Nuclear Unicorn
Nuclear Unicorn's JournalSo, who is to blame?
This OP feels a little too soon after the fact but this is gnawing at me.
The pilot that just murdered 149 people by deliberately crashing his plane had a history of mental illness and was deemed not fit for duty. In GD I have seen several threads cautioning us (lecturing us, really) not to blame the patient. I agree the patient doesn't want to be mentally ill and has done nothing to provoke their condition. So, in that regard, they are blameless and we should strive as society out of both basic decency and self-interest to provide them the treatment they need.
However, if the pilot had taken a gun and gone after his victims in a suicidal rampage who would be blamed?
-- The coed student not wanting to walk back to her dorm defenseless after staying out late studying
-- The store owner not wanting to surrender his meager earnings to common crooks
-- The wife escaping with her children from an abusive ex
-- The competition shooter
-- The hunters who feeds their families while ensuring game herds don't over-graze the land
-- The people spending time with friends and family at a generations-old hobby
-- The families protecting their homes from random criminals
And they are being blamed even though Loughner, Lanza, Hasan, Holmes, Alexis, Rogers, Cho and others were known to the authorities as being dangerous. Let that sink in. None of the above-named people emerged ex nihilo. All of them exhibited behaviors that brought them in contact with law enforcement, healthcare providers, superiors, etc. that made people warn there was a propensity for future acts of violence. We were warned. Why, then, are we blaming 80 million people for the acts of these individuals?
(By the way, how is it even logistically feasible to blame 80 million people -- a number so vast it can only be expressed as a generalized abstraction -- while those who commit the underlying heinous acts are so few they can be named as individuals?)
I suppose we could blame the authorities who appear derelict in their duties and try to hold them accountable -- but then who would be left to enforce gun control laws (assuming they would not be derelict in those duties, as well).
The drink called the "Mind Eraser" pretty much works as advertised.
And all morning, every time my husband looks at me, he starts sporting this insipid grin.
I'm scared to check social media.
Absurd Fourth Circuit ruling embodies everything that’s wrong with drug raids
The 4th Circuit just overturned the award in a civil suit where a man was shot and killed by police conducting a no-knock warrant.
...
But it’s worth considering what it means for this to be settled law. In the 20 or so years leading up to the American Revolution, the British crown began stationing troops in the streets of Boston to enforce England’s tax and import laws. The British troops and enforcement officers were armed with writs of assistance, or general warrants that gave them broad powers to search colonists’ homes. They didn’t need to establish probable cause, or even specificity as to a person or residence. The abuse that came with those warrants made Boston a hub of revolutionary fervor, and memories of that abuse are why the Founders created a Fourth Amendment after the war.
But while today’s search warrants require both specificity and some evidence of wrongdoing, in many ways the colonists had more protections than we do today. For example, the British soldiers could serve warrants only during the day. And they were always required to knock, announce themselves, announce their purpose and give the resident time and opportunity to come to the door to let them in peacefully. This was all in observance of the Castle Doctrine, or the idea that the home should be a place of peace and sanctuary, and that it should be violated only in the most extreme circumstances. Even then, the Castle Doctrine had a long and rich history in English common law, a tradition that carried over in the United States until the Supreme Court began chipping away at it in drug cases, beginning in about the 1960s.
Today, of course, authorities can break into homes without knocking. They can conduct raids at night. In theory, we’re today protected by the requirement that authorities show probable cause before serving a warrant, but given the deference judges give to police and prosecutors in much of the country and the boilerplate language you’ll often find on warrant affidavits, you could make a good argument that in many jurisdictions the probable cause protection is little more than a formality. In any case, if the Fourth Amendment is due to the Founders’ offense at British soldiers forcibly entering homes in daylight hours after knocking and announcing to search for contraband, it seems safe to say that the Founders would be appalled by the fact that today, dozens of times each day, heavily armed government officials break into homes, often at night, without first knocking and announcing, in order to conduct searches for contraband.
Drug raids weren’t always conducted this way. In fact, as I point out in my book, the no-knock raid wasn’t even something that organically grew out of policing. Police did sometimes enter homes without knocking. But it happened only if, while serving a search warrant, they observed some exigent circumstance that compelled them to do so — for example, if they heard someone getting beaten or hurt inside or observed through a window a resident loading a gun. But the idea of a pre-planned no-knock raid is a relatively new phenomenon. It was brought to us by drug-warring politicians, first through Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in New York, then via a Senate aide named Don Santarelli, who was recruited to the Richard Nixon presidential campaign in 1968, specifically for the purpose of coming up with tough-on-crime-sounding positions Nixon could stake out to appeal to (white) middle-class voters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/03/27/absurd-fourth-circuit-ruling-embodies-everything-thats-wrong-with-drug-raids/
U.S. top court rejects challenge to Wisconsin voter ID law
(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge to Wisconsin's Republican-backed law requiring voters to present photo identification to cast a ballot, a measure Democrats contend is aimed at keeping their supporters from voting.
The justices declined to hear an appeal filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the law. The ACLU said it then filed an emergency motion with a federal appeals court to try to keep the law from taking effect immediately.
Republican Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said the law cannot be implemented for the state's April 7 election because absentee ballots are already in the hands of voters but would be in place for future elections. "This decision is final," Schimel said.
Voter identification laws have been passed in a number of Republican-governed states over Democratic objections. Republicans say voter ID laws are needed to prevent voter fraud. Wisconsin's measure, blocked by the Supreme Court last year, was backed by Governor Scott Walker, a potential 2012 Republican presidential contender.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/23/us-usa-court-election-idUSKBN0MJ1DZ20150323?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter
It's my understanding, admittedly limited, that the USSC declined to grant cert, meaning that even among the court's liberal wing the appellants could not muster 4 justices willing to hear the case.
That being said, I'm not sure how much fruit the ACLU's request for a stay can produce.
No, states are NOT obligated to enforce federal law.
Any state that has decriminalized/legalized MJ is already engaged in the practice.
The case law is already established. In Printz vs US (thank-you to former9thward for naming the case) the USSC ruled that having states enforce federal law left the law to be administered by LEOs whom the president had no authority over. Put another way, if the president cannot hire/fire the officers enforcing a law -- which a president cannot do in state and local agencies -- then the president cannot properly take care to enforce laws passed by Congress per the Constitution.
Furthermore, the federal government via the Obama administration has already told states they are not allowed to enforce federal immigration law.
And, no, states cannot have federal funding withheld. Once Congress passed a budget saying what money goes where that is the law.
Withholding federal funds is also unconstitutional. Just as the feds cannot withhold Medicaid funding for states refusing to establish insurance veal pens -- er, sorry -- exchanges so too would it be unconstitutional to funds for Program X because Law Y was not being enforced.
Austin lawyer Adam Reposa says he put up ‘white people’ stickers
AUSTIN (KXAN) — An Austin lawyer is claiming responsibility for several stickers placed on East Austin businesses that claimed they were “exclusively for white people.”
Adam Reposa posted the video on YouTube and made a statement on Facebook saying he was trying promote the issue of gentrification in East Austin. (Warning: The video contains explicit language)
“They’re getting pushed out, and pretty quick. This area of town is turning into white’s only,” Reposa said in the clip. “Not by law like it used to be, and everyone’s going to jump on, ‘that’s racist!’ ‘that’s racist!’ Man, this town, the way **** works is racist! And I knew I could just bait all of y’all into being as stupid as you are.”
Reposa went on to blast people for not getting the message.
http://kxan.com/2015/03/20/austin-lawyer-adam-reposa-says-he-put-up-white-people-stickers/
It's our fault we didn't dig the vibe on his stupidity.
By the way, it'd be really nice if he'd put his shirt back on.
Role of Hillary Clinton’s brother in Haiti gold mine raises eyebrows
MORNE BOSSA, Haiti — Drive down the rutted dirt road a couple of miles to the guardhouse, then hike 15 minutes up to the overgrown hilltop, and there it is: a piece of 3 1/2 -inch-wide PVC pipe sticking out of the ground.
This is what, at least for the time being, a gold mine looks like.
It also has become a potentially problematic issue for Hillary Rodham Clinton as she considers a second presidential run, after it was revealed this month that in 2013, one of her brothers was added to the advisory board of the company that owns the mine.
Tony Rodham’s involvement with the mine, which has become a source of controversy in Haiti because of concern about potential environmental damage and the belief that the project will primarily benefit foreign investors, was first revealed in publicity about an upcoming book on the Clintons by author Peter Schweizer.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/role-of-hillary-clintons-brother-in-haiti-gold-mine-raises-eyebrows/2015/03/20/c8b6e3bc-cc05-11e4-a2a7-9517a3a70506_story.html?postshare=9431426941780024
Which of these proposals could have prevented Sandy Hook?
Lanza did not purchase his guns. he killed the owner, his mother, and stole the weapons.
Other notable, recent shootings such as Loughner, Holmes, Cho, Hasan, Rogers, Alexis did not purchase their weapons absent a BC.
A laudable action but -- again -- Lanza did not purchase his weapons and in cases where the police should have intervened they chose to not do so.
In the 4.5 minutes it took the police to arrive a 10-round capacity would not have made a difference. In fact, Lanza was changing magazines before exhausting them.
The AWB is likely what sank the proposal in the first place. It's been tried.
The term "loophole" is ambiguous, at best. This needs to be defined.
Police do not prevent, they react (except in the case of Columbine) and even then they are not obligated to act.
A tad undefined.
4.5 minutes is still 4.5 minutes.
Okay but, Holmes WAS reported by his mental health care provider under provisions of Colorado law but the authorities did nothing. The day Eliot Rogers went on his killing spree his own parents reported him to the police saying they thought he was going to hurt people. Loughner, Lanza, Hasan, Alexis and Cho also had histories with authorities and providers and yet nothing was acted upon.
Last I heard "school resource officer" means "cop with a gun." I've been told guns in school is not the answer.
He should really talk to his former chief-of-staff.
*****
CORRECTION -- I originally wrote the post stating the police response time was 12 minutes. I was informed the response time from the placement of the call to 911 to police arriving on-scene -- at which time Lanza shot himself -- was approximately 4.5 minutes. The OP has been corrected, I apologize for the error and I appreciate Lurks Often for bringing it to my attention.
According to salon.com Mayor Rahm Emmanuel closed half of Chicago's mental health clinics
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/16/rahm_emanuels_achilles_heel_6_reasons_he_may_lose_his_reelection/This is interesting because the city has also been spending a lot of money fighting in court to keep its gun ban or defending itself from its disingenuous efforts to skirt USSC rulings.
Yet, when statistics for gun deaths are analyzed over half of gun deaths are from suicides -- people in need of mental health care.
Is it really about saving lives or is it about control?
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