Category Archives: Culture

Today Rand Paul and Pat Leahy Introduced a Bill to Fix Our Atrocious Federal Mandatory Minimum Laws – Hit & Run : Reason.com

by

This is a great example of an area where the Tea Party and Occupy can see eye-to-eye. Rand Paul 2016!

Here’s why this bill is important: A guy–let’s call him Weldon–sells pot to a government informant, who notices that Weldon has a gun strapped to his ankle. The next time the informant buys pot from Weldon, he notices a gun in Weldon’s car. When police move in to arrest Weldon, they find guns in his house. Weldon has never fired these guns, never used them to coerce anyone. He has, however, sold pot three times* while in possession of a firearm, so prosecutors charge Weldon with “multiple counts of possession of a gun during a drug trafficking offense.” He is convicted. What do you think Weldon’s sentence is? Ten years? Twenty years? Try 55 years–five for the first gun-related offense, and 25 for the second and third. That’s the mandatory minimum federal sentence for Weldon’s charges, meaning the judge who sentenced him could not sentence him to less time–only more.

Weldon Angelos is a real person, by the way, and the existence of a safety valve in 2004, the year he was sentenced, would’ve allowed the judge to sentence him to 18 years instead of 55 (that was the judge’s preference). It would’ve meant Weldon, who was 24 at sentencing, would go free at age 42 instead of age 79. But because the federal system has mandatory minimums with no parole, Weldon will spend most of the rest of his life behind bars for selling several hundred dollars worth of pot while wearing a gun on his ankle.

via Today Rand Paul and Pat Leahy Introduced a Bill to Fix Our Atrocious Federal Mandatory Minimum Laws – Hit & Run : Reason.com.

Bryan Ferry’s son Merlin: A knife? That’s not a real crime | Metro News

by

I call this a pre-crime arrest.

He warned of the ‘devastating consequences’ on his ‘lucky life’ if he carries a knife again. ‘One of my nightmares is that I give a lenient sentence to someone for having a bladed article and read a few months later that they have stabbed someone,’ said the judge.

‘You are just another young man carrying a knife and that makes you very frightening to people in west London and that is why people think I should send you to prison.’ Prosecutor James O’Connell said Ferry was rude when police in west London stopped his uninsured Saab car in September.

via Bryan Ferry’s son Merlin: A knife? That’s not a real crime | Metro News.

Forget the Cellphone Fight — We Should Be Allowed to Unlock Everything We Own | Wired Opinion | Wired.com

by

While Congress is working on legislation to re-legalize cellphone unlocking, let’s acknowledge the real issue: The copyright laws that made unlocking illegal in the first place. Who owns our stuff? The answer used to be obvious. Now, with electronics integrated into just about everything we buy, the answer has changed.

We live in a digital age, and even the physical goods we buy are complex. Copyright is impacting more people than ever before because the line between hardware and software, physical and digital has blurred.

The issue goes beyond cellphone unlocking, because once we buy an object — any object — we should own it. We should be able to lift the hood, unlock it, modify it, repair it … without asking for permission from the manufacturer.

But we really don’t own our stuff anymore (at least not fully); the manufacturers do. Because modifying modern objects requires access to information: code, service manuals, error codes, and diagnostic tools. Modern cars are part horsepower, part high-powered computer. Microwave ovens are a combination of plastic and microcode. Silicon permeates and powers almost everything we own.

via Forget the Cellphone Fight — We Should Be Allowed to Unlock Everything We Own | Wired Opinion | Wired.com.

‘Go and Repair My House’ – WSJ.com

by

The meaning of the name he chose should not be underestimated. Cardinal Bergoglio is a Jesuit and the Jesuits were founded by St. Ignatius Loyola, who said he wanted to be like St. Francis of Assisi.

One of the most famous moments in St. Francis’s life is the day he was passing by the church of St. Damiano. It was old and near collapse. From St. Bonaventure’s “Life of Francis of Assisi”: “Inspired by the Spirit, he went inside to pray. Kneeling before an image of the Crucified, he was filled with great fervor and consolation. . . . While his tear-filled eyes were gazing at the Lord’s cross, he heard with his bodily ears a voice coming from the cross, telling him three times: ‘Francis, go and repair my house which, as you see, is falling into ruin.'” Francis was amazed “at the sound of this astonishing voice, since he was alone in the church.” He set himself to obeying the command.

via ‘Go and Repair My House’ – WSJ.com.

Newt Gingrich Schools Piers Morgan on Catholic Church ‘Reform’ | NewsBusters

by

GINGRICH: I am amazed at how much western elites translate reform into sex. If it doesn’t relate — if it doesn’t relate to sex, it doesn’t count. I think he’s going to challenge all of us in terms of dealing with the poor. I think he’s going to challenge all of us in terms of spirituality. I think he’s going to wrestle more than any Pope has in modern times with a part of your question, which is if Christ loves everybody, and that certainly includes people of different sexual identities, then what is the church’s relationship to everybody? And I don’t know that he’s going to come up, Piers, with what you would think of as enlightenment. But I think he may come up with some answers that are profoundly spiritual and that lead all of us to new dialogue and new conversation, in ways that, frankly, without him as Pope, we might never have imagined.

via Newt Gingrich Schools Piers Morgan on Catholic Church ‘Reform’ | NewsBusters.

Surrogate offered $10,000 to abort baby – CNN.com

by

This is the society we live in. I know babies are expensive, especially sick babies. But this young woman did the right thing. As the surrogate mother (a Ms. Kelley) said, the baby deserved a chance.

In a letter to Kelley’s midwife, Dr. Elisa Gianferrari, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Hartford Hospital, and Leslie Ciarleglio, a genetic counselor, described what happened next.

“Given the ultrasound findings, (the parents) feel that the interventions required to manage (the baby’s medical problems) are overwhelming for an infant, and that it is a more humane option to consider pregnancy termination,” they wrote.

Kelley disagreed.

“Ms. Kelley feels that all efforts should be made to ‘give the baby a chance’ and seems adamantly opposed to termination,” they wrote.

The letter describes how the parents tried to convince Kelley to change her mind. Their three children were born prematurely, and two of them had to spend months in the hospital and still had medical problems. They wanted something better for this child.

“The (parents) feel strongly that they pursued surrogacy in order to minimize the risk of pain and suffering for their baby,” Gianferrari and Ciarleglio wrote. They “explained their feelings in detail to Ms. Kelley in hopes of coming to an agreement.”

“I told them that they had chosen me to carry and protect this child, and that was exactly what I was going to do,” Kelley said. “I told them it wasn’t their decision to play God.”

Now things get really horrible. The attorneys get involved:

“You are obligated to terminate this pregnancy immediately,” wrote Douglas Fishman, an attorney in West Hartford, Connecticut. “You have squandered precious time.”

On March 5, Kelley would be 24 weeks pregnant, and after that, she couldn’t legally abort the pregnancy, he said.

“TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE,” he wrote.

Fishman reminded Kelley that she’d signed a contract, agreeing to “abortion in case of severe fetus abnormality.” The contract did not define what constituted such an abnormality.

Kelley was in breach of contract, he wrote, and if she did not abort, the parents would sue her to get back the fees they’d already paid her — around $8,000 — plus all of the medical expenses and legal fees.

Next? The parents threaten to seize custody of the child, only to abandon her to be a ward of the State of Connecticut, rather than let the surrogate mother care for her. Ms. Kelley fled to Michigan, where surrogacy is not recognized, and the woman who bears the child gets legal custody. After consideration of her means and the needs of her other children, Ms. Kelley decided to give the child for adoption to a couple who had helped her with her move to Michigan, and who were knowledgeable about children with needs of this sort.

As to the baby’s condition today, her adoptive parents are optimistic.

If Baby S. does survive, there’s a 50% chance she won’t be able to walk, talk or use her hands normally.

In some ways, Baby S. looks different from other 8-month-olds babies. In addition to the facial abnormalities, she’s very small, weighing only 11 pounds and she gets food through a tube directly into her stomach so she’ll grow faster.

Her adoptive parents know some people look at her and see a baby born to suffer — a baby who’s suffering could have been prevented with an abortion.

But that’s not the way they see it. They see a little girl who’s defied the odds, who constantly surprises her doctors with what she’s able to do — make eye contact, giggle at her siblings, grab toys, eye strangers warily.

“S. wakes up every single morning with an infectious smile. She greets her world with a constant sense of enthusiasm,” her mother said in an e-mail to CNN. “Ultimately, we hold onto a faith that in providing S. with love, opportunity, encouragement, she will be the one to show us what is possible for her life and what she is capable of achieving.”

via Surrogate offered $10,000 to abort baby – CNN.com.

Op-Ed: How to end overcriminalization | WashingtonExaminer.com

by

Take Eddie Leroy Anderson, a retired logger from Idaho whose only crime was loaning his son “some tools to dig for arrowheads near a favorite campground of theirs,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Anderson and his son found no arrowheads, but because they were unknowingly on federal land at the time they were judged to be in violation of an obscure Carter-era law called the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.

The government showed no mercy. Wendy Olson, the Obama appointee prosecuting the case, saw to it that father and son were fined $1,500 apiece and each sentenced to a year’s probation. “Folks do need to pay attention to where they are,” she said.

Statutory law in America has expanded to the point that government’s primary activity is no longer to protect, preserve and defend our lives, liberty and property, but rather to stalk and entrap normal American citizens doing everyday things.

After identifying three federal offenses in the U.S. Constitution — treason, piracy and counterfeiting — the federal government left most matters of law enforcement to the states. By the time President Obama took office in 2009, however, there were more than 4,500 federal criminal statutes on the books.

“Too many people in Washington seem to think that the more laws Congress enacts, the better the job performance of the policymakers,” Lynch notes. “That’s twisted.”

via Op-Ed: How to end overcriminalization | WashingtonExaminer.com.

What Sort of Leader Was Lincoln? – NYTimes.com

by

The more I learn about Lincoln, the more I admire him. My libertarian friends may disagree, of course, but all evidence is that his humility, faith, and vision increased while he was in office. While he occasionally used questionable presidential powers, in general he did so for the right reasons. He was the right man at the right time.

There is no one whose statecraft more vividly illustrates the style of constitutional leadership better than Abraham Lincoln. He stated the problem of constitutional leadership with uncommon clarity in his Special Message to Congress of July 4, 1861. “Must a government, of necessity,” he asked, “be too strong for the liberties of its own people or too weak to maintain its own existence?”

As Lincoln understood, the most essential feature of constitutional leadership is self-restraint. Constitutional government is, by definition, limited government. Governments may be limited either with respect to their means or with respect to their ends. Constitutional government is both. It deliberately leaves some things outside the parameters of political control. Our government, for example, respects the individual’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These belong to the discretion of the individual, and it is the task of government to fulfill the function of protecting the exercise of each person’s right to use or misuse their freedom as he sees fit. A government that seeks to supervise every aspect of its citizens’ private lives is on the way to the destruction of constitutionalism.

The self-restraint imposed by the doctrine of consent was the opposite of the doctrine of “popular sovereignty” proclaimed by Lincoln’s great rival, Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas had argued that it was the right of every state or territory to decide for itself whether or not to permit slavery — a case of simple majority rule. What the majority of people wanted within a designated territory was sufficient to decide the problem. Thus Douglas could declare that it was a matter of “indifference” to him whether slavery was voted up or down.

For Lincoln, however, the doctrine of unlimited majority rule violated the principle of constitutional government. Constitutions are devices for restraining power, whether this be the power of a king or a popular majority. If slavery is a good, Lincoln enjoyed chiding his audiences, then it is a good that no man has ever chosen for himself. It is consent that forms the essence of constitutional government.

via What Sort of Leader Was Lincoln? – NYTimes.com.

Silicon Valley Libertarians Cling to Their Guns: “Gun Control is Technology Control” | TechPresident

by

Gene Hoffman is standing in the middle of his sunny corner office in Belmont, California, and he’s showing me his AR-15.

If California State Senator Leland Yee had his way, Hoffman could get arrested for this. In 1989, the California legislature passed a law banning semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 on the basis of a combination of features such as pistol grips and telescoping stocks. But Hoffman and some other gun enthusiasts scrutinized state regulations and found a way around the legal code in 2007 by creating a button that fixes magazines in place. That theoretically renders a rifle legal because its magazine could then not be detached without using a tool, as required by state law. Gun owners could still rapidly reload with this button in place, because all they have to do is poke it with the tip of a bullet to unlock empty magazines. Last year, Yee floated a bill that would add button-equipped guns to a list of banned weapons.

So when I asked Hoffman to explain the device — a controversial add-on called the “bullet button” — he didn’t have to close his office door before pulling the seven-pound Lauer LCW-15, unloaded, from a large rectangular case on the floor. He did anyway — “Just so I don’t alarm anyone,” he said.

via Silicon Valley Libertarians Cling to Their Guns: “Gun Control is Technology Control” | TechPresident.

Why the Choice to Be Childless is Bad for America – Newsweek and The Daily Beast

by | 1 Comment

“I like seeing people with their children, because they have their special bond, and that’s really sweet, but it’s not something I look at for myself,” says Tiffany Jordan, a lively 30-year-old freelance wardrobe stylist who lives in Queens in a rent-stabilized apartment and dates a man who “practically lives there.”

Jordan and her friends are part of a rising tide. Postfamilial America is in ascendancy as the fertility rate among women has plummeted, since the 2008 economic crisis and the Great Recession that followed, to its lowest level since reliable numbers were first kept in 1920. That downturn has put the U.S. fertility rate increasingly in line with those in other developed economies—suggesting that even if the economy rebounds, the birthrate may not. For many individual women considering their own lives and careers, children have become a choice, rather than an inevitable milestone—and one that comes with more costs than benefits.

“I don’t know if that’s selfish,” says Jordan, the daughter of an Ecuadoran and an Ohioan who grew up in the South Bronx, explaining her reasons for a decision increasingly common among women across the developed world, where more than half of the world’s population is now reproducing at below the replacement rate. “I feel like my life is not stable enough, and I don’t think I necessarily want it to be … Kids, they change your entire life. That’s the name of the game. And that’s not something I’m interested in doing.”

via Why the Choice to Be Childless is Bad for America – Newsweek and The Daily Beast.