It has been an interesting five days since the 2016 election. Taking another swing at this blog after another extended absence. Thoughts and views haven’t changed much so a lot of the older content is still accurate, the only difference being the current roster of miscreants and demagogues have changed to match a world two years on. Here’s to seeing what happens next.
Category: news
The Congress shall have power to…
I have been gone for awhile. I have several unpublished posts from the last year that are all too dated to publish. It’s been a weird road, watching the nation go on, watching the ups and downs, and not talking about it. I was comfortable writing thousands of words, critiques on the matters of State, and deleting them because, honestly, I was vain and empty. The world, I believed, wanted flash. Shining lights bright colors in streamers at the bottom of the television set. Well dressed hosts in $5,000 suits quantifying matters of international concern one moment and then tittering about puppies the next.
It is grotesque, and will continue to be so because they have the money, the advertisers, and the professionals that pour through reams of data that tell them this is exactly what their viewers want. I was fine with this. It is their money, it is their channel, and their viewers. I can go without that. I have disagreed with their tactics, but that is theirs, and there are bigger fish to fry.
The link above goes to an article from CTV News regarding the President’s bid to expand the American military presence in Iraq. The president and his “legal team” have attempted to craft a legal maneuver around the restrictions of the War Powers Clause of the Constitution and War Powers Act of 1973 and a host of international standards regarding national sovereignty and international war.
I am not fond of snippets. However, the scope of the section I will post the relevant text of the enumerated powers from Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution:
The Congress shall have power…to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water.
It is a fundamental thing. A simple idea that the people of a nation, not a single man or woman, should decide when and why the nation goes to war. It was the desire to remove the absolute authority of the king that prompted the declaration of war to be put in the hands of the people and their representatives in the Legislative, rather than Executive, branch.
We have seen challenges to this power time, and time again. From The Gulf of Tomkin to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As a matter of fact, scholars have spoken on this very matter:
What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne…
That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaida. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.
Granted the speech is from the buildup to the second Iraq War, and if the word choice and tone sounds familiar, it should. President, then Senator, Barack Obama delivered this address on October 2nd, 2002. The most poignant words of his speech apply just as much to his actions as Commander in Chief as they did to President George Bush when he was decrying the impetus by the Executive Branch to to follow the unwise course of action that would, eventually, embroil the American military in one of it’s longest running military actions:
Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.
Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair. The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not — we will not — travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.
Since that time we have followed through on practically none of these issues. ISIS/ISIL is loaded with young men from Saudi Arabia. Their government wonders how we, not they, will stop ISIS/ISIL from arriving at their door because they have, for decades, done exactly what was warned against decades before, and elucidated by President Obama when he put pen to paper in 2002.
Here we stand twelve years later. Still beholden to the rampant policies of the Middle East. Policies and movements rooted in religious bigotry rather than rational discourse. National well-being discarded in lieu of perceived religious bias. Our nation, weary from two, decade-long wars that have claimed the lives of thousands of countrymen, and countless civilians. What fruit have we seen from these wars? None.
A broken nation stands, still fighting with itself. A region that is progressing further into chaos because of selfish policies set decades ago, and being overseen by petty dictators. Armies without parent countries formed from the most zealous, uneducated, and blood-thirsty. We, as a nation, failed to step up onto the world stage and engaged in statesmanship rather than showmanship. We negotiated with the sword rather than with an olive branch, or bread basket. We remain the most powerful solely because of “investment” in a military that’s purpose is to project the promise of violence. We have deferred diplomacy in lieu of the capacity to annihilate those who stand against us.
Have we used these powers judiciously, to an extent. We have destroyed with one hand, but in the other there should have been honest cooperation with those who remain. To allow nations to decide how they would rule themselves instead of listening to the Young Turk who believes they know all. Here we stand, here our President stands. Seeing, hopefully, all the follies we have committed, and, hopefully, learning from them.
Limited action against ISIS/ISIL has been successful, but the time of Presidential operation without the purview of the electorate is at an end. The notion that lawyers are working around the clock to further stretch the President’s capacity to operate without the consent of Congress, and by proxy the people, is a distasteful indication of a desire to operate outside of the realm of the Constitution. A need to push the letter of the law as far as it can go, knowing that those who would punish in the case it breaks are firmly in your pocket. It dishonors the spirit of the law, and the notion that the representatives of the people should decide when we are to go to war. It was the firm notion 227 years ago that no President would ever have this nations army at his beck and call for extended use. If this is to be another war, let it be a war America chooses, rather than the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating
It’s a cheap shot today and return after a long absence.
The Primaries are going on today in Virginia. So far it looks like a par for course run; the races that are close are going to be driven by the grassroots support that is drummed up during these off-season primaries while strong incumbents and those who are historied within the wall of their respective parties will clinch their nominations with little difficulty. That doesn’t bother me. Shenanigans bother me, and I’ve been listening to them for months.
The purpose of the Republican Primary was to ensure that there was ‘purity’ in the selection of the candidates that were chosen last month. There was the need for this to be ‘honest’ and ‘clear of meddling’. Rush Limbaugh refers to these yet to materialize, and oft worried about, efforts at tampering ‘Operation Chaos’. The gist is simple: open primaries mean that Democrats can roll in to the polling station and supposedly pick the weaker of two candidates, effectively setting up their “strong” candidate with an easy win. If the yarn sounds familiar, it was kicked around in 2008 when McCain was winning much to the chagrin of the Republican party. It was rolled out again in 2012 when Mitt Romney was facing supposedly impossible odds against the titanic political powers of Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, and (seriously?) Rick Santorum.
Therein lies the problem. Since the end of the Primary, and the wretched result that has me wincing each morning I have to listen to John Fredericks talk about the latest train wreck of a video someone has dug up on the Virginia Lieutenant Governor nominee E.W. Jackson, the discussion has shifted from the need for purity in the selection process to encouraging our team to go out and vote during the open primaries for the other side. Granted, there are primaries today for Republican candidates, and to those I say go nuts, have a ball. For the Democratic candidates and races I wonder where the wagging tail ends and the dog begins.
Now, I enjoy Mr. Fredericks’ show, and have so since I discovered it on a drive to work one morning last year, but I take pause with his notion that voting in the Democrats open primary is perfectly acceptable after our party went to such great lengths to prevent such actions. It is, of course, his choice, and he chose to exercise that, and in no way am I saying it’s bad. I’ve met Senator Northam, at the end of election night where I was working for the team that was trying to take his seat, and found him most agreeable, articulate, and, to borrow common vernacular, very real. As Fredericks said, and so I shall reiterate, what you see from Northam is what you get. No, I have no problem with his selection, but I’m saying the action of voting for a democrat after you’ve selected your Republican candidate feels…awkward. It invites analysis by others, and recognition of the inherit weakness of the primary system; any Tom, Dick, or Harry can roll into a polling station and vote for a rep from their state or district.
After the utter, pardon the following, shitcan mess that was the Republican primary in May, why on earth would we advertise, nay, encourage our huddled masses, who were terrified of the bogeyman of cross-platform voters, to go out and do the very thing we decried as fouling the process? It is hypocritical to demand a pure representation of a party, then to encourage our team to go out and muddy the waters for the other side. There is no honor in it.
Stars out of the eyes, I understand that, mathematically, the Republican turnout for a Democratic primary is going to be low (maybe 0.25-0.5% of the Republican voting block, so 0.10-0.35% of the overall voting block for the district), but the notion is noxious to me. If we are going to claim moral high ground it means constant diligence. Moral strength comes from the ability to act consistently, and in the political world consistency, if measured in gold, would be worth the national debt and a few dollars more. Lastly, if Mr. Fredericks is going to champion the notion of selecting a candidate based on his authenticity and amicable nature in working across the aisle, maybe closing a post out by talking about the unique opportunity to take Senator Northam’s seat in a special election should probably be saved for another day. Especially when you are reminding folks that Northam’s vote, if taken, would tip the balance to 21-19 in favor of the Republicans who, at the moment have a very, very weak candidate running for the coveted tie-breaker known as, you guessed it, the Lt. Governor of Virginia. I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you, Mr. Fredericks, to cover yourself; your machinations are showing.
Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
A recent discussion between friends had me pondering a well-worn topic covering the Westboro Baptist Church. While I am loath to give this repugnant organization any more lines in the massive universe of online and paper text I feel that the notion they were positing was not the best course of action.
It is the standard argument that crops up each time there is a tragedy and these vultures, nay ghouls, crawl out from their miserable crypt and threaten the world with their mere presence. The subsequent ballyhoo over these vile, barely passing for, human beings feed into their hopes of either 1) spreading their woefully misguided message of monumentally ignorant hate with little understanding of their source material, or 2) getting someone worked up enough to do something irrational enough to warrant a lawsuit that will fill what has to be dwindling coffers.
However, I believe, and have argued, that the desire by the masses to simply ignore these individuals, or to refer to them in some offhand way that does not recognize them directly (such as ‘they who shall not be named’) does not retract from their capacity to continue these repulsive acts. If anything, I believe it encourages them.
They are not deterred by legions on Facebook or twitter from referring to them as ‘those wackos’, but those who attend these services and stand in direct opposition of them and their message. The Patriot riders who lined military funeral processions and revved their bikes so loudly that the WBC packed their things and left because they could not be heard. The hundreds of students who mass against a planned protest on a college campus to face off against the WBC when they came to picket, or more likely celebrate, the death of a gay student.
Our society has picked up this notion that an evil ignored dies on the vine of ignominy. We forget that terrible thoughts and hideous acts must be met with thoughts and actions in opposite. Where there is truly misguided hate and disgust, there must be compassion. Where praise of violence against the soldiers or against the children, there must be the solemn respect for the deceased and those still suffering from the loss.
The quote above is from one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett. I won’t go into his fiction, and how it should be read by all who can spare the time, but I want to point out that in this scenario we are the darkness.
We contain the ever-present capacity for humanity to care, to feel, and to have compassion in times of our own suffering as well as the suffering of others. The WBC may think they will get there first, that they will be the loudest voice, but the light, as is not often stated, only illuminates the area around it, leaving the rest into darkness. Is it not too much to hope that the darkness is not the evil of the universe, but that which is all-encompassing. That compassion for the injured, physically and mentally, the wounded, and the deceased fills the void that their ‘light’ would so like to dispel.
In that vein, should that light die, to turn a phrase on Dylan Thomas, I doubt there will be many that rage against it, but until it fails, until the abomination that is the WBC is stripped of its undeserved title as a ‘religious’ institution, and crushed under the heel of both judge, jury, and social executioner it should not be forgotten. No evil that is forgotten dies. No evil that is unchallenged shrinks. if history has taught us anything, it is that.
Fear is the mind killer
It’s a quote from Dune, I highly recommend reading the books or watching the films. Fear is the name of the game in politics anymore. See that guy over there, he’s going to take away something valuable to you, and the only way to protect it is to vote for me. It’s played by both sides of the aisle, and the application of fear in campaigns is well know, well documents, and flat-out nonsensical at times.
Why do I bring this up? Fear goes both ways. We’re afraid of the pending failure of our government to be able to pay its bills, so the President and the dutiful denizens of the left in congress roll out additional taxes and new spending to engage the economy in what could be the most over-estimated recovery that has yet to happen.
Meanwhile there is the argument from the President that the Deficit is going down (as a side now, each projected pseudo-budget that has been touted out for the last five years has been a ‘deficit-reducing’ budget) and yet we’ve tacked on $6 trillion to the national debt. So, there’s our fear. We’re deep in the hole and we need money. So, how do we get this money. We limit how much goes into Roth IRA’s. It’s a short story put up by The Hill pointing out that the super wealthy have been squirreling away money in Roth IRAs, which they can’t touch until they’re 59 and a half without some heavy penalties, and in a desperate attempt to raise some additional coin, the government thinks that the amount of dough saved in those accounts shouldn’t exceed a specified amount.
I understand the logic. There’s money there, and, after pouring through more pages of the IRS website than I care to do ever again, it turns out you pay an excise tax of 6% on excessive donations, and early withdrawals are taxed at rate, and then 10% more on top (again if withdrawn before you are 59 and a half). So, in all that, there’s money. How much money? I’m not certain the numbers are solid, but according to the article from The Hill roughly $9 billion over the next decade. Yup, over the next decade they’d square away 0.005% of last year’s deficit.
Solid plan there.
Nominally, it’s going to take work, and I hope to god they’re working on it because right now I don’t think it’d pay for the paper it’s being printed on.
The other side of the sword is the delivery method. Like I said, we’re talking about fear here, and the need to make people afraid. Why are we talking about this? Because it’s scary. Because the Government is going after our retirement savings, or so the Drudge Report would have you believe.
If you hit the Drudge Report over the weekend you would have seen the hyperlink to “Obama budget targets retirement accounts…”. Rolling off the recent move by the EU to soak the owners of money laden accounts in the national bank of Cyprus, there is an expectation of the government in the United States doing something similar to ward off a fiscal boogeyman (don’t get me wrong, we have serious money problems) but to snag 40-60% of the value of all accounts that hold more than $100,000…can’t happen, won’t happen, and will break the financial system faster than the housing bubble of 2008.
Now, rank and file readers aren’t expecting this. Most folks are pretty certain that their money is safe, and it is. The Cyprus situation was a state run and controlled bank, we don’t have that in the US. We have a fed that feeds into banks, but those accounts are ours, and the money comes out of the hides of the bank, not out of Uncle Sam. However, it’s still a scary thought. It’s in red, of all colors, against all the black text. It’s important. It’s also inaccurate based on the text of the article linked. Not wholly inaccurate, but omits the focus on the wealthy aspect of the donors being targeted.
So, boogeymen abound on both sides, and what do we have. People worried that their retirement funds are now the target of a government siege on savings to slake their ever-growing thirst for funds to toss at social projects, and politicians who are offering weak tea solutions to monumental budgetary issues. This is not a good-get. This isn’t even a good story. It’s about as bottom of the barrel as you can get when it comes to dialogue. There is no genuine interest in doing what is right, just in making sure that someone is scare, and what they are hoping is that someone is you.
When the banker wants to pick up the policeman’s gun, no one is safe
A recent story out of Seattle states that an amendment proposed for a bill that would safeguard employee passwords from being requested during job interviews, however should an internal investigation be started that protection of the employee’s private information goes right out the window. Thankfully the provision was pulled a day later and the bill protecting potential employees from having to divulge unnecessary private information went to the floor without the excessive intrusion attached.
It’s not the first time an amendment/ provision/bill like this has been introduced, nor will it be the last. The horrifying part of the story is not so much the provision, but the intention of the representative who added it (quote from The Columbian story linked above):
On Wednesday, House Labor and Workforce Development Committee chair Rep. Mike Sells withdrew the amendment. He had introduced it at the behest of business groups, who say the original bill would open an avenue for possible illegal activity by employees, such as divulging proprietary or consumer information to outsiders.
The fear by business groups who were concerned that this would open up an avenue for possible illegal activity apparently forgot that should illegal activity occur there is a process by which they contact the police and then the proper law enforcement agencies, who are trained and the only bodies by law who can do this, SUBMIT A WARRANT for the personal information directly to the site in question.
I respect a need for businesses to protect their trade secrets, yet it seems that Apple’s latest iPhone doesn’t so much show up on an employee’s news feed or blog spot, rather in a bar after they’ve had one too many. If there is potential theft of intellectual property, embezzlement, or or other such criminal activity going on, my first advice to a business owner would be to get the police involved (i.e. get the folks whose job it is to sort this kind of thing out) rather than trying to play cowboy and find it on their own. The process, should it have proceeded, would have been, as privacy advocated pointed out, rife for abuse, and could lead to lawsuits from employees should other private information be divulged to a company who has not right or reason for having said information.
Lastly, to the state and federal representatives of the nation. Take a moment to think on this matter when it comes to you. Realize that anyone looking to pick up a duty of law enforcement must be addressed with great care and skepticism. Any effort by a business to take on a responsibility or to take an action that would circumvent the law of due process, those pesky warrants that police need in criminal investigations, needs to be shuffled off, and documented for public consumption. These business leaders should be named, and their organizations chastised by the public, but I feel comfortable in saying that none of the barking voices that decry the vices, real and imaginary, of the government will raise a word against the corporate sector.
Simply because people work for a company does not mean that they are to have access to every nook and cranny of their employees lives. If we as a political body fear the encroachment of a nebulous, faceless monstrosity trying to worm its way into every aspect of our lives, why should we treat the businesses who are not restrained by the rules of our Constitution with less caution than the government which we can control?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
A curious note was passed my way regarding a recent court decision to prohibit the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors from holding a pre-meeting prayer that included the name Jesus. Couple that with the knee-jerk reaction from some state representatives in North Carolina who submitted a resolution to establish a state religion, and it’s another spin on the ‘religious freedom’ movement.
Going back to Virgina first, The article regarding the court decision can be found here and the ACLU has it’s own take here. In short, the County Board of Supervisors had deviated from the religious neutral prayer that most government organizations insist upon at the beginning of meetings for a clearly identifiable Christian one. This raised the hackles of one Mrs. Barbara Hudson, and she informed the Board that what they were doing was unconstitutional…which it is. The board more or less told her to shove off, and, true to form, the ACLU became involved. Mediation failed, and ‘lo the Judiciary is brought in to lay the smack down.
A similar incident occurred in North Carolina, in the district the that is represented by the state congressman that presented the resolution. The judicial response to the prayer is what inspired these two representatives, one of which wears the tea party badge with honor, to file this amazingly unconstitutional piece of legislation.
The ground level I’m getting to is this: They were informed that it was unconstitutional, and when informed of such they didn’t bother to research their position nor did they take it under consideration. They blew the challenge off for self-indignant or self-righteous reasons, failed to come to a compromise in court mandated mediation (a simple acquiescence would have sufficed), and in the end cost the taxpayers significant time and energy better spent addressing the issues of their respective county as well as the thousands, if not millions, of dollars in legal fees that will be assessed after the dust has finally settled.
The need, not desire but flat-out need, to invoke God at public government events also makes me wonder, as I have many times before, about the personal relationship with God that the believers are suppose to have, but seem very eager to show off in public. My understanding was that it was a deeply personal, one-on-one kind of relationship. One that cannot be impressed upon by the government, and, through that same clause, cannot be impressed upon others.
The comments on other articles claiming this is another attack on religious freedom by the Judiciary, the resolution goes on to itemize how these decisions are just that, but here’s the thing; the government, any government beholden to the Constitution of the United States America, cannot endorse any religion. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution overrides state Constitutions and local legislatures. Its not an attack on religion when those affected are asking that the rules that apply to the situation be enforced accordingly. Somewhere along the line those who are pushing for “religious freedom” forgot what it was about.
The Representatives from North Carolina, short on civics lessons or long on sleeping in class, fail to realize that the federal government does have a say in what the states do. The power of the states lies in their people and the states capacity to represent themselves at the federal level. They rage about judicial oversight with regards to these, and many other social matters (and religion is a social matter), but fail to recall that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are to balance each other. Should the legislative, or we’ll say the most representative body of the electorate, get a wild hair up it’s ass, it is up to the Judiciary (since the executive cannot directly interfere on state affairs) to apply the law as it is interpreted.
Does that mean that the “majority” might get a black eye supporting specific causes, yes. I’d point to school integration, inter-racial marriage, interstate commerce, property rights, voting rights, freedom of speech, and several thousand other decisions made by the Judicial branch that have in some respects hindered the majority from being a collective dick to a select group of people, but also protecting the body politic from those in both the state and federal realms from doing long-lasting harm.
There isn’t a gun being held to their heads saying that they must worship Allah, Amaterasu, or Cthulhu because there are explicit protections prohibiting the government from enforcing a state religion. That protection, however, does not guarantee that a specific religion will remain in the majority over the existence of a nation, or that the majority religion receives any special privileges or protections because it has the most, or most influential, followers. It appears that those that normally decry religious freedom forget that the government is designed to protect not only those practicing a religion from government interference, but also to protect those of us who don’t share their beliefs from being steamrolled by the them.
A moment of reflection
I heard about the shootings in Connecticut in passing. I didn’t get the full weight of what had occurred until Patricia called me and asked if I had heard about the hideous body count. A little research, and quick check of Facebook (which I was not surprised to find quite a few pages for the shooter, and how he was a great guy and a fantastic photographer), and I was up to speed with the rest of America. What bothered me further was the comment section under every news article, and a few Facebook posts.
In short, I unfriended someone today. Not a monumental accolade or something that need be noted in the archives of WordPress history, but it was the statement that summed up the illness of it all. In short, a man I knew some time ago, and considered intelligent, reasonable, and tolerant stated on his page that he was not surprised that this occurred because it happened in a nation without a soul. He then went on to give a paltry wave of the hand and condolences to the families that lost loved ones, but the first statement. “A nation without a soul” stuck hard in my craw like a jagged pebble.
There are now millions, if not billions, of condolences of perfect strangers floating across the world-wide web. Fundraisers are going up by the hour to help with relief efforts, pay for grief counselors, etc. We, as a nation, are painted in a muddy hue of soullessness because we do not adhere to the tenants of a self-declared ‘militant’ christian. My only response would be that the longer you look down the irons of the rifle you believe is protecting you, the more everything begins to look like a target or an enemy. That immediate attachment of this incident as an indictment of our nation as a whole is disgusting, ill reasoned, and ignorant.
Couple that with the almost instantaneous prattling of fear over gun control legislation, and how the President will steal away our automatic weapons before he has even had a chance to speak on this tragedy (which he did eloquently by the way) lends further to the stereotype that the right is so desperately trying to fight. My only request is that we stop worrying about our own fears for a moment, and think on others. Know for a moment that your family is safe, and, for those of you who have children, might dote on them a little more this evening; be inclined to hold them a little tighter tonight before they go off to bed. For those who lost a child or a loved one today, my deepest condolences.
The die has not been cast with regards to why this wretch took those lives, but the evidence piling up appears to indicate that there were issues at home (at last report his brother was found dead at the residence). In the days and weeks to come we will know everything about the gunman, his name being avoided here as I do not want to recognize the monster outright. No, we will find out the why, what, where, who, and when of everything in this case, then it will fade. My only request would be that we allow that process to be completed before we begin the process of trying to address the results.
Access to firearms and mental health are going to take front stage. Let us, for a change, be informed before we go into political battle and rattle our sabers for our cause, and decry the boogeymen of the opposition. This is, as has been stated by many public figures today, a time where consensus can be reached with little thought. The only matter in that case is giving the people time to grieve and learn what happened. Then, and only then, can we find a true answer that may very well prevent future incidents like this one.
Escalation of force and your friendly neighborhood SWAT team
Stories like this one are becoming more common in the news. Swatting, or the act of placing a fake phone call from a VoIP hone or internet server to emergency providers indicating that there is a shooting/violent crime/ general mayhem going down at a particular address. Everyone from Politicians to kids playing video games have been surprised to see teams of fully armored, automatic weapon toting law enforcement officers knocking down their doors, causing thousands of dollars of damage and wasting police time and funds chasing down ghost leads with the most militant branches of their organizations.
I want to make something clear before I continue, I have nothing against SWAT teams. I respect what they do, and recognize that they should be called into the most dire of situations. What I do have a problem with is the escalating frequency with which they are being sent out to enforce mundane legal activities.
From serving warrants to handling armed 79-year-old ladies the rank and file police duties are quickly getting picked up by SWAT teams across the country. The horrify notion that the military is selling off extra hardware to police departments doesn’t bode well. Especially when those same police departments turn around and sell it off to, as the article from the Sacramento Bee puts it, “pad their budgets”.
There is a need for the SWAT teams in cities across America, but there appear to be a greater need for restraint in their deployment. If the basic assessments are being accomplished, and it is duly warranted that an escalation to a para-military level is required, then by all means send in the SWAT team. If the department didn’t bother to check the residence or call the house, and proceeded to break down a door, flash-bang innocent civilians, and then physically treat them like common criminals, then, frankly, someone needs to lose their job.
When a bad idea meets a functional tool, nothing good comes of it
Last weekend I was having a conversation with a friend and the topic of the recent expansion of government surveilance via drones came up. There is genuine concern over how the information will be used, and, considering the manuverability of some of the drones being employed, where they go, and what they will be able to see is of extreme concern.
I aruged that the drones will be used, but they will be fairly restricted, and the government is going to find out very, very quickly that they are not the best tools for the job when it comes to law enforcement. As if on queue The University of Texas, challenged by the Department of Homeland Security, downed a drone in mid flight.
Not to take some shine off of the University of Texas’ achievement, but this is old hat. Iran dropped a stealth drone, piloted by the best and brightest, and slapped together by DARPA and operated by the DoD. In terms of intellectual firepower, I imagine that the DHS has quite a few brilliant minds, but the military has an entire organization devoted to development everything from quantum encryption to weapons systems that fire 1.2million rounds a minute. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the Stealth drone was harder to drop, but when it was released that they went through the GPS system to bring it down, I fell over laughing.
A paper I wrote in my last year at the Old Dominion University was on robotics on the battlefield, and the number one issue with these devices have is the communication and GPS systems. Avionic systems have some play, but the real bugs were in terrestrial based sword bots, so named because they have monikers like ‘claymore’ and ‘saber’. These battle bots were failing remote tests because they could not respond fast enough, did not respond at all, or did things like firing off around 45 seconds after being issued the command to do so. You could strip away the electronic protection on them, and give the operator faster reaction time, but then there is nothing to stop a local Al Qaeda operative, trained by a technician from a relatively unfriendly state, with a wireless connection and few tools of the electronic warfare trade, to hack in and either disable the robot on the field, or, in the worst case scenario, take remote control of these electronic weapons platforms and turn them on the soldiers standing right next to them. Granted, that scenario is half a world away, but imagine small drones with live video feed hovering about, each one supposed protected by encryption on par with, say, any of the banks that have recently been hacked, or the police departments that have had their records compromised (and I can guarantee that the LAPD servers are not going to have the same encryption as government security contractor companies, or international banking systems).
Lastly, the drones offer an odd stretch of police power reaching into the personal domain. Currently police can fly over your house and if they see pot being grown in the back yard, they can get a warrant and conduct a raid. It’s legal, there was a supreme court case on it, and it flew. Drones will be able to do the same, but there is a twist regarding that maneuverability issue. Smaller drones means that they can go places helicopters and larger drones cannot. So we can’t see anything in your yard, but what about that shed at the corner of your property. We’re still flying, technically we’re not trespassing (you wait, this will be one of the first legal arguments), and we happened to peek in this window and saw that you had a shotgun. We checked the state gun registration and you don’t have a shotgun on record with us. That’s a bust.
Is it a silly scenario, absolutely, but it is completely plausible. Why put a GPS tracker on a criminal’s car when you can just tail him incessantly with a drone? Easy way to get around that pesky warrant problem:
“no your honor, the drone was not following the individual in question. It just happened to be everywhere he was going.”
You can see where this is going.
I am all for the thin blue line doing its thing and bringing in the bad guys, but with great power comes great responsibility, and this is another example of military tech rolling down to police departments that don’t need more military tech. For the price of a drone operation system and related drones you could probably hire another dozen cops. Humans that need jobs, can form intellectual and emotional bonds with the community, grown and learn, become leaders of the community, and, best of all, can’t be hacked to dive bomb cars on the I-95.
Old Jeffersonian 