Scottish Nous

Think Stupid, Not Candid

Yet again, McCain makes a poor attempt at pleading ignorance:

What does he know?

Jury Selection Experience

[This is part one of a two part series on jury duty.  I intend both parts, taken together, to be one of the best available resources for potential jurors googling for information on what they are about to face.  There is, I have found, very little information available online.   In this part I describe my experience and the philosophical reflections it prompted which are of the kind, I take it, that any prospective juror should be aware of.  As a disclaimer, I am a member of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left and a certifiable anarcho-capitalist.  Nevertheless, I think the more philosophical reflections that follow are the sort of reflections most liberals, and many conservatives, will find compelling.  In the second part, still forthcoming, I will explain how to successfully engage in jury nullification without appearing to, in fact, be engaging in jury nullification.  Or less tendentiously, I will examine the debate over one's constitutional right to jury nullification, clarify the content of that debate, and explain precisely how to exercise your moral rights as a juror without violating, or appearing to violate, any of your legal rights.  This is important for potential jurors who wish to, for example, nullify in drug cases, but would rather not be held in contempt of court as a result.]

So I was called up for jury duty.  I actually returned that little piece of paper they send you in the mail.  You won't receive your summons via certified mail, so the courts can hardly force you to return it.  But I did.  Quite some time went by, and I was sure I had been passed over.  No so.  I finally received a letter (again, not via certified mail) stating that I had been selected, and to show up at the courthouse early in the morning some ten days off.

Ten days later, I went down to the courthouse and waited in Jury Room 47 for the selection process to begin. Judge Marnocha was presiding, and all outward appearances suggested him to be a fairly decent sort of guy.  The charge was battery.   The defendant victim was a young black woman around twenty five years of age.  Specifically, she was being charged with hitting someone with a bottle (I think).

Battery comes in several legal varieties.  This was a Class C Felony charge, punishable by 2 - 8 years in prison.  The presumptive sentence for such a charge is four years, but no less than two is possible.  She was undoubtedly (though speculatively) "offered" the chance to plead guilty to a Class D Felony.  The sentence for a Class D Felony will range from 6 months to 3 years.  This means that risking trial probably cost her around 1.5 years of her life (she was no doubt convicted).  The prosecutor's office (more justified speculation) no doubt threatened to fuxor her at trial as hard as they possibly could (if she refused the plea deal) by charging her with the Class C offense.  Their hope, of course, is that she would plead guilty out of fear so they could add an easy and inexpensive notch to their belts.

In order to prove the charge, the prosecuting attorney would have to establish (beyond a reasonable doubt), minimally, that the defendant:

knowingly or intentionally touched someone in a rude manner with a deadly weapon.  [link]

Most of the above information, of course, is information that your average juror wouldn't know.  And there were some average jurors at selection, let me tell you.  There were also some below average jurors, by which I mean disgusting prejudiced bigots.  More on this later.

Marnocha was concerned to make potential jurors feel immensely important and highly valued, just in case the fifteen minute propaganda video we watched beforehand hadn't left someone unconvinced of their specialness.  He also seemed eager to endear himself to potential jurors.  I was pleased to see that he cited Article 1, Section 19 of the Indiana Constitution which states, roughly, that jurors have the right to to judge both the facts and the law.  I confess that made me feel somewhat more comfortable, but not really all that more comfortable, since Marnocha said he would explain what this meant at some point during the trial.  It is quite likely, of course, that this explanation would have constituted a bogus reinterpretation of that section of code, which concerns jury nullification.  His wording was mildly interesting, as Article 1, Section 19 reads:

In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts. [link]

Marnocha, note, did not say "determine the facts and the law". What he said was "judge the law and the facts".  (I report this with around 99% certainty.)  Those who have attempted to take away jury's rights to nullification have insisted (for utterly asinine reasons) that there is a distinction worth respecting between determining the law and disregarding the law.  In any case, it wouldn't be very hard to "determine away" the law in any particular case while claiming that one wasn't disregarding it.  One would just be giving it a non-standard interpretation.  And this probably wouldn't be necessary in any case, if one wanted to return a not guilty verdict, since one could always claim that the burden of proof had not been adequately met.  More on both of these points later.

Thirty-five potential jurors showed up.  The selection process was begun when we were seated, fourteen at a time, in the jury box.  The first wave took their seats, and the prosecutor questioned them.  Then the defense attorney got her turn. (The State always goes first.  Marnocha emphasized this point in order to stress the "fairness" of the process.  Of course, only a brainwashed juror thinks the process is, in fact, fair.)  Once finished, the respective attorneys conferred in whispers with the judge, retained some jurors and dismissed the remainder.  Those of us not in the first wave were able to listen to these questions, but the selected jurors from the first wave had to leave them room after they were chosen.  (This is to prevent their "contamination".)  I was part of the second wave, and after the second wave of fourteen, the jury had been assembled, so a few people didn't get the chance to do anything but watch and listen.

The assistant prosecuting attorney (Holly Curtis, perhaps?) was a moderately attractive blonde female around her mid to late thirties.  She thought fast on her feet, was efficient and articulate, and had obviously prepared for the case.  She was also skilled at pandering to the (potential) jury.  She sat with what I took to be her star witness, an almost shaven blond-haired hulk of a uniformed officer equipped for a dangerous Secret Service Op, complete with squiggly earpiece and a SWAT-like vest with multiple holsters.  Apparently he was prepared to dash out of the courtroom and serve somebody at a moment's notice.  That, or appear as official and intimidating as possible when he delivered his well-prepared testimony with the trained and practiced precision of an officer coached in testisfying persuasively.

The defense attorney, who I must assume was a "public defender", sat with her client.  She, like most defendants, was black.  She was also older, stupider, and less articulate than anybody else in the courtroom, potential jurors included.  I don't know how to express in English, without using terms that would make the most hardened criminal blush, the utter incompetency and ignorance this woman exhibited.  The miracle that constituted her graduation from law school and admittance to the bar almost makes me believe that an omnipotent being exists.  The least of her problems was that she didn't know the name of the individual her client was alleged to have battered.  (I will say one thing in her defense.  In 2006, "public defenders" in St. Joseph County each worked about 120 cases per year.)

The questioning process was fairly benign.  There were no odd questions asked, by which I mean questions about, for example, my musical tastes (which some websites suggest might be asked).  Each possible juror received a general question asking about their ability to fairly and impartially apply the law to the facts of the case.  In some cases, potential jurors stated that they had conflicts of interest (a friend had been battered, and they would probably be more likely to convict for no good reason as a result).  One obstinate piece of human refuse continued to insist that he was prejudiced and that this black girl, in virtue of being in court that day, must be guilty.  Thankfully, he was dismissed for being an ignorant bastard.  (This same jerk also stated that if the defendant didn't testify, he would definitely assume she was guilty.  More on this later.)

The prosecuting attorney asked me a couple of questions, towards the very end of selection, in the context of asking several people about what they would expect good testimonial evidence to look like.  It was pretty clear that this case was going to be based solely on testimony (and perhaps a picture of the harm the defendant had allegedly inflicted), she belabored the point that there is such a thing as testimonial evidence for quite some time (as opposed to "hard" evidence produced by forensic detectives on CSI).  Not all evidence, she said, had to be a physical object "like her pen".  Once she satisfied herself that she knew which potential jurors would not be satisfied without hard evidence (so could rule them out), she began to press people on what they would expect to see and hear from the witness box.

There was pretty much just one response from potential jurors to this line of questioning.  The vast majority answered that they wanted to see, I suppose, the kind of body language that allegedly telegraphs honesty.  One woman in particular prided herself on the highly sophisticated honesty detector she was in possession of.  (Dubious at best.)  While the prosecuting attorney loved this response, it was very important to her to add something else.  And she repeated her addition ad nauseum: "Wonderful!  Excellent response!  But wouldn't you also want what the witness is saying to make sense?  You can use your common sense, right, and if you use it, you'd expect them to say things that make sense?"  Quite frankly, I had no idea what this was supposed to mean, but she definitely intended "making sense" to amount to something beyond mere internal consistency of the testimony.  Perhaps what she had in mind was something like a well-told story making "more sense" than a poorly told one.  Or perhaps she meant the description of a situation related would count as "making sense" if it sounded like a plausible description of a situation that might obtain.

It was at this late point that she got to me.  I had almost expected being thoroughly ignored, but instead I was something like the tenth person she posed the question "What would you expect to see and hear from the witness box?" to.  So ten people had already answered "body language" and agreed to the "making sense" proviso, and at this point I wasn't really wanting to be on this jury (for conflicting reasons I won't get into here), so I thought I'd take the opportunity to contaminate as many potential jurors as possible.  I made two points.  First, I told her that I placed very little credence in notion that interpretation of body language was a good guide to credible testimony.  I supported this point by noting that the police officer sitting next to her was no doubt trained to give testimony and had little to lose, while the defendant would likely be terrified.  Second, I observed that everybody can have reasons for lying - the defendant and the officer included.  So I would require strong corroborating testimony and/or evidence of good moral character.  Specifically, I mentioned that I would require her to provide evidence that the police officer was not a liar.  She thanked me for my honesty, told me it was very important to be honest, noted that the State could not meet that burden and did not have to, and mentally wrote me off the jury.  I'd talked long enough at this point, so I was ready to shut up, but I wish I had interjected and said that of course the State could meet that burden, and that if they wouldn't, they clearly had no case.  Kthxbye.  Ah well.

It should now be pretty clear here that the prosecuting attorney knew what she was doing.  She succeeded, about as far as it is possible for a lawyer to succeed, at putting together a jury that would be very favorably inclined to kind of evidence she would be producing.  One more point in that speaks mildly in her favor.  When a juror said something that suggested to me that she would be unsympathetic to the prosecution or to the defense, the prosecuting attorney always asked whether the person would in fact find themselves incapable of setting aside their concerns for the purpose of judging the case on its merits (who knows what she did mentally).  I seemed to get the impression that she might have been the sort of person who would really base her jury decisions on the answer to this latter question.  But who knows.

The worst part of the process, however, was yet to come.  It was now the defense attorney's turn to quiz us.  And this miserable excuse for a public defender could barely get a coherent sentence out of her mouth.  She bumbled about in front of the jury box, stuttering and gesturing like a complete fool.  And I was hardly the only potential juror who thought this.  Conversation afterwards with others suggested that it was nearly universally recognized that this woman was beyond incompetent.

First, she seemed very confused as to the nature of the defense she would be offering.  She tried to tell some story about the police officer (the one sitting next to the prosecuting attorney) attempting to stand up and having his gun catch on the armrest, go off, and shoot her.  This story was so poorly told it, quite frankly, didn't make any sense.  She would stutter out phrases like, "So there was a shooting.  A shooting occurred.  The shooting took place.  I'm shot, and hurt.  He shot me.  So the battery occurred.  There was battery." And then she tried to ask people if, were something like that to happen, they would be likely to convict (even though battery had taken place).  It was a horrible attempt to see if potential jurors would be sympathetic to an accident defense, I guess, but most jurors had no idea what she was trying to get at, in part because she kept insisting, in the active voice, that the police officer had shot her (and going through weird motions trying to indicate how he might have accidentally drawn and fired at the same time) and that, by extension, her client had in fact committed battery (thus the "battery occurred" remarks).  Ma'am, if your client did in fact commit battery, as defined, then she's guilty.  Dur?

Later, her lines of attempted questioning suggested that there would be no accident defense, and in fact that, metaphorically speaking, no shooting had occurred (read: my client didn't really hit anybody with anything - accidentally or not - so let's ignore the fact that I just implied, as strongly as possible, that she had in fact battered the shit out of the alleged victim.)  This wasn't working for her, obviously.  And potential jurors were staring at her with puzzled looks, and occasionally even laughing at her.

Yet her most egregious sin was yet to come.  She then began to ask us whether or not we would convict if she proved that her client had not battered anyone.  (Here's where the previously hinted at accident defense which actually had her admitting her client had battered someone stopped making sense.)  And she proceed through the jury box asking juror after potential juror whether they would convict if she did in fact prove that no battery had occurred.  The responses she elicited were all pretty much along the following lines:

Well... I guess if you really proved that she didn't, then I guess I probably wouldn't convict.

She simply accepted all these responses!  At this point, I'd pretty much blown my chances of being on the jury, and I couldn't stomach any more of this.  Every potential juror already believed that the defendant had committed battery because of the "public defender's" moronic questions.  So I took it upon myself to again attempt "contamination" of the jury pool.  I informed the public defender that it was not her job to prove anything. Rather, it was the job of the prosecuting attorney to prove guilt.  And if the prosecuting attorney didn't do that, what the defense did was wholly irrelevant.  So of course I wouldn't convict if the prosecuting attorney didn't prove guilt, and furthermore, I could not understand why she was asking this question absolutely backwards.  I hope I succeeded in reversing some of the damage she'd already done, but a few minutes later it was all over, and I was one of the twenty odd people sent home.  And hopefully not the only one who was absolutely horrified at the travesty of justice we'd just witnessed.

Nostradamus Me

Lindsay asks a rhetorical question regarding the devil's servants in Republican guise:

How inept are these people? They can't even protect teenagers in the halls of congress. How are they supposed to protect the rest of us?

She has in mind, of course, sexual predator and elected congressman Mark Foley.  While Foley's disgusting e-mails do provide us with a nice, concrete case of some of the wickedness infesting the halls of congress, Foley by no means exhausts the depths of congressional moral depravity, which, of course, is hardly confined to the Republican camp.* 

We live in a country in which a whole plethora of rich, white, male, self-interested moral perverts with god-complexes are actually voted into office by poorer, harder-working unthinking citizens who pay them hard cash to be dominated and abused.  Bizarrely, some people actually seem to believe that this is democracy rather than tyranny.  Granted, your average American hopes to be dominated and abused less then they are protected, and so appears to at least tacitly endorse utilitarianism w.r.t politics.  Yet intellectually lazy Americans will get what they're satisifed with, and so long as they're satisfied with electing tyrants, they shouldn't be surprised that their tyrants are morally depraved.  This is because the sort of psychological freak of nature who desires to wield widespread and near-unilaterial powers over others is more likely than not to be both rationally and morally incompetent.

Perhaps it comes as a bit of a surprise that Foley, in particular, turned out to be just another common moral pervert.  But it is no surprise that yet another moral pervert has been found out in the halls of congress.  I hereby safely prophesy that moral pervert after moral pervert after moral pervert will be uncovered in the foolishly revered halls of congress.

* The moral terminology employed here (wickedness, depravity) presupposes only moral realism, and not any particular member of the class of moral realisms.  So in particular, I am not presupposing any religious set of beliefs by using the English word "wickedness".  I make solely metaphorical use  of "devil's servants" for "civil servants".

Suppose You Were An Idiot

Racists, sexual perverts, and abusive thugs?  You decide.  Not commenting further may save me from having to vomit.

Update: Giles Charle and David Siller Released

In When Human Refuse Meets The Law, I blogged about Giles Charle and David Siller, two young men who were sentenced to a six month jail term for taking waste from a dempster dumpster.  Richard Myers has updated me on their situation by providing me with a link to Colorado Freedom, a website which chronicles the debacle.  Due to intense public pressure, Giles and David were released after serving three days post-sentence (ten in toto ) in jail.  A transcript from the DA's office is cited:

[Shop owner Jonathon] Hieb: So among all this other stuff that you’re doing, and the mistakes that you’ve already made, now you’re calling me a liar? Is that what you’re doing?

[Assistant District Attorney Kerry] St. James: I’m saying we disagree as to that conversation.

Hieb: You know, right now, I think, this is just my two cents. It’s probably worth nothing. But right now, what you need to do, as a man, is take responsibility for your actions.

St. James: I’m sorry. I can’t do that.

A very amusing section from the transcript:

Roesink: They [the police officers] called the owner of the store – Ms. Zambrana.

Jonathan Hieb (Sweet Pea owner): Katherine Zambrana

Roesink: Zambrana, Katherine Zambrana. She came down to the store, she looked around, and things were amiss.

Hieb: We both were down at the store. I’m Jonathan Hieb, the owner of Sweet Pea Produce, along with Katherine. We both came down to the store.

Roesink: Well, our police reports don’t indicate that you were at the store.

Hieb: Well, if we’re getting things accurate here, let’s get them accurate.

Roesink: OK, I’m going off police reports. That’s how we – let me tell you what the police reports say.

Hieb: I know what they say. Go ahead though.

Roesink: They don’t say that you were there.

Hieb: I was there.

Roesink: OK. But they don’t say that.

Hieb: The bottom line was, I was there.

Roesink: OK, but it doesn’t say that you were there.

So the police can't do their job either?  But that's not really news.  Throughout the transcript, co-owner Hieb suggests over and over again that Bonnie Roesink, Routt Count DA, is some kind of clueless:

Roesink: And then, the owner was contacted – Mr., you said, Hieb?

Hieb: Hieb.

Roesink: Mr. Hieb was contacted by Mr. St. James, and he was told the two plea offers and –

Hieb: I actually contacted him.

Roesink: OK, well I’ll let Kerry address this because I’m commenting on something I don’t know firsthand. I just know that Kerry’s told me this is what happened.

Hieb: I’m just trying to keep things straight.

Roesink: OK. Kerry can comment on his conversation with you – that wasn’t necessary for him to have. He could handle this case any way he wanted to handle this case. So he contacted Mr. Hieb, and I’ll let him address –

Hieb: I contacted him.

Roesink: OK, well you all – I don’t know that. Kerry, do you want to address that?

St. James: I returned your phone call, Mr. Hieb.

Hieb: Yes, I left you a message and you did return it.

St. James: I contacted you.

Hieb: I made first contact, right?

St. James: Yes.

Hieb: OK. Good deal.

A comment from Sweet Pea Produce co-owner Jonathon Hieb reads in part:

Sweet Pea does not agree with the offer made to these young men, by DA St. James.

I personally spoke with St. James concerning this matter a month ago. I told St. James that I was concerned with what he had offered these men, and before I could even explain my position St James rudely interrupted me and specifically told me he wasn't going to have these young men and the rainbow people come into our nice town and take it over. And he added, that he was going to make an example out of them. I was so furious I soon ended the conversation, in fear I would say something that I would later regret.

Now I'm going to say what I should have said to St. James that day.

In my opinion DA St James purposely put these young men in a situation were they had to choose jail time instead of excepting a felony that would have ill effects on them for the rest of their lives. These young men are clearly not criminals and are ambitious in their endeavors as social workers and as teachers, a felony on thier record would surely crush these dreams.Basically, St. James made them choose between the lesser of two evils.This matter could have been handled with an apology, an at most a small amount of community service.Instead, St. James has made Steamboat Springs look like a place that is absent of compassion and most of all common sense.I think it's time Mr. St. James questioned his ability to serve the people of routt co. [link]

Hopefully efforts to recall Kerry St. James and Bonnie Roesink from public office proceed successfully.  While both should really be imprisoned for gross dereliction of their duties, putting them out of a job is probably the next best thing.

When Human Refuse Meets The Law

Are you interested in seeing what happens when idiots pass and enforce laws?  Embryos which might possibly save lives get trashed and hungry people who take unwanted produce out of the trash get six months of jail.  But seriously, folks, what else can you expect when you live in a country where mental midgets pass and enforce laws?  What happened to the two victims, Giles Charle and David Siller, involved a real prick of district attorney threatening them with a felony charge if they didn't plead guilty to misdemeanor trespassing.  Fighting the charge would give them the option of risking a felony conviction on the meager hope that a jury of their "peers" would (despite the letter of the law passed by the elected representatives of their "peers") acquit them of the charge (something known as "jury nullification") the district attorny would tell the jury members they absolutely must - on the basis of the law! - convict them of.

Now it is possible that Giles Charle had a prior conviction for shoplifting.  In fact, Giles Charle may be addicted to produce, for the Concord Monitor reports that a Giles Charle (in the New England vicinity) was charged with stealing $4.43 worth of salad.  But this, of course, is irrelevant.  In the first place, that information could not be brought up in a trial.  But more importantly, Giles took unwanted produce from a trash can.   Consider the following quote from the GJSentinel:

"We didn't have any intention of committing a crime or doing anything wrong," Charle told the Steamboat Pilot & Today newspaper. "We had just come in town and we were prepared to buy groceries from a store but everything was closed."

How many people do you think would be aware of the fact that they might face a felony charge for taking produce from a trash bin?  It's wholly plausible that poor Giles had no idea whatsoever that he was breaking a morally questionable law.  (I am here reminded of of a verse from Scripture.  Look below the fold.)  Perhaps (supposing it's the same Giles) instead of stealing salad this time, Giles thought he'd do better to ease his aching stomach with garbage.  But good Americans didn't think he'd learned his lesson, and so the prosecuted him to the fullest extent of the law, threatened him with a felony conviction if he didn't plead guilty on the spot, neglected to provide him with the best chance at a legal defense against an unjust charge a moral pervert of a DA wanted to pad his record with, imposed a cruel and unusual sentence, and offered no ex post facto aid in his time of distress.

I want comments on what should happen to this district attorney (Kerry St. James).  How do you think his life should be ruined/destroyed?  Or do you think nothing should happen?  If the latter, I'd like some justification for what I'd be inclined to call your disgusting and perverse heartlessness.  Finally, why isn't a good lawyer working this case pro bono and doing everything in her power to try and withdraw this guilty plea?

Update: In fact, the fascist State prosecuted them even when the owner of the produce store did not want them prosecuted at all.  From the Times Leader:

Hieb said he told Assistant District Attorney Kerry St. James he didn't want the men prosecuted and thought his input would have carried some weight. He said if they were going to be prosecuted, 10 to 20 hours of community service would have been punishment enough.

Rich Privilege

Regarding the NYC transit strike, Maria Negron is quoted in USA Today as stating:

It's a form of terrorism, if you ask me.  I hope they go back to work.

Somehow, I just can't muster up any pity for Maria, depiste the fact that she claims she is being "terrorized".  Only over-privileged individuals think they are "entitled" to rides from other persons.  Understandably, when people live in the close proximity afforded by cramped city high rises, owning your own method of transportation may not be an option.  That others  may sometimes not be around to pick you up when you want is a risk, in part balanced by other luxuries, you simply have to assume. 

A risk that the Chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, tycoon Peter Kalikow, who really does look like a gangster, probably need not assume.  Instead, he parades about in his chauffered Lincoln, which may make him one of the few over-privileged individuals who is in fact entitled to a ride - at any time of the day or night - from some other person (upon the assumption that his chauffer freely and autonomously entered into a wholly just contractual arrangement). 

Yet the sense that people are, in general, entitled to receive rides from others, is not lost on Kalikow even if he may never feel the need to exercise this assumed right.  Thus he sent bloodsucking attorneys out to fight his employees in the courtroom, and achieved some measure of success when an injunction was handed down leveling a $1 million per day fine on the striking union.  Which brings me to my point.  The courtroom has always been one of the favorite locations for rich, white, overfed, male cigar smokers to convene in order to promote rights violations and legalize oppression.  No doubt the new SCOTUS won't let us down.

Bush: "I'm a Legal Cowboy, Baby!"

Bush has reauthorized - some thirty-odd times - a highly classifed and unconstitutional program that permits the NSA to spy on U.S. citizens.  (It is a presupposition of this post that Bush has acted unconstitutionally.  I do not here argue against a broad interpretation of the Constitution that permits the president unbounded legal authority in some situations.)  And he intends to continue reauthorizing it indefinitely, in the face of heavy criticism, because he's a legal cowboy, baby.  The NYT broke the story after withholding the information for an entire year.  When they finally managed to get around to fulfilling their journalistic duties, Bush accused them of breaching the nation's security.  When aides revealed to the president that he may be ignoring long-standing legal rules to "authorize" illegal behavior, the president pitched a temper tantrum.

According to Capitol Hill Blue, which may or may not usually be a reliable source, the president's temper tantrum ran as follows:

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”  “Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”  I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.” [link]

Now this is amusing, if not strictly true.  Yet, as noted here, it does echo a similar sentiment Bush is recorded on video as expressing when president-elect:

If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator. [CNN]

And, as we will shortly see, if Bush didn't say it, he thought it.  Paul Campos, a CU professor, has an excellent article on Bush's personal war on civil liberties.  You see, there exists a system in place for issuing warrants for spying to nasty little organizations like the NSA.  And, in fact, the secret court that issues these secret warrants need not even be approached before the spying begins, so long as the NSA obtain the warrant within three days post commencing.  Furthermore, these secret warrants are almost never turned down by this secret court.  So why does Bush need to break the law (you can read: "undermine civil liberties" here if you like)?  Campos points out that it's "easy to imagine what sort of spying a president might want to order that wouldn't be approved by a court."  And, we should add, by this mockery of a court in particular!

We'll display the standard party line defense by making fun of Cheney's mental capacity:

Either we're serious about fighting the war on terror or we're not," the vice president said. ''The President and I believe very deeply that there is a hell of a threat.

This line of reasoning, the same line that our intellectually destitute president pressed against the NYT and its journalists, implies that it is a necessary condition for diminishing the "hell of a threat" we face that the NSA need not even seek a warrant for spying on citizens within three days after they kick off their dirty work.  Now this is not obviously true.  In fact, it's got not one iota of prima facie plausibility.  It would require serious justification in the form of rigorous  and carefully reasoned argument - argument our President is probably incapable of and our system of government not equipped to handle - if it could have a chance of being sustained.  What seems obviously true is that if such an overly permissive court that can convene on a moment's notice to grant warrants with a three day grace period, can so handicap the NSA that they couldn't perform their nasty job, then the NSA should be immediately disbanded on grounds of gross incompetence.  Who could not share this intuition?

There is simply no excuse for removing the last roadblock standing in the way of severe and wanton violations of civil liberties.  Or at least, not in the manner that the president has gone about it, given the prima facie implausibility of the piffle coming from the executive office.  Why on earth would so many more people be at risk of death if the standard and supremely lenient process for obtaining warrants was followed?    I contend that this is hard evidence that the president is thrilled to get rid of the checks and balances so many Americans rightly demand as a condition of any form of legitimate government (if there is such).  I conclude that if Bush didn't say to hell with the Constitution, he's surely acted as if he thinks as much.

Voting Is The Best Way To Initiate Force While Abdicating Responsibility

I spoke with the 27 year old Boulder City Council candidate Shawn Coleman two weeks ago, or, more accurately, he accosted me after a mutal friend introduced us.  (This isn't to say that Coleman wasn't congenial; he was.)  The coversation quickly shifted to voting, and I informed him, much to his chagrin, that I would not be voting in the election (which took place, without me, yesterday).  He seemed very concerned that I would not be voting, even if I wasn't going to vote for him.   In other words, he suggested that he would rather have me vote against him than not vote at all.  I found this mildly admirable in a naively civic sort of way, but I take it that I was yesterday vindicated (as I knew I would be) when Shawn Coleman was not elected to the City Council.  For supposing that I had voted for Shawn, he would still not be sitting on the City Council.  So you see, my vote wouldn't have made a difference to the outcome, as I informed him.  We parted on friendly terms, agreeing to disagree.

I expect this post will raise the hackles of some of the philosophers who read this blog, and I look forward to any interesting reactions it might provoke.  But there are some typical reactions I  almost always receive when people find out I'm a dissenting non-voter which I hope won't be raised in response.  For example, it is often suggested that one has a "civic duty" to vote.  Or it is pointed out I have to vote out of respect for the people who "died for my right to vote".*  A related pseudoreason commonly invoked has to do with your alleged duty to "honor" your "forefathers" being (at least in part) satisfied by voting.  Concomittantly, there are supposedly people who are currently "putting their lives on the line for your right to vote".  These theses are almost always conjoined with the further thesis that people who don't vote don't have a right to complain.*

We can go on.  Sometimes people, albeit usually those with a penchant for religious rites, try to elevate the act of voting to taking the sacrament.  Somehow, voting is sacred.  It's holy.  It's what God wants you to do.  This blessed form of government, in which the majority enforces their whims on the minority can only be sustained if I vote.  To this must be added the claim that it is good to sustain the current form of government, but that's obviously presupposed by those who take voting to be a sacrament of the Church of the United States of America.  Ever so slightly more sophisticated arguments include the proposition that, by virtue of my continued residence in this country, I have consented to be governed by elected leaders.  Starting here, some lead themselves down primrose paths by maintaing that, given this prior consent, I should do everything within my power (notice how we're sneaking voting in) to ensure that these leaders will not be the moral perverts they invariably are.  On this construal, voting is almost cast as a form of self-defense.          

I have other matters to attend to, so I'll stop here.  Suffice to say that I hope the arguments of the last two paragraphs are not advanced against my "voter apathy".  And I'll point out that, pace my good friend and brilliant colleague at Vintage Piranha, it is not a good thing that Referendum C passed, and this despite the fact that it secures some  solvency for the institute of higher education of which I am a member.  This is simply because 50% of the population has demanded, upon penalty of force, that the remaining 50% give them even more of their money to spend in ways that this 50% would not have chosen to spend that money.

*I complain about politics quite a bit here.  The reverse is actually closer to the truth.  If anyone has the greater right to complain, it's the non-voter who hasn't consented to let a bunch of moral perverts lord it over him.  Those who think my moral right to freedom of expression, and indeed the moral imperative I have to speak out against transgressions of justice, somehow depends upon enacting my legal right to head to the polls, are nothing other than fascist pigs.  As someone said, if Jubal Harshaw were around, he'd say "I know who my social equals are, and they're not voters".

**Check out this hilarious article which fantastically claims that your vote will "count very much for" 17 dead American soldiers.  Thanks from beyond the grave, eh?  Derek Parfit would have a fit!

Please Redo Questions 1, 4, 8, 9, and 17

More on Miers' brain, or lack thereof.  Everyone seems to know that she's about as smart as a Republican whip.