Thursday, September 13, 2012

HUNTER now available as an audiobook

I'm delighted to announce that HUNTER is now available as a 12-hour audiobook. Narrated by talented New York voice actor Conor Hall, the HUNTER audiobook is available on Audible.com, on Amazon.com,  and on iTunes.

You can listen to a five-minute sample of the story on each of these sites -- the scene where Annie Woods meets Dylan Hunter for the first time.

Many thanks to Conor Hall for his splendid characterizations, and to Rob Grannis of Brick Shop Audio in New York City for a first-rate sound production.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

DEATH OF A LEGEND: Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, has died on August 25, 2012, at age 82.

A man of surpassing intelligence, dignity, and self-possession, he will remain an inspiration for all time. And not just for his iconic status as the commander of the Apollo 11 lunar mission.

Armstrong's subsequent refusal to hog the public limelight -- his withdrawal into a completely private life, because he didn't want to take exclusive credit for an achievement that he felt (rightly) was the product of many brilliant, dedicated, unsung individuals -- is one of the things that, in my mind, most marks him as a hero. And certainly, as an individualist.

His post-Apollo career -- in which he repelled every offer to exploit his status for glory or money -- is completely opposite the typical course followed by the vacuous instant "celebrities" of our morally bankrupt Reality TV era. His life, to the contrary, was the triumph of private substance over public "celebrity." He simply refused to sacrifice a personal life and its independence to become some sort of collective "role model." 


Armstrong had begun his career as an engineer's engineer, as a brave test pilot -- a man for whom the substantive rewards of conquering Nature were infinitely greater than the illusory rewards of conquering Society. He later became a teacher and a businessman. All of these were the professions of someone whose focus was on the facts of reality -- not winning the approval and adulation of others.

Neil Armstrong's greatness was not that he was the first to make that "one small step for a man" that became such "a giant leap for mankind." His real greatness is that he grasped, at the core of his being, what it was to be a man. 


And in that unsung role, as one commentator just put it, his passing is truly "one giant loss for mankind."

Friday, July 20, 2012

NEW PRESIDENTIAL DECREES

THE WHITE HOUSE

EXECUTIVE ORDER #3,425,786

FROM:  THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
TO:         HOLLYWOOD

Given the principles I enunciated in Raleigh, NC, I hereby issue this executive order compelling you to add two hours of closing credits to all future films.

[signed] BARACK OBAMA

President of the United States

----------------------------  

[Handwritten message by the President to his personal secretary:]

Anita: Plz send following memo, my private stationery, to Academy Awards show producers:

"Guys, you're gonna have to allow enough show time for MUCH longer 'thank-you' speeches. In future, figure on two-week Oscar TV show, minimum." -- s/ Barack

Also, dash off reminder memo, again my private letterhead, to my Hollywood filmmaker friends (use Clooney's distribution list):

"You didn't produce and direct that." -- s/ Barack

Thursday, June 28, 2012

U.S. CONSTITUTION, R.I.P.

With this morning's 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare's "individual mandate," which will compel people to buy a product under threat of a tax penalty from the federal government, the U.S. Constitution is now essentially dead as a bulwark against incursions on individual liberty.

This is especially true when considered in the wake of the Court's much earlier 5-4 "Kelo" decision, which permits local governments to claim "eminent domain" as an excuse to seize private property from some individuals and transfer it to other private individuals (political cronies).

If the U.S. Constitution can be construed so as to permit government to force you -- under penalty of law -- to buy designated products from crony-capitalist companies, or allow it to simply take your private property and hand it over to politically connected cronies, then the Bill of Rights is a dead letter. Any way you cut it, today's ruling affirms the premise of collectivism over the rights of individuals. In essence, it says that the government, through legislatures, is in principle unconstrained in its power over the individual.

That this latest ruling was made possible only with the complicity of a pragmatic judicial "conservative," Chief Justice John Roberts, only underscores the philosophical chaos reigning in the nation today. It is so symbolic that the Court's left was united in their support of the mandate, but that the conservatives were philosophically fractured: That, in a microcosm, has been the case throughout our modern political history, which is why we see steady, inexorable triumphs by the political left.

I said before this morning's decision that the Court was likely to "split the difference" between conservatives and liberals in their decision. I was too optimistic: This decision was a complete surrender to the united far left of Court. The reason is this: Conservatism has never been a coherent political philosophy, rooted in a defined, consistent set of principles. There are as many varieties of "conservatives" as there are vegetables in a supermarket. Without any definite grounding in specific principles, conservatives in practice typically wind up compromising and "splitting the difference" with the left...which is committed to a specific principle: to the subordination of the individual to the state. Statism is the uncompromising principle of the left; statism is the principle underlying the "individual mandate"; and statism is the principle which Chief Justice Roberts joined the Court's liberals in championing today. (See my award-winning essay "Up from Conservatism.")

The only thing that could have spared America this sorry day would have been a commitment by a Court majority to the premise of individual rights: to the view that individuals are ends in themselves -- not mere means to the ends of some tribal collective, ends imposed by the brute power of the state. That was the Enlightenment view held by our nation's Founders, and by the Framers of the Constitution, who intended that document to be a barrier to the unlimited exercise of power by the state over individuals. Well, that view, and that document, have been obliterated today.

Do we still have liberties that we can exercise? Yes, in many respects, but only by sufferance of our rulers and by the accidents of the political process -- and no longer by legal right. The only thing that we can do now is to fight endless political and legislative battles for supremacy over the statists, but unsupported by the legal framework and precedents bequeathed to us by our forefathers.

We can begin those battles in earnest this November.

UPDATE. After having a day to peruse many commentaries about the decision, I wanted to add this about the legal travesty that just occurred.

During the legislative debate, Obama and the Dems explicitly denied that the individual mandate penalty in Obamacare was a "tax." They always referred to it as a "penalty" and a "fine." They knew that, politically, passing a giant "tax" on the middle class would be suicidal. And in fact, they never used that term anywhere in the bill.

Moreover, on the first day of oral arguments before the Supreme Court, the government lawyer, the Solicitor General, also denied that it was "a tax" under the Commerce Clause. Why? Because on legal grounds, if it was a tax under the Commerce Clause, it would run afoul of another federal law: the Anti-Injunction Act. That Act would render such a tax illegal, and therefore, Obamacare would have to be rejected as unconstitutional.

But...on the second day of the hearing, the government was also permitted to argue that it was "a tax" -- under the "taxing power" clause of the Constitution. In other words, the government was allowed to argue, simultaneously, that the "fine" was not a tax, but also that it was a tax!

In his Supreme Court opinion, Chief Justice Roberts discarded all those facts. Even though the Congress that passed Obamacare had explicitly, repeatedly denied that the fine was "a tax," and Obama (who signed it) explicitly, repeatedly denied it was a tax, Roberts arbitrarily seized upon the cynical last-minute argument from a government lawyer that it was a "tax" in order to rule that Obamacare's individual mandate was permitted under the Constitution.

Here is what Roberts actually wrote: "Under [my] theory, the mandate is not a legal command to buy insurance. Rather, it makes going without insurance just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income."

"THEORY"???

That the federal government could tax inactivity?

This is the same John Roberts who -- earlier in his same opinion -- wrote: "The Framers gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it, and for over 200 years both our decisions and Congress's actions have reflected this understanding."

So, like the government attorneys, Roberts also was arguing out of both sides of his pen. He argues that government has no power to "compel " commerce with a "fine"; yet a few pages later, he says the government has the power to do exactly that: force people to engage in "commerce" (buy insurance) or else be hit with a whopping fine (which he arbitrarily calls a "tax").

This was a breathtaking, completely unjustified, fraudulent stretch of law and logic that nobody anticipated. And Roberts's "reasoning" incensed the four dissenting Justices, as a potent Wall Street Journal editorial points out:

In their brutal (and, in a rarity, jointly signed) dissent, Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito write that the Chief Justice's logic "is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it.... One would expect this Court to demand more than fly-by-night briefing and argument before deciding a difficult constitutional question of first impression." They score the Chief Justice for carrying 'verbal wizardry too far, deep into the forbidden land of the sophists."

In other words, as Rush Limbaugh put it, "the whole thing is a fraud." Trickery was used at every turn to push Obamacare through Congress; fraud was now used to uphold it in the Supreme Court.

And no less a figure than the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court has made the fraud possible.

The U.S. Constitution has been left in tatters. In Limbaugh's term, no longer is there a legal "backstop" to protect individual rights. If courts can simply invent, out of cloth, language and arguments that don't even appear in the laws they are adjudicating, and if those laws can swipe and transfer property, or compel you to buy government-mandated products, with no legal recourse or Bill of Rights protections, then the Constitution is -- just as I said -- truly a dead letter as a limitation on governmental power over the individual.

UPDATE #2: Chief Justice Roberts actually was AGAINST the individual mandate before he was FOR it, according to reporting by CBS. Along the way, he changed his mind, sources tell CBS, because he was worried about "public opinion" -- meaning: what politicians and the media would think of him and the Court. Read this and weep. Specifically, this is truly sickening:

"Over the next six weeks, as Roberts began to craft the decision striking down the mandate, the external pressure began to grow. Roberts almost certainly was aware of it.

"Some of the conservatives, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, deliberately avoid news articles on the Court when issues are pending (and avoid some publications altogether, such as The New York Times). They’ve explained that they don’t want to be influenced by outside opinion or feel pressure from outlets that are perceived as liberal.

"But Roberts pays attention to media coverage. As Chief Justice, he is keenly aware of his leadership role on the Court, and he also is sensitive to how the Court is perceived by the public.

"There were countless news articles in May warning of damage to the Court – and to Roberts’ reputation – if the Court were to strike down the mandate. Leading politicians, including the President himself, had expressed confidence the mandate would be upheld.

"Some even suggested that if Roberts struck down the mandate, it would prove he had been deceitful during his confirmation hearings, when he explained a philosophy of judicial restraint.

"It was around this time that it also became clear to the conservative justices that Roberts was, as one put it, “wobbly,” the sources said.

"It is not known why Roberts changed his view on the mandate and decided to uphold the law. At least one conservative justice tried to get him to explain it, but was unsatisfied with the response, according to a source with knowledge of the conversation....

"Roberts then engaged in his own lobbying effort – trying to persuade at least Justice Kennedy to join his decision so the Court would appear more united in the case. There was a fair amount of give-and-take with Kennedy and other justices, the sources said. One justice, a source said, described it as 'arm-twisting'....

"The fact that the joint dissent [by the conservative Justices] doesn’t mention Roberts’ majority [opinion] was not a sign of sloppiness, the sources said, but instead was a signal the conservatives no longer wished to engage in debate with him."

Folks, what Roberts did is the complete antithesis of the rule of law -- the premise that we should be a nation "of laws, not of men." The "absolute" governing his ruling was not his oath of office "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States," but public opinion.

But if public opinion is to govern the nation without limit, then why bother having a Constitution or a Supreme Court at all? In pandering to public opinion, Roberts achieved precisely the opposite of his apparent goal: He has delegitimized the reputation of the Supreme Court.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Is the Criminal Justice System "Overly Punitive"?

Was my novel HUNTER wildly inaccurate in its portrait of a overly lenient criminal justice system?

Critics have said that. So, I'd like to address their claim that America is unjustly over-incarcerating legions of minor offenders, and even many actually innocent people. Are we truly "overly punitive" and "over-incarcerating"? Is it therefore true that we could safely release thousands of inmates, thereby saving millions or even billions of taxpayer dollars on unnecessary prison cells?

I took on the belief that huge numbers of people are in prison unjustly in my nonfiction book Criminal Justice: The Legal System vs. Individual Responsibility. Leaving aside, for the moment, the much-smaller federal prison system (where there are indeed a higher proportion of prisoners serving sentences for "crimes" that shouldn't exist), state prisons are quite another matter. The "Excuse-Making Industry" that I exposed in that book has played numerous games with definitions of crimes. One of their games is to define "the inmate" based solely on the current offense for which he is imprisoned -- ignoring the rest of his criminal history, and even other current crimes for which he may be serving concurrent or lesser sentences.

For example, under reigning definitions, "non-violent" or "first-time offenders" behind bars include many individuals who have been arrested in the past but not convicted for violent crimes, solely because plea bargaining minimized the charges against them -- or because records of serious juvenile crimes have been sealed or even expunged -- or because they received a "diversionary" sentence rather than a prior term of incarceration. "Non-violent prisoners" also include individuals whose past incarcerations include crimes of violence, but whose current incarceration may be for a property or drug crime. Similarly, "drug offenders" may be inmates whose past records include property and violent crimes, but whose current offense is for drugs. Likewise, some inmates later found to be innocent (say, via DNA testing) of their current conviction offense have criminal histories for other crimes; yet when released, they are portrayed as wholly "innocent" people. Etc.

By such deviously selective definitions, Excuse-Makers paint a picture of prison cells crammed with thousands of unjustly incarcerated choir boys -- claims that the liberal media are only too willing to echo.

In truth, it's actually very hard to get into prison in these days of "alternatives to incarceration." Usually, you have to be a chronic criminal, arrested many times, and be stupid enough to get caught a lot, so that the judges get tired of seeing you in their courtrooms and finally lock you up. Or you must commit a particularly serious crime. Most convicted criminals are, in fact, serving their terms under "community supervision."

In 2010, the latest year for which statistics have been published, "about 7 in 10 persons under the supervision of adult correctional systems were supervised in the community (4,887,900) on probation or parole at yearend 2010, while about 3 in 10 were incarcerated (2,266,800) in local jails or in the custody of state or federal prisons." In other words, the overwhelming majority of convicted adult criminals -- nearly five million -- are being "managed" on the streets, not behind bars.

In the early 1990s, when I was deeply involved in researching crime, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics provided a host of eye-opening reports about the exact composition of the inmate populations. But as the gods of Political Correctness have taken over the federal government, those stats are now hard to come by, while today the BJS is compelled to collect data on such leftist hobby-horse issues as racial composition of the inmate population, and incidents of rapes and HIV in prison. Still, by diligent digging, you can find at least some interesting data.

From the BJS document "Prisoners in 2010": "In 2009, the most recent data available, 53% of state prison inmates were serving time for violent offenses, 19% for property, 18% for drug, and 9% for public order offenses." In other words, only about 1/5th of state prisoners are behind bars for a current conviction offense that is drug-related. Appendices 16a, 16b, 17a, and 17b give some idea of the composition of state prisons by current conviction offense. But again, this does not mean, for example, that those currently convicted of drug crimes may not also have serious property or violent crimes on their records.

And even if we assume that all drug and many "public order" offenders could be safely released, and thus reduce the need for so many prisons and prison beds, the document "Probation and Parole in the United States, 2010" ought to put that fantasy to rest. Check out Appendix Table 10 on p. 38, a chart of "Adults on Probation, By Most Serious Offense, 2010." You'll find that 447,000 individuals convicted of violent crimes, plus 669,000 property criminals, are free on probation (an alternative to incarceration) -- in other words, well over a million criminals. And to that whopping total you also can add parolees (inmates released early from their prison terms): Check Appendix Table 20 on p. 48, and you'll find an additional 200,000-plus violent criminals and 185,000 property criminals.

In sum, about 1.5 million violent or property criminals are being "managed" on our streets by hopelessly overburdened parole and probation officers who can't possibly keep track of them or their activities. We could release all of the 300,000 or so state and federal drug criminals from prison, and immediately refill all their cells from the legions of convicted violent and property criminals now under "community supervision," and still need over a million additional new cells to house the rest.

And what do these convicts do when they are released back onto our streets? BJS statisticians, tasked with compiling data for their liberal masters, haven't released a fresh study of criminal recidivism (i.e., return to crime) in a long time. But the data they publish on their website are chilling:

* Of the 272,111 persons released from prisons in 15 states in 1994, an estimated 67.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.9% were reconvicted, and 25.4% resentenced to prison for a new crime.

* These offenders had accumulated 4.1 million arrest charges before their most recent imprisonment and another 744,000 charges within 3 years of release.

* Released prisoners with the highest rearrest rates were robbers (70.2%), burglars (74.0%), larcenists (74.6%), motor vehicle thieves (78.8%), those in prison for possessing or selling stolen property (77.4%), and those in prison for possessing, using, or selling illegal weapons (70.2%).

* Within 3 years, 2.5% of released rapists were arrested for another rape, and 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for homicide.

Is this evidence that our biggest criminal-justice problem is the "unjust" incarceration of multitudes of "minor offenders"?

So, why are so many dangerous individuals are being "managed" on the streets, rather than behind bars. In 2005, I wrote a two-part piece about the "Excuse-Making Industry" of criminal advocates, many of whom also double as "sentencing consultants." Part I is archived here; and Part II is here. It shows how and why "progressive" advocates of "social justice," who have manipulated definitions and distorted statistics pertaining to economics, have done the same thing with statistics concerning crime and punishment.

Their portrait of an overly punitive justice system is an ideologically driven and financially self-serving fantasy, whose widespread acceptance has led frequently to tragic and horrifying consequences. That was the deadly reality that I meticulously exposed in Criminal Justice? and then dramatized in HUNTER.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

A Meditation on the "Progressive" Narrative

In the wake of the Supreme Court's late-March 2012 hearing on the constitutionality of ObamaCare, many liberals responded with shock and anger to the sharp, skeptical questions that justices asked the government's lawyers.

But why? Why did so many liberal/progressive scholars and media denizens arrogantly assume that ObamaCare would be ratified by the Supreme Court in a "slam dunk"? Why were they so stunned to hear potent counter-arguments emerging from the justices? One commentator offers this:

What can explain liberals’ widespread failure to anticipate the Court’s wariness of the mandate? Research conducted by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests one possible answer: Liberals just aren’t as good as conservatives and libertarians at understanding how their opponents think. Haidt helped conduct research that asked respondents to fill out questionnaires about political narratives [emphasis added]—first responding based on their own beliefs, but then responding as if trying to mimic the beliefs of their political opponents. "The results," he writes in the May issue of Reason, "were clear and consistent." Moderates and conservatives were the most able to think like their liberal political opponents. "Liberals," he reports, "were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as 'very liberal.'"

The article is well worth reading in its entirety, because it shows how liberals view everything through the filter of politics--and now assume, based on their political Narrative, that the Supreme Court's opposition to the individual mandate is nothing more than "partisan politics." In fact, though, that charge is nothing more than psychological projection. Commenting on this reaction by the left, some have opined that liberals just don't seem wedded to simple logic. That is true, but it doesn't go far enough in explaining the liberal mindset.

As subjectivists, liberals do not believe in the objective reality that is the basis of logic. To subjectivists, logic (like everything else) is merely an arbitrary social convention. That same subjectivism is the root of their multiculturalism (no culture or society is better than any other), of their moral relativism (there's no objective basis for ethics, so "do your own thing"), and, in this instance, of their doctrine of "the living Constitution" (a document that is as elastic and flexible as their own whims).

But if everything is mere subjective opinion, and opinions clash, then logical persuasion is without merit as a means of resolving disputes -- and the only thing left that can decide disputes is force. Hence, the liberals' view that everything in society consists of "conflicts of interest" and "power relationships"; hence, their quest for unlimited power to dominate, rule, and control others; and hence, their efforts to transform everything that we are, have, or do into a political issue: into a matter to be decided by wielding coercive political power over others.

But why should they, the liberals, be the ones wielding that power?

That's where their "Narrative" comes in. The liberal Narrative is rooted not in the logical, but the psychological. In their morality play, they have cast themselves as "progressives" -- as the smartest, most educated, most culturally sophisticated, most sensitive, most enlightened people on the planet, in contrast with the vast, crude masses of rubes, idiots, bigots, and know-nothings (i.e., the rest of us). The liberals' motive in holding and advancing this Narrative is the indispensable role that it plays in inflating their egos and self-regard. In their self-flattering psychodrama, they cast themselves as the Ruling Class, the social elite that -- by virtue of intellectual, moral, and esthetic superiority -- is entitled to lord it over their inferiors (i.e., the rest of society).

If you want a clear glimpse of the self-congratulatory "progressive" worldview, try to dig up a copy of the old H.G. Wells film "Things to Come." Wells was a socialist, and in his dystopian, sci-fi fantasy, he imagined a benevolent technocratic elite taking over a world that had descended into tribes of savages. Now, there's a lot I like about the film on a metaphysical level: Its no-limits view of human potential reminded me of "Star Trek" ("to boldly go where no man has gone before"). But its view of society is unadulterated "progressive" arrogance: A small, educated in-group of sophisticated geniuses takes total political power, becoming a new Ruling Class to civilize the savage masses...for their own good.

That's the essence of the liberal/progressive Narrative. And philosophical subjectivism allows them to use any means they wish to achieve that total power over the rest of us "savages."

If you now take all of this and apply it to the ObamaCare debate before the Supreme Court, you'll understand at once what was going on, and why the left is so shocked and indignant over the skeptical questioning by the justices. Their legal subjectivism was being challenged, at root. The justices were asking them what "limiting principle" existed upon the power they wish to assume over private economic relationships, and they couldn't answer because they don't have one, or believe that one should exist. Their arguments were transparent sophistry, attempts to provide legalistic excuses to grant them UNlimited power over the lives of the savages. That they should be required to justify this quest clashed with their entire Narrative, and the subjectivism that rationalizes it.

And so how do they respond? Only as they can, through their Narrative filter: Since to them, everything is a "political power relationship," they could only besmirch the alleged political motives of the skeptical justices as being "partisan" and "pro-Republican." This, to the liberal, is a necessary substitute for an argument based on the merits -- on facts and logic -- because the latter don't count in their subjective universe, except as tools of political manipulation.

There are broader, pessimistic conclusions to be drawn here, for example, about the possibility of persuading people wedded to the progressive/subjective Narrative, or about how we ought to engage and fight them. I've argued in my previous essay here on "The Narratives That Guide Our Lives" that the best approach is to advance a compelling counter-narrative. But what that is, and how it might be advanced, are topics for future development and discussion.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

CLIMATEGATE 2.0 -- the global-warming scandal continues

5,000 newly leaked emails reveal that "scientists DID collude with government officials to hide research that didn't fit their apocalyptic global warming...deleted evidence that cast doubt on claims climate change was man-made...[and] were under orders from US and UK officials to come up with a 'strong message'"

Connect this with the previous post about leading climate alarmist Dr. James Hansen of NASA, who has become rich and famous by spreading this hysteria, and you'll see exactly what this 20-plus-year scam has been all about.

Monday, November 21, 2011

James Hansen and the corruption of science

Al Gore isn't the only environmentalist to have made a bundle on climate alarmism. So has his "science" adviser, Dr. James Hansen.

Hansen is the taxpayer-funded NASA scientist who (1) initiated the global-warming scare in hyperbolic congressional testimony in 1988, (2) claimed that President Bush was trying to "muzzle" him (even while he was conducting more media interviews than any government "scientist"), and (3) actually advocated prosecution of businessmen for advocating contrary views ("deniers," he called them), for "crimes against nature." Can't let a pesky little nuisance like the First Amendment get in the way of a good scare campaign, now, can we?

Well, it turns out that the self-righteous-but-ethically-challenged Dr. Hansen sports an $8,000 Rolex and somehow "forgot" to report $1.6 million in income to the IRS. So, despite his denunciations of capitalism for despoiling the environment, it seems that he's found big money to be had from the taxpayers in government jobs that purvey panic. Just as there has been vast wealth for his political stooge, Mr. Gore. Both enjoy the good life, wining and dining at climate conferences around the world, and traveling in cushy limos and private jets, while chiding the rest of us for leaving behind "carbon footprints."

Inmates harass victims via Facebook

NEWS STORIES THAT PROVOKE ME TO WRITE VIGILANTE NOVELS, #12,576 of a series:

"Inmates harass victims via Facebook"

How? By using smart phones smuggled into prison to allow them to connect to the internet and establish accounts on Facebook.

And their "punishment" for these direct coercive threats against their victims? Not longer prison terms tacked onto their sentences. No, instead, they only have a few weeks cut from their early-release credits. "Early release" from prison has thus become the norm for inmates -- just another welfare-state "entitlement."

Anyone still think that in HUNTER I was exaggerating how corrupt and anemic the criminal "justice" system has become?

Friday, November 18, 2011

College scholarships...for murderers

Just when you think you have seen and heard it all, you find yet another example of the moral inversion that is destroying our culture.

Bruce Reilly, a first-year at Tulane [University’s School of Law in New Orleans] ... had pled guilty to second-degree murder and robbery and served 12 years in prison. When he was 20 years old, Reilly beat and stabbed to death a 58-year old English professor at Community College of Rhode island, capping off his crime by stealing the professor’s car, wallet, and credit cards. In short, he is a felon....

The fact that Reilly is an admitted student in Tulane’s law school should be at least curious and potentially worrisome to the students, alumni and supporters of that school. The Louisiana Bar, like all other states, requires proof of good moral character and fitness to be admitted to the bar, a requirement that almost always excludes felons – particularly those who have been convicted of a violent crime as heinous as Reilly’s. (The fact that he is out of prison after only 12 years when he murdered and robbed an older college professor doesn’t say a lot for Rhode Island’s criminal justice system, either.) It is next to impossible for him to become a licensed attorney even if he graduates, as Tulane University officials must surely know.

As at least one student complained to The Times-Picayune, Reilly is taking up “another’s space in the law school even though he may never be able to practice as a lawyer because of his conviction.” But it gets worse.

Reilly is attending Tulane on an NAACP scholarship and a Dean’s Merit Scholarship. The NAACP has made it very clear in its public statements and its litigation that it believes that the constitutional right of states under the Fourteenth Amendment to take away the right of felons to vote is “discriminatory” and “undermines the most fundamental aspect of American citizenship” (which the NAACP apparently thinks means being able to murder and vote at the same time).

As the hero said in my thriller HUNTER, correcting Edmund Burke:

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is an enabler."

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

White House sniper: just another "minor offender"

ABC News about Oscar Ramiro Ortega, being hunted for sniping at the White House: "Ortega has an extensive record, ranging from domestic violence to drug charges." And: "U.S. Park police say Ortega may have spent time blending in with Occupy D.C. protesters."

Yeah, he'd clearly fit right in with that crowd.

The Examiner: "Ortega's criminal history in Idaho, Texas and Utah includes arrests for assault of a law enforcement officer, marijuana possession and being a minor in possession of alcohol." Yet, despite this criminal history, and even though he was picked up for questioning by cops hours before this sniping incident, they let him go.

There you have it: just another "minor offender" being "treated" with "alternatives to incarceration" so that he could be "managed outside an institutional setting." Your criminal justice system at work, folks.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

News stories that make me write vigilante thrillers

Get a load of this news story. Then come back here and read the rest of this post.

Got that?

Now, please: Never, ever say that in my thriller HUNTER I exaggerated or misrepresented the appalling level and number of moral inversions that occur daily within our alleged "criminal justice system."

Combine this case with the systematic "enabling" that allowed a child-molesting predator to continue committing atrocities against little boys for years at Penn State University, even after his rapes had been eye-witnessed at least twice, and we see a society that has completely lost its moral bearings.

The cause? A single premise: that individuals are not responsible for what they do -- that they are helpless "victims" of circumstances beyond their control.

From Freud to Rawls to the pulpits to the classrooms, a vast Excuse-Making Industry of intellectuals has persuaded millions that criminals are mere "victims" of circumstance; that the only real crime, therefore, is punishing them for actions that they "couldn't help" -- or even daring to pronounce a negative moral judgment about them, or anything; and that the primary purpose of government is not to protect people from predators, but to redistribute the "lucky" fruits of some people's success to those who were too "unlucky" to get their "fair share," from whatever mysterious source that goods and services and happiness are supposed to magically materialize.

The unrelenting, ubiquitous war on the principle of personal self-responsibility has led to widespread moral intimidation and cultural paralysis, even in the face of brazen degeneracy. Consider just a few recent examples:

* the unwillingness of politicians to clear city streets and parks of "Occupy Wall Street" vandals, thieves, rapists, thugs, and bums, no matter what crimes they openly commit, while police are ordered to stand in passive witness of their offenses;

* the mute confusion and anguished indecision of at least two eyewitnesses and countless college bureaucrats to the Penn State predator's rapes of terrified, helpless little boys;

* the linked news article in this post, which documents once again how our misnamed "justice system" simply can't recycle career predators back onto the streets fast enough or often enough.

If your knee-jerk response to this angry post is indignation over my words, rather than over the unspeakable atrocities that provoke them, then you've imbibed the same toxic premise that is killing our civilization: the premise that the only real "evils" are anyone's demands for self-responsibility, and any moral judgments that proceed from that insistence.

And as you look around our nation and the world at the rise of savage mob rule, tribal piracy on the open seas, and terrorist thuggery everywhere, you need find the cause of it all at no greater distance than your route to the nearest mirror.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

The Environmental Perils of Going "Organic"

We are constantly subjected to environmentalist scare campaigns -- none so common or terrifying as those directed against the use of pesticides and herbicides on our crops. These, it is argued, represent an environmental and health menace.

But what would happen to the environment if we banned pesticides and all tried to live on "organic" crops?

An expert explains the facts of life...literally. Those long under the sway of the environmentalist Narrative might find the claims disconcerting. But check them out for yourself.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Behind the "dying polar bears" eco-scare is...

...yet another scam by environmentalists. Don Surber comments: "So we have an expert on birds guessing that white blobs on a photo are drowned polar bears. That’s it. That’s the science."

Yet from this "science," from one non-expert guessing what's in a photo, comes national policy decisions that are destined to cost billions upon billions of dollars and countless jobs.

Welcome to the Brave Green World.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

"Occupy Wall Street" activists ARE the world's richest one percent

Yes, you read that correctly: Most of the Occupy Wall Street activists -- who scream indignantly about income inequality, and who want confiscatory taxes imposed on the "wealthiest one percent" -- are themselves among the world's wealthiest one percent:
In America, the top 1% earn more than $380,000 per year. We are, however, among the richest nations on Earth. How much do you need to earn to be among the top 1% of the world?

$34,000.

That was the finding World Bank economist Branko Milanovic presented in his 2010 book The Haves and the Have-Nots. Going down the distribution ladder may be just as surprising. To be in the top half of the globe, you need to earn just $1,225 a year. For the top 20%, it's $5,000 per year. Enter the top 10% with $12,000 a year. To be included in the top 0.1% requires an annual income of $70,000....

The global distribution figures may seem incomprehensibly low, but consider a couple of statistics you're likely familiar with: According to the U.N., "Nearly half the world's population, 2.8 billion people, earn less than $2 a day." According to the World Bank, 95% of those living in the developing world earn less than $10 a day.

Those numbers are so shocking that you might only think about them in the abstract. But when you consider them in the context of the entire globe, including yourself, the skewing effects they have on the distribution of income is simply massive. It means that Americans we consider poor are among some of the world's most well-off. As Milanovic notes, "the poorest [5%] of Americans are better off than more than two-thirds of the world population." Furthermore, "only about 3 percent of the Indian population have incomes higher than the bottom (the very poorest) U.S. percentile."

In short, most of those protesting in the Occupy Wall Street movement would be considered wealthy -- perhaps extraordinarily wealthy -- by much of the world. Many of those protesting the 1% are, ironically, the 1%.
Now, I wonder how many of the protestors would be eager to have their own incomes and property confiscated in order to "level" income disparities with the rest of the world? Think they'd like to live in the "equality" of, say, $3 per day incomes?

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Muslim alternative to capitalistic interest payments: insolvency

Okay, here's my belly laugh of the day:"Sharia-compliant mortgage lender in receivership":
UM Financial was one of the first companies in Canada to offer so-called Islamic financing to Muslims who believe that sharia, or Islamic law, prohibitions against usury include interest on things such as mortgages.

UM would buy a property then lease it to a client so they were paying rent instead of interest. Some homeowners complained that the firm would also charge extra fees.

The company had $50 million in financial backing from Central 1 Credit Union of which almost $29 million is outstanding.

Qayum Mian knew he was paying a premium on his Markham house for the seven years he used UM Financial — he estimated up to 2 percentage points more than if he’d gone through a bank — but was happy to pay the price “because my conscience was satisfied.”

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

"Occupy Wall Street" does NOT represent the American middle class

Democrat pollster Doug Schoen explodes the Democrat/progressive Narrative about the "Occupy Wall Street" gang. It's a wishful-thinking-based storyline (promoted by the liberal media) that casts the demonstrators as righteously aggrieved "victims" of capitalism, who represent the views of "99 percent" of Americans and their aspirations. Reports Schoen:
Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.

Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.

The vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed, and the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%)....

What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas.

Sixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost. By a large margin (77%-22%), they support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but 58% oppose raising taxes for everybody, with only 36% in favor. And by a close margin, protesters are divided on whether the bank bailouts were necessary (49%) or unnecessary (51%).

Thus Occupy Wall Street is a group of engaged progressives who are disillusioned with the capitalist system and have a distinct activist orientation. Among the general public, by contrast, 41% of Americans self-identify as conservative, 36% as moderate, and only 21% as liberal. That's why the Obama-Pelosi embrace of the movement could prove catastrophic for their party.
Team Obama and their willing media accomplices are such prisoners of the leftist Narrative that many actually believe that these street agitators and social misfits reflect the demographics of Middle America. We can only hope that continue to drink this Kool-Aid until November 2012.

Monday, October 10, 2011

"Public education" in the Age of Equality

I don't really think that I need to comment on this.

Except to say that, in the Age of Egalitarianism -- which is what our president and his party are all about -- not only can you be "too big to fail," you can be "too incompetent to fail," also.