Archive for 2014
October 7, 2014
STATE DEPARTMENT INSPECTOR GENERAL: More evidence of rampant mismanagement under Hillary Clinton.
AMY OTTO: A new sexual consent law in California has Progressives pushing for a return to the kind of sexual arrangements they decry as regressive. They’re Mrs. Grundy now. Our only hope for getting them to go back to a “sex is private!” line is if Hillary is charged in some sort of rape scandal.
THE BRIDE AT EVERY WEDDING, THE CORPSE AT EVERY FUNERAL: The Atlantic: Why Would Obama Try To Make The Election About Himself?
UPDATE: Stephen Green in the comments: “Meh. To Democrats in tough races, Obama is practically the corpse at every wedding.”
THE ECONOMIST: How Prosecutors Came To Dominate The Criminal Justice System.
Another change that empowers prosecutors is the proliferation of incomprehensible new laws. This gives prosecutors more room for interpretation and encourages them to overcharge defendants in order to bully them into plea deals, says Harvey Silverglate, a defence lawyer. Since the financial crisis, says Alex Kozinski, a judge, prosecutors have been more tempted to pore over statutes looking for ways to stretch them so that this or that activity can be construed as illegal. “That’s not how criminal law is supposed to work. It should be clear what is illegal,” he says.
The same threats and incentives that push the innocent to plead guilty also drive many suspects to testify against others. Deals with “co-operating witnesses”, once rare, have grown common. In federal cases an estimated 25-30% of defendants offer some form of co-operation, and around half of those receive some credit for it. The proportion is double that in drug cases. Most federal cases are resolved using the actual or anticipated testimony of co-operating defendants.
Co-operator testimony often sways juries because snitches are seen as having first-hand knowledge of the pattern of criminal activity. But snitches hoping to avoid draconian jail terms may sometimes be tempted to compose rather than merely to sing. . . .
It is not clear how often prosecutors themselves break the rules. According to a report by the Project on Government Oversight, an investigative outfit, compiled from data obtained from freedom of information requests, an internal-affairs office at the Department of Justice identified more than 650 instances of prosecutors violating the profession’s rules and ethical standards between 2002 and 2013. More than 400 of these were “at the more severe end of the scale”. The Justice Department argues that this level of misconduct is modest given the thousands of cases it handles.
Judge Kozinski worries, however, that there is “an epidemic” of Brady violations—when exculpatory evidence is hidden from defence lawyers by prosecutors. For example, in 2008 Ted Stevens, a senator from Alaska, was found guilty of corruption eight days before an election, which he narrowly lost. Afterwards, prosecutors were found to have withheld evidence that might have helped the defence. Mr Stevens’s conviction was vacated, but he died in a plane crash in 2010.
Prosecutors enjoy strong protections against criminal sanction and private litigation. Even in egregious cases, punishments are often little more than a slap on the wrist. Mr Stevens’s prosecutors, for example, were suspended from their jobs for 15 to 40 days, a penalty that was overturned on procedural grounds. Ken Anderson, a prosecutor who hid the existence of a bloody bandana that linked someone other than the defendant to a 1986 murder, was convicted of withholding evidence in 2013 but spent only five days behind bars—one for every five years served by the convicted defendant, Michael Morton.
Related: Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything Is a Crime.
ROGER SIMON: Midnight in Obama’s Garden of Good and Evil. “At its basis, the problem is cultural relativism, the tawdry mother philosophy of political correctness that suffused the academy when Obama was going to school and still does. Under CR, all cultures are equal, ours and the Islamic State. We are imperialist to think otherwise. Morality is a thing of the distant past, some artifact of St. Anselm or Maimonides. Not cool, even if it protects us from murdering each other.”
If morality is obsolete, then there’s no reason not to destroy the Islamic State and all its supporters, and to occupy them with mercenary troops recruited from Muslim-hating parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Right?
IT’S COME TO THIS: VIDEO: Lois Lerner Tries Barging Into Neighbor’s Home To Evade Questions.
October 6, 2014
BUT NO TRAVEL LIMITATIONS: President Obama vows tough passenger screenings to stop the spread of Ebola.
I was talking to my mom the other night, and she remembered that back when I was a kid, they made her get a chest x-ray before they’d let her back in the the US after a year in Germany. They made us all get re-vaccinated for smallpox, too. And some English friends traveling to Harvard had to spend most of a day at the airport because one of their kids couldn’t prove vaccination. Nowadays, the travel restrictions seem a lot laxer, even as the disease threats are worse.
GET READY FOR “BAD LUCK” AT THE Amazon Emergency Prep Store. Plus, Emergency & Long-Term Storage Food Deals.
Plus, Fall Deals on Men’s Shoes. Also, Women’s Shoes.
Plus, Generators and Portable Power for Storm Season. Winter is coming, as I believe I may have mentioned.
OBVIOUSLY, THEY’RE NOT TAXED ENOUGH: Greedy Corporation Stops Ebola Spread in Liberia. “NPR’s report puts emphasis on Firestone’s financial resources, but I think they miss the ‘X’ factor that causes these private-sector employees to succeed outside of their bailiwick: They’re accustomed to setting goals, achieving results and being rewarded based on actual accomplishments. In addition, they’re innovative, and know that one must often improvise and create rapid prototypes on the way to the ultimate product.”
Sounds like something out of one of Jerry Pournelle’s future history stories. But so much does, lately.
UM: Obama: ‘Extremely low’ odds of U.S. Ebola outbreak.
We’ve heard that before.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: ‘Back-up husbands,’ ‘emotional affairs’ and the rise of digital infidelity.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: “Sorry, education reformers, it’s still memorization and repetition we need.”
IT’S AS IF THEY DIFFER IN TERMS OF SELF-DISCIPLINE, ANALYTICAL SKILLS, AND FORETHOUGHT: Rich People Exercise, Poor People Take Diet Pills.
FROM SARAH HOYT, thoughts on “privilege.”
ADVICE ON STAYING EBOLA FREE.
MATT WELCH ON THE DECLINE OF THE OBAMA DREAM:
If you want to trace the downward trajectory of the dreams that liberals pinned on the enigmatic figure of Barack Obama, look no further than the presidential histories and political dramas through which they have filtered their understanding of his meteoric rise and drip-by-drip fall in popularity. . . .
The ensuing presidency, and the last six years of American political life, have been so desultory that it’s almost hard to remember how ubiquitous the now-laughable Lincoln comparison once was. Take this Washington Post analysis after the 2008 election: “He was a boy with a distant father, raised in a family of modest means. He had a curious intellect, devouring history and memorizing passages from Shakespeare. He became a lawyer and settled in Illinois, where he was elected to the state legislature. With relatively little political experience, he decided to run for president. Few believed he stood a chance of winning a primary campaign against the party’s heir apparent, a senator from New York. But the gangly, bookish Illinoisan galvanized millions across a country in crisis with his soaring rhetoric, speaking in big strokes about transcending partisan politics and creating America as it ought to be. He rose from obscurity to clinch his party’s nomination and the presidency. Sound familiar?”
Someone needs to do an updated edition of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: Is Screen Time Bad For Your Eyes? Short answer: Not really.
There’s no direct evidence that TVs, computers, or cell phones cause nearsightedness. Yet worries about the effects of staring at illuminated screens persist. Our eyes adjust their shape to focus on “near work” with printed text or digital displays, so it seems plausible that extended bouts of reading might lead to lasting damage. But Kathryn Rose of the University of Sydney says this hypothesis has not been borne out.
That said, staring at screens can cause discomfort, says Mark Rosenfield of the State University of New York’s College of Optometry. In a study conducted by his lab, about 40 percent of office workers from a sample in Manhattan reported having symptoms of eyestrain for at least half the time they’re on duty—a condition he calls “Computer Vision Syndrome.”
Rosenfield blames this not necessarily on screens, but on small print and shorter distances between our eyes and the material being read.
Well, Web designers don’t help this, with small fonts, often in low-contrast colors.
HEALTH: Perry announces infectious disease task force. “At a press conference Monday, Gov. Rick Perry announced the creation of the Texas Task Force on Infection Disease Preparedness and Response, a group aimed to prepare for pandemic disease such as the Ebola virus in Texas. Perry named Dr. Brett P. Giroir as director of the task force, with Texas Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Dr. Kyle Janek and Texas Department of State Health Services Commissioner Dr. David Lakey serving on the task force as well. The governor is also calling on the federal government to immediately begin stricter screening measures at all ports of entry into the United States to prevent the disease from entering.”
TO SOME THAT’S NOT A BUG, BUT A FEATURE: Political Correctness Endangers The Weak.