Category Archives: Law and Order

Law and Order, Politics

Bah on the Bluenoses

Reason on the growing hysteria from the MADD folks. They now want zero tolerance on drinking. In principle, that’s OK. In practice, there is no impairment at low BAC levels. The problem is habitual drunk drivers with high BACs, not the person who has a glass of wine with dinner and has a low BAC.

Although alcohol nannies generally support zero tolerance, one dissenting voice doesn’t. “I thought the emphasis on .08 laws was not where the emphasis should have been placed,” Candace Lightner told the Los Angeles Times in 2002. “The majority of crashes occur with high blood-alcohol levels, the .15, .18 and .25 drinkers. Lowering the blood-alcohol concentration was not a solution to the alcohol problem.”

That’s one of the founders of MADD, BTW.

I especially like the idea of forcing everyone in America to blow into tubes to start their cars. Yeah, I’m sure that won’t have any unintended consequences.

Read the whole thing.

Law and Order, Politics

No Prison, No Peace

Uh, yeah:

The US prison population has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to the taxpayer, researchers say.
There are more than 1.5 million people in US state and federal jails, a report by a Washington-based criminal justice research group, the JFA Institute says.

Inmate numbers are projected to rise by 192,000 in five years, costing $27.5bn (£13.44bn) to build and run jails.

The JFA recommends reducing the number and length of sentences.

The Unlocking America report, which was published on Monday, also advocated changing terms of parole and finding alternatives to prison as part of a major overhaul of the US justice system.

“There is no evidence that keeping people in prison longer makes us any safer,” said JFA president James Austin.

Here are the crime statistics. What they say is literally true but intellectually stupid.

The violent crime rate started rising in the mid-1960’s, the same time at which — in must certainly be an amazing coincidence — the welfare state began and prison began to wane. By 1980, the crime rate was up 266%, from the 160 per 100,000 to almost 600. It dropped after Reagan took office to the low 500’s. Then, bouyed by the crack explosion, it rose to the 750’s, 380% above the level of the 1960’s. I was in a rural college at the time, so I didn’t appreciate how dangerous things had gotten.

And then? Clinton became President and was the first Democrat in years to be tough on crime, supporting tough sentences and more cops. Gun control laws were loosened. Welfare reform hit in 1996, which I’m sure was just another strange coincidence. And by 2006, the violent crime rate had plunged by 1/3 down below 500. That’s not a coincidence. And every longitudinal study has confirmed that putting people in jail drops the violent crime rate.

(A lot of people are noting smugly that our murder rate is down to 1966 levels. This means nothing — it’s because our emergency and trauma care have improve drastically).

Interestingly, the trend have leveled off a bit under Bush and even risen slightly the last two years. Between 1992 and 2000, the violent crime rate dropped from 757.5 per 100,000 to 506.5. Since then, it has only dropped another 30 points. I’m not sure if you can blame this on Bush since the first steps of progress are always the easiest. But he certainly hasn’t made things noticeably better.

I do agree with these idiots on one thing. Throwing people in prison for stupid things like simple possession, throwing coffee at a car or downloading videos is ridiculous and counter-productive. Prison should be reserved for the violent. Putting non-violent people in prison only ruins lives and creates more criminals.

When our crime rate gets back down to 1960 levels (which would be 1/3 of where they are now), we can start talking about jailing people for playing online poker.

Law and Order, Politics

Phelps

1 Comment

Over at the conspiracy, Volokh makes the case that Fred Phelps shouldn’t have been found liable for picketing military funerals. He makes some good points, although I stand my impression that politics should not intrude on a private event. I oppose speech codes and am a big supporter of free speech, so my stance is not set in stone.

On the other hand, as noted by Overlawyered, Fred Phelps is vicious psychopath who has no problem abusing the law to get his way.

And then there are the lawsuits. Phelps himself is a disbarred attorney who was long known for massive litigation; at one point, he personally had almost 200 lawsuits pending in federal court. Although his congregation includes only about 22 adults, at least 14 of those have law degrees.

The church has its own law firm, Phelps Chartered, which is staffed by church members and which has repeatedly filed suit against its perceived enemies (see Halting Abusive Lawyers).

In addition to suing the chief of police and various Kansas judges and politicians, it has sued one district attorney three times for “malicious prosecution.” Even private citizens who filed criminal complaints against the picketers found themselves embroiled in lawsuits — or, perhaps by coincidence, with roofing nails littering their driveways.

Maybe $11 million is a bit much for this specific sin, but when you include things like this:

WBC members have picketed the funerals of Bill Clinton’s mother, Sonny Bono and Frank Sinatra. Even Bob Dole, Jerry Falwell, the Ku Klux Klan, Santa Claus and the 17 sailors killed aboard the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen last October have been attacked as “fags” or “supporters of the fag agenda.”

One little girl, going with her parents to see the “Nutcracker” ballet in a Topeka hall, had WBC pickets hiss at her: “Did your Daddy stick in his prick in your ass last night?”

I think it becomes apparent that this lawsuit is about the sum total of hatred and abuse they have heaped on anyone and everyone.

“There was a woman working at my restaurant who was gay,” says Jerry Berger, an attorney and owner of Topeka’s Vintage Restaurant. “Phelps told me, ‘If you don’t fire her, we’re going to put you out of business.'” The Westboro Baptists proceeded to picket the Restaurant “literally every day” for about three years. Berger eventually sold the restaurant and the woman quit.

Phelps didn’t. He followed the unfortunate woman, picketing at her new job, and “he still pickets the restaurant all the time,” Berger said in a recent interview. “And now, he pickets my law offices every Tuesday.”

Can we not declare insane and lock up a group of people who do things like this?

The article goes into the depressing amount of support this creep has gotten; but also into the people uniting against him.

Law and Order, Politics, Science and Edumacation, War on Terror

Monday Linkorama

  • I’m a big supporter of free speech in academia and I oppose the flag-burning ammendment. Still. What an asshole.
  • I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the biggest impediment to global warming being taken seriously is the tendency for supporters to link everything to it, including Darfur, for some reason.
  • Simulated drowning isn’t torture? Well, maybe half-drowning is.
  • John Ashcroft makes the case that the phone companies should not be sued for complying with government surveillance demands.

    Longstanding principles of law hold that an American corporation is entitled to rely on assurances of legality from officials responsible for government activities. The public officials in question might be right or wrong about the advisability or legality of what they are doing, but it is their responsibility, not the company’s, to deal with the consequences if they are wrong.

    To deny immunity under these circumstances would be extraordinarily unfair to any cooperating carriers. By what principle of justice should anyone face potentially ruinous liability for cooperating with intelligence activities that are authorized by the president and whose legality has been reviewed and approved by our most senior legal officials?

    He makes a good case. (Hat Tip: Overlawyered.com, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite all-purpose blogs.)

  • Balko on California’s attempt at criminal justice reform. I’ve moved quite a bit on this issue. I used to be more in the “hang ’em all, let God sort ’em out” camp. I’m still very much a law-and-order type who thinks some criminals should be tossed in prison for the rest of their lives. But I’m getting more and more leary of the “tough-guy” attitudes.
    • 'Culture', Law and Order, Politics, Sports, War on Terror

    Friday Nights Linksorama

  • Nice work, if you can get it. Wish I could get paid half a billion dollars for shuffling papers.
  • An Islamic cleric explains how to beat your wife. I was actually expecting something much worse. He regards women as children, which is an improvement, I guess, over regarding them as animals. The scary thing is, he’s a liberal by Middle Eastern standards.
  • Ah, cat butter. The salad days are over for Mac users.
  • At last they find a way to honor John Jordan O’Neill. Fantastic.
  • Megan McCardle on the importance of failure. As a scientist, I can tell you that an experiment that works precisely as planned tells you nothing.

    Failure, to put it bluntly, works. Failure is nature’s way of telling you “Hey, that doesn’t work!” The American economy is vastly strengthened by the fact that companies are allowed to fail–and also by the fact that our crazy culture encourages us to try things that don’t work.

    In the first few iterations, this often looks inferior to a centralized system. Look, the critics say, they sat down and planned it all! Compare that to our messy, fragmented market where half the stuff doesn’t work!

    It can take a decade or more before the cracks in the planning appear. The planners, it turns out, didn’t foresee that the world would change, and now the giant, planned system can’t cope.

    Speak it, sister.

    • 'Culture', Law and Order, Politics, War on Terror

    Saturday Morning Linkorama

  • Yeah, the Democrats aren’t a slave to special interests. That’s why they’re trying to massively expand the number of lawsuits being filed under ADA. These days, wearing glasses counts as being “disabled”. They’re also running a anti-gay, anti-abortion Religious Right idiot because he supports the trial lawyers.
  • Yes, the Star Trek prequel movie is going to suck. But it’s still cool that they’ve cast Simon Pegg as Scotty (or that that the writer of the article is named Siegel). If you haven’t seen Hot Fuzz or Shaun of the Dead, do so.
  • Gore Nobel round up. Both sarcasm and constructive criticism.
  • The DOJ is refusing to spend the money Congress allocated to test DNA samples of convicted felons. Because we can’t have innocent people getting freed from prison, can we?
  • An update on what’s going on with Ayaan Hirsi Ali
    • Law and Order, Politics

    Yeah, They Were in the Dark

    Dammit, I hate being right all the time. A few days ago, in response to the “more black men are in prison than in college” claim, I said:

    One things I’ve learned about social scientists. When they present you with answers to the wrong question, it’s because the answer to the right question didn’t fit their agenda.

    Well, someone decoded the socio-speak.

    According to 2005 Census Bureau statistics, the male African-American population of the United States aged between 18 and 24 numbered 1,896,000. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 106,000 African-Americans in this age group were in federal or state prisons at the end of 2005. See table 10 of this report. If you add the numbers in local jail (measured in mid-2006), you arrive at a grand total of 193,000 incarcerated young Black males, or slightly over 10 percent.

    According to the same census data, 530,000 of these African-American males, or twenty eight percent, were enrolled in colleges or universities (including two-year-colleges) in 2005. That is five times the number of young black men in federal and state prisons and two and a half times the total number incarcerated. If you expanded the age group to include African-American males up to thirty or thirty five, the college attendees would still outnumber the prisoners.

    Again, the incarceration rate is too high. But the hysteria is unwarranted, especially when the solution is fairly obvious:

    End the War on Drugs.

    'Culture', Healthcare, Law and Order

    Doctoring Like It’s 1984

    This is downright disturbing:

    Thanks to guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics and supported by the commonwealth, doctors across Massachusetts are interrogating our kids about mom and dad’s “bad” behavior.

    We used to be proud parents. Now, thanks to the AAP, we’re “persons of interest.”

    The paranoia over parents is so strong that the AAP encourages doctors to ignore “legal barriers and deference to parental involvement” and shake the children down for all the inside information they can get.

    One of the reasons doctors have left the AMA? They endorsed this Soviet Union 1984 horse manure. Only a fascist state tries to get kids to inform on parents.

    'Culture', Law and Order, Politics

    Monday Morning Linkorama

    Ugh, I was up until 4 am working on proposals. So here is my list of Monday links:

  • So your 9/11 conspiracy theory is gibberish? Sue!
  • More Numbers in the Dark. You know that massive crime wave that’s happening? Um, no. Also that study that says men are happier than women? It might just be a noise spike. Always remember that we get our news from people who flunked math and science.
  • You know Media Matters? The organization that loves plucking quotes from guys like Bill O’Reilly out of context? They’re part of the Clinton/Soros Empire. Now the article is complicated and, frankly, a bit paranoid. But you know that if similar ties existed between George Bush and, say, the Swift Boat Vets (oh, wait they do!), everyone would go nuts. I’m curious … how many liberals has Media Matters gone after?
  • Juan Williams has a more coherent defense of O’Reilly. Now look, I’m not fond of Bill O’Reilly. In fact, I don’t like his show at all. But his Sylvia’s comment is being taken completely out of context. It’s fine when The Daily Show does this. That’s a comedy show. But when news organizations do it? Jesus.

    When I saw the segment on The Daily Show, I knew the quote was being taken out of context. Why am I smarter than people who analyze the news for a living? How can a dippy blogger be more attentive to this sort of thing than people getting paid for it?

  • Dick Nixon was an anti-semite. Big surprise. Of course, FDR did little to stop the Holocaust.
    • 'Culture', Law and Order, Politics

    Fisking Sully

    1 Comment

    What Sullivan says:

    Three times as many black men will spend tonight in a prison cell as in a college dorm room. That number is almost as bad for Hispanics. A quarter of a century ago, the ratio was even.

    What the study actually says:

    The numbers, driven by men, do not include college students who live off campus. Previously released census data show that black and Hispanic college students — commuters and those in dorms — far outnumber black and Hispanic prison inmates.

    Now my reading of this is that blacks and hispanics have moved off campus — much like the rest of the student body. The crowing headline that “three times as many black are in jail as in college” is pure hysterical race-baiting that misses and obfuscates the more important point:

    The data show that big increases in black and Hispanic inmates occurred since 1980.

    Not stated is how big the increases have been for whites. I went to the Census Bureau website but their data is almost deliberately opaque. I couldn’t get a handle on what it actually said and nor find the answer to the real question: Over the last 25 years, how has the incarceration rate changed for blacks, white and hispanics?

    One things I’ve learned about social scientists. When they present you with answers to the wrong question, it’s because the answer to the right question didn’t fit their agenda.

    The real story here is that our prison population has exploded over the last thirty years, primarily because of the War on Drugs. That’s something that affects all of us, not just black people. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. That needs to change. For everone.

    Law and Order, Politics

    AG

    The latest attorney general nominee strikes me as a reason to hope. He’s not the rockhead lackey that The Little Legal Creep was, but seems a capable judge and attorney.

    You have to wonder what goes on in the Bush mind. He follows up an excellent SCOTUS nomination (Roberts) with one of the worst nominations in history (Harriet Myers). He puts Gonzalez in charge at Justice and Brown in charge of FEMA, but taps Condi Rice and Colin Powell to head the State Department. His nominees are either great or terrible. WTF?!

    The great news is that nominating someone like Mukasey indicate the Rice faction is winning the internecine White House war. I predict that they will call for the closure of Gitmo within six months.

    And Mitt Romney will say he favored closing it all along.