Pre-vacation Police State bulletin

Apologies for the continued light posting. Day job, etc. Also, next week I will be on a beach in the tropics sipping pina coladas and lukewarm beer, so no posting at all. I even don't know if my phone will work down there, but I'm not taking it in any event, so don't expect blog posts, emails, phone calls, or really any communication whatsoever. Right now I'm at the point where I go to sleep considering the wording of certain contract provisions, and wake up babbling incoherent corporate-speak (as if there is any other kind).

Anyway.

If you haven't checked out Robert Guest's spiffy new Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog (formerly I Was The State), then you should. Robert is on the front lines fighting for freedom every day. In his case, this is not an overly dramatic way of describing what he does.

A couple of recent posts of his got my attention. First, he comments on a speed trap on I-45 in a town called Ferris. Apparently the town of Ferris (pop. 2,157) generates $720,000 of income per year in traffic tickets. While Robert comments generally on how outrageous this is, and notes that a state law prohibits ticket quotas, I was reminded of a state law passed a number of years ago which specifically prohibited a municipality from retaining any revenue from traffic tickets which exceeds 30% of its previous year's total revenue. This law was specifically aimed at preventing small towns from raising money from speed traps. (too tired to wade through The Google much, but here's a re-post (original not available) of a Houston Chronicle article which reported on this law).

So... how does Ferris legally do this? I don't know... but concerning small town policies regarding raising revenue from traffic fines, a while back I was talking to a guy who was a city council member of a small town. He told me that the city had no express policy in this regard, and no one ever overtly discussed it, but he said that when it came budget time, and the police chief came before the council to argue for his budget allocation, the city's top-level budget spreadsheet always had the line for the police department's budget immediately adjacent to the line for the revenue generated by traffic fines. My buddy told me that this was certainly no coincidence.

Second, Robert comments on the case of Henry Doke, who is fighting to prevent forfeiture to the state of some real estate property he owns. The state has determined that someone unaffiliated in any way with Mr. Doke had at some point used the property to engage in "drug activity". Under our wise and prescient civil asset forfeiture laws, this means that Mr. Doke's property is now (or soon will be) the property of the state.

Clearly this is a stupid outcome, which is a direct and foreseeable result of a stupid legislative framework. But it doesn't stop there. As I noted in a comment at The Agitator today:

Civil forfeiture can [without violating the U.S. Constitution] be used to seize property owned by people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the commission of the crime.

I wrote a law review article (not available online) on the case of Bennis v. Michigan. The ruling in this SCOTUS case states that cars (and presumably all other kinds of property, including houses) can be forfeited to the state even when the owners were not themselves engaged in the crime. In the facts of the case, the wife of an accused John was trying to prevent the forfeiture of her car in a prostitution case. The car was community property (i.e., making her half owner). [Obviously she did not participate in this crime, and had no knowledge of it, and furthermore, because the car was half-owned (i.e., owned "in common") by the husband, she had no power to limit his usage of it. (and as the opinion made clear, even if she had been the sole owner of the car it would not have prevented forfeiture)]

Needless to say, the state won, thereby adding injury to the woman’s insult. A ridiculous outcome. One of the hypotheticals arising in the case was the idea that a homeowner could lose their home to the state by virtue of one of their teenage children (or a friend of a teenage child), without the knowledge of the homeowner, being caught smoking a joint in the house. The justices opined that the judgment (and professionalism!) of prosecutors and law enforcement could be relied upon to ensure that such an injustice does not occur. Heh.

Of course, no prosecutor has yet had the temerity to take someone's house because someone smoked a joint in it. The operative word in that sentence being "yet". Because, as with all government powers, if they have it, rest assured they will -- eventually -- use it.

A few items of possible interest:

1. Me and a buddy of mine discussed this story when it first came out, but now it's back in the news. Very brief synopsis: after an appropriations bill passes congress, but before it goes to preznit for signing, corrupt senator from Alaska somehow goes in and fracks with the wording of the bill so that one of his campaign contributors in Florida (Florida!) gets a $10M highway interchange that will benefit his business (and only his business).

2. What goes through the heads of people who would do something like this? (link via The Agitator).

3. Man with no science or medical background finds (potential) cure for cancer using wife's baking pans and some hot dogs. (no, this is not a joke.)

4. There Will Be Blood is one of the best movies I've ever seen.

5. And, somewhat relatedly, DC Park Police drink Thomas Jefferson's milkshake. See also this, which manages to work in the seemingly mandatory Footloose reference in the very first graf.

I was not aware that Matt Drudge had taken over a major television broadcast network

Dear ABC News:

In case you haven't heard -- in the event that, despite being in the news business, you're not quite up to speed on current events -- our country is currently fighting two wars, is on the verge of a constitution crisis by virtue of the executive branch unilaterally deciding to contravene its coequal status and ignore virtually every constitutional and statutory restraint on its power, and is teetering on the edge of a disastrous economic meltdown with our currency at historic lows -- and falling -- against other world currencies and our energy costs and debt skyrocketing out of control -- in case you are not aware of these facts despite their daily appearance on front pages of newspapers across the country and the world day after day, you really should spend a bit of time investigating the matter.

Because, in light of these momentous ongoing events, your decision to spend the first 50+ minutes of tonight's presidential debate asking questions about lapel pins, pastors, bowling scores, and other nonsense, makes you, to be very charitable, appear rather foolish.

Sincerely,
HipHopLawyer

Boalt Hall: teaching the next-gen torture lawyers

I've been reading a lot about the recently released Yoo Torture Memo. Started to write a much longer post on the subject, but as many times will happen with me, I got bogged down in a lot of minutia and ended up with nothing worth reading.

But having seen the usually politically-reticent (blogwise, anyway) Gleemonex pick up the slack with an excellent takedown of the harshly euphemistic BushAdmin mendacity concerning its torture regime, I thought I should at least say something.

Since Bush himself is thoroughly on-record as saying "We Don't Torture", it's not hard to see why he and his minions would want to keep catapulting the "harsh interrogation techniques" propaganda. But what I don't get is why the estupid news media feels it must go along and refuse to call things by their right names. I mean, sure, we can let the government get away with spending trillions of dollars fighting a war of aggression in our name, and torturing any random brown person who we might happen to grab up off the street, but must we, really, let them get away with torturing the English language?

I found one guy in this whole story who won't stand for this. His name is Christopher Edley, Jr., and he's written an opinion piece called "The Torture Memos and Academic Freedom" (emphasis mine). Mr. Edley certainly isn't going to let the BushAdmin get away with euphemizing torture, no sir!

Unfortunately, Mr. Edley happens to be the Dean of Boalt Hall, the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. And his opinion piece was written for the purpose of justifying his school's continued employment of Mr. John Yoo as a professor teaching Constitutional Law.

And so begins a rambling series of semi-coherent thoughts in which little of interest is discussed

As I note below, my paying gig is currently leaving me with little mental energy to devote to my normal reader-edification program of diatribing against state corruption, incompetence, and unchecked dominance of the citizenry. Does that sentence even make sense? I don't know, but I'm leaving it there.

So... my neighbors have seen fit to accuse me of flooding their yards. They suggest, through showing up unbidden to my door, that my swimming pool is leaking, or otherwise suffering from some large loss of water. At first, I did not dispute this as, not having paid much attention to the swimming pool or its mysterious equipment during the non-swimming months of the year, I had little idea whether it might be true.

During the superficially pleasant conversation, I maintained repeatedly -- repeatedly -- that if, indeed, something had gone awry with the pool, I would be foremost among residents of our little enclave in seeking to fix whatever problem had arisen. After all, what pool owner would stand idly by whilst his or her pool disgorged hundreds upon hundreds of gallons of water each day? But the thing is, I don't think they believed me. I came away from the conversation with the distinct impression that they believed that I was such a person; i.e., one who secretly delighted in profligately wasting tons of water, paying the resultant higher-than-normal water bills, and thereby gleefully inconveniencing all of my neighbors.

Of course, at some point in the conversation my lawyerly instincts kicked in, and I began to ask questions designed to elicit what, if any, evidence there might be which would lead anyone to believe that problem of the surplus water could be laid at my particular doorstep. No such evidence was forthcoming. My further questions reflected a somewhat more civilly expressed preoccupation with the issue of: "What? Your yard is muddy? Gee, didja notice how it's been raining, uh, like, a lot the past several days?"

Nevertheless, being a neighborly sort, I called up my pool guy. (A dude who, when he first arrived at my house last summer, on more than one occasion during his visit made a point of telling me that he "never set out to become a pool guy".) Rather than make an appointment to come out to my house and charge me money, he asked me a series of questions. First: is your pool obviously losing large amounts of water each day? No. Do you have an automatic pool filler? Yes. Is it on? Yes. How often and for how long does it fill the pool? Once every 4 days it fills the pool for 5 minutes. Ah, he says, there's your problem. You're overfilling the pool, and your overflow drain dumps right into the neighbors yard(s).

Which sounded about right to me. So I turned it off. Then I began checking each day to see if the water level went down. It didn't, but we had some heavy rain for a few days (as noted above, it's been wet around here).

But then: I checked the level every day since it last rained (Thursday night). The level of the water each time I checked was right up to the overflow drain. I checked again today at 10:30AM. Right up to the overflow drain. My pool had not lost any appreciable amount of water in at least 3 days.

I then went around to where all the mysterious pool equipment lurks. It is right on my neighbor's property line (not, in fact, one of the neighbors who had complained). And sure enough, there was pooling, standing water there. But my pool equipment wasn't running at the time, and there were no visible leaks, and then I notice that my next door neighbor has his irrigation system running, and his strip of sideyard is flooded.

This leads me to possibly conclude that my neighbor's irrigation system is causing all the extra water, not my pool and not, in fact, anything to do with me. Why, then, would my neighbors automatically assume this problem could be attributed to some malfeasance on my part? Perhaps it is my habit of not coming to the door when I don't know who the fuck is knocking at it.

Light posting

Probably all this week. Day job is interfering with my ranting hobby. (Though on the positive side, last month was the heaviest posting month ever here at Hip Hop Lawyer: average of 1+ post per day!)

If you're looking for something to read, I suggest this:

John Yoo's War Crimes. (brief ad click-through)

Anyone else catch Google the other day

tryin' to bite Hip Hop Lawyer's style?

"Sportscar"

Not sure why this came to mind, but pictured here is a mile or so of road that leads from U.S. 380 to (what at least used to be) Twin Hills beer store.

Back during my formative years, the ol' hometown was "dry", meaning it did not allow sales of intoxicating beverages. Actually, the entire county, though due to byzantine blue laws, beer and wine sales were allowed in the part of the county surrounding the lake (not pictured). In any event, a drive of about 20 minutes (in any direction) was required in order to procure beverages.

And needless to say, me and my buddies made many such trips, both before and after we were of legal drinking age. On one such run, after we had made our purchases, my friend and I drove away from the beer store heading back home. As we stopped at the stop sign (at the top left of the picture, pointing southwest), a couple of guys in a newish (late-80s) pickup truck quickly pulled up beside us and rolled down the window. The passenger said something like "nice car," in reference to my friend's twin-turbo 300zx. We both kind of nodded, and the guy says "wanna race?". My friend looked at him, looked over at me (you can't imagine the shit eating grin on my face), looked back at the guy and says "sure."

So the driver of the truck starts revving up his engine and glancing over at my buddy, who was just calmly sitting there with the gearshift in neutral, doing nothing. Finally the guy guns it and takes off. My buddy nonchalantly waits about 5 beats, carefully slips the shifter into 1st, and pulls out from the stop sign. I'm looking at him like "what are you waiting for?" as the truck barrels way ahead of us. My friend, not easily excited by such things, routinely shifts into 2nd, still driving like he's going through a school zone, then suddenly floors the accelerator and then... wait for it... the turbos spool up and the car takes off like it had been hit from behind by a speeding semi.

We entered the curve at around 105mph, passed the pickup truck going 120, and then, jamming on the brakes, slid past the stop sign into the middle of 380. Luckily there was no traffic at that time of night, and my friend backed up behind the stop sign and waited for the pickup to arrive. My friend looks over at me with just the slightest grin, and says "Sportscar."

I've ranted about wingnut emails...

but I have to admit, this is just funny:


The caption reads: How to recognize a Persian cat.

What are the limits of Leader-worship?

I think the post down below (regarding the Republican ditto-heads who, despite all logic and reason, continue to brazenly support our tragic misadventure in Iraq) deserves a follow-up.

First, I am not affiliated with any political party. My political views are a mix of those found on both the "left" and the "right", but are firmly rooted in principles of individual liberty and non-intrusive government. I think the current political climate where everything must be shoehorned into the dichotomy of liberal/conservative, right/left, or Democrat/Republican is very harmful to our political discourse. To me, this dichotomy is false and often precludes serious discussions of certain issues (for example, rolling back the drug war) because neither party officially supports the position (though, in some cases, a majority of Americans might support it, just not a majority of people within either party -- which makes it politically untenable).

So I reject this Democrat/Republican structure. But what I abhor, and what I believe is most harmful, is that a great many people, having picked one party or the other based on one or a small handful of issues most important to them, then feel it necessary to adopt that party's position on most or all other issues, without any serious thought being given to these other issues. And yet, for this type of person (let's call them "Partisans"), even though a given question may not rank high for them as a priority, and despite the Partisan not having independently analyzed the various approaches to the question, the Partisan feels a very strong urge to defend his Party's stance on the issue in the most vociferous and strident possible terms. So much so, that even after his Party's stance is proven -- beyond any reasonable doubt -- to be flat wrong, the Partisan will still support that stance until his Party's leaders have abandoned it.

I should here add that I think Democrats can be just as bad with Partisan thinking as can Republicans. That being said, I most often criticize Republicans in this space for the following reasons: (1) they have controlled the government during the last 8 years, and during that time they have done some of the stupidest and most villainous things in the long history of this country, and (2) as a group, on average, as a general rule, those on the "Right" are more likely to be "followers" in an intellectual sense than are those on the "Left". They are more likely to be conformists, people who follow rules. They are less likely to be independent thinkers and more likely to think as their "superiors" tell them they should. (a good example is the fact that such a relatively high proportion of Republicans are "religious", because they need structure, and discipline, and someone (God, their church, the Bible) to give them a set of rules to go by.)

But the specific question I want to examine here is, given that Partisans by definition are apt to follow and support the policies of their Party, what are the limits of Partisanship? I want to propose a scenario to help answer this question:

Suppose George W. Bush, President of the United States and undisputed Leader of the Republican Party, were to announce that he, in consultation with his National Security Advisor, his Director of National Intelligence, the Justice Department and OLC, and his military advisors, had come up with a new program to Make America Safer. With much fanfare, he comes on the teevee and outlines his plan: federal agents, in conjunction with selected state and local law enforcement, will immediately begin the process of identifying and locating all members of a certain class or group of people. [for purposes of this hypothetical, the identity of this group is not relevant; it could be based on race or ethnicity (Arabs, blacks, Aleuts, etc), or it might be based on religion or political affiliation (Muslims, ACLUers, or Seventh Day Adventists) or on profession or lifestyle choice (homosexuals, gardeners, kayakers, etc) or any other method of classification; for purposes of this hypothetical, lets call them "Others".]

The President states that he has received credible, reliable evidence that these Others are the prime cause of our nation being less safe. He knows this, he says, although he can't reveal the details of what he knows, because that would Make Us Less Safe. Rest assured however, he says, that he has rigorously reviewed this evidence, and there is no doubt that it is correct.

Continuing, the President says that the Others will be taken into custody and held in secret detention facilities, where they will be humanely treated. Each Other will then be interrogated in order to help identify other Others. They will then be offered an opportunity to be rehabilitated (or "re-educated"). But if such rehabilitation proves impossible, then the Others will be systematically pushed feet first through industrial wood chippers.

This will make us Safer and More Secure. While it may be unpleasant or inconvenient to the Others, it has been proven (albeit by secret evidence and secret analysis of that evidence) to the President's satisfaction that the Others are the cause of the danger facing our country. Furthermore, the President has consulted with his legal advisers and they have assured him that this program comports with all applicable laws.

That is the scenario. I don't intend to suggest that it is likely to happen, or even remotely plausible. I only propose it to ask the question: would Partisans, those on the "side" of the President, sit down at their computers and type up drooling and ludicrous comments in support of this program? And insult the character and patriotism of those who oppose it?

No politics today

Because arguing with fans of demagoguery can be tedious. There is a lot of Teh Stupid on the internets. And Y'all, I read a lot of the internets. Sometimes it makes your brain hurt.

So...

I was driving back from the St Patty's Day parade at lower Greenville the other weekend, and right as I was first getting up to speed on Central Expressway, shifting into 4th gear, my clutch pedal went straight to the floor. And stayed there. This posed quite the problem with my motoring experience, from that point forward.

Though the clutch pedal was depressed to the floor, the clutch remained fully engaged. This makes changing gears very difficult, but -- as it turns out -- not impossible. I was able to use a few of the gears by pressing firmly against the shifter in the direction of the gear-slot I wanted, and then slowly revving the engine until the point (different for each gear) where the rpm of the gear matched up to the rpm of the engine. Not a fun experience, in traffic, on the freeway(s), especially given my less-than-optimum physical and mental condition at that particular point in time.

As I got closer to home, stoplights and stop signs became a significant challenge. Stopping, in gear with clutch engaged = engine dies. Engine dying, combined with extreme difficulty of shifting into 1st or 2nd gear with clutch engaged = attempting to start car while in 1st or 2nd gear with traffic honking away behind you = severe frustration and embarrassment.

But I succeeded in getting home without further damage to car or person. And after a tow to the mechanic on the following Monday, and after waiting an entire week for parts, and after paying a hefty sum for installation of parts ($605), the nice mechanic shows me the culprit behind the whole mess:


This is a bolt. It costs $11 dollars. As I remarked to the mechanic, this bolt does not appear to be something you'd think of as likely to fail. He said he, nor any of the people he had discussed the issue with, had ever heard of one failing. Just my bad luck, I'm sure. Probably has nothing to do with my driving style.

But at least I didn't need my clutch replaced. A while back, the people at the dealer, after charging me $180 to replace a (different) bolt that had "fallen out" of my shifter assembly, informed me that I needed a new clutch. They kindly offered to replace the clutch, for the reasonable sum of $2500 U.S. Dollars. I laughed in their faces, called them a few choice names, and went on my way. (Note that, because this incident occurred 2 years and 25,000 miles ago, and I have still yet to replace the same clutch, I believe I may have been justified in calling them "fucking crooks" and "assholes".)

Mindless followers and regurgitators

I was just now trying not to throw up in my mouth as I was reading through the comments to this post on Liberal Lean. The topic, of course, is the 4000th Iraq death.

It still doesn't cease to amaze me how many people mindlessly support such a monumentally failed policy, the result of which -- among other things -- has been to throw our country into financial ruin and to dishonor the good name and high ideals of our nation. Oh, and to kill a few thousand of our countrymen (most of them young, with families), and a few hundred thousand of those people we are purported to be "saving".

We've also not become more secure (which was, under most of the various formulations over the years, the ostensible objective of this adventure), but rather have greatly decreased our security by becoming militarily weaker (readiness for other potential threats is the lowest its been since Vietnam) and by drastically increasing the number of people who violently hate us.

So, by pretty much any measure, the war and the occupation following it has been an abject failure. One of the most unwise, disastrous, and tragic things our country has ever done. And yet, what do commenters to the linked post have to say?

They start by accusing war critics of emphasizing the death toll in order to smear the "conservative movement", move on to asking how many people the Democrats killed in Vietnam, and then quickly segue into criticizing Democrats for various other real and imagined failings. This devolves quickly into shouts of "librul!" and "surrender-monkey" and, finally, "traitor". But most important, apparently, is emphasizing (intentionally or unintentionally) that the issue of whether the war is a failure hinges entirely upon which party started it and which party criticizes it.

People who instantly try to transform the question "Iraq war: success or failure?" into the question "Democrat or Republican?" are -- not to put too fine a point on it -- complete idiots. This kind of "my party, right or wrong" thinking is the bulwark of the intellectually lazy and the socially retarded. People, pull your heads out of your asses, look at the facts, and come to your own conclusions. Think for yourself, just this once. If you can do that, then I'll try to forget the fact that you probably only support Republicans because, of the two parties, they are the ones fighting hardest against the black "welfare queens" and those dirty Mexican immigrants. Which is about the best reason to support invading and occupying a foreign country as I've yet come across.

How to make friends and influence people

Peasants in Peru and Bolivia have been chewing on coca leaves for thousands of years. This practice literally dates to the beginning of recorded human history. Experts say it is less harmful than caffeine.

But since there are ungodly folks here in the U.S. who like chemically refined coca leaves (i.e., cocaine), and since the only way to stop U.S. consumers from getting cocaine is to entirely eradicate coca from the face of the planet, then these peasants are just going to have to change their ways. Or so says ONDCP, the DEA, and their lapdogs at the U.N.'s International Narcotics Control Board. They have recommended that coca-chewing be banned and that, presumably, the dirt-poor countries of Bolivia and Peru should build billions of dollars worth of prisons in order to incarcerate the millions of peasants who, due to flaws in their characters, refuse to quit chewing coca.

Bolivia is risking tens of millions of dollars in annual U.S. humanitarian aid by refusing to go along with this modest proposal. Bolivian President Evo Morales, who, just incidentally, happens to remain the head of Bolivia's largest union of coca growers (!), has stated his intention to fight any ban coca. It seems that taking an action that insults, degrades, and infuriates a large portion of his country's citizens is not very palatable to Mr. Morales.

Via The Agitator, who adds:

The sad thing is, our scorched earth drug policy in Latin America is a big reason why the entire continent hates us, and has turned to electing hostile political leaders like Chavez and Morales. Who can blame them? We send armed agents down there to march through their backyards, poison their fields with industrial-strength herbicides, and foment dangerous black markets and fund organized crime syndicates, all because our government can’t bear the thought its own citizens getting high. And of course, anyone who wants to can get high, anyway.

The tragedy is that poor countries like Bolivia, Venezuela, and Peru then lump all U.S. policy in with our shameful coca eradication efforts. So they reject free trade, privatization, and other liberal reforms, too. Which keeps them poor.

The amount of widespread destruction effected by the drug war is really mind-boggling.

Where is my Au...To...Mo...Bile ?

So I'm on my way home, and I happen to catch NPR interviewing a guy named Gedde Watanabe. As Long Duk Dong in the movie Sixteen Candles, he was fortunate to deliver one of the funniest ripostes in all time cinema history: "Ottomobeeeele?"

I've seen it dozens, hundreds of times, but I watched it again just now and it still makes me laugh.

Not having caught enough of the interview, I'm not sure what the point of it was, but while I was listening they were harping on the idea that the Long Duk Dong character was some kind of insidious racial stereotype that has caused millions of Americans to have a poor perception of Asian-Americans. To which I say: Stop. Ok? Just stop.

Dear Time Warner Cable: concentrate on your crappy cable business

I got this glossy mailer from Time Warner Cable. In super large font, it asks: WHY HAVE 3 MILLION PEOPLE DUMPED THE PHONE COMPANY?

It answers its own question at the bottom by asking: DID THEY THINK THEY WERE PAYING TOO MUCH?

Which is all by way of saying that they want you to SWITCH! to their "DIGITAL HOME PHONE SERVICE". It's only $24.99/month!!

Hey, here's a newsflash from, like, 5 years ago: People are "dumping the phone company" because they have no fucking use for "home phones" anymore. Nice time to be getting into this market segment, ya dumbfucks.

Not that it needs to be pointed out, but everydamn person in the world over 8 years old has their own cell phone. Especially all the ones whose households have broadband subcriptions. "Home phone" numbers are only ever used by callers who don't have the person's cell phone or have no idea exactly who it is they are trying to get ahold of. In other words, telemarketers and bill collectors. They serve no other purpose. The only reason anyone still has them is force of habit.

Time Warner Cable further advises me to "Say NO to high phone bills". Thanks, genius.