Tag: Bill of Rights

What is Government?

Why do we submit to the law?

We can’t run very fast. We have no sharp teeth or claws. Long ago it became obvious that it was in humanity’s self interest to ban together for our mutual security. We each give up a small amount of personal freedom, for the greater good of the whole. That is the basis of the social contract.

As citizens, our responsibility is to uphold the laws of government. The government, in turn, also has obligations. The bare minimum of those obligations are to protect the majority of people from enemies both foreign and domestic. What enemies do we wish to protect ourselves from? At the very least hunger, disease, invasion by hostile forces (external security), and threats to our self-governance (internal security).

So how are we doing in that respect? Lousy.

We all but wiped out hunger in the US shortly after the Kennedy administration (ended 1963), but the government intentionally reintroduced it in the Reagan administration to drive down worker wages. What is left of our health care system is sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Foreign NGO’s have been invited by the Supreme Court to financially manipulate campaigns and thus our government. Internal threats to self-governance are too numerous to recount here, and in any case the Supreme Court has abandoned all pretense that this was a democracy and officially ruled the US a plutocracy.

We are in essence living in a failed state. Just because I am writing about the US, don’t think your country is doing any better. Most of the Western world is in the same boat.

Other articles have detailed the complex road we took to get here. That is not the purpose of this series. This series discusses how we get out.

Specifically, how to tell our government “No!”

This is a must read review in Salon of today’s court ruling on “Boumediene vs Bush”  written by Glenn Greenwald, which gives the history of the creation of Bush’s prison gulag in 2006 with the Military Commissions Act, and background and then says:

  Congratulations to the United States and Obama for winning the power to abduct people anywhere in the world and then imprison them for as long as they want with no judicial review of any kind.  

If you’re secretly kidnapped by, say,  a military for profit contractor and shipped off to Gitmo, the Bush DOJ contended that the detainee under Boumediene has a right to a hearing (when they get “around to it,” years later, if you survived the torture) but when you’re secretly kidnapped by Only God Knows What or Who and shipped off to Bagram’s Secret little hell holes in Afghanistan, then the non existent detainee has no rights to any such kind of hearing.  

Greenwald:

 In other words, the detainee’s Constitutional rights depends on where the Government decides to drop them off to be encaged.  One of the first acts undertaken by the Obama DOJ that actually shocked civil libertarians was when, last February, as The New York Times put it, Obama lawyers “told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team.”

But last April, John Bates, the Bush-43-appointed, right-wing judge overseeing the case, rejected the Bush/Obama position and held that Boumediene applies to detainees picked up outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram.  

But which Bagram are they being shipped to ?  The known Bagram Prison, or the one Gen McChrystal’s Secret Special Forces and the CIA and Blackwater Xe’s operations aren’t admitting the existence of ?  

President Barack Obama, on a roll after his Attorney General floated the idea to the Sunday morning talkie tubes that the Miranda rule should be optional in the War on Terra, had his anonymous spokesperson let loose with the news late this evening that Elena Kagan would be his Supreme Court pick to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

Elena Kagan, a Clinton era leftover,former Dean of Harvard Law School, and current Solicitor General, would be the 3rd female on the Supreme Court at the same time, which presumably would signal the Beginning of the End Times for certain fundamentalists.  Kagan has never been a judge.

Like most things in the Obama administration which start out sounding wonderful, there has to be a catch:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36…

Her nomination is unlikely to cause a damaging fight in the Senate ahead of congressional mid-term elections in November or distract the Obama administration from other issues like jobs, financial regulation and climate change legislation.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com…

Has plenty of ties to Obama and his administration. In addition to being solicitor general, was hired by chief White House economics adviser Larry Summers to be dean of Harvard Law School. And while at the University of Chicago, Kagan tried to recruit Obama — then a part-time lecturer in constitutional law — to a full-time job in academia.

***  Seven Republicans voted for her confirmation: Coburn (OK), Collins (ME), Gregg (NH), Hatch (UT), Kyl (AZ), Lugar (IN), Snowe (ME). Newly minted Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter voted against her.

Won praise — from both liberals and conservatives — during her tenure as dean of Harvard Law. Hired some of the best law professors in the country, including Obama friend (and administration official) Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago.

Larry Summers, Orin Hatch, and Cass Sunstein.  It’s like the Bermuda Triangle.

And Arlen Specter doesn’t like her, but remember, the Tea Party hates Arlen Specter.

One reason why she’s the nominee:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/b…

Yesterday, I read everything Elena Kagan has ever published. It didn’t take long: in the nearly 20 years since Kagan became a law professor, she’s published very little academic scholarship-  three law review articles, along with a couple of shorter essays and two brief book reviews. Somehow, Kagan got tenure at Chicago in 1995 on the basis of a single article in The Supreme Court Review-a scholarly journal edited by Chicago’s own faculty-and a short essay in the school’s law review.

…. joining Harvard as a visiting professor of law in 1999. While there she published two articles, but since receiving tenure from Harvard in 2001 (and becoming dean of the law school in 2003) she has published nothing. (While it’s true law school deans often do little scholarly writing during their terms, Kagan is remarkable both for how little she did in the dozen years prior to becoming Harvard’s dean, and for never having written anything intended for a more general audience, either before or after taking that position.)

Kagan’s handful of publications touch on topics like regulating offensive speech, analyzing legislative motivations for speech regulations, and evaluating the process of administrative law-making. But on the vast majority of issues before the Court, Kagan has no stated opinion. Her scholarship provides no clues regarding how she would rule on such crucial contemporary issues as the scope of the president’s power in wartime, the legality of torture, or the ability of Congress to rein in campaign spending by corporations.

Private vs. Public Schools: What’s the Difference?

Your goal is to find a school that will meet your child’s needs. But how do you choose between a public school and a private school?

[… interesting list of Pros and Cons …]

The Bottom Line

There are a few fundamental differences between public and private schools, but here’s the bottom line: There are great private schools and there are great public schools. The trick is finding the school that best fits your child’s needs. You may also want to consider public charter schools or homeschooling. It’s a good idea to research the schools that interest you and, to get a true picture of the school, visit in person.

(emphasis added)

http://www.greatschools.net/cg…

Has Competition from Public Education “killed” the thriving Industry of Private Education?

Hardly!

Neither will Competition from a Public Option in Health Care, “kill” the thriving Industry of Private Insurance — assuming they actually have a Product, that People are willing to pay for!

and if they don’t …?

The Presumption of Innocence, and other Quaint Ideals

Presumption of Innocence

(Innocent until proven guilty)

A principle that requires the government to prove the guilt of a criminal defendant and relieves the defendant of any burden to prove his or her innocence.

The presumption of innocence, an ancient tenet of Criminal Law, is actually a misnomer. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the presumption of the innocence of a criminal defendant is best described as an assumption of innocence that is indulged in the absence of contrary evidence

[…]

the presumption of innocence is essential to the criminal process. The mere mention of the phrase presumed innocent keeps judges and juries focused on the ultimate issue at hand in a criminal case: whether the prosecution has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the alleged acts. The people of the United States have rejected the alternative to a presumption of innocence-a presumption of guilt-as being inquisitorial and contrary to the principles of a free society.

http://legal-dictionary.thefre…