December 8, 2015


News Clips For The Day


Supreme Court Trial Today: Evenwel v. Abbott – December 8, 2015

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/28/the_supreme_court_case_that_could_doom_the_democrats_inside_the_rights_cynical_scheme_to_cement_power/

"Supreme Court case could doom Democrats... justices could help GOP rig the game"
Salon

The Supreme Court case that could doom the Democrats: How the justices could help GOP rig the game
A new proposal to change how legislative districts are drawn shows conservatives' ruthless cynicism in action
SIMON MALOY
THURSDAY, MAY 28, 2015

Photograph -- Justices Antonin Scalia, John Roberts (Credit: AP/Dave Tulis/Larry Downing/Photo montage by Salon)


This week, the Supreme Court opted to hear arguments in Evenwel v. Abbott, a case out of Texas that challenges the ways in which states draw their legislative districts. The longstanding status quo has been that when state governments set the boundaries for legislative districts, they use census estimates of total populations to determine where the boundaries should be drawn so that each district contains roughly the same number of people. The plaintiffs in Evenwel, and the conservative activist group representing them, argue that the districts should be drawn based on the number of eligible voters, not the total population. It’s a challenge to the existing notion of “one person, one vote,” and up until now, the high court has been unwilling to consider cases that seek to redefine that principle.

This case is yet another testament to the conservative movement’s boundless creativity when it comes to exploiting the courts to achieve policy outcomes. Conservative activists know that if they can wrap their policy agenda in a legal argument that at least sounds plausible, they have a pretty good chance of getting a favorable decision from the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc.

In this case, the policy agenda is restricting the political power of Democratically-aligned populations. The reason conservative activists are seeking this change to “one person, one vote” isn’t to satisfy an ideological argument. As law professor Richard Hasen noted at Slate, the argument being put forth by the conservative group behind the case actually hampers the abilities of local governments to determine their own systems of political representation. They’re urging the Supreme Court to restrict the rights of the individual states, which tends not to comport too well with the conservative ideal of “small government.” But, as Hasen writes, “a ruling favorable to conservatives in the Evenwel case, especially if extended to congressional redistricting, could shift more power to Republicans, who are more likely to live in areas with high concentrations of voters.”

Urban areas have greater concentrations of people who, for one reason or another, are not eligible to vote. By removing them from the tallies when redrawing district lines, you’re effectively diminishing the number of districts that will be more likely to vote Democratic. In states like Texas, the impact could be huge. “Drawing districts based on the number of voters would mean that Hispanic districts in many parts of Texas would need to contain more actual people (each a constituent), than comparable suburban white districts,” the Brennan Center for Justice notes. The conservatives pushing for this change understand this, and the overall goal of increasing Republican political power outweighs the ideological considerations.

It also outweighs the practical considerations. Determining district boundaries is a messy business as it is. States use estimates of total population because it’s the least troublesome way of counting and, at the very least, they are consistent across the board. Mandating a shift to counting only the eligible voting population introduces a huge amount of complexity and chaos into an already uncertain process. Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw explains:

Among those who are currently ineligible, how many will finish their prison terms and regain the right to vote? How many will complete the naturalization process? The list goes on and it’s a dizzying problem to even contemplate. I suppose the court could say something vague along the lines of demanding that the state make their “best effort” to determine the numbers, but then you’re just in line for an endless series of lawsuits from plaintiffs who claim that the best effort in question wasn’t good enough or was corrupted by biased politicians.

It has the real potential to be a great big disaster in the making, and pretty soon you’re going to hear pretty every conservative with access to a media platform demand that it happen. As Paul Waldman writes at the Washington Post, the conservative posture towards Evenwel will very likely be similar to what’s happened with another bit of right-wing legal exotica, the King v. Burwell challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s insurance subsidies:

First, a conservative advocate comes up with a novel legal theory, one few people had considered before, to accomplish a Republican goal. Though it flies in the face of either logic, history, and common sense (as is the case in King) or settled precedent (as in this case), Republicans everywhere quickly realize its potential and embrace it wholeheartedly, no matter how many silly arguments they might have to make along the way. And in the end, five conservative justices on the Supreme Court might or might not give the GOP a huge and unexpected victory.

It’s a bluntly cynical way to realize one’s policy agenda without actually having to bother with elections and lawmaking, and conservatives have demonstrated time and again how ruthlessly effective it can be.



http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/05/major-test-on-voter-equality-set-for-review/

Major test on voter equality set for review
Lyle Denniston Independent Contractor Reporter
Posted Tue, May 26th, 2015

Cartoon -- SCOTUS takes Evenwel v. Abbott (Art Lien)


The Constitution has been understood for the past half-century to require that no individual’s vote count more at election time than anyone else’s. The Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday, for the first time, to clarify how that concept of equality is to be measured, when legislatures are drawing up election districts.

The Court took on a case challenging the 2011 redistricting of the thirty-one seats in the Texas Senate, focusing on what measure of population should be used to judge whether the “one-person, one-vote” mandate has been met. That mandate originated in Reynolds v. Sims in 1964. The new case of Evenwel v. Abbott will be heard and decided next Term, as will two new criminal cases the Justices also agreed on Tuesday to hear.

In one of the other cases, Foster v. Humphrey, the Court will clarify the ban on the use of race in excluding potential jurors from the panel at trial — a ban laid down in the 1986 decision in Batson v. Kentucky. In a Georgia death penalty case, defense lawyers discovered evidence, after the trial, that the prosecutor had created black-juror strike lists contradicting claims of being neutral on race during seating of the jury.

In the other new criminal case, Lockhart v. United States, the Court will spell out when a mandatory minimum prison sentence is required under a federal law against child pornography, based on a prior conviction under state law for sexual abuse. The federal appeals courts are divided on the scope of that requirement.

The Justices’ move into the Texas Senate redistricting case comes fourteen years after Justice Clarence Thomas, in Chen v. City of Houston in May 2001, was the sole member of the Court who went on record in favor of sorting out “what measure of population should be used for determining whether the population is equally distributed among the districts.”

The usual choice considered by legislatures is to make districts more or less equal by dividing up shares of the state’s total population, or, as an alternative, to draw lines based upon some measure of the voting members of the population — such as the numbers actually registered to vote.

Two Texas voters, who wound up in state senate districts where they say their votes will count less than the votes in another district even though each of those districts has about the same total number of people, argued that this contradicts the “one-person, one-vote” guarantee of voter equality. Their votes would have counted equally, they contended, if the legislature instead had used voting-age population as the measure.

The voters, Sue Evenwel, who lives in Titus County in Senate District 1, and Edward Pfenninger, who lives in Montgomery County in District 4, said their votes were diluted because of the disparity between the two measures as applied to those districts, where more of the people vote proportionally. Both districts are rural. Other, more urban districts have proportionally fewer registered voters, so the redistricting plan based on actual population is said to give those who do vote more weight — that is, fewer of them can control the outcome.

“A statewide districting plan that distributes voters or potential voters in a grossly uneven way,” the two voters told the Court, “is patently unconstitutional under Reynolds v. Sims and its progeny.”

The voters do not argue that legislatures should be forbidden ever to use total population as the districting measure, but only when it results in the kind of disparity, compared to a plan based on voters’ numbers, that resulted in Texas.

At the theoretical core of this dispute is the theory of representation that a legislature should follow. Texas, supported by the lower court in the new cases, argued that this is a question of how to define democracy, a question that it said should be left to the people’s elected representatives, and not decided by the courts. The state also contended that the Supreme Court had said explicitly in a 1966 decision (Burns v. Richardson) that the choice of population measure was a matter for legislatures.

The Justices, while taking on new cases for decision, also denied review on Tuesday of a number of significant controversies, including these:

** Whether the mental disability of an individual convicted of murder, and claiming to be too handicapped to be executed, should be analyzed as of the time of the crime, or many years later when the issue arises anew. That was the question in Murphy v. Texas.

** Whether it is unconstitutional for a local government to shift to out-of-state companies most of the cost of disposing of unsold prescription drugs that may pose a safety or health hazard. The issue in Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America v. Alameda County tested the scope of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause to local recycling ordinances.


Posted in Foster v. Chatman, Lockhart v. U.S., Evenwel v. Abbott, Cases in the Pipeline, Featured, Merits Cases

Recommended Citation: Lyle Denniston, Major test on voter equality set for review, SCOTUSblog (May. 26, 2015, 12:14 PM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/05/major-test-on-voter-equality-set-for-review/




http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/08/symposium-evenwel-v-abbott-and-the-constitutions-big-data-problem/

Symposium: Evenwel v. Abbott and the Constitution’s big data problem
Nathaniel Persily Guest
Posted Mon, August 3rd, 2015


Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford University Law School. (For a more developed version of the argument presented here, please see Nathaniel Persily, The Law of the Census: How to Count, What to Count, Whom to Count, and Where to Count Them, 32 Cardozo L. Rev. 755, 775-81 (2011).)

The plaintiffs in Evenwel v. Abbott deserve credit for highlighting an unappreciated feature of our system of representation and exposing a gap in the jurisprudence of one person, one vote. Their constitutional argument, however, is academic, at best, and at worst, dangerous and destabilizing for the redistricting process and the U.S. Census. Leaving aside the weighty and contested philosophical arguments concerning the proper basis for legislative representation, a constitutional rule of redistricting based on citizenship or eligible voters presents insurmountable logistical difficulties. These difficulties are of constitutional import because no national database of citizenship exists at the level of granularity necessary to draw legislative districts that comply with one person, one vote.

First some basics on the redistricting process. With each decennial census virtually every level of government in the country – from Congress to state legislatures to school boards and any other manner of local government – must redraw their districts to adjust to population shifts the Census reveals. The redistricting dataset released by the Census (the so-called PL 94-171 datafile) and used by virtually all jurisdictions in the United States includes information regarding the total population and voting-age population, as broken down by race. The data are derived from the Census form we now receive every ten years, which only asks questions as to race/ethnicity, age, gender, and owner/renter status of the home. It does not ask anything about citizenship, voter registration, or anything comparable.

From where, then, do all of the data concerning citizenship we hear so much about come? They come from a yearly survey of 2.5% of American households called the American Community Survey (ACS). As one of many surveys conducted by the Census, the ACS contains a host of questions covering everything from a house’s plumbing, internet connectivity, and tax rates, to its occupants’ citizenship, marital, employment, and veteran status. The Census releases results from each year’s ACS, as well as averages for the previous three- or five-year period. Whenever you see citizenship rates reported in the news, the ACS is usually the source. Unlike the decennial census, the ACS is not mandated by the Constitution, and Congress could terminate or defund it at any time, as some representatives have threatened.

The ACS does not produce a dataset, however, that is appropriate for redistricting. First, because they sample such a small share of the population, the yearly surveys do not produce data at sufficient granularity for redistricting, namely the census block or neighborhood level, akin to the decennial census. Just like other public opinion polls, a survey like the ACS can paint, in broad outlines, the profile of a state or large subsections of it. But as you move down to your neighborhood, a 2.5% national survey will often not include enough people from your immediate vicinity in order to create accurate estimates of citizenship rates. Any such estimates, therefore, come with margins of error, just like other public opinion polls.

Because any yearly ACS is too small and inaccurate to be used for redistricting purposes, three- and five-year averages might give better estimates of the citizenship rates at smaller levels of geography. Even those statistics, though, are not released at the census block level, which is the building block for redistricting plans. Even if they were, they do not provide estimates of the citizenship population at the time of redistricting – that is, they are averages of earlier years and give estimates of what the citizenship rates have been, not what they are at the time districts need to be drawn. Unlike the decennial census, which presents a snapshot of the population, the ACS is more like a movie, highlighting general movements in the population data viewable only on the big screen. (To make matters even more complicated, those ACS averages are derived from the earlier census geography – i.e., the census tracts as they were drawn for the census ten years earlier – not the census immediately preceding the redistricting.)

The other population base for redistricting put forward by the Evenwel appellants is registered voters. With this suggestion, they appear on more familiar ground, given that the Supreme Court in Burns v. Richardson (1966), upheld, though clearly did not mandate, the use of registered voter data for redistricting purposes. Burns somewhat reluctantly sanctioned the use of registered voters as the population base, only because in that context, “registered voters was chosen as a reasonable approximation of both citizen and voter population.” Requiring as a constitutional rule redistricting on the basis of equal numbers of registered voters comes with its own set of serious problems, however.

First, as with a “citizen census,” the Constitution does not require voter registration. In fact, North Dakota does not require its voters to register and nothing prevents other states from following suit. Another fourteen states allow for Election Day registration; for them, the number of registered voters in a given jurisdiction can fluctuate considerably depending on whether one uses data before or after the election.

Indeed, the extreme variability in voter registration data for any jurisdiction is a key reason such data should not be used for redistricting purposes. The size and accuracy of a voter registration list will often depend on the proximity to an election. When voter registration drives are in full force, especially for an impending presidential election in a battleground state, the number of registered voters can increase substantially. If the next election is a congressional election or even an off-year local election, the number of registered voters in a jurisdiction might be smaller or out of date. The voter registration list is, in this sense, a moving target. If it is to be used for redistricting, the decision as to which voter list to use, and when, can lead to dramatically different outcomes. (Expressing caution as it blessed the use of registered voters, Burns recognized this problem: “[F]luctuations in the number of registered voters in a given election may be sudden and substantial, caused by such fortuitous factors as a peculiarly controversial election issue, a particularly popular candidate, or even weather conditions.”

The inaccuracy of voter rolls, moreover, has been a continuing source of frustration for election administrators and should caution against using voter registration as a population base for redistricting. As the Report of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, for which I served as Senior Research Director, detailed, roughly eight percent or sixteen million voter registration records are invalid or significantly inaccurate. But the degree of inaccuracy varies considerably by state and over time. For some states, as many as fifteen percent of the names on their voter registration list constitute “deadwood”: names of people who have likely moved or died since they were registered at the given address. As a result, states conduct periodic purges of their voter rolls, as regulated by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Whether a jurisdiction redistricts on the basis of a list before or after a purge can lead to different results. To guard against disenfranchisement by way of purging, furthermore, states retain different lists of voters: an active voter list of those who have regularly voted and an inactive voter list, which includes people who have missed voting in the last few elections. As with the ACS citizenship data, mandating redistricting on the basis of “registered voters,” as the Evenwel appellants urge, does not settle the question concerning the proper population base for redistricting: It would require further decisions as to which voter registration list, at which time.

These points concerning the inaccuracy and variability of the potential alternative data sources for redistricting will likely receive less attention in Evenwel than familiar constitutional arguments concerning the proper interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. But these seemingly technical and logistical issues should foreclose the constitutional debate. Current data on citizenship or on registered voters is simply too inaccurate or contested to be used in redistricting. Unless the Justices are prepared to mandate a new kind of “citizen census” or to constitutionalize the voter registration process, then they should leave it to the states to draw their districts using the most accurate data available.

Posted in Evenwel v. Abbott, Featured, One person, one vote and Evenwel

Recommended Citation: Nathaniel Persily, Symposium: Evenwel v. Abbott and the Constitution’s big data problem, SCOTUSblog (Aug. 3, 2015, 12:01 AM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/08/symposium-evenwel-v-abbott-and-the-constitutions-big-data-problem/





http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/07/symposium-taking-voter-equality-seriously/

Symposium: Taking voter equality seriously

Ilya Shapiro Guest
Posted Wed, July 29th, 2015


Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute. He filed an amicus brief supporting the jurisdictional statement in Evenwel and will be filing another at the merits stage. Shapiro became a U.S. citizen just last year. Like most immigrants, he does a job few native-born Americans will: defending the Constitution.

The issue in a nutshell

The “one person, one vote” standard (OPOV) has become an axiomatic part of election law: Whatever mischief happens during the decennial redistricting process, states can’t draw districts with wildly disproportionate populations, such that a vote in lightly populated districts is worth much more than a vote in heavily populated districts.

It’s an easy principle to understand. You can avoid getting tied into knots determining whether a given regulation is “congruent and proportional” to the problem it addresses – and you can stay out of the thicket of “undue burdens” and other jurisprudential monstrosities.

Instead, OPOV solves the old “rotten borough” problem, where some British parliamentarians represented constituencies where very few – or no! – people lived. This became an issue in the United States as the country urbanized but depopulated rural areas maintained disproportionate voting power in state legislatures and congressional delegations. The Supreme Court ruled in the 1964 case of Reynolds v. Sims that political map-designers can’t dilute the franchise that way and instead must draw districts with roughly equal numbers of people.

In other words, each person’s vote should be equal, as guaranteed by the Constitution; nobody gets more votes based on wealth, education, occupation, sex, race, or geography. None of this is or should be controversial.

But a funny thing happened on the way to electoral utopia: just as the Industrial Revolution fomented radical population shifts, modern immigration patterns have created disparities in the number of voters per district. Just as it was intolerable for a rural district with 500 voters to have the same representation in a state legislature as an urban district with 5000 voters, it’s now constitutionally suspect to have that disparity between a heavily (non-citizen) foreign-born district and one with mostly native-born citizens. In each case, the Supreme Court must intervene to maintain voter equality.

While the specific case now before the Court, Evenwel v. Abbott, doesn’t present the stark 10:1 ratio in voting power I just stylized, the disparities are nonetheless significant: as detailed by the challengers to Texas’s districting map detail (see tables on pages 8-10 of their jurisdictional statement), some state senate districts deviate by as much as fifty percent from the ideal. That means that twice as many voters may elect a state senator in one district as in the smallest district.

In sum, regardless of one’s views of Evenwel’s particular facts, it has to be the case that disparities between the number of voters in state districts raises a constitutional issue. Otherwise, even 10:1 or 100:1 ratios wouldn’t be a problem. And if all we’re talking about here is line-drawing rather than first principles, then the challengers win.

Cato’s briefing

I don’t want to simply summarize the challengers’ arguments, so let me focus instead on two points that Cato is developing for our Evenwel merits brief: (1) the inaptness of the so-called “federal analogy” (which I’ll explain); and (2) that when the Voting Rights Act (VRA) conflicts with the Constitution, the latter trumps.

The federal analogy
When the Supreme Court was asked more than fifty years ago to uphold grossly disproportionate state legislative districts, Alabama argued that states should be allowed to implement a “little federal system” that would be “framed after the Federal System of government—namely one senator in each county of the state.”

The Court correctly realized then that “the federal analogy [is] inapposite and irrelevant to state legislative districting schemes.” After all, the states are “separate and distinct governmental entities which have delegated some, but not all, of their formerly held powers to the single national government,” whereas “[p]olitical subdivisions of States—counties, cities, or whatever—never were and never have been considered as sovereign entities, [but rather] have been traditionally regarded as subordinate governmental instrumentalities created by the State to assist in the carrying out of state governmental functions.” Further, because “[t]he system of representation in the two Houses of the Federal Congress . . . [arose] from unique historical circumstances,” “the Founding Fathers clearly had no intention of establishing a pattern or model for the apportionment of seats in state legislatures when the system of representation in the Federal Congress was adopted.”

The Court is now presented with a new, twenty-first-century federal analogy, this time relating to the other chamber of Congress. Texas and its supporters are arguing that because the Constitution allocates congressional representatives by total population rather than voter population, states should be able to do the same for their own legislative districts.

This federal analogy works no better than the last one. Careful study of the original public meaning and history of both Section 2 of Article I and Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment show that the rule they established is one for dealing with separate states that possess a great deal of legal autonomy – first and foremost in defining for themselves who shall have the right to vote. Once again, states are asking that they be allowed to treat their legislative districts as if they were separate states.

Since the federal rule provides no support for state inequalities, we’re left back at the same simple principle the Court has consistently upheld, that “[t]he conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing—one person, one vote.”

The Voting Rights Act vs. the Constitution
Another argument has been put forward to justify violating OPOV – that Section 2 of the VRA requires gerrymandering state legislative districts to create majority-Hispanic districts where possible, and that this “compelling interest” justifies the effect of unequal voter strength. This argument fails because even if the VRA does ask states to do such gerrymandering, such legislation can’t trump the Constitution. Where the VRA conflicts with the Fourteenth Amendment, the VRA must give way.

Let me explain. States are now caught in the inevitable trap of (1) maintaining majority-minority districts under complex, overlapping legal precedents and (2) administering electoral schemes that do little to advance racial equality while doing much to undermine voter equality. In the background of this conflict, there lurks a cacophony of precedent and oft-conflicting court-administered standards that have arisen from cases interpreting Section 2 of the VRA. Basic constitutional guarantees of equal protection inherent in the Fourteenth Amendment – such as OPOV – get lost in this thicket.

Avoiding racial discrimination is particularly difficult in jurisdictions where “total population” and “citizens of voting age population” (CVAP) – standard metrics for evaluating whether a district violates OPOV – diverge due to varied concentration of non-citizens. As I’ve described before, jurisdictions navigating between the VRA’s Scylla and the Constitution’s Charybdis are bound to wreck individual rights – here, voter equality – on judicial shoals.

Over the years, the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized the potential for devaluing individual votes by drawing majority-minority districts in a manner that accords greater weight to minority votes in protected districts and diminishes the relative weight of voters elsewhere. In 2000, in Chen v. City of Houston, the Fifth Circuit also recognized this danger while ultimately ruling the other way. Nevertheless, here the special district court adhered to that flawed lower-court precedent – refusing to acknowledge CVAP as integral to OPOV and thus a required element of equal protection.

At least one Justice – Justice Clarence Thomas, dissenting from the denial of certiorari in the Chen case in 2001 – has already recognized the urgency of the problem: “Having read the Equal Protection Clause to include a ‘one-person, one-vote’ requirement, and having prescribed population variance that, without additional evidence, often will satisfy the requirement, we have left a critical variable in the requirement undefined.”

The VRA’s Section 2 and the Fourteenth Amendment have thus reached an impasse that has been highlighted by a conflict among lower courts’ application of OPOV. (The Fifth Circuit has held that states can choose either total population or CVAP on the grounds that the Equal Protection Clause is ambiguous, the Fourth Circuit reached the same conclusion but through the “political question” doctrine, and the Ninth Circuit held that states can only use total population, in a split 2-1 decision that provoked a strong dissent by Judge Kozinski.) It’s thus heartening that the Court took up Evenwel – and hopefully it will resolve that conflict once and for all by explaining the proper use of different population metrics. The noble principle of OPOV needs to be saved from the legal morass of Voting Rights Act jurisprudence.

Posted in Evenwel v. Abbott, Featured, One person, one vote and Evenwel

Recommended Citation: Ilya Shapiro, Symposium: Taking voter equality seriously, SCOTUSblog (Jul. 29, 2015, 12:01 AM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/07/symposium-taking-voter-equality-seriously/



INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE ISSUE – HOW TO ADMINISTER DEATH IN THE SLOWEST, MOST EXCRUCIATING WAY POSSIBLE


https://newrepublic.com/article/125069/saudi-arabias-depraved-justice

Saudi Arabia’s Depraved Justice -- A Sri Lankan housemaid is soon to be stoned to death, as the world turns a blind eye.
By Jonah Cohen and Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe
December 4, 2015


In the coming days, a Sri Lankan woman is to be led to an outdoor pit in Saudi Arabia. Her arms and hands will be tightly bound, her body buried up to her breasts. Saudi men will then surround her and begin to hurl rocks at her head to kill her slowly.

Signal -- As a morality tale, we should recognize that our indifference to this woman says as much about ourselves as it does the brutality of Saudi Arabia’s legal system.

A married housemaid, she was convicted of adultery, while the man, a bachelor, also a vulnerable Sri Lankan migrant worker, was given 100 lashes, as prescribed by Islamic law.

It is a measure of how violent Saudi Arabia’s capital punishment laws are that beheadings can at times seem compassionate. Decapitation, after all, is nothing compared to lapidation. Beheading is quick; stoning, slow. It’s death by torture.

“It doesn’t matter to me: two, four, ten—as long as I’m doing God’s will, it doesn’t matter how many people I execute,” Muhammad Saad al-Beshi, Saudi Arabia’s leading public executioner, said about beheadings in a 2003 interview with Arab News.

Proud of Beshi’s “godly” work, the Saudi kingdom gave him a special gift: a costly executioner’s sword, which he keeps razor sharp.

“People are amazed how fast it can separate the head from the body,” he said. “There are many people who faint when they witness an execution. I don’t know why they come and watch if they don’t have the stomach for it.”

Beshi also coolly described the terror that his prisoners felt before they were beheaded: “When they get to the execution square, their strength drains away.”

The housemaid’s panic must be unimaginable. What makes her punishment even more agonizing is that she all but surely did not receive a fair trial.

The legal cost to plead her case—10,000 riyal, or about $2,600—roughly amounts to the average yearly salary of a foreign worker in Saudi Arabia. It’s unlikely, therefore, that she had the money necessary to receive adequate legal guidance during her trial.

It’s also doubtful that she fully understood the Arabic language. Or Islamic law. Or the gravity of the sexual charges that were brought against her. It is not uncommon for underprivileged women from Asia and Africa to be victimized in Saudi Arabia’s religious legal system.

U.S. State Department reports on human trafficking show that migrant women in Saudi Arabia find themselves held captive by their employers, because of the kingdom’s requirement that foreign workers must receive permission from their employers to obtain an exit visa to leave the country.

Predictably, reports of rape and sexual blackmail, as well as bogus charges of adultery, aren’t rare among foreign female workers trapped in Saudi Arabia.

Knowing all this, the Sri Lankan government is making some efforts to get the housemaid’s sentence lifted or reduced. Legal help has been procured, an appeal filed before the Riyadh Court. But the hour is late. (The exact date of her scheduled execution is unclear; it’s difficult to get clear information from the Saudi courts.) Sri Lanka doesn’t appear to have made interventions at the highest diplomatic levels. It cannot afford to fall out of favor with the Saudi kingdom, one of the Middle Eastern countries on which Sri Lanka is dependent for $2.5 billion in remittances from Sri Lankan domestic workers.

In the past, Sri Lanka, a small, predominantly Buddhist island, has had little influence on the legal decisions of the wealthy Muslim kingdom, which treats many Sri Lankan workers like prisoners of war. In 2013, another Sri Lankan maid was put to death. Today nearly 250 Sri Lankans, including 125 women, are serving jail time. There are also 150 more Sri Lankans languishing in Saudi police stations or camps awaiting trial for all manner of alleged crimes.

Perhaps in the next few days only world outrage might save the housemaid. Not even her family knows about her death sentence.

So far the Obama administration has shown no interest in her case. Nor has any assistance come from the United Nations, where, in a grim irony, Saudi Arabia currently chairs a panel of the the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The stoning of this lowly, nameless housemaid will stand as a symbol of our world’s moral failing. Given the indifference of the Obama administration, the silence of the United Nations, and the cruelty of the Saudi Arabian theocracy, only pressure from the media might now help.

So far the world’s response has been shameful. And as a morality tale, we should recognize that our indifference to this woman says as much about ourselves as it does the brutality of Saudi Arabia’s legal system.

A married housemaid, she was convicted of adultery, while the man, a bachelor, also a vulnerable Sri Lankan migrant worker, was given 100 lashes, as prescribed by Islamic law.

It is a measure of how violent Saudi Arabia’s capital punishment laws are that beheadings can at times seem compassionate. Decapitation, after all, is nothing compared to lapidation. Beheading is quick; stoning, slow. It’s death by torture.

“It doesn’t matter to me: two, four, ten—as long as I’m doing God’s will, it doesn’t matter how many people I execute,” Muhammad Saad al-Beshi, Saudi Arabia’s leading public executioner, said about beheadings in a 2003 interview with Arab News.




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sanders-im-frightened-about-the-planet-were-going-to-leave/

Sanders: I'm "frightened about the planet we're going to leave"
By REBECCA KAPLAN FACE THE NATION
December 6, 2015

Play VIDEO -- Bernie Sanders doubles down on link between climate change and terrorism


Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is preparing to roll out a plan to deal with climate change that includes a tax on carbon pollution, which he says is the necessary response to threat posed by global warming.

"You want to talk about being frightened? I am frightened about the planet we're going to leave our kids if we don't act," Sanders said in an interview on CBS" "Face the Nation" Sunday.

His plan, which his campaign says he will release soon, aims to cut carbon pollution by 40 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. By comparison, President Obama has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025 as part of the ongoing Paris climate talks.

In addition to a tax on carbon pollution, Sanders is promising to repeal fossil fuel subsidies and make "massive" investments in energy efficiency and clean, sustainable energy like wind and solar power.

"What the scientists are telling us is if we do not act boldly and aggressively now which is what my legislation does - massive cuts in carbon pollution - if we don't do it now, the planet that we are going to be leaving to our children and grandchildren may very well be uninhabitable and in much worse shape that the planet is today," Sanders said. "We have a moral obligation to move aggressively, to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and to energy efficiency and sustainable energy and that is what my legislation does."

He quotes Pope Francis, who recently said the U.S. is "at the limits of suicide" on the issue of climate change." Sanders is also very critical of his Republican colleagues on the issue.

"It is beyond my comprehension that we can have a Republican Party and Republican candidates who are more concerned about getting huge campaign contributions from the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil and the coal industry than they are about accepting what the overwhelming majority of scientists are saying. And that is climate change is real, caused by human activity and already causing major and devastating problems in our country and around the world," he said.

He previously linked climate change to terrorism on "Face the Nation."

"If we are going to see an increase in drought, in flood, and extreme weather disturbances as a result of climate change, what that means is that people all over the world are going to be fighting over limited natural resources," he said last month. "If there is not enough water, if there is not enough land to grow your crops, then you're going to see migrations of people fighting over land that will sustain them. And that will lead to international conflict."

"When people migrate into cities and they don't have jobs, there's going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment, and people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al Qaeda and ISIS are using right now," he added.




“His plan, which his campaign says he will release soon, aims to cut carbon pollution by 40 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. By comparison, President Obama has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025 as part of the ongoing Paris climate talks. In addition to a tax on carbon pollution, Sanders is promising to repeal fossil fuel subsidies and make "massive" investments in energy efficiency and clean, sustainable energy like wind and solar power. In addition to a tax on carbon pollution, Sanders is promising to repeal fossil fuel subsidies and make "massive" investments in energy efficiency and clean, sustainable energy like wind and solar power. …. "When people migrate into cities and they don't have jobs, there's going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment, and people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al Qaeda and ISIS are using right now," he added.”


Most well-educated people believe in the scientific method of thinking, and have concluded almost exclusively that our weather patterns are becoming more erratic and extreme, our glaciers are melting, that the oceans are rising higher on the shore, and that parts of the world such as California are beginning to dry up. That is one of the most important agricultural areas in our country, not to mention the problem citizens there will have in procuring potable water. The city of Atlanta, GA several years ago was almost at the end of its’ water supply when, finally, there was a stretch of wet weather. If we think wars will be fought over oil, we should not be surprised at the instability that will be caused by massive water shortages. We’d better start looking into raising camels rather than cows and horses. Right?




http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/12/05/458586878/wreck-of-legendary-spanish-galleon-is-found-colombia-says

Wreck Of Legendary Spanish Galleon Is Finally Found, Colombia Says
Bill Chappell
Updated December 5, 2015

Art -- A Spanish galleon is seen here in an artist's depiction of trade on the high seas in the 16th century. Colombia says it's found a galleon from 1708 that is believed to hold billions of dollars' worth of treasure. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
YouTube -- The president said that after a massive undertaking, several shipwrecks had been found on the sea floor — and that by working with the navy and a team of international scientists, Colombia's Institute of Anthropology and History determined that "an archaeological site that corresponds to the... galleon San Jose."
Image -- A still from a video released by Colombia's Institute of Anthropology and History shows bronze cannons that researchers match those of a legendary Spanish galleon. Screengrab by NPR
Google Maps -- As part of the court filings in the court case, the salvage company published a history of the final battle of the San Jose, the flagship of an armada of 15 ships that was escorted by two French frigates.


More than 300 years after it sank during an attack in the Caribbean near Cartagena's coast, a Spanish treasure ship has been found, says Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos.

Santos announced the discovery of the legendary galleon Friday night, tweeting: "Great news: we found the Galeón San José!"

The value of the San Jose's treasure — believed to include gold, silver, emeralds, and other precious cargo — has been estimated at more than $10 billion, with a range of $4-$17 billion often invoked. Much of the bullion came from mines in what is now Peru.

The discovery was made on Nov. 27, Santos said at a news conference in Cartagena Saturday. He called it "one of the biggest findings and identification of underwater heritage in the history of humanity."

At a formal announcement this morning, Santos said, "I am very pleased, as head of state, to inform you that, without a doubt, we have found, 307 years after its sinking, the galleon San Jose."

The three-decked ship was reportedly 150 feet long, with a beam of 45 feet; it was armed with 64 guns. Colombia says researchers found bronze cannons that are in good condition, along with ceramic and porcelain vases and personal weapons. The researchers say that the specifications of the cannons leave no doubt that the wreck is that of the San Jose.

Santos' office also says that so far, the evidence suggests "the San Jose did not explode, as stated in almost all books" about its sinking. Santos also says that it will take several years to recover items from the wreck.

If it's borne out, the find would write a new chapter into a shipwreck story that has long fascinated people in Colombia and elsewhere — it even figures in Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel Love in the Time of Cholera, as an object of both fantasy and lore.

Announcing the historic find, Santos said that the discovery had been documented for future generations. His office released a roughly edited video Saturday that shows a ship's crew exploring underwater areas with a submersible probe — and sending off a hard drive of data for analysis.

Santos also paid tribute to the 600 people who lost their lives in the sinking of a ship that had been intended to bring treasure back to Europe.

The galleon was meant to help fund the war effort led by France against Britain in the War of Spanish Succession. It also sparked a modern legal battle, after its location was initially reported to be miles off the coast at a depth of more than 800 feet by a salvage company in 1981.

That find was part of a collaboration between Colombia's government and the American company Sea Search Armada — which later filed a lawsuit, after Colombia claimed ownership of the wreck as a heritage site. Today, Colombia says the ship was found in a place "never before referred to by previous studies."

The San Jose was reportedly found miles off of Colombia's Caribbean coast, near Cartagena (marked).

"The complaint in this case reads like the marriage between a Patrick O'Brian glorious age-of-sail novel and a John Buchan potboiler of international intrigue," U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote in his 2011 ruling — which went against SSA, due to the statute of limitations.

Here's a portion of the document that describes the heart of the combat between Britain's Commodore Charles Wager (who was later knighted) and the weighted-down — and badly leaking — galleon of Spain's Admiral Jose Fernandez de Santillan, Count of Casa Alegre:

"In a one-on-one battle, Wager's ship, the Expedition, had the San Jose outgunned both in the number and size of their cannons. The first bloody broadside was exchanged between them shortly after sunset. There were casualties on both sides. In the light winds, the ships seemed to be drifting, but locked together, blasting each other with cannonades of chains, scrap iron, and balls of all sizes up to Wager's 32 pounders. The largest cannons on the San Jose were 24 pounders. Between broadsides, each ship raked the other's decks with small swivel cannons and muskets. There was a good deal of blood on the decks of both ships. Sand was quickly poured over the blood to allow sure footing for the crew, as the battle continued without interruption.

"By 7 PM, it was quite dark. Wager's sixth broadside answered Alegre's. Blasts of fire and smoke spurted out of thirty cannons consecutively as they came to bear. The noise was deafening. The smoke, smelling of sulphur and brimstone, was heavy in the air, and punctuated with crimson from fire streaking out of the cannon barrels. With little wind, the smoke was slow to clear; it enveloped and obscured the two ships pounding each other at close range.

"The Expedition's 32 pound cannonballs blasted through the heavy timbers of the San Jose's hull at a distance of about 100 feet. After the last of the Expedition's 30 cannons had fired, there was a brief silence as the gun crews tried to see through the smoke to assess the damage they had done. The silence was broken by a tremendous explosion on the San Jose. From the deck of the Expedition, Wager could feel the sudden heat of the blast, but little of the shock, as the path of least resistance for the explosion inside the San Jose was upward. The gunpowder which had been moved up from its lower hold to escape the leakage had ignited. Its explosion drove the hull of the San Jose down into the sea with a force so great it created a shock wave—a wall of water so high it came in at the Expedition's gun ports. The San Jose's upper decks, which were not built to withstand forces from below, offered little resistance. The decks blew skyward, splintering from the blast and igniting from the heat."

The account concludes that the galleon sank so quickly that it seemed to simply vanish.



“The discovery was made on Nov. 27, Santos said at a news conference in Cartagena Saturday. He called it "one of the biggest findings and identification of underwater heritage in the history of humanity." …. The three-decked ship was reportedly 150 feet long, with a beam of 45 feet; it was armed with 64 guns. Colombia says researchers found bronze cannons that are in good condition, along with ceramic and porcelain vases and personal weapons. The researchers say that the specifications of the cannons leave no doubt that the wreck is that of the San Jose. Santos' office also says that so far, the evidence suggests "the San Jose did not explode, as stated in almost all books" about its sinking. Santos also says that it will take several years to recover items from the wreck. …. His office released a roughly edited video Saturday that shows a ship's crew exploring underwater areas with a submersible probe — and sending off a hard drive of data for analysis. Santos also paid tribute to the 600 people who lost their lives in the sinking of a ship that had been intended to bring treasure back to Europe. …. "The complaint in this case reads like the marriage between a Patrick O'Brian glorious age-of-sail novel and a John Buchan potboiler of international intrigue," U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote in his 2011 ruling — which went against SSA, due to the statute of limitations.”


Shipwrecks are a prominent feature in the history of my home state of North Carolina, especially in the Cape Fear River area where the notorious pirate Blackbeard kept his vessels. When my family went to the beach we usually went to the Outer Banks, famous for the shipwrecks there. I did see the blackened “bones” of a ship in the sand there once. That was exciting. That area is called “the graveyard of the Atlantic,” because Cape Hatteras extends outward into the ocean there and ships have struck it numerous times, not to mention hurricanes.

Florida’s coastline also has been the source of some Spanish galleons full of treasure, to be found by treasure hunting skin divers. Sailing on the open ocean is something that has always sounded wonderfully exciting, but in reality it would be a little too exciting. The life of a sailor is fraught with danger, as the most recent tragedy of the El Faro proves, which succumbed to an Atlantic hurricane, killing over 30 people. The ocean is incredibly beautiful, but I respect it very highly. I confine myself to walking in the edge of the surf or sitting on the sand to watch the birds and hear the sounds. A gorgeously weathered seashell with coral growing on it serves as a reminder of what I have seen.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-on-fighting-isis-in-syria-iraq-libya-defends-ties-with-wall-street/

Hillary Clinton details plan to defeat ISIS, defends ties to Wall Street
CBS NEWS
December 1, 2015

Play VIDEO -- Clinton on Wall Street connections, why she's running for president


In her first television interview since the Paris attacks, Hillary Clinton spoke to "CBS This Morning" co-host Charlie Rose about her plans to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and controversies over her ties with Wall Street.

Sticking by President Obama's current strategy, the former secretary of state said she could not "conceive of any circumstances" where she would agree to send American combat troops to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

"We don't know yet how many Special Forces... trainers and surveillance and enablers might be needed," Clinton told Rose at the Hay Adams, across the White House. "But in terms of thousands of combat troops like some on the Republican side are recommending... it should be a non-starter, both because I don't think it's the smartest way to go after ISIS - I think it gives ISIS a new recruitment tool if we get back in the fight."

Calling the terror group a "barbaric enemy which has more money and now controls territory," the Democratic presidential candidate said the fight against the terror group must occur on various fronts - in the air, on the ground and in cyberspace.

Clinton also emphasized the importance of getting over "the false choice between either going after Assad or going after ISIS," by bringing in the Russians.

"You know, the Russians have now paid a big price," Clinton said, referring to the downed Russian jet in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, for which ISIS claimed responsibility. "I think you say, 'Look, we need your - if not your active help - your acquiescence in what we're going after ISIS.' So that means you're going to have to pull back from this area while we go after their leadership and their economic infrastructure."

Another key strategy Clinton advocates is a no-fly zone over northern Syria. When asked about a possible Russian invasion of the no-fly zone, Clinton said that would not be possible because the Russians will be "clearly kept informed" about the area.

"I want them at the table. They don't have to participate in it, but I want them to understand that there has to be safe areas on the ground," she said.

Clinton also stressed the need for a continued dialogue about national unity in Libya, where ISIS is expanding its presence.

"We need to join together right now before they get a stronghold and work to eliminate ISIS in Sirte. And it is something that is going to require a lot of cooperation," Clinton said. "There are armed groups that are fighting for power within Libya that are not in any way identified with or allied with ISIS. They need to form even a loose confederation to try to push ISIS literally into the sea before they get a stronghold."

Clinton also addressed criticism that as secretary of state she met with dozens of corporate executives and long-time political donors.

"The fact is, I saw a lot of people when I was secretary of state. And I worked really hard to increase exports from American businesses. I saw a lot of business people. I saw a lot of union leaders. I saw as many people as I could fit in the day who needed something from their government," Clinton said.

She recounted when FedEx CEO Fred Smith would call her up and say, "The Chinese government's taking away our permits. We've been in China for decades doing Federal Express." Or Corning, a company that she knew well from her time in the Senate, would tell her, "They're trying to put a tariff on us that is going to drive us out of business."

"I worked really hard to get more jobs for Americans, and that meant representing big business and small business and everybody in between," Clinton added.

Clinton said she doesn't think her critics saying she's too close to Wall Street has hurt her image while running for president.

"I have stood for a lot of regulation on big banks and on the financial services sector. I also represented New York and represented everybody from the dairy farmers to the fishermen...And so, yes, do I know people? And did I help rebuild after 9/11? Yes, I did," Clinton said.

"And did you take money?" Rose asked.

"Yeah. But that has nothing to do with my positions. Anybody who thinks that they can influence me on that ground doesn't know me very well," Clinton said.

Clinton has led a remarkable career, but she's not running for president, she said, to make history and be the first female president.

"I mean, that's all-- that would all be an extra, added part of it. But for me, I really love this country," Clinton said. "And I think this will be one of those watershed elections where we're either going to get the economy to work for everybody, or we are going to see increasing inequality and unfairness in a way that we haven't seen since, you know, the 1920s."

"We're either going to figure out how to live together despite all of our differences, show respect for people, enforce human rights, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, workers' rights, or we're going to really have the balance shift dramatically against the kind of democracy that I believe in, that I think works best for America," she said. "And we're either going to lead around the world, or we're going to take a back seat and pay a big price for it."

Clinton acknowledged a lot of people think the biggest problem for America is Washington and its politics.

"But look at the way our founders set it up. They set up the separation of powers. And they made it really difficult to get things done," Clinton said. "And some years, it's really hard. And we're in one of these periods where we have a minority within the other party that doesn't believe in compromise, doesn't believe in reaching consensus."

"But there you go attacking them. That's not the way to do it," Rose pointed out.

"No, no. Because part of what you have to do is make it clear to everyone else who is in that party that there is room for negotiation," Clinton said.



“Sticking by President Obama's current strategy, the former secretary of state said she could not "conceive of any circumstances" where she would agree to send American combat troops to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq. "We don't know yet how many Special Forces... trainers and surveillance and enablers might be needed," Clinton told Rose at the Hay Adams, across the White House. "But in terms of thousands of combat troops like some on the Republican side are recommending... it should be a non-starter, both because I don't think it's the smartest way to go after ISIS - I think it gives ISIS a new recruitment tool if we get back in the fight." …. "I think you say, 'Look, we need your - if not your active help - your acquiescence in what we're going after ISIS.' So that means you're going to have to pull back from this area while we go after their leadership and their economic infrastructure." Another key strategy Clinton advocates is a no-fly zone over northern Syria. When asked about a possible Russian invasion of the no-fly zone, Clinton said that would not be possible because the Russians will be "clearly kept informed" about the area.”


"We're either going to figure out how to live together despite all of our differences, show respect for people, enforce human rights, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, workers' rights, or we're going to really have the balance shift dramatically against the kind of democracy that I believe in….” This is the issue that concerns me most at this time – that in an effort to meet our foes effectively here and abroad we will allow laws to be made that take away our most basic rights as citizens, as well as our public education system and the “social safety net.”

If Republicans think we can do without Social Security, Unemployment, Medicaid and Medicare and the rest of our economic aid package, they don’t understand the true financial levels of many of their most loyal voters. Many people who foolishly have voted for them because of their rants against blacks, Hispanics and now Islamic groups, are lower Middle Class at best and will find themselves homeless and hungry when they are 65.




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sanders-wins-times-online-person-of-the-year-poll/

Bernie Sanders wins TIME's online Person of the Year poll
By REBECCA SHABAD CBS NEWS
December 8, 2015


Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, won the online readers' poll for TIME Person of the Year on Monday, topping people like Pope Francis, education activist Malala Yousafazai and President Obama.

The presidential candidate won more than 10 percent of the vote, according to the results. Yousafazai, who won the Nobel peace prize last year, came in second place and the pope came in third. Mr. Obama came in fourth place with 3.5 percent of the vote.

Hillary Clinton, Sanders' rival in the Democratic presidential field, won 1.4 percent of the vote.

Other U.S. politicians or presidential candidates on the list included GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Ben Carson, Sen. Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, Sen. Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush.

Other people who made the list included singer Adele, Russian President Vladimir Putin, J.K. Rowling, hip-hop artist Drake, and Mark Zuckerberg.

The leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, also appeared on the list.

According to TIME, no presidential candidate has been named Person of the Year before the end of the campaign though Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Mr. Obama won later on.

TIME's editors will choose the official Person of the Year, who will be revealed Wednesday morning on NBC's "Today" show.

People who fought the Ebola epidemic in Africa last year won TIME's Person of the Year in 2014.




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-sheriff-wayne-ivey-arming-citizens-goes-viral/

Sheriff calls on America's "good guys" to shoot "bad guys"
CBS NEWS
December 8, 2015

Photograph -- Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey, WTSP-TV

After being introduced by dramatic horns in front of fancy computer graphics, Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey had a message for his constituents: "One of the great things about being sheriff is that you're able to do and say what needs to be said and done to protect the citizens of your community."

The thing that needs to be done, according to Ivey, is for the "good guys" to arm themselves, and shoot the "bad guys" if they get a chance.

In a Facebook message that has since gone viral, the sheriff said said he was "sick and tired" of terrorists who just want "their 15 minutes of fame."

He referenced shootings in San Bernardino, Texas, South Carolina and even his own home county to illustrate the point that everything is a target for terrorists and "active shooters."

Ivey said that wasn't the only thing worrying him.

"Equally concerning is the fact that there are those in this country who are in a position to speak out by voicing strength and taking action who appear more concerned about being politically correct than they are about protecting those they took an oath to protect and serve," Ivey said.

While saying this wasn't about "politics" or "religion," and instead had everything to do with "liberty," Ivey repeatedly said political correctness was making things more dangerous for everyone, and it was forcing him to speak out.

"It's time for America to get back to being America," Ivey said, before adding: "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Ivey said he wants people to train themselves in how to handle a firearm so in an active shooter situation they can take an active role "until the cavalry can arrive."

While Ivey said he's "not encouraging vigilantism," not all in law enforcement encourage his plan.

Detective Larry McKinnon, a Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office spokesperson, told CBS affiliate WTSP in Tampa that mass shootings don't happen in a vacuum. They are chaotic, and most people are not trained to deal with the adrenalin rush and confusion of a bloodbath.

"The risk is that you could easily be shot. You could be shot by the active shooter, you could be shot by other concerned citizens carrying firearms and you could be shot by law enforcement," said McKinnon.




“The thing that needs to be done, according to Ivey, is for the "good guys" to arm themselves, and shoot the "bad guys" if they get a chance. …. While saying this wasn't about "politics" or "religion," and instead had everything to do with "liberty," Ivey repeatedly said political correctness was making things more dangerous for everyone, and it was forcing him to speak out. …. While Ivey said he's "not encouraging vigilantism," not all in law enforcement encourage his plan. …. "The risk is that you could easily be shot. You could be shot by the active shooter, you could be shot by other concerned citizens carrying firearms and you could be shot by law enforcement," said McKinnon.


There really is a widespread politically radical element within the “police culture,” as Ivey shows, and a rational and generally more fair-minded group as evidenced by McKinnon. Some policemen do intend to “protect and serve”, but others are just a specialized form of murderer. As many police officers have spoken out against automatic weapons being available to ordinary citizens as those who are avid NRA members. If I were to need a handgun for self-protection I would like to be able to buy and register it in accordance with the law, but I don’t approve at all of this kind of vigilantism that Ivey says he is NOT supporting. Yeah, right! You could have fooled me!




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/christopher-buckley-donald-trump-new-book-the-relic-master/

Christopher Buckley: Donald Trump is a "demagogue"
By REBECCA LEE CBS NEWS
December 8, 2015

Play VIDEO -- Bipartisan backlash over Trump's proposal to ban Muslim entry


Long before Donald Trump actually stepped onto the campaign trail, political satirist and author Christopher Buckley drafted what he imagined would be the business mogul's inaugural address, should he actually become president.

"This is a great day for me, personally. You're very smart to have voted for me," Buckley wrote back in 2000 in the Wall Street Journal.

Fifteen years later, Trump maintains a double-digit lead over his Republican opponents in polls -- this despite his relay of controversial comments since the beginning of his campaign, which Buckley calls "inflammatory" and "disgraceful."

"He maligned the war record of John McCain... then he makes an insulting comment about Megyn Kelly which I wouldn't even repeat on morning TV," Buckley said on "CBS This Morning" Tuesday. "(But) every time he says something, it drives up his ratings."

In his latest comment to spark fury, Trump called for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." This comes as the presidential candidate already faces backlash for other anti-Muslim remarks, including his suggestion to shut down mosques, have a "Muslim database," and allegations that Muslims were cheering in New Jersey after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"I think once again, Mr. Trump has proved that he's not really a serious person. Serious people don't say things like that," Buckley said responding to Trump's latest remark. "Mr. Trump is a demagogue, and demagogues tend to use up all the oxygen in the room."

Buckley borrowed from the words of his father, conservative commentator William F. Buckley, to condemn Trump.

"My late father told me once an old rule is -- never debate with an amateur, they'll kill you every time," Buckley said. "An amateur would just shout and say anything, and it makes rational argument impossible."

The state of the current election cycle has led Buckley to put aside political satire for something new -- religious fiction. His new book, "The Relic Master," tells a comic tale of 16th-century rascal mercenaries who cash in on what they claim are the bones and possessions of saints.

"We've reached a point in this election cycle where American politics are self-satirizing," Buckley said "I don't think they need me."



"This is a great day for me, personally. You're very smart to have voted for me," Buckley wrote back in 2000 in the Wall Street Journal. Fifteen years later, Trump maintains a double-digit lead over his Republican opponents in polls -- this despite his relay of controversial comments since the beginning of his campaign, which Buckley calls "inflammatory" and "disgraceful." "He maligned the war record of John McCain... then he makes an insulting comment about Megyn Kelly which I wouldn't even repeat on morning TV," Buckley said on "CBS This Morning" Tuesday. "(But) every time he says something, it drives up his ratings." …. This comes as the presidential candidate already faces backlash for other anti-Muslim remarks, including his suggestion to shut down mosques, have a "Muslim database," and allegations that Muslims were cheering in New Jersey after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. …. "We've reached a point in this election cycle where American politics are self-satirizing," Buckley said "I don't think they need me."


I was interested when Buckley said that he voted for Obama in 2008, so he is like George W. Bush’s daughter, he isn’t following in the patriarch’s footsteps on politics. Bush’s daughter didn’t say she voted for Obama, but that she is a registered Independent rather than a Republican. The fact that Trump is actually leading in the polls shows to me that the US public is leaning even farther toward the right and in larger numbers than I had realized.

On the other hand, it’s interesting and encouraging to me that Bernie Sanders is so popular with Democrats. I had thought that since he calls himself a Democratic Socialist many would be afraid of him. He’s almost a “rock star.” Interestingly he was named by Time Magazine as their person of the year. Some of us like Clinton on the personal level, but don’t think she is liberal enough on the political scale, and at this time we need more liberals than Third Way candidates to stop the flood of ever more rightwing laws. I was personally glad when Joe Lieberman finally left the Democratic Party because he was entirely too “flexible.” Helping to form a consensus is one thing, and yes, gridlock is bad, but being spineless is not a virtue either.




http://www.npr.org/2015/12/08/458950280/why-didn-t-officer-call-medic-for-freddie-gray-and-other-questions

Why Didn't Officer Call Medic For Freddie Gray? (And Other Questions)
Jennifer Ludden and Laura Wamsley
December 8, 2015

Photograph -- William Porter faces charges of manslaughter, assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office. He is one of six Baltimore police officers charged in connection with the death of Freddie Gray.
Rob Carr/AP


Officer William Porter is the first of six Baltimore police officers who stand accused of playing a role in the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died after injuries sustained in the back of a police van while he was handcuffed and shackled. Porter, who joined the police force in 2012, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, and misconduct in office. Essentially, prosecutors want him held accountable for failing to put Gray in a seatbelt, and failing to call medical aid. Here's a breakdown of some key questions that have come up in court.

Why didn't Porter seatbelt Gray?

It's the policy of the Baltimore Police Department to seatbelt those in custody, but in his opening statement defense attorney Gary Proctor suggested few do. He told jurors Porter was "just like every other officer." Officers placed Freddie Gray face down in the police van, handcuffed and with his legs shackled. Porter checked on Gray at a later stop, and helped pull him up on to a bench, but still did not seatbelt Gray. On April 9, 2015, three days before Gray's arrest, new orders were emailed to officers that required seatbelting detainees without exception. But defense lawyers say it was "buried" in an 80-page attachment. The police department's head of IT says that Porter received that email, but he can't tell whether he read it.

This issue isn't new. There are a number of previous instances in Baltimore of people dying or becoming paralyzed after riding in Baltimore Police vans without being seatbelted.

Why didn't Porter call a medic?

One of the most crucial parts of this case took place during the fourth stop of the police van, when Officer Porter checked on Gray. Porter has told police investigators that Gray asked for help, said he couldn't breathe and couldn't move. Porter said he helped lift Gray onto the bench in the van. He says he asked if Gray needed a medic, and Gray said yes. When police investigators asked why he didn't call one, Porter said, "I thought he was faking," in part because Gray couldn't explain what was wrong. The state's medical examiner and an expert neurosurgeon testified that by that point, Gray's spinal injury would mean he was struggling for air, finding it difficult to talk. Porter also told investigators that medics "don't want to take prisoners if we already have transport" and can take him ourselves. But prosecutors say it would have been as easy as pressing a button on his chest for Porter to call for a medic.

Who was responsible for Gray's safety?

A Baltimore Police Academy instructor and other witnesses have spoken of "shared responsibility" for a detainee's safety, although Porter's defense lawyers have suggested ultimate responsibility lies with the driver of the police van. Whatever jurors decide, this will be a key issue not only in Porter's trial but those of the five others. Officer Caesar Goodson, the van's driver, faces the most severe charge of depraved heart second-degree murder. His trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 6.

What happened in the van?

This is the central mystery of the case. The van's internal video camera was not working, and the detainee who was briefly in the other side of the van could not see Freddie Gray. Maryland's assistant medical examiner Carol Allan told jurors that she believes Gray managed to stand up, and then — unable to brace himself since he was handcuffed and in leg shackles — was thrust forward by the van's movement, breaking his neck and severely pinching his spinal cord. Allan and a neurosurgeon the prosecution brought in as a witness both dismissed the defense's suggestion that Gray could have injured himself, saying the force of the impact was too strong. But defense attorneys did get Allan to concede that no one described seeing Gray stand up, and there is no physical evidence he ever did so.

Porter is expected to take the stand when the defense calls its witnesses. The trial is building toward the closing arguments, and Judge Barry Williams has said the trial should end by Dec. 17.



“Essentially, prosecutors want him held accountable for failing to put Gray in a seatbelt, and failing to call medical aid. …. It's the policy of the Baltimore Police Department to seatbelt those in custody, but in his opening statement defense attorney Gary Proctor suggested few do. …. On April 9, 2015, three days before Gray's arrest, new orders were emailed to officers that required seatbelting detainees without exception. But defense lawyers say it was "buried" in an 80-page attachment. …. There are a number of previous instances in Baltimore of people dying or becoming paralyzed after riding in Baltimore Police vans without being seatbelted. …. He says he asked if Gray needed a medic, and Gray said yes. When police investigators asked why he didn't call one, Porter said, "I thought he was faking," in part because Gray couldn't explain what was wrong. …. Porter also told investigators that medics "don't want to take prisoners if we already have transport" and can take him ourselves. …. Officer Caesar Goodson, the van's driver, faces the most severe charge of depraved heart second-degree murder. His trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 6.”

There is no individual responsibility for every officer in this group to follow common sense and benign individual judgment in this case. Okay, maybe the driver is “the boss” at the time, but Porter is the one who checked on Gray and was told clearly that he did in fact need a medic. Porter, on his own, decided that Gray “was faking.” He also alleged that medics “don’t want to” transport prisoners to the hospital, which I can’t believe. That is their job and ambulance companies get paid well for that service. The whole story just doesn’t make sense, and Porter sounds like a liar – anything to escape blame in the situation. The fact that this instance with Gray is one of many of the same situation – prisoner not belted in and given a “rough ride” with the result of paralysis or death. It’s obscene.




http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/12/08/458919219/trumps-muslims-plan-inflammatory-definitely-unconstitutional-maybe

Trump's Muslims Plan: Inflammatory? Definitely. Unconstitutional? Maybe
Eyder Peralta
December 8, 2015

Photograph -- The Statue of Liberty stands tall as dark clouds cover the New York sky. Jewel Samad /AFP/Getty Images


Donald Trump has faced a torrent of criticism after releasing a policy proposal that would ban all Muslims from entering the United States.

His fellow Republicans haven't held back: Marco Rubio called it "offensive," and Jeb Bush called it "unhinged." A number of others — politicians, pundits, experts and regular folks — have called it unconstitutional.

Scholars, however, are hotly debating that last point because many say the Constitution gives Congress a lot of leverage to decide who is allowed to enter the country. Some constitutional experts we talked to say Trump's proposal was clearly out of line with the founding document; others say at least some parts are on murky legal ground.

"Almost all of what [Trump] is saying is stupid," Akhil Reed Amar, a constitutional expert at Yale Law School, tells us. "Much of it is un-American. But some of it is constitutional."

Trump so far has released very few details on his policy. His aides have told Fox News that it would include all Muslims, but Trump has said in an interview with the network that U.S. military personnel who are Muslim and serving abroad would be allowed back in.

Amar says that under current case law, Congress — and it's important to note here that a President Trump would have to persuade Congress to take up his cause — could pass a law barring foreign Muslims from entering the country and it would be constitutional. But Amar says any law that also barred Muslims who are American citizens from re-entering the country would violate the Constitution.

"The Supreme Court has never completely repudiated a very long-standing doctrine — known as the 'plenary power' doctrine — that gives Congress very broad power to keep aliens of all sorts from entering America if Congress so chooses," Amar says.

In fact, the United States has in the past excluded immigrants based on their national origin. For example, under the Chinese Exclusion Act, the U.S. barred Chinese nationals from entering the United States from the late 1800s until 1943, when the act was repealed.

Michael C. Dorf, a constitutional expert at Cornell University Law School, says one could make an argument that barring non-American Muslims from the country is constitutional but that such a law would "also be grotesquely immoral."

Ultimately, Dorf says, a law like that would be ruled unconstitutional by a narrow margin.

"The U.S. routinely applies different immigration rules for nationals of different countries," Dorf says. "Nonetheless, immigration law is not a constitutional no man's land. Odious discrimination in immigration law is unconstitutional, as the House of Representatives itself tacitly recognized when just three years ago it passed a resolution expressing regret for the Chinese exclusion laws, which were based on ethnic prejudice. Immigration policy based on religious prejudice would be equally odious, and thus unconstitutional."

Gabriela Rivera, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties, says that throughout the years, the high court mostly upheld the exclusion act, which Congress revised many times.

"For example, in the 1905 case United States v. Ju Toy, the court held that a U.S. citizen of Chinese descent — who shouldn't have even been subject to the act — who was denied entry to the United States was not deprived of due process when port administers denied him entry," Rivera says. The court also declined to put any limits on Congress' ability to create a law of that kind. However, Rivera doubts a law like that would pass constitutional muster today.

Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, says he's certain that Trump's proposal would violate the Constitution.

Yes, he says, some court decisions have found that the some parts of the protective mantle of the Constitution don't extend to foreigners. But according to Tribe's interpretation, some of the most well-known protections — such as the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom and the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process — are not limited by nationality or geography.

"The [Fifth Amendment] applies to U.S. conduct with regard to any 'person,' wherever located and of whatever citizenship," Tribe writes in an email. "And [the First Amendment] is a flat prohibition on actions that the U.S. government may take, including those actions that respect 'an establishment of religion' or prohibit 'the free exercise thereof.' "

What's more, Tribe says, a religious litmus test like the one proposed by Trump would violate the spirit of Article VI of the Constitution, which prohibits the government from requiring a religious test to qualify for public office.

Daniel Halberstam, a constitutional law professor at the University of Michigan, brings up another issue. He says foreign nationals would have a hard time successfully suing the United States over a policy like this, because they have to have "a constitutionally recognized interest in coming here."

But the right case, Halberstam says, could make it to the courts. For example, if a Muslim abroad applied for a visa to come to the United States to speak at a university and was denied, the courts would take up the case. Halberstam says the law would be found "unconstitutional in a heartbeat."

Amar, the Yale professor, says that despite the fact that he argues parts of the policy are constitutional, he doesn't like it.

He says the proposal is antithetical to the successful pluralistic democracy that the U.S. has built. He notes that not a single justice on the Supreme Court right now is a Protestant and no one has made a big deal about that. He points out that during the last presidential contest, three of the four major party candidates were not members of mainstream Protestant churches.

"The one who was, was named Barack Hussein Obama," Amar says. "And no one made a big deal about [their religious affiliations]. The only reason I mention that is because we have accomplished something amazing in America. And how unfortunate would it be to repudiate this?"



“Scholars, however, are hotly debating that last point because many say the Constitution gives Congress a lot of leverage to decide who is allowed to enter the country. Some constitutional experts we talked to say Trump's proposal was clearly out of line with the founding document; others say at least some parts are on murky legal ground. "Almost all of what [Trump] is saying is stupid," Akhil Reed Amar, a constitutional expert at Yale Law School, tells us. "Much of it is un-American. But some of it is constitutional." …. Amar says that under current case law, Congress — and it's important to note here that a President Trump would have to persuade Congress to take up his cause — could pass a law barring foreign Muslims from entering the country and it would be constitutional. But Amar says any law that also barred Muslims who are American citizens from re-entering the country would violate the Constitution. …. the House of Representatives itself tacitly recognized when just three years ago it passed a resolution expressing regret for the Chinese exclusion laws, which were based on ethnic prejudice. Immigration policy based on religious prejudice would be equally odious, and thus unconstitutional." …. The court also declined to put any limits on Congress' ability to create a law of that kind. However, Rivera doubts a law like that would pass constitutional muster today. …. we have accomplished something amazing in America. And how unfortunate would it be to repudiate this?"


“… known as the 'plenary power' doctrine — that gives Congress very broad power to keep aliens of all sorts from entering America if Congress so chooses," Amar says. In fact, the United States has in the past excluded immigrants based on their national origin. For example, under the Chinese Exclusion Act, the U.S. barred Chinese nationals from entering the United States from the late 1800s until 1943, when the act was repealed.” As a populace in peacetimes, we are pretty nice people, but when under stress – economic, political or religious – we start spouting radical ideas.

Maybe that is by nature a “democratic” thing to do. That is what our Founding Fathers spoke of as “the excesses of the masses.” They wanted a safe and peaceful self-governing form and not anything resembling what happened a decade later in the French Revolution. In our folk literature of a national philosophy, we have retained our image of the US as being “the Melting Pot” comprised of all religions, ethnic groups plus the NEEDS if not an endless struggle of the wealthy versus the poor.

See the following comments on the subject, however. What in my opinion we are is not a pure “Republic,” as the Republicans claim, but an intricate and ever developing mixture of a republic and a democracy, and we are all the better for that combination. Going to the polls to vote periodically is simply not enough.

We need to be a virtuous nation, and when we lean too far over toward a class-bound society with total control by the wealthy and the ruling powers – a “law and order” stance – we lose much of our virtue. We might as well take down the Statue of Liberty and give it back to France. I really don’t want to see us degenerate in that way. If we do devolve into a police state I may get in my old Honda, put as many things in it as I can, and drive across the border to Canada, where I hope there will be enough civilized people to maintain a decent society.



https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/spl/beard-sparks.html

Charles A. Beard

"Framing the Constitution"

Excerpted from Charles Beard's "Framing the Constitution," in Peter Woll, ed.,
American Government: Readings and Cases, 11th ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1993)


In the following essay, which is adapted from The Supreme Court and the Constitution (1912), Charles Beard presents evidence that the framers of the Constitution were less interested in furthering democratic principles than in protecting private property and the interests of the wealthy class. Since this work was written over eighty years ago, there are a few anachronisms you may want to keep in mind. First, when Beard speaks of the "Confederacy," he is referring to the government that existed under the Articles of Confederation -- not to the Confederate states that seceded from the Union during the Civil War. Also, it is important to remember that the Senate was still not elected by popular vote when Beard was writing -- although that was changed in 1913 by the Seventeenth Amendment. Finally, when Beard speaks of "republican" or "democratic" tendencies, he is not referring to the Republican or Democratic parties, but is instead using the words in their more generic sense.

At the outset it must be remembered that there were two great parties at the time of the adoption of the Constitution -- one laying emphasis on strength and efficiency in government and the other on its popular aspects. Quite naturally the men who led in stirring up the revolt against Great Britain and in keeping the fighting temper of the Revolutionaries at the proper heat were the boldest and most radical thinkers -- men like Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson. They were not, generally speaking, men of large property interests or of much practical business experience. In a time of disorder, they could consistently lay more stress upon personal liberty than upon social control; and they pushed to the extreme limits those doctrines of individual rights which had been evolved in England during the struggles of the small landed proprietors and commercial classes against royal prerogative, and which corresponded to the economic conditions prevailing in America at the close of the eighteenth century. They associated strong government with monarchy, and came to believe that the best political system was one which governed least. A majority of the radicals viewed all government, especially if highly centralized, as a species of evil, tolerable only because necessary and always to be kept down to an irreducible minimum by a jealous vigilance.

Jefferson put the doctrine in concrete form when he declared that he preferred newspapers without government to government without newspapers. The Declaration of Independence, the first state Constitutions, and the Articles of Confederation bore the impress of this philosophy. In their anxiety to defend the individual against all federal interference and to preserve to the states a large sphere of local autonomy, these Revolutionists had set up a system too weak to accomplish the accepted objects of government; namely, national defense, the protection of property, and the advancement of commerce. They were not unaware of the character of their handiwork, but they believed with Jefferson that "man was a rational animal endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice and that he could be restrained from wrong and protected in right by moderate powers confided to persons of his own choice." Occasional riots and disorders, they held, were preferable to too much government.

The new American political system based on these doctrines had scarcely gone into effect before it began to incur opposition from many sources. The close of the Revolutionary struggle removed the prime cause for radical agitation and brought a new group of thinkers into prominence. When independence had been gained, the practical work to be done was the maintenance of social order, the payment of the public debt, the provision of a sound financial system, and the establishment of conditions favorable to the development of the economic resources of the new country. The men who were principally concerned in this work of peaceful enterprise were not the philosophers, but men of business and property and the holders of public securities. For the most part, they had had no quarrel with the system of class rule and the strong centralization of government which had existed in England. It was on the question of policy, not of governmental structure, that they had broken with the British authorities. By no means all of them, in fact, had even resisted the policy of the mother country, for within the ranks of the conservatives were large numbers of Loyalists who had remained in America, and, as was to have been expected, cherished a bitter feeling against the Revolutionists, especially the radical section which had been boldest in denouncing the English system root and branch. In other words, after the heat and excitement of the War of Independence were over and the new government, state and national, was tested by the ordinary experiences of traders, financiers, and manufacturers, it was found inadequate, and these groups accordingly grew more and more determined to reconstruct the political system in such a fashion as to make it subserve their permanent interests.

. . . The rest of this essay is equally as beautifully written as this sample, and is suggested reading.