To the So-Called 53%: Stop Embarrassing Yourselves, by Kevin Carson at the Center for a Stateless Society (republished in its entirety below):
One of the corporate establishment’s favorite tricks for countering dissent is fake populism — dismissing as “class warfare” any critique of genuine privilege while misdirecting the working class’s resentment toward the underclass.
If you’re visiting this page the old fashioned way (i.e., not in an RSS feed) you’ve probably noticed a couple minor changes. The first is the removal of the red circled A (standing for Anarchy is Order) which until today graced the right sidebar. This is not because I’ve mellowed out but because I just updated to the latest version of WordPress and after I did so this image inexplicably enlarged to about 10 times its former size. Once I figure out how to fix this glitch, if I ever do, I’ll put it back.
I’ve also added a link in the right sidebar to a new blog I’m experimenting with, freelegallance.com. Thus far I’ve only posted there once, a couple months ago, but the idea is to use that blog as a platform to expand my work as a freelance legal research and writing assistant and to post information about new developments in the law as coolly and collectedly as I can, while continuing to do here whatever it is I do here. I’ve also tried to add a footer to my posts here in the RSS feed linking to the new blog. I guess I’ll know if that worked once I hit publish.
Portland police Lt. Robert King said.
The official demonization of “anarchists” by State propagandizers continues on apace, in this instance by an agent of an “agency”-without-principals which intends to violently evict Occupy protesters from Portland parks this weekend. Meanwhile, a real-life “anarch” (leader of leaderlessness), Wendy McElroy, explores, at the Daily Anarchist, what an anarchist system of justice might look like, and in reply to a comment on her post writes:
I am by no means a Nietzsche scholar or fan boy, but in light of what he had to say about the State I think it’s safe to say that those inclined to blame him for the Nazis are grossly mistaken. In any event, I want to distance myself from any vulgar and probably mistaken interpretation of his denigration of the “superfluous” and the “all-too-many” that I approvingly quoted along with his damnation of the State.
Albert Jay Nock notes what I think is the relevant distinction:
Check out this eye-opening essay by Alan Dershowitz (H/T Evolution News & Views) at the website of a new movie about the Scopes Monkey Trial, “alleged,” starring Brian Dennehy as Clarence Darrow and Fred Thompson as William Jennings Bryan. As Dershowitz shows, the textbook from which John Scopes was accused of teaching, Hunter’s Civic Biology, was replete with racism and eugenic advocacy.
On a related note, Jeff Gamso credits Mike at Crime & Federalism with having the best tag line in the whole blogosphere:
Because everything I was ever told was a lie.
I spent the time I was going to use writing this post instead re-reading Henry David Thoreau’s A Plea for Captain John Brown. Here’s an excerpt that’s particularly interesting to me as a lawyer and that explains the nature of Thoreau’s “Plea,” but read the whole thing and be reminded that great heroes have lived and died in America:
I’ve edited out the needlessly profane words I used in a recent post to describe the most hated judge in America. Other judges have done even worse things in their published opinions. Police officers have seen, and criminal defense attorneys have represented people accused of doing, much worse things.
. . . appears as the vital Idea of which the “consent of the governed” is a pale and passive imitation, and as what distinguishes and divides a People from a State. A few posts ago I quoted Nietzsche:
Where there are still peoples, the state is not understood, and is hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.
I hold up as support for Nietzsche’s observation the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy and the attitude of the Iroquois to the authoritarian governments brought over by the British colonists, and recommend Charles Mann’s 2005 op-ed in the New York Times on this subject. In his book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Mann wrote:
Probably the craziest thing I do on this blog, and the thing most likely to get me disbarred, is openly criticize judges. A couple friends and family members have wondered at some of the things I’ve written, and wondered if I wasn’t scared that a judge might read them. Despite the modest readership of this blog indicated by sitemeter, a couple local attorneys have randomly mentioned to me that they read the blog, and complimented me on it. I have to assume it’s likely that others in the local legal community, including possibly some judges I appear before, have read it, and aren’t amused. This realization no doubt contributes to the generalized sense of estrangement and alienation I noted in my previous post.
From Lust for Justice, Paulette Frankl’s biography of J. Tony Serra:
“The most vital human force on the face of the Earth,” he says, “is the true believer. It’s naive. It’s simple. It’s non-intellectual. It’s a wholehearted commitment to a cause. It’s what everyone’s afraid of. That’s what I bring into the courtroom.”
Serra’s insistence on swimming against the current on occasion, however, doesn’t translate outside the courtroom, even right outside the door. Considering himself the last of a dying breed, a sociological throwback, often results in estrangement. Wherever he goes, he admits, he feels estranged.
“Existentialism 101,” he says. “Disgorge yourself of everything, and redefine yourself, and ultimately the first level you reach is estrangement. The first level you feel is your alienation. I’ve never overcome that.”
My comment responding to the above phrase in a comment from la Rana at IOZ’s blog is probably the concisest expression yet of my “political” ideals:
That’s a thin reed indeed, and in fact I see no separation whatsoever. Anarchy prevails betwixt the governments of the world. What is an individual laying claim to a house and a yard but a little government? My prescription for what ails the world: balkanization (all the way down to that schlub in his castle) and confederation mediated by Georgism.
reading this:
Smith, who had been released from custody in 2006 pending the government’s appeal of her case, is expected to return to prison before Christmas, her attorney said.
. . .
Lawrence Daniels, a supervising deputy attorney general who argued the case for restoring Smith’s conviction, said he couldn’t answer questions about the case until he had fully reviewed the 18-page decision.
Smith’s attorney, Michael J. Brennan, said he would file a clemency petition with the state government but that the chances of it being granted were “extremely slim.”
“The attorney general’s office has fought vigorously to reincarcerate her for years. They don’t have the authority to say, ‘Just kidding, she doesn’t have to go back to jail,’ ” Brennan said.
. . .
made me think of this:
Thus writes Justice Ginsburg, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Breyer, in their dissenting opinion in Cavazos v. Smith, in which the majority summarily reversed a Ninth Circuit decision holding that no rational trier of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty of shaking her grandchild and causing his death in 1996. As a result of the majority’s decision, the grandmother, who has been free for the last five years, will now have to return to prison.
The very fact that the presumably-rational Ninth Circuit judges found that no rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt should itself demonstrate to a rational mind that no rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Even the majority on the SCOTUS admitted that “Doubts about whether Smith is in fact guilty are understandable.” If those doubts are understandable, they’re reasonable.
For various personal and professional reasons (which may be readily discernible by regular readers of this blog), I am phasing out most of my regular law practice (primarily by slashing my advertising budget) and am looking to expand my work as a freelance legal research and writing assistant to other lawyers. The most positive of these reasons is that, since my days on law review at the University of Wisconsin, legal research and writing is the aspect of the law I’ve found most fulfilling and at which I believe I’m most proficient.
To facilitate this expansion, I am offering my services as a legal research and writing assistant (at least for now) at the very bottom of the customary price range for such services.
Such assistance can take many forms, at both the trial and appellate levels, from simply researching the case law on a particular issue and summarizing the holding of each case, to writing more formal memoranda, to drafting briefs for filing in court. I recently assisted an experienced and highly-competent appellate attorney by providing basic research at the beginning of the appeal, which he built upon in drafting the brief. I then reviewed the draft and suggested various changes, most of which he incorporated in the final draft. All of this was done by email and fax machine, since we resided in different cities.
Feel free to email me at john at kindleylaw dot com if interested.
I alluded to it today in this comment at Popehat. As is too typical, the published appellate opinion doesn’t accurately reflect the actual facts and arguments at issue as I remember them. But beyond that, I was second chair, and the lawyer who called the shots and I didn’t see eye to eye on the arguments that ultimately made it into the briefs filed in the trial court. I wasn’t involved at all in the appeal. Granted, judging by the opinion the result probably would have been the same even if the arguments I wanted made were made. But I don’t talk much about this case because, given my role, I’m reluctant to accept or disclaim responsibility for it.
The heart of the case, as I saw it, was this: the abortion industry’s widely promulgated claim that abortion is “ten times safer than childbirth” is proved false and misleading by the generally accepted and established scientific fact that childbirth reduces the risk of breast cancer.
Strike the Root links today to my recent post on the Presumption of Innocence, which largely consisted of quoting J. Tony Serra on the subject. I wanted to add one thing to Serra’s inspirational words: A recent Gallup poll found that, for the first time since Gallup began asking in 1969, more Americans support legalization of marijuana than oppose it. My view is that, so long as fewer than 92% of Americans (nevermind 50%) have supported the criminalization of marijuana, so long has the criminalization of marijuana been exposed as itself an infamous crime.
If 11 out of 12 jurors in a criminal case vote to convict, only 91.66% of those jurors have voted to convict. We righteously require more than that to overcome the presumption of innocence and convict a person of a crime.
If we the people really believe that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, and that we are endowed by our Creator with the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, then we should presume innocent not only every person but every person’s pursuit of happiness, and it should take a lot more than just a bare majority of self-serving politicians to rebut that presumption and to deem anything anybody does a crime.
“Well, of course it has been. There is no contract between the state and its subjects; the contract is with itself; the First Amendment isn’t a constraint on the power of government to fuck your shit up; it is a mere New Year’s Resolution; having used up that January membership at the gym, fatty is going to take a day off . . . two days off . . . well I’ll go back next week . . . mmmm are those double-stuff oreos? . . . nom nom nom crunch crunch crunch.” — Monsieur IOZ
Odds and ends from around the web:
Ron Paul, Obstetrician: No Abortion, No Federal Money
Are Law Schools and Bar Exams Necessary?
Oral Argument, scene I — Appellant’s opening
Summary Execution Is Not A Joke. Hillary Clinton Should Resign.
The Virginia State Bar v. Free Speech
Public Defender Loses Lawsuit Over His Courtroom Scuffle with Deputies
I remember a discussion I had with a law prof after class back in 1999 at the University of Wisconsin. We were discussing my student law review article, which had recently been selected for publication by my peers on law review. I had given it the overly long but descriptive title “The Fit Between the Elements for an Informed Consent Cause of Action and the Scientific Evidence Linking Induced Abortion with Increased Breast Cancer Risk.” I had started the article with the modestly academic goal of simply establishing the legal duty to inform women considering abortion of this scientific evidence, but was told by the editorial staff early on that to make the article interesting and important enough to be published I would need to demonstrate the actual viability of an actual cause of action based on breach of this duty. By the time the article was thoroughly researched and written, I was convinced that I had indeed invented the next big “toxic tort.” Apparently, the editorial staff was similarly if not identically persuaded, because they voted to publish the article.
My idol Tony Serra is quoted in Lust for Justice as saying to a graduating class of law students:
I believe that the presumption of innocence is a fabulous thing. It’s perhaps the most cherished thing that we have given body to as a culture. Americans don’t really stand for very much. We’ve invented the cowboy movie. We’ve certainly invented a lot of implements of destruction: military airplanes, deadly toxins, and bombs. We jealously guard our atomic weaponry and disallow everyone else to have it. But on the good side, we’ve given concrete form and expression to the concept of presumption of innocence and we’re giving it now to the world. It’s really one of the pillars of a free society. We presume innocence. We make the prosecution prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, to a moral certainty. What a fabulous notion!
Jonathan Turley on the abuse of a wounded man and the parading and stripping of his corpse.
(The title of this post is borrowed from the Wobblies.)
A comment by Ryan from Absurd Results on this post about the Georgist “Single Tax” and Thomas Jefferson’s “Ward System” gave me the opportunity to once again formulate, summarize, and clarify my political wish list. Ryan wrote:
As for Georgism, I have to admit, I find it intriguing—even more so when combined with Jefferson’s ward system. Actually, I think the ward system (which sounds a lot like Michael Rozeff’s panarchy) would be essential for a single tax regime, for it would more likely keep closed the door to statism by making the wards compete for citizens.
Eric Rasmusen has an excellent point-by-point critique, which I also linked to in my last post, of the Indiana Supreme Court’s September 2011 opinion granting rehearing and “restat[ing] the essential holding” in Barnes v. State. The Court’s original opinion held that the common-law “right to reasonably resist an unlawful police entry into a home is no longer recognized under Indiana law.” The opinion granting rehearing, on the other hand, holds that the common-law right to reasonably resist unlawful entry into a home is not a defense to the crime of battery on a police officer. (Furthermore, it also appears to suggest that the Indiana statute authorizing “reasonable force . . . to prevent or terminate” the unlawful entry of a dwelling is not a defense to the crime of battery on a police officer, either, on the grounds that battery on a police officer to prevent or terminate the police officer’s unlawful entry of a dwelling is never “reasonable.”)
“Mayor Gaynor astonished the whole of New York when he pointed out to a correspondent who had been complaining about the inefficiency of the police, that any citizen has the right to arrest a malefactor and bring him before a magistrate. “The law of England and of this country,” he wrote, “has been very careful to confer no more right in that respect upon policemen and constables than it confers on every citizen.” State exercise of that right through a police force had gone on so steadily that not only were citizens indisposed to exercise it, but probably not one in ten thousand knew he had it.” — Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State (1935)
Seattle crime-fighting “superhero” Phoenix Jones knows he has it, and more power to him.
When the underlying issue is his own sanity, and when he himself is Exhibit A in support thereof.
The denial of Bryan Brown’s application for admission to the Indiana Bar was nothing but tyranny, and leads me to assume that I myself am practicing law on borrowed time. I’ve met Bryan, and he’s far fitter than I to practice law.
Please pray for Bryan as he argues his case to the Seventh Circuit next Thursday at 11:30 a.m. EST.
Forget 9-9-9. Here’s a Simple Plan: 1
H/T LVTFan, who contrasted Cain with George here. And I made the same contrast here. It’s good to see that George hasn’t been entirely forgotten.
Volokh has links to the judge’s offending opinion and the higher court’s contempt finding. A commenter writes:
Before this gets farther, the underlying case was the charge of murdering an officer. Subsequent evidence –official police investigation and all witnesses– state the act was unintentional homicide in the act of self defense. The officer had a history of violence, and first (without provocation or cause) chased one brother down and beat him with an axe-handle. Then the officer went after and started to beat the other brother with the axe-handle; initiating a 5 minute tussle in which the officer’s gun was discharged.
The trial court Judge’s disrespect was for the prosecutor who made an involuntary manslaughter plea offer, then denied making it. When confronted with an audio tape of the offer, the prosecutor retracted it for voluntary manslaughter. In addition, the prosecutor flouted the court by refusing to attend the plea hearing, etcetera ….There is far more underneath all this –and far more background too– but the Virgin Islands Daily News has a splendid reporter who gives a great summary of this series.
Like these cops, who “chose to sack a man instead of shooting him in the Tenderloin early this morning, even after he drew a .380.” (Via Fark)
And some cops aren’t, like this local cop who shot and killed an unarmed man who’d led police on a pursuit before crashing into a building:
The chase ended after ten minutes when Bledsoe crashed his truck into the main building at Faubian Plumbing, Heating & A/C Inc. The business located in the 700-block of E. Lincoln Ave. saw nearly $10,000 in damage.
Police say Bledsoe tried to dislodge his truck from the building by flooring the accelerator as police surrounded him. After refusing to stop, Bledsoe was shot once in the neck.
. . . for leaving this comment on a post at John Regan’s blog about a motion Regan and Norm Pattis have submitted to the SCOTUS on behalf of Sephora Davis (Background here, here, here, here and here):
That is some lawyering. Good for Norm for jumping in, and godspeed to you and Sephora.
And good on Marc Randazza for not deleting this comment on a post in which he professed his atheism and asserted, inter alia, that “[i]f you believe in a magic space zombie Jew, you’re not rational enough to be president either”:
Hmmm… I would then assume that you could heap the same scorn on someone for their lack of beliefs…. so I will. The writer of this blog is a pompous ass know it all who thinks that his way is the right way. He is no better than those he despises. But….. that’s the way it always is.
Have a nice day.
UPDATE: I want to make clear that I don’t agree with the comment posted on Marc’s blog. I actually agree with the main point of Marc’s post. I just think some bloggers should have thicker skins.
 Lysander Spooner |
 Henry George |
 Harriet Tubman |
 Sitting Bull |
 Angelus Silesius |
 Smedley Butler |
 Rose Wilder Lane |
 Albert Jay Nock |
 Dora Marsden |
 Leo Tolstoy |
 Henry David Thoreau |
 John Brown |
 Karl Hess |
 Levi Coffin |
 Max Stirner |
 Dorothy Day |
 Ernst Jünger |
 Thomas Paine |
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