People v. State

Lest anyone misunderstands me, it should go without saying that I think Rick Santorum is a sick son of a bitch. The only upside to a Santorum presidency I can see would be that he just might be crazy enough to force the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to finally stop lying to the American people about the abortion-breast cancer link, and I have to confess that from my perspective that would be a big upside. From my perspective, that is a big deal. And I don’t believe that Santorum could be much worse than Romney or Gingrich or Obama when it comes to civil liberties and foreign policy. They are sick sons of bitches too.

Without a doubt, as I’ve said multiple times, Ron Paul stands head and shoulders over every other candidate for President. But alas, we will continue to get the government we deserve.

Incidentally, Ron Paul’s favorite U.S. President is not Washington or Lincoln, but Grover Cleveland.

Let us therefore, in honor of Presidents Day, consider what Benjamin Tucker called Lysander Spooner’s “latest and unquestionably greatest work,” his Letter to Grover Cleveland (1886), which began thusly:

To Grover Cleveland:
SIR, — Your inaugural address is probably as honest, sensible, and consistent a one as that of any president within the last fifty years, or, perhaps, as any since the foundation of the government. If, therefore, it is false, absurd, self-contradictory, and ridiculous, it is not (as I think) because you are personally less honest, sensible, or consistent than your predecessors, but because the government itself — according to your own description of it, and according to the practical administration of it for nearly a hundred years — is an utterly and palpably false, absurd, and criminal one. Such praises as you bestow upon it are, therefore, necessarily false, absurd, and ridiculous.

. . .

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Just a few days ago I had to school Norm Pattis, the alleged ringleader of what a cabal of blogging assholes like to call the “Happysphere,” a place of their imaginings wherein never is heard a discouraging word, on what Justice is. Today I’m doing it again, setting Norm straight by defending the honor of William Jennings Bryan, a man whom history and today Norm has wrongfully-maligned but who in fact, as Alan Dershowitz has shown, was actually “a great populist who cared deeply about equality and about the downtrodden,” and who was “no simple-minded literalist, and . . . certainly . . . no bigot. . . . Indeed, one of his reasons for becoming so deeply involved in the campaign against evolution was that Darwin’s theories were being used – misused, it turns out – by racists, militarists, and nationalists to further some pretty horrible programs. . . . All in all, a reading of the [Scopes Monkey Trial] transcript shows Bryan doing quite well defending himself, while it is [Clarence] Darrow who comes off quite poorly – in fact, as something of an antireligious cynic. . . . The textbook Scopes wanted to teach was a science text rather than a religious tract, but it was also a bad science text, filled with misapplied Darwinism and racist rubbish.”

But history is written by the survivors, it’s said. The Scopes Monkey Trial was litigated in 1925, and Bryan died five days after it ended. Clarence Darrow lived on until 1938. According to a recent biography: “He visited seers and mediums, and at one point near the end of life Darrow asked his wife to kill herself on his deathbed, because he could not face the crossing alone.”

Somehow I think Norm is tough enough to brook our disagreement with equanimity, even though I’ve intentionally harshed it a little to prove my point.

Compare, on the other hand, Eric Mayer, who seems to think that by publicly fantasizing about being in a knife fight and posting Messages for Wuss Lawyers no one will notice that he blogs like a Wuss.

But Norm might be right about one thing: It’s kind of dumb to blog about bloggers. I’ll try to remember that going forward.

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Santorum suggests abortion causes breast cancer

[H/T one of the brain-dead rabid commenters who populate Jonathan Turley’s blog]

Why shouldn’t I root for Santorum? I still want Ron Paul to win, but he’s not going to. Santorum could hardly be any more hostile to civil liberties and to the world than Obama already is.

Paul getting elected would really shake things up for a Change. Santorum getting elected and touching off this particular powder keg would too.

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Jamison Koehler, who deserved the top honors he received this year in the ABA Journal’s Blawg 100 Criminal Justice category, for all the reasons eloquently described by Scott Greenfield in his post commemorating the occasion, had some classy things to say about Greenfield on the occasion of Greenfield’s announcement that he’s retiring from the blogosphere. Jamison wrote: “His kind words recently – almost two years after I was banished from his blogroll as a self-promoting marketer — meant far more to me than any ABA award.”

But then Greenfield’s right hand man, the malodorous Brian Tannebaum, appeared in the comments on Jamison’s post and had this to say:

I didn’t want to break your heart on Valentine’s Day, but did you read Greenfield’s post about you carefully? I mean really carefully? Read it again. Make sure your door is closed and there are no sharp objects around.

Jamison replied:

From my previous dealings with Greenfield, it did occur to me that he was pulling my leg. I concluded that, based on my communications with him after my father died, he wouldn’t have brought my father into the equation if he was in fact making fun of me. Although Greenfield can be a bastard sometimes, nobody could be that classless and cruel.

Then again, you know him far better than I.

See, Greenfield had written this in his post about Jamison’s ABA honor:

My wild guess is that he gets it from his father, a poet of both renown and great talent.  Jamison’s occasional homage to his father, who lives on his writing, is both heartwarming and moving.  They say the apple never falls far from the tree, and if that’s true, then Jamison’s fabulous writing style comes to him as honestly as can be.

And you know how Tannebaum replies? Like this:

Classless and cruel is textbook happysphere talk for “truth.” Maybe I know something buddy.

Norm Pattis struck exactly the right tone in his own post on Greenfield’s departure (and I thought that even before seeing Tannebaum’s vile remarks, and considering their vile implications), and in this comment on Jamison’s post:

I stopped reading him a year or so ago when he seemed to go off the deep end and began to write more about blogging than the law. Getting out for a while will be good for him. I hope he clears his system of whatever it was that transformed him from a bright guy into a tedious scold. He’ll be back soon in some form or another; the satisfaction of attending your wake lasts only so long. When he returns, I hope he writes about practicing law rather than writing about those who write about those who practice law.

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Eric the Unwashed Advocate writes:

You know who and what you are.

You’re the guy who goes into court with a couple of decent motions. You file them knowing that you have a great chance of succeeding because, hey, the law appears to be on your side. From your perspective. You expect to win.

Then, you don’t. . . .

. . .

Then, as you lay on the ground, exhausted from your crying. You reach for your keyboard. You write. No, not a motion or legal brief. You write on Facebook, or a message board, or a twit. You write about the unfairness. You kick the process, the “system,” the rules, and the deck so deftly stacked against your client. Unfairness reins supreme.

Tears pour from your words.

And not a damn bit of it helps your client.

Is that me?

I’ve noted before that, given particularly awful precedent in my state, things I’ve written here could conceivably get me disbarred. But my willingness to write those things in spite of that doesn’t prove I’m not a wuss, because, as I’ve also noted before, part of me thinks the supreme court would be doing me a favor by disbarring me. Does my indifference to whether I remain a lawyer itself make me a wuss? I don’t think so. There are many ways to wage war, of which a license to practice law is only one.

I view this blog as constituting a very small contribution to a very large (in terms of stakes if not of numbers of wagers) campaign, which the powers-that-be do not regard with unconcern. That campaign says: “Pay attention to the man behind the curtain.” “The Emperor has no clothes.” “The Constitution is of No Authority.” These ideas, if they become general, will have consequences.

Yes, my only weapon in this campaign is a keyboard. What would Eric call me if it wasn’t?

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I subscribe to Georgism because it is Just. That is, it entails the absence of the crimes of land ownership and taxation.

But I hear it also makes all kinds of economic sense.

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I can’t find the post now, but the first time I commented on Scott Greenfield’s Simple Justice blog back in late 2008 / early 2009 I had yet to try a case to a jury, and noted that fact in my comment. As I recall, this earned me being singled out for ridicule in Scott’s next post.

As of mid-March 2009 it was no longer the case that I’d never tried a case to a jury. I noted that change in status in a comment on Scott’s blog, and Scott replied:

I don’t know how much comfort this will bring, but you need to know that losing a trial never gets easier and never feels better.  I don’t care how long the lawyer’s been practicing, we all search ourselves after a defeat, blame ourselves, question ourselves and challenge ourselves.  Whether it’s your first trial or your 100th, it doesn’t change.  Every loss is a killer, and every good lawyer believes that he could have won if only he had done better because we have to believe in ourselves to do this job.

Since then I’ve been banned from Scott’s blog, twice. While I thought and still think the bannings were ridiculous, I can’t say I was completely without fault. I just couldn’t let a dis go unanswered, even though wanton disses were clearly part of the old man’s schtick. Scott also had some unbelievably unkind words for a fellow citizen of the blawgosphere whom I regard as a friend, that were over-the-top and unwarranted. But, while I certainly can’t speak for that friend, who was the recipient of words far more malicious than any I ever received, it seems to me being the tough guys we play on the internet entails a willingness to forget and maybe even forgive internet slights, eventually. The internet’s kind of unreal anyway.

Anyway, after 5 long years and 4,744 posts Scott’s shuttering the doors at Simple Justice. As I understand it, though, he’s not dead yet. He’s still twittering. There’s no law that says he can’t post again at Simple Justice, as often or as rarely as he likes. He’ll probably pop in and continue to comment on other blogs. Heck, he was just sighted in this recent interview, larger than life:

It’s time to let bygones be bygones. Scott, you’re no longer banned here at People v. State. Feel free to stop in anytime.

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Norm Pattis posts about a radio debate he had with a fellow named Jerome Corsi:

A natural born citizen, according to Corsi, is a person not just born in the United States, but also spawned by two parents who are also citizens. . . .

Support for this interpretation of the phrase is gleaned from the writings of an eighteenth century Swiss writer, Emerich Vattel. Vattel wrote: “The natives or natural born citizens are those born in the country of parents who are citizens.” There it is, plain as day. An eighteenth century writer asserted that natural law made this so. . . .

This is the sort of logic that gets pro se litigants in trouble all the time. A little bit of knowledge is, the aphorists teach, a dangerous thing. Natural law has a disturbing tendency to reflect the preferences and biases of those who seek to discern it. Aristotle taught then some were slaves by nature; most of us think otherwise today, and thankfully so. I am with Jeremy Bentham on the topic of natural law: it is little more than nonsense on stilts.

I commented:

Natural law is nonsense? What should guide legislators, then? So soon you’ve given up on Spooner? Of course I agree that natural law arguments, i.e. arguments about what is right and just, won’t get you far in trying to persuade judges. But I don’t see the connection of Vattel’s claim to natural law.

Norm responded:

I don’t see Vattel that way either, but Corsi does. As for natural law, I just don’t believe in right reason. I suppose I am a methodological anarchist and believe simply in juries serving as a counterweight. As for justice: What’s that?

I tried to reply as follows, but Norm’s blogging software apparently doesn’t like comments longer than 5 sentences:

Justice, I think, is the absence of crime. Which I think amounts to a very strong presumption against punishment, because even Blackstone held that the only legitimate purpose of the criminal law and of punishment is to prevent future crime. Whether punishment does so is speculative. Punishment itself, on the other hand, resembles crime. The jury, and especially its requirement that the jurors be unanimous before a person is convicted of a crime, embodies procedurally that presumption against punishment. None of which, I acknowledge, tells us anything about what a “natural born citizen” is.

Of course, I’ve said almost the exact same thing before in a number of posts on this blog, but I repeat it because I was frustrated by Norm’s blogging platform and because I regard it as one of my minor contributions to the practical blawgosphere: Saving the word “Justice” for zealous criminal defense. (Although I haven’t really called attention to it before, I note that Tony Serra’s biography is titled Lust for Justice.)

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Two days ago David Drumm, guest-blogging at Turley, noting my last post‘s link to his post about Komen, wrote in a comment on his post:

Looks like the link to my post is pushing woo regarding a link between induced abortion and breast cancer. Guess I’ve got a topic for one of tomorrow’s posts.

I responded in a comment:

I am looking forward to it. Maybe you will follow the truth wherever it leads. Maybe you won’t.

My latter prediction proved the correct one, as Drumm’s guest post yesterday was titled Lying For Jesus: The Abortion/Breast Cancer Link. I called Drumm a liar in my first comment on that post, which predictably led to a long and acrimonious comment thread there, and a battle of links to various places on the internet. My participation wound down with this comment addressed to me by someone calling herself “idealist707”:

What you are doing is prevaricating on a large scale.

Did you really have hopes that you could start a legal case accusing the state,et al for misleading women who have abortions and later get breast cancer, on the basis of information withholding, a la cigarettes and lung cancer?
And you lost money on it too, you say on your site?

Stop beating a dead horse. The bell has rung. Go get a new life as confirmation of you worth. You won’t find support here for your false-flagging of concern for breast cancer patients who were denied knowledge of the effects of abortions.

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Komen, I think, is going down the toilet, where it belongs. In a post today by a guest blogger at Turley’s blog about a top Komen fundraiser who is quitting in disgust and who in an angry letter condemned the decision to end funding for Planned Parenthood and called for the resignation of Komen’s CEO and founder, it is written: “While donations from the Planned Parenthood haters have helped, they may not be sustainable.” That may be the understatement of the year, given that Komen quickly reversed its decision, caving to pro-abortion political pressure and revealing a yellow streak a mile wide. (Incidentally, in a comment on the post Scott Greenfield makes a very good point about Komen but confirms that he is a true blue New York liberal.)

I wondered what the Coalition on Abortion / Breast Cancer thought about all this, and checked in at its website. (I was around when the Coalition was formed, living in the Chicago area at the time, where the Coalition is based.) In a press release issued after Komen’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood but before its decision 3 days later to refund it, the Coalition’s president applauded Komen for discontinuing its grants to Planned Parenthood but said: “Personally, I will not donate to Komen while it is still cooperating in the cover-up of the abortion-breast cancer link . . . .”

I also learned from the press release that the “Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer was the first to expose the Komen-PP relationship to the world in 2003.” (2003 was when I ran into that brick wall in North Dakota, which all but ended my legal career before it began, and I’ve pretty much washed my hands of the abortion-breast cancer business ever since. As far as I’m concerned, the North Dakota supreme court judges who decided the Red River Women’s Clinic case have blood on their hands. A river of it.) I also learned from the Coalition’s press release that 52 out of 67 epidemiological studies now show a positive association between induced abortion and increased breast cancer risk. (Back when I wrote my Wisconsin Law Review article Comment on this subject it was 25 out of 31, with 17 of the 25 showing a “statistically significant” positive association.)

The Coalition’s press release links to this breakdown of the 67 extant studies (updated in November 2011) on the website of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute (founded by my expert witness in the Red River case). The five most recent studies, published between 2008 and 2011, all found a statistically significant positive association between induced abortion and breast cancer risk. One of these five studied American women, and is available in its entirety here on the Coalition’s website. Here’s the first three sentences of the Results section of that study:

In analyses of all 897 breast cancer cases (subtypes combined), the multivariate-adjusted odds ratios for examined risk factors were consistent with the effects observed in previous studies on younger women (Table 1). Specifically, older age, family history of breast cancer, earlier menarche age, induced abortion, and oral contraceptive use were associated with an increased risk for breast cancer. Risk was decreased in relation to greater number of births and younger age at first birth.

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“The state is not a mystical entity, a sum greater than the human beings making it up. The state is simply a group of human beings cooperating for common purposes — purposes frequently at odds with those of other groups of people, like the majority of people in the same society. And violent actions by an association of individuals who call themselves ‘the state’ have no more automatic legitimacy than violent actions by associations of individuals who call themselves ‘the Ku Klux Klan’ or ‘al Qaeda.’”

That is the first and greatest truth of anarchism, articulated here by Kevin Carson at the Center for a Stateless Society. (I’ve got to finally get around to reading Kevin’s The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto, which is freely available online here.)

The second is like unto it: “Unless you want world government, you’re already an anarchist. We’re just haggling over the level.” — Sheldon Richman

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Thumper’s father did not tell him, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

ADDED: “What distinguishes criminal defense lawyers is our willingness to think critically, about ourselves as well as others, and gives us the legitimacy to offer insight, whether pleasant or not,” saith Scott Greenfield.

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The South Bend Tribune yesterday published a story that makes a local judge, Jerome Frese, look bad (as evidenced by comments on the story left by three two morons) for interpreting a statute in a manner favorable to defendants and getting reversed by a unanimous three-judge panel of the Indiana Court of Appeals in three separate cases (which all turned on that statutory interpretation) on the same day back in November. The statute at issue (section 3 of Indiana Code 9-30-5) reads as follows:

[A] person who violates section 1 or 2 of this chapter commits a Class D felony if … the person has a previous conviction of operating while intoxicated that occurred within the five (5) years immediately preceding the occurrence of the violation of section 1 or 2 of this chapter[.]

Judge Frese said that “occurred within . . . five . . . years” ” modifies “operating while intoxicated.” The Court of Appeals says it modifies “conviction.”

But this reasoning from one of the three Court of Appeals decisions (the other two opinions contain exactly identical language) caught my attention:

We conclude that section 3 is not ambiguous, and it is the previous conviction that is subject to the five-year limit, not the act that gave rise to the conviction. While we acknowledge that the word “occurred” is indeed closer to the noun “operating” than it is to “conviction,” simple proximity is not sufficient to support a conclusion that “occurred” could be modifying “operating” in section 3. Very few, if any, would read “we had a meal in France that was delicious and expensive” and conclude that “delicious and expensive” was describing “France.” In any event, while the gerund “operating” is nominally a noun, it is not functioning as such in section 3, but, rather, as the object of the prepositional phrase “of operating while intoxicated,” which is functioning as an adjectival phrase to modify “conviction.” As such, “conviction” is the noun closest to the prepositional phrase beginning with “that occurred within … five … years” and, in our view, is clearly being modified by that phrase as well. In summary, while we acknowledge that word order is important, there is nothing in the word order of section 3 to suggest that the phrase “occurred within … five … years” is intended to modify anything other than “conviction.”

Now, I used to be a sentence diagramming son of a gun, having taught 7th and 8th grade English for a year at a Catholic school back in the mid 90’s. I used to know this stuff cold. But it’s been a while. And I especially doubt myself because I have to assume that the three judges who signed their names to the above passage (one of whom is the Chief Judge) either brushed up on their grammar prior to publishing their opinion or knew what they were talking about and knew they didn’t need to. Nevertheless, after spending about 15 minutes on the internet refreshing my own recollection, I can’t help but continue to maintain the following opinions, in spite of what the Indiana Court of Appeals says:

1. A gerund is by definition a verb that ends in -ing and functions as a noun, so if “operating” in section 3 is a gerund, as the Court of Appeals says it is and as it appears to be, then, contra the Court of Appeals, it is functioning as a noun in section 3.

2. The objects of prepositional phrases are either nouns, pronouns, gerunds (i.e., verbs functioning as nouns), or noun clauses. It makes no sense to say, as the Court of Appeals said, that a word is not functioning as a noun, “but, rather,” as the object of a prepositional phrase.

3. The words “that occurred within … five … years” do not begin a prepositional phrase.

Perhaps some kind reader can set me straight and show me the error of my ways.

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Thus wrote Melville in a letter to Hawthorne following the publication of Moby Dick. Having just finished reading Blood Meridian, I imagine Cormac McCarthy might have felt the same.

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Romney & Co. vs. “the Very Poor,” by David S. D’Amato at the Center for a Stateless Society:

Mitt Romney’s latest “Gaffe of the Week” is revealing: “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there; if it needs repair, I’ll fix it.” Playing into every negative perception of Romney as a latter-day robber baron, the comment coursed through the news cycle.

It’s easy enough to understand why: The mouthpieces of the Washington-Wall Street nexus never tire of banging the drum for their plutocratic system of deprivation — and they do it using the language of freedom and competition.

It ought to come as no surprise, then, that people who genuinely care about poverty and economic justice want to run for the hills at any and all talk of free markets, convinced that they’re about to be broadsided with more of the same pleas for Mr. Moneybags and slurs against the less fortunate.

But being “libertarian” doesn’t in itself have anything at all to do with defending American capitalism; indeed any complete understanding of what free markets would mean in practice is certain to be thoroughly inimical to what people like Mitt Romney are campaigning for today.

The safety net Romney alluded to, the one managed and administered by the total state and capable of allaying all of his frets about “the very poor,” is actually no such thing. A genuine safety net, formed by the community it is meant to serve and adapting naturally to its needs, would be far sturdier and more efficacious than the state’s moldering bureaucracies.

What’s more, it would be a lot less necessary. The state’s fundamental purpose in economic affairs is to foreclose opportunities for ordinary, working people, blocking the passageways of real voluntary exchange to the advantage of the established players.

To the floundering have-not who can’t start a business out of her home because she doesn’t have the costly permits and licenses, or to the homeless family who can’t make rent due to the state-enabled monopolization of real estate, food stamps and subsidized housing appear like scraps cast into the rubbish after the corpulent corporate hogs have finished gorging.

A free market that allowed all forms of peaceful competition, that based rights to land and resources on real homesteading and trade, would fracture the very bedrock of American Big Business monopolism.

As explained by market anarchist Dyer Lum, “[I]t is not capital per se that liberty assails, but the artificial power it usurps; that under equal freedom, where no privilege exists to entail exploitation, it is as harmless as we have seen private property would be.”

Ruling class spokesmen like Mitt Romney really don’t care about creating opportunities for poor people, but that’s because they don’t care a lick about real free markets. A world without coercive, political domination of all productive activity would be one where labor was justly and completely compensated, one without a sponger class lobbying for new and creative ways to disrupt mutual exchange.

We have to stop allowing vermin like Romney to use the language of freedom unchallenged to vouch for a system that has reduced thousands of Americans to penury. Our manumission from the oppressive system he represents can only come through the abolition of authority and thus of the state; here’s to electing that in 2012.

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Prompted by this post by Mike at Crime & Federalism, I’ve been reading Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy, author of The Road and No Country for Old Men, the film adaptations of which I’ve seen and appreciated. As Mike promised, it’s a phenomenal read. I felt obligated to read it because I’ve been accused of romanticizing the Wild Wicked West, because Mike claims it brings Nietzsche thereto and I’ve professed a superficial interest in the Mad Philosopher, and because according to Wikipedia many critics agree that there are Gnostic elements present in the book and I do like me some of that good old-fashioned gnosis.

I’m only about half-way through the book and haven’t reached the dialogue quoted by Mike, wherein “the judge” holds forth on war. But I’ll highlight these two earlier dialogues:

from Page 20:

Lost ye way in the dark, said the old man. He stirred the fire, standing slender tusks of bone up out of the ashes.

The kid didnt answer.

The old man swung his head back and forth. The way of the transgressor is hard. God made this world, but he didnt make it to suit everbody, did he?

I dont believe he much had me in mind.

Aye, said the old man. But where does a man come by his notions. What world’s he seen that he liked better?

I can think of better places and better ways.

Can ye make it be?

No.

No. It’s a mystery. A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it. You believe that?

I dont know.

Believe that.

from pages 129-30:

No, said Tobin. The gifts of the Almighty are weighed and parceled out in a scale peculiar to himself. It’s no fair accountin and I dont doubt but what he’d be the first to admit it and you put the query to him boldface.

Who?

The Almighty, the Almighty. The expriest shook his head. He glanced across the fire toward the judge. That great hairless thing. You wouldnt think to look at him that he could outdance the devil himself now would ye? God the man is a dancer, you’ll not take that away from him. And fiddle. He’s the greatest fiddler I ever heard and that’s an end on it. The greatest. He can cut a trail, shoot a rifle, ride a horse, track a deer. He’s been all over the world. Him and the governor they sat up till breakfast and it was Paris this and London that in five languages, you’d have give something to of heard them. The governor’s a learned man himself he is, but the judge . . .

The expriest shook his head. Oh it may be the Lord’s way of showin how little store he sets by the learned. Whatever could it mean to one who knows all? He’s an uncommon love for the common man and godly wisdom resides in the least of things so that it may well be that the voice of the Almighty speaks most profoundly in such beings as lives in silence themselves.

He watched the kid.

For let it go how it will, he said, God speaks in the least of creatures.

The kid thought him to mean birds or things that crawl but the expriest, watching, his head slightly cocked, said: No man is give leave of that voice.

The kid spat into the fire and bent to his work.

I aint heard no voice, he said.

When it stops, said Tobin, you’ll know you’ve heard it all your life.

Is that right?

Aye.

The kid turned the leather in his lap. The expriest watched him.

At night, said Tobin, when the horses are grazing and the company is asleep, who hears them grazing?

Dont nobody hear them if they’re asleep.

Aye. And if they cease their grazing who is it that wakes?

Every man.

Aye, said the expriest. Every man.

The kid looked up. And the judge? Does the voice speak to him?

The judge, said Tobin. He didn’t answer.

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In one of the biggest displays of cowardice in recent memory, since the Indiana legislature reversed itself on requiring abortion providers to inform women considering abortion that abortion increases breast cancer risk, Susan G. Komen for the Cure has now caved under the political heat and reversed itself after only three days on its decision to defund Planned Parenthood.

Just as it was reported that Planned Parenthood saw a spike in donations from abortion supporters following Komen’s initial decision, I’m sure many “pro-lifers” who’ve long declined to support Komen because they knew some of their money would go to Planned Parenthood gave money to Komen over the last three days because of its decision to defund Planned Parenthood.

Komen owes those people their money back.

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I left this comment this morning at IOZ:

There has long been a terrible contradiction at the heart of Komen’s association with Planned Parenthood: induced abortion significantly increases breast cancer risk, and many women have died as a result of breast cancer caused by their abortions. Both Komen and Planned Parenthood have a long history of suppressing this inconvenient truth. The National Cancer Institute’s central role in this massive deception was one of my first clues that the State is the Son of the Father of Lies. Perhaps Komen’s apparently courageous disassociation now signals a willingness to finally admit this terrible truth.

Lest it’s assumed I know not whereof I speak, I wrote one of the “books” on the subject, published back in 1999 by that bastion of right-wing propaganda, the University of Wisconsin Law School. See here: http://www.kindleylaw.com/?page_id=10.

The article points the way to totally and irrevocably “defunding” Planned Parenthood by way of coast-to-coast medical malpractice / toxic tort litigation.

So you might want to consider redirecting your donations to a more viable and less hypocritical “cause.”

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Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure is defunding Planned Parenthood. Wesley J. Smith offers one explanation. Jonathon Turley has a similar albeit differently slanted take. Here is an altogether different possible rationale for Komen’s decision: Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest provider of abortions + Abortion is the single most avoidable risk factor for breast cancer.

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When Stephen Colbert announced his “candidacy” for the Republican nomination last week, and urged his viewers to vote for Herman Cain as a vote for him, I worried that this would hurt Ron Paul, because the people most likely to vote for Colbert are probably also the people most likely to vote for Paul. I’m no longer worried, and I now respect Colbert even more than I already did:

(H/T David Kramer at the Lew Rockwell Blog)

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Via Brian Doherty at Reason, some chick writing in the women’s section of Slate concludes, as summarized by Doherty, that “young men like [Ron] Paul’s ideas because they are black and white and simplistic and make the young men feel smart.”

I resemble that remark, although I can no longer call myself a young man.

If there is Law, there is not one Law for the people who constitute the State and another Law for everyone else. The same Law applies equally to all.

It’s as simple as that.

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“And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I’m going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.

God didn’t call America to do what she’s doing in the world now. (Preach it, preach it) God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.

But God has a way of even putting nations in their place. (Amen) The God that I worship has a way of saying, “Don’t play with me.” (Yes) He has a way of saying, as the God of the Old Testament used to say to the Hebrews, “Don’t play with me, Israel. Don’t play with me, Babylon. (Yes) Be still and know that I’m God. And if you don’t stop your reckless course, I’ll rise up and break the backbone of your power.” (Yes) And that can happen to America. (Yes) Every now and then I go back and read Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And when I come and look at America, I say to myself, the parallels are frightening. And we have perverted the drum major instinct.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Drum Major Instinct” sermon (4 February 1968)

Barack Obama is a disgrace:

“I know there’s been a lot of controversy lately about the quote on the memorial,” Obama, the nation’s first black president, said at a service project at a school in Washington in honor of today’s King holiday. “If you look at that speech about Dr. King as a drum major, what he really said was that all of us could be a drum major for service, all of us could be a drum major for justice, and there’s nobody who can’t serve, nobody who can’t help somebody else.”

Dr. King also said in that speech that all of us could be a drum major for peace.

Here is something else Dr. King said in that speech that is particularly applicable to “the nation’s first black president”:

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. (Yes) And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important.

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I learned via IOZ that the words in the title of this post are inscribed in the granite of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in D.C., and that some people aren’t happy about it. They think these words inaccurately paraphrase the words of the sermon from which they’re taken, and make King sound like “an arrogant twit.” The State has heard their prayers, and is somehow now going to change the inscription. After reading the actual sermon, I think the inscription is just fine the way it is, for reasons I explained in a comment on IOZ’s post.

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It’s not the prospect of getting your face eaten off by hungry rats, or of whatever you most fear befalling you. No, it is the fear of ultimately betraying those you love, of preferring your self to them, of preferring that what you most fear be done to them rather than to you, and thereby discovering that your love was a lie, and that you yourself are less than nothing. It is the fear of doing, and being, what you hate.

The so-called Problem of Evil, widely considered as the strongest argument against the existence of God, is typically framed by asking why bad things happen to good people. But the real Problem of Evil is this: Why do “good” people do bad things? Why do we ourselves not do what we believe to be right? Why do we fall short, by the testimony of our own consciences? In this, I believe, and not in cancers or tsunamis, or even in man’s inhumanity to man, is found the greatest obstacle to faith. It is found not in what others do to us or each other, but in what we ourselves do, or fail to do.

In theory, then, as the Stoics might say, our Happiness and our Beatitude is in our own hands. Yet even so, “the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. . . . I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” Those of us who have foolishly gotten ourselves addicted to cigarettes know this better than anybody, and are reminded of it daily.

The answer, if there is one, is to understand, before we ever get to Room 101, that we are less than nothing, and that only God is Good. Perhaps then we will find in ourselves the strength of the martyrs. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” The modern ear revolts at this: Am I not good? Why did God create me to be nothing, and so weak? Why, if he is our Father, and loves us, does he demand our abasement, and our abject subjection to Him? But, in truth, the Son is equal to the Father. God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. God is more us than we are ourselves. It is we who have made ourselves nothing. It is as easy as the Stoics say. It is as easy to lay down your life for your friends as it is to throw away those stupid cigarettes.

I believe there is salvation even for Winston Smith and for Julia. Perhaps, as barbaric as it sounds, there is a Purgatory, wherein what we fear most finally befalls us, and wherein we may discover for ourselves, if we didn’t discover it in this world, that the “sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”

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H/T John Regan

On a related note, Rick Horowitz writes (emphasis added):

You might pity us [criminal defense attorneys] because of our clients. “Oh, god!,” I hear more often than not. “How could you defend that person? How hard that must be!”

The truth is, though, that sometimes our clients are not guilty. Even those who have committed some crime have often not committed the crime of which they are accused. And even when they have — yes, please think about this! — even when they have, it was an accident. A one-off incident that will never recur again.

That’s not at all to say that it’s okay. It’s not to say that all should be forgiven. However much it might actually be as effective in preventing future crimes, I know of no one who will say, “Go, and sin no more.”

Well, okay. Maybe I’ve heard of One. But we know what happened to Him.

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From an article in The Arizona Republic about how crazy Jared Loughner was/is:

In August 2007, Loughner put a cryptic question to Giffords at a public event: “What’s government if words don’t have meaning?”

It seemed an attack on the very legitimacy of government. Giffords fumbled for a reply. Loughner wouldn’t forget it, her or his question.

Three years later, the same question appeared in the last line of a YouTube screed called “Introduction: Jared Loughner.” The lengthy post read like a manifesto.

. . .

Loughner thought money not backed by gold was unconstitutional. That those in power kept it by controlling grammar, words, numbers and symbols; that the CIA and FBI read his online messages; that spaceflight and organized religion were frauds; that teachers and government used mind control.

. . .

Such ideas anchor a number of New Age spiritualist websites that blend theories of lucid dreaming, secret knowledge and government conspiracies, along with several other concepts Loughner wrote about.

It’s unknown whether Loughner accessed such sites, but the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups and extremists, commented on the similarities soon after the shooting.

Taken as a whole, the ideas dovetail with the message of a 2001 full-length animation film “Waking Life,” which news reports said was among Loughner’s favorites.

. . .

In an online post, Loughner named [Philip K.] Dick and George Orwell among his favorite authors. Orwell’s classic “1984” depicts a totalitarian government that can change history by altering language and climaxes when the hero is tortured into submission by agreeing that “2+2=5.”

. . .

He started calculating his life earnings and what he’d paid for education.

. . .

Retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole, whose career focused on mass shooters, says a common trait is what she calls an “injustice collector.” Such shooters often collect grudges, let them ferment and unleash an act of revenge far out of proportion to the initial insult.

It clearly appears that Jared Loughner was indeed clinically insane at the time he committed the terrible actions for which he is incarcerated. What’s disturbing about the article in The Arizona Republic is that it seems to imply that certain ideas (rational in themselves) were part and parcel of his insanity, and that these ideas are therefore as insane and dangerous as Loughner is.

This very blog is “an attack on the very legitimacy of [the] government.” When I first read this opinion issued by the Indiana Supreme Court, my immediate response was to write: “Words, including the words of which the law is made, are worthless.” (Cf. Loughner’s “What’s government if words don’t have meaning?”) The irrationality and the injustice of the court’s opinion literally left me speechless.

Mass shooters are commonly “injustice collectors”? Well, here is just one well-regarded blog, titled Injustice Everywhere, which is exactly that.

“Waking Life” is a damn fine movie. According to Wikipedia, its title is a reference to philosopher George Santayana’s maxim: “Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.” Roger Ebert gave it four out of four stars, and included it on his ongoing list of “Great Movies.”

A lot of people, including a lot of lawyers, are beginning to realize that education, including law school, is a scam.

Is it crazy to think that money not backed by gold is unconstitutional, or that the CIA and the FBI (like the Southern Poverty Law Center) monitors “extremists” online? Is it crazy to regard Orwell’s “1984” as prophetic, and to see his prophecy being fulfilled before our very eyes? Do we not hear, even in this Arizona Republic article itself, the advent of Newspeak, i.e., “the destruction of words” (cf., again, Loughner) and of nuance and distinction, in the equation of attacking “the very legitimacy of government” with insanity?

Loughner is indeed crazy. He’s lost it. But did the State, which shackles and steals from its subjects and then tells them to fly, help drive him mad? How many other fragile minds and desperate souls, especially in this time of artificial and aggravated poverty and unemployment, will be driven by the State’s crimes and doublethink to such madness?

Deliberate and premeditated violence that is gratuitous and unnecessary is madness. It was Loughner’s madness. It is the State’s madness.

I disavow that madness. I fear Room 101. Therefore I speak, while we still can, in spite of the Thought Police.

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I like that I was born on Michaelmas. I like that I’m a Libra. And I like that this was the #1 song in the USA on the day of my birth:

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From today’s NYT:

In 1974, when Colbert was 10, his father, a doctor, and his brothers Peter and Paul, the two closest to him in age, died in a plane crash while flying to a prep school in New England. “There’s a common explanation that profound sadness leads to someone’s becoming a comedian, but I’m not sure that’s a proven equation in my case,” he told me. “I’m not bitter about what happened to me as a child, and my mother was instrumental in keeping me from being so.” He added, in a tone so humble and sincere that his character would never have used it: “She taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that’s directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us. What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not no pain — it’s that the pain is actually a gift. What’s the option? God doesn’t really give you another choice.”

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On Tuesday the US presidential cycle reached its first major milestone, with Iowans caucusing to determine the fates of the GOP’s contenders. As the unofficial start of 2012’s election madness (in fact already well under way), Iowa offers an opportunity to reflect on what rehashing the whole fatuous pretense every four years actually means.

In the systems prevailing around the world today, those of political decision-making, public policy is crafted by an infinitesimal fraction of society — one whose interests are not at all representative of the general population’s. Historically, the state has provided the means through which a circle of rich, ruling elites shifts its costs onto an unwary public and monopolizes the benefits of productive activity.

Since its naissance as the institutionalization of conquest and theft, however, the state has come to be regarded as something else entirely. Today, the state, the great predator of the innocent, enjoys a reputation as guardian of the weak and attendant of justice. And practical politics — that liturgy of the modern state in which the opera of elections is substituted for a government of, by and for the people — has been instrumental in varnishing that reputation.

Intermittent rituals like Iowa, rather than presenting a real opportunity to influence government, serve to pacify a populace victimized by government at every opportunity.

As a matter of course, allowing a privileged few to formulate rules for all results in rules calculated to favor those few. Free and open competition, based on equality in rights and fairness in exchange, is never the operating principle in an arrangement whereby some people have a legal prerogative to decide how everyone can use their resources, both tangible and intangible.

Instead, the modus operandi of the political process has always been and will continue to be that of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. As Duke University economist Thomas J. Nechyba succinctly described this phenomenon, “[T]he ‘winners’ are a concentrated few for whom it is easy to organize politically while the ‘losers’ are a diffuse many who barely notice why it is they are losing.”

Such is the nature of monopoly and the reason that it necessarily relies on the coercive, preclusive power of the state.

Among campaigning politicians, the constant rhetorical refrain is fixed on practical solutions to problems facing the country, on “making government work” for ordinary folks. But the representative politics that Americans recognize just isn’t designed to do anything outside of cementing and legitimizing a system of state-enforced corporate capitalism.

Whoever ends up in Washington, money and influence will be waiting there to secure privileges, expressed as laws and regulations that shackle competition. Politicians and their votes will go to the highest bidder, the benefits of obstructing genuine individual rights and voluntary exchange going to the most well-connected.

Getting money out of politics is made impossible by the very nature and definition of politics. The state is an agency of an economic ruling class, and elections are its exiguous attempt at public relations. Real democracy in a stateless society would mean consensually organized groups administering their own affairs, free from aggressive, external rule.

Corporate execs and our “public servants” were the big winners in Iowa. The best the rest of us can do is pull out our votes, withdrawing our participation and getting down to creating the kind of society we want outside of politics.

(source)

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“Rick Perry Pulls Out in Frustration After Santorum Surges From Behind,” courtesy of Radley Balko (and Dan Savage).

Mark Draughn is disgusted.

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