Caylee's Law?

Get ready for the cable-news-personality-driven push to enact "Caylee's Law" all over the country. They're entertaining one in the State of Georgia, and the usually diverse commentary at Peach Pundit presented a nearly united front against.

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Legit Verdict

To be clear, I'm of a rationally firm opinion that if someone attacks you with deadly force, you are well within your rights to defend yourself with a firearm.

However, if an attacker has already been shot, and they are unconcious and bleeding on the floor, coming back to stand over them and shoot them 5 more times is little better than cold-blooded execution. It passes the realm of "self-defense" and into the realm of "murder" when the attacker is no longer a threat due to lying prone and bleeding on the floor.

I don't know all the evidence presented in this case, but that's a verdict that appears to have a basis in reality.

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The Culture You Have

Not the culture you wish you had.

I was running errands this morning, and heard Glenn Beck on the radio playing "Glenn-downer" about the spontaneous celebrations last night at the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed. He asked, "who are these college students?"

The United States Naval Academy has at least one answer to that.

But let us not kid ourselves, Glenn Beck isn't the only one asking about the appropriateness of celebrating a killing after what we saw last night. There are plenty who went out to cheer, and there are plenty who say today that the cheering was inappropriate.

Me? I find it hard to do either.

On the one hand, I would love to think this is a spontaneous outpouring of joy and thanks to our men and women in uniform - a preview of the ticker-tape parade, if you will. I think that is a lot of it, yes. Our veterans and those serving overseas have accomplished a great deal in those combat zones, often without the strategic or tactical support necessary for a war effort of this magnitude. They deserve a great deal of thanks and recognition for that, and they deserve to have their ears ringing with the cheers of their countrymen when they return home.

I wish I could just stop thinking about it there and leave it at that.

But I cannot. I read the words of those people chiding the exuberant behavior. I think about where our culture has gone and how this kind of reaction should be expected after all the rah-rah over the last 10 years. This past decade has seen our popular culture devolve into controversies over American flag lapel pins, ribbon stickers on cars, the competition between sporting events to see who can unfurl the biggest American flag at mid-field with the loudest and closest flyover. If you didn't participate in the "USA" chant, or wear red on Fridays, or display appropriate mourning over everything September 11th, your patriotism was in question. One of the greatest condemnations in the past 10 years has been the idea that someone might be "apologizing" for America by looking at the world from different points of view.

Those folks cheering, you have to try and see it through their eyes.

For the young folks at least - those college kids Glenn Beck was talking about - they were between 8 and 15 on September 11th. This is the world and the culture they've grown up in. This is the behavior our culture has asked them to display. Before last night, anyone criticizing - or even questioning - behavior like that was considered un-American.

Think about the last decade and you'll see why spontaneous celebration comes from on the heels of good news. Between September 11th; Madrid, London, and Bali; the war in Afganistan continues; the war in Iraq continues; Hurricane Katrina and the Flood - and the rebuilding that continues; earthquakes and/or tsunamis in Indonesia, Haiti, and Japan; the Great Recession, the rising gasoline prices, the economic stagnation and insecurity that comes along with it; the BP Oil Gusher in the Gulf of Mexico; and our poisoned popular and political culture, where has the good news come from for the last 10 years?

And now, the face most associated with evil over the last decade was brought down. How can you expect people not to cheer? When talking about excessive celebration, there is an oft-heard suggestion to "act like you've been there before." For a lot of folks, they haven't been here before. For others, it has been a long, long time.

On the other hand, I remember the decade before the last and I grew up in the decade before that. As much damage as bin Laden has done to our nation and our world, as much damage has been done in our nation's imperfect pursuit of him and the clash of civilizations that he intentionally attempted to construct (and that so many in our own nation followed him into with froth at the mouths), I find it hard to celebrate with cheering.

We really have lost so very much, in so very many ways, as a nation and as a world, over the last 10 years. I know things in the past weren't as good as my memory thinks they were, and I know things in the present aren't as bad as they seem, but I can't help to think about where the world would be if this one madman hadn't had the wherewithal or means to disrupt and damage so much of what it felt we were working on.

And that does not make me feel like cheering.

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Security Theatre's New Season

So, the new Department of Homeland Security wants to scrap the old, color-coded terror alert levels. Napolitano brought up a great point:

"We've been at 'orange' since 2006."

I always found that color-coordinated stuff nonsense, and I remember it changing every once in a while to remind Americans to fear, fear, fear. I believe it was counterproductive, the equivalent of crying "wolf" constantly for years.

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect to be a fan of the new system, either. All this is, in my opinion, more theatre. Maybe it comes from those American people who allow themselves to believe that they can outsource vigilance to a government agency so they don't have to worry about it personally. Maybe it is the government, who wants to advertise that they're doing something of value to the taxpayer without people looking too closely. Maybe it is a combination of both.

I only know this: you are never perfectly safe. Never. You never have been, you never will be, and no amount of complaining too or about the government is going to change that. They have limited resources to act proactively and reactively to those things that go bump in the night. While you are right to expect those actions to work effectively and continuously to help minimize risks to society as a whole and to work towards justice after the fact, you cannot abdicate your responsibility to participate in your own personal safety.

Now, you can let your fear of non-safety rule your life, or you can deal with it and pay attention to your surroundings, mitigating your risk as much as you can within reason, and understanding that sometimes no amount of preparation will ever be enough.

The answer isn't an overactive, color-coded government. The answer isn't to live your life in fear and never enjoy things because you're worried about events beyond your control. The answer is a society where everyone is, on average, a little bit vigilant; a society where people are more educated and less fearful, more involved in their communities and less alienated from each other, and use more common sense to pay more attention to their surroundings.

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Fear & Cartooning

Recognize the format of this video? They're riffing off a powerful information transmitter to spread a culture of fear.

Because, really, that was some shakedown?

Not to mention the fact that, it AIN'T EVEN BEEN A YEAR, and they're already back to drilling.

And spilling.

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The KSM Civilian Federal Trial Unicorn

Promised. Not delivered.

But let's not kid ourselves who is at fault for this broken promise. While the President and the Attorney General bear tremendous responsibility for it, you cannot excuse the cowardice of the political factions in this country who would use such a trial as an excuse to fan the flames of cultural panic, nationalist fear, and sectarian hatred all over America.

They are the same people who manufactured a controversey about a "Ground Zero Mosque," which was neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero, which an issue last summer (several of whom are running for President) to help them win elections through demagoguery. They are the people who, fearing the political fallout from that manufacture, choose to bow or cower before the altar of cultural panic instead of leading the nation away from it.

It is a shame that, when it comes to big decisions, the political calculus must include expectations of issue demagoguery by the opposition and allies. What is even more of a shame is that those calculations show the manufacture of fear to be more powerful than doing things the way they ought to be done.

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Tu Quoque

Newsflash: human beings still prone to outbursts of violence, threats of violence, advocacy of violent policies and behaviors, and extreme cases of government sanctioned violence - regardless of religion or political affiliation.

One of the dumbest things about stereotyping and demonizing one group of people for a universal human flaw is the cognitive dissonance required to ignore your own demographic's similar behaviors.

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All According to Plan

Well, it looks like the best-laid plans of American evangelical exhibitionist fundamentalist Christian-istas have achieved the desired effect.

The ironic thing is that too many Americans will watch the news and see a bunch of Muslims in Afghanistan chanting "Death To America," and think this is A) an unprovoked reaction, and B) representative of Muslims worldwide.

Let's put the truth to it:

1. A professional American Christian congregation Hate Group with non-profit tax status, in order to raise money and get attention for itself, abused our nearly sacred First-Amendment Rights in order to yell "Death to Islam" as loud as it possibly could.

2. Muslims in a place that has been living in stone age conditions since at least 1978, who are under military occupation by troops from nations with mostly Christian populations that have significant political factions and popular cultures that constantly demonize Islam, hear "Death to Islam." Again.

3. Because they have not lived under a constitutional government for some time, and have no experience with ideas like the First Amendment, it is very easy for our legal protection of "Death to Islam" speech to appear like a legal endorsement of "Death to Islam" speech.

4. Many Americans ignore items 1 - 3, and watch the news to see Muslims burning flags, effigies of the President, rioting, and killing UN workers.

5. Many Americans use that to justify their continued xenophobia and religious bigotry, which is far more of a historical and existential threat to America than Muslims or Sharia law will ever be.

All just a part of the plan.

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The Glynn County Life

Finally, someone exposes the bullshit stinking from behind the bench from the Glynn County Drug Court. (HT: patsbrother)

Luckily, like in the Middle East, when cracks first appear in the despot's reign, things start to happen. Hopefully, people will start taking notice and start realizing how much power local authorities have over your life.

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Georgia Republican Presidential Hopefuls

What should really make Democrats mad is that guys like these, who politic to the lowest common demoninator by brining up the lurking spectre of American sharia law, belong to the political party who ran the Democrats out of every state office.

Oh, and with his "secular atheist country, potentially dominated by militant Islamists" quote, Gingrich officially joins the In Their Own Words Chorus of Incongruent Political Opinions that many of my conservative friends couldn't believe existed. And let's not pretend we don't know where the "Muslims = Bad" stuff is really coming from.

Irrational cultural panic may sell advertising, but it should not win elections in an educated nation.

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For the Record

They're just calling it "The Report."

The full version is a massive, 150 page excoriation of a police department that has structurally operated outside the law far too often for far too long. The executive summary alone reads like 19 page thriller novel of every Hollywood stereotype associated with the "bad cops." But you keep scrolling down to another example of malfeasance and miscarried justice. Some of these couldn't be made up.

Some folks have a lot to say about it. Others don't have to say much at all. They are truly the ones most vindicated by these findings, as they have been telling everyone who would listen what has really been going on for painfully far too long. They have been the ones telling us how deep the cancer grows.

And now the United States Department of Justice has concluded their investigation, and we find out just how right those voices have been.

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Seattle's Hurricane Pam

Unlike the earthquakes that have done incredible damage to Haiti, Chile, and New Zealand, the earthquake in Japan has rocked the American psyche. Not only is our stock market in freefall, but the "renaissance" of nuclear energy is now being questioned in a way that was unthinkable before.

Because if it can happen to Japan, it can happen to us. That seems to be the opinion, anyway. Nevermind that an earthquake in Haiti could very well set off a tsunami that batters an already fragile Gulf Coast...

But it does awaken some folks to the risks "the big one" poses to American cities. While we all suspect San Francisco and Los Angeles are tops on the list, you can't forget about Seattle. Maybe the city leaders in the Northwest, the people who live there, and the political federal authorities who will be tasked with response will take their scenario simulations more seriously than past worst-case scenarios that later proved prescient.

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Costs

In other news regarding government waste, here are just a few figures regarding the cost of our nation's war on drugs.

Because some people continue to think that marijuana being illegal doesn't cost us anything.

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Balance

More on the comparisons and contrasts examination of balance for the sake of balance, false equivalencies, and non-comparisons.

According to Ross Douhat at the New York Times, "getting out into the streets and getting a little bloody" is equivalent to "second amenment remedies."

Which I guess gives us the equation:

street fighting = armed insurrection

Umm, I'm not a big fan of violence advocates on either side and I have grown to despise violent rhetoric in politics and consider inappropriate military metaphors childish.

That being said, those two items are in no way equivalent in terms of scale, and I am shocked that more reasonable members of our media caste are so invested in "balance" that they will willingly ignore this fact.

HT: Daily Dish

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Insufficient Evidence

What has happened, and what still happens, in regards to our generations' "War on Terror," should be a shame on our national conscience as great as that of the Japanese American Internment. I could relate it to many of the historical injustices the people of this nation, through fear or greed, suspended the rights of fellow Americans for purposes that could only be described as illegitimate or lazy. But the Internment is the one that comes to mind the easiest, because that should have been our lesson on fear-based government overreach.

Maybe it would be easier to draw lines to our history if politicians, pundits and cultural harpies didn't spend so much time trying to rewrite or undermine the events and lessons of the past.

For those of you wondering, this is but one of the reasons I will never fully trust the government. I love my country, I respect my government, and I realize that anyone can make mistakes. But I also know that people who make mistakes don't like to admit it, and any human being can make assumptions. If that human being has some form of authority, he can do significant damage with those assumptions if he is able.

If someone in authority thinks you are a threat, and you have limited resources to defend yourself, they will come for you first. Vigilance is always necessary so that such things like this can be called out when the time comes, cynicism is always necessary to make sure you aren't being fed a bunch of bullshit when those in authority tell you about it.

It is also important from a real security standpoint. Behaving badly will always keep them from effectively focusing resources on the more legitimate threats - they will be too busy with the low hanging fruit.

This is one of the reasons I refuse to respond to the politics of fear.

This is also one of the reasons I find it abhorrent and intellectually sloppy to equate all Muslims or Middle Easterners with terrorism in our political discourse, our campaigns, our media and our culture. That helps cover up those in authority who make mistakes, it helps those mistakes make us less secure, and it only increases the ignorance necessary for our population to forget (and thus repeat) the sad lessons of our own history.

This is also one of the reasons I find it ridiculous that interrogations might involve torture, or that individuals can be held by our government for significant periods of time without formal charges being brought. If someone is a prisoner of war, they are a prisoner of war - obey those rules. If someone is suspected of a crime, bring charges against them in a court of law. It really is that simple.

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Two Acts of Violence

There are tens of thousands on the streets right now demonstrating support for Labor and "liberal" causes. So why isn't the mainstream media telling you about all the incidents of violence these thugs are accountable for? Because the list really isn't that long.

If you want the media to treat conservative activists as generally good people who have bad apples and assholes in their midst, you have to treat left-wing activists the same way.

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Christendom

Rick Santorum sums up the problems with historical revisionism and its application to utopian right-wing politics. He is one of the reasons people can freely associate mainstream Republicans with the policies of 'endless war' and the 'clash of civilizations.'

This is a guy invited to speak to private Christian schools, and Republican womens' organizations in South Carolina - an early primary state for Presidential politics. Santorum has a high profile, nationally, and continues the politics of theocracy, demonization of Islam, and appears to advocate perpetual war by America against nations of the Middle East.

Sounds like a lot of national Republicans these days, doing what they can to fire up the base for 2012.

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A Non-Frivolous Lawsuit

One thing I want to start doing is highlighting lawsuits that matter. I want to do so to counter a popular and dangerous cultural narrative that exists in our society.

I've heard a lot about "frivolous" lawsuits recently, both on talk radio and through chain emails. I'm sure it has to do with the Taco-Bell-Not-Serving-Beef litigation (a suit I do not consider frivolous), which came about the same time some woman who walked into a water fountain while texting attempted to sue the mall she was in for her accident (which I do consider silly).

But the "frivolous lawsuit" comes from a longstanding cultural narrative that America is a too-quick-to-sue culture. The narrative continues that these lawsuits are the fault of trial lawyers (who, we are constantly reminded, robustly support Democratic Pary with donations) and drive up costs for all services and goods, especially in the field of medicine. Every time you see a warning label on a product, we are told to remember that such a warning exists because someone filed a ridiculous lawsuit sometime somewhere someway. The focus driving this narrative is always the initial filing, or initial finding - I do not believe a cultural understaning exists to check on whether any of those cases get dismissed or have an outrageous award reduced on appeal.

Thing is, you rarely hear about the necessary lawsuits. You rarely hear about those lawsuits constantly required to keep big business or government overreach in check. You rarely hear about those lawsuits that fall under the guise of a "redress of grievances" that take years to come to a conclusion, that take hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars from filing to final verdict. You would be hard pressed to find widespread circulation of how damaging a "loser pays" system would be for those individuals who attempt to right some wrong.

Part of that is because following legal minutiae is boring, part of it is because of the cultural narrative that leads us to believe most lawsuits are frivolous.

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Unhinged

Sort of a non-sequitur, this morning I got the opportunity to listen to Glenn Beck's radio program for about 10 minutes.

He was talking about Code Pink (they still exist?) and a protest they held where "several" individuals held up nasty signs against Clarence Thomas and Glenn Beck (he has video on a website). This was important, he said, because Code Pink represents all liberals in this country, like their friends in the Weather Underground and Bill Ayers (and you know who he knows). Anyway, according to Beck, these people are dangerous, and the FBI says so (audio clip) because they went to prestigious "educational centers" called colleges and used to get together back in the 70's when they talked about killing 25 million white babies to prove their revolutionary credibility. This is nothing short of the language of ethnic cleansing, he claims, which they also employ when talking about Israel/the Jews, which explains why Code Pink is working with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood to organize the many demonstrations around this country in support of the Egyptian revolutionaries (?). Beck says this is what communists and socialists and groups like Code Pink and ANSWER and the Weather Underground do whenever and wherever they take over.

Don't believe him? He's going to connect the dots between Code Pink and Hamas and George Soros for you on his show this evening. He's tired of ringing the bell and playing Paul Revere.

And where IS the media on all this, he asks?

Seriously, I've got to find a transcript of all that to prove to myself I'm not making it up.

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The Islamic Republicans of New Jersey

The same architects responsible for manufacturing the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy (which was neither illegal, nor a mosque, nor at Ground Zero, nor controversial when first envisioned) are now furious with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) for turning New Jersey into a hotbed of terrorist sympathy under the yoke of Sharia law.

Not my words, theirs.

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