Elections are supposed to be rigged!

Adapted from my post of October 2016 

The Hill, yesterday after President Biden's two-hour press conference: Biden says elections might not be legitimate if reform bills aren't passed.

President Biden on Wednesday said the legitimacy of the upcoming midterm elections could depend on Democrats passing voting rights legislation. 

“I’m not saying it’s going to be legit. The increase in the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed,” Biden said during his second solo press conference at the White House, referring to the 2022 election. ...

The president responded that it “depends” earlier in the press conference when asked if he thinks the upcoming election results will be legitimate if voting rights legislation doesn’t pass. 

“Well, it all depends on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election,” he said.

I have posted to some extent on how American elections are rigged.

Just before the 2016 election, George Will, a solid member of the Political Class, albeit mostly on the Right, saying that rig attempts are well known: "Trump Has Point That Elections Are Rigged If He Would Just Make It More Clearly."

Then there is long-time DNC operative Bob Creamer explaining how any why the Democrats rig elections, on camera (warning, frank language). He clearly says that law and ethics have nothing to do with Democrat campaigns, the only point is to win, period. Nothing more, but absolutely nothing less.

By the way, How deeply in the middle of Democrat party operations is Bob Creamer. Well, he ...

... has visited the White House 342 times since 2009, White House records show.

Robert Creamer, who acted as a middle man between the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee and “protesters” who tried — and succeeded — to provoke violence at Trump rallies met with President Obama 47 times, according to White House records. Creamer’s last visit was in June 2016.

During Obama's entire term until June 30, 2016, there were 2,717 days. That is equal to 388 weeks. That means that Creamer went to the White House almost every week of Obama's entire tenure until the end of last June. And this guy's main mission in life, if not his only one, was to use violence and otherwise corrupt and influence elections outside the law.

But as I have pointed out already, in Marxist, which is to say Democrat, theory, elections are supposed to be rigged.

What is the purpose of this elaborate extravaganza? Marxists have long noted that insofar as its stated purpose is concerned–determining the question of political power in modern society–it is no more than a charade, a political sleight of hand in which the more things seem to change, the more do they remain the same. But Marxists do not deserve any special credit for making such an observation. One hardly has to be a Marxist to grasp the fact that bourgeois elections do not, in any way, impinge upon or alter questions of power. The general cynicism among the masses toward politics and politicians–a cynicism which runs far deeper than can be measured solely by noting the large numbers of people who do not bother to vote in elections–is itself proof that the futility and corruption of bourgeois politics has become a part of U.S. folklore.

(Paul Saba, 1980, "Reaffirming the Marxist Theory of the State")

Here is the George Will transcript:

When Mr. Trump talks about it being rigged, he sweeps all his grievances into one big puddle. He talked about the media. He talked about the primaries. He talked about the polls. Talked about the Republican National Committee. I think when most persons hear that an election is rigged, they think of government action to rig the election. And there Mr. Trump has a point if he would just make it more clearly.

It is hard to think of an innocent reason why Democrats spend so much time, energy and money, scarce resources all, resisting attempts to purge the voter rolls, that is to remove people who are dead or otherwise have left the jurisdiction. It's hard to think of an innocent reason why they fight so tremendously against Voter I.D. laws. They say, well that burdens the exercise of a fundamental right. The Supreme Court has said that travel is a fundamental right and no one thinks that showing an I.D. at the airport burdens that fundamental right.

We know -- we don't surmise -- we know that the 2010, '12 and '14 elections were rigged by the most intrusive and potentially punitive institution of the federal government, the IRS. You can read all about it in Kim Strassel's book Intimidation Game. She's familiar to all Wall Street Journal readers and FOX viewers. This is not a surmise. I have talked to lawyers in a position to know they say it's still going on. The IRS is still intolerantly delaying the granting of tax exempt to conservative advocacy groups to skew the persuasion of this campaign.

In Marxist theory the whole point of elections is to give the proles the illusion that they have a say in the outcome and how the country is run. But they don't and they shouldn't. At least, not by the bourgeois world view.

What Marxists should do about this was debated quite a bit before the Russian Revolution. On the one hand, a faction believed that once the workers had cast off their chains and appropriated the means of production (the industrial plant), then the proletariat would be able to vote truly and well because the capitalist bourgeoisie would not be allowed or able to blinker them and the natural purity of their proletariat hearts. Hence, right away elections could continue to be held and this time, dadgummit, they actually would mean something.

The competing view, held by the Russian Bolsheviks, was that they were the "vanguard of the revolution" and that therefore Marx's instruction of the necessity of a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat -- meaning by Lenin and his gang, not the general proletariat - was the key to bringing forth True Communism.

In Marxism-Leninism, true communism was a state in which material production was so great that all human needs were met without shortage. Greed would therefore disappear and the inherent but capitalist-suppressed natural nobility of men and women would emerge. They would be transformed into true communists - altruists who worked each day for the good of the people, not for crass, selfish profit. 

The vanguard revolutionaries understood that to leap from workers in chains, unaware of how deluded and ignorant they really were, and in political infancy, to the status of the True Communist Man was stupidly unrealistic. So their own dictatorship was a deplorable but critically-important step to bring the long-oppressed and unenlightened proles to political maturity and understanding. Truly fair, honest and meaningful elections certainly would be held - eventually. Just not yet. But trust us, it's right around the corner, any day now. Forever.

Remember, the point of Marxist revolutions is not to empower the people, it is to brings the reins of state power to the Marxist revolutionaries. Which always means the Vanguard because for the proles' own good the vanguard of the revolution (maybe in its fifth generation by now!) must also be the conservators of the revolution. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end, amen.

Sadly, very sadly, all of this was foretold by American statesmen and observers more than 150 years ago:

"I shall assume the privilege of advancing years in reference to another growing and dangerous evil. In the last age, although our fathers, like ourselves, were divided into political parties which often had severe conflicts with each other, yet we never heard until within a recent period of the employment of money to carry elections. Should this practice increase until the voters and their representatives in the State and National Legislatures shall become infected, the fountain of free government will be poisoned at its source, and we must end, as history proves, in a military despotism. A democratic republic, all agree, cannot long survive unless sustained by public virtue. When this is corrupted, and the people become venal, there is a canker at the root of the tree of liberty which will cause it to wither and to die."

-- Charles Mackay, 1858: “A corrupt republic is tainted in its blood, and bears the seeds of death in every pulsation.” Read the whole thing.

"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." -- Joseph Stalin.

Or nowadays, the people who hack the votes decide everything.

The Pew Center says, in masterful understatement, that "America’s Voter Registration System
Needs an Upgrade."

Update:

Watch it here.

Update: Actually, Democrats have a long history of saying the elections they lost are illegitimate: 

Biden Is Not Alone. Democrats Have Been Delegitimizing Elections for Years.

And this:

Seattle police call it quits. What's next? Vigilantism

Something will fill the vacuum left by police, and it seems doubtful the left will like the results.

Seattle Chief of Police Carmen Best

 Seattle police cannot use any crowd-control devices and must, effectively, let the violent, lawless rioters run free. 

Seattle’s police chief alerted residents that they are on their own now.

Here is Chief Best's letter to the city council:

University of Tennessee law Prof. Glenn Reynolds wrote in June about the absence of police:

We’ll see a lot of vigilante justice. And what are people gonna do about it? Call the cops? Remember, in the end the police aren’t there to protect the public from criminals, they’re there to protect criminals from the public. Communities dealt with crime long before police were invented, usually in rather harsh and low-due-process ways. The bargain was, let the police handle it instead. No police, no bargain.

Get ready, folks. Major parts of the country are about to descend to the level of the Wild Wild West.

Update: A federal judge has ruled to overturn the Seattle city council's prohibition of non-lethal riot-control measures.

A good friend of mine for 25 years lives in Seattle; he texted me yesterday,

Last night got tense with somebody trying to burn down the court house but Feds kept their distance. They torched the new juvenile detention center that's being built also this weekend.

And the link to this: At Least 45 Arrested After Seattle Police Declare Riot

The problem isn't the bad apples. It's the orchard.

Why the policing problem isn’t about “a few bad apples”
“The system was designed this way”: A former prosecutor on the fundamental problem with law enforcement.

Protest Also Against Police Unions and Qualified Immunity

A letter to the American public: Why you must decide what you want from cops
If you recruit well, conduct thorough background checks and train constantly, you can have a human with a kind heart and good ethics – but you can't have perfection

Links will be added as the day goes on.

It’s Past Time to Examine How Police Unions Protect Bad Cops

What Democrats have done and why

Liberal Cities, Radical Mayhem

Democratic mayors and governors seem unable to stop the destruction of their own cities.

This isn’t merely about damage to property. It’s about destroying the order required for city life. Non-criminals are afraid to go into these cities to make a living. The police pull back from active policing, which creates more opportunity for criminals, especially in poor and minority neighborhoods. Businesses that are finally starting to emerge from government lockdowns have new costs to absorb and more reasons for customers not to return.

What all these cities have in common is that they are led by Democrats who seem to have bought into the belief that the police are a bigger problem than rampant disorder. They are either cowed by their party’s left, or they agree that America is systemically racist and rioting is a justified expression of anger against it. They offer pro forma disapproval of law breakers but refuse to act to stop them.

The Left Couldn't Care Less About Blacks

The left-wing mantra of “America is racist” has little to do with caring for blacks; rather, it is indispensable to bringing America down.

Second, without a lopsided black vote for the left-wing party, the Democrats, no Democrat could get elected to national office. It is therefore imperative to repeat as often and as vociferously as possible how anti-black America is. The angrier a black person is at America, the more likely he or she is to vote Democrat. Some years ago, after talking to listeners of every race on my radio show for decades, I came up with this riddle:

“What do you call a happy black person?”

Answer: “A Republican.”

To the left, blacks are not real people as much as they are an electoral bloc. How else to explain Joe Biden’s recent comment, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” The contempt for blacks — from the sentiment that one is “not black” unless one is a Democrat to his use of the word “ain’t” — is obvious to any nonleftist.

Here's the Real Story on George Floyd, Police Abuse, and Racism, and What You Should Do About It

While police abuse is not necessarily a racial problem, it is nonetheless a big problem. Derek Chauvin, the man who killed George Floyd, had a long record of complaints. Gregory McMichael was not immediately arrested. The men who killed Breonna Taylor entered her house in plainclothes without announcing their presence. These facts should make Americans’ blood boil, and they should lead Americans to demand concrete action.

I don’t always agree with former President Barack Obama (okay, I almost never agree with that scandal-plagued president), but I agree with his basic advice on police reform. Obama encouraged activists to develop concrete demands and to focus on achieving change at the local level.

Police unions often protect bad cops who pose a danger to the community. In some cases, police have effective “get out of jail free” cards that they hand out to their family and friends. This institutionalizes an “old boys club” culture.

I did not kill George Floyd
The attempt to hold all whites responsible for the death of Floyd shows what a dead-end woke politics is.

There’s a new sin. Forget gluttony. Forget sloth. The great moral error today is whiteness. To be white is to be fallen. Whiteness has become a kind of original sin, an inherited moral defect one must atone for throughout one’s life. In the wake of the brutal execution of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, this almost religious treatment of whiteness as an existential flaw has gone uber-mainstream.

We Don't Have a Racism Problem, We Have a Deep State Problem: The Hideous Police Killing of Duncan Lemp

That tiered justice system that black activists talk about is real. The people pulling the strings who revel in all this chaos never pay for their massive crimes. They get away with treason, presidential coup attempts, mishandling of classified documents, child trafficking, insider trading, and even murder (Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself) while the cattle are thrown into prison for twenty years for petty drug offenses or shot dead in their beds with no explanation. We are not who we should be mad at. We are in the same herd of oppressed and abused livestock. Some of us get abused more regularly than others but we’re still locked up in the same rancid farm. It’s time to act in unison and break out of the prison they’ve built around us.

Read all of each one.

Update: Professor Alex Tabarrok on Police Union Privileges Revisited, read all of it, too. It's not long.

Rioters don't care about George Floyd

FB post here.

Buzzfeed article here.

Ban on cell phone use while driving - just a cash cow?

Last July 1, a law went into effect here in Tennessee that makes it illegal for anyone driving a car to hold a cellular phone in his or her hand. Reports the Knoxville News Sentinel,

The Tennessee law banning hand-held cell phones went into effect July 1. Drivers can eat, drink, converse, sing, look at roadside sights, talk to their kids in the back seat, and it’s all perfectly legal. Pick up a cell phone, however, and you’re a distracted-driving lawbreaker. Law enforcement and first responders, however, are exempt from the safety measure that the legislature and governor determined is required for Tennessee drivers.

The Sentinel is not a fan of the law, mainly because such bans, in effect in some other states for many years, have not once been shown to affect the accident rate at all. They cite a number of such studies.

But it does roll cash into county and state coffers.

At $50 per ticket, the Tennessee Highway Patrol’s cell phone ban enforcement netted, it would appear, a minimum of $21,200 for the 424 tickets the THP wrote in July, Knox News reported. Tickets increase up to $200 depending on the situation.

And yet . . .

Yes, the ban here in Tennessee is really just another way to tax people. OTOH, the worst accident scene I ever got called by the sheriff's dept. to go work was directly caused by a young woman driving on a two-lane state highway in Franklin, Tenn. It was before smart phones were invented. She was trying to punch a number into her cell phone and wandered into the other lane. An oncoming 18-wheeler swerved to miss her, bounced back onto the road and went head on into a Chevy pickup behind the woman's car.

The impact was so violent that it completely separated the truck's body from its frame, knocking the truck body 20 or more feet away from the frame assembly, which was solely occupied by the driver, married only three weeks, on his way home from work. He had been ripped into three separate pieces. The 18-wheeler's driver was injured.

The woman phone caller was wholly uninjured but when I spoke with her she was not very coherent. She was still holding the phone in her hand, up next to her head, though of course there was no call connected, and basically just walking in a small circle at the rear of her car.

A highway patrol trooper told me that in his 26 years in the THP, this was the most violent accident he had seen. After seeing the truck driver's remains, I could see why. Before the medical examiner's team went to retrieve the remains, I held a time of prayer and Holy Communion for them (I always took my Communion kit responding to sheriff's department calls).

So I cannot argue with Tennessee's law.

Democrats want to kill Democrat voters

I mean that literally: serving Democrat politicians want laws to allow the deliberate, pre-meditated killing of future Democrat voters. How else to explain the words of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, who openly ...

endorsed infanticide and tried to make it sound as harmless as he could. When asked by a radio host if he supported Virginia legislator Kathy Tran’s proposed law to permit abortion while a woman was in labor, Northam replied:

This is why decisions such as this should be made by providers, physicians, and the mothers and fathers that are involved. When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of physicians, more than one physician by the way, and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus which is non-viable. So in this particular example, if the mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen, the infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if this is what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother.

Here is the video:


Please note that Northam thinks this is perfectly okay because, after all, "The infant would be kept comfortable" right up until it is destroyed. Maybe the SS should have taken that tack at Auschwitz because, "We will be nice to you right up until we brutally kill you" can't possibly be wrong.

The Federalist points out that the bull being discussed here was presented by Virginia Delegate Kathy Tran, who said this during a subcommittee hearing:

“How late in the third trimester could a physician perform an abortion if he indicated it would impair the mental health of the woman?” [subcommittee chairman Todd] Gilbert asked.

“Through the third trimester,” responded Tran. “The third trimester goes all the way up to 40 weeks.”

“Where it’s obvious that a woman is about to give birth, that she has physical signs that she is about to give birth, would that still be a point at which she could request an abortion if she was so certified?” Gilbert asked.

“She’s dilating,” he continued, using the term for a woman’s cervix naturally opening to allow a baby to exit his mother during birth. “I’m asking if your bill allows that.”

“My bill would allow that, yes,” she said.

Which is to say, Tran wants the law to allow the mother to tell the doctor to kill the being-born or newborn (Northam: "the infant would be delivered") infant. While Northam said that more than one physician needs to be consulted, Tran insisted that only one be permitted for the go-ahead.

I do not know words nearly harsh enough to condemn the overt, public murderousness of today's Democrat party specifically and progressives generally. And on the same day that Gov. Northam, considered a rising star in the Democrat party, said that just-born babies should be killed on the mother's whim, the extraordinary hypocrisy of this party was on full display by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D.-Ohio, who said, talking about President Trump,

"Real populists don’t engage in hate speech and don’t rip babies from families at the border."

But the law already allows babies to be literally ripped - as in ripped apart - inside the womb and now Democrats want to allow living, delivered infants to be ripped from life itself.

The Left is already howling at we who explain what Tran and Northam said - accusing us, of course, of being the wrongdoers here.

I used to listen attentively to by left-of-center friends and ministerial colleagues on the matter of public policy, even though I hardly ever found that I could agree with their positions. But I did try to understand their point of view and how they justified it, whether on secular or biblical bases.

That door is now slammed shut. After Tran/Northam/Brown, there is no "understanding" possible that stays on this side of insanity. Starting now, I absolutely refuse to tolerate any lecturing by a "progressive" on the subject of morality on any issue, and this is now my number one reason why.

But back to my title for this post, "Democrats want to kill Democrat voters." Why do I say that? because according to the Guttmacher Institute (2014 data), of women who had an abortion,

Thirty-nine percent were white, 28% were black, 25% were Hispanic, 6% were Asian or Pacific Islander, and 3% were of some other race or ethnicity. ...

... three-fourths of abortion patients were low income—49% living at less than the federal poverty level, and 26% living at 100–199% of the poverty level.

Which means that minority infants were killed in the womb far out of proportion to the share of those demographics in the general population, and these minorities are by far super-majority voters for Democrats.Same with income levels - the demographic described as obtaining three-fourths of abortions are Democrat voters to a very high degree.

That's why I sometimes refer to the murdered infants as "Unborn Democrats." I New York City, for example, more black babies are killed in the womb than are born alive.

But Democrats won't talk about that because shut up.

Doctor Anthony Levantino performed 1,400 abortions until he abandoned that practice. Here is part of his testimony to Congress on how second-trimester abortions are done. (For third-trimester abortions, the baby is chemically killed in the womb and two or three days later the mother's body ejects the dead infant through the birth canal, usually with inducing drugs' assistance.)

When someone demands that a woman must have "the right to choose," remember that this is what that choice means:

  As Lincoln said about slavery, "If this is not wrong, then nothing is wrong." But "wrong" is far too wimpy a word to describe this. This is over the edge of evil.
Update: Virginia Delegate Kathy Tran says she was surprised by the pushback to her comments to the subcommittee and has tried to walk back her statements, but in so doing winds up more twisted around than an octopus playing Twister.

This is my shocked face: "No Democrats In Congress Seem To Have Heard Ralph Northam’s Abortion Comments," including this Democrat:


And yet, House Democrat warns ethics committee about Steve King promoting white nationalism website. In Democrat fantasy world, only Republicans have the duty to renounce members of their own party. When a Democrat does, every other Democrat pretends do not even know there is a problem.

The sanity of the shooter, the insanity of the debate

Stephen Paddock no doubt thought he was sane until the very end. At some level, until his last thought was removed by the bullet he fired into his own brain, he thought what he was doing was reasonable, just and fair.

But he had to be angry. A contented man does not commit massacres such as this one. Why was he angry? Gambling debts? Father issues (his father had been on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list)? Jilted by his long-time girlfriend, who had left the country? Brain lesion that veered him horrifically off course?

One day we may know - or think we do. Or we may never know, not even enough to make a decent guess. But this I think is true: Stephen Paddock no doubt thought he was sane until the very end.

Now, what to do? First, I think we should admit that there is still far more we do not know about Paddock and the whole horrific event than we do know. I do not want to announce "the solution" while still mired in ignorance about the why, not knowing the details about what laws Paddock  have followed, skirted, or outright disobeyed. Apart of murder, of course, which is already illegal.

I think that columnist David Harsanyi hit it on the head, though:

There are generally two kinds of social media reactions to heart-wrenching events like yesterday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas: one is to offer prayers and sympathy to the victims and their families, and the other is to reflexively lash out in anger at those who don’t share your political agenda. Although emotionally satisfying, one of these responses makes it nearly impossible for the country to engage in any kind of useful discussion moving forward.

Here is what I mean: On the one hand, it has been reported that Paddock used a "bump stock" to raise the rate of fire on at least two of the rifles police found in his hotel room. I had never heard of such a thing until earlier this week, but it is a replacement stock plus trigger-guard attachment that "bumps" the rifle forward after the first shot is fired so that the trigger re-contacts the finger/attachment and the gun fires again. Both technically and legally, the rifle is still a semi-auto because the firing mechanism's internals remain the same and a trigger pull still fires only one round. But it does so extremely quickly, up to rates of fire that rival or equal true machine guns,.

Now, people who think that gun laws are too lax would really want me as their ally, I would think. I am very, professionally familiar with firearms of many types and designs. I am politically libertarian-conservative. I am indeed an NRA member. And I am quite open to redefining "automatic weapon" to be based on rate of fire rather than merely the mechanical design, as the law now defines it (which is why bump stocks are legal; they do not change the mechanical design of the gun).

But, as has happened all over the internet and in some mainline media, before the police have even released the bodies of the slain to their families, I read, for example, that a vice-president of CBS has no sympathy for the victims because they were probably Republicans, or read that solutions are being offered when the problem is still undefined (such as keeping "silencers" outlawed), then honestly, it concretizes me even more into the "no" camp. Because there is no end to the prohibitions. There is never a time when the Left says, "One more gun control law, just one more, and then we'll never ask for another."

Outlaw "silencers." Then grip stocks. Then flash suppressors. Then "large capacity" magazines." Then forward hand grips. Then then then. It never stops. At least The New Republic came clean this week by publishing that all firearms must be banned in America (which can be done in only five easy steps!). So is there really any wonder when those on the Right suspect that each "reasonable" measure is really nothing but another brick in the wall?

How many gun laws did Paddock violate? We don't know yet because the police do not even know yet. Nonetheless, out comes the same, tired old list of prohibitions that this time will bring peace, love, joy and kum bah ya.

There are no dangerous guns. There are only dangerous persons. And there is no more dangerous weapon than the human heart. "But but but," one retorts, "if only Paddock had faced more effective gun laws..." Again, read the paragraph immediately above.

Senator Marco Rubio drew some flak for saying (in 2015), "None of the major shootings that have occurred in this country over the last few months or years that have outraged us, would gun laws have prevented them."

So The Washington Post's Fact Checker columnist did the research and found that Rubio was right.

More laws are not the answer. We do not have a legal problem. And we do not have a gun problem. As my friend, retired law-enforcement officer Ken Latham, put it,

In the aftermath of the massacre at the Bataclan in Paris, there were 137 dead, 413 wounded. In a city with complete gun control. Guns, you see, are tools. They have no hate, no anger, no motives, no agenda. They are inanimate pieces of metal, and wood, and plastic. It is the heart of the operator that brings to life the hate, who expresses the anger, who holds motives and agendas. A person determined to kill, will find a way. A cargo truck killed scores in France, a knife killed 2 women just this week in that country. A U-haul van was used in Canada. Fertilizer was used in OKC. Box cutters and airplanes were used on 9/11.

We have a culture problem. This is not a "racist, xenophobic, anti-anyone," problem. We have a culture that celebrates hate, that excuses it, that justifies it. We hold no one responsible for their actions, instead we assign that blame to either an inanimate object or a third party that we dislike. 

We demand that our rights be protected while attacking others'. We just know that we are right, and the others are wrong. We resort to names, that lead to divisions, and pushing them out of our circle. We live in echo chambers so we can hear our own beliefs validated, then spoken in someone else's voice. 

We surrender who we are and where we come from to create some connection to the cause of the day, to assuage our own sense of self-guilt, that has been taught to us by others doing the very same. 

We have a culture problem.

End note:

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an un-uprooted small corner of evil.

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

What does a "death" sentence really mean?

Ronald Gray has been on death row in a US Army prison for 29 years.
Twenty. Nine. Years. Exactly how is that a death sentence?

I wrote last December that I was present in the court-martial room when then-Spec. 4 Ronald Gray was sentenced to death for murdering a civilian cab driver while on the US Army reservation of Fort Bragg, NC.

His conviction was 29 years ago and Gray's case is still wrapped up in the appeals and review process. He was 22 years old when convicted, now he is 51. His latest appeal was to vacate his death sentence because (he claims),

... he was incompetent to stand trial and had ineffective lawyers. He also challenged the whole notion of capital punishment and argued the death penalty is racially biased.

This appeal was denied, but his execution does not actually loom. I am on record as opposing capital punishment, and this case illustrates one reason why: exactly how Gray was sentenced to "death"?

What he really was sentenced to was (and is) "decades more of life with unending appeals until he is an old man." Which costs the government untold thousands of dollars to keep going.

"Justice delayed is justice denied." If Gray's death sentence ever was just, it is just no longer. The murder for which the court-martial convicted him was indeed brutal, but putting him to death for it after after decades of delays cannot be said to be just recompense for the victim or her family.

When I am elected king I will abolish the "death" sentence and people convicted of such crimes will be sentenced to "imprisonment until death by natural causes." And the endless appeals and reviews will stop and the victims' loved ones will not be suspended in limbo awaiting a sentence that very well may never happen.

Also, here is another reason to oppose capital punishment: Ex-officer helps exonerate US prisoner after 24 years.

A Philadelphia man has been exonerated and freed from prison 24 years after he was found guilty of a murder he did not commit.

Shaurn Thomas, 43, was released after the Philadelphia District Attorney's office agreed that the evidence did not support the conviction.

How many men or women have been sentenced to death - and eventually suffered execution, but who were likewise innocent of the crime? We'll never know. For the record, I do not think it is a high number at all, but if one says that only one such execution is insufficient to abolish killing people, then tell me how many executions of the innocent it would take? A dozen? Twenty? What?

As I said last February, finding ways to kill people has become a near-religious idol of both the Left and the Right. Killing people in prison has become as much of a political statement by Republicans to define who they are as killing people in the womb defines the Democrats.

Sheriff admits huge failure, begs forgiveness

Facebook, ISIS beheadings and child porn

Yet another reason I don't regret deactivating my FB account. The Times (UK) reports, "Facebook publishing child pornography."

Facebook is at risk of a criminal prosecution in Britain for refusing to remove potentially illegal terrorist and child pornography content despite being told it was on the site, The Times can reveal.

The social media company failed to take down dozens of images and videos that were “flagged” to its moderators, including one showing an Islamic State beheading, several violent paedophilic cartoons, a video of an apparent sexual assault on a child and propaganda posters glorifying recent terrorist attacks in London and Egypt. Instead of removing the content, moderators said that the posts did not breach the site’s “community standards”.

Facebook’s algorithms even promoted some of the offensive material by suggesting that users join groups and profiles that had published it.

A leading QC who reviewed the content said that, in his view, much of it was illegal under British law. Facebook was at risk of committing a criminal offence because it had been made aware of the illegal images and had failed to take them down, he said.

If you have a tough stomach, read the rest.

The Internet is autonomous. You are not.

The much-heralded Internet of Things is shaping up badly. IOT refers to devices other than computers connected to the Internet, such as smart-home controls or connected refrigerators and televisions.

And automobiles:

Your car knows more about you than you think. Newer cars that connect to the internet can collect vast amounts of data about drivers, such as where you went to dinner, if you broke the speed limit or if your seat belt was buckled.  

When you buy a car, you cede data control to your car company. Most automakers say they won't sell information without an owner's consent. But they're not legally required to inform you if they do.

As they say, read the whole thing. But wait! There's more! "Lawyers reaching for in-car data -- Legal system begins seeking information flowing through vehicle telematics." Because if your car is keeping a database of how you drive, where you drive, when you drive, your speed and on and on, of course lawyers are going to go after that information. 

Information gathered by vehicle telematics systems such as General Motors' OnStar, Ford's Sync, BMW ConnectedDrive and others is garnering increased attention from lawyers who see the data as a puzzle piece in building court cases.  

It's a sign that privacy concerns raised about telematics data won't go away soon. At the least, the industry's quest to be closer to consumers through telematics has created new responsibilities involving data management.  

Those responsibilities include complying with court orders to turn over telematics data, which automakers say they have done. The privacy terms for ConnectedDrive's BMW Assist component says it may "collect and retain an electronic or other record" of a person's location or direction of travel at a given time -- providing another potential legal tool for lawyers to go along with cellphone records, vehicle black boxes and even airbag modules.  

That may irk consumers who worry about an all-seeing eye keeping tabs on their travels.

I'd say that "irk" is much too mild a term. It does  not stop there. Remember Progressive Insurance's plug-in driving-data collector, Snapshot? 

The Snapshot device collects information about how you drive, how much you drive and when you drive. It also collects your vehicle identification number and triggers an email to you if it comes unplugged. Some devices collect location data: this is only for research and development purposes—we don't use it to calculate your rate.

Uh, huh. As my Swedish friend Lars said, "Yah, shoor." The data from Snapshot go off to Progressive all on their own, autonomously. The day is coming - in fact, has arrived - when we will not be able to opt out or avoid such data snooping. 

Subaru announced that it has added eight cloud-based apps to the STARLINK multimedia system in the 2017 Impreza. Some are familiar, like Yelp. ... And one ought to give a bit of pause: RightTrack. According to Subaru, "RightTrack Test Drive from Liberty Mutual Insurance monitors driving habits and provides customers with tips on driving safer to help lower their insurance rates and improve their safe driving skills."

The more we use - and are used by - autonomous smart devices, the less autonomous we will be ourselves. Skynet is indeed shaping up, only not as James Cameron imagined it.

Supreme Court ruling on national security and the judiciary

Has the Supreme Court ever ruled on the role of the judiciary in matters of national security? Yes, in
C. & S. Air Lines, Inc. v. Waterman S.S. Corp., 333 U.S. 103 (1948), decided February 9, 1948

The ruling states (in relevant part to the Ninth Circuit's set-aside of the executive order temporarily suspending, with certain exception, entry into the United States of persons from seven named countries),

The court below considered, and we think quite rightly, that it could not review such provisions of the order as resulted from Presidential direction. The President, both as Commander-in-Chief and as the Nation's organ for foreign affairs, has available intelligence services whose reports neither are nor ought to be published to the world. It would be intolerable that courts, without the relevant information, should review and perhaps nullify actions of the Executive taken on information properly held secret. Nor can courts sit in camera in order to be taken into executive confidences. But even if courts could require full disclosure, the very nature of executive decisions as to foreign policy is political, not judicial. Such decisions are wholly confided by our Constitution to the political departments of the government, Executive and Legislative. They are delicate, complex, and involve large elements of prophecy. They are and should be undertaken only by those directly responsible to the people whose welfare they advance or imperil. They are decisions of a kind for which the Judiciary has neither aptitude, facilities, nor responsibility, and have long been held to belong in the domain of political power not subject to judicial intrusion or inquiry. Coleman v. Miller, 307 U. S. 433, 307 U. S. 454; United States v. Curtiss-Wright Corporation, 299 U. S. 304, 299 U. S. 319-321; Oetjen v. Central Leather Co., 246 U. S. 297, 246 U. S. 302. 

We therefore agree that whatever of this order emanates from the President is not susceptible of review by the Judicial Department.

The ruling's author was Justice Robert Jackson, a towering figure in American jurisprudence.

[He] was United States Solicitor General (1938–1940), United States Attorney General (1940–1941) and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1941–1954). He is the only person in United States history to have held all three of those offices.

Read that excerpt from the ruling again. Seems clear enough.

At what point does it just become too hard?

Utah's firing squad prisoner's seat. Presently, only Utah and Oklahoma
make firing squads a legal form of capital punishment. 

The death penalty, I mean:

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Mississippi lawmakers are advancing a proposal to add firing squad, electrocution and gas chamber as execution methods in case a court blocks the use of lethal injection drugs.

Republican Rep. Andy Gipson says House Bill 638 is a response to lawsuits by "liberal, left-wing radicals."

The bill passed the House amid opposition Wednesday, and moves to the Senate.

Lethal injection is Mississippi's only execution method. The state faces lawsuits claiming the drugs it plans to use would violate constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment.

Mississippi hasn't been able to acquire the execution drugs it once used, and it last carried out an execution in 2012.

When lawmakers are going to this kind of exertion to make sure the state can kill someone, there is something at stake other than simply seeing justice done. It appears in Mississippi's legislature that capital punishment has at least become semi-idolatrous. As evidence:

Republican Rep. Andy Gipson says House Bill 638 is a response to lawsuits by "liberal, left-wing radicals."

And that, not justice, is real object - to show those Leftists a thing or two! Killing people in prison has become as much of a political statement by Republicans to define who they are as killing people in the womb defines the Democrats.

Once again, though with new meaning:

Just face the fact that killing prisoners has become too hard and commute the sentences to imprisonment for life without hope of parole. In fact, you can say they are still sentenced to death - by old age.

Then get on with life.

Doctors can legally kill you on purpose "in good faith"

Not here, yet.

The Netherlands:

Full story on Daily Mail, where we learn that the ethics review panel said that the doctor had "crossed the line" but had not broken the law.

Illustration above at American Digest.

Meanwhile, Oregon has had legalized doctor killing since 1998. According to the state's public health department, this is the graph through the end of 2015.

And it seems that controls in Oregon are looser even than in The Netherlands, where physicians are required to report every time they kill a patient. In Oregon, there is no such requirement:

The DHS [state Dept. of Human Services - ed.] has to rely on the word of doctors who prescribe the lethal drugs. Referring to physicians’ reports, the reporting division admitted: “For that matter the entire account [received from a prescribing doctor] could have been a cock-and bull story.  We assume, however, that physicians were their usual careful and accurate selves.”

The Death with Dignity law contains no penalties for doctors who do not report prescribing lethal doses for the purpose of suicide.

(Italics original.) Believe me, if doctors do not have to tell the authorities, they don't have to tell family members, either. Legally, there is nothing that stops an attending physician from offing your husband, wife, mother, or father during morning rounds, and then you just get a phone call.

The 21st century is not turning out like I hoped it would.

Who says there's no good news?

Goodness is busting out all over:

1. U.S. abortion rate drops to lowest level since Roe v. Wade. Actually, the rate is much lower than when Roe v. Wade was decided.

2. Washington state moves to end death penalty. One down, 30 to go.

I have seen the future and it stinks

At least in part - but it could be a pretty big part.

HT: Gerard.

Update: "Members of Best Buy’s Geek Squad passed incriminating evidence to the law enforcement agency and received payments from agents."

Are Teslas Christine-mobiles?

Christine is the name of a Stephen King novel that tells the story of a possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury that kills people all by itself.

There is nothing supernatural about Tesla automobiles, but one has to wonder whether the company is turning out Christine-mobiles because of software faults that may pop up.

Two days ago I waited at a stop sign to turn after an oncoming car passed by. I happened to notice that it was a Tesla as I pulled out behind it. The state highway's speed limit was 50 so the Tesla pulled away smartly as I accelerated.

Before long the road curved to the right but the Tesla did not. It crossed the double-yellow centerline with both front and the left rear wheels before the driver apparently intervened and brought the car back into its lane. Luckily there was no car coming the other way so no harm was done.

Tesla features an unfortunately-named electronic package called Autopilot that it promotes as 100-percent capable of driving its cars wholly without human intervention. And in the company's website video it does, most impressively:



I have no idea whether the driver of the Tesla in front of me this week had Autopilot engaged; he may have simply been inattentive. But as you can imagine, lawyers have been all over perceived defects in Autopilot's operation.

Here is the latest: "Tesla owner files lawsuit in California claiming sudden acceleration."

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Tesla Motors Inc was sued on Friday by a Model X owner who said his electric SUV suddenly accelerated while being parked, causing it to crash through the garage into the owner's living room, injuring the driver and a passenger.

The Model X owner, Ji Chang Son, said that one night in September, he slowly pulled into his driveway as his garage door opened when the car suddenly sped forward.

"The vehicle spontaneously began to accelerate at full power, jerking forward and crashing through the interior wall of the garage, destroying several wooden support beams in the wall and a steel sewer pipe, among other things, and coming to rest in Plaintiffs' living room," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California, seeks class action status. It cites seven other complaints registered in a database compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) dealing with sudden acceleration without warning.

That said, self-driving cars are coming whether we want them or not. Every major manufacturer is working on them. And whatever erratic commands Autopilot may or may not send, the system never nods off, never rubbernecks at cops stopping someone for speeding, never leaves task. As this video shows - listen for the warning beeps before the wreck occurs.



The Tesla's radar and computer computed that the following car would hit the leading one and started braking the Tesla before it happened. Could an alert driver have done the same thing? Probably, but probably not likely.

But I predicted the new legal field way back in 2005:

If there will be self-driving cars then there will be self-crashing cars. Automakers will rethink making such cars when their legal departments start to figure out where tort law will go on this technology. And the lawyers will love it of a whole new field of case law is opened up.

Indeed, they already do.

Military's first execution since 1961 looms

I was present in the courtroom at Ft Bragg, NC, in 1988 when then-Specialist 4 Ronald Gray, U.S. Army, was convicted and when he was sentenced to death for murder.

Spec. 4 Ronald Gray during his court martial for capital murder at Ft Bragg, NC, in 1988.

Now, almost 30 years later, Gray's execution may take place.

Gray, a former soldier who was convicted in a series of rapes and murders in Fayetteville and Fort Bragg more than 25 years ago, lost a court battle to keep in effect a stay of execution first granted by a U.S. District Court in Kansas in November 2008.

Earlier this week, Judge J. Thomas Marten ruled the stay was no longer in effect and denied Gray's request to further block the military from moving forward with the death sentence.

Gray, who was convicted and sentenced in 1988, is being held at the U.S. Army Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

His crimes were committed in 1986 and 1987 on Fort Bragg and near Fairlane Acres Mobile Home Park off Santa Fe Drive.

Gray killed cab driver Kimberly Ann Ruggles, Army Pvt. Laura Lee Vickery-Clay, Campbell University student Linda Jean Coats and Fairlane Acres resident and soldier's wife Tammy Wilson and raped several other women.

In addition to the death sentence handed down by a military court, he also received eight life sentences from civilian courts, including three to be served consecutively.

The reason that Gray is described as a "former soldier" is because his sentence also included a dishonorable discharge, along with first a reduction in rank to Private (E-1), the lowest enlisted rank, and total forfeiture of all pay and allowances.

Because at least one of the victim's bodies was found on the premises of Ft Bragg, the US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID, where I later served as a principal staff officer) investigated. IIRC, the body was that of Ms. Ruggles, the cab driver. It was for this murder that he was sentenced to death by a general court martial. The trials in civilian court followed. Military authorities remanded Gray to civilian custody conditional on their agreement to return him to military control once the civilian trials were over, regardless of verdicts. (This kind of agreement is quite common.)

No date has yet been set for Gray's sentence to be carried out.

Under military law, only a general court martial (GCM) can adjudge a dishonorable discharge or death penalty. The court is called a "general" court because it may be convened only upon the authority of a general officer (or admiral in the Navy) in command. GCMs are the highest-level trial courts of the military.

A GCM may adjudge the death penalty only if the convening authority includes that in his orders convening the court. Unlike civil courts, hung juries are not possible in in military courts. A GCM's panel (jury) votes once and only once to convict or not. The panel's vote to convict must be unanimous; if there is even one vote to acquit, the accused is acquitted. The panel votes once per charge for which the accused is tried, and when the vote is taken for each charge, the vote is final and the panel moves to the next charge.

The death penalty likewise is voted one time only and it also must be unanimous. Also, unlike civil juries, members of the panel may question witnesses by sending questions in writing to the judge, who takes the decision on whether to allow it. If so, the judge reads the question to the witness; the judge may consult first with both the trial counsel (prosecutor) and the defense counsel.

How each panel member votes is not recorded, only the total. No panel member, then, may be identified as casting a deciding vote. It is furthermore strictly forbidden for any mention of an officer's or NCO's service on a panel to be included in any report or personnel file; no promotion board, for example, will ever know that an officer or NCO served on a court's panel at all, much less which trial.

FindLaw has a good guide to military courts.

Who says there's no good news?

The death penalty is dying in the United States, and it's about time.