Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

One thing that is getting lost in the partisan noise out of Washington about the Russian election tampering case is really a profound vindication of the United States government efforts to protect our elections. You see, although the Russians did try to force the election in their favor, the FBI says they failed to substantially effect the outcome.

The Republicans are so worried that their legitimacy will be questioned, they deny the Russians even tried to tamper with the election. The Democrats are so sure they deserved to win, they insist the Russians worked in collusion with the Republicans. I mean look at the names, they both start with and “R.” Isn’t that proof enough?

All jokes aside, there is a comforting message for all of us that no one is telling. During the 2016 national election, the United States was under attack, fought a cyber battle, and won. No two ways about it. The toughest black-hat hackers on Earth engaged in cyber-warfare with the United States of America, an act of war, causes belli for the hawks in the land, and they failed to accomplish any of their aims. The only reason Donald Trump won the election was that enough people voted for him that he had a majority of the Electoral College. No one stole the election from the anointed queen. Hillary lost on the merits of the campaigns and the will of the people. it’s only a coincidence that the result of the election was the same as the desire of Putin. Too bad for him that Trump isn’t cooperating the way he had hoped.

The FBI, the Secret Service, the Pentagon, and the other cyber defense warriors in the United States of America did a marvelous job. They won a difficult battle against a sophisticated foe. No one else is giving them credit for the great work they have done. Is the war over? Not by a long shot. All Americans can sleep soundly because these dedicated cyber warriors are on the job. My hat’s off to you.

The Grownups Weigh In

The Senate Intelligence Commitee has announced that they will pick up the investigation into Russian meddling in the last national election. The difference between the Senate committee's approach and the House’s approach is telling. Finally, a bipartisan effort to cooperate on getting to the facts of the issue is under way. Why this couldn’t happen in the House is a question that I ponder. But there is light in this lantern. I am happy to see that some politicians can act like statesmen and women even in this day.

In the Senate, the office holders generally have been there a while. And they only have to run for election once every six years. This means they have leeway to do their job as it ought to be done, instead of grandstanding to their political base. The members of the House run every two years, and can’t think beyond what the polls will look like if they do what is right. When the electorate follows feelings from sound bites, the Reps in the House have to pander to those feelings, instead of working on the needs of the nation as a whole. Retention of power trumps statesmanship in these situations every time.

If we Americans would grow up, maybe our politicians would do so too. When we all act like third-graders on the playground, is it any wonder that our politicians do so too? Politics is called the art of compromise, yet American politics has degenerated into a playground melee between rival factions. Demand of your elected officials that they act like grownups and maybe they will.

Washington Playground Politics

The political infighting in Washington has gotten so bad that it looks like the government is going to shut down again this year. Sad that grown men and women can’t talk to each other with respect or listen to each other’s ideas. The saddest thing I have heard about Washington politics is the expanding number of Congressmen and women who supported a position until the other party proposed it, then changed their minds and opposed it. That’s so childish I wonder why the people who vote for these playground fugitives continue to send them back.

What we ought to do is break the strangle hold the two main parties have on politics in America. There are so many other parties to chose from, you can find someone who represents you better than the Democrats and Republicans. Shoot, the Republicans ought to break into at lest three parties, Tea Party, Old Line Conservatives (read big business lackeys) and Populists. Meanwhile, the Democrats ought to split two ways, Progressives and Special Interest Liberals. Maybe we could add in a moderate party to round it out, and then Washington will look more realistic. The other political parties, like the Greens or the Libertarians, will also fit right in then.

Think about it. We already have political cacophony in Congress, we may as well look like Europe.

Sunday Evening Rant 3/26/17

Today the news is full of protests in Russia against the corruption of the government, aimed at Putin’s hand picked premier, Medvedev. Remember that Putin first came to power on the promise that he would curb corruption, dismantle the mob and bring prosperity to the people. He took over most business and criminal activity in the name of the government. What little he doesn’t control is too petty to be of significance. But there’s goods in the stores, food enough to eat two meals a day, and enough vodka to forget the promises Putin made and failed to keep. So the people love Putin; it’s Medvedev they blame.

Any sensible voter would see that Putin is the one corrupt and Medvedev is the whipping boy to distract responsibility. But when a cult of personality enforced with terror is the head of state, people can’t be sensible. There is a lesson here for the United States.

We need to remember that the man on the horse is just another man with ambition and greed. To blindly follow is to be blind and lost. Look past the tweets of the day and remember the past. Americans have a tendency to forget what happened yesterday and believe the pie in the sky promises of the leaders who win our fancy. If we don’t watch our leaders, we will wind up in the same basket as Russia.

Germany looks to be wiser than the leaders feared. The extremists failed to make inroads into the political leadership in the small state election held today. Add to that the sensible result in Netherlands and the easing of the political turmoil in France and it looks like Europe is straitening itself out. The only place of contention is still the Middle East, where the Caliphate of the Islamic State is brutally mistreating whomever gets in the way. And when no one gets in the way they’ll take someone at random.

The world has dodged a bigger bullet than we realize.

Kudos to the United States Central Command for owning up to the responsibility for air strikes on the building where the Islamic State fighters were using human shields. The loss of life is reminiscent of the Second World War in France or Italy when United States Army forces reduced whole villages to rubble to drive out Wehrmacht troops. The difference is that we have weapons available that can shoot the I.S. fighters without rubling the building, unlike the 1940s. The soldiers just forgot they were not facing any civilized enemy that fights under the Law of War. We must keep in mind that we’re not fighting a legitimate nation state, but a gang of liars, murderers and theves.

That’s enough rent for a Sunday. I’ll rant more tomorrow.

Why the Republicans Failed

Yesterday, March 24, was a rather rich day for a snide political commentator who blasts both sides. What do you think went wrong in DC? I remember in school learning about the early Twentieth Century comedian and commentator Will Rogers. He is famous for making the political joke, “I don’t belong to any organized political party, I’m a Democrat.” Here we are more than eighty years later and the shoe is literally on the other foot. The only organized political party in power is the Democrats, who can almost always count on their members to stick it to the Republicans. But when the republicans run both houses of Congress and the White House. They can’t agree with each other on a single health care bill.

The roots of this go back to the cultural divide in the United States that formed between the revolution and the Civil War. In one region of the country an idea of rugged individualism grew up. At the same time in another area the more traditional philosophy of nobless oblige was the driving force on society. In politics the Democratic Party was strong in the region of nobless oblige and the Whigs were losing influence to the upstart Grand Old Party, the Republicans. The GOP embraced rugged individualism and promised the slogan Government of the People, for the People and by the People. This brought the common people to the ranks of Republican membership and gave the party a uniting concept to drive their politics.

The secession of the Southern states from the United States caused a rift in the Democrats that lasted almost seventy years. The democrats would argue with each other more than their political rivals. Meanwhile, the Republican Party was taken over by the big money of the robber barons of the industrial age. It became the party of big business, where at one time it had been the party of the common man. The last great Republican leader who embraced the founding concepts of the party was Theodore Roosevelt, who was as bitterly opposed by his fellow Republican politicians as he was loved by Republican voters.

The Great Depression was the wake up call for the Democrats, as well as the moment of their philosophical shift from old money privilege to an uniquely American form of socialism. The victories of the New Deal in raising the hopes and the the prospects of American poor became the cement that bound the party. The privileged money part of the party joined with the capitalist robber barons in the Republican Party over the next thirty years, and by 1965 the Democratic Party was very good at organization. Still lacking in big money donors, they attracted unions and working poor to their banner on the promise of government assistance for their financial difficulties caused by the capitalists’ unfair business practices.

The 2009 exercise of the mandate gained by the Democrats from the previous fall’s election was the crowning moment in Democratic unity. The Republicans had shot themselves in the foot by eight years of W’s presidency with near feudal government that served the interest of Bush and no one else. Now the Democrats shoved through their pseudo-socialist Affordable Care Act without regard for the objections of the newly marginalized Republicans. They did reach out to invite Republicans to join them in voting for the bill. But at no time did they consider amending the bill to assuage these objections. The resentment over the strong-arm tactics that passed the bill cemented opposition to the Democrats, but nothing more.

Meanwhile, the republicans were being overrun by the Tea Party Movement. This created a large group of sitting Republicans who were professional opposition forces, but not amenable to consensus. When the Republicans won the whole enchilada, they were not a united party, but in reality four parties under one name. The capitalist minded old guard was in the minority, the Tea Party opposition was in the ascension, the Bull Moose style original Republican moderates were a small minority, and a growing wave of populist Trumpians showed up to confuse things even more. We now have five parties in the Congress, four of which think they’re working together.

We would be better off if we rid ourselves of this “two-party system” sherade and adopted a system of multiple parties. Then the opposers would have practice in working together instead of assuming unity that doesn’t exist.

Eugenics in America, Past and Present

Today on NPR there is a story about the eugenics movement in the United States in the 1920s. This group had the hubris to claim the right to chose who may or may not procreate in the name of improving the gene pool of the human race. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party picked up on the plan in 1932 and made it law in Germany. After the war, the connection to Nazis made anything with the name eugenics on it too hot to touch. But the principles of the eugenics movement didn’t fade away.

While NPR talks about how evil and over with the movement was, they’re only half right. The forced sterilization of people based on arbitrary criteria was and is still an act of ultimate evil. But the principles of American eugenics are still practiced today under other names. People all across the American political spectrum, from extreme left to hard right, agree on the idea that they can chose who should have children in the interest of improving the gene pool. They just changed the names of the front organizations.

You won’t find out which organization is eugenic in philosophy by listening to their public press releases. To learn the philosophical principles behind a modern organization, you have to evaluate their practices. From local social clubs who limit their membership based on arbitrary criteria to national organizations. that work to reduce the procreation of minorities and undesirables, modern eugenics minded organizations. abound in America.

One example from my own life, when my wife and I were married, she was nineteen, Bertha turned twenty after our daughter was conceived. On the paperwork we received from Planned Parenthood offering obstetric and gynecological assistance, our baby was listed and an unwanted teenage pregnancy. As far as Bertha and I were concerned, no baby ever born was more wanted than our Deborah. But we didn’t have enough money to buy health insurance to cover the prenatal, delivery and postnatal medical care. Therefore, Planned Parenthood didn’t want us to procreate. The criterion used to decide our fitness for procreation was the balance of our bank account and the color of our skin, we only qualified on skin.

Whenever you are asked to support any organization, don’t look only at their press releases and public fundraising statements. Look at the actual effects of their service. Unless you support eugenics, you may be paying for things you oppose.

SCOTUS Works, and Conservative Problems

Evening, March 22, 2017:

Today the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on the Americans With Disabilities Education Act. This ruling is one of the best examples of our justice system when it works as intended. The eight justices were united in the ruling, there was no dissent. They read all the documentation Congress had produced outlining the intent of the law. Then they ruled that, “Students with disabilities must have a meaningful challenge, and the assistance of the school to help them meet it.”

This is remarkable because the court is incomplete with only eight members sitting. The political infighting in Congress has left Justice Scalia’s seat on the bench vacant for over ten months. This has the potential of leaving some cases unresolved if there is a tie vote on the issue. But in this case the justices all agreed, the intent of the law is to ensure that children with a learning disability will be able to grow to the fullest of their potential.

I am proud of the eight old men and women and, one empty seat, who made this ruling. Anyone else have an opinion on SCOTUS?

Morning, March 23, 2017:

I am appalled at the attitude of some of the Congressional Freedom Caucus. This morning NPR news reports that the group is will to sabotage the health care bill if it helps the poor people who need it. Most Republicans are not willing to leave the poor out. But these “statesmen” don’t care. They claim the states should do more to help the people they are willing to cut off. Under the upcoming Federal plans for infrastructure, tax reform, government downsizing, etc., the states will already be hard pressed to accomplish the goals laid down by these programs and their essential state services.

I am not surprised to discover that the leader of the Freedom Caucus is from Texas. Look at that state’s budget over the last two decades and you will see how much this Freedom Caucus is willing to pare the Federal budget. This is a nasty form of government from the party that was formed on the basis of helping the little people. The Tea Party was overtaken and captured by these destructive elements.

Another report on NPR talked about the rising death rate among Middle Aged white men. It seems that despair is the leading cause of death among white men over fifty. According to the radio report, the death rate among this demographic is now higher than the overall death rate among American Black people. I understand that the Freedom Caucus plan goes a long way to exacerbate the despair among all Americans who don’t happen to have a huge bank balance. That is the current position of Conservative politics in Congress. Have you bought your funeral program yet? Save your heirs some grief and invest in the funeral of your choice. It’s coming sooner than you planned it.

Feminazi Professor and Resistance to Defense

I just listened to an interview on NPR with a feminazi professor who was discussing what went on that was wrong when congress was holding hearings on the dangers of high-dose birth control pills in the 70s. I was very sympathetic throughout the interview until the discussion turned to modern politics. The gist of that portion of the interview is that everything done by Trump and his appointees is vile and will kill women.

An example the professor gave was a ruling by Judge Gorsuch that if an employer has a religious conviction that abortion is wrong, they don’t have to pay for insurance coverage of that procedure. In order to drum up greater support from people who oppose abortion, but not necessarily forms of birth control that don’t entail murdering an unborn child, the interviewer and the professor both used the term contraception in place of abortion. This is not only fraud, it is inaccurate to claim abortion is contraception; you cannot abort a child that has not been conceived.

Why do these feminazis claim that unless a woman has an absolute and inviable right to sacrifice her unborn children on the altar of Moloch all women will become enslaved by evil males? I can understand the struggle for equal pay, equal opportunity in employment and housing, etc. But what I don’t get is the push to kill, kill, kill unborn babies. Statistics show that the number of abortions per thousand women in the United States is steadily declining for the past thirty years. Abortion is nearly passe in our society. This makes no sense to me. Can someone explain why it is essential, with all the ways we have today to avoid conception when we use sex for recreation, abortion is the sacred cow of feminism?

Just to rant in a different direction, Homeland Security announced that people traveling from ten airports in the Middle East will be required to check any electronic device larger than a smartphone because bomb makers in the area with access to those airports are building explosive devices into laptops and tablet computers. The United Kingdom followed suit a few hours later. Now there are people declaring it to be discrimination against Muslims because the airports are all in countries with a Muslim majority. They vow to take it to court, but only in the United States. They don’t mind the UK rules because May never campaigned with outrageous suggestions of banning Muslims.

Are the bomb makers paying these people to fight for their right to kill Americans? If not they’re fools to aid and abet the bomb makers and other terrorists in the midst of a declared war on terror. That’s right, the treason stuff again. Take it to the logical conclusion. If these anti-Trump litigants are successful in shutting down any and all defensive measures against radical Islamic terrorists, the terrorists will have no trouble coming to the United States and killing American civilians. This is what the terrorists want, and I bet they’re willing to pay some of those big oil bucks that finance them to ensure it gets done. Tell me what you think.

Solutions to the Problem of the Innocent Convicted

So how do I propose to solve the problem of innocent people being convicted? This is such a complicated issue that no simple solution presents itself. A complicated problem doesn’t necessarily require a complicated solution. But this one has so many contributing causes that the solution will have to address each one.

Of course, the first step to solving the problem is to recognize the cause. Therefore, I urge everyone to read yesterday’s screed delivered from this Soapbox. Research the problems I listed in that article, then, when you have a grasp of the magnitude of the problem, come back and consider my proposals.

My first proposal is to establish in every criminal venue an agency whose only job is to try to debunk every criminal case in which the accused pleads not guilty. This agency will be manned by trained investigators who are overseen by an experienced investigator or a lawyer who has defended criminal cases for at least five years. All of the personnel in these agencies should be heavily steeped in forensic techniques and the latest science behind them.

The defense investigators would pass on their findings to both the District Attorneys and the defense counsel. The DAs will use the information to help decide weather to drop all charges or continue to prosecute the case. And the defense counsel will have as many resources as the state for preparing his/her case. As it stands today, only a very wealthy defendant will have the resources of the state to defend himself. This is why most innocent people who get convicted of other peoples crimes are indigent at the time of trial, and those who hire their own attorneys only have enough money to get the minimum of defense.

My second proposal will meet with much resistance from the law enforcement community. I propose a separate agency, not a part of the police forces, to investigate all public complaints against law enforcement officers, and to make and keep public the outcome of all of these investigations. It is an old proverb that an agency that polices itself has no one policing it. The many instances of police departments excusing the obviously egregious acts of their officers demonstrates the need for this one. I predict the vast majority of complaints will be resolved in a way that is amenable to both parties. But the few bad apples will be completely removed from the barrel, instead of merely shuffled out of sight.

The third proposal will not go over with many voters. Most people like the way their DAs pander to their fears and are happy to vote for a lawyer who would not hesitate to do anything for a conviction. That is the reason that district attorneys, and maybe even judges, ought to be removed from the political process. The pressure to get reelected is the driving force to convict when there is a question of the guilt of the defendant. I am not even going to touch on the bigger problem of racism in the justice system. But depoliticizing the office of DA will go a long way toward eliminating racism too.

Fourth, give the trier of fact in a criminal case, usually the jury, but sometimes the judge, the power to question and demand the presentation of evidence in a trial. Too often the jury has questions that are never even addressed, let alone resolved, when they are required to render a verdict. In the Napoleonic system found in Europe and parts of America south of the Rio Grande, this is the case. While there are still cases of egregious error in a conviction under such a system, when the trier of fact has the power to demand evidence be presented fewer people get railroaded by the attorneys.

My fifth proposal is to put some sort of penalty in place for attorneys who violate the law in carrying out their duties. As it now stands, the courts have granted themselves total immunity from any consequence of their misdeeds in the course of their duties. The lawyers love to quote the adage that, “No one is above the law.” Yet the reality is that they have effectively placed themselves above the law in their jobs.

I don’t hold the illusion that these proposals are perfect, nor that they will all be implemented. But it is my hop to start people thinking and begin a public debate. Comment on the blog if you have any thoughts on these or other proposals to solve the problem of innocent getting convicted.

Why Are the Innocent Convicted?

Why do the innocent get convicted. Most politicians and pundits have blamed the prosecuting attorneys. But the justice system in America is too complicated and convoluted for the blame for any wrongs to be laid at the feet of a single group of people. When the justice system gets it right, it is very right. I know there are people who ought to be incarcerated for the rest of their lives because they are a continuing threat to the peace and safety of the community. Many of them actually do get a life sentence. But there are a vast number of people, perhaps one in ten among those in America’s many prisons, who are not guilty of any felony at all.

When we “get tough on crime” it makes no sense to waist resources on locking up innocent people. Whenever an innocent person is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, the actual perpetrator gets a free ride to go forth and offend the law again and again. This isn’t “tough on crime.” It enables those criminals who continue to prey upon society while laughing up their sleeves at the system for locking up someone who didn’t do it.

So how does it happen? It all begins with the police officers and detectives who investigate crimes and arrest an innocent person instead of hunting down the guilty one. There is an unhealthy attitude among many police that they are standing against a whole world of criminals. To these cops, everyone is guilty of something and ought to be arrested. They think only police officers and investigators are righteous and can do no wrong. That is why they’re willing to excuse obviously egregious actions by their fellows.

I’m not saying all law enforcement officers are like this. On the contrary most LEOs are conscientious and ethical in carrying out their duties. But all LEOs either actively defend the ones who do wrong, or remain silent when they ought to condemn the misdeeds of their fellows. This is the primary reason for public distrust of police. That helps feed the police perception that they’re alone against a world of criminals.

But the biggest problem with police arresting the innocent is the way they are trained to investigate a crime. I call it the “Hollywood method” of investigation. We have all seen the movies and police procedural shows in which the veteran cop tells his rookie partner to “go with your gut” when deciding on whom to arrest for a crime. Looking at the stereotypical police diet of bad coffee and stale doughnuts, I don’t wonder that they have a bad feeling in their guts whenever they come in contact with Joe citizen. But jokes aside, the pressures to close a case now no matter what, and the attitude of “us against them” are drivers that tempt an investigator to reject empirical facts for gut feelings. When they do this they often have to fill in the blanks in their case with fictions and fudgings to get a case before a prosecutor that she will run with.

Training won’t be enough so long as the culture and friction remain. But investigators that follow hunches at the expense of facts are far too common to be comfortable with. We must demand that our investigators only follow the facts, all the facts, and nothing but the facts, no matter whether the case is closed or not. There is far more cooperation between local police forces than in the past. But the sharing of information between agencies is still far behind what is necessary to keep the community safe from predators.

The case of the murder of Christine Morton is one example of the problem. Investigators decided upon meeting her husband, that Michael Morton was the one who killed his wife in a rage over sexual frustration. Morton did not confess, and there was not enough evidence to convince a jury that Morton did the crime. There was evidence that a third party intruder unknown to the Mortons had entered the home and killed Christine. But it didn’t fit the scenario developed by the gut feelings of the investigators, and was discounted and even covered up. Then a criminal was given a deal to reduce his sentence of he would tell the jury that Morton told him he killed his own wife.

With the testimony of the snitch and the lack of evidence contrary, which was ignored or covered up by the police, Morton was convicted and did nearly two decades in prison for a crime of which he was actually a victim. A capital crime, one in which the State of Texas would seek the death penalty, was committed by the murderer, but the state could not charge Morton with capital murder because he could not burglarize his own home, only a third party could.

The man who killed Christine Morton had just recently killed another woman who looked a lot like her nearby. After Morton was in prison this man was finally arrested for a murder he committed of yet another woman who looked a lot like Christine Morton. He was known to police and had been angry at his own wife, who just happened to resemble Mrs. Morton, and took it out on his many victims as surrogates. The question we should ask is how many women would be alive today had the police followed the facts instead of their guts.

But once the arrest is made and the evidence, both real and fiction, handed over to the District attorney, the case gets even worse. No DA is ever interested in finding evidence that the person the police have charged is not the one who did the crime. Instead, as in the Morton case, DAs will hide evidence and refuse to investigate any possibility of the wrong person being charged. DAs in America are elected officials who uniformly campain on their record of convictions, Not their record of properly vetted cases. They don’t want to be seen as soft on crime for letting people go on little technicalities like they didn’t do it. In the Morton case all of these factors came into play when evidence accidentally collected by the police before they had decided Morton would go down for the crime was hidden from the defense attorney to ensure the jury never saw it. Then the DA intentionally used perjury, known to be such beforehand, to convince the jury that Morton was guilty of something he knew Morton did not do.

The families of victims are often recruited by police and DAs to support the conviction of an innocent person by feeding an attitude of hate toward that person. Once this emotional investment is made, most people are unwilling to change their minds even in the face of irrefutable evidence. It’s far too common to hear sound bites on television of victims’ family members venting hate toward the one they’ve become convinced did their loved one wrong. Even after exoneration of one who is actually innocent, these people remain estranged and hateful. The damage to their souls is too great to heal with truth.

How can we fix these problems? Denial of their existence won’t fix them. We must first recognize what the problems and bad practices are before we can work out solutions. The United States has a higher percentage of our population incarcerated than any other civilized, developed democracy in the world. We have too much vengeance and not enough justice in our system. I will propose solutions in tomorrow’s post.

What Is Wrong With Lawyers?

Everybody who doesn’t practice law, and quite a few who do, has a joke or complaint about lawyers. Why do we make so much fun of them? There is a lot of truth behind some of the worst jokes. Some of the most generous people I know are lawyers, impeccably ethical and thoroughly moral. Yet the lawyers who are not stand out so egregiously that they become the definition of the profession for the rest of us. That is sad, but worse is the resistance of the practitioners of law to do anything to change the things that are bad.

When a lawyer becomes your attorney of record, he stands between you and the court. Nothing may be presented to the court except through him. If he does not make the effort to present the case desired by the litigant, you do not have your say, he does. The legal definition of due process of law is the right to be heard in a meaningful manor in a meaningful time. If that gatekeeper refuses to put forth your full story, you do not have due process.

How common is this? In my personal experience, I have had five different lawyers represent me in court. Of those five, only one listened to me before filing motions or other papers and running with the case. The one who heard me out only used some of the things I wanted to present. In each of those cases, my case was lost before the judge’s ruling by the lack of presentation. I have done an informal poll of others with similar contact with the courts. Each person with whom I spoke had a similar experience with lawyers who didn’t present their full case but only the minimum that was expedient.

Among those who practice law there is an adage, “Go with the money.” If you don’t have the money, many lawyers won’t go with you.

Many people tell me there are a lot of good lawyers out there, and I hope they are right. My answer to them each time is always the same, “Introduce me to one. All I need is one lawyer willing to do good in my own case.” Somehow they never do. It seems easy to declare there are good lawyers, but hard to find them. Mercenary, sociopathic, narcissistic, these are all qualities attributed to the practitioners of law. Altruistic, generous, helpful, these are all qualities the practitioners of law apply to themselves. Am I the only person who sees the disconnect?

To all the legal practitioners who read this, I urge you to listen to your clients, even if they don’t have a huge bank account. Treat people as if their value were intrinsic to their humanity and not the sum of their assets. Give your clients their say in court so that they can have the due process you pride yourselves on championing. There is no reason for the practice of law to be view as parasitical.

Political Bickering is Treasonous

Today I was listening to NPR news, and wondered at the reasoning our courts have dropped into.  The reason cited by the judge for declaring Trumps EO on restricting travel from six failed nations unconstitutional is that he said things in the past that exhibited prejudice toward Muslims.  According to the ruling, there is nothing Trump will ever be allowed to do to secure our nation from extremist terrorists if they happen to claim Islam as their faith.  The courts, driven by Democrat opposition to Trump because they hate him, will declare all efforts to stop terrorists who happen to be members of an extremist sect of Islam is unconstitutional because Trump is prejudiced against Muslims. 
How does that guarantee the security of our homeland?  It doesn't!  One of the definitions of treason is, "Aiding and abetting enemies of the United States."  This activity sure looks like aiding and abetting to this commentator.  Good sense is thrown out the window in favor of political power struggles.  This has gone on too long.
Americans ought to dump the two main parties and elect officials from other parties:  the Greens, Libertarians, etc.  When the two main parties see their base abandoning them, they will moderate their anti-other stances on everything and work together to benefit the nation as a whole.  But we have to send them the message that this is what we want.  We can't have the status quo continue.

First Day's Observation

Is it just me, or does anyone else see the Liberals lack of consern about the security of the United States? Anyone who has played a strategy game like chess, Risk, or go, knows that you don’t attack a strong opponent from the same direction every time. The Liberals claim there is no threat of people from the countries on Trump’s list of temporarily banned source nations for travel to the US because there had never been an attack on US soil by a person from these nations. The State Department relies on host nation intellegence agencies to vett refugees and visitors. These countries either have no government, or their governments are too busy fighting insurgents and Islamic extreemists and they have no resources left to vett immagrent to the US. Don’t think the leaders of the califate are too blind to see the opportunity afforded them by the American Liberals whose hate for Trump have blinded them to the larger issues.

The Liberals filing suits against the “travel ban” state that there is nothing Trump can do that they won’t counter with his campaign rhetoric. They think that it would be cool to open the US to distructive elements from all over the world so long as Trump is trying to stop them. Yes they trot out a needy refugee or two every time they protest Trump. But their message has always been wo anti Trump that any pro refugee message they espouse rings false, at least in my ears.

In another place. Two pages of Trump tax returns turned up in a journallist’s mailbox. The Liberals are all over it in a feeding frenzy, until it comes out that Trump paid more taxes than he had to pay had he itemized. Instead he claimed the minimum deduction and paid 25% instead of 3% to which he would have been entitled had he claimed all exemptions and deductions.

These observations make the Liberals look as dumb as the Conservatives who worship the marketplace god. Imagine saying that taking money away from the poor and giving it to the rich will make everybody more wealthy. Huh? How do they get to that conclusion? Last time I looked, Whenever the capitalists were given free hands, they become 19^th Century-style robber barrons. Just look at the credit industry (where do they get any industry out of lending money for usery?), interest rates charged to the banks for loans from the Federal Reserve have been at their lowest in history for over eight years, yet interest on a credit card from one of those banks is 18% or more. And the Smithian concept that the marketplace will fix it is poppycock. That’s just one example, and now the Conservatives want to do the same thing for insurance “industry.”

Then we have Russia. Hacking the government is one thing, but paying American hackers to hack Yahoo, and then giving them a free hand to do as they please once inside, is not the act of a legitamate government, but a criminal gang. Too bad RICO doesn”t apply to forien states. And we’re still unaware how close Russia is with Trump. What is the relationship? Are you there FBI?

Ol’ Fuzzy is going to try to be even handed every time I file a post in this blog. But remember, some days one side or the other will be laying low.