Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

Getting the State Out of Marriage

The opinion of an Alabama Supreme Court justice has caused a minor amount of jimmies to get rustled. Justice Glenn Murdock opined that allowing same-sex marriage to continue in Alabama could result in all marriages behind banned in the state. Needless to say this has the writers over at Think Progress very upset:

Thus, according to Murdock, if gay couples and straight couples must enjoy the exact same marriage rights under the Constitution, the proper remedy might be to deny those rights to everyone, rather than extending them to same-sex and opposite-sex couples alike.

In the unlikely event that a majority of the state supreme court adopts this approach, that could cause a largely academic matter that has divided federal judges to suddenly become hugely important. Though the overwhelming majority of federal judges to consider the question after the Supreme Court’s most recent gay rights decision in 2013 agree that the Constitution does not permit anti-gay marriage discrimination, these judges have split on rationale. Some judges have held that denying equal marriage rights to gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals deprives them of their right to equality under the law; while others have held that denying such rights to these individuals violates a “fundamental right” to marry. (Other judges have embraced both rationales in favor of marriage equality, or they’ve embraced a hybrid of the two rationales.)

According to the author’s view denying anybody the ability to marry would be the denial of the right to marriage. I actually propose an alternate view. Rights are supposed to be acts individuals can partake in freely. Privileges, on the other hand, are acts individuals can partake in so long as they have permission to do so. This means any act the state interferes with becomes a privilege instead of a right. Marriage, by being regulated by the state, is today a privilege that one must seek approval from the state to partake in.

Progressives and libertarians agree that people should be free to marry who they want. Where the two groups disagree is how such a freedom can exist. According to progressives the freedom to marry can only exist if the state allows it to. Libertarians believe that the freedom to marry can only exist if the state is entirely divorced (excuse the pun) from the process. The difference between the two beliefs is stark. If the state is involved then it has the power to grant or deny marriages. Currently the fight for marriage equality focuses on same-sex couples. However granting same-sex couples the privilege to marry doesn’t necessarily grant, say, polyamorous groups the privilege to marry. Meanwhile divorcing the state from marriage would mean the institution is up to individuals to define so same-sex couples and polyamorous groups would both be free to declare themselves married.

By denying all marriages Alabama could create a de facto environment where state approval of marriage is no longer sought and therefore individuals would be more apt to declare themselves married on their own terms. In my opinion far more would be accomplished if Alabama denied all marriage licenses than if it approve heterosexual and homosexual couples to get married. The former would encourage people to ignore the state whereas the latter would require, say, polyamorous groups to drudge through a long legal fight to seek permission to get married.

Why I Hate Public School History Courses

I love history. In fact I’m writing this post after spending about an hour reading The Secret History of the Mongol Queens (it’s a great book and if you have an interest in Mongol history I highly recommend it). This love didn’t develop until well after I graduated. During my public career I didn’t give two shits about history. It wasn’t not because I was lazy, it was because none of the history we learned was interesting. The most interesting history is the controversial history but that’s what they avoid teaching in public schools like the plague (which, interestingly enough, was likely introduce to Europe by the Mongols). I believe this is because the people drawing up the history curriculum want to avoid dealing with the idiot politicians who chomp at the bit whenever something slightly different from their party’s ideology is taught.

Whoever wrote the history curriculum in Oklahoma is learning this valuable lesson. Apparently they decided to cover some of the more sinister, and therefore more interesting, parts of this country’s history because some of that state’s Republicans are flipping their shit:

State Rep. Dan Fisher (R) introduced a bill at the beginning of the month that keeps the state from funding AP U.S. History unless the College Board changes the curriculum. The bill also orders the state Department of Education to establish a U.S. History program that would replace the AP course.

Since the College Board released a new course framework for U.S. history in October 2012, conservative backlash against the course has grown significantly. The Republican National Committee condemned the course and its “consistently negative view of American history” in August. Numerous states and school districts have now taken action to denounce the exam.

Fisher said Monday that the AP U.S. History course emphasizes “what is bad about America” and complained that the framework eliminated the concept of “American exceptionalism,” according to the Tulsa World.

This pisses me off for three reasons. First, the idea of “American exceptionalism” is nationalistic bullshit. The United States, like every other country on the face of the planet, has done some terrible shit. Nothing it has done has been exceptional in regards to the world at large. It really is just another country in the long history of countries. And if you really dig deep enough the United States is little more than a discount Roman Republic.

The second reason this pisses me off is because sweeping the bad parts of American history under the rug prevents the next generation form learning from those mistakes. Slavery, genocide, mass incarceration, institutionalized bigotry, and many other rather nasty things populate American history. If all of those things are just swept under the rug then they won’t be discussed critically and the lessons learned will be forgotten. Forgetting past fuck ups is not smart.

The third reason this pisses me off is because it dissuades teachers from covering controversial history. Without controversy history classes are places where students go to learn names and dates just long enough to pass tests. A lot of people bitch that kids these days don’t know history. Well it’s not their fault. They’re fed a bunch of bland facts with no critical analysis. Since that’s their introduction to history they believe it’s a born area of study and avoid it. If you taught them some of the really good shit they would likely take a real interest in the topic and pursue it.

What makes history interesting are the stories. Interesting people doing interesting shit is the backbone of any story whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. But telling interesting historical stories is difficult in a political environment where one or the other major party will jump down your throat because the stories shine a negative light on their bullshit ideology.

Minnesota Man Imprisoned for Months for Possession Vitamins

As the famous saying goes, you can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride. The war on unpatentable drugs has given law enforcement almost completely unchecked powers when it comes to stealing your shit and holding you in a cage. Civil forfeiture laws, for example, grant law enforcement the power to literally take your stuff and they only have to return it if you can prove that it wasn’t tied to a drug crime in any way (and proving a negative is very difficult). Likewise law enforcement officers can put you in a cage if you are in possession of anything that looks like it could be a verboten drug. While you may eventually beat the charge after lab analysis has been performed on whatever you were carrying you will have still wasted months of your life in a cage:

MANKATO, Minn. — A Mankato man was jailed for months while he waited for the state crime lab to process suspected drugs that turned out to be vitamins.

Joseph Burrell was arrested in November and charged with two felony counts of drug possession. His bail was set at $250,000. The 31-year-old Burrell says he’s not happy it took so long for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to process the evidence.

In all likelihood Mr. Burrell will receive no compensation for being unlawfully detained for months. This is because the state doesn’t have to compensate you when it makes a mistake, you only have to compensate it when you make a mistake.

Banning Sharp Sticks

The problem with prohibitionist ideals is that it’s hard to decide where to stop. For the longest time the United States has had a mob of people demanding that firearms be banned. They do this under the auspices of safety. When asked if they want to ban clubs, sticks, and other weapons they scoff and claim you’re using a straw man argument. But when they get their way they quickly start moving onto other weapons. As a state that enjoys very restrictive gun control laws New York is finally at the point where other weapons are becoming political targets. One senator is going to present a bill that will band machetes:

The sale of machetes should be outlawed after several recent attacks, a Queens pol said Wednesday.

State Sen. Tony Avella plans to introduce a bill to ban the possession of the scary blades in New York.

“The fact that anyone can easily purchase this potentially lethal tool is just crazy,” he said.

[…]

Under Avella’s proposed legislation, the mere possession of a machete could lead to a year behind bars.

This bill is in response to a single attack. Well a single attack and a strong desire to perform a little political grandstanding. Machetes certainly are lethal weapons but they’re also extremely limited by their size. That is to say a machete is difficult to conceal. Police are quick to question and people are likely to avoid somebody walking around with a giant knife strapped to their body.

I often point out the futility of prohibiting an easily constructed device when the topic of gun control comes up. Making a machete is child’s play compared to making a firearm, which is always child’s play. You can just buy a piece of flat steel, grind down a handle, and sharpen one of the sides. So this bill is not only stupid but it’s even more pointless than gun control laws are.

The Terrorist Canard

With encrypted communications threatening to reduce the state’s revenue stream by letting us little serfs conceal our black market business dealings the political body is getting worried. Whenever the political body gets worried it begins efforts to propagandize the general populace. The propaganda always exploits fear. At one time the fear being exploited was drug usage then it became street crime and now it’s terrorism. Hoping the hamper the development of strong cryptographic tools the political body has been looking at introducing laws that would require software and hardware developers to introduce backdoors for state usage. Because it’s the fear of the day they’re selling these laws under the guise of fighting terrorism:

President Barack Obama is making his position on encryption known: he is a supporter and “believer in strong encryption” but also “sympathetic” to law enforcement’s needs to prevent terror attacks.

“I think the only concern is… our law enforcement is expected to stop every plot. Every attack. Any bomb on a plane. The first time that attack takes place, where it turns out we had a lead and couldn’t follow up on it, the public’s going to demand answers. This is a public conversation that we should be having,” Obama said in a Friday interview with Re/Code. “I lean probably further in the direction of strong encryption than some do inside law enforcement. But I am sympathetic to law enforcement, because I know the kind of pressure they’re under to keep us safe. And it’s not as black and white as it’s sometimes portrayed. Now, in fairness, I think those in favor of air tight encryption also want to be protected from terrorists.”

Can we stop with the terrorist canard? Nobody expects law enforcement to stop every terrorist plot. In fact nobody, at least nobody sensible, expects law enforcement to stop any terrorist plot. What people expect of law enforcement is to clean up after a terrorist attack. If people actually expected law enforcement would stop terrorist attacks they wouldn’t be afraid of terrorist attacks.

Furthermore the state’s widespread surveillance efforts haven’t stopped a single terrorist plot. Every claim made to the contrary has been thoroughly debunked. This isn’t surprising. Widespread surveillance creates a sea of data from which no single piece of useful data can be extracted. What makes widespread surveillance even more worthless is that no single piece of data can reveal a terrorist plot so you need to find multiple pieces of connected data to being revealing a plot. If finding a single piece of useful data in a sea of noise is difficult try finding many pieces of connected data that aren’t obviously connected.

The only way law enforcement can stop terrorist plots is to utilize old fashion investigative techniques. But these techniques are expensive in both money and time and don’t lead to revenue for departments. Why would a law enforcement agency put resources into uncovering a terrorist plot when it can rely on anonymous tips to kick down the doors of drug deals and legally confiscate all of their property to auction of later? To add insult to injury solving a terrorist plot is actually detrimental to a law enforcement agency since they rely on successful terrorist attacks to justify buying surplus military equipment.

It’s time to put the terrorist canard to bed. Only the completely gullible are being fooled and they’re not the ones that need to be convinced. In order to put backdoors into software and devices the developers and manufacturers have to be convinced and they won’t be convinced because their users will stop buying their products if they implement said backdoors. Since many of their users are gullible idiots the state’s terrorist propaganda won’t accomplish its goal and thus the exercise is a waste of everybody’s time.

Why Nobody Likes the Republican Party Part 2

The Republican Party continues its downward spiral into political irrelevancy. This downward spiral is being pushed, nearly at the speed of sound now, by the party’s social conservatism, which no decent person supports. Yesterday saw a trifecta of Republican Party social stupidity. First the governor of Kansas decided to repeal a previous governor’s executive order that prevented the state from discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) employees:

Kansas will no longer ban discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered in hiring and employment in much of state government because of an action announced Tuesday by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.

Brownback rescinded an executive order issued in August 2007 by then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius barring discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The order applied to hiring and employment decisions by agencies under the governor’s direct control and required them to create anti-harassment policies as well.

Over the century the state has set a precedence for prohibiting itself from discriminating against employees. It started with the women’s suffrage movement and continued on through the civil rights movement. Since then the state has ruled that it cannot discriminate against people based on sex, race, religion, or national origin. As time continues on more groups are added to the list. It’s almost certainly a matter of time before LGBT individuals are added to the list. But the governor of Kansas is a fucking asshole that should be hauled out to a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific and stranded. By repealing the executive order he has demonstrated his desire to discriminate against LGBT individuals and that alone proves he’s a horrible human being.

Speaking of discriminating against LGBT individuals, one of the neocon’s rising stars decided he wanted to get in on the action. Ted Cruz, who is often mistakenly referred to as a libertarian by idiots, has introduced a bill to strip federal benefits from married same-sex couples:

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz is pushing the State Marriage Defense Act, legislation that if signed into law could accomplish two objectives. First, redefine marriage at the federal level to remove from hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples the federal government’s recognition of their marriages, and thus, any corresponding federal benefits they are afforded, now or in the future. And second, should the U.S. Supreme Court not find a right to marriage for same-sex couples, encourage states that do not wish to recognize those marriages to potentially nullify them.

Cruz is, not surprisingly, selling this as a states’ rights bill even though it would strip same-sex couples of federal benefits. Once again one must ask why any senator is wasting our time with discriminatory legislation. Only the socially conservative zealots want this and they’re the last group of people anybody should be listening to with any seriousness. The state should not be in the business of discriminating against anybody for any reason. Doing so destroys the fiction its tried to hard to establish that it is representative of the people. Just toss this on the tall pile of reasons not to support Cruz if he decides to run for the presidency.

The third act in this trifecta is rather bizarre. Montana State Representative David Moor introduced a bill that would outlaw, and I’m not kidding here, topless men in public. The representative also had some choice words for yoga pants:

A Republican legislator from Montana has proposed a law that seems like something out of another decade — or perhaps even another century.

State Rep. David Moore has proposed a new bill that would ban “any device, costume, or covering that gives the appearance of, or simulates, the genitals, pubic hair, anus region, or pubic hair region.”

“Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway,” he added following a debate over the bill. Although the law would not make yoga pants or speedos illegal, it does call for the elimination of all nipple exposure, male or female.

Government so small it fits in your wardrobe! More and more the Republican Party beginning to reflect the rulers of Saudi Arabia. Like the Saudi rulers, members of the Republican Party continue showing an unhealthy obsession with sex. I’m not sure if this is because they’re trying to suppress desires that go against their socially conservative values or they’re just raging assholes that hate everybody that doesn’t fit into the tiny box that makes up their worldview. Either way they’re only pushing Americans way from their party, which is a good thing because they’re also a bunch of war mongering assholes (but their only real competitor is almost composed of war mongering assholes so this is a moot point).

Court Rules State Secrets Trump Justice

I really do appreciate living in the United States. In what other country could you be subjected to constant surveillance by your own government and enjoy a court system that declares the practice legal? OK, that’s actually a lot of countries. But what makes the United States so special is its propaganda about being the land of the free. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been working on a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) for violating our supposed Constitutional rights against unlawful search and seizure. Today a district court in California ruled that the NSA’s was above the law because prosecuting it would require revealing state secrets:

A district court in California has issued a ruling in favor of the National Security Agency in a long-running case over the spy agency’s collection of Internet records.

The challenge against the controversial Upstream program was tossed out because additional defense from the government would have required “impermissible disclosure of state secret information,” Judge Jeffrey White wrote in his decision.

That really shows how much protection the Constitution provides. The amendments in the Bill of Rights can be rendered null and void the second state secrets exist. If the Soviet Union were around today it would likely be envious of the American system.

The Front Line of the Bathroom Wars Has Shifted to Florida

Republicans often call themselves advocates of small government. What that means is that the government needs to be small enough to fit into our bedrooms and bathrooms. In the tradition of the Roman propensity of naming wars after the locations where they were fought I’ve dubbed the Republican Party’s attempt to regulate bathroom usage the Bathroom Wars. Two years ago the front line of this war was in Arizona, where Republicans tried to pass a law that would make it a jailable offense to use a bathroom in a manner that wasn’t specifically approved by the men in suits in Arizona’s capitol building. Now the front line has moved to Florida where Republican scumbag Frank Artiles has introduced legislation that manages exceed Arizona’s attempt in stupidity and offensiveness:

According to the bill’s text, any trans person who enters a “single-sex public facility” that doesn’t match their “biological sex” is guilty of a first-degree misdemeanor. A “single-sex public facility” includes bathrooms “maintained by an owner of public accommodations, a school, or a place of employment”—basically, any public bathroom in the entire state. Any trans person who violates the act could be sentenced to one year in prison.

Regardless of your views on transgender individuals I think we can mostly agree that tossing somebody in a cage for one year because they failed to use a bathroom in a manner unapproved by the men in suits in Florida’s capitol is asinine. The state’s cages are already overflowing with nonviolent individuals so I fail to see how adding more to the mix will make matters worse.

But jailing transgender individuals for using a bathroom in a manner unapproved by the state is par for the course thanks to Arizona. Frank Artiles decided he wanted to kick things up a notch and prove that he is, without a doubt, more transphobic than the Republicans in Arizona:

It gets much, much worse. Any non-trans person who discovers a trans person using a bathroom that doesn’t align with their “biological sex” would be permitted to sue that trans person under the act. (If sued successfully, the trans person would have to pay their accuser’s attorney fees.)

I’m not sure how a cisgender person is supposed to identify whether or not another person using a bathroom is transgender unless they start resorting to age old tactics of detecting thoughtcrime:

On the upside this bill is mostly toothless because the Republican Party cherishes property rights above all else and therefore would never require a private business to abide by this law. Just kidding!

And, in a final turn of the screw, an “owner of public accommodations, a school, or a place of employment” who allows a trans person to use the bathroom of their true gender is liable for a civil suit.

Republicans never were big on the whole private property thing. This is especially true when property rights interfere with the subjugation of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals.

As an individual with transgender friends I find these bills personally offensive. As a libertarian who believe the government has no right to regulate bedrooms or bathrooms I find these bills tyrannical. As an anarchist who believe all interactions should be voluntary I find these bills sickening. Basically these types of bills offend me on every level and I really think tarring and feathering individuals who introduce them and vote for them is too kind. I hope this bill doesn’t pass and I hope Frank Artiles gets exiled to a deserted island so far out in the middle of the ocean that there’s no chance he’ll make it back to the United States.

She Should Have Been a Security Expert

As you can expect from a man who has a blog just so he can bitch about whatever he feels like, there are a lot of things that really piss me off. One of the things at the top of the list of things that piss me off is blaming victims of rape fore being raped. Oftentimes such blame comes in the form of people claiming a woman shouldn’t have worn revealing clothing or gotten drunk at a party. But the Arizona Attorney General’s Office may have just taken the cake. A woman is suing the state because she was raped by a prisoner while working at the prison. The Attorney General’s Office is claiming she was at fault because the prison failed at provider her effective security:

“Plaintiff is an ADOC (Arizona Department of Corrections) employee who routinely worked at the prison complex,” Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Weisbard wrote in his motion to dismiss. “By being placed in a classroom at the complex, the officers were not placing Plaintiff in any type of situation that she would not normally face. The risk of harm, including assault, always existed at a prison like Eyman.”

[…]

Normally, such tests are given in the visitation room, which is monitored by security cameras and corrections officers. But on that day, because of a special event, she was sent to an unmonitored classroom, handed a radio and told to use it if there was any trouble, her lawsuit says.

The test lasted 90 minutes during which not a single corrections officer checked on her or radioed to ask if everything was OK. As they finished, six inmates left, returning unescorted to their dorm. One, Jacob Harvey, lingered.

According to the lawsuit, the 20-year-old inmate grabbed her from behind and took her to the ground as she struggled. He then stabbed her repeatedly in the head with a pen, choked her, slammed her head into the floor, tore away her clothes and raped her, the lawsuit says.

The teacher told investigators she screamed for help, but no one came. After the attack, Harvey tried to use her radio to call for help but it was tuned to a channel the guards didn’t even use. Eventually, Harvey allowed her to phone for help.

In other words the Attorney General’s Office is saying she should have known the room was unmonitored and therefore demanded a different room and to verify the radio given to her was set to the proper channel. Its defense is literally claiming she was at fault for being raped because she wasn’t a trained security expert. I don’t even have words for how disgusting that claim is.

Prisons are supposed to be completely controlled facilities. That’s why there are walls, fences, bars, and guards literally everywhere. But even in these tightly controlled environments the state can’t protect people. It really makes you wonder why anybody expects the state to protect them. This also shows that the state will sink to some really goddamn awful levels to dodge responsibilities for its failures.

Proving Once Again Police Are Better Than Us

Tony Cornish is a busy man. Last week he was helping introduce legislation that would classify any police body camera footage not being used to prosecute a prole, which would help ensure bad police officers continue to be shielded from the consequences of their misdeeds. This week he’s proposing a special emergency system just for the police officers:

ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) — Minnesota lawmakers are debating a statewide alert system that would be used by law enforcement and broadcasters when a police officer is hurt.

The Blue Alert system would help get the word out quicker to the public to help identify and locate a suspect who seriously hurts or kills a law enforcement officer. This would apply to local, state and federal police in Minnesota.

Rep. Tony Cornish, who introduced the bill, says the system would use the same format already in place that issues Amber Alerts.

Police officers are like you and me only better! You have to love the fact that this would help get the word out to the public when a perpetrator has hurt a law enforcer but won’t do squat if a perpetrator rapes, murders, or assaults anybody else. I can’t wait to see Cornish’s next attempt to hoist the police further above the general public. Maybe his next bill can require all emergency services be diverted from whatever they are doing to respond to any incident where a cop is injured. That would forsake any lowly prole who is having a heart attack but sometimes we have to make sacrifices to ensure our oppressors are safe.