Ron's Log

Another Reason To Wear Clean Underwear

Albert Florence was arrested because state records indicated he was wanted on an outstanding warrant for an unpaid fine. There was no such warrant. In New Jersey, an unpaid fine is not a crime. Mr. Florence was held in jail for a week, required to shower with delousing soap and underwent strip searches. Mr. Florence sued, arguing that unless they have reason to believe the person is carrying a weapon or drugs, a strip search is unconstitutional.

"Pish-posh," the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled. Reminding people that the Constitution was written to imprison the guilty and to protect the police, not to keep innocent people free and safe, Justice Kennedy writing for the majority pointed out that Timothy McVeigh was arrested initially for not having a license plate on his car. And did his strip search uncover drugs or weapons? One of the 9/11 terrorists was stopped and ticketed for speeding just two days before highjacking flight 93. And did the police strip search him and discover the plot? The logic is inescapable. All must be strip searched. I suggest 5 Supreme Court Justices volunteer to be first in line.

Failure Of Judgement By Berkeley Police Chief

Chronologically, this is how it went down: On Saturday, February 18, Peter Cukor found Daniel DeWitt trespassing at his home in Berkeley. Cukor ordered him to leave twice and DeWitt did so. Cukor called the police non-emergency number. Then Cukor walked to a nearby fire station to get help, but the fire fighters were out on a call. When Cukor got back to his house, DeWitt bludgeoned him to death.

Cukor's wife, Andrea, then called 911 and Berkeley Police showed up in 4 minutes. Berkeley PD have said that no one came in response to the first non-emergency call because officers were being kept on standby for an expected Occupy action.

Since then there have been questions about how the police handled it, so on Thursday evening, March 8, Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan and other city and police officials came to a community meeting at Northbrae Community Church to discuss the matter. Reporter Doug Oakley of the Contra Costa Times/Oakland Tribune attended the meeting, which ended around 9:30 PM, after which he wrote and filed his story. Follow that link and you will see that the story was originally posted at 11:21:44 PM and updated at 01:31:26 PM the next day. (BTW, isn't that an amazing thing! A newspaper that documents when it posts and revises a news story! It makes me think they employ - oh, what's the word? - journalists! If only the Desert Sun would hire one of those journalist people. We can but dream.) The essential point to bear in mind is that we are now seeing the revised story.

But to go back to 11:21:44 PM on Thursday night when Mr. Oakley's story was put online. Mr. Oakley had gone to bed for a comfortable rest...for little more than an hour. At 12:45 AM Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, Berkeley PD public information officer, came knocking at Mr. Oakley's door. Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan had ordered her to go to Oakley's home. "'She didn't want to be here at all,' said Oakley. 'She was really apologetic. She was told to go.'" She told Oakley that the Chief had been unable to reach him by phone or email [well duh!] and he wanted errors in the story corrected before the Tribune hit the streets. Mr. Oakley explained that it would be impossible to change the story until 7 AM when real live people showed up for work at the Tribune.

The important error in the story was that Oakley had written that the Police Chief had apologized for not responding to Cukor's first call, when in fact the Chief had apologized only for not getting information out to the community quickly enough.

So, the story of the day on Friday was not about the community meeting, but about the Police Chief sending an officer to a reporter's home in the middle of the night.

The Chief has since apologized:

I sincerely apologize for my actions on Thursday night. The Berkeley Police Department has a good, productive working relationship with the Oakland Tribune and its reporters. I have apologized to the reporter personally and I take full responsibility for this error in judgment. I was frustrated with the Department's ability to get out timely information, but that is no excuse. My actions do not reflect the values of the Berkeley Police Department. I deeply appreciate the importance of an independent and thoroughly informed media, and how they assist us in making our community aware of important events and information. I am committed to ensuring that the Police Department continues to have a trusting and professional working relationship with the press and to make sure that happens, I am planning for an independent review of the Department's policies and practices regarding release of information to the media.

Also, Interim City Manager Christine Daniel has released a statement: "There was no justification for contacting the reporter in this way and the Chief understands that the more appropriate response to his concerns about inaccurate statements in the article should have been to wait until the following day and make contact by phone or email. The Chief has acknowledged his lapse in judgment and assured me that nothing like this will happen again."

Thus endeth the sideshow.

Apparently there is still money to be lost...

...and people to lose it. Official press release that Atlas Shrugged 'Part 2' will be produced. Shooting will begin in April 2012. The press release doesn't mention anyone being beaten, beheaded or disappeared, so one is left to assume that those who perpetrated Part 1 are going to do it again: Paul Johansson, director; John Aglialoro, producer; and Brian Patrick O'Toole, screenplay. This time, however, they're adding Duncan Scott who seems not to have done anything since 1983 when he was the "additional second assistant director" on Zelig. Unless his responsibilities include firing everybody and starting over from scratch, I am not optimistic about chances for improvement.

10th Circuit Rules Oklahoma's Ban On Sharia Law Unconstitutional

News article here. Decision here. Defendants asserted that the state constitutional amendment approved in November 2010 banned all religious laws. The three judges of the appeals court surprised the defendants with their ability to read. The amendment actually barred only Sharia law and suggested that laws of religions that were part of the domestic culture of Oklahoma were permissible.

Anyway, knowing that someone, somewhere is frothing out a screed to accuse these three Tenth Circuit justices of being communistic, atheistic, treasonous, Islamic homosexualists and Democrats, too, I thought I would grab this brief moment of time to check out their bios. Here's what the official court website says about them. The links are to Wikipedia articles. You can make up your own mind about whether they are bent on turning Oral Roberts University into Mecca West, or what.

Judge Terrence L. O'Brien Federal Judicial Service U. S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Nominated by George W. Bush on September 4, 2001, to a seat vacated by Wade Brorby; Confirmed by the Senate on April 15, 2002, and received commission on April 16, 2002. Education University of Wyoming, B.S., 1965 University of Wyoming Law School, J.D., 1972 Professional History U.S. Army, Ordnance Corps, 1966-1969 Staff attorney, Land & Natural Resources Division/Appellate Section, U.S. Department of Justice, 1972-1974 Private practice, Wyoming, 1974-1980 District judge, Sixth Judicial District Court of Wyoming, 1980-2000 President, Visionary Communications, Inc., 2000-2001 Private practice, Wyoming, 2001-2002

Senior Judge Monroe G. McKay Federal Judicial Service U. S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Nominated by Jimmy Carter on November 2, 1977, to a seat vacated by David Thomas Lewis; Confirmed by the Senate on November 29, 1977, and received commission on December 1, 1977. Served as chief judge, 1991-1993. Assumed senior status on December 31, 1993. Education Brigham Young University, B.S., 1957 University of Chicago Law School, J.D., 1960 Professional History U.S. Marine Corps, 1946-1948 Law clerk, Hon. Jesse A. Udall, Supreme Court of Arizona, 1960-1961 Private practice, Phoenix, Arizona, 1961-1966 Director, Peace Corps, Malawi, Africa, 1966-1968 Private practice, Phoenix, Arizona, 1968-1974 Associate professor, Brigham Young University Law School, 1974-1976 Professor, Brigham Young University Law School, 1976-1977

Judge Scott M. Matheson, Jr. Federal Judicial Service Judge, U. S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Nominated by Barack H. Obama on March 3, 2010, to a seat vacated by Michael W. McConnell; Confirmed by the Senate on December 22, 2010. Education Stanford University, A.B. Oxford University, M.A. (Rhodes Scholar) Yale Law School, J.D. Professional History Hugh B. Brown Presidential Endowed Chair, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, 2009-10 Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., 2006-07 Dean University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, 1998-2006 Professor, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, 1991-2010, Associate Professor, 1985-91 United States Attorney for the District of Utah, 1993-1997 Visiting Associate Professor, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University 1989-90 Deputy County Attorney, Salt Lake County, 1988-89 Associate Attorney, Williams & Connolly, Washington, D.C., 1981-85

Judge Matheson might be a bit hard to read, with a Utah background and a Visiting Associate Professorship at the Kennedy School of Government. He ran as a Democrat for Governor of Utah against Jon Huntsman in 2004 and lost.

Wow! Anti-Godwin's Law Law Proposed In Israel

Surely not in response to my recent post, but close enough. Draft legislation in Israel would make it a crime to criticize people by comparing them to Nazis. The AP news article on Yahoo has generated some surprisingly anti-Semitic comments. Well, by "surprising" I suppose I mean it's surprising that Yahoo or AP is letting them sit there. I'm not surprised that there are a lot of anti-Semites around waiting to vent their spleens at the mere mention of Israel. Here let me give you a sample:

Retired 11B4V • Fort Bragg, North Carolina • 5 mins ago

The smartest idea Hitler had was to make them wear a star, so you could identify who they were. If we had that system, I think the US public would be unsettles to see how many media people, those that feed us the news, are jewish. Do people know that Wolf blitzer, Andrea mitchell, Dana Bah, John King, William Kristol, etc are jewish, and zionists? I think not. It would reveal the agenda behind their coverage

Gary Johnson Offically Going With Libertarian Party

His refusal to align himself with the standard Republican Presidential candidate hate-mongering has failed to get him a toehold in the primary campaigns, so Gary Johnson, former Governor of New Mexico, has announced that he will forego the Republican nomination and seek the Libertarian Party nomination instead. Of course, the fact that his views are pretty similar to Ron Paul's hasn't helped his campaign. There's only room for one tolerance-monger among the Republican leaders. His political views include opposition to the Patriot Act, support for free-market capitalism, abolition of the Federal Reserve, a complete opposition to legislative earmarking of budget items (preferring to keep all that power in White House, I guess), allowing states to determine whether abortions would be legal or not, an end to the war on drugs, ending all government regulation of marriage, and a promise to appoint only judges who interpret the Constitution "according to its original meaning" which, without further clarification, means to me a support for terminating equal rights, restoring slavery and counting slaves and Indians as three-fifths of a person.

New Hampshire Ad

Or, as we called it when I lived in Massachusetts: "New Hampster," but that's neither here nor there.

Where's Dagny Taggart When You Need Her?

"California's proposed bullet train will need to soar over small towns on towering viaducts, split rich farm fields diagonally and burrow for miles under mountains for a simple reason: It has no time to spare." Apparently, some people in Sacramento think this is a bad thing.

"In the fine print of a 2008 voter-approved measure funding the project was a little-noticed requirement that trains be able to rocket from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles to San Francisco in no more than two hours and 40 minutes" the L.A. Times says. It certainly didn't escape my notice when I wrote about Prop 1A in October 2008. For me, that requirement was essential, after having watched the lofty promises of Amtrak's Acela gradually compromised until it became nothing more than a really pretty, sorta fast, very expensive train. I also pointed out that Prop 1A required engineering so that "Trains will not be forced to slow down when passing stations." Did nobody in Sacramento read this? It all is obviously very expensive and very desirable (IMO).

And speaking of Dagny Taggart, the Blu-ray version of Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 is available at Netflix now, so I got it and watched it, and I have this to say: it is not nearly so terrible as all the reviewers said. OTOH, it's not good. I've never made a movie, so I don't know where to lay blame for actors who rush woodenly through their lines. Are they bad actors? Were they being encouraged to pick up the pace to keep the movie under 1½ hours? Were there scowling Objectivists lurking in the shadows behind the cameras making them nervous?

The novel needs to be made into a mini-series, which would give it the breathing space it needs. The smart producer would make John Galt's speech one full episode in the mini-series. This would allow those who are not fans of Objectivism or Ayn Rand to easily skip over that. Heresy, I know. But how many people who bought the book do you think actually read every word of that speech?

The Love & Warmth Of Ayn Rand

In 1963 Bruce McAllister, then age 16, mailed a 4-page mimeographed survey on the subject of symbolism to "150 well-known authors." Seventy-five authors responded, and sixty-five of those responses survive today, including replies from Jack Kerouac, Ralph Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Ralph Ellison, John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Norman Mailer.

Here is Ayn Rand's reply.

Libertarian Calls Fire Department