LONG BRANCH, N.J. - The city wants Anna DeFaria's home, and if she doesn't sell willingly, officials are going to take it from the 80-year-old retired pre-school teacher.
In place of her "tiny slip of a bungalow" — and two dozen other weathered, working-class beachfront homes — city officials want private developers to build upscale townhouses.
Is this the work of a cruel government? Or the best hope for resurrecting an ocean resort town that is finally showing signs of reviving after decades of hard times?
Echoes of the debate are happening across the country, after a U.S. Supreme Court decision brought new attention to governments' ability to seize property through the tool of eminent domain. Some 40 states are re-examining their laws — with action in Congress, too — after the court's unpopular ruling.
"We thought this was going to be our home forever," said DeFaria, sitting in a kitchen cozy with photos of children and grandchildren, quotes from the Bible and a game of Scrabble that she plays against herself. "Now they want to take it away. It's unfair, it's criminal, it's unconstitutional."
Not according to the Supreme Court. In a 5-4 ruling last June that was greeted with widespread criticism, the court found that New London, Conn., had the authority to take homes for a private development project.
The Constitution says governments cannot take private property for public use without "just compensation." Governments have traditionally used eminent domain to build public projects such as roads, reservoirs and parks. But for decades, the court has been expanding the definition of public use, allowing cities to employ eminent domain to eliminate blight.
The high court, in its ruling, also noted that states are free to ban that practice — and legislators around the country are thinking about whether they should do just that.
New Jersey state Sen. Diane Allen, with bipartisan support, is pushing for a two-year ban on all eminent domain actions and for a bipartisan study group to re-examine its use in New Jersey.
"Right now government, I think, is using eminent domain to take people's private properties and hand it over to another owner," said Allen, a Republican. "It's really putting a hole in the American dream. Ownership of private property plays such a large role in that dream."
After the court ruling, four states passed laws reining in eminent domain. Roughly another 40 are considering legislation. In Congress, the House voted to deny federal funds to any project that used eminent domain to benefit a private development, and a federal study aims to examine how widely it is used.
The Washington-based Institute for Justice, a libertarian advocacy group that worked for homeowners in the New London case and in Long Branch, argues that state laws should be changed so property can only be seized for public uses like a park or a school — not urban redevelopment that benefits private developers.
Redevelopment usually depends on defining an area as "blighted" or a "slum," though definitions are vague, said Bert Gall, an attorney with the institute. Criteria can include a building's age, lack of compliance with building codes, even the size of a yard.
Abuses are widespread, Gall said, claiming that over a five-year period ending in 2002, more than 10,000 properties were threatened by eminent domain.
Municipal leaders across the country are pushing back, arguing that it's false to claim eminent domain is widely abused and warning that an emotional backlash to the court ruling is putting at risk an important tool that has helped turn around neighborhoods including Baltimore's Inner Harbor and New York's Times Square.
Elected officials have difficult decisions to make, and often must balance a community's needs with a few individuals, said Don Borut, executive director of the National League of Cities.
The plight of homeowners is hard to ignore, he said. "But at the same time ... there are hundreds if not a couple of thousand faces of people you don't see, of people of all levels of income who as a result of the economic development will get jobs," he added.
In Long Branch, there's no doubt the city needed to do something — a comeback wasn't happening on its own, Mayor Adam Schneider said.
"Most people wouldn't walk down those streets anymore. The worst neighborhood in our city was along our oceanfront. And that's been reversed," he said. Since the redevelopment effort began in earnest in 2002 after a decade of planning, new shops and homeowners have moved in, and new sidewalks have been installed — along with a new boardwalk, parks and an ice-skating rink, he said.
"What you do is you've improved your city, you've gotten rid of decrepit housing, you've created jobs," Schneider said. "It's easy to play it out as the city is cruel and government is stealing your property. I'm used to it. ... But this has reversed the decline that's been going on in Long Branch for more than 50 years."
Already, people are coming to new shops along the central waterfront, where the old pier burned down back in 1987. Rows and rows of new, sand-colored condominiums shadow DeFaria's one-story home when the afternoon sun sinks low.
DeFaria said she was offered $325,000 for the home she and her late husband bought in 1960 for $6,400. Where could anyone buy a waterfront view on the Jersey coast for that amount of money now?
But it's not the money, she said: $1 million wouldn't convince her. "They're taking my home away — not my house. My home. My life."
Sunday, February 05, 2006
When will it end?
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Oh, No! College Kids Are Still Drinking!
University of Massachusetts, Amherst wants to make some new rules to curb college drinking.
I suppose someone sees this as sensible. I sure the hell don't.
Now one thing that surprises some people about me is my attitude about college drinking. One would naturally assume that such an outspoken and enthusiastic lover of fermented beverages such as myself would come out in favor of college drinking shennanigans, and in the end their right, but not for the reasons one might think.
I actually despise the way people drink in college. I really can't stand such dilletantishness as keg stands, beer bongs, and shotgunning. I mean that's some childish shit right there. Even when I was in college I hated that shit. And believe me, at a small, Baptist university where any drinking is frowned upon, that's about all the drinking you see, albeit a little more surreptitiously.
If you wanna get smashed, don't just dump 5% ABV American "sex in a canoe" beer down your throat with a hose. Instead, crack open a bottle of Bourbon or vodka and mix a proper drink. If you drink at all, it should be because you like to drink, not to prove your manhood or try to fit in or some shit. If you're feeling insecure about whether or not all the cool kids will like you, I'm here to tell you the booze ain't gonna help.
What it will do, however, is remove your inhibitions which are preventing you from doing the stupid shit you are likely to do because you've got something to prove. Contrary to what we've all been spoon-fed, alcohol does not make you do something you don't want to do. It simply lowers the inhibition. If someone is going to make an ass of themselves, the booze will simply remove the inhibition and it's only a matter of time. Even if they do get through it all unscathed, they'll blame the booze in a bad way and end up further propagating the prohibitionist paradigm more effectively.
"See kids," The reformed college "alcoholic" says, "alcohol is bad for you. It made me sleep with all those frat boys and get AIDS. It made me drink that flaming shot and get third degree burns all over my face. It made me jump across that bonfire and break my legs. It made me do all those kegstands because I wanted to impress my buddies and drive home and wrap my car around a telephone pole."
I mean just look at our President. There's a man who needs to come out of the drunkard closet if I ever saw one. But that's another rant, and as we say in the tech support monkey business, "outside of the scope of this document."
My fellow drunkards and I refer to that as Amateur Hour. You get these young kids that are too young to remember when the martini lunch was de rigeur among professional types, or when you could drive home after having a glass of wine with dinner and not have to worry about random checkpoints. These people don't have any cultural experience with drinking, so their drinking is amateurish and irresponsible. They end up hurting themselves and in some cases dying before they ever can learn how to drink properly.
I feel sorry for them. You have an entire subculture of people who are the victims of neoprohibition. They've been fed all the stock bullshit about how alcohol is nothing but bad, and that if you so much as have a beer, your life will spin out of control and you will become a raging alcoholic and be a failure at life. I guess that these people figure that since they are "breaking the rules" then they might as well give up all control.
That way you end up with DUI's, wrecked academic careers, and the occasional death from alcohol poisoning, "a promising youth cut down in his prime," as the cliche goes. These people are victims of neoprohibitionism and a nannying society which rules us all to death and makes criminals of the innocent.
In the wake of this, of course, the response is to make more rules. There's a sensible solution. [/sarcasm]
Now keep in mind that for most of these milquetoast neoprohibitionist harpies, the definition of binge drinking is at least two drinks a day. Ironicly, this is the same amount that most doctors recommend as a minimum to help prevent heart disease, lower blood pressure, and a whole other laundry list of things that doctors have recently determined that moderate alcohol intake is good for (and that sensible people have known that alcohol is good for since ancient times).
So with that mindset at work you have all these petty little regulations being implimented, which I'm sure will not even make a dent in the amount of binge drinking, either real or imagined, that goes on in college campuses. While the amateurish style of drinking does create problems, there are still plenty of folks going to college who don't have these problems. But screw it, let's just punish the whole lot for the sins of a few. And while we're at it, let's use the sins of those few as anectodal evidence to support more manufactured statistics and create more unnessesary rules.
Now I know some of you are reading this and going, what does this have to with Constitutional rights?
Well, I could argue that this subculture and these kinds of rules tie into a larger neoprohibitionist effort perpatrated by those who've been collectively undermining the Constitution since 1983. While that might be valid that's not why I chose to post this here.
What irks me specificly is that the University of Massachussets system is a public school which recieves funding from the State of Massachussets. As such they have to adhere to that annoying little document called the Constitution just like any public body. And if you live in the State of Massachussets, you're paying taxes for this shit.
You see there's this little amendment to the constitution, the 21st in fact, which specicicly repealed the 18th amendment prohibiting alcohol. Oh, bother, say the prohibitionists. Many argue that, failing the direct approach constitutionally, prohibitionists are passing lots of small laws that result in the end goal of prohibition anyway. But there's also the 1st Amendment:
Now look at this bit from the article:
It seems to me like college students getting together for the purpose of drinking in a legal fashion constitutes peaceable assembly. Not only does the University policy violate the letter of the Constitution, I believe it violates the spirit of what the framers had in mind. Consider that in the time the Constitution was written, the drinking tradition was much stronger in this country. Every single one of the authors of our Government went out drinking at night. The idea that a hardworking, churchgoing, responsible American wouldn't drink would was ridiculous to them.
These college students who are drinking in their dorm rooms aren't there to engage in sedition or to incite violence, they're there to get their drink on. As long as it's legal (IE: everyone is over 21, etc.) There's no reason for that sort of rule.
Or more appropriatly, I should say there's not excuse for that rule.
UMass Imposes More Drinking Restrictions
Jan 31, 7:08 AM (ET)
AMHERST, Mass. (AP) - No more drinking games at the University of Massachusetts. The school is cracking down on alcohol abuse on the Amherst campus with a list of new rules that go into effect this semester.
Along with banning games meant to get players drunk as quickly as possible, the rules include prohibitions on taps and funnels and large gatherings where more than 10 people are in a dormitory room with alcohol.
There will also be fewer bottles of beer lined up on the dorm room walls. Students who are 21 or older will be allowed to keep no more than 12 bottles or cans of beer, two bottles of wine or one bottle of hard liquor.
"These changes represent our continued efforts to reduce underage and binge drinking," said Jo-Anne Vanin, dean of students.
I suppose someone sees this as sensible. I sure the hell don't.
Now one thing that surprises some people about me is my attitude about college drinking. One would naturally assume that such an outspoken and enthusiastic lover of fermented beverages such as myself would come out in favor of college drinking shennanigans, and in the end their right, but not for the reasons one might think.
I actually despise the way people drink in college. I really can't stand such dilletantishness as keg stands, beer bongs, and shotgunning. I mean that's some childish shit right there. Even when I was in college I hated that shit. And believe me, at a small, Baptist university where any drinking is frowned upon, that's about all the drinking you see, albeit a little more surreptitiously.
If you wanna get smashed, don't just dump 5% ABV American "sex in a canoe" beer down your throat with a hose. Instead, crack open a bottle of Bourbon or vodka and mix a proper drink. If you drink at all, it should be because you like to drink, not to prove your manhood or try to fit in or some shit. If you're feeling insecure about whether or not all the cool kids will like you, I'm here to tell you the booze ain't gonna help.
What it will do, however, is remove your inhibitions which are preventing you from doing the stupid shit you are likely to do because you've got something to prove. Contrary to what we've all been spoon-fed, alcohol does not make you do something you don't want to do. It simply lowers the inhibition. If someone is going to make an ass of themselves, the booze will simply remove the inhibition and it's only a matter of time. Even if they do get through it all unscathed, they'll blame the booze in a bad way and end up further propagating the prohibitionist paradigm more effectively.
"See kids," The reformed college "alcoholic" says, "alcohol is bad for you. It made me sleep with all those frat boys and get AIDS. It made me drink that flaming shot and get third degree burns all over my face. It made me jump across that bonfire and break my legs. It made me do all those kegstands because I wanted to impress my buddies and drive home and wrap my car around a telephone pole."
I mean just look at our President. There's a man who needs to come out of the drunkard closet if I ever saw one. But that's another rant, and as we say in the tech support monkey business, "outside of the scope of this document."
My fellow drunkards and I refer to that as Amateur Hour. You get these young kids that are too young to remember when the martini lunch was de rigeur among professional types, or when you could drive home after having a glass of wine with dinner and not have to worry about random checkpoints. These people don't have any cultural experience with drinking, so their drinking is amateurish and irresponsible. They end up hurting themselves and in some cases dying before they ever can learn how to drink properly.
I feel sorry for them. You have an entire subculture of people who are the victims of neoprohibition. They've been fed all the stock bullshit about how alcohol is nothing but bad, and that if you so much as have a beer, your life will spin out of control and you will become a raging alcoholic and be a failure at life. I guess that these people figure that since they are "breaking the rules" then they might as well give up all control.
That way you end up with DUI's, wrecked academic careers, and the occasional death from alcohol poisoning, "a promising youth cut down in his prime," as the cliche goes. These people are victims of neoprohibitionism and a nannying society which rules us all to death and makes criminals of the innocent.
In the wake of this, of course, the response is to make more rules. There's a sensible solution. [/sarcasm]
Now keep in mind that for most of these milquetoast neoprohibitionist harpies, the definition of binge drinking is at least two drinks a day. Ironicly, this is the same amount that most doctors recommend as a minimum to help prevent heart disease, lower blood pressure, and a whole other laundry list of things that doctors have recently determined that moderate alcohol intake is good for (and that sensible people have known that alcohol is good for since ancient times).
So with that mindset at work you have all these petty little regulations being implimented, which I'm sure will not even make a dent in the amount of binge drinking, either real or imagined, that goes on in college campuses. While the amateurish style of drinking does create problems, there are still plenty of folks going to college who don't have these problems. But screw it, let's just punish the whole lot for the sins of a few. And while we're at it, let's use the sins of those few as anectodal evidence to support more manufactured statistics and create more unnessesary rules.
Now I know some of you are reading this and going, what does this have to with Constitutional rights?
Well, I could argue that this subculture and these kinds of rules tie into a larger neoprohibitionist effort perpatrated by those who've been collectively undermining the Constitution since 1983. While that might be valid that's not why I chose to post this here.
What irks me specificly is that the University of Massachussets system is a public school which recieves funding from the State of Massachussets. As such they have to adhere to that annoying little document called the Constitution just like any public body. And if you live in the State of Massachussets, you're paying taxes for this shit.
You see there's this little amendment to the constitution, the 21st in fact, which specicicly repealed the 18th amendment prohibiting alcohol. Oh, bother, say the prohibitionists. Many argue that, failing the direct approach constitutionally, prohibitionists are passing lots of small laws that result in the end goal of prohibition anyway. But there's also the 1st Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Now look at this bit from the article:
Along with banning games meant to get players drunk as quickly as possible, the rules include prohibitions on taps and funnels and large gatherings where more than 10 people are in a dormitory room with alcohol.
It seems to me like college students getting together for the purpose of drinking in a legal fashion constitutes peaceable assembly. Not only does the University policy violate the letter of the Constitution, I believe it violates the spirit of what the framers had in mind. Consider that in the time the Constitution was written, the drinking tradition was much stronger in this country. Every single one of the authors of our Government went out drinking at night. The idea that a hardworking, churchgoing, responsible American wouldn't drink would was ridiculous to them.
These college students who are drinking in their dorm rooms aren't there to engage in sedition or to incite violence, they're there to get their drink on. As long as it's legal (IE: everyone is over 21, etc.) There's no reason for that sort of rule.
Or more appropriatly, I should say there's not excuse for that rule.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Yes, GOP, I'm looking at *you*
Once again, the ministrations of representatives of the so-called "party of small government" proves that it has abandoned the principles of Ronald Reagan.
Judge Bradshaw-Hull is seeking reelection on the GOP platform.
Man awarded $1 for 105 acres Port condemned
By: DANA BURKE, Citizen Staff01/19/2006
For years, Seabrook residents have said building the Bayport container facility north of town would hurt property values.
They might be surprised at how much one man got for his tract of land - $1 for 105 acres.
Pasadena land owner Glenn Seureau, II, thinks he was robbed of his by the Port of Houston Authority. He plans to continue an uphill battle with the Port until he is paid fair market value for the land.
One civil court judge, on the other hand, seems to think $1 is compensation enough for Seureau's land, located just north of Seabrook.
Seureau fought for nearly three years to protect his property, in his family for more than 150 years, from the Port's power of eminent domain, only to lose his case in May of last year in the court of Harris County Civil Court Judge Lynn Bradshaw-Hull.
The judge ruled that having paid Seureau $1, the Port now owns the fee simple title to the property. Seureau was also ordered to give back the Port's previous payment of more than $1.9 million at 5.75 percent interest and pay the Port's court costs at the same interest rate.
Seureau has appealed the ruling, and he and his attorneys are currently in negotiations with the Port.
Port officials declined to comment on the case, but confirmed that they are working with Seureau to reach an agreement.
The conflict began in September 2002, when a special commission held a hearing regarding the Port's request to condemn Seureau's land. Seureau did not attend the hearing, and the commission ordered the Port to pay him approximately $1.9 million for the property.
The Port deposited the funds into the registry of the court, taking constructive possession of the land, but Seureau refused to take the money or relinquish the title to the property.
"I didn't think (the Port) had the right to take the property," he said, adding that the Port's need for the land seems to be based on private rather than public interests.
The Port plans to build a portion of the Houston Cruise Terminal on the property.
Seureau also believes $1.9 million is less than the market value for the land, which he had planned to develop with multi-family residences.
He was later advised by an attorney that he did not have the right to contest eminent domain and withdrew the $1.9 million to pay for further appeals regarding the market value of his land.
The Port brought Seureau to Bradshaw-Hull's court on May 16, 2005 to obtain the fee simple title that Seureau had withheld until that point.
On May 17, the judge excluded the testimony of both Seureau and his only expert witness, Louis Smith, saying that neither man could provide evidence that was relevant or reliable regarding the market value of Seureau's land.
According to court documents, the judge's final ruling was based on a lack of evidence to support Seureau's argument.
Seureau also made a motion to exclude the testimony of one of the Port's expert witnesses, Matthew Deal. The court denied that motion.
Seureau, who lives in his 180-year-old family home next door to the recently condemned property, said that although he is not familiar with the judge's intentions, he sees Bradshaw-Hull's ruling as a "punishment" for trying to challenge the Port.
"I was forced to settle for less than market value," he said.
Bradshaw-Hull declined to comment on the case since it is on appeal.
Judge Bradshaw-Hull is seeking reelection on the GOP platform.
Monday, January 16, 2006
Kelo in action
Back when the US Supreme Court (thanks to Swinging Sandra O'Connor) decided in Kelo that government can seize private property from its current owner and transfer the property to another private party in the name of economic development, many of us predicted that abuses were sure to follow. Yours truly, for example, wrote a TCS column, in which I opined that:
After news of Napoleon's victory in the Battle of Austerlitz was conveyed to British Prime Minister William Pitt, Pitt pointed to a map of Europe and said: "Roll up the map; it will not be wanted these ten years." In light of the Supreme Courts decision to side with New London, we might just as well roll up the Takings Clause of the Bill of Rights, because we won't need it any longer.
Regrettably, confirmation of my concern comes from my own home town: In the sort of blatant move one associates with the Soviet kolkhoz process, Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks (our feckless ex-police chief) wants to the city to sell property seized to build a badly needed animal shelter funded by a city bond approved by the voters to a politically well-connected developer (Francisco Pinedo, president of Cisco Bros.) who has made campaign contributions to Parks and other top city officials. The LA Times reports:
The city's initial plan was to use the site for a new South Los Angeles animal shelter. The city paid $5.8 million to buy the property with money raised by a bond issue that voters approved to expand animal services. ...
Councilman Bernard C. Parks, who is spearheading the plan and represents the area, says the public would benefit more if the land were used for a business. ...
The previous owners of the property, which includes three warehouse buildings, said the city has betrayed them. Their furniture-manufacturing firm had 20 years of success in South Los Angeles, said Scott Vaughan, a partner in Vaughan Benz, which has moved to near Chinatown. "It was thriving." "If they are not going to do what they claimed they were doing and put an animal shelter there," he said, "it was unnecessary to take our property." Vaughan Benz fought the city's decision to seize its property in court, and the partners said the time and money spent on that battle hurt their business.
This is the worst sort of abuse of the eminent domain process, in which a private property owner gets screwed of its land so that a wealthy and politically-connected developer can make money.
But the problem is compounded by the involvement of the voter-approved bond fund:
"I really do feel uncomfortable about it," said James W. Odom, a member of an oversight committee set up by the city to make sure it properly spends the money from its animal shelter bond issue. If the city decides to change the property's use, Odom said, he will fight to make sure the animal shelter bond money is paid back. ...
City sources ... said the income from the sale is unlikely to fully pay back the $8 million spent so far from the animal shelter bond, which includes the legal costs of acquiring the property through eminent domain and $1 million in already completed design work.
Put bluntly, this reeks of corruption. If the deal goes forward, there needs to be an investigation to determine whether Parks violated the law. Ironically, however, city attorney Rocky Delgadillo has gotten even more money in campaign contributions from developer Pinedo!
Is there ANYONE out there who could not have predicted that our property rights would eventually be at the mercy of those with enough dough to bribe corrupt politicians?
Thursday, January 05, 2006
You Say You Want a Revolution? Well, Alright.
If you look closely at the rights extended to us by the US Constitution, you will realize that several of them are not just rights, they are the duties of free peoples. This is because the very EXERCIZE of those specific rights helps us maintain them and all other rights. The first two amendments of the constitution stick out foremost in my mind -- by worshiping as we see fit, we are reminded that our rights are endowed to us by our Creator, not the whim of the state. It is by speaking freely that we keep the flame of freedom lit in the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens, and it is by assembling that we can communicate and coordinate any and all efforts to protect our freedom.
But the second amendment is even more essential, for an unarmed populace is powerless to do anything to protect itself or its freedoms except to call upon and trust in the good graces of the powerful. That is not a bet I care to place. You see, while I do not intend to downplay the usefulness of firearms as a way of securing food (hunting) or self-defense, I believe, as many of us on the right do, that the core purpose of the Second Amendment is to protect us all from Tyranny -- and not just to arm the military to proterct us from foreign tyrrany, but to arm the populace against domestic tyrrany. The Founding Fathers had taken up arms in such a cause once, they intended to provide for the possibility of a repeat performance in the future.
I came to the above realization while pondering the recent brouhaha regarding the Christmas Cross that Lars Larson was planning. At least on poster at Portland IndyMedia made comments fantazizing about doing bodily harm to Lars. I supported Lars' decision not to go through with the cross raising, believing he had taken the moral high ground. But two things about the incident struck me: One was that I found it highly ironic that those on the Left (Let's be clear here, I'm not talking about liberals, I'm talking about THE LEFT -- people whose politics make Howard Dean seem centrist) would call Lars a Fascist and in the same breath threaten violence to silence him. But while I was bemused, I was not surprised.
The Left's fringe has become stronger, louder, and more openly embraced by the "Party" in general. And it's become apparent to anyone paying attention that the Left is becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of doing anything they must to further their views, including using violence and lawlessness. They also seem more than willing to do what they must to silence the expression of opinions contrary to their own. And while they might believe they are "Freedom Fighters", they are striving for a political and social order that is frighteningly oppressive in its tolerance of personal freedom. It seems more and more apparent that what the Left wants is Revolution, or at least Civil War. Case in point, note the tone taken by the reader "Unapologetic Liberal" in the comment thread of this post at Ace of Spades HQ.
But the left may be biting off more than they can chew.
This was the second impression I got from the Christmas Cross incident. As one conservative (I can't remember who or where) pointed out that this would be unwise, ever since a leftist idiot revealed Lars' home phone number at Michael Moore appearance and Lars began receiving death threats, Lars has had a CCW permit and actively exercizes his Second Amendment rights. While Lars decided to back down to prevent violence, if any of the PDX IM crowd really tried to do Lars bodily harm, I'm sure they would regret it -- if they lived.
There's a lesson about the Right to be learned by the left from that angle to the story, just as we are learning about them from their reaction. You see, while there is a fringe element to both sides of the political spectrum, it seems that in recent years, the Right has more and more marginalized its fringe, distancing ourselves from it, rejecting its extremes in a way that the Left has failed to react to their fringe. And while it's popular to cast the Right in the light of being the oppressors, we have for the most part shunned violence and domestic unrest as a means to our ends. We have tried to take the moral high ground, abide by the law, distance ourselves from unscrupulous allies and distinguish ourselves from unscrupulous adversaries.
But we can only be pushed so far. And if we find ourselves in a position where our own ability to push back is all that stands between us and being overrun by those who wish to oppress us, we will push back -- and our push is harder. We strive to uphold and respect the Rule of Law. But if you finally get what you want, if you achieve revolution in the streets and open conflict between us, remember this: We're the ones who believe in and exercize our right to bear arms as a means of protecting our other rights. Usually that means from the random criminal who would mug or rob or rape us or our families. Strategically that means from a tyrant who would invade our country from without. Theoretically, the Framers believed it could mean from a corrupt government that would usurp its authority from within. But make no mistakes. If you try to impose a Marxist order on us through violent overthrow of the Government, we are highly likely to decide that you are a greater threat to our freedom than the Government ever could dream of being.
And you won't like what happens when we take sides.
But the second amendment is even more essential, for an unarmed populace is powerless to do anything to protect itself or its freedoms except to call upon and trust in the good graces of the powerful. That is not a bet I care to place. You see, while I do not intend to downplay the usefulness of firearms as a way of securing food (hunting) or self-defense, I believe, as many of us on the right do, that the core purpose of the Second Amendment is to protect us all from Tyranny -- and not just to arm the military to proterct us from foreign tyrrany, but to arm the populace against domestic tyrrany. The Founding Fathers had taken up arms in such a cause once, they intended to provide for the possibility of a repeat performance in the future.
I came to the above realization while pondering the recent brouhaha regarding the Christmas Cross that Lars Larson was planning. At least on poster at Portland IndyMedia made comments fantazizing about doing bodily harm to Lars. I supported Lars' decision not to go through with the cross raising, believing he had taken the moral high ground. But two things about the incident struck me: One was that I found it highly ironic that those on the Left (Let's be clear here, I'm not talking about liberals, I'm talking about THE LEFT -- people whose politics make Howard Dean seem centrist) would call Lars a Fascist and in the same breath threaten violence to silence him. But while I was bemused, I was not surprised.
The Left's fringe has become stronger, louder, and more openly embraced by the "Party" in general. And it's become apparent to anyone paying attention that the Left is becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of doing anything they must to further their views, including using violence and lawlessness. They also seem more than willing to do what they must to silence the expression of opinions contrary to their own. And while they might believe they are "Freedom Fighters", they are striving for a political and social order that is frighteningly oppressive in its tolerance of personal freedom. It seems more and more apparent that what the Left wants is Revolution, or at least Civil War. Case in point, note the tone taken by the reader "Unapologetic Liberal" in the comment thread of this post at Ace of Spades HQ.
But the left may be biting off more than they can chew.
This was the second impression I got from the Christmas Cross incident. As one conservative (I can't remember who or where) pointed out that this would be unwise, ever since a leftist idiot revealed Lars' home phone number at Michael Moore appearance and Lars began receiving death threats, Lars has had a CCW permit and actively exercizes his Second Amendment rights. While Lars decided to back down to prevent violence, if any of the PDX IM crowd really tried to do Lars bodily harm, I'm sure they would regret it -- if they lived.
There's a lesson about the Right to be learned by the left from that angle to the story, just as we are learning about them from their reaction. You see, while there is a fringe element to both sides of the political spectrum, it seems that in recent years, the Right has more and more marginalized its fringe, distancing ourselves from it, rejecting its extremes in a way that the Left has failed to react to their fringe. And while it's popular to cast the Right in the light of being the oppressors, we have for the most part shunned violence and domestic unrest as a means to our ends. We have tried to take the moral high ground, abide by the law, distance ourselves from unscrupulous allies and distinguish ourselves from unscrupulous adversaries.
But we can only be pushed so far. And if we find ourselves in a position where our own ability to push back is all that stands between us and being overrun by those who wish to oppress us, we will push back -- and our push is harder. We strive to uphold and respect the Rule of Law. But if you finally get what you want, if you achieve revolution in the streets and open conflict between us, remember this: We're the ones who believe in and exercize our right to bear arms as a means of protecting our other rights. Usually that means from the random criminal who would mug or rob or rape us or our families. Strategically that means from a tyrant who would invade our country from without. Theoretically, the Framers believed it could mean from a corrupt government that would usurp its authority from within. But make no mistakes. If you try to impose a Marxist order on us through violent overthrow of the Government, we are highly likely to decide that you are a greater threat to our freedom than the Government ever could dream of being.
And you won't like what happens when we take sides.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Good Collumn and Some Ranting About Neoprohibition
JD Bruewer of limaohio.com has a rather nice bit about neo-prohitionist legislation.
So in other words, shit or get off the pot!
I, like the author, know which side I am on regarding this issue. Drinking is legal. It should have never been made illegal. Having been made illegal, the only correct thing to do was to repeal the Constitutional amendment that made it illegal, which was done. With prohibition, as wrong as it was, you see a good example of people working within the law to amend the constitution properly within the correct framework, more or less.
Unfortunately, any above the board legislation concerning alcohol ended with the repeal of prohibition, when it became clear that American public would not as a majority support a minority position such as prohibition. Since then the vocal minority in this country has used every underhanded tactic they could think of to keep people confused and sitting on the fence regarding this issue.
In other words, the Drys couldn't defeat the American drinking public with a frontal assault, so now they are going for the flank. They couldn't win by preaching. They couldn't win by violence (such as was perpatrated by Carrie Nation and the Anti-Saloon league). They couldn't win by the legal high ground of the US Constitution. So now they want to undermine that Constitution to get what they want.
Let me stress that again. Regardless of the motive, which itself isn't entirely clear, the people who want to prohibit the consumption of alcohol now choose to undermine the Constitution because they couldn't manipulate it to get whay they want. They don't want anyone to drink, and they will take away that right any way they can. And they don't care if the rights of due process, fair trial, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and even the basic right of a mother to care for her child are compromised, so long as they get what they want.
And it's working, because they've been slowly softening and shifting the public perception of drinking and drinking issues for decades. They will fail if the American public stops and thinks about what is going on. They will fail if Americans question their own opinions and even perception of the facts on this matter. Even if you don't drink, at least be aware of what's going on because you have as much to lose as any drinker.
Here are a couple of facts that everyone seems to have forgotten. It's not illegal to drink in the United States. It's not even illegal to drink and drive (although the neoprohibitionists have managed to confuse us on that issue enough to where even most police officers no longer understand this simple fact).
Think about that for a second. It's not illegal for you to drink and drive. It's illegal to be intoxicated while driving, as you endanger yourself and others. The definition of that intoxication has been (innapropriatley) set as having a BAC of .08 in most states. Also, it's a very good idea to not drink and drive, one which I continue to endorse even when it means I'm not going anyhwere for a while. But if you drink and drive, you have not broken the law unless you've had enough to bring your BAC up to .08 or higher.
If you had a glass of wine with dinner and drive home, you have not broken the law, even though you might get arrested for it. If you are sleeping it off in the back seat, you have not broken the law, even though you might get arrested for it. If you are sitting at a bar drinking while your car sit in that bar's parking lot, you have not broken the law, even though you might get arrested for it. If you call a cab because you've been drinkinand don't wish to endanger yourself and others by getting behind the wheel, yet before you get into the cab you go into your car to fetch some of your belongings, you have not brokent the law even though you might get arrested for it.
Neo-prohibitionists don't want you to be aware of these facts. Instead they want you to have a fuzzy, inarticulate perception about drinking. And while they are at it they want you to be so afraid of criminall persecution and prosecution that you will stop drinking altogether.
"Drinking is not a crime."
Prohibition is political dead meat. Enter neo-prohibition, a lighter, more palatable dish.
Calls for prohibition elicit strong reaction from many sectors of the public, but who can object to protecting children and innocent drivers? Neo-prohibitionists use these causes to criminalize and stigmatize all alcohol-related activities.
How can you object to tougher drunken driving laws or restricting the sale of alcohol around children? What politician would come out in favor of drunken driving or jeopardizing children?
With this approach, neo-prohibitionists have pushed the implementation of extreme laws that limit the civil rights of citizens accused of using alcohol improperly, while proving ineffective at protecting the public.
In a October column on FoxNews.com, Radley Balko, who runs the Weblog www.TheAgitator.com, details how Mothers Against Drunk Driving has morphed into a neo-prohibitionist group and how the .08 blood alcohol limit law the group promoted has failed to curb drunk driving.
“When two-thirds of alcohol-related traffic fatalities involve blood-alcohol levels of .14 and above, and the average fatal accident occurs at .17, this move doesn’t make much sense. It’s like lowering the speed limit from 65 to 60 to catch people who drive 100 miles per hour,” Balko writes.
He points out that the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s review of drunken-driving data concluded, “The evidence does not conclusively establish that .08 BAC laws by themselves result in reductions in the number and severity of crashes involving alcohol.”
If you want to read Balko’s writings on the subject, or the GAO report on .08 blood-alcohol content laws, go to www.LimaNews.com/neo-prohibition.
My point is, if you’re against legalized alcohol, say it, fight against it and be clear in your intention.
Don’t confuse the issue by tying it to bad, feel-good legislation. Don’t harm legitimate efforts to protect the driving public and children by hijacking their causes to support your own.
If you are for legalized alcohol, stand up for the right to drink, don’t let the neo-prohibitionists strip away your rights.
So in other words, shit or get off the pot!
I, like the author, know which side I am on regarding this issue. Drinking is legal. It should have never been made illegal. Having been made illegal, the only correct thing to do was to repeal the Constitutional amendment that made it illegal, which was done. With prohibition, as wrong as it was, you see a good example of people working within the law to amend the constitution properly within the correct framework, more or less.
Unfortunately, any above the board legislation concerning alcohol ended with the repeal of prohibition, when it became clear that American public would not as a majority support a minority position such as prohibition. Since then the vocal minority in this country has used every underhanded tactic they could think of to keep people confused and sitting on the fence regarding this issue.
In other words, the Drys couldn't defeat the American drinking public with a frontal assault, so now they are going for the flank. They couldn't win by preaching. They couldn't win by violence (such as was perpatrated by Carrie Nation and the Anti-Saloon league). They couldn't win by the legal high ground of the US Constitution. So now they want to undermine that Constitution to get what they want.
Let me stress that again. Regardless of the motive, which itself isn't entirely clear, the people who want to prohibit the consumption of alcohol now choose to undermine the Constitution because they couldn't manipulate it to get whay they want. They don't want anyone to drink, and they will take away that right any way they can. And they don't care if the rights of due process, fair trial, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and even the basic right of a mother to care for her child are compromised, so long as they get what they want.
And it's working, because they've been slowly softening and shifting the public perception of drinking and drinking issues for decades. They will fail if the American public stops and thinks about what is going on. They will fail if Americans question their own opinions and even perception of the facts on this matter. Even if you don't drink, at least be aware of what's going on because you have as much to lose as any drinker.
Here are a couple of facts that everyone seems to have forgotten. It's not illegal to drink in the United States. It's not even illegal to drink and drive (although the neoprohibitionists have managed to confuse us on that issue enough to where even most police officers no longer understand this simple fact).
Think about that for a second. It's not illegal for you to drink and drive. It's illegal to be intoxicated while driving, as you endanger yourself and others. The definition of that intoxication has been (innapropriatley) set as having a BAC of .08 in most states. Also, it's a very good idea to not drink and drive, one which I continue to endorse even when it means I'm not going anyhwere for a while. But if you drink and drive, you have not broken the law unless you've had enough to bring your BAC up to .08 or higher.
If you had a glass of wine with dinner and drive home, you have not broken the law, even though you might get arrested for it. If you are sleeping it off in the back seat, you have not broken the law, even though you might get arrested for it. If you are sitting at a bar drinking while your car sit in that bar's parking lot, you have not broken the law, even though you might get arrested for it. If you call a cab because you've been drinkinand don't wish to endanger yourself and others by getting behind the wheel, yet before you get into the cab you go into your car to fetch some of your belongings, you have not brokent the law even though you might get arrested for it.
Neo-prohibitionists don't want you to be aware of these facts. Instead they want you to have a fuzzy, inarticulate perception about drinking. And while they are at it they want you to be so afraid of criminall persecution and prosecution that you will stop drinking altogether.
"Drinking is not a crime."
Thursday, December 01, 2005
No Wonder We're Losing Our Rights
We're being conditioned to give them up in school.
In Lowell, Mass., a girl is sent home for wearing camo.
This bothers me on two fronts. First, I'm a Navy brat and I've been wearing my old man's dungaree cutoffs, field jackets, and old BDU's since I was about 12. I carried my schoolbooks in seabags, field packs and bags purchased overseas while the old man was on liberty. This was the style in the 80's as it is now, but even if it wasn't, I and my fellow brats would have done it anyway because it was a part of our subculture, just as much having gray blankets that say "US" folded at the foot of our beds and putting olive drab batteries in our Walkmans and boom boxes. By time we reached late elementary school age, these things were a source of pride for us, and our parents were usually hip to it.
God help any school administrator that told one of us we couldn't wear camo to school. The general attitude among our parents was "I didn't fight for my country in Vietnam (or wherever) just to come and have my kids told they can't express themselves." They may not have always understood our fashions, but most military parents respected them because they realized that long hair or denim jackets with spikes or hip hop gear were a source of pride for one's specific peer group and that they indicated that we were taking pride in our appearance. These were values that my dad at least wanted to instill, even if the aesthetics were different than what he was used to.
Second, this shows either supreme ignorance or supreme malevolence on the part of the admistrators regarding the culture of their students. Here's a quick lesson. Gang members tend to wear baggy khaki's, plain white shirts or gear from athletic teams, and of course, their colors. The reason that they wear that sort of thing is so they don't stand out, except as a member of their gang. They wear baggy pants, of course, to conceal weapons. But their clothing is plain and uniform in order to both blend in and to deny a usable description to the police. When a gangbanger holds up a liquor store or commits a driveby, and the cops ask for a description from the victim, what they get is "a black male, average height, average build, wearing khaki pants, and a white t-shirt," or "a hispanic male, average height, average build, wearing a plaid shirt and a blue headband". Of course when the cops in South Central LA or East Houston go to look for the suspect, they see about a hundred people matching that exact description. It's kind of like going to a heavy metal show and saying, "have you seen a guy with long hair and a black t-shirt?"
Camouflage, of course, defeats that purpose because it stands out. Sure it's designed to conceal and break up one's outline in the field, but as youth fashion in an urban or suburban environment it's supposed to stand out. That's why it's worn. Kid's wear camo because they want to look cool and identify with other kids who share the same sense of aesthetics and cultural identity. There's nothing wrong with that. It is, in fact, constitutionally protected free expression.
Of course part of the problem is ignorant administrators confusing gang culture with hip-hop culture. Hip Hop culture often includes camo and all black attire, but it also includes visual elements taken from gang culture, such as the extremely baggy pants. Regardless of what someone thinks of kids wearing baggy pants halfway down their asses (which I personally think looks stupid), it doesn't equate to being in a gang. Administrators are simply making a spurious connection that has no basis in fact.
To use their logic, I must be a gangster because I wore a pair of khaki's to my business casual office job the other day. Never mind I was also wearing a company polo shirt and some dressy moccasins, because khaki's are associated with gangs therefore I must be a gangster. It's a handy excuse for malevolent or racist administrators to persecute students they don't like.
But there's more.
In Winona, Minn., Students are being punished for wearing"Bondage Pants". Now before I post the text of the article, let me explain what the hell these things are because I know some of you are scratching your heads. Bondage pants are basicly baggy pants, usually black, with a lot of zippers and straps and shit hanging off of them. Supposedly they are used in BDSM sex play as you can use the straps to tie the wearer up. thus the term "bondage pants." Now, I know some people who are heavy into lifestyle BDSM and I've never seen them wear bondage pants. Those folks usually prefer leather. But regardless, these pants are common among goth, punk, and metal subcultures because they are usually black and they look cool.
"Safety concerns?" Bullshit!
That's a flimsy excuse if I ever heard one. Moreover, here we see the increasing mindset of punishing someone because something might happen, or worse, because of what someone else might do.
I'll tell you, I've seen these things worn at clubs and in some of the most ferverous mosh pits to have occured and not once have these caused a safety problem. They damn sure aren't a safety issue in a school setting.
This sort of ban is more common across the country since the Columbine shootings. Right after Columbine you saw lots of schools banning black trenchcoats or black gear in general. In fact chances are a lot of you reading this are young enough to have experienced this personally. Never mind that one of the things that drove the kids at Columbine to do what they did was that they were made pariahs by their teachers, administrators, and more "normal" peers because of the way they dressed. And again it's the guilty by association mindset. The guys that did the shooting were wearing black trenchcoats so any kid that wears a trenchcoat or even watches too many Matrix films must be a potential mass murderer.
But here's the worst one I've seen in a while:
In Jasper County, Georgia a student was suspended when he disabled and removed a camera that was taping in the school restroom!
This is beyond outrageous! Normally, when someone is caught taping people in the bathrooom they are convicted of a sexual offense and registered as sex offenders in a public database. But here it's ok because the principle was trying to catch vandals? I don't think so!
Maybe the principle was trying catch someone in the act of vandalism. Or maybe, someone in this school's administration likes to get their jollies by watching young boys go to the restroom. Either way it's a completely unacceptable violation of basic privacy rights.
Those of you reading this who have children, how would you feel about a school administrator watching your children go to the bathroom? What would you do about it? How would you teach your kids to handle it? As a culture, we teach our children not to get in a car with strangers and not to give out personal information on the internet in order to keep them safe from sexual predators. Are we supposed to then lay that aside because the person operating the camera happens to be a school principle. Again, I don't think so. Or as we used to say when I was in the Navy, "not on my watch!"
Besides the persecution and selective enforcement that is common among these cases and many more like them, there is one common theme that I think cannot be ignored, and that is the wish and consent of the parents. The girl who got sent home for wearing camo was sent home against her mother's wishes. The mother bought the outfit for her child and encouraged her to wear it to school. The kid who was sent home because he wouldn't have someone taping him while he went to the restroom was punished (I refuse to apply the word "discipline" to a case like this) against his mother's wishes. The story about the bondage pants doesn't really mention parents' response, so I've got to wonder how many of these parents consented to this policy. I'm pretty sure that most of the parents bought these pants for their kids so that at least implies consent for their kids to wear them to school.
I seems like whenever I read a story like this, whether it's about a kid wearing a peace symbol on his shirt or a muslim girl wearing the hijab, the school policy is always at odds with the parents' wishes. Wasn't there a case in the late 80's where a father in Pasadena, Texas sued the school district because his boys were sent home for having long hair?
It seems like schools want to take the place of surrogate parents. As valuable as compulsory education is, the schools are most certainly not surrogate parents. Who gave teachers and administrators the right to determine how parents are going to raise their kids? While schools do have a certain supervisory responsibility, and while that responsibility comes with certain rights, the ultimate decision on what those rights are lies with the parents who send their children to school. The right of a parent to raise their child as they see fit is as fundamental as any basic human right in existence. It's not a privelage to be granted by a public institution to be revoked whenever that institution sees fit.
Moreover, American schools seem to be the primary battlefront for political indoctrination by those who want to take away our constitutional rights. It follows because children are impressionable that if someone wants to create an Orwellian society where children turn their parents into the State, then first they've got to get those kids to come around to the "correct" way of thinking.
Think of any contraversial issue involving Constitutional rights, or any rights for that matter. For every one I'll bet you'll see a corresponding effort to "educate" children on the subject, usually by those who want to take away those rights.
For instance with my personal pet issue, prohibition of alcohol, you've got MADD in schools teaching about the evils of booze, even though the kids aren't old enough to drive, much less drink legally. Same goes with legalization of marijuana and the legal issues that go with it, such as vehicle searches and drug screening. You've got constant, relentless conditioning on that issue and how bad "drugs" are.
Gun control? You've got "gun free zones" around schools. Constitutionally protected free speech? you've got schools banning attire and slogans left and right. Unreasonable search and seizure? How about the random locker sweeps and parking lot sweeps that happen all the time? Freedom of religion? Anyone remember "See You At The Pole"? Pick an amendment and you'll find someone trying to undermind it in our nation's schools.
It's not a coincidence, people.
In Lowell, Mass., a girl is sent home for wearing camo.
FATIGUE FLAP: LHS student sent home for wearing camouflage outfit
By HILLARY CHABOT, Sun Staff
Lowell Sun
LOWELL -- Shilo Lewis just wanted to blend in with the crowd.
She'd seen camouflage clothing in fashion magazines, on the streets of the city, even in Lowell High School.
But a head-to-toe camouflage ensemble got the high-school junior sent home from school yesterday.
“They took one look at me and said, ‘You have to get picked up,' “ Lewis said about school officials.
Lewis, 16, was wearing a camouflage bandana holding her waist-length hair in a ponytail, a camouflage jacket over a camouflage T-shirt, and a pair of camouflage pants.
“I think she looks great,” said her mother, Bette Lewis, who bought her the outfit. “She always looks nice. She always matches everything.”
Lowell High Headmaster Bill Samaras said military gear is associated with some local gangs, and could disrupt students' safety and their learning environment.
“This has nothing to do with the military. We allow Reserve Officer Training Corps to wear military gear because they wear it in a respectful manner. It's the gang relation. If it's controversial or if it has gang associations, we won't have it,” Samaras said.
This bothers me on two fronts. First, I'm a Navy brat and I've been wearing my old man's dungaree cutoffs, field jackets, and old BDU's since I was about 12. I carried my schoolbooks in seabags, field packs and bags purchased overseas while the old man was on liberty. This was the style in the 80's as it is now, but even if it wasn't, I and my fellow brats would have done it anyway because it was a part of our subculture, just as much having gray blankets that say "US" folded at the foot of our beds and putting olive drab batteries in our Walkmans and boom boxes. By time we reached late elementary school age, these things were a source of pride for us, and our parents were usually hip to it.
God help any school administrator that told one of us we couldn't wear camo to school. The general attitude among our parents was "I didn't fight for my country in Vietnam (or wherever) just to come and have my kids told they can't express themselves." They may not have always understood our fashions, but most military parents respected them because they realized that long hair or denim jackets with spikes or hip hop gear were a source of pride for one's specific peer group and that they indicated that we were taking pride in our appearance. These were values that my dad at least wanted to instill, even if the aesthetics were different than what he was used to.
Second, this shows either supreme ignorance or supreme malevolence on the part of the admistrators regarding the culture of their students. Here's a quick lesson. Gang members tend to wear baggy khaki's, plain white shirts or gear from athletic teams, and of course, their colors. The reason that they wear that sort of thing is so they don't stand out, except as a member of their gang. They wear baggy pants, of course, to conceal weapons. But their clothing is plain and uniform in order to both blend in and to deny a usable description to the police. When a gangbanger holds up a liquor store or commits a driveby, and the cops ask for a description from the victim, what they get is "a black male, average height, average build, wearing khaki pants, and a white t-shirt," or "a hispanic male, average height, average build, wearing a plaid shirt and a blue headband". Of course when the cops in South Central LA or East Houston go to look for the suspect, they see about a hundred people matching that exact description. It's kind of like going to a heavy metal show and saying, "have you seen a guy with long hair and a black t-shirt?"
Camouflage, of course, defeats that purpose because it stands out. Sure it's designed to conceal and break up one's outline in the field, but as youth fashion in an urban or suburban environment it's supposed to stand out. That's why it's worn. Kid's wear camo because they want to look cool and identify with other kids who share the same sense of aesthetics and cultural identity. There's nothing wrong with that. It is, in fact, constitutionally protected free expression.
Of course part of the problem is ignorant administrators confusing gang culture with hip-hop culture. Hip Hop culture often includes camo and all black attire, but it also includes visual elements taken from gang culture, such as the extremely baggy pants. Regardless of what someone thinks of kids wearing baggy pants halfway down their asses (which I personally think looks stupid), it doesn't equate to being in a gang. Administrators are simply making a spurious connection that has no basis in fact.
To use their logic, I must be a gangster because I wore a pair of khaki's to my business casual office job the other day. Never mind I was also wearing a company polo shirt and some dressy moccasins, because khaki's are associated with gangs therefore I must be a gangster. It's a handy excuse for malevolent or racist administrators to persecute students they don't like.
But there's more.
In Winona, Minn., Students are being punished for wearing"Bondage Pants". Now before I post the text of the article, let me explain what the hell these things are because I know some of you are scratching your heads. Bondage pants are basicly baggy pants, usually black, with a lot of zippers and straps and shit hanging off of them. Supposedly they are used in BDSM sex play as you can use the straps to tie the wearer up. thus the term "bondage pants." Now, I know some people who are heavy into lifestyle BDSM and I've never seen them wear bondage pants. Those folks usually prefer leather. But regardless, these pants are common among goth, punk, and metal subcultures because they are usually black and they look cool.
Minn. high school bans 'bondage' pants
November 29, 2005
WINONA, Minn. --Winona Senior High School has prohibited students from wearing a certain style of baggy pants because of safety concerns.
"Bondage" pants -- pants with several straps that hook from each back pocket to the opposite pant leg -- were banned about a month ago. The school's dress code committee decided that students shouldn't wear any strap that could be unsafe, whether made from chain or fabric, said associate principal Jeff Sampson.
Although the straps haven't caused any injuries at the school, Sampson said they could possibly hook students onto something or someone and would be especially dangerous around shop class equipment.
Junior Ed Chick and his friends said the straps would rip off the pants once caught and most are too high off the ground for others to trip over.
Students said the new prohibition is aimed at groups who some label as "Goth" or "freak." They said teachers have been less stringent enforcing the dress code among students in other groups who wear skimpy blouses, T-shirts promoting alcohol or pants that show underwear.
"We've all been yelled at or called to the office," said junior Carl Schreiber, who was told he couldn't wear pants with cuffs 1.5 feet in diameter because he could conceal a gun in them or trip.
Sampson said about 15 students have agreed to remove the straps, and "a handful" were suspended after refusing.
"Safety concerns?" Bullshit!
That's a flimsy excuse if I ever heard one. Moreover, here we see the increasing mindset of punishing someone because something might happen, or worse, because of what someone else might do.
I'll tell you, I've seen these things worn at clubs and in some of the most ferverous mosh pits to have occured and not once have these caused a safety problem. They damn sure aren't a safety issue in a school setting.
This sort of ban is more common across the country since the Columbine shootings. Right after Columbine you saw lots of schools banning black trenchcoats or black gear in general. In fact chances are a lot of you reading this are young enough to have experienced this personally. Never mind that one of the things that drove the kids at Columbine to do what they did was that they were made pariahs by their teachers, administrators, and more "normal" peers because of the way they dressed. And again it's the guilty by association mindset. The guys that did the shooting were wearing black trenchcoats so any kid that wears a trenchcoat or even watches too many Matrix films must be a potential mass murderer.
But here's the worst one I've seen in a while:
In Jasper County, Georgia a student was suspended when he disabled and removed a camera that was taping in the school restroom!
A Jasper County mother says her 8th grade son found a video camera taping in the school bathroom this week. But now, he is the one in trouble.
Cindy Champion says her son, Mac Bedor, and a few of his friends took the camera out of the ceiling because they felt it violated their privacy. Champion says her son brought the camera home to show her that afternoon. She says when she contacted the Jasper County Comprehensive School, she found out high school principal, Howard Fore, put the camera there. She says Fore told her he put the camera in the boys' bathroom to catch students vandalizing. Champion says her son is now suspended for taking school property.
CINDY CHAMPION, MOTHER:
"I had told the high school principal, Mr. Fore, that he needed to come up with another solution. That this wasn't appropriate. His response to me was he was going to continue to film."
Jasper County Superintendent, Jay Brinson, sent a faxed response to Eyewitness News. Brinson says high school principal, Howard Fore, placed the camera in the bathroom last Sunday to control vandalism. He says Fore put the camera there "to discover the identity of those doing the damage." Brinson says the principal did tell Cindy Champion that the camera would be installed again. But in his statement Brinson says, "The camera was not placed back in the restroom, and will not be placed back in the restroom."
Eyewitness News tried to contact the Ocmulgee Circuit District Attorney about the legality of placing hidden cameras in public school rest rooms. He covers that area. Eyewitness News was not able to get in touch with him. But, Eyewitness News did talk with Bibb County District Attorney, Howard Simms. He says cameras in public school bathrooms are legal because schools have more leeway on privacy issues.
This is beyond outrageous! Normally, when someone is caught taping people in the bathrooom they are convicted of a sexual offense and registered as sex offenders in a public database. But here it's ok because the principle was trying to catch vandals? I don't think so!
Maybe the principle was trying catch someone in the act of vandalism. Or maybe, someone in this school's administration likes to get their jollies by watching young boys go to the restroom. Either way it's a completely unacceptable violation of basic privacy rights.
Those of you reading this who have children, how would you feel about a school administrator watching your children go to the bathroom? What would you do about it? How would you teach your kids to handle it? As a culture, we teach our children not to get in a car with strangers and not to give out personal information on the internet in order to keep them safe from sexual predators. Are we supposed to then lay that aside because the person operating the camera happens to be a school principle. Again, I don't think so. Or as we used to say when I was in the Navy, "not on my watch!"
Besides the persecution and selective enforcement that is common among these cases and many more like them, there is one common theme that I think cannot be ignored, and that is the wish and consent of the parents. The girl who got sent home for wearing camo was sent home against her mother's wishes. The mother bought the outfit for her child and encouraged her to wear it to school. The kid who was sent home because he wouldn't have someone taping him while he went to the restroom was punished (I refuse to apply the word "discipline" to a case like this) against his mother's wishes. The story about the bondage pants doesn't really mention parents' response, so I've got to wonder how many of these parents consented to this policy. I'm pretty sure that most of the parents bought these pants for their kids so that at least implies consent for their kids to wear them to school.
I seems like whenever I read a story like this, whether it's about a kid wearing a peace symbol on his shirt or a muslim girl wearing the hijab, the school policy is always at odds with the parents' wishes. Wasn't there a case in the late 80's where a father in Pasadena, Texas sued the school district because his boys were sent home for having long hair?
It seems like schools want to take the place of surrogate parents. As valuable as compulsory education is, the schools are most certainly not surrogate parents. Who gave teachers and administrators the right to determine how parents are going to raise their kids? While schools do have a certain supervisory responsibility, and while that responsibility comes with certain rights, the ultimate decision on what those rights are lies with the parents who send their children to school. The right of a parent to raise their child as they see fit is as fundamental as any basic human right in existence. It's not a privelage to be granted by a public institution to be revoked whenever that institution sees fit.
Moreover, American schools seem to be the primary battlefront for political indoctrination by those who want to take away our constitutional rights. It follows because children are impressionable that if someone wants to create an Orwellian society where children turn their parents into the State, then first they've got to get those kids to come around to the "correct" way of thinking.
Think of any contraversial issue involving Constitutional rights, or any rights for that matter. For every one I'll bet you'll see a corresponding effort to "educate" children on the subject, usually by those who want to take away those rights.
For instance with my personal pet issue, prohibition of alcohol, you've got MADD in schools teaching about the evils of booze, even though the kids aren't old enough to drive, much less drink legally. Same goes with legalization of marijuana and the legal issues that go with it, such as vehicle searches and drug screening. You've got constant, relentless conditioning on that issue and how bad "drugs" are.
Gun control? You've got "gun free zones" around schools. Constitutionally protected free speech? you've got schools banning attire and slogans left and right. Unreasonable search and seizure? How about the random locker sweeps and parking lot sweeps that happen all the time? Freedom of religion? Anyone remember "See You At The Pole"? Pick an amendment and you'll find someone trying to undermind it in our nation's schools.
It's not a coincidence, people.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Ihre papieren bitte
So there's this lady in Colorado. She used to take the bus every day to get to work. The bus would go through some federal property. Some federal cops decided it was their prerogative to harrass the passengers on said bus.
You can click the link above to read the rest.
But there's more detail right here.
When she refused to show her ID, she said, officers with the Federal Protective Service removed her from the bus, handcuffed her, put her in the back of a patrol car and took her to a federal police station within the Federal Center, where she waited while officers conferred. She was subsequently given two tickets and released.
You can click the link above to read the rest.
But there's more detail right here.
The Compliance Test
On Monday, September 26th 2005, Deb Davis headed off to work on the route 100 bus. When the bus got to the gates of the Denver Federal Center, a guard got on and asked her if she had an ID. She answered in the affirmative. He asked if he could see it. She said no.
When the guard asked why she wouldn't show her ID, Deb told him that she didn't have to do so. The guard then ordered her off the bus. Deb refused, stating she was riding a public bus and just trying to get to work.
The guard then went to call his supervisor, and returned shortly with a federal policeman. The federal cop then demanded her ID. Deb politely explained once again that she would not show her ID, and she was simply commuting to work. He left, returning shortly thereafter with a second policeman in tow.
The Second Compliance Test
This second cop asked the same question and got the same answer: no showing of ID, no getting off the bus.
The cop was also annoyed with the fact that she was on the phone with a friend and didn't feel like hanging up, even when he 'ordered' her to do so.
The second cop said everyone had to show ID any time they were asked by the police, adding that if she were in a Wal-Mart and was asked by the police for ID, that she would have to show it there, too.
She explained that she didn't have to show him or any other policeman my ID on a public bus or in a Wal-Mart. She told him she was simply trying to go to work.
The Arrest
Suddenly, the second policeman shouted "Grab her!" and he grabbed the cell phone from her and threw it to the back of the bus. With each of the policemen wrenching one of her arms behind her back, she was jerked out of her seat, the contents of her purse and book bag flying everywhere. The cops shoved her out of the bus, handcuffed her, threw her into the back seat of a police cruiser, and drove her to a police station inside the confines of the Denver Federal Center.
Once inside, she was taken down a hall and told to sit in a chair, still handcuffed, while one of the policemen went through her purse, now retrieved from the bus.
The two policemen sat in front of their computers, typing and conferring, trying to figure out what they should charge her with. Eventually, they wrote up several tickets, took her outside and removed the handcuffs, returned her belongings, and pointed her toward the bus stop. She was told that if she ever entered the Denver Federal Center again, she would go to jail.
She hasn't commuted by public bus since that day.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Anyone Remember This Guy?
Last year there was a story about a guy who lost his driver's license because he told his doctor he drank more than a six pack of beer per day.
Well it turns out that after a year of legal wrangling, he can drive again if he installs a blood-alcohol measuring device in his car.
So, not only can local Government take away your driver's license without a criminal conviction, or even an arrest for that matter, and not only do they require doctors to violate their patients' expectation of confidentiality, but now a citizen must pay thousands of dollars towards intrusive devices and "rehabilitaion" programs because he might someday commit a crime. Just what is that about?
Hat tip to Rowdydrunk79 on the Modern Drunkard forums.
Keith Emerich, 44, said yesterday he disclosed his drinking habit in February to doctors who were treating him for an irregular heartbeat.
"I told them it was over a six-pack a day. It wasn't good for me -- I'm not gonna lie," Emerich said in a telephone interview from his home in Lebanon, about 30 miles east of Harrisburg.
Emerich said he initially thought the license recall notice was a joke, but then hired an attorney when he said he couldn't get an explanation from the transportation agency.
"They want me to go to counseling to prove that I'm OK," Emerich said. "I tried to go to a place ... and they wanted $250 for a three-month program."
Well it turns out that after a year of legal wrangling, he can drive again if he installs a blood-alcohol measuring device in his car.
Keith Emerich, the Lebanon, Pa., man who lost his driver's license after telling his doctor he drinks 10 beers a day, is being allowed to drive again -- as long as he installs a blood-alcohol measuring device in his car, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Aug. 18.
"Just think of the stigma that's going to put on me, blowing into some tube just to start your car," said Emerich, 44. "This is how I'm being treated, like some common criminal. And all I did was go to the doctor."
Emerich had his license suspended by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDot), after he went to Good Samaritan Hospital in Lebanon for an irregular heartbeat. When a physician inquired about his alcohol use, Emerich reported drinking six to 10 beers day. The doctor told Emerich that the alcohol was damaging his heart.
Two months later, Emerich received a letter notifying him that his license was being revoked based on the doctor's judgment that he has a drinking problem. Under Pennsylvania law, physicians are required to report drivers with medical conditions that could be potentially dangerous. Alcohol misuse is on the list of dangerous medical conditions.
Lebanon County Judge Bradford Charles supported PennDot's action and ordered Emrich to install the ignition interlock device, a breath test for alcohol that must register below 0.025 percent for the car will start.
"If Emerich's alcohol addiction had progressed to the point where he could not stop drinking even though it was killing him, how could we reasonably expect Emerich to forgo alcohol simply to ensure safe driving?" wrote Charles in his ruling.
"We're happy that it gives him a chance to drive, but the ruling doesn't answer the ultimate question: Why isn't he able to drive when he hasn't done anything wrong?" said lawyer Horace Ehrgood.
Emerich is responsible for the device's $1,000 cost. "I'm tapped out. I don't know what to do. I can't afford to keep this lawyer I have. I've already tapped into my 401(k) for all this," said Emerich. "But I guess it's do what they say or walk for a while."
So, not only can local Government take away your driver's license without a criminal conviction, or even an arrest for that matter, and not only do they require doctors to violate their patients' expectation of confidentiality, but now a citizen must pay thousands of dollars towards intrusive devices and "rehabilitaion" programs because he might someday commit a crime. Just what is that about?
Hat tip to Rowdydrunk79 on the Modern Drunkard forums.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Pink License Plates For DUI Offenders
Why don't they just call it what it really is,...a scarlet letter.
So not only will people be more afraid to have a drink (remember you don't have to be drunk to get a DUI conviction), but they want to go ahead and circumvent due process yet again. If anybody complains, the US Supreme Court can always just rule a "DUI exception" like it has for every DUI case since 1983 or so.
CLEARWATER - -- A Bay area senator wants Floridians to think pink before they have a drink.
Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, has filed a bill that would require "bright pink" license plates on vehicles driven by people with restricted driving privileges resulting from a conviction for driving under the influence.
"Maybe it will embarrass people and keep them from drinking and driving," Fasano said. "Maybe they'll think twice."
Filed Nov. 1, Senate Bill 538 calls for the first three characters on the pink license plate to read "DUI." The bill also says police "may stop any vehicle that bears a DUI plate without probable cause to check the driver."
If passed, Florida would join Ohio and Michigan as a state with a punitive license plate law for DUI offenders. Many states have considered similar legislation, including Tennessee this year, but most bills have died after debate about privacy issues.
"Pink plates would hold out individuals for punishment as well as ridicule. We are very opposed to it," said Larry Spalding, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida.
So not only will people be more afraid to have a drink (remember you don't have to be drunk to get a DUI conviction), but they want to go ahead and circumvent due process yet again. If anybody complains, the US Supreme Court can always just rule a "DUI exception" like it has for every DUI case since 1983 or so.
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