finney, another lawyer who has represented clients suffering the OEC’s censorious attention, says what the Commission typically deals with “has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the statement in question [but with] trying to embarrass your opponent as Election Day approaches. You get a headline that says this person is a liar.”

Opposing conclusions can both be “right” . . . given contradictory interpretations of the same facts. The First Amendment is supposed to safeguard open debate about such disagreements — not extinguish it.

Would defenders of Ohio’s law cheer if editorial writers were routinely hauled before speech boards to defend the accuracy of their political assessments?

It’s a disgrace that Ohio’s false-statement law has been in effect for even one day, let alone decades.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights free trade & free markets too much government

Practicing Competence Without a License

You just can’t win. Well, you can; but if you do win — or even just make a decent go of it — that only proves you’re cheating.

Before you object, please take a breath. Note the sterling sentences, above, with subjects and predicates and everything. I must be practicing grammar without a license! At least, that’s what the charge would be if I were to dispute the syntax of pronouncement from the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

See, an official at NCDOT has accused David Cox, a member of a citizens group, of “practicing engineering without a license.” This was not just colorful rhetoric. The accuser filed a complaint with the state licensing bureau.

Cox’s group wants city and state officials to authorize traffic lights at a couple intersections. The Department of Transportation hired an engineering consultant to demonstrate that the traffic lights are unnecessary. In response, Cox helped prepare a sophisticated counter-analysis with diagrams and traffic projections. Cox, a computer scientist, did such a great job that he allegedly crossed the line from legal bumbling to illegal knows-what-he’s-doing.

I shan’t tear this notion to bits myself. You’re no doubt doing so in your head, and without first obtaining governmental permission — you outlaw! I will say that in this case, “practicing engineering without a license” might as well mean “petitioning of government without a license.”

But we don’t need licenses for that. We have the right. A constitutionally recognized right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights too much government

Not Guilty as Charged

If software developer Phil Mocek is guilty of anything, it’s the conviction that he has a right to move about the country as if he were a free man. He’s guilty of defending his dignity. Guilty of believing he’s innocent.

That’s his crime, not “failing to obey an officer,” “concealing his identity,” “criminal trespass” or “disorderly conduct.” Fortunately, an Albuquerque jury has now found him innocent of these bogus charges.

During his trial, a TSA official and an Albuquerque police officer both testified, in Mocek’s words, that “you do not have to show ID in order to fly and that you can use cameras in public areas of the airport.” Yes, recording the unwarranted and outrageous harassment of him was proposed as proof of the man’s criminality.

The normals among us, on the other hand, can only applaud Mocek’s nerve and presence of mind in standing up for himself.

Defense co-counsel Molly Schmidt-Nowara observes that TSA officials and police at the airport “became annoyed because he was filming.” But annoying the police or TSA officers is not in itself a crime.

Mocek says: “I wasn’t testing the system. I went in with a boarding pass. I had what I’m required to have to fly and by way of being a human I observed what happened.”

Has the tide started to turn against the noxious surveillance state and in favor of everyday freedom for human beings?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies too much government

The Kill Switch for Freedom

The Egyptian government — or perhaps a mysterious inter-dimensional vortex, we’re not sure which — has shut down some 99 percent of the Internet within Egypt as protests mount demanding that President Hosni Mubarak step down. Mubarak has ruled autocratically for three decades and the protesters are fed up. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other cyber-tools have played a part in their protest, helping them document Egyptians’ clashes with authorities in word and image.

Declan McCullough, a veteran reporter on privacy and the Internet, observes that the Egyptian government is “conducting a high-profile experiment in what happens when a country with a $500 billion GDP, one that’s home to the pyramids and the Suez Canal, decides that Internet access should be restricted to a trickle.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, U.S. pols like Senator Joseph Lieberman are again pushing a bill to give the president authority to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” in the event of a crisis and shut down major portions of the Internet. For our own good, of course. No judicial review would be necessary before the executive branch could snap the cyber-spine.

Perhaps American politicians who advocate letting the president throw a so-called kill switch for the Internet in case of emergency would deny any tyrannical intentions. And perhaps their motives are indeed pure . . . in some aesthetic sense. But once you give government new authority to exercise destructive control over us, there is, of course, the temptation to use it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access First Amendment rights initiative, referendum, and recall

Red-lining Democracy

Why does a fellow who’s the executive director of the Greenlining Institute want to red-line democracy?

Recently, in the pages of California’s Capitol Weekly, Orson Aguilar called the state’s initiative process a “monster.” Mr. Aguilar’s main beef is that “huge corporations and business groups” spent “massive” amounts of money, and that of the more than $200 million spent on ballot measures “hardly any of it came from ordinary citizens.”

Whether one agrees with a corporation or a labor union or an interest of any kind, freedom of speech still carries moral weight. It’s worth noting that while Aguilar doesn’t like corporate spending on ballot measures, he probably doesn’t mind the corporate contributions that account for over 16 percent of the Greenlining Institute’s annual income.

But what was the result of business spending? He informs us, “Happily, many of these corporate initiatives were defeated . . .”

Aguilar doesn’t name a single detrimental measure passed by voters.

Still, according to Aguilar and seemingly every special interest group, something must be done to undercut the democratic check on government that citizens enjoy via initiative and referendum.

While admitting that the “huge number of signatures required” to place an initiative on the ballot “is almost impossible to do with just volunteers,” Aguilar bemoans the use of paid petitioners.

Never does he suggest the obvious: If we want the citizens’ voice in government, petition requirements should be made less onerous, not more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment First Amendment rights government transparency national politics & policies

Secrecy Broken

The “Wikileaks” controversy proceeds to grow and mutate, like Clostridium botulinum in a Petri dish with spoiled pork, and I’ve avoided talking about it up till now.

Wikileaks is a website devoted to publishing leaked documents from governments and other scandal-prone institutions. You probably know the major players, and the various permutations of the story. You can hardly miss them. Because of that, I’m not going to go through the story in detail. Instead, I’d like to take a step back and offer a few “meta-thoughts” . . . ideas that might help produce a good conclusion.

  1. Republican forms of government require a great deal of transparency, though not on everything. There are military secrets and diplomatic info-dumps that, for our security, would best remain secret and un-dumped.
  2. Politicians, soldiers and bureaucrats tend to hate transparency. Why? They don’t like being second-guessed by “non-professionals.” So they often make government more opaque than it should be.
  3. Some of our leaders have tried to put nearly everything foreign-policy-related into the tightest security, demanding high clearances even for viewing. Much of this is self-serving, not truly security-related.
  4. A government worker who breaks security protocols to leak documents can be at once a hero and still prosecutable by law.

Now’s a good time to rethink transparency and our government’s secrecy protocols.

But, rethought or not, no one’s been surprised to learn of more amazing lapses in ethics and judgment on the part of our leaders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access First Amendment rights

Clean Elections or Dirty Con?

No supporter of so-called “clean elections” would argue that we should be forced by law to pull the lever on election day for the candidate we oppose. But the tangled web that politicians and regulators have woven with campaign finance laws does often force us to support candidates we oppose during the run-up to election day.

Here’s just one perverse example: The “‘clean’ elections” system in Arizona. Under Arizona’s scheme, if Candidate A runs as a “‘clean’ elections” candidate, every time Candidate B, who declines public funding, raises a certain amount of money by making effective appeals for support, Candidate A gets matching funds at taxpayer expense. In other words, the government forces you as taxpayer to offset the support you give to Candidate B voluntarily by ensuring that your money goes to Candidate A too — involuntarily. Under this law, the spending of independent groups is also matched by coercive taxpayer donations to “‘clean’ elections” candidates.

It’s a horrific skewing of the political field in favor of the ideas and candidates voters don’t want to support — a direct coercive assault on their democratic rights.

The fate of Arizona’s “welfare-for-politicians” law has survived a federal appeal, but may yet be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Institute for Justice has taken up the cudgels on behalf of independent groups and candidates who garner financial support the old fashioned way . . . they earn it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.