Well, I was wrong to complain about Greenfield and Windy the other day. Reading blawgs all the time I began to grow weary of their repetitive nature but I have to admit when you're writing it's a lot easier to simply refer to the Constitution rather than engage in a discussion of what the principles you hold are and why they are better.
However, Windy Pundit took me up on my challenge and actually did it. And I doubt I could have done a better job. Kudos to him. Maybe we should all just add links to this post at the end of anything we write where we don't have time to discuss in detail our point of view. Like a manifesto. That's really not a bad idea.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Boise, What's the Haps?
For those who ignore that cesspool of insane that is Boise, you should be happy to learn that there is some good news!
First, though not really related to criminal law, the Idaho version of the "it's ok to hate for religion" bill that is doing well in Arizona died recently. So that's heartwarming.
Next, the bill that would allow concealed carry on college campuses is surviving. I realize you may think guns are bad, but well, I don't agree with you. And in any case, there's nothing more annoying that a person charged with possession of a gun who was honestly carrying it for self defense. The criminal law is for immoral acts. Not to scare the populous into disarming itself. Gah. We'll never agree on this. Moving on.
Last, and my personal favorite, a law that would have made it illegal to get into an accident because of your medical condition died. Words cannot express how insane that law was. But I can tell you that the current laws we have are often used to attack people who get into accidents due to things like diabetic shock. I hope the attorneys out there that actually plead their clients to this madness are paying attention.
Now the bad news.
Ag gag bills are pretty common. What makes anyone think you can pass these laws in view of the First Amendment, I don't know. But we have a new one coming. The most excruciating thing about it is that it is being passed because activists caught a place abusing cows in every way (I'm saying some sex went on). And the reason for this being the response? "Well, they're just taking things out of context and twisting it." Uh. How do you take sexy times with a cow out of context? How do you twist it? How are these people getting elected?
In any case, this story has gone viral. Since I can't seem to find an Idaho news source giving the full story, here's the LA Times, though you can also find it on Reason blog, CNN, CBS, etc.
Rep. Malek of hotbed of crazy Kootenai County is apparently the lackey of the prosecutor club and is proposing what has to be the worst, stupidest law I've seen in a while:
Idaho’s 2004 law says a person is guilty of video voyeurism when images are broadcast “with the intent of arousing, appealing to or gratifying the lust or passions or sexual desires of such person or another person, or for his own or another person’s lascivious entertainment or satisfaction of prurient interest, or for the purpose of sexually degrading or abusing any other person.” Malek’s bill takes that out, and defines the crime as broadcasting intimate images of another person, without his or her consent, when “the parties agreed or understood that the images should remain private.”
In other words, Malek has zero understanding of the First Amendment. But why would he? He worked for the Kootenai County Prosecutor's office, which has the worst record of prosecutorial misconduct in the state.
So, see, we can end on that positive note. We still have reps that are intelligent, thinking human beings. And we can pray they win.
First, though not really related to criminal law, the Idaho version of the "it's ok to hate for religion" bill that is doing well in Arizona died recently. So that's heartwarming.
Next, the bill that would allow concealed carry on college campuses is surviving. I realize you may think guns are bad, but well, I don't agree with you. And in any case, there's nothing more annoying that a person charged with possession of a gun who was honestly carrying it for self defense. The criminal law is for immoral acts. Not to scare the populous into disarming itself. Gah. We'll never agree on this. Moving on.
Last, and my personal favorite, a law that would have made it illegal to get into an accident because of your medical condition died. Words cannot express how insane that law was. But I can tell you that the current laws we have are often used to attack people who get into accidents due to things like diabetic shock. I hope the attorneys out there that actually plead their clients to this madness are paying attention.
Now the bad news.
Ag gag bills are pretty common. What makes anyone think you can pass these laws in view of the First Amendment, I don't know. But we have a new one coming. The most excruciating thing about it is that it is being passed because activists caught a place abusing cows in every way (I'm saying some sex went on). And the reason for this being the response? "Well, they're just taking things out of context and twisting it." Uh. How do you take sexy times with a cow out of context? How do you twist it? How are these people getting elected?
In any case, this story has gone viral. Since I can't seem to find an Idaho news source giving the full story, here's the LA Times, though you can also find it on Reason blog, CNN, CBS, etc.
Rep. Malek of hotbed of crazy Kootenai County is apparently the lackey of the prosecutor club and is proposing what has to be the worst, stupidest law I've seen in a while:
Idaho’s 2004 law says a person is guilty of video voyeurism when images are broadcast “with the intent of arousing, appealing to or gratifying the lust or passions or sexual desires of such person or another person, or for his own or another person’s lascivious entertainment or satisfaction of prurient interest, or for the purpose of sexually degrading or abusing any other person.” Malek’s bill takes that out, and defines the crime as broadcasting intimate images of another person, without his or her consent, when “the parties agreed or understood that the images should remain private.”
In other words, Malek has zero understanding of the First Amendment. But why would he? He worked for the Kootenai County Prosecutor's office, which has the worst record of prosecutorial misconduct in the state.
And he's at it again! Actually, this is an older Malek bill that makes zero sense other than, as he says, his dad is a doctor and he's a fucking idiot. The bill essentially just adds healthcare workers to the list of people who if you hit them you will be found guilty of a felony and face five years in prison. This article is about how some clueless jackass helped him rewrite it (it died last time when everyone recognized that they were going to be filling prisons with insane people), but never mentions his name. But I remember. Because it was so painfully stupid when it died last time. The new law fixes everything because.. it's only three years. Let us pray it simply dies again. Because, as Sen. Nuxoll said:
“I just can’t imagine those patients who are under the duress, they are really going to be thinking about whether this is a felony or not.”Monday, February 17, 2014
The Comfort of Eternal Things
Windy Pundit picked up on the same Greenfield post I did and wrote his own take. The ideas are similar. Windy is no Greenfield, and steps back from his rhetoric and invective. But like Greenfield, he is of the opinion that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights mean what he thinks they mean. Civil Rights are right there, in black and white, and are meant to be applied as he has come to understand them.
The Constitution is a remarkable document, and like other remarkable documents, it apparently supports everyone. What Greenfield and Windy see as being the intention of the "founders" or perhaps, if they're thinking more accurately, the populations of the colonies/states that ratified the document, is but one view. Their view of the Constitution is one of the more attractive because it requires little thought, there simply are forbidden things and that is that. The government can go this far and no further. Keeping the government on its side of the line is one of our eternal duties.
I grow tired of this view. I see it everywhere, and it is as intellectually dishonest as it is hypocritical. Of course the Constitution isn't eternal. Of course it doesn't simply mean X. First, language is not and has never been a particularly good way to capture bright lines and the Constitution was one of the most vague pieces of writing ever. Hell, even allowing the "Congress shall make no law" bit as much strictness as you'd like (and you shouldn't give it much at all if you have any understanding of our history), half the time we're arguing about what on earth "due process" is and what a "reasonable" search is. Second, at the time the document was being written and adopted men were of opposing views and yet it passed. It did not pass with the ringing of the hands of those who wanted to give the feds more power. Adams was our second president and he passed the Sedition Acts. Jefferson did the Louisiana Purchase without the consent of Congress. And those are just the better known examples. What Greenfield and Windy and their ilk trumpet so blindly as the meaning of the First Amendment was a concept shaped largely by men in the beginning of the twentieth century, men like Holmes and Hand and other men who had more sense than just about anyone alive today as far as I can tell.
We are sovereign. Not the Constitution. We are. The Constitution has been and will always be the plaything of the powerful. If the best argument you can come up with is "well the Constitution said so" or "the founders thought so" then you will lose the war of ideas. More ironically, you will have attempted to thwart authoritarians by relying on authority, pure and simple. If your ideals have as much value as you credit them with having, then take the time to learn about that value and how to express it. Otherwise, your simple, mindless repetition of this that or the other amendment and your waving of the shriveled ancient parchment you so love will not save you from the horde of children growing up today who think that document foolish and dated. You are losing the war in our schools and in our courts. Stop simply defining liberty in the negative and assume the lines you draw A. exist in the Constitution and B. that their constitutional pedigree holds them above suspicion. Most of the ideas you love came about in the last century under the care of great men and women who, unfortunately, have mostly died out. You do them no honor pretending that their ideas simply are the Constitution and having no idea how to defend those ideas.
And no, the majority of people will not agree that living dangerously is worth it, or that it's ok if the Constitution is a suicide pact. Greenfield recognized that just lately in this piece on why he evidently thinks democracy is awful. Well, you can despair of democracy if you like. But as far as I can tell, when it does finally go, the ideas you love will go with it. The Greenfields can claim that they have "reason, logic, and the Constitution" on their side all they want. But it will be the group with the people on their side that will decide the fate of this nation.
The Constitution is a remarkable document, and like other remarkable documents, it apparently supports everyone. What Greenfield and Windy see as being the intention of the "founders" or perhaps, if they're thinking more accurately, the populations of the colonies/states that ratified the document, is but one view. Their view of the Constitution is one of the more attractive because it requires little thought, there simply are forbidden things and that is that. The government can go this far and no further. Keeping the government on its side of the line is one of our eternal duties.
I grow tired of this view. I see it everywhere, and it is as intellectually dishonest as it is hypocritical. Of course the Constitution isn't eternal. Of course it doesn't simply mean X. First, language is not and has never been a particularly good way to capture bright lines and the Constitution was one of the most vague pieces of writing ever. Hell, even allowing the "Congress shall make no law" bit as much strictness as you'd like (and you shouldn't give it much at all if you have any understanding of our history), half the time we're arguing about what on earth "due process" is and what a "reasonable" search is. Second, at the time the document was being written and adopted men were of opposing views and yet it passed. It did not pass with the ringing of the hands of those who wanted to give the feds more power. Adams was our second president and he passed the Sedition Acts. Jefferson did the Louisiana Purchase without the consent of Congress. And those are just the better known examples. What Greenfield and Windy and their ilk trumpet so blindly as the meaning of the First Amendment was a concept shaped largely by men in the beginning of the twentieth century, men like Holmes and Hand and other men who had more sense than just about anyone alive today as far as I can tell.
We are sovereign. Not the Constitution. We are. The Constitution has been and will always be the plaything of the powerful. If the best argument you can come up with is "well the Constitution said so" or "the founders thought so" then you will lose the war of ideas. More ironically, you will have attempted to thwart authoritarians by relying on authority, pure and simple. If your ideals have as much value as you credit them with having, then take the time to learn about that value and how to express it. Otherwise, your simple, mindless repetition of this that or the other amendment and your waving of the shriveled ancient parchment you so love will not save you from the horde of children growing up today who think that document foolish and dated. You are losing the war in our schools and in our courts. Stop simply defining liberty in the negative and assume the lines you draw A. exist in the Constitution and B. that their constitutional pedigree holds them above suspicion. Most of the ideas you love came about in the last century under the care of great men and women who, unfortunately, have mostly died out. You do them no honor pretending that their ideas simply are the Constitution and having no idea how to defend those ideas.
And no, the majority of people will not agree that living dangerously is worth it, or that it's ok if the Constitution is a suicide pact. Greenfield recognized that just lately in this piece on why he evidently thinks democracy is awful. Well, you can despair of democracy if you like. But as far as I can tell, when it does finally go, the ideas you love will go with it. The Greenfields can claim that they have "reason, logic, and the Constitution" on their side all they want. But it will be the group with the people on their side that will decide the fate of this nation.
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