Politics

Jarrett Maupin II, protege of Al Sharpton, wants to be mayor of Phoenix, but unfortunately for his campaign, incumbent mayor Phil Gordon’s challenges to his ballot petitions have disqualified enough signatures to get him off the ballot. It seems that Maupin hired individuals with felony convictions to collect signatures, and a majority of his signatures were from people not registered to vote, leaving him 91 signatures short. Maupin said he was “outraged” by Gordon’s challenge of his petition and insisted that he would be on the ballot. Maupin got press by showing up at the mayor’s office with a voter registration form, stating that Gordon is a Democrat in name only and should switch his registration to Republican. Ironically, Maupin was head of the Young Republicans at Brophy College Preparatory (though this was before he was of legal voting age). I also just came across a news report from 2005, regarding Maupin’s father: ...

I’m currently reading Pulitzer Prize winning author Tim Weiner’s 20-years-in-the-making history of the Central Intelligence Agency, Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA (2007, Doubleday). All of Weiner’s facts are sourced and on-the-record, including numerous recently declassified sources (some of which the government is attempting to re-classify). This review of the book by Chalmers Johnson, a former outside consultant for the CIA, does a good job of pointing out some of the highlights and arguing at the conclusion for the abolition of the CIA and letting the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research fill in for the foreign intelligence function. Weiner’s book points out how the CIA has been mismanaged since its creation from the ashes of the Office of Strategic Services, failing to come up with accurate information about major events of significance and leaving a wake of damage from failed covert ops designed to stop the spread of communism even where there was none. And it has regularly deceived presidents, massaged or fabricated intelligence information, and violated the laws of the United States. Johnson writes: Nothing has done more to undercut the reputation of the United States than the CIA’s “clandestine” (only in terms of the American people) murders of the presidents of South Vietnam and the Congo, its ravishing of the governments of Iran, Indonesia (three times), South Korea (twice), all of the Indochinese states, virtually every government in Latin America, and Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The deaths from these armed assaults run into the millions. After 9/11, President Bush asked “Why do they hate us?” From Iran (1953) to Iraq (2003), the better question would be, “Who does not?"This paragraph understates the case–Johnson goes on to describe how the CIA provided funding for Japanese and Italian politicians. Weiner’s book observes that the CIA helped a convicted war criminal become prime minister of Japan in 1957 and bribed the leading officials of the Liberal Democratic Party, which it helped maintain in power until the 1990s. CIA broadcasts from Radio Free Europe called for uprisings. To their surprise, former Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy, who had been expelled from the Communist Party, announced on state radio a break with Russia, and within days formed a new coalition government in October 1956, but CIA Director Allen Dulles rejected him because he had been a communist and RFE attacked him. RFE broadcasts as much as promised U.S. assistance to Hungarian rebels, only to leave them to die on their own in November 1956 when the Soviets crushed the rebellion. Tens of thousands of people were killed and thousands shipped off to Siberia. Dulles lied to Eisenhower about the content of the broadcasts, transcripts of which only became available in English in 1996, and claimed the U.S. had done nothing to encourage the Hungarians. I’ve still got much to read in the book (I’m only up to 1958), but so far it is eye-opening and appalling. UPDATE (August 11, 2007): The CIA has issued a press release taking issue with Weiner’s book for its bias. UPDATE (December 16, 2009): The CIA has published a review critiquing the accuracy and reliability of Weiner’s book. ...

The New York Times editorialized that vice president Dick Cheney was the person who sent then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card to the hospital bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft to try to get him to reauthorize the warrantless wiretapping program that the acting Attorney General James Comey and many Department of Justice staff (including Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller) threatened to resign over. Larry King asked Cheney about it, and his response is that he had no recollection of such an event, and besides, he didn’t read the New York Times editorial. Sounds like a lie to me, and Larry King seems to suggest he thinks so as well. Talking Points Memo thinks they’ve identified a Cheney “tell." (And no, it’s not just that his lips are moving…)

Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R-AK) home was raided today by the FBI. All of Alaska’s federal legislators are now under investigation for corruption, as are some Alaskan state legislators, such as Ted Stevens’ son Ben Stevens, president of the Alaska State Senate. UPDATE (August 1, 2007): George W. Bush continued his habit of supporting legislators with criminal investigation and ethics problems by hosting a White House dinner in Ted Stevens’ honor back on May 23 of this year. UPDATE (October 28, 2008): Ted Stevens was convicted yesterday on seven charges, making him the fifth sitting Senator to be convicted of a felony.

Outsourcing the Picket Line The picketers marching in a circle in front of a downtown Washington office building chanting about low wages do not seem fully focused on their message. … Although their placards identify the picketers as being with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, they are not union members. They’re hired feet, or, as the union calls them, temporary workers, paid $8 an hour to picket. Many were recruited from homeless shelters or transitional houses. Several have recently been released from prison. Others are between jobs. ...

Many of these, from Radley Balko at The Agitator, are also appropriate for Republicans. A few I especially liked: A recent study found that over half the country now derives part or all of its income from the federal government. Three of the richest counties in the country are in the D.C. suburbs, a telling indicator of just how bloated with taxpayer dollars Washington has become. The federal government is today pervasive in our day-to-day lives, from cradle to grave, from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep. Do you think these trends are healthy? Looking at the premise of this question, would you agree or disagree federal government is getting too large, too influential, and too pervasive? Do you think it’s appropriate for drug cops to be making medical policy? What is your philosophical approach to federalism? What issues do you feel are best decided at the national level? What issues should be left to the states? Is there any underlying principle you use in separating one from the other, or would you make such decisions ad hoc? Do you believe the U.S. military should be deployed for humanitarian missions? Do you think an atheist could be president? Do you think an atheist should be? Assuming you generally agreed with an atheist on more issues than the alternatives in a given election, would you vote for one? Name five things you think are none of the federal government’s business. What is your view of the pardon power and executive clemency? Should it be used frequently? Should it be use to show mercy and forgiveness or to correct injustices that slip through the cracks? Neither? Both? Is there any type of speech you believe should be criminalized? Do you promise not to claim for yourself any of the executive powers you’ve criticized the Bush administration for claiming? What is your position on Kelo vs. New London? Under what circumstances would it be appropriate for a government to seize land from one private party and give it to another? What federal crimes will you instruct the Justice Department to make a priority during your administration? Are there any currently private industries that you believe are “too important” to be left to the private sector? Oil and gas? Health care? Google? America by far and away has the highest prison population in the world. Does this concern you? Are there any federal crimes you feel should be repealed from the books, or devolved to the states? What’s your philosophical approach to risk assessment and the precautionary principle? Do you think government should ban products, treatments, and procedures until they’re proven safe, or permit them until they show signs of being unsafe? Do you think it’s a legitimate function of government to protect people from making bad decisions or prevent them from developing bad habits? Even if those habit or decisions don’t directly affect anyone else? How far should the government in preventing bad habits and bad decisions? In other words, should the government’s role be merely advisory, or should it criminalize things like gambling, pornography, drug use, or trans fats? Should members of Congress be required to follow all of the laws that they pass? Should members be required to read each bill before voting on it? Would you support a sunset provision requiring Congress to revisit and re-pass each law after five years? The complete list is here. ...

One of the serious problems I have with our democracy is that politicians are a package deal. When one gets elected we celebrate their good ideas, but we have to endure their idiotic ones. I think this could explain the popularity of the “lesser-of-evils” argument people often use to persuade others to vote for their pet candidate of the moment. Arguably, all politicians are idiots - to a greater or lesser degree. Case in point: Ron Paul. You can love him for his stance on the war in Iraq, but this sort of stuff really makes me wonder about the guy: The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion.WTF??? Isn’t Ron Paul supposedly a constitutionalist? It’s not a big surprise to me to find that the source of the above patent absurdity is an article posted at lewrockwell.com - home of the kookiest of the kooks in the “libertarian” world. Thanks to the no god zone, which has more to say on this topic. UPDATE by Jim (October 18, 2007): Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more on Ron Paul’s views on religion and government, with lots of data in the comments. UPDATE by Jim (December 25, 2007): Ron Paul rejects evolution. ...

The fact that color printers print a pattern of yellow dots on all pages that indicate which printer was used, for the purposes of being able to track the identity of who has printed any page, has been known since the EFF decrypted the codes and publicized the information in 2005. Now, however, the MIT Media Lab has started a project called “Seeing Yellow” to encourage printer owners to contact the manufacturers and complain, after it has been found that those who do so get reported to the U.S. Secret Service as subversives. (There is one known case, in which someone called to ask a printer manufacturer if there was a way to turn off the “feature.”) (Via Don Lloyd at Distributed Republic.)

In France, the penalties for speeding are now so widely seen as unfair that there is now a market for selling and purchasing the deduction of points from your license for traffic offenses. Each driver starts with 12 points on their license, and loses points for violations. Exceeding the speed limit by 20 kph or less has a two-point penalty, for example. Once you get to zero, your license is automatically suspended for six months. But if you get a traffic citation, you can pay 300-1500 euros per point to someone who is willing to take the rap for you (either because they don’t drive or are sufficiently far from zero that the penalty won’t bother them), and they’ll incur the points by sending in their information on your ticket. The French Interior Ministry is attempting to investigate means to crack down on this, but the volume of tickets is apparently making it difficult. More at the Reason blog. I think this mechanism could work well for photo radar speeding tickets in the U.S.

The Arizona legislature and the governor have passed legislation banning the sale of t-shirts that say “Bush Lied/They Died.” The Arizona legislature voted unanimously in favor of the ban, which allows for the punishment of a year in jail for using the names of deceased soldiers to sell goods, and gives the families of such soldiers the right to collect civil damages. This is an outrageous violation of the First Amendment to prohibit perfectly legitimate political speech using factual information in the public domain. Similar bans have also been passed in Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma, and are in the works in Florida. In Arizona, this law also violates the state constitution (Article 2, Sections 1, 2, and 6, in my non-lawyerly opinion). Several Democrats who voted for the bill have now agreed that they should not have, and made excuses for why they did: “I shouldn’t have voted the way I did,” House Minority Leader Phil Lopes said. The Tucson Democrat blamed his vote in favor of Senate Bill 1014 on a “senior moment." Rep. Tom Prezelski, D-Tucson, said he thought problems he originally had with the measure had been fixed. He acknowledged not reading the final version. And Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix, conceded that she wasn’t paying attention and was totally unaware of the contents of the bill on which she voted at least twice—once after a proponent of the measure gave a short floor speech explaining the essence of the bill and why he believed it was necessary. Our governor, also a Democrat, has given an equally lame response when asked why she signed such a clearly unconstitutional bill: …gubernatorial press aide Jeanine L’Ecuyer said a divided vote would not have resulted in a veto. “Her concern is for the families who lost someone,” L’Ecuyer said. Asked if Napolitano, a lawyer, believes the measure is unconstitutional, L’Ecuyer’s only response was, “The governor signed the bill."Napolitano cannot be re-elected, and after this, she clearly should not be. Any legislator who voted for this bill should be given the boot, which means cleaning out the entire Arizona legislature. Toss the bums out! The shirts are being sold by Dan Frazier of Flagstaff, who also offers some different messages on top of the list of names of the fallen soldiers. The Arizona Civil Liberties Union has already filed a lawsuit to overturn the law (PDF). If anyone in Phoenix is interested in purchasing some of these shirts as part of a group purchase (or as my resale at cost to you, so I can work some civil disobedience of an unconstitutional law into it), please let me know. UPDATE (August 24, 2007): Dan Frazier has gone to court to get an injunction against the law, but it looks like the legislators wrote the law not only in ignorance of the Constitution, but in ignorance of what Frazier is doing–the law doesn’t ban the sale of items using the names of fallen soldiers, it bans advertising using the names of fallen soldiers. The names are not legible on Frazier’s website, so he may not fall afoul of the law. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s a bad, unconstitutional law, however. ...